| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Michael Brian Schiffer. Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment. Assisted by Kacy L. Hollenback and Carrie L. Bell. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2003. Pp. xiv, 383. $34.95.

This volume introduces the reader to the surprisingly densely populated world of the electrically inclined in eighteenth-century Europe and North America. Michael Brian Schiffer, a prolific author who has been a leader in the field of behavioral archeology (the theoretical framework for this book), draws on his considerable knowledge of electrical science and technology to "study how technologies, as artifacts [relate] to the lives of the people who made and used them, seeking meaningful behavioral patterns in the human-made world" (p. 3, author's italics). He examines those patterns by classifying who was interested in electrical phenomena and devices into eight communities of investigators and practitioners, examining each community in turn. Schiffer is engrossed in the telling of who chose to take up the pursuit of electrical phenomena and to what end.

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