David Bodanis is truly great at writing the history of science. Even if I am well familiar with various histories, somehow he grabs my attention immediately, my dopamine neurons start going crazy, and I remained hooked for the entire book. I love the way he tells a history.

The one exception to his exceptional writing is that he wrote an entire book about electricity -- in the universe, in the world, and in the animal body-- without mentioning Tesla!! Edison received his due, as did so many others. How can anyone write a history of the discovery of electricity without discussing Tesla? It could be that awareness of Tesla's contribution was not as understood in 2004, when this book was published, as it is now. regardless of why, any book on electricity that leaves out Tesla cannot receive more than 3 stars.

The rest of the book is 5 stars all the way. ​Beautiful histories of how humans discovered waves, which were all around us but unseen. Bodanis' history of Faraday was exquisite. Volts should be called Faradays and Bodanis will tell you why. I only wish he had given the same treatment to Tesla that he gave to Faraday.

Bodanis examined electricity in the universe as it pulls opposite charged atoms together, creating wonderful reactions. When discussing the electricity in the brain, he begun the section with a beautiful image of stars exploding out the elements that would eventually help each brain mount a response. Excellent writing all around!

If you are looking for a book that will teach you about electricity, what it is and how it operates, this is not the book for you. I did really enjoy the history of how various inventors made their discoveries, but the author assumes that his readers have a lot more knowledge then they may have.
Very frankly, he is not very good at explaining how electrons work and seems happy to envelope the topic in a cloak of mystery, rather than giving the reader a good explanation, although in a few places he does a good job in getting across his point, like in his explanation of what a volt is.
I found the notes in the back of the book interesting, but even as a science teacher, I would not want to spend that much time looking up the sources.

More of a historical book than an analytical or conceptual one. Author never goes into too much depth explaining the science... just keeps referring to 'loose electrons shaking around'. Pretty enjoyable read, though, with good story-telling technique. Ranked 4 stars for this, but debated a 3 star rating due to the author depicting many of the scientists/inventors as being definitively either really admirable or really horrible individuals. I feel like I'd need to read or learn more about each person before accepting the author's opinions (but he could be totally spot on; this is more a reflection of my ignorance, hence going with 4 stars instead of 3). Also, Tesla never mentioned?

This book was so interesting. A perfect mix of accurate and not overreaching historical context with a detailed description of the science involved. Excellent description of electrical phenomena and its practical applications.

Serviceable survey of how mankind's insight into electricity and its uses has advanced through the years, although much more time is spent on the personalities behind the discoveries and inventions than on explaining the physics and chemistry behind those events. Extensive recommendations for additional reading of source materials included, if you want to do the work yourself and go beyond the text. More like 3 1/2 stars than 4. Recommended, but only assuming the reader knows what they're going to get (and not get) going in.

In the foreword to his book ‘Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World’ David Bodanis writes: As the Victorian era dawned, that was still most of our knowledge: two metals, when positioned near each other, could sometimes produce a sparking current within a wire connecting them. It seemed a weak, merely curious phenomenon. But it was the first useful door into a world that had been sealed and hidden.

He continues: “In this book I show what has happened in the two centuries since humankind opened that door, which took a mere two centuries.

The first part looks at the Victorian researchers who had only a few tenuous glimpses of electricity, yet created devices never before imagined. There were telephones and telegraphs and lightbulbs; roller coasters and fast streetcars—and ever more electric motors powering them all. There was even an electrical fax machine operating efficiently in France in 1859—before the American Civil War.

The world started to change. The new wave of electrical technologies helped lead to the modern corporation and to votes for women, to suburbs stretching far from cities, and tabloid newspapers, and, influenced by crisp telegraph messages, to a new Hemingway-style prose. One exuberant telephone executive apparently remarked that Americans had become the first people who would interrupt sex to take a phone call.”

This narrative includes information on a fascinating cast of characters, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Michael Faraday, Alessandro Volta, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, James Clerk Maxwell, and Cyrus West Field.

The author says: “The stories along the way are as much about religion, love, and cheating as they are about impersonal science or technology.

