Noble Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the Greatest Industrial Secret of the 19th Century

Noble Obsession follows the life of Charles Goodyear, a single-minded genius who risked his own life and that of his family in a quest to unlock the secrets of rubber. In rich, historical detail, it chronicles the personal price Goodyear paid in pursuit of his dream and his bitter rivalry with Thomas Hancock, the scholarly English inventor who ultimately robbed Goodyear of fame and fortune. From the jungles of Brazil to the laboratories of Europe to the courtrooms of America, Noble Obsession tells one of the strangest and most affecting sagas in the history of human discovery.