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Empires of Light
- Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
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Publisher's Summary
In the final decades of the 19th century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America's Gilded Age - Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse - battled as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation's most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world's first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, an eccentric dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Empires of Light is the gripping history of electricity, the "mysterious fluid", and how the fateful collision of Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed.
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Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DuPont
- 06-15-17
Get the book vs audio version
The book is nice history read as I am a fan of Tesla but the narrator of the audio has a tick that bothered me...when he gets to the end of a sentence he has certain drawl that wore thin on me and I could not finish listening to the book...I recommend getting the book vs audible version.
19 people found this helpful
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- Jason Rollo
- 12-20-17
Worst narrator on the planet. Dont waste your time
I don't believe I have ever heard a more monotone, dull, boring narrator in my life. The person who read this book should be permanently banned from ever reading anything aloud ever again!! He made me want to cut my wrist just to end the agony of his boring voice
15 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-07-18
wonderful book if you can tolerate the narration
I love the writing, the story and especially the detailed account of how electricity became what it is today. Unfortunately, the monotone up and down rhythm of the narration overshadows the wonderful story.
8 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 08-03-17
Engaging
Instead of writing about one of these great titans Edison, Tesla or Westinghouse, Jill Jonnes chose to write about all three in one book. Jonnes focused on the race to control electricity delivery to the country. The battle between Edison and Tesla was whether electricity should be delivered and put to use as direct or alternating current. Edison backed direct and Tesla alternating current. Westinghouse jumped into the fray to control the delivery to business and homes throughout the country. Westinghouse and Tesla teamed up to harness the Niagara Falls in 1895 to deliver electricity. According to Jonnes electricity unleashed a Second Industrial Revolution.
The book is well written and meticulously researched. The book covers a broad-spectrum picture of the race to electrify the nation. The book is well organized. The book covers everything from the biographies of the three men to the science of electricity, to business and finance. Of the three men, it is Tesla that has fascinated me since I studied him in college.
Jill Jonnes has her degree in history from John Hopkins University. In this book, she demonstrates the ability to portray the broad picture of history in the style of the late Stephen Ambrose. She is definitely an author to watch.
The book is almost seventeen hours long. Chris Sorensen does a great job narrating the book. Sorensen is a screenwriter, playwright and award-winning audiobook narrator.
11 people found this helpful
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- Zack
- 06-19-19
The narrator...
The narrator has a strange intonation at the end of almost every sentence. It is super distracting from the otherwise fascinating storyline. if you listen at 1.3 speed its much better. but still... very very distracting.
2 people found this helpful
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- Brandon Ulwelling
- 05-18-17
History is amazing
It is hard to imagine life before electricity. I didn't know how Westinghouse got Tesla to hand over his patents but now I do. A little eccentricity mixed with arrogance. And it was too bad Edison got mixed up in the War of Currents. I'd have appreciated him more if he skipped the electrocution experiments. A must read for history buffs.
2 people found this helpful
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- John Noh
- 12-31-20
Play at 1.2X speed
This is a gripping story of three titans of American history, well-researched and well-written.
The narration is a different matter. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode when George despairs of the irritating books on tape narrator and his whiny, nasaly monotone. That would also describe this narrator. The best idea came from another reviewer who suggested speeding up the narration. After trial and error, I found 1.2X speed to be the most palatable. Not great but acceptable.
1 person found this helpful
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- Matthew M Anderson
- 12-29-19
great book, poor narration
Very entertaining and informative book. I appreciated the direct quotes from the main characters' own letters and newspaper articles about them. However, the narrator's style was too flat and slow for me.
1 person found this helpful
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- jgmacdonald2
- 03-10-17
Loved Every Minute!
Jill Jonnes has capture the real life drama , with all its complexities , emotion, triumph, and tragedy, in his superbly , extremely well paced, engrossing, excellently written "Empires of Light."
Extremely informing and the book pays great tribute to the founders and contributors of the second industrial revolution.
Chris Sorensen dose an amazing job of reading , never tiring to listen to.
Enjoyed it immensely!
1 person found this helpful
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- shawn reese
- 07-25-22
1.25x Speed and it's great!
After increasing playback speed to 1.25x, I'd say the story is so engrossing that the mediocre narration fades into the background. Overall, very great listen!
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Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant, invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp, and the remote control. Tesla's personal life was magnificently bizarre. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, he was germophobic and never shook hands. He required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. In later years, he ate only white food and conversed with the pigeons in Bryant Park. This clear, authoritative, and highly enjoyable biography takes account of all phases of this remarkable life.
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Listening Again
- By Thompson on 11-18-19
By: Richard Munson
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Conquering Gotham
- The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels
- By: Jill Jonnes
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The demolition of Penn Station in 1963 destroyed not just a soaring neoclassical edifice, but also a building that commemorated one of the last century's great engineering feats: the construction of railroad tunnels into New York City. Now, in this gripping narrative, Jill Jonnes tells this fascinating story - a high-stakes drama that pitted the money and will of the nation's mightiest railroad against the corruption of Tammany Hall, the unruly forces of nature, and the machinations of labor agitators.
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A good tale of the times
- By Edouard on 02-08-08
By: Jill Jonnes
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The Devil in the White City
- Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death.Â
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Impossible to stop listening
- By Michael on 05-26-12
By: Erik Larson
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Tesla: Man Out of Time
- By: Margaret Cheney
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered - and continue to alter - the world in which we live. Tesla: Man Out of Time is an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.
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Excellent insight on Tesla
- By Caz on 01-10-15
By: Margaret Cheney
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Higher
- A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City
- By: Neal Bascomb
- Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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This riveting, true account of the 1929 race to build New York City's tallest skyscraper evokes the glory of an exciting time long past.
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Riveting (excuse the pun)!!
- By Celia on 09-28-05
By: Neal Bascomb
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The Race Underground
- Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway
- By: Doug Most
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew larger, the streets became increasingly clogged with horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 brought New York City to a halt, a solution had to be found. Two brothers - Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York City - pursued the dream of his city being the first American metropolis to have a subway and the great race was on.
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interesting journey
- By Andy on 02-14-14
By: Doug Most
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The Age of Edison
- Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America
- By: Ernest Freeberg
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The late 19th century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the light bulb overwhelmed the American public with the sense of the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, the electric light marked the arrival of modernity.
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great book
- By kyle on 03-10-16
By: Ernest Freeberg
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Edison
- By: Edmund Morris
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 25 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Although Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous American of his time, and remains an international name today, he is mostly remembered only for the gift of universal electric light. His invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world - already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other revolutionary devices - that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius patented 1,093 inventions, not including others, such as the X-ray fluoroscope, that he left unlicensed for the benefit of medicine.
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Editors should stand up to Pulitzer winner
- By Porter on 12-03-19
By: Edmund Morris
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I Invented the Modern Age
- The Rise of Henry Ford and the Most Important Car Ever Made
- By: Richard Snow
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In many ways, Henry Ford's story is well-known; in many more ways, it is not. Richard Snow masterfully weaves together a fascinating narrative of Ford's rise to fame through his greatest invention, the Model T. A highly pleasurable listen, filled with scenes and incidents from Ford's life, I Invented the Modern Age shows Richard Snow at the height of his powers as a popular historian and reclaims from history Henry Ford, the remarkable man who, indeed, invented the modern world as we know it.
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Excellent...But I'm a Ford Guy!
- By Rick on 10-07-13
By: Richard Snow
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Tesla
- Inventor of the Electrical Age
- By: W. Bernard Carlson
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the 20th century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius.
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A detailed examination of Tesla's work
- By Jean on 02-01-14