Description: Simply Electrifying: The Technology that Transformed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk brings to life the 250-year history of electricity through the stories of the men and women who used it to transform our world: Benjamin Franklin, James Watt, Michael Faraday, Samuel F.B. Morse, Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull, Albert Einstein, Rachel Carson, Elon Musk, and more. In the process, it reveals for the first time the complete, thrilling, and often-dangerous story of electricity's historic discovery, development, and worldwide application. Electricity plays a fundamental role not only in our everyday lives but in history's most pivotal events, from global climate change and the push for wind--and solar--generated electricity to Japan's nuclear accident at Fukushima and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Written by electricity expert and four-decade veteran of the industry Craig R. Roach, Simply Electrifying marshals, in fascinating narrative detail, the full range of factors that shaped the electricity business over time--science, technology, law, politics, government regulation, economics, business strategy, and culture--before looking forward toward the exhilarating prospects for electricity generation and use that will shape our future.
Brief description: Craig R. Roach is a nationally recognized expert on the electricity business. Over the course of his forty-year career, Roach has been vetted and accepted officially as an expert in regulatory courts and courts of law across North America. He has served in cases involving one of the biggest bankruptcies ever, a first-of-a-kind clean coal investment, a federal preemption case resolved ultimately by the Supreme Court, and the design and implementation of electricity auctions worth billions of dollars. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin, consistently ranked among the top ten research institutions in economics in America. He is the founder and President of Boston Pacific Company, Inc., a consultancy specialized in the electricity business. He and his firm have become trusted advisers to regulators as well as electric utilities and investors.