CHARLES STEINMETZ

This book suffers from the common malady of easy biographies for children--highly fictionalized dialogue, more characteristic of elementary school primers than of living people. It is most repugnant in the beginning of the book, where the writing is stiff, full of truisms, and has very little flair. Later, while the large number of less significant details seems rather at odds with the level of reading, the writer has been able to render some of the man's personality as well as the facts. An unremarkable account of a truly remarkable engineer.