To the author Charles Slack: well done. What a great read. The writing style is eloquent, as if of that era. It sucked me right into the story.

And it is an amazing story. The origin of vulcanized rubber is fraught with betrayal and heartache, with real-life good guys and bad guys. I wouldn't be surprised to see Noble Obsession at the cinema soon.

In short, this is the best biography I've ever read, and the legacy of Charles Goodyear has another admirer. ( )

The biography of the tenacious inventor Charles Goodyear, whose vulcanization process is synonymous with rubber. He devoted his life to working with the process to detriment of his health and his family's well-being. In debtors prison many times he never abandoned the work that burned within.
The author makes Goodyear the determined but oblivious New Englander who is very sympathetic to the reader. I put off finishing the book because I didn't want to find out what horrors awaited him, financially, physically and socially. If you ever wondered how our industrial life began this would be a great start. ( )

Goodyear has to rank as an authentic American hero. Compulsion doesn't even begin to describe the tenacity with which Goodyear, through countless trial and error attempts tried to discover the secrets of vulcanization. One has to sympathize with his family, however, as Goodyear -- dare I say squandered in light of the result? -- his family's funds to purchase supplies, taking over the kitchen with gooey, syrupy liquid rubber, making a mess out of his personal life, facing debtor's prison and generally obsessing with rubber. Certainly, part of the motivation was money. Whoever solved the problem would become rich. Goodyear was bedeviled constantly by those wishing to steal his secrets and profit from his discoveries. The story of the legal battle for control of the patent is equaling riveting.

Slack turns what one would think to be a boring subject into a fascinating read (or listen in my case) as he weaves the technical, social, and political aspects together into a fine narrative. ( )