The Power and the Glory
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The Battery:
How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution
By Henry Schlesinger
Smithsonian Books; $25.99; 287 pp
You've met it many times, but it's a good bet that you know next to nothing of the life story of the tech world's Rodney Dangerfield. Instead, you dote on the latest handheld device or flashy new car, neither of which could function without the humble battery, the device-within-a-device that has underpinned an enormous slice of high tech's progress.