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.

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.

[I]t is refreshing to explore a book which takes seriously ancient encounters with manifestations of natural electricity as precursors to more recent innovations.

Turkel has a very imaginative and bold central proposition: that acquaintance with electric fishes is connected to the harnessing of electricity. He is able to bounce around among piscine evolution, plate tectonics, electromagnetism, the history of science, and much else with ease and aplomb. I can imagine a prize-winning book here.