Praise for The Power Makers:

“Well-written, entertaining and detailed....Klein shows how optimism gradually spawned financial euphoria.”— Robert J. Samuelson, The New York Times Book Review

“Who better than Maury Klein to write an engaging history of the stock market crash of 1929 and the way its enthusiasms and traumas burned their way into the American experience? Here is a tale whose ending we already know, yet he rivets attention by weaving compelling vignettes into a dramatic narrative. . . . There is something new for everyone in Rainbow's End.”—Journal of American History

“Maury's Klein's The Power Makers allows us to step back and remind ourselves — and we do need reminding — that the past two centuries have been a period of extraordinary invention....Fascinating.”—William Tucker, Wall Street Journal

“Klein's book reads like a fairy tale...Klein himself rarely fails to reach for the full significance of events. "Every material achievement that would characterize civilization during the next two centuries began with the possibilities opened by the steam engine,"he writes of James Watt's invention.) The Power Makers is at once grandiloquent and granular. At technical descriptions, Klein excels. In explaining a disadvantage of Edison's direct current—the greater the current, the bigger the wire needed to conduct it—he offers this nifty illustration: 'to light Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Fifty-ninth Street, the conductors would have to be as large as a man's leg.' If you haven't given Boyle's law much thought since the Reagan revolution, reading Klein will reward you with an excellent course in heat, electricity, and magnetism, at very little cost to your composure.”—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

"In an ambitious and expansive narrative, Klein (Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929) chronicles the advent of steam power and the electrification of America. Klein's descriptions of the science of steam power, beginning with James Watt, and electricity are clear and detailed. He is especially strong when exploring the confounding engineering feats needed to make electricity a commercially feasible commodity. The heart of the book is the collision of entrepreneurs, inventors and financiers, and the epic battle between two icons of American industry, Edison and Westinghouse, to control and profit from the electrification of America. Along the way Klein brings dramatically to life the triumphs and disappointments, both human and technical, as the fledging electric companies sought to service American homes and businesses. In a well-written and satisfying account, Klein makes readers aware of the magnitude of the energy, genius and tenacity of not only Edison—whose development of the world's first power station in 1881 on New York's Pearl Street was a momentous accomplishment—but also of Westinghouse and many others whose discoveries and vision made cheap electricity possible. B&w illus. (June)—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Maury Klein's stories of heroic inventors creating the industrial revolution make the history of technology come alive." --Daniel Walker Howe, NBCC Award nominee for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

"This well-oiled colossus of a book—its moving parts working together like a mighty machine—illuminates an epic period of national growth, when the country's first big carbon footprints were made on a march toward greatness and plenty." —Thomas Mallon, author of Henry and Clara, Bandbox, and Fellow Travelers.

“The Power Makers vividly and brilliantly reveals how the revolutions of steam and electricity, one facilitating the other, combined to reshape American society. Maury Klein tells a fascinating, heroic tale peopled by such giants as Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and J. P. Morgan, whose partnerships, subterranean deals, and marketplace battles redefined not just American commerce but the American landscape as well.”—Edward J. Renehan Jr., author of Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt