{"product_id":"9780375758843","title":"Empires of Light","description":"Author: Jonnes, Jill\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9780375758843\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: RANDOM HOUSE US\u003cbr\u003eYear first published: 15 Nov 2004\u003cbr\u003ePages: 464 \u003cbr\u003eFormat: Paperback \/ softback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith characters such as J.P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, William Vanderbilt, Michael Faraday, and Benjamin Franklin, EMPIRES OF LIGHT is an incredible melding of science and history, invention and magesty. Here is the story of the race between three titans of the Gilded Age to bring electricity to the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePlt;bPgt;The gripping history of electricity and how the fateful collision of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed.Plt;\/bPgt;Plt;brPgt;Plt;brPgt;In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans  of AmericaP#8217;s Gilded AgeP#8212;Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George WestinghouseP#8212;battled  bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Plt;iPgt;Empires  of LightPlt;\/iPgt;, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting  and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and  hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison,  the nationP#8217;s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb  and mastermind of the worldP#8217;s first direct current electrical light networks; the  Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who  revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George  Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial  idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful  electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Plt;brPgt;Plt;brPgt; Edison struggled to introduce  his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City  as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current  (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history,  the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago  WorldP#8217;s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamberP#8212;Jonnes takes us on the  tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler,  convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.","brand":"Print on demand - Ships in 1 to 3 months","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50527475499166,"sku":"UBD-9780375758843","price":44.78,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0400\/9043\/5742\/files\/9780375758843.jpg?v=1790244719","url":"https:\/\/classicbargains.com.au\/products\/9780375758843","provider":"Classic Bargains Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}