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Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World 1776-1914 Hardcover – Bargain Price, April 7, 2009

by Gavin Weightman (Author)

24 customer reviews

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In this vivid, sweeping history of the industrial revolution, Gavin Weightman shows how, in less than one hundred and fifty years, an unlikely band of scientists, spies, entrepreneurs, and political refugees took a world made of wood, powered by animals, wind, and water, and made it into something entirely new, forged of steel and iron, and powered by steam and fossil fuels. Weightman weaves together the dramatic stories of giants such as Edison, Watt, Wedgwood, and Daimler, with lesser-known or entirely forgotten characters, including a group of Japanese samurai who risked their lives to learn the secrets of the West, and John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson, who didn’t let war between England and France stop him from plumbing Paris. Distilling complex technical achievements, outlandish figures, and daring adventures into an accessible narrative that spans the globe as industrialism spreads, The Industrial Revolutionaries is a remarkable work of original, engaging history.

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The author of some fine business histories, including Signor Marconi’s Magic Box (2003), Weightman elevates his game in this work. Skeptical of theoretical explanations of the Industrial Revolution, he highlights entrepreneurs behind inventions symbolic of the world’s transformation from agrarianism to manufacturing. Beginning with innovators of iron smelting and winding up with the founders of the chemical industry, Weightman profiles the often-obsessed personalities whose technical advances made watching capitalists take notice and invest. His narrative of the iron story sets the tone: it depicts the man who introduced coke into the smelting process, which rendered previous methods obsolete, and whose effusion of business schemes earned him the sobriquet John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson. Indeed, eccentricity seems a common trait in Weightman’s cast of characters, which perhaps explains the persistence of a Robert Fulton, who failed for years until his steamboat succeeded, or the audacious claim of a painter to be the inventor of the telegraph. Integrating lively biography with technological clarity, Weightman converts the Industrial Revolution into an enjoyably readable period of history. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

“Entertaining and informative.” —John Steele Gordon, The Wall Street Journal

“Abraham Gesner is hardly a household name today, but this country-doctor-turned-geologist in Nova Scotia was the first person to transform the raw sludge of fossil remains into kerosene and other fuels. … Gesner is but one of the fascinating characters Gavin Weightman brings to life in The Industrial Revolutionaries, his engaging survey of the countless men and women who wedded technological innovation to capitalist profit or nationalist agenda, and in the process helped usher in the modern era. … Weightman believes the industrial revolution was an incremental process in which credit for any innovation or invention rightly belongs to innumerable individuals scattered throughout the world. He is remarkably successful at capturing this process, skillfully stitching together thumbnail sketches of a large number of inventors, architects, engineers, and visionaries. … Weightman expertly marshals his cast of characters across continents and centuries, forging a genuinely global history that brings the collaborative, if competitive, business of industrial innovation to life.” —Stephen Mihm, The New York Times Book Review

“Refreshingly old-fashioned . . . In this lively study, there is little room for the dry academic prose that so often makes economic histories a painful reading experience. Instead we have a wealth of vivid portraits of figures from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. . . . Weightman is excellent at demolishing some of the myths of the industrial revolution.” —Leo McKinstry, Literary Review

“The author of some fine business histories, Weightman elevates his game in this work. ... Integrating lively biography with technological clarity, Weightman converts the Industrial Revolution into an enjoyably readable period of history." —Booklist

“[Weightman’s] enthusiasm for his subjects, and his insistence that the Industrial Revolution was the doing of more than a handful of Great Men, propels the book forward. It's one that anyone with a passing interest in economic history will thoroughly enjoy.” —The Seattle Times

“It is one of the pleasures of Weightman’s book to see how technology rose above nationality. . . . The interconnectedness of this world of invention and technology is extraordinary.” —The Sunday Telegraph

“A whirlwind tour-de-force of the foundations of industrialization. … a popular, accessible history. Highly recommended.” —Choice

“Swirling with seers, savants, and sorcerers of the mechanical age, every page of this epic saga will dazzle even the most technologically jaded reader.” —William J. Bernstein, author of A Splendid Exchange

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product details

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Grove Press (April 7, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0802118992
ASIN: B0033AGT6I
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 24 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,049,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2040 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Labor & Industrial Relations
- #2043 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Labor & Industrial Relations
- #13722 in Books > Deals in Books

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Decent

ByThe Monarch & Dr. Girlfriendon April 13, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Interesting. Decent information on people and events that shaped the Industrial Revolution(s). I especially like the inclusion of info about lesser-known figures. Valuable for the information provided on a wide-ranging topic. There could have been more information included, but this is a good and mostly well-rounded book for the subject-matter.

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A Fresh, Sometimes Unconventional, View

ByJohn D. CofieldTOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICEon July 6, 2009

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this new history of the Industrial Revolution. Gavin Weightman writes clearly and wittily, enlivening even the most technical aspects of some of the new inventions. He has investigated and sometimes debunked some of the cherished old myths and stories about the way some inventors made their breakthroughs and given new life to their personalities, so that men like James Watt and Robert Fulton who are rightly regarded as heroes of industrialization become real, flawed, human beings once more. Weightman also provides some fascinating new connections, like the link between the inventor of the torpedo and the Von Trapp Family Singers, which are intriguing and often amusing.

Some of Weightman's characterizations and assessments are problematic, as when he calls Prince Albert gauche but then refers over and over to his meetings with and encouragement of eminent scientists and inventors, but these are minor flaws. The Industrial Revolutionaries is a well written and scholarly history of industrialization in Britain, Europe, America, and Japan and should be a prime resource for students of the period.

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Excellent in several ways

ByPhilip Lyonon May 18, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This books covers not only the inventors but the spies and publicists who pushed the inventor's fruit, ending in 1914 just before WW1.

It's chock full of fascinating characters, some good, some bad, some unknown in their homelands yet cherished halfway around the world for the transformation they wrought, NTM the British 'roast-bifs' or 'navvies' in France who's energy shocked the upper classes as they built France's first RR's, and changed the French diet for the common working man.

The truly incredible stories of how Japan was transformed in part by a couple of five shipwrecked fishermen, followed by spies bent on preserving Japan's isolation but discovering that had become obviously impossible and too dangerous, compelling them to support Japan becoming a modern nation fully active in the world.

Critical industries often ignored, like petroleum are included, in part because their creation and transformation was in just 2-3 decades, as is the pneumatic bicycle rubber tire by a guy who'd never ridden one.

This is less about nations trying to keep up like France or Japan, though they're included, than people seeking advantage of their opportunities.

You may think you know the industrial revolution as I did, but I'm fairly sure you'll learn something new here.

This isn't to say there aren't errors, as other reviewers have noted; the price of the Louisiana Purchase is reported as 80 million dollars after it was previously mentioned as 80 million francs, though the correct US figure of $15 million is given in the book's summation [a quarter being the US assumption of French debts to US citizens] and actual payment was arranged by both a British and Dutch bank, who took the $3 million in gold plus the rest in US government bonds while paying cash to Napoleon who demanded cash immediately, though that story isn't in the book; but knowledgeable readers should spot other mistakes or typos fairly easily.

Overall, this a very human story that while some may seem too fantastic, ring true to the potential in all of us to change the world in some way for the better.

Enjoy!

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Worthy, but could be better

ByAkulJayon October 26, 2012

