Product Description

In this amazing story of high stakes competition between two titans, Richard Moran shows how the electric chair developed not out of the desire to be more humane but through an effort by one nineteenth-century electric company to discredit the other.

In 1882, Thomas Edison ushered in the “age of electricity” when he illuminated Manhattan’s Pearl Street with his direct current (DC) system. Six years later, George Westinghouse lit up Buffalo with his less expensive alternating current (AC). The two men quickly became locked in a fierce rivalry, made all the more complicated by a novel new application for their product: the electric chair. When Edison set out to persuade the state of New York to use Westinghouse’s current to execute condemned criminals, Westinghouse fought back in court, attempting to stop the first electrocution and keep AC from becoming the “executioner’s current.” In this meticulously researched account of the ensuing legal battle and the horribly botched first execution, Moran raises disturbing questions not only about electrocution, but about about our society’s tendency to rely on new technologies to answer moral questions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2254220 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-11
• Released on: 2003-11-11
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.98" h x .62" w x 5.19" l, .62 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

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.

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

Review
“Fascinating and provocative. . . . Moran skillfully used the story of the creation of the electric chair to illustrate the brutal clash between Edison and Westinghouse.” —Washington Post Book World

“Fascinating. . . . Moran conclusively shows that Edison hoped to discredit alternating current--by associating it in the public mind with death--and advance his own direct current." —Los Angeles Times

"Chilling. . . . A 'Coke-versus-Pepsi' story as if told by Stephen King. . . . A macabre jolt of history." —Chicago Sun-Times

“A remarkable account. . . . A fantastic tale, well told.” —Forbes

“[An] engaging analysis of the relationship between electrocution and the personal and corporate battles waged between Edison and Westinghouse.” —Louis P. Masur, Chicago Tribune

“Richard Moran shows us not only how the death penalty in America affects condemned prisoners, but also how it is used by powerful interests in our society to further their own political and economic ends. . . . Five stars, and three cheers, for Professor Moran!” —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

“Riveting. . . . Moran [has a] lively reportorial style. . . . In this narrative of callous ambition and hypocrisy, a condemned criminal plays an unexpectedly dignified role.” —Seattle Weekly

"Compelling. . . . Reads like pages torn from today's headlines about nefarious CEOs and corporate greed." —Albany Times Union

“Haunting…. Incisive… A chilling look at something that has become a too-common theme of modern times: the use of technology to develop new ways of killing.” —Roanoke Times

“An eye-opening and riveting account of the battle for the future of electricity and the part that played in changing the technology of execution.” —Wilmington Sunday News Journal