Michelle Ferrari

Trace the city's development from its humble beginnings as a remote frontier way station to its mid-century florescence as the gangster metropolis known as 'Sin City' to its recent renaissance as the fastest growing city in the United States.

In the early twentieth century, the average American medicine cabinet was a would-be poisoner's treasure chest. There was radioactive radium in health tonics, thallium in depilatory creams, and morphine in teething medicine and potassium cyanide in cleaning supplies. While the tools of the murderer's trade multiplied as the pace of industrial innovation increased, the scientific knowledge (and the political will) to detect and prevent the crimes lagged...

It tells the story of the eugenics movement and its long history in the United States, from its beginnings in the study of heredity to its rise as a popular movement promising to uplift the human race through state-sponsored sterilization, to its influence on immigration laws designed to close our borders to groups deemed genetically inferior.

By the time he died in 1931, Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most famous men in the world. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in history, Edison had achieved glory as the genius behind such revolutionary inventions as sound recording, motion pictures, and electric light. Born on the threshold of America's burgeoning industrial empire, Edison's curiosity led him to its cutting edge.