The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis (review)

Samuel Insull's life was a tragedy in three acts. In his youth he embodied the Horatio Alger tale of a young man of humble origins whose pluck and talents gain the notice of a great man—in this case Thomas Edison—and propel him to prosperity. In his prime he was a grand tycoon, amassing millions of dollars by electrifying the American Midwest and spending them impressively on himself and various philanthropies. Finally, in his old age, Insull and his companies went bankrupt, taking down hundreds of thousands of stockholders and becoming symbols of the abuses of capitalism that had opened the door to the Great Depression.

Insull's story has been told before, most notably in Forrest McDonald's 1962 biography Insull (recently reissued) and Harold Platt's The Electric City, as well as in Thomas Hughes's Networks of Power and American Genesis. In The Merchant of Power, author John Wasik, a business journalist, acknowledges his debt to these previous works, particularly McDonald's. Although he has explored archival sources himself, Wasik does not take issue with existing interpretations or advance any explicit thesis of his own, making unclear the purpose of this book. McDonald does a far more thorough job of explaining Insull's complex financial maneuvers and his family life, while Platt presents a much superior account of Insull as the master salesman of central-station electric service who made Chicago the premier electrified city of the early twentieth century.

Wasik does contribute some details of Insull's personal life and image. We suffer the stress of Insull's early career, admire his elegant clothing, and learn that, not long after Insull's death in 1938, director Orson Welles handed his makeup artist a photograph of Insull to show how he wanted to appear in the title role of Citizen Kane. Wasik also provides context by describing events that took place around the same time as milestones in Insull's career, though occasionally these become distracting lists of trivia. Also distracting are frequent dangling participles, awkward metaphors, and anachronistic slang.

The most vivid passages in the book describe the "Insullania Sites" Wasik visited, including Insull's villa north of Chicago and the opera house he opened just eleven days after the 1929 stock-market crash. Wasik writes in his notes that he "saw firsthand the amazing network of power that Insull created," and that "it was not until I visited some of Insull's homes that I started to appreciate his personality, influence, and legacy" (p. 251). Had he followed his apparent urge to write a travel narrative, following Insull's footsteps across Europe and the United States, he might have produced a more original book.

As it stands, The Merchant of Power may introduce Insull to readers not familiar with the tycoon. But those who want to understand Insull's achievements and failures will be better served by other accounts.