Flash of Genius: And Other True Stories of Invention

Author Seabrook (Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture), a staff writer for The New Yorker (where these 15 essays first appeared), says in his introduction that he has ""always been interested in the circumstances, unforeseen obstacles, and unimagined outcomes of 'inventive acts.'"" It's clear that he's also fascinated by interconnectedness: how the prospector in Nevada links to investors in gold futures, how the business of scrap metal links American trash to Chinese entrepreneurship. Each story is a brief but detailed look inside what might seem arcane businesses, projects and ideas (like the research into an anachronistic Greek artifact called the Antikythera Mechanism), made clear and compelling by Seabrook's focus on personal satisfaction over business success, though the themes of human inventiveness and human acquisitiveness twine throughout (with a few exceptions, money is a huge driving force in these stories). Especially entrancing are the ""Fruit Detective,"" the founding of the Weather Channel, the efforts of a Hollywood animatronic designer and an MIT scientist to build a ""lovable"" robot, and the title essay, following windshield wiper revolutionary Bob Kearns's long fight with Ford Motors (and basis for the current feature film).