Electricity as Metaphor [review of "Power lines: Electricity in American Life and Letters, 1882-1952" [Book Review]

Power Lines by Professor Jennifer Lieberman of the University of North Florida is based on her doctoral dissertation at the University of Illinois. Her choice of topic was inspired: the appearance of electricity as metaphor in American letters in the first 70 years starting shortly after electrification became a major technology in American life. Her fiction authors, besides Dreiser and Ellison, are Jack London, Mark Twain, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In addition, she supplements her treatment of electrification with nonfiction by such cultural critics as Henry Adams and Lewis Mumford as well as essays by the just named fiction writers.