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EDISON AND THE ELECTRIC CHAIR

A Story of Light and Death.

By Mark Essig

One of Thomas Edison's most important inventions was the incandescent light bulb. Mark Essig focuses on a deadly parallel to the popularization of Edison's breakthrough. ''Although in 1887 Edison had said he would 'join heartily in an effort to totally abolish capital punishment,' a year later he became the most powerful advocate of this new method of scientific killing,'' Essig writes in his first book, ''Edison and the Electric Chair.'' ''Like other defenders of the electrical execution law, he claimed that a powerful current would be far more humane than hanging.'' Although Edison was truly concerned with human suffering in executions, he was more concerned with his own financial interests; in what Essig aptly describes as ''one of the strangest hustles in the history of American business,'' Edison backed the invention and use of the electric chair to expand his business empire. His system for home and office electrification ran on low-voltage direct current, while that of his main competitor, George Westinghouse, was powered by high-voltage alternating current. Edison argued that executions should use alternating current because it was more deadly, implying that it was more dangerous to the public as well. And the best way to protect the public was by replacing Westinghouse's wires with Edison's. Ultimately, his plan was a complete failure. Not only did the more economical alternating current become the norm, but also, as Essig writes, ''by making executions appear painless, Edison helped the death penalty survive.''

DEATH ON THE BLACK SEA

The Untold Story of the Struma and World War II's Holocaust at Sea

By Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins

As the Nazi menace escalated during World War II, many Jews sought refuge in British-controlled Palestine. Arranging passage became more and more difficult, but the British also played a role in stanching the flow, as Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins write in ''Death on the Black Sea.'' In 1939, Parliament substantially reduced the number of Jews allowed to enter Palestine, primarily to avoid endangering access to Arab oil. The change meant a marked increase in the number of Jews attempting to enter Palestine illegally, many by ship; but because many ships had been conscripted into the war, desperate Jews were often forced onto less-than-seaworthy vessels. Frantz and Collins focus on the Struma, a terribly rickety ship crammed with some 800 Jews, whose unreliable engine took it only from Romania to Istanbul harbor in late 1941. Neither Germany nor Britain wanted neutral Turkey to let the ship leave, and it languished there for more than two months. In a cruel twist, the Struma was eventually sunk by a Soviet torpedo after an order from Stalin ''to destroy all neutral shipping in the Black Sea.'' All but one person perished. ''The passengers were victims of the British geopolitical strategy of keeping the Arabs pacified, the Turkish insistence on maintaining the facade of neutrality and the heartless pragmatism of the policy of Stalin.'' Frantz, an investigative reporter and editor for The New York Times, and Collins, who covers Turkey for The Chicago Tribune, deftly chronicle an incident that has remained virtually unknown for lack of survivors.

SO OTHERS MIGHT LIVE

A History of New York's Bravest: The FDNY From 1700 to the Present

By Terry Golway

On Sept. 13, 2001, the New York Fire Department released a statement about the deaths of Peter Ganci Jr., chief of department; William Feehan, the first deputy commissioner; and the Rev. Mychal Judge, department chaplain: they died as a result of ''injuries sustained while operating at Manhattan Box 8087, transmitted at 0847 hours on Sept. 11, 2001.'' The flat, unemotional tone conveyed the determination of the department to carry on. In his gutsy, emotional and detailed history, ''So Others Might Live,'' Terry Golway chronicles three centuries of conflagrations and innovations to show how the Fire Department became the nation's largest. Golway vividly describes several famous fires, from a December 1835 blaze that leveled 674 buildings in the financial district to the enormous April 1963 brush fire that destroyed 10 square miles on Staten Island. Golway, the city editor at The New York Observer, minutely details what he calls ''the war years,'' a period from the mid-1960's through the late 1970's that saw an epidemic of arson for profit and false alarms that he calls ''a civic apocalypse.'' Through it all, he shows that the department was constantly learning and improving itself -- from adding technical innovations, including telegraph-linked alarm systems in the 1850's, to opening its ranks to women in the late 70's. Golway's passionate account makes you realize how much experience the Fire Department lost on Sept. 11, and you wonder how it will be able to carry on.

WARRIORS OF GOD

Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade

By James Reston Jr.

There were five primary crusades but, as James Reston Jr. writes, the third, which spanned from 1187 to 1192, was the most interesting. In his splendid and thrilling portrait of that war, ''Warriors of God,'' he calls it ''the largest military endeavor of the Middle Ages,'' bringing ''the fury of the entire crusading movement to its zenith.'' While the battles of the Third Crusade involved thousands of soldiers, Reston, whose previous books include ''The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D.,'' sees that holy quest essentially as a mano a mano contest. The Muslims, who occupied Jerusalem, were led by Saladin, the compassionate and humble lord of Egypt, Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia. The master of the Christian forces was England's king, Richard the Lionheart, a fierce although often reckless warrior. Disunion among the leaders of Islam was the reason the First Crusade had been successful in 1099, and reunification under Saladin allowed the Muslim forces to recapture Jerusalem in 1187. Similarly, internal squabbles played a major role in scuttling the crusaders' chances of retaking the city. Most of the friction came out of the relationship between Richard and Philip Augustus, the king of France. Even with a diminished army and news from home that his younger brother John was trying to usurp his title, Richard valiantly continued on in his quest. In the summer of 1192, with Saladin on the ropes, Richard seemed poised to snatch his prize. At this point Reston's account falls flat. He writes that Richard ''concluded that the quest for Jerusalem was hopeless,'' and he conceded. Why? ''No historian has ever adequately explained.'' It is an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise wonderfully told story.