The Last Days of Night

After a memorable opening scene followed by a somewhat sluggish set-up period, Graham Moore’s ‘The Last Days of Night’ builds to an intriguing inner-workings story of a clash between two turn-of-the-century American titans.

This fictionalized retelling of the feud between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison, which also entangled the enigmatic Nikola Tesla ends up being a moving and exciting story, even though its bedrock has to do with lawsuits and patents for the electrical systems and devices that would light up 20th century America. From this rather unpromising raw material, Moore has managed to extract a tale of industrial espionage, arson, dirty dealings, collusion, and monumental egos, most of which is played out from the show more viewpoint of yet another historical personage, attorney Paul Cravath, who represented Westinghouse and who also managed to develop the template on which most large law practices are now built (while simultaneously courting a notorious opera singer).

If that sounds like a lot to cram into one novel, it is. But Moore has selectively moved a few events around to smooth things out, makes some reasonable assumptions about his characters’ inner lives, and sculpts a fascinating story. (For the historical purist, an author’s end-note specifies the liberties taken with the timeline and who-probably-knew-what-when details.)

Readers seeking a comprehensive biographies of Westinghouse, Edison, or Tesla will have to look elsewhere (though Tesla gets the most ink when it comes to the details of his creative life), and Edison, particularly, gets some of the gloss knocked off his legend. Moore has also, without belaboring the fact, led many chapters with quotes from men whose lives wrought equally massive changes in our lives a hundred years later – Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. If there are specific parallels to be drawn, it’s up to the reader to draw them. show less

Set in New York and Pittsburgh in the late 1800s, this historical fiction tells the story of the (real) rivalry between George Westinghouse (proponent of alternating current) and Thomas Edison (proponent of direct current) in their battle over the establishment of an American standard electrical infrastructure. It covers the invention of the incandescent bulb, the largest patent lawsuit in history, and the story of the creation of General Electric. The protagonist is George Westinghouse’s lawyer, Paul Cravath. Other key players include inventor Nikola Tesla, financial magnate J.P. Morgan, and opera singer Agnes Huntington. (These characters are all real people of history.)

As the story opens, Cravath is a twenty-six-year-old attorney show more and a recent graduate of law school. Cravath is hired by Westinghouse to prosecute a patent-related lawsuit against Edison to prevent a monopoly on electric lighting. The central question to be answered in this legal dispute is: “Who invented the light bulb?” By the date of the lawsusit, 1878, low-quality lighting systems were being sold to cities and towns throughout the US, but gas lighting was much safer and more attractive. There was a huge potential market for an invention of a better lighting system so the results of the lawsuit would lead to great gains for the winner and great losses for the loser.

Edison’s side believed his patent covered any type of light bulb, and Cravath was charged with convincing the judge that Edison patented a specific lightbulb. One of the best characterizations in the novel is that of Nikola Tesla, who displays the eccentricities of genius. At one time Tesla worked for Edison, but left due to a falling out, and was hired by Westinghouse to design a better bulb. Tesla ultimately invented alternating current and the bulb that operated on it. This led to an escalation of the battle between Westinghouse and Edison over the rights to electricity generation and distribution. Eventually J.P. Morgan became involved in a clandestine deal that ended the debate.

This is one of those rare books that takes a business issue and its corresponding legal wranglings and turns it into a riveting story. In the Afterword, the author states that it is based on real events, but the author also engaged in educated guesses, dialogue fabrication, timeline compression, and dramatic renderings. It covers so much ground, including a new legal practice designed by Cravath, that became a model for future legal teams.

This book shows how close America came to using an inferior system. The characters of Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla, are very well crafted. It was easy to envision Edison’s grandstanding, Westinghouse’s devotion to quality, and Tesla’s laser focus on ideas. Even though they were far from cooperative team, the resulting electrical solution was a product of their combined interactions.

