Although Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous American of his time, he is mostly remembered only for the gift of universal electric light. In all, this near-deaf genius patented 1,093 inventions, while he left the X-ray fluoroscope unlicensed for the benefit of medicine. Much as he did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Theodore Roosevelt trilogy, Edmund Morris offers an incredibly vivid portrait of a semi-legendary figure, and in this final book by the Kenyan-born biographer, he dispels the myths about Edison, a restless visionary who was also a philosopher, futurist, chemist, botanist, wartime defense adviser, and founder of nearly 250 companies.