Edison's Ghosts

The Untold Weirdness of History's Greatest Geniuses

By: Katie Spalding

Narrated by: Susie Riddell

Overturn everything you knew about history’s greatest minds in this raucous and hilarious book, where it turns out there's a finer line between "genius" and "idiot" than we've previously known.

“As Albert Einstein almost certainly never said, everyone is a genius—but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” So begins Katie Spalding’s spunky takedown of the Western canon, and how genius may not be as irrefutably great as we commonly understand. While most of us may never become Einstein, it may surprise you to learn that there’s probably a bunch of stuff you can do that Einstein couldn’t. And, as Spalding shows, the famous prodigies she explores here were quite odd by any definition. For example:

• Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb, believed that he could communicate with the undead and built the world’s very first hotline to heaven: the Spirit Phone.
• Marie and Pierre Curie, famous for discovering radioactivity, slept next to a lump of radioactive material for years and strapped it to their arms to watch it burn them in real-time.
• Lord Byron, acclaimed British poet, literally took a bear with him to university.
• Isaac Newton discovered the laws of gravity and motion, but he also looked up at the sun without eye protection. The result? Three days of blindness.
• Tesla, whose scientific work led to the invention of the AC unit, fell in love with a pigeon.

Edison's Ghosts is filled with examples of the so-called best of humanity doing, to put it bluntly, some really dumb shit. You’ll discover stories that deserve to be told but never are: the hilarious, regrettable, and downright bafflingly lesser-known achievements that never made it into our history books, until now.

©2022 Katie Spalding (P)2022 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

"[Edison's Ghosts] takes a lighthearted tour of the missteps of scientific heavyweights, including Thomas Edison’s so-called phone to heaven and the time Isaac Newton temporarily blinded himself after studying the sun without eye protection."—Publishers Weekly

“With wit and charm, each of Katie Spalding’s stories in Edison’s Ghosts nudges, pushes, and eventually shoves some of our most illustrious celebrity thinkers right off their pedestals. Whether it was learning how Pythagorus died from an ill-timed fascination with beans, the career derailing procrastination of Leonardo Da Vinci, the truly impressive-in-its magnitude gullibility of Arthur Conan Doyle, or the failed attempt of the titular Edison to create a phone for calling ghosts, this warts-and-all review of the human, the very silly human, side history’s most famous “geniuses” will fuel your dinner party conversations for years.”—David McRaney, author of You Are Not So Smart

“Edison's Ghosts is a masterful combination of historical research and comedic storytelling, infused with erudition and judiciously dropped F-bombs. I laughed out loud on nearly every page. It is truly inspiring to read about the stupidity of geniuses. Thank you, Katie, for knocking these wunderkinds down a few pegs and making the rest of us feel smarter in the process.”—Justin Gregg, author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal

tons of nerdy fun!

this is like a hilarious gossip session about the awkward traits of revered elders. Hugely fun stories from a great storyteller.

A single accomplishment does NOT define a person

(As posted in Goodreads)
It's really interesting to see some of the things about many of our heroes that actually make them human. We tend to forget that "one fabulous aspect or accomplishment" really does not totally define a person. Just like the Nobel Prize winner who touted vitamin C for absolutely everything was NOT an expert in "absolutely everything", and in fact, was totally wrong and misleading about others, the general population needs to remember that a single major accomplishment is NOT definitive!
I enjoyed reading about some of our stars and finding out that all of them have mistakes and misinterpretations associated with them. And the book is humorous and brings people down to humanity!
Good job!

Never a dull moment

This surprised me right out of the gate with the very snarky tone and frequent F bombs but I decided I could deal with that, I’m glad I did because it was a really fun book. A lot of laugh out loud moments at the true stories behind some of our most admired people. The narration was amazing. I’ve never heard a British person do a better American accent and beautiful foreign language quotes as well. Well done!

Enlightening, funny, sad and astonishing

Great book. So many things many of us would never know about genius. After all we are still all human !

fascinating and beautifully narrated!

Excellent, witty and incredibly narrated book! I highly recommend for historical knowledge and great laughs!

Amazingly fun book

Really laughed at so many chapters in this book as several of my favorite geniuses were taken back down to earth! The chapter on Einstein and the one on Hemingway were both particularly good!

Book and narrative fantastic!

I am ready for her to write more. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole book. The author makes the genius human.

Definitely amusing

I found it definitely was entertaining. I would listen more from this author if this mildly naughty humor is included. A nice, light and educational listen…

Thoroughly Entertaining

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this engaging and amusing romp. The sketches of the foibles of geniuses throughout history were varied and with only one exception identified with gobsmacking oddities. The peculiar exception was Maya Angelou whose “fictionalized autobiographies” describe a varied and challenging life, but oddly the author found her to be more or less flawless, though brought up by a bizarre mother. This was only a small blemish. Another terrific strength is the narrator who was absolutely perfect for this book. One P.S. I see some reviewers on Amazon were horrified that the PhD author dropped f-bombs and other curses. Be assured that these serve the casual and even whimsical tone of the narration and are not a sign that the book is not extremely articulate.

OMG! I loved this

OK, here’s the thing. If you enjoy sarcasm, crassness, dark humor with a heavy sprinkling of profanity then you’re going to love this every bit as much as I did. I literally snorted several times during this book.

If, however, you are one of those people who thinks that “history should be approached with a sense of serious detachment and dignity “ then .. . . First of all, seek help because history is ugly and needs to be treated as such. Second, don’t bother picking up this book and writing a review about how “childish“ it is because you don’t deserve the masterpiece that was in this book :-).