Autumn is upon us = Time for some more books!

Autumn is here! I can’t help but get ecstatic at the leaves that are blooming into varying shades of yellow, orange, brown, and red. After 5 years of living in the midwest, the spring flowers and autumn leaves are growing to be my absolute favorite things about the area.

Back home in Japan, autumn is a time when the excruciating heat and humidity of the summer slowly loosens itself to cooler, more pleasant temperatures, accompanied by lengthening nights. Many people refer to the time of the year as “reading season” perhaps for this reason. It’s a happy excuse for me to feel justified in burying myself in more books than ever :)

Here’s one that I recently read and absolutely adored.

Historical fiction about the “current war”

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore is a historical fiction based on a true story. The story is set in late-19th century Manhattan, where parts of the city is beginning to be lit by electricity rather than the longstanding gas lamps. The energy culminating from all the fear, excitement, and competition surrounding this new and otherworldly technology is palpable. No one really knows what electricity really is or how it works, including the inventors and manufacturers themselves. Despite the occasional electrocution accidents and accompanying concerns over the safety of the technology, there is no question that whoever seizes control of this technology will seize control of light itself.

Even though Thomas Edison might have ended up the best-known name, the answer to the question “Who invented the light bulb?” is not so clear-cut. Even though Edison held the patent, he was by no means the first to come up with electrical light. Even the term “light bulb” is something entirely new at the time - raising questions such as, if someone else invented a slightly different device for electrical light, how does anyone determine if this infringes on Edison’s “light bulb”?

The Last Days of Night paints the legal, technological, and business battles between two of the strongest electric companies in the world, Westinghouse Electric and Edison’s General Electric, now referred to by historians as the “current war”.

Graham Moore writes the story in such a way that jolts you straight into the bustling 19th century Manhattan, and doesn’t let you go. The story captures depth in each of the historical figures with their own motives, obsessions, geniuses, and imperfections. It’s a complex fabric of many parallel threads involving rivalry, prestige, greed, obsession, egos, deception, resilience, love, growth, and many more themes. I wholeheartedly recommend this to both fiction- and non-fiction lovers!