| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair. By Richard Moran. (New York: Knopf, 2002. xxii, 271 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-375-41059-7.)

Several articles and books have been written over the years about the invention of the electric chair, of which this is the best but still not definitive account. Richard Moran, a professor of sociology at Mount Holyoke College and author of a previous book about the origins of the insanity defense, has produced a lively layman's history that examines several aspects of the William Kemmler case. This work includes some of the details surrounding the world's first legal electric chair execution at Auburn State Prison on August 6, 1890; the epic "battle of the currents" (p. 35) between the industrial titans Thomas Edison (who favored direct current) and George Westinghouse (champion of alternating current) over dominance in the generation of electric power; the development of New York's revolutionary electric execution law; Kemmler's landmark trial and legal appeals; and a discussion of some of the case's far-reaching implications as part of today's ongoing death penalty debate.

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