Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

Last Days of Night by Graham Moore is one of my favorite books of the year so far. It is historical fiction, primarily taking place about a decade prior to the start of the 20th century. The main characters are inventors and innovators: Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla, George Westinghouse and his lawyer, Paul Cravath.

Electric lights are new and just beginning to be adopted in businesses and homes across America.  As with many new technologies, there are competing delivery systems (think VHS and Beta, or even more contemporary examples like Apple, Microsoft, and Google). Last Days of Night is also a mystery/legal thriller, providing an interesting blend of science, history, business practices and the role of media as the electric “current wars” rage and the legal suits and counter-suits rapidly multiply.  

I especially liked how best-selling author Graham Moore started each chapter with a relevant quote*:

• I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work ~ Thomas Edison
• Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways … or because they’ve realized something that shoots a hole in how we’ve been thinking about a problem ~Steve Jobs
• Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana ~ Bill Gates

Honestly, I could envision students immediately relating events in the novel to today’s news, both in terms of finding parallels and due to the long-lasting impact of the main characters. In addition, students could look up past newspaper articles about these individuals, including singer Agnes Huntington who provides a bit of romance, in archived editions of The New York Times or The Chicago Tribune. Seeing those articles – sometimes on the front page of these national newspapers – should be intriguing. Plus, there are several documentaries available (such as this one about George Westinghouse).  I am recommending Last Days of Night by Graham Moore as a possible Junior Theme read and as an interdisciplinary study for science, business or IGSS.

Moore wrote an award-winning screenplay for The Imitation Game about Alan Turing and it has been reported that filming for Last Days of Night (starring Eddie Redmayne) will begin early in 2017. This novel was selected as an Amazon Best Book of August 2016.  Be sure to add it to your own “to read” list.  

* And another quote for those who know me:  “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” ~Albert Einstein 

ADDED on 8/29: article from New York Times about "G.E., the 124-Year-Old Software Start-up"