Seize the Daylight : The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time

Benjamin Franklin conceived of it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorsed it. Winston Churchill campaigned for it. Kaiser Wilhelm first employed it. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt went to war with it, and more recently the United States fought an energy crisis with it. For several months every year, for better or worse, daylight savings time affects vast numbers of people throughout the world. And from Ben Franklin's era to today, its story has been an intriguing and sometimes-bizarre amalgam of colorful personalities and serious technical issues, purported costs and perceived benefits, conflicts between interest groups and government policymakers. It impacts diverse and unexpected areas, including agricultural practices, street crime, the reporting of sports scores, traffic accidents, the inheritance rights of twins, and voter turnout. Illustrated with a popular look at science and history, Seize the Daylight presents an intriguing and surprisingly entertaining story of our attempt to regulate the sunlight hours. In Seize the Daylight, David Prerau weaves a tale of science, history, and politics - a story grand enough to involve luminaries such as Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, and FDR, but personal enough to revolve around railroad conductors and schoolchildren waiting at bus stops on dark mornings - all about the simple act of setting the clock forward an hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall. Who knew that daylight saving time influences everything from movie attendance to street crime, voter turnout to traffic accidents, Halloween trick-or-treaters to death-row inmates? That it has foiled Mideast terrorist plots and saved young men from being drafted into war? That it took a "celebrity endorsement" from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a Supreme Court decision to make it an actuality? That three U.S. states still refuse to employ it? Seize the Daylight is the story behind an institution that has been the subject of back-room brawling and front-page headlines for more than two hundred years - and remains so today Benjamin Franklin conceived of it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorsed it. Winston Churchill campaigned for it. Kaiser Wilhelm first employed it. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt went to war with it, and more recently the United States fought an energy crisis with it. For several months every year, for better or worse, daylight savings time affects vast numbers of people throughout the world. And from Ben Franklin's era to today, its story has been an intriguing and sometimes bizarre amalgam of colorful personalities and serious technical issues, purported costs and perceived benefits, conflicts between interest groups and government policy makers. Daylight savings time impacts diverse and unexpected areas, including agricultural practices, street crime, the reporting of sports scores, traffic accidents, the inheritance rights of twins, and voter turnout.