The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
Published by Random House
Publication date: August 16, 2016
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Historical
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It’s hard to imagine that an ordinary and ubiquitous household item could be the source of riveting fiction, but in The Last Days of Night it is. Author Graham Moore makes a new, young lawyer the central character in what is an astonishing battle over who invented the light bulb and who would profit from it.
For someone who believed Thomas Edison invented the light bulb The Last Days of Night is an eye-opening experience. Paul Cravath is the newly minted lawyer hired by George Westinghouse to fight the 312 lawsuits Thomas Edison has filed against him. This titanic conflict drags on for years, spreading like a toxic cloud to include the rights over electrical transmission. Edison’s determination to discredit Westinghouse’s method led to the creation of the electric chair. The chair was wired with alternating current to prove it was dangerous, but when it was used, it backfired horrifically.
Moore takes facts like these and more from the very real battle, legal and otherwise, between Edison and Westinghouse, and flavors them with his imagination. Key figures in history such as Nikola Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, and J.P. Morgan all play a part in this obsession to win between two inventors. Banish any thought of gentlemanly behavior on the part of these titans of industry. They had no qualms with fabrications, violence, spying, and outright criminal behavior all in an effort to win a legal battle worth one billion dollars in 1889 (over $34 billion today). That the story of one of the most amazing inventions in human history could be lit up into the kind of fiction that reads like a thriller is why The Last Days of Night is electrifying.
Want more exciting historical fiction? Try Moore’s The Wealth of Shadows– a novel about America’s covert efforts to end WWII in its early days.
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