If you read just one biography of Michael Faraday make it this one.

Actually I haven't read any others and probably won't. But this was one well worth it. As Dickensian as the Wire, but more David Copperfield than Little Dorrit. Faraday picked up science by browsing books in the store that he worked in. And then worked his way up from essentially an errand boy to one of the world's premier experimentalist in electricity and magnetism.

Hirshfeld does a nice job mixing the life of Faraday with his science.