Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

My sister said her book group loved this book, so I picked up a copy at the library. It started with a bang--literally--then kind of slowed down, but the second half moved right along. Basically, Night is the story of the rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over who invented the light bulb and whose system (A/C or D/C) would be used across the country. The main character is a young lawyer named Peter Cravath who signs on as Westinghouse's lawyer to sue Edison--a suit that no one thinks he can win. Along the way he crosses paths with a beautiful opera singer named Agnes, an eccentric inventor named Tesla, and the powerful financeer JP Morgan.

We all take electricity for granted but in the late 1880s, it was a marvelous, mysterious, and sometimes frightening concept. It's interesting to look back and see how it all started.