"The Fire of His Genius tells the story of the extraordinarily driven and ambitious inventor who brought all this about, probing into the undoubted genius of his mind but, too, laying bare the darker side of the man -- and the darker side of the American dream that inspired him. It depicts one of America's earliest heroes both at the pinnacle of creativity and success, fame, and fortune and in the depths of solitude, recklessness, and contentiousness that preceded his early death (Fulton spent much of his life defending patents for everything from rope-making machinery to submarines to proto-torpedoes that he attempted to sell, in succession, to the French, the British, and the American navies). All this is set against a brilliant portrait of a dynamic historical period filled with charactersfrom Bonaparte to Jefferson, Cornelius Vanderbilt to Meriwether Lewis, Robert Livingston to Benjamin West, and events from the Lewis and Clark expedition to the War of 1812, the Louisiana Purchase to the bombing of Fort McHenry, the treasontrial of Aaron Burr to the "Great Removal" of American Indians. Here are the "taming" of America's rivers and the building of its great canals, the introduction to every body of water of Fulton's "large, noisy, showy, fast, brash, exciting, powerful, and audacious" machine that was the very embodiment of America. A biography that bears comparison to the best work of David McCullough, Dava Sobel, and Garry Wills, "The Fire of His Genius is a remarkable achievement: an extraordinarily clear window into an extraordinary time told with deftness, zest, and unflagging verve.
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Background Information
The Hudson River drains upstate New York into the Atlantic, forming the fine harbor New York City in its estuary. Cornelius Vanderbilt founded a transportation empire based on steam and launched a family dynasty that became synonymous with extreme wealth.