The gripping history of electricity and how the fateful collision of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of Americas Gilded AgeThomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghousebattled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empireIn Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nations most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the worlds first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George We