David Bodanis: Electric Universe

As an antidote to those physics textbooks that straightjacket science personalities in dull white labcoats, this thumbnail-sketch social history turns electrical physicists into entertaining bundles of quirks.

Alexander Graham Bell fell in love with one of his young students, who was deaf, and invented the telephone to impress his future father-in-law. Pharmacologist Otto Loewi dreamed of an important experiment one night. He woke and wrote it down but couldn't read his writing the next day — so he willed himself to have the same dream a couple of nights later.

Alan Turing was a tragic figure, shunned for conceptualising a universal computing machine ahead of its time. Convicted of homosexual behaviour, he committed suicide after being forced to take female hormones, which gave him breasts.

On the list of cartoon villains: Samuel Morse unsuccessfully ran for New York mayor under a racist and anti-Catholic banner and then ripped off the telegraph idea from unworldly teacher Joseph Henry.

Thomas Edison had a vacuum where his conscience ought to be, according to his unscrupulous boss at Western Union, who employed him to copy Bell's telephone. Surprisingly, as it fits so well with his character, Edison's involvement in developing the electric chair is not mentioned.

This is not the book to turn to if you want a scientific analysis of how electricity works (one toddler-targeted explanation refers to electrons as bits ripped off atoms, which is confusing rather than enlightening).

However, Electric Universe does highlight electricity's impact on society, from the communications revolution of the telegraph to the weaponry of radar to the psychological revolution of liquid-electricity Prozac. In the short span of 170 years we've become utterly dependent on what Volta's 16th-century contemporaries thought was a weak curiosity.

Author David Bodanis, an American who lives in London and whose previous titles include E=mc2 shows acute distaste for the English class system. He wastes no opportunity to underline instances when stuffy lords have impeded the quest for knowledge by ignoring the inventiveness of low-born geniuses.

For the most part, Electric Universe is infotainment, and although the details are presumably accurate, they have been chosen for their intrigue rather than their importance.

The result is a skilfully streamlined, coherent narrative, which doesn't pretend to tell the whole story but which is a lively introduction to the electrical revolution. Suitable for teenagers as well as adults.

* Janet McAllister is a canvas writer 

Published by: Little, Brown
Price: $35