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What it argues
The Last Days of Night is Graham Moore's historical novel about the legal and commercial war between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over the electrification of America. The central figure is Paul Cravath, a 26-year-old lawyer fresh out of Columbia who is hired by Westinghouse to handle patent litigation against Edison. Moore uses Cravath's real-life trajectory — he would eventually found one of the most powerful law firms in New York — as the spine of a story about ambition, innovation, and the brutal economics of invention.
The novel covers the years 1888 to 1892, the peak of the so-called War of Currents. Edison's direct current system was losing ground to Westinghouse's alternating current, which could travel farther and power entire cities. Edison fought back through patents, public demonstrations of AC's dangers, and a lobbying campaign to have it used in the electric chair — the logic being that if AC killed criminals, consumers would fear it in their homes. Moore renders the technical dispute with enough clarity that the reader grasps the stakes without needing an engineering background.
What it gets right
- 1.
The War of Currents was decided as much in courtrooms as in laboratories. Edison's patent strategy was as central to his dominance as his inventions.
- 2.
Nikola Tesla's genius did not protect him from being outmaneuvered commercially. He sold his AC patents to Westinghouse under financial pressure and received little of the wealth they generated.
- 3.
Paul Cravath's approach to building a law firm — hire the best recent graduates, train them rigorously, promote from within — became a template that reshaped American legal practice for the next century.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Graham Moore is an American author and screenwriter best known for winning the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Imitation Game (2014), based on the life of Alan Turing. Before The Last Days of Night, he wrote the thriller novel The Sherlockian. Moore studied history at Columbia University and has said that the Cravath legal dynasty, which he encountered through a footnote while researching another topic, became the seed of the novel. He lives in Los Angeles.
