Spark from the Deep

This beautifully written and exhaustively researched book traces the links between experiments on strongly electric fish and scientific understanding of electricity… Turkel’s book is a joy to read; it will entertain and educate scientists, historians, and anyone with an interest in the natural world. Choice Turkel’s book convincingly reminds us that all the laptops and gadgets we surround ourselves with are remixes; altered versions of strongly electric fish. For that strange and insightful observation, this book ought to be widely read and enjoyed. – Chris Conway Endeavour [I]t is refreshing to explore a book which takes seriously ancient encounters with manifestations of natural electricity as precursors to more recent innovations. – James F. Stark The British Journal for the History of Science

William J. Turkel is an associate professor of history at the University of Western Ontario and is author of The Archive of Place: Unearthing the Pasts of the Chilcotin Plateau.