Hedy's Folly

October 1, 2011
The author of The Twilight of the Bomb (2010) returns with the surprising story of a pivotal invention produced during World War II by a pair of most unlikely inventors--an avant-garde composer and the world's most glamorous movie star. Pulitzer and NBA winner Rhodes offers the stories of his two principals in alternating segments, sometimes chapter-length. The diminutive pianist/composer George Antheil--who worked with Stravinsky, Ezra Pound, Balanchine, DeMille and other notables--was also a prolific writer and inventor. And Lamarr (born Hedwig Kiesler), smitten by the theater in her native Austria, married a wealthy man charmed by Nazis; she later fled for Hollywood, where she quickly established herself as a major star in such films as Algiers and Ziegfeld Girl. She crossed trails with Antheil, who'd also moved west. Rhodes shows us that Lamarr (a new surname name suggested by the wife of Louis B. Mayer) was extremely bright (though poorly educated), a woman who had an area in her house devoted to inventing. And Antheil--who'd once composed a piece requiring 16 synchronized player pianos--had inventing interests that dovetailed with Lamarr's. They worked together to invent a way to radio-guide torpedoes and to use a technique called frequency-hopping to insure that the enemy could not jam their signals. Lamarr and Antheil secured a patent, but the U.S. Navy did not adopt the device, which, as Rhodes shows, would form the foundations of today's Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies. Antheil died before earning any recognition for this achievement, but Lamarr, late in her life, did receive awards. The author quotes liberally--perhaps overly so--from the memoirs of his principals. A faded blossom of a story, artfully restored to bright bloom.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2011

Thank your Hollywood stars that Hedy Lamarr, who trained as an engineer, invented spread-spectrum radio with avant-garde composer George Antheil. Allowing the rapid switch of communications signals through a range of frequencies, spread-spectrum radio makes cell phones, GPS, and radio-guided torpedoes possible. I've heard this story but suspect that multiaward winner Rhodes will make it even better.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2011
Literary luminary Rhodes is not the first to write about movie star Hedy Lamarr's second life as an inventor, but his enlightening and exciting chronicle is unique in its illumination of why and how she conceived of an epoch-shaping technology now known as frequency-hopping spread spectrum. As intelligent and independent as she was beautiful, Jewish Austrian Lamarr quit school to become an actor, then disastrously married a munitions manufacturer who got cozy with the Nazis. Lamarr coolly gathered weapons information, then fled the country for Hollywood. As she triumphed on the silver screen, she also worked diligently on a secret form of radio communication that she hoped would boost the U.S. war effort but that ultimately became the basis for cell phones, Wi-Fi, GPS, and bar-code readers. Lamarr's technical partner was George Antheil, a brilliant and intrepid pianist and avant-garde composer whose adventures are so fascinating, he nearly steals the show. In symphonic control of a great wealth of fresh and stimulating material, and profoundly attuned to the complex ramifications of Lamarr's and Antheil's struggles and achievements (Lamarr finally received recognition as an electronic pioneer late in life), Rhodes incisively, wittily, and dramatically brings to light a singular convergence of two beyond-category artists who overtly and covertly changed the world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)