Seth Shulman's The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret draws the true creator of one of the 20th century's greatest inventions into question. Shulman probes one of the science community's more salacious scandals, delving into an intellectual rivalry on par with that of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison or Alexandre Yersin and Shibasaburo Kitasato. The resulting tale illustrates the philosophical labyrinth of intellectual-property rights, as well as the inevitable price of innovation.

Shulman investigates Bell and electrical engineer Elisha Gray's concurrent research on transmission devices, examining both inventors' patent claims (filed on the same day, no less) and their suspicious similarities. He interweaves the narrative with excerpts from the rivals' lab notebooks and legal documents, blending inquiry with anecdotes from the telephone twins' lives. In the process, he also explores the ins and outs of a vulnerable American legal system and the dubious circumstances that led to Bell's later fame and fortune.

Despite the book's juicy premise, Shulman is no conspiracy theorist. While he was working as a guest researcher at MIT, the Harvard-educated science journalist stumbled across a document that cast doubt upon Bell's alleged invention. After considering the potential repercussions of challenging the inventor's widely mythologized discovery, Shulman created a scandal of his own by pursuing his controversial theory. As the book's subtitle suggests, the resulting argument is more of a journey than a dry thesis, and, in many ways, is as much about its author as its subjects.

The Telephone Gambit is not without obvious relevance to a world of wireless communication and accelerating technology. Shulman's exhaustive research and bold assertions are a testament to the enduring fragility of authorship and ownership in the realm of abstract ideas. Even without its philosophical undertones, however, The Telephone Gambit is an engaging story that examines a historical event with the suspenseful gush of a detective novel and the intellectual clarity of academic scholarship.

-Chelsea Bauch