“As schoolchildren we learn that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. We don’t learn that this is among the least interesting things about him. It takes a book like Katie Booth’s The Invention of Miracles to teach us that. Provocative, personal, and exhaustively researched, Booth’s book is the rare biography that completely alters a famous person’s popular image… Booth has the courage and perspective to portray her subject’s deeply flawed humanity, giving the book its poetry and tragic resonance.”
— The Boston Globe

“Meticulously researched, crackling with insights, and rich in novelistic detail, The Invention of Miracles is more than the revelatory biography of an inventor who transformed the world. By shining a bright light on society’s assumptions about disability, Booth’s book is a profound and lyrical meditation on what it means to be human.”
— Steve Silberman, New York Times bestselling author of NeuroTribes

“Katie Booth’s brave and absorbing book is the story of a contradictory genius whose inventiveness outstripped his compassion… Booth’s style is highly poetic, even moving… [and] so scrupulously researched you feel like you’re walking alongside the inventor as he strides the Scottish moors or looking over his shoulder as he researches the qualities of different kinds of current in his Boston home.”
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Engagingly written… Booth’s descriptions of Bell’s passionate courtship of his student Mabel Hubbard, who belonged to a much higher social class, are as stirring as a romance novel, and her narrative of his work on the telephone reads like a thriller… Her meticulous research and rigor are evident on every page.”
— Andrew Solomon, The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating tale of great love, innovation, personal drama, and the unexpected consequences of good intentions.”
— Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs

“Refreshingly candid. Booth does a masterful job weaving this powerful and compelling story about fear and obsessive fascination with difference.”
— Brian Greenwald, PhD, professor of history at Gallaudet University

“A complex and profoundly moving historical saga, The Invention of Miracles is an insightful portrayal of the extraordinary life of Alexander Graham Bell… Superbly written and decidedly subjective, The Invention of Miracles provides a challenging portrait of an imperfect genius.”
— Judges’ citation for the Mark Lynton History Prize

“A powerful revisionist text, at once personal, historical, and insightful. As someone born deaf with hearing parents, I think I would have benefitted from being born into a world where ableist attitudes were rooted out and understood the way Booth demonstrates here.”
— Raymond Antrobus, author of The Perseverance

“Katie Booth vigorously revises the historical record… [and] reveals a rich history of heights and depths... including the questionable patent process that secured Bell’s name in history, the evolution and empowerment of the Deaf community, and Bell’s endearing marriage, which survived his own misguided intentions.”
— BookPage

“A revealing biography that will enlighten readers… The Invention of Miracles paints a textured portrait of a man driven not by an entrepreneurial desire to invent a product that changed the world but by a passion.”
— New York Journal of Books

“Impassioned and scrupulously researched… Enriched with vivid sketches of Bell’s wife, Mabel Hubbard, and other historical figures, including Helen Keller, this revelatory history deserves a wide readership.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Careful and balanced… Booth explores the progression of Bell’s career with compassion and nuance, eliding neither his good intentions nor the lasting harm that his emphasis on orality wrought on generations of D/deaf students.”
— Booklist

“Ardent… [This] well-written biography reveals less-familiar aspects of the life of the famed inventor.”
— Kirkus Reviews