Reluctant Genius

August 1, 2006
Gray recounts both the inventor of the telephone's creation of the device and the projects he pursued once his future was secured. Bell is portrayed as imaginative and neurotic, but his marriage to a steadier sort kept him on even keel, if not exactly scientifically disciplined. She was Mabel Hubbard and is so present in Gray's work as to make it a dual biography. Deaf teenager Mabel met Bell when he taught the hearing-impaired, and Gray's story of their courtship is intertwined with the story of how Mabel's father became involved in Bell's side project of transmitting sound by wire, much in the scientific air in the 1870s. Without the worldly Mr. Hubbard's legal and business management, Bell might not have succeeded; certainly none of his subsequent inventions had the eclat of the telephone. Combining the household history of the Bells with that of Alexander's successive enthusiasms (Helen Keller, kites, airplanes, hydrocraft), Gray fairly portrays the attractions and exasperations of Bell's life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)