1. Jone-Lin Wang, “Why Are We Using More Electricity?” The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2010.

2. Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 84.

3. Thomas Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 42 (“dynamos”); IEEE Global History Network, “Pearl Street Station,” at (electricity bill).

4. Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: Wiley, 1992), pp. 133–34 (“most useful citizen”) p. 434; Robert Conot, Thomas Edison: A Stroke of Luck (New York: Bantam, 1980), p. 132 (“could not explain”); Jannes, Empires of Light (“minor invention”).

5. Paul Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), p. 166 (“subdivided”); Jonnes, Empires of Light, p. 59 (“scientific men”); Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 19–21 (“Edison’s genius”).

6. Hughes Networks of Power, p. 22; Israel, Edison, p. 167 (“enabled him to succeed”).

7. Robert Friedel, Paul Israel and Bernard Finn, Edison’s Electric Light: The Art of Invention (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), p. 30–31 (“expensive experimenting”); Jonnes, Empires of Light, p. 76 (“Capital is timid”), pp. 3–11 (“experimental station”).

8. Randall Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Edison Invented the Modern World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007), p. 126; Jonnes, Empires of Light, pp. 195–97 (“Westinghoused”).

9. There were 27. 5 million recorded visitors to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, at a time when the total population of the United States was 65 million; Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), pp. 4–5; J. P. Barrett, Electricity at the Columbian Exposition (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1894), pp. xi, 16–18; David Nye: Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1992), p. 38.

10. John F. Wasik, The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 7, 10–11; Forrest McDonald, Insull: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Utility Tycoon (Washington, DC: BeardBooks, 2004), pp. 15–20.

11. Hughes, Networks of Power, p. 220 (“had to go to Europe”).

12. Richard F. Hirsh, Technology and Transformation in the American Electric Utility Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 19 (“begin to realize”).

13. Alfred E. Kahn, The Economics of Regulation: Principles and Institutions, vol. 2. (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1998), p. 117; Hughes, Networks of Power, p. 206.

14. Alfred E. Kahn, The Economics of Regulation: Principles and Institutions, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1998), pp. 11–12, 43 (“fair interpretation”); Samuel Insull, The Memoirs of Samuel Insull: An Autobiography, ed. Larry Plachno (Polo, Illinois: Transportation Trails, 1992), pp. 89–90.

15. Hughes, Networks of Power, p. 182 (“most important city,” “toasted bread”), p. 227 (“remaining last”).

16. Hirsh, Technology and Transformation in the American Electric Utility Industry, p. 17; Jonnes, Empires of Light, p. 368; New York Times, July 17, 1938 (“cheapest way”).

17. Time, May 14, 1934 (“presiding angel”); McDonald, Insull, p. 238 (“my name”).

18. McDonald, Insull, p. 282.

19. U. S. Energy Information Agency, “Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935: 1935–1992.” January 1993, p. 6; Time, May 14, 1934 (“I have erred”).

20. Frederick Lewis Allen, Since Yesterday: The 1930’s in America (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986), p. 75 (“I wish my time”); New York Times, June 12, 1932 (“foresight”); McDonald, Insull, p. 277 (“too broke”).

21. Wasik, The Merchant of Power, p. 236; Time, May 14, 1934; McDonald, Insull, p. 314 (“to get” the Insulls); New York Times, July 17, 1938.

22. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 3, The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 304 (FTC).

23. Hughes, Networks of Power, p. 204 (“difficult concepts”); Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 3, The Politics of Upheaval, pp. 303–12 (“private socialism”); Kennth S. Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years 1933–1937 (New York: Random House, 1986), pp. 529–37.

24. Robert Caro, The Path to Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 379, 504.

25. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 231–33; Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The G. I. Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington, DC: Brassay’s, 2000), p. 287.

26. Ronald Reagan, Reagan: A Life in Letters, eds. Kiron Skinner, Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson (New York: Free Press, 2003), p. 143 (“won’t fly”).

27. Ronald Reagan with Richard G. Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me? (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965), p. 273 (“most electric house”); Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), p. 111 (“more refrigerators”), ch. 6; Nancy Reagan with William Novak, My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 128 (Hoover Dam).

28. General Electric, “Ronald Reagan and GE,” webpage at .