They take us from Hamburg cellars during a World War II firestorm to the mind of Alan Turing, brilliant computer inventor, hounded by the authorities of the very country he’d saved; from the slum-born Michael Faraday, slurred by his contemporaries because of his religious faith (yet who used his faith to become the first to see electric forces weaving invisibly through space); to a pampered artist, Samuel Morse, who eagerly ran for mayor of New York on a platform of persecuting Catholics, and who learned more about how telegraphs operate than he ever cared to admit, from a frontiersman who couldn’t believe anyone would wish to patent such an obvious idea.”

And there’s Graham bell: “There’s an exuberant twenty-something immigrant to America, Alexander Bell, desperate to capture the love of a deaf teenage student, and there’s the forty-something Robert Watson Watt, desperate to escape from a boring marriage and the tedium of 1930s Slough.

There’s Otto Loewi, who wakes up one Easter eve realizing he has solved the problem of how electricity works in our body, yet in the morning, agonizingly, can’t read the scrawled explanations he jotted beside his bed during the night; there’s the boy from rural Scotland, James Clerk Maxwell, who was treated as a fool for years by bullies at his elementary school, yet who became the nineteenth century’s greatest scientific theorist, able to envision the inner structure of the universe in a way that scientists of a later era would realize was profoundly true. All of these stories illuminate how the immense force of electricity was gradually seen: how it was led out from its hidden domain—and what we, imperfect humans, have made of the enhanced powers it has granted.”

Bodanis’s history of the science of electricity is a journey of discovery, as it vividly describes the work of the many scientists and pioneers who unlocked and applied electricity’s invisible secrets.

This is a must-read book for any average teen ager – and adult alike. Bodanis’s book makes electricity clear both as a force of nature and as an integral part of modern society.

The personal accounts really undulated from interesting to stone cold boring. I probably would have liked a little more science at the expense of some of the personal stuff.

Very enjoyable

ενδιαφέρον αλλά όχι τόσο καλό όσο θα περίμενα... δεν είναι ακριβώς η ιστορία του ηλεκτρισμού, ή της ηλεκτρονικής ή των υπολογιστών... είναι κάτι ενδιάμεσο... οπότε λέει λίγα για πολλά θέματα...

The book certainly manages to hit many of the high points in the history of electricity and electronics. Unfortunately, it fails to provide much detail about any single person or idea. The book does include an extensive "Guide to Further Reading" and numerous notes for those who like more details. Annoyingly, the notes aren't referenced in the main text so you're forced to read in parallel through the main portion of the book as well as the "Notes" chapter if you want the full story. In the end, I suppose my own expectations got the better of me: I was hoping for an in-depth history of electricity, perhaps along the lines of Richard Rhodes Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", rather than a entertaining afternoon read...

This book could have been titled "The Deceptive and Dishonest World of Scientists" or "Intrigue in the Lab".

If you are not that into science and prefer the stories behind the people and the history of discoveries, this is your book! David Bodanis gives us the "National Enquirer" version of electricity by going into the stealing of discoveries, the grandstanding by scientists, the resistance to new ideas, and the "accidental discoveries" that are often more important than organized research.

There are a number of people that are left out in this book. It has been pointed out by others that Tesla but there are many more that Bodanis didn't include. Electrical force was known and used ancient Arabic, Egyptian, and Roman cultures and scientists way before Ben Franklin was credited with discovering it (can you say always credit older, white men). That said, this book does a great job of telling not only what electricity is and why it is so important to us, it also gives a great overview of the stumbling way discoveries happen and how the timing has had a major impact on the history of the human race.

This book doesn't limit itself to manufactured items like light bulbs and computers but also delves into how electricity is used to run animal bodies and how it lets us think and remember. There is a great deal of material covered in this book and the author livens up what could be a dull lecture by interspersing interesting "behind the scenes" information. After the book is "finished", Bodanis includes a number of interesting and lengthy appendixes with even more information - both historic and scientific.

If you are looking for a hard science textbook, this is not the book for you. However, if you like to learn science without falling asleep with the book on your lap, you will definitely find Electric Universe worth reading.

Readily readable

Well written with clear explanations of stuff you kind of thought you already knew. Can't say I couldn't put it down. In fact I kept putting it down so I could think about what I'd just read. It's that kind of boo.k