IN SHORT: NONFICTION
By DOUGLAS A. SYLVA
Published: March 26, 1995
EDISON Inventing the Century. By Neil Baldwin. Hyperion, $27.95.
So many biographies of Thomas Edison have already been written that you have to wonder if there is anything left to say. But according to Neil Baldwin, the author of "Edison: Inventing the Century," earlier books were closer to mythology than true biography -- they were about the "wizard" and not the man. Mr. Baldwin is engaged by different concerns. For example, why did this genius produce light bulbs and phonographs rather than symphonies or pure science? The author finds a man fully immersed in his culture, who turned the ideas of Emerson and Thoreau into a gospel of industry and mass consumption. For Mr. Baldwin, who has also written biographies of William Carlos Williams and Man Ray, this was how Edison and his contemporaries invented our century. And it brought with it such momentous change that even Edison was taken by surprise. Mr. Baldwin's Edison is consumed by insecurities and self-doubt. Was his confidence really shattered by the lawsuits and mergers flitting around his personal empire? And did he really worry so much about his neglected family? Mr. Baldwin's evidence suggests otherwise, but his sympathies for the man lead him to find redeeming vulnerability even so. DOUGLAS A. SYLVA