The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World, by Philip F. Schewe (J. Henry Press, March, 2007)

In 1927, the Englishman and travel writer Stephen Graham published the book New York Nights. In it he describes a time he spent walking by Consolidated Edison’s power plants on the East River in Manhattan. “Oh, what is Edison contriving there,” Graham asked. “Are they engines of death or life?”

On a few occasions in modern New York history, Gothamites found out the answer quickly and abruptly—they are engines of life. In the fall of 1965 and the summer of 2003, massive electrical grid blackouts disrupted life in the northeastern United States and parts of Canada, and cost billions of dollars in damages.

We were lucky in 2003. I was living in Queens then, walking distance from the power stations that had gone down. The day was cool by New York summer standards. And the day was long: we were without light for only a few hours of the night. It could have been worse.

Indeed, it has been. A blackout in 1977, this one localized to New York City, triggered arson, rioting, and looting.

Each time there is a major power disruption like these, citizens are left wondering, How could this happen? What is going on? Who is to blame? The electrical grid is so vital to commercial and social life, and at the same time so taken for granted, that when electricity just disappears, the feeling of helplessness is deep and unsettling.

The legendary science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The grid is magical. Flip a switch and a light turns on. Plug in a box and you can heat food in a minute. Press a button and on pops the evening news. It’s this magical quality that contributes to the sense of unease those rare times the magic stops.

Among the things we now take for granted that the grid unleashed was the abundance of light that made nighttime activities easy and plentiful.

Lucky for us, Philip Schewe has spoiled the magic show. A physicist with the American Institute of Physics, Schewe is the author of The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World. The Grid is an extraordinarily successful work of popular writing packed with interesting historical anecdotes, roguish and brilliant businessmen, and science and technology marvels.

Several books before this one have told elements of the remarkable story. In Empires of Light, Jill Jonnes tells the story of “Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World.” Schewe covers this territory in The Grid but his treatment is more engaging and alive. David Bodanis’s Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World also tells elements of the same story, but does so with less authority.

And several recent books have tackled the large-scale generation of electricity, including Marc Reisner’s tale of hydropower in Cadillac Desert, Barbara Freese’s Coal: A Human History and Jeff Goodell’s Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.

The Grid largely eschews the political commentary and moral hectoring that diminish these other efforts to tell this story. Of course politics has played a big role in the development and evolution of the electric industry (and, thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, it is about to play an even bigger role). And any history of the electric grid would have to wade into those waters. But unlike other authors, Schewe mercifully keeps his politics mostly at bay and tells the story with affection and care.

And what a story! Schewe argues, correctly, that “much of what we call modernity is fundamentally electrical in nature or at least dependent in a fundamental way on the electrical grid.”

One telling anecdote illustrates the scope of the transformation. Schewe asks readers to “compare the last great world’s fair to be devoted to steam power rather than electricity, the one held in Philadelphia in 1876, with the one in Chicago in 1893. The Philadelphia exposition would virtually shut its doors at sunset each day, whereas in Chicago the magic began at sunset because that’s when the power of electricity revealed itself in full force.” Among the things we now take for granted that the grid unleashed was the abundance of light that made nighttime activities easy and plentiful.

Schewe also covers the marketing of electricity to the masses through the life of the “Energy Pharaoh” Samuel Insull. The chief of the Midwestern energy giant Commonwealth Edison, Insull was determined to broaden the market for electricity as widely as possible.

Schewe tells readers of “the ploy that earned Commonwealth Edison a place in the early golden days of mass advertising. It worked like this. A cart was sent through residential neighborhoods. The cart was piled high with electric irons, and the man in charge was offering a bargain that would rival the tasty apple offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Ladies, allow electricity into your home—installation charges spread out over two years, with no financing charges applied—and replace your old cumbersome flatirons with modern electric irons. We have 10,000 new irons to give away.” Insull was aggressively priming the pump for future demand. He makes today’s Madison Avenue ad reps look like pikers by comparison.

Given how important the grid is to human history—the National Academy of Engineering dubbed the electric grid the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century—it’s remarkable it has taken this long for the publication of a comprehensive and accessible treatment of “the development of the power supply system from Edison’s era right up to the present day.” But as one might say upon the return of electricity after a blackout, so one can say of The Grid—better late than never.

Nick Schulz is a contributing editor to The American, where he writes the Techno-Ideas Column. He is the editor of TCS Daily.