Blood and Volts

Th. Metzger is the author of Big Gurl (Penguin 1989 / OVO 2012), Shock Totem (Penguin 1990), Drowning in Fire (Penguin 1992), This is Your Final Warning (Autonomedia 1992), The Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the Dope Fiend (Breakout Books 1998), Select Strange and Sacred Sites: the Ziggurat Guide to Western N.Y. (Exit 18 Books, 2002), Hydrogen Sleep and Speed (Poet's Press 2011), Big Noise on the Astral Plane (Ziggurat 2021), Flaherty's Wake (Ziggurat 2023), and Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal (mogtus-sanlux 2023).

An ax murderer, two of the most brilliant scientific minds of the century, billions of dollars in profit, precedent-setting legal battles, secrets of life and death - all of these come together in the story of the first electric chair.In Blood and Volts, Th. Metzger creates a unique synthesis of scholarship, storytelling, and cultural critique. Though it draws from a number of disparate fields-true crime, history of technology, conspiracy theory, criminal law-Blood and Volts presents a clear and compelling story: America struggling to define itself through scientific innovation.At the dawn of the twentieth century, General Electric (using Edison's direct current) and Westinghouse (employing Tesla's groundbreaking alternating current) were locked in combat to determine which would dominate the electro-technical fate of the nation. Electricity was thought to be a highly ambiguous force: both godlike creative power and demonic destroyer of life. Metzger argues the electric chair was both harbinger and early pinnacle of modernity, the high altar of the rising cult of progress. In the popular imagination, Tesla and Edison were seen as nearly superhuman beings, and their struggle was not only for wealth and power, but to reshape the face of America.This is a second, revised edition.