The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World
“If you guys haven't read it, it's a good biography of Edison.”
Why it is worth your time
The Wizard of Menlo Park is Randall Stross's 2007 biography of Thomas Edison. Stross taught business at San Jose State University and wrote eBoys, on the venture firm Benchmark. The book covers the phonograph, the electric light and Edison's loss of the current wars to Westinghouse, but its real subject is fame. Stross argues Edison was the first celebrity inventor, managed the press with care, and let the image run ahead of the engineering. Friedberg mentioned it on the Jul 22, 2021 episode as a good biography of Edison. Energy is his subject, and Edison's Pearl Street station is where the grid began. It suits readers who want the inventor without the hero worship. The caveat is that it is a single volume of about 400 pages focused on Edison's business and self-promotion, and historian Tim Lacy found it more denigrating than celebratory.
