A review by kurtwombat
The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I by Douglas Brunt

dark informative mysterious slow-paced

3.5

 
The central tease of this book is the disappearance of Rudolf Diesel (inventor of the diesel engine) as referenced in the title and the subtitle. For the vast majority of the book that is the only sniff of mystery to be had. Instead we are treated to a series of articles about Diesel and the history he was born into with little hope for a cohesive narrative. The articles are informative and interesting but slow going because they don’t feel essential to the story. It was like winning a free vacation and then finding out you must sit through a sales meeting every day. Portions of each article could have been woven into a nice narrative—easily 100 pages could be lost from the book overall with little downside. The book does contain two essential surprises first that Diesel was actually a person (not having thought about it assumed it was a German mechanical term). And a rather fascinating person apparently retaining a humanity rare among those at his level of success. The second, that I would find essentially the biography of a mechanical device so interesting—more so than most of the component parts of this book. Dropping the mystery from the title and simply referencing the amazing impact the diesel engine had on history would have been a better play—making war a global event, becoming a driving force in international politics and changing the everyday life of most people living on the planet should have been interesting enough. (Amazing stuff on its own but I understand the mystery part drives sale.) Yet we have to wade thru long biographical digressions on John D. Rockefeller, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolphus Busch. All fascinating figures but lamentable hurdles here. The mystery is finally addressed near the end of the book—and some interesting thoughts are churned up—well worth the wait for the revelation but I found the author’s transition from supposition to fact disquieting. Likely is not the same as fact.