"What the Industrial Revolution Did For Us" is a journey back in time, giving the reader an insight into how British life was transformed between 1750 and 1830, and how it shaped the world we live in today. So what did the Industrial Revolution do for us? Without the huge advances in science, engineering and medicine and the cast of extraordinarily colourful inventors and scientists who revolutionised the way we think, our modern world would be very different. We would be without vaccinations against contagious diseases and have no anaesthetics for surgery. The industrial revolution also gave birth to our national obsession with tea drinking, the mass production of crockery for the house-proud newly emerging Middle Classes and the transformation of clothing worn by the ordinary man and woman. As well as huge leaps in the evolution of machinery and manufacturing, our transport system was completely overhauled as the first ever steam trains emerged, roads were drastically improved, and canal mania took over Britain. The great industrial cities burgeoned and London became the international power it still is today. From the quacks advertising their potions to the new Middle Classes to the great innovators and entrepreneurs such as Robert Stephenson, James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood, "What the Industrial Revolution Did For Us" takes us right to the heart of the excitement of this revolutionary age.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One minor error,
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This review is from: What the Industrial Revolution Did for Us (Hardcover)
On page 227 the author states that "if you heated rubber and extracted the sulfur from it, you transformed it into a workable material". In actuality, vulcanization requires the addition of sulfur to rubber, not the removal. A small error in a very interesting book.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Like a curate's egg,
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This review is from: What the Industrial Revolution Did for Us (Hardcover)
This is a book accompanying a television series, so one would not expect anything very profound. The first three of the six chapters are a perfectly readable and lavishly illustrated introduction to the First Industrial Revolution, though there is only one sentence (in the sixth chapter) about Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The other three chapters, on London, medicine and weaponry seem to fit ill with the title of the book. We have something on the growth of London, but one wonders what the extensive description of pleasure gardens has to do with the Industrial Revolution. The only thing that development in medicine "did for us" is Jenner's work on vaccination. Whether that has anything to do with the Industrial Revolution is questionable, and certainly the pages on useless patent medicines and on body snatching can't be said to have done much for us. The description of weaponry (ineffectual rockets and early torpedoes, fortifications like the Martello Towers) likewise have done little for us. Unfortunately, as the note on Further Readings tells us, there seem to be very few general surveys in print of the First Industrial Revolution, but one that is recommended is Phyllis Deane's The First Industrial Revolution, and anyone seriously interested in the subject would do better to consult that work than this one, and Eric Hobsbawm's excellent Industry to Empire is not mentioned in the bibliography at all.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Examining the Industrial Revolution's lasting impact,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: What the Industrial Revolution Did for Us (Hardcover)
Between 1750 and 1840 the Industrial Revolution changed the lives of British people forever, advancing science and technological discoveries and their application to daily lives. Gavin Weightman is a noted historian and Dan Cruikshank presents the TV series on the topic: together they use the TV show as a starting point and foundation for examining the Industrial Revolution's lasting impact on modern times.
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