- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (Oct 15 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0375410597
- ISBN-13: 978-0375410598
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.5 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 612 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #723,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This account opens at New York's Auburn Penitentiary, in 1890, with a bloody, scorched body strapped in the electric chair. The first electrocution concluded a courtroom drama involving a humanitarian dentist, an ambitious attorney, an illiterate murderer and the great American inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison. Edison joined the debate over electrocution in an effort to discredit his rival, George Westinghouse, whose system of alternating current, or AC, was rapidly outpacing Edison's direct current, or DC, in the race to electrify America. Playing upon concerns about public safety and eager to brand Westinghouse electricity the "executioner's current," Edison advised legislators that a shock of AC killed most efficiently and, disregarding his own professed opposition to capital punishment, suggested a design for the chair. Meanwhile, Westinghouse surreptitiously underwrote the appeals of the condemned man, William Kemmler, challenging the constitutionality of electrocution. Withholding his personal opposition to the death penalty until the book's final sentence, Moran (Knowing Right from Wrong: The Insanity Defense of Daniel McNaughton), a sociologist at Mount Holyoke College, marshals his sources-committee reports, legislative hearings, court decisions-to argue that the search for a humane method of execution does not resolve the moral dilemma, but instead leaves capital punishment in the hands of alleged experts who are too often guided by self-interest. For all his careful documentation and apparent impartiality, Moran freely borrows from sensational newspaper stories, many based on second-hand accounts, to accentuate the horrors of electrocution and portray the condemned as victims. With Edison's name in the title and macabre execution scenes in the opening pages, this book should attract browsers as well as politically engaged readers. 22 b&w illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were building the first power plants in the country, electric light was a bizarre new technology that few people understood and many people feared. Adding to the confusion were the two competitors' attempts to promote their own systems and discredit the other. When New York State began considering electrocution as a method of capital punishment, Edison recommended Westinghouse's alternating current for the unseemly task. Westinghouse, not wanting the negative stigma associated with his system, fought back, and a truly well intentioned government effort to find a more humane method of execution became a courtroom battle for commercial supremacy between two competing pioneers. Moran's account is broad, covering the electric power struggle between Edison and Westinghouse, the trial and execution of the first man to die in the electric chair, and the history of the capital punishment debate in the U.S. Edison's popularity as a cultural hero lends appeal to the entertaining drama of the power companies' competition, and the surprisingly colorful history of the electric chair makes for fascinating reading. Gavin Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well-Written and Thorough,
By A Customer
This review is from: Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (Hardcover)
This is a good book. In addition to being very clearly written in a very engaging style, the author discusses just about all aspects of the development and use of the electric chair: technology of the times, effects of electricity on the human body, legal and political aspects of executing condemned criminals using electricity, related sociological matters, even the life, trial and details of the execution of the chair's first official customer. Naturally, the war between Edison and Westinghouse, i.e., DC vs AC, plays a most prominent role in this exciting saga; in particular, the "efforts" in determining which is deadlier: DC or AC. Highly recommended!
2.0 out of 5 stars
Executioner's Current,
By A Customer
This review is from: Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (Hardcover)
Whilst Mr. Moran presents a compelling story, it is nontheless a biased one - I was also left wanting for more background on the characters, which the book does not really cover and required much other reading to fill in the gaps.From a writer's perspective, the language and often the story is highly repetitve, with much unnecessay page-filling.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Will the Real Genius Please Stand Up?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (Hardcover)
Although I have not read Mr. Moran's book, I am worried it appears as if he gives credit to George Westinghouse as fathering alternating current electricity. Westinghouse merely had the forsight to finance the brilliant mind behind AC electricity, Nikola Tesla, who conceived it, and designed the machinery for using it. Fortunately, Westinghouse was there at the right moment. It is possible without his financial help, Tesla may not have accomplished what he did. But let's make sure we have the right names for the fueding parties in this war of the currents. Westinghouse can get the credit for the AC electric plants because he was holding the purse strings, and for his courageous fight against Edison. However, it was the genius of NIKOLA TESLA that revolutionized electric power. So give credit where credit is due, and call it by its proper name--TESLA's AC electricity, not Westinghouse!
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