Toward a Livable World: Leo Szilard and the Crusade for Nuclear Arms Control, Vol. 3 Book

This is a really interesting story about the man who invented the laser, and the crazy legal battles he went through to get his patents validated and licensed and to overcome condescension from the scientific community (how could someone without a PhD invent anything useful?) and bullying by large corporate entities. It's a tragedy of our legal system that it costs so much, personally, professionally and financially, for an individual inventor to promote their work and get the benefits due to them. But it's also a testament to this man and others like him who can overcome those obstacles and come out victorious (and sane).

I would have given it another star but it is a bit of work to get through it - this is a dense, complicated, thirty-year story involving politics, patent law, and technology; reading even a well-done summary of that is an undertaking. Easier than reading a patent or a scientific paper, perhaps, but not a light read (no pun intended).