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A review by siria
The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball
2.0
The Inventor and the Tycoon is readable, but I think that's more in spite of Edward Ball's writing than because of it. The subject matter is great: Eadweard Muybridge, an Anglo-American who was as notorious for the murder he committed as for his pioneering photographs and Leland Stanford, the railroad tycoon and founder of Stanford University. Both men played key roles in the history of 19th century California, and both were utter bastards to boot. Great fodder for a book, right?
Sadly, The Inventor and the Tycoon could profitably be used in the college classroom as an example of how not to write history. Ball's narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time for no good reason; I think he was attempting to add drama, but all of his attempts fall flat. The same information is often given three or four times, the thematic links which Ball could have emphasised are often ignored, and Ball has a terrible penchant for speculating about what someone "might have thought" and for reading people's character through portrait photography. Yes, someone might well seem distant and reserved in a mid-19th century formal portrait, when the subject had to hold themselves still for a minute or more in order not to spoil the shot—that doesn't give us some deep insight into their personality! Someone needed to go through this manuscript with a red pen, excise a hundred pages and rearrange the rest in order for this to work.
Sadly, The Inventor and the Tycoon could profitably be used in the college classroom as an example of how not to write history. Ball's narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time for no good reason; I think he was attempting to add drama, but all of his attempts fall flat. The same information is often given three or four times, the thematic links which Ball could have emphasised are often ignored, and Ball has a terrible penchant for speculating about what someone "might have thought" and for reading people's character through portrait photography. Yes, someone might well seem distant and reserved in a mid-19th century formal portrait, when the subject had to hold themselves still for a minute or more in order not to spoil the shot—that doesn't give us some deep insight into their personality! Someone needed to go through this manuscript with a red pen, excise a hundred pages and rearrange the rest in order for this to work.