Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America by Maury Klein

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America's rise to industrial greatness was propelled by the "power revolution," the ascendance of the steam engine, the electric motor, and the incandescent bulb. The revolution changed every aspect of American life, from labor to leisure, from material wealth to scientific research. Maury Klein's history of this transformation focuses not on the machines but on those who made them pervasive; titans like James Watt, Elihu Thomson, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, J. P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and, of course, Thomas Edison.

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The dramatic story of the “power revolution” that turned America from an agrarian society into a technological superpower, and the dynamic, fiercely competitive inventors and entrepreneurs who made it happen—a riveting historical saga to rival McCullough’s The Great Bridge or Larson’s Thunderstruck.
Maury Klein, author of Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929, is one of America’s most acclaimed historians of business and industry. In The Power Makers, he offers an epic narrative of his greatest subject yet—the “power revolution” that transformed American life in the course of the nineteenth century.
The steam engine, the incandescent bulb, the electric motor—inventions such as these replaced backbreaking toil with machine labor and changed every aspect of daily life in the span of a few generations. The power revolution is not a tale of machines, however, but of men: inventors such as James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs such as George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen such as J.P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin of General Electric. Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once. With consummate skill, Klein recreates their discoveries, their stunning triumphs and frequent failures, and their unceasing, tumultuous, and ferocious battles in the marketplace.
In Klein’s hands, their personalities and discoveries leap off the page. The Power Makers is a dazzling saga of inspired invention, dogged persistence, and business competition at its most naked andcutthroat—a tale of America in its most astonishing decades.

Publishers Weekly

In an ambitious and expansive narrative, Klein (Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929) chronicles the advent of steam power and the electrification of America. Klein's descriptions of the science of steam power, beginning with James Watt, and electricity are clear and detailed. He is especially strong when exploring the confounding engineering feats needed to make electricity a commercially feasible commodity. The heart of the book is the collision of entrepreneurs, inventors and financiers, and the epic battle between two icons of American industry, Edison and Westinghouse, to control and profit from the electrification of America. Along the way Klein brings dramatically to life the triumphs and disappointments, both human and technical, as the fledging electric companies sought to service American homes and businesses. In a well-written and satisfying account, Klein makes readers aware of the magnitude of the energy, genius and tenacity of not only Edison—whose development of the world's first power station in 1881 on New York's Pearl Street was a momentous accomplishment—but also of Westinghouse and many others whose discoveries and vision made cheap electricity possible. B&w illus. (June)

Frederick J. Augustyn Jr. - Library Journal

Klein (history, emeritus, Univ. of Rhode Island; The Genesis of American Industry, 1870-1920) presents an engaging, annotated, and accessible portrait of 18th- through early 20th-century inventors and entrepreneurs who fashioned America into the world's economic powerhouse. Rather curiously inserting the device of "Ned," a fictional visitor to the major expositions in Philadelphia (1876), Chicago (1893), and New York City (1939), all of which educated the public on industrial plans and progress, Klein highlights the famous-Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan, and George Westinghouse-and the lesser known-including Nikola Tesla, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin-while also surveying the proliferation of industry based on their inventions, notably the railroad, steamship, and electric motor. Given his greater focus on the late 19th century, Klein might best have concluded with the electric illumination displays of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, but "Ned" doesn't go there. Although "Ned" is at the 1939 World's Fair, the author scarcely mentions the rise of the automobile, the greatest agent of change during the early 20th century. This book will especially satisfy new or younger devotees of American applied scientific and technological history. Recommended for public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Business historian Klein (The Change Makers: From Carnegie to Gates, How the Great Entrepreneurs Transformed Ideas Into Industry, 2003, etc.) brings the steam and electrical power revolutions memorably to life. The author enlivens the narrative in two ways. First, he tethers it to three industrial exhibits-the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and the 1939 World's Fair in New York-all occurring within the span of a lifetime, each neatly showcasing for the common man (and the general reader) the successive fruits of the power revolution and together linking the steam to the electric era. Second, he sprinkles lively portraits of the uncommon men responsible for the stunning transformation in the way we live: James Watt and the steam engine, Michael Faraday and the electromagnetic motor, Thomas Edison and the incandescent lamp. Klein also tells the story of Edison's principal rival, George Westinghouse; the eccentric visionary Nikola Tesla; Samuel Insull, who figured out how to deliver electricity cheaply to the masses; and scores of lesser-known figures who played a significant role in the advancement of the technological revolution. In addition to his comprehensive discussion of the discoveries, inventions and improvements, Klein also explains the centrality of politics, finance and public relations to the development, marketing and widespread adoption of the many wonders coming from progressive workshops like Menlo Park. From steamships, locomotives and trolleys, to telephones, radios, record players and a host of household appliances, the era was packed with astonishing developments that came with dizzying speed. The authormakes room for a few cautionary tales about the blessings of this new technology, about the rampant materialism it helped inspire and about the damage inflicted during the rush to the future. For the most part, though, the book is a paean to the genius of an age not long past and a tribute to the men who made-far more than any politician or statesman-the modern world. An endlessly entertaining and informative treatment of a vast, sometimes difficult subject. Agent: Marian Young/The Young Agency

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Table of Contents