The Current War

"The Current War – The dirty PR battle to electrify the world" exposes the ruthless conflict between Thomas Edison (Direct Current) and George Westinghouse/Nikola Tesla (Alternating Current). While we remember them as great inventors, this book portrays them as vicious corporate warlords fighting for a monopoly on the future. Historian Victor Stone details the smear campaign led by Edison. Desperate to prove that AC was "too dangerous" for homes, Edison arranged public electrocutions of stray dogs and horses using Westinghouse's AC generators. The conflict culminated in the macabre execution of Topsy the elephant and the invention of the electric chair—not for justice, but as a marketing stunt to scare the public away from the competition. "The Current War" is a story of how the lightbulb was turned on by dark tactics. It reveals that the standard for the world's power grid was decided not just by engineering efficiency, but by a gruesome media war of fear and death.