Rubber was to the 1830s what the Internet boom was to the 1990s: a flawed but potentially world-altering discovery that made and destroyed fortunes. It took the vision, courage, and perseverance of one manCharles Goodyearto reinvent rubber into the indispensable substance it is today. Noble Obsession is a riveting work of history that reads like enthralling fiction. It tells how Goodyear, a single-minded genius, risked his own life and his familys in a quest to unlock the secrets of rubber, and how Thomas Hancock, the scholarly English inventor who raced against Goodyear, ultimately robbed him of fame and fortune. Filled with villains, con men, and entrepreneurs, and brimming with fascinating facts about the science and business of rubber, Noble Obsession takes readers from the jungles of Brazil to the laboratories of Europe to the courtrooms of America to tell one of the strangest and most affecting sagas in the history of human discovery.