The writing is strong, creating dramatic scenes that are easy to envision. I found this book engrossing, and recommend it highly to those interested in business, history, invention, law, science, or technology. It was a trifecta for me – I love books that combine science, history, and compelling storytelling. show less

I became aware of Graham Moore’s book, “The Last Days of Night,” through what I thought was the ambiguously and poorly named film version of it (The film in question turned out to be based on a different book about Tesla and Edison). I had intended to use my normal process of watching the movie first, then reading the book as I find that a good movie (or sometimes even a mediocre one) can lead one to a better book, but the reverse is rarely possible. Books give the author so much more room than a typical movie that the reader is usually a disappointed viewer as scenes are removed, compressed, and casting choices can rob us of our own imagined characters. (Tom Cruise is a perfectly acceptable Jack Reacher unless you’ve read any show more of the books.)

As it happens, I read the first few pages of Moore’s novel and was too hooked to stop. It’s a rare opening sentence that is enough for me, but, “On the day he would first meet Thomas Edison, Paul watched a man burn alive in the sky above Broadway,” is quite the hook. I was vaguely familiar with the outlines of the Edison/Westinghouse feud in which Tesla was a pivotal figure, but not in any detail, and some of what I “knew” is wrong. I am greatly impressed by the Author’s Note at the end, where Moore lays out what is true, what is conjecture on his part, what the real timeline was, and what facts he moved or enhanced for dramatic purposes. That impresses even more than just naming the list of biographies, contemporary news sources, and diaries he researched to try to get as many of the facts straight as possible. As a writer, I was blown away by his clever rendering of Tesla’s speech by mangling his syntax rather than attempting a phonetic rendering of his accent.

Even more astounding is Moore’s ability to sympathetically and, I believe, realistically portray the varying labor and perspectives of inventors, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and businessmen. One of the highlights for me, is his rendering of what it is like to work with a genius. I have worked with a couple over the course of my career and heard many second-hand tales of a few others. Though none match Tesla in his eccentricities, I couldn’t help but smile in recognition at the difficulties and rewards of working with a genius.

As a novel, it has the readability, plot twists, hidden conspiracies, and clever heroics that would make any thriller writer proud.

The parallels between the early days of the electrification wars and the Gates/Jobs rivalry and internet revolution that I lived and worked through were made explicit by some of the quotations with which he introduces each chapter, and I couldn’t help but think of that when I read his imagined conversation between Edison, Westinghouse, Tesla, and his main character at the end of the book:

“Our age of invention,” explained Edison. “These days of handcrafted miracles…they won’t last much longer. Does that ever worry any of you? Light bulbs. Electricity. It seems likely that ours will be the last generation to ever gaze, wide-eyed, at something truly novel. That our kind will be the last to ever stare in disbelief at a man-made thing that could not possibly exist. We made wonders, boys. I only wonder how many of them are left to make.”

Yet, I lived during the transition of esoteric, room-sized, number-crunching machines to desktop, laptop, and hand-held devices that contain or have access to almost everything ever written. I was even the equivalent of a spear-carrier at Marathon during our own monumental battle to transform the world into an online marvel that only the wildest of Science Fiction writers imagined. Reading “The Last Days of Night’ made me feel like my own life had refuted Edison’s worry, and there’s no better reason for a book to exist. show less

A battle to invalidate Edison's patent for the light bulb. The debate over the safety of alternating current (AC). The birth of the modern law firm. Can an author were these events together into a compelling novel? In this case, absolutely yes. With a real life cast of larger-than-life characters led by Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla and a strong grounding in well-explicated science, this novel does just that. Throw in the struggle of the young lawyer taking on an impossible case and his alliance with a beautiful, intelligent, and seemingly unreachable singer-actress and you have a page turner of the highest quality. The background is very well drawn, recreating late 19th Century America with all its high points show more (Delmonico's, for one) and low points (such as class snobbery and racism). The author does take some liberties with history--compressing events, fleshing out characters whose full biographies are unclear, and putting his protagonist in places he wasn't. But there is probably more truth here than in reputed non-fiction such as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And in a nice postscript, the author explains the liberties he has taken and his speculations.

