Wolcott writes a detailed account of his life, much of it day to day events interwoven with his encounters with other contemporary physicists and important research work. The account rambles a great deal, but there are some gems to be found, such as a visit to Thomas Alva Edison which he recounts. Wolcott also discusses his early childhood, friends, family, and teachers and describes his undergraduate years at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where he studied physics under Louis W. Austin, Chester Snow, and Robert W. Wood, built some of the first x-ray equipment, and did research in electricty, especially electrolytic condensers, with Augustus Trowbridge; his further studies at the University of Berlin, where he attended lectures given by Max Planck, Jacobus Van't Hoff, and Otto Lummer, and his thesis work under Austin in Germany; his post, after leaving Germany, as head of the department of physics at the Colorado School of Mines, where he also set up an electrometallurgy laboratory; summer sessions at the University of Chicago with Albert A. Michelson and Robert Millikan; his various patents and research work on dust and metal recovery and precipitation in smelting and cement processing, rectifiers, petroleum and explosives research, and gas ionization; research during World War II; correspondence with Nikola Tesla; research in trace elements in agriculture; the discovery of rhenium in gold-platinum ore; patent litigation with Universal Oil Products Company; and a number of sketches of various --personalities--he encountered during his life.