Tad Reynales

Great historical drama; offputting narrator

Revisado: 03-09-20

I very much enjoyed reading this history of the "war" between Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse to win the market for electric lighting in the United States. Jill Jonnes does an excellent job of conveying the social, political and economic environment of the time, as well as creating a suspenseful narrative of the competitions. It is somewhat ironic, today, that all of the light bulbs, whether incandescent or fluorescent, are being replaced by LED lamps -- which, of course, noone could envision back in 1900. Also, the competition between alternating and direct current technologies is similarly amusing when one sees all of the solar electric installations that will be supplying residential lighting and other power to homes going into the future. Either lights and appliances will have to be converted to D/C, or there will have to be D/C to A/C inverters, which may result in 20% power loss, depending on efficiency. The illustrations in the paperback version are black & white and most are small (half page). Haven't see the hardback version yet.

The narrator of the audiobook has a voice that, to me, resembles Keith Morrison on Dateline - the tone and cadence of an undertaker that continually suggests something awful is about to happen but there's nothing that can be done about it (if there's an English or foreign language word for this, please advise). He (Chris Sorenson) has apparently narrated some 240 other audiobooks, so he must have an audience, but I am not a fan. I tried speeding up and slowing down the audio and it didn't help.

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