“This was like no fire they’d ever witnessed. This was electricity. And the dark marvel of man-made lightning was as mysterious and incomprehensible as an Old Testament plague.”–Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night
In the waning years of the 19th century, gas lamps still light street corners and the electric light as we know it is barely beyond the idea phase. This is the backdrop of Graham Moore’s fascinating novel based on the real life race to develop electricity as a viable way to light the nation and reap the economic windfall sure to follow. Paul Cravath, recently graduated from Columbia Law School, is hired by George Westinghouse to defend him and his company from a suit filed by Thomas Edison. The suit seeks to settle the billion dollar question of who invented the light bulb and therefore has the right to power cities across the country.
Forget whatever you think you know about how the light bulb and Thomas Edison and get ready for an engrossing story complete with well known public figures, villains, an opera singer, and ingenius legal strategies. Since this a novel based on actual events, I appreciate that Moore takes time at the end of the book to explain what the fictional elements were and why he chose to portray things a certain way.
Content Advisory: Some language, violence