Futurist and science writer David Bodanis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bodanis) provides an excellent read in Electric Universe. He weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through a lucid account of the invisible force that permeates our universe. In these pages the virtuoso scientists who plumbed the secrets of electricity come vividly to life, including familiar giants like Thomas Edison; the visionary Michael Faraday, who struggled against the prejudices of the British class system; and Samuel Morse, a painter who, before inventing the telegraph, ran for mayor of New York on a platform of persecuting Catholics. Here too is Alan Turing, whose dream of a marvelous thinking machine—what we know as the computer—was met with indifference, and who ended his life in despair after British authorities forced him to undergo experimental treatments to ‘cure’ his homosexuality. From the frigid waters of the Atlantic to the streets of Hamburg during a World War II firestorm to the interior of the human body, Electric Universe is a thrilling journey of discovery by a most engaging science writer.
First published 2005. Winner of the Aventis Prize (http://royalsociety.org/awards/science-books/) in 2006
320 pages in Abacus paperback edition
ISBN 978-0349117669
David Bodanis