Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They were genius rivals: two American titans who transformed the technology industry and lived to see their visions of computers and electronic devices in billions of homes ...

Graham Moore's new novel opens in 1888 with a jolt: Its main character, Paul Cravath, witnesses a Western Union worker being electrocuted in the sky above Broadway while trying to repair a live wire.

Yes, children really were hired to collect stray dogs for electrocution experiments to help determine which electric system would power the modern world. This is one of many events in the true story ...