bookshelf

EDISON AND THE ELECTRIC CHAIR

Name: EDISON AND THE ELECTRIC CHAIR
Author: Mark Essig
ISBN: 0-8027-1406-4

A STORY OF LIGHT AND DEATH

by Mark Essig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2003

But of course he did. Essig’s fine account, like L.J. Davis’s Fleet Fire (p. 653), doesn’t diminish Edison’s reputation as a...

bookshelf

High-voltage investigation into the politics of invention and the marketing of science.

Imagine what might happen if, say, razor-blade manufacturer Billy Bob Gillette proclaimed that razor blades produced by archrival Silas Schick were the very best instruments to use when cutting someone’s throat. That’s much what Thomas Edison did, writes Essig in this promising debut: though an opponent of capital punishment, he turned his attention in the last decade of the 19th century to the development of the electric chair, which, he argued—at least publicly—was the most humane way to dispose of condemned prisoners, certainly more so than the noose or the bullet. Edison had killed a couple dozen dogs and several horses and calves in his New Jersey laboratory to prove as much. But, he urged, the best way to kill said condemned was not through his direct current, which was a safe form of electricity, but through hated archrival George Westinghouse’s alternating current, which was deadly, he hinted, to anyone who approached it. As for the prisoners who came into contact with AC, he said, “When the time comes, touch a button, close the circuit, and . . . it is over.” A brilliant marketing ploy: American states went for capital punishment via the electric chair in a big way, as they did for the cheaper if admittedly more dangerous alternating current. Whereupon, Essig writes, Edison returned to his former position of condemning capital punishment as a barbarity and denied that he’d ever had anything to do with the electric chair, saying, “I did not invent such an instrument.”

But of course he did. Essig’s fine account, like L.J. Davis’s Fleet Fire (p. 653), doesn’t diminish Edison’s reputation as a scientific innovator and entrepreneur, but it certainly lessens our estimation of him as a human.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-8027-1406-4

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Walker

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

bookshelf

HIGH LONESOME

THE AMERICAN CULTURE OF COUNTRY MUSIC

by Cecelia Tichi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1994

bookshelf

A dry exegesis of country music by the author of Electronic Hearth (1991). Tichi (English/Vanderbilt Univ.) is a novice fan of country music whose background is strongest in American literature and art. Proceeding thematically, she addresses common issues in American culture, including the tension between the individual and society, the lure of home versus the call of the road, and nature as both a nurturing and potentially dangerous force. Lacing together anecdotes, interviews, and analysis of songs, she comes to the conclusion that country music addresses many of the same topics as more ``serious'' art forms, making it ``emphatically [a] national music.'' While her discussions can be interesting, ultimately she offers little new to explain the popularity or quality of country music. The musicians she favors—Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Laurie Lewis, Nanci Griffith, and Barry and Holly Tashian—all come out of a folk-rock background (in the '70s, they would have been called singer/songwriters), so they naturally tend to take an intellectual, pseudoliterary approach to songwriting and performance. Tichi's musical knowledge is slim, leading to some factual errors, as when she ascribes ``Dueling Banjos'' to Earl Scruggs, though it was in fact recorded by Marshall Brickman and Eric Weissberg. And the comment that ``the ability to read music would be futile for bluegrass...the music simply moves too fast to be read off the page'' would come as a surprise to any classical violinist who's ever tackled Paganini. The book is accompanied by a CD that primarily focuses on new country acts; this material is readily available, and it would be surprising if a reader who was attracted to this book did not already own most of these recordings. A tip of the academic mortarboard towards the ten-gallon-hat crowd that will befuddle members of both groups. (122 b&w photos and 16-page color insert)

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1994

ISBN: 0-8078-2134-9

Page Count: 350

Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

- BOOK REVIEW
A GILDED REDWOOD COFFIN
by Cecelia Tichi

- BOOK REVIEW
DEATH IN A GILDED FRAME
by Cecelia Tichi

- BOOK REVIEW
A GILDED DROWNING POOL
by Cecelia Tichi

bookshelf

TALK DIRTY TO ME

AN INTIMATE PHILOSOPHY OF SEX

by Sallie Tisdale ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1994

bookshelf

Tisdale (Stepping Westward, 1991, etc.) leads an enthusiastic amateur's tour through sex in America (with a few brief forays abroad). In an inviting expansion of her controversial 1992 Harper's magazine essay of the same title, Tisdale offers a trek through sexual inhibitions, expressions, assumptions, and questions (for instance, if everyone thinks about sex so much, why do so few feel comfortable discussing it?), arriving at an increasingly fashionable pro-sex feminism. Americans are so conflicted about sex, she says, because they're caught endlessly between obsession and avoidance. Tisdale, fighting avoidance, confronts the subject head on. She checks out sex clubs, sex toy stores, pornography shops, and erotic novels, citing everyone from Roland Barthes to Susie Bright. Ancient Greece, the story of Adam and Eve, Freud, Jesse Helms, and Basic Instinct convince her that we're a nation of guilty prudes, arrested adolescents who can't sate our lust for adult material. We're ``sex drenched and sex phobic.'' Tisdale indicates that the fear starts with men, but that women can help fix it. ``Women guiding the sexual drive of men changes them, gentles the institutions men have made to cope with their feelings toward women.'' One area she sees women reinventing is pornography. The chapter on this subject is by far the most controversial and at times tedious. Coming down hard on anti-porn feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (even more than on the Religious Right), she argues for tolerance and maintains that the heterosexual nuclear family, reproductive legislation, and patriarchal society in general are likely to do more damage to women than any X-rated films. Finally, she reaches the unoriginal but hopeful point that sexual freedom contains the seeds of significant social change. ``The center will not hold...if radical sexuality works.'' Just about everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask. Fluidly written, sexy, probing, personally revealing, and wise.