As the story unfolds, we see things through the lawyer's eyes as he discovers that his initial impressions of the geniuses with whom he is dealing are far from accurate. Edison begins as a villain, but by the end of the story he is humanized and we can appreciate the magnitude of his achievements, although they were more the work of a factory than of individual genius. George Westinghouse gets his due here as a visionary without whom the arrival of modern America would have been delayed. As for Tesla, he spends much of the book in a semi-incoherent state, but emerges as a sympathetic genius who puts pure science over any thoughts of its commercial application.

I could go on--but spend no more time reading this review. Go out and read this marvelously entertaining (and dare I say educational?) book right now. show less

Der Name Thomas Edison dürfte vermutlich den meisten Menschen geläufig sein, George Westinghouse wahrscheinlich eher weniger. Dass diese beiden Herren sich gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts eine irrsinnige Fehde lieferten, um ihre jeweiligen favorisierten Techniken der Stromversorgung als Standard durchzusetzen, dürfte vermutlich noch unbekannter sein (mir war es das zumindest). Wobei diese Schlacht, bekannt als 'Stromkrieg', alle bekannten feindseligen Übernahmen der Neuzeit locker in den Schatten stellt. So ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass diese Auseinandersetzung Thema eines Romans wurde; eher schon, weshalb es nicht bereits viel früher geschah.
Erzählt wird diese Geschichte aus der Sicht des jungen Anwalts Paul Cravath, der von show more Westinghouse das Mandat übertragen bekommt, die Verfahren gegen Edison zu führen. Für ihn, der praktisch keine Berufserfahrung hat, ist es der Eintritt in ein neues Leben. Seine ganze Zeit widmet er diesem 'Krieg' voller Engagement und Enthusiasmus, auch wenn die Erfolge auf sich warten lassen. Er lernt das Wesen der Erfinder kennen: Menschen wie beispielsweise Nikola Tesla, die nur für ihre Arbeit leben. Es ist eine völlig andere Welt als die ihm bisher bekannte.
Graham Moore, der Autor, versteht es, eine Szenerie zu entwerfen, die ich beim Lesen buchstäblich vor Augen hatte. Das noch schwach elektrifizierte New York; das Leben auf den Straßen; die Atmosphäre bei den Dinnern der Strom-High-Society - es ist fast schon ein Film, der sich da vor mir abspielte. Kein Wunder, denn der Autor ist auch als Drehbuchautor erfolgreich und erhielt bereits für 'Ein streng geheimes Leben' einen Oscar. So dürfte es nicht überraschen, das 'Die letzten Tage der Nacht' verfilmt werden. Doch die Schilderung der historischen Ereignisse (nebst fiktiven Ergänzungen und Verfremdungen), die so spannend wie ein Krimi sind (es wird spioniert, intrigiert, bestochen undundund), machen nicht allein den Reiz des Buches aus. Ganz nebenbei wird ein Grundwissen der Elektrizität vermittelt, das wirklich für Alle (auch für mich! - und das will was heißen ;-)) verständlich ist wie auch Begrifflichkeiten der Juristerei.
Dennoch, ein Manko gibt es: So gut es Moore versteht, diese Geschichte bildhaft darzustellen - seinem Protagonisten Paul Cravath kam ich nicht nahe. Meist lebe und leide ich mit der Hauptfigur mit, aber dies gelang mir hier nicht. Die Distanz zu ihm blieb während der ganzen Lektüre. Und so las ich das Buch wie einen spannenden, lehrreichen historischen Film. Ich bin gespannt, wie der Film dann wirklich ist. show less

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore is a deceptively engaging piece of historical fiction. I expected to enjoy the book because I find the main historical characters interesting but I was honestly apprehensive about whether the topic could be made into a generally compelling read. I found Moore's style to have worked very well, from the dialogue to the use of many smaller chapters to keep the story moving.

As great historical personalities fall deeper into the past (or as we hurtle recklessly into the future, either way) they start to be remembered only for the dominant feature of their lives. So an inventor is remembered for creativity and ingenuity, which are generally positive characteristics, so we often think of these people in show more purely positive terms, yet few if any people are all positive or all negative. This work brings to light the intersection of science and capitalism in the person of Thomas Edison.

A fascinating read simply as a historical legal novel yet also very interesting to see how easily money can become the determining factor even for those who start out wanting to create. This novel may well be one that rewards multiple readings with new insights into the time period as well as human nature, such as it is.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads. show less

To Paul Cravath, a twenty-six-year-old attorney from whom great things are expected — demanded — Manhattan in 1888 feels like an oyster he knows contains a priceless pearl. He just doesn’t know how to open it.

On the surface, Paul has what many young men on the make would envy. Despite his age and inexperience, he’s George Westinghouse’s chosen lawyer to defend a lawsuit, which, unfortunately, looks unwinnable. Actually, there are 312 of them, for that’s how many cases Thomas Edison has brought against Westinghouse, his allies, and suppliers, contending that Westinghouse’s light bulbs infringe his patent. A master at manipulating public opinion and as unscrupulous as any robber baron, Edison holds all the cards. Yet when show more the great inventor summons Paul at a ridiculously late hour to intimidate him, Paul has to wonder: Why did Edison go to such trouble?

Indeed, in this crackerjack legal thriller based on real characters and a true story (though certain events are altered or compressed to fit a dramatic timeline), motives are parsed to a hair’s breadth, and pressures mount from all sides. It’s not just that the damages Edison’s seeking total $1 billion, a sum beyond imagining, especially back then. If it were only money, and very old money at that, nobody reading today would care.

But Edison insists that anything he invented — or says he invented, for the patent filing contains inconsistencies — must occupy a sacrosanct, untouchable position. No one else must improve on them; only he may say how they are to be used; and only he may profit. Moreover, if he has his way, the country will be wired only for direct current, a cumbersome, inefficient, and costly system, as opposed to the alternating current Westinghouse favors. To that end, Edison buys journalists and lawmakers to attack A/C any way he can, twisting the science and engineering involved to sway an ignorant, fearful public.

So we have intellectual and economic freedom, as well as the fate of the world, in a sense, the essence of a thriller, the so-called public stakes of a novel. But there’s more here, a lot more. Paul realizes that his only chance to win his case or make sense of its Byzantine details lies in creating a potent story to compete with Edison’s. Consequently, The Last Days of Night is about the stories people tell themselves and others to justify who they are. For a thriller, this is unusual ground and all the more appealing. At the root lies this observation: “All men get the things they love. The tragedy of some men is not that they are denied, but that they wish they’d loved something else.”

Since Paul is still trying to figure out who he is, that conundrum fits him snugly. Unlike the case in many thrillers, this one’s prime mover makes many mistakes and often feels out of his element. Jealous of his senior partners at his firm (one of whom is Charles Evans Hughes, future presidential candidate, Supreme Court Justice, and secretary of state), Paul tries to maneuver secretly, often to his cost.

But certain games must be played in the open, as with a corporate dinner at Delmonico’s with Nikola Tesla, the brilliant, psychologically unstable, Serbian-born engineer whom Edison used and threw away, and whom Paul believes is the key to victory. Does Tesla harbor vengeful feelings against Edison that Paul can harness? What does the engineer know about Edison’s light bulb? And could he invent another based on a different design?

For a while, I thought Moore had ignored the other half of the gambit necessary in any novel, the private stakes. But I sold him short, for Paul’s other client, Agnes Huntington, a beautiful opera singer with as many different façades as a city block, enters the game as a major player. (She’s a historical figure too.) Younger than Paul by a few years, she nevertheless outclasses him, yet another casting against type.

Credible and gripping as The Last Days of Night is, however, I do wonder about Agnes’s ability to perform various actions necessary to the plot. The growing attraction between Paul and Agnes, though de rigueur, doesn’t always ring true. And I could have done without the earnest effort to redeem Edison and Westinghouse after the narrative has shown them to be neither warm nor fuzzy.

Nevertheless, this is a terrific novel. show less