List of Illustrations

Introduction: Seizing the Lightning

1. Atlantic Circuits

2. Lightning Rods and the Direction of Nature

3. Wonderful Recreations

4. Electrical Politics and Political Electricity

5. How to Handle an Electric Eel

6. Electrical Humanitarianism

7. Electricity as Common Sense

Conclusion: What Is American Enlightenment?

Notes

Illustration Sources

Acknowledgments

Index

Illustrations

1. The Myth of Electricity and Revolution

2. Electricity as an Atlantic Science

3. Electrical Games

4. Generating Enlightenment

5. Illustrating Electricity

6. Heroic Self-Evidence

7. Franklin as a Bookish Natural Philosopher

8. The Exploding Thunder House

9. The Direction of Lightning

10. The Spectacle of Enlightenment

11. Science in the Parlor

12. Franklin as Plenipotentiary

13. Electricity and Revolution

14. The Conspirators

15. An Electric El Dorado

16. The Electric Eel as an Organic Machine

17. Perkins's Tractors: Electricity or Imagination?