The genius of America's most prolific inventor, Thomas Edison, is widely acknowledged, and Edison himself has become an almost mythic figure. But how much do we really know about the man who considered deriving rubber from a goldenrod plant as opposed to the genius who gave us electric light? Neil Baldwin gives us a complex portrait of the inventor himself--both myth and man--and a multifaceted account of the intellectual climate of the country he worked in and irrevocably changed.

The genius of Thomas Edison is widely acknowledged, and Edison himself has become an almost mythical figure. But how much do we really know about the man who considered deriving rubber from a goldenrod plant as opposed to the genius who gave us electric light? In this text, Neil Baldwin gives a complex portrait of the inventor - both myth and man - and an account of the intellectual climate of the country he worked in and irrevocably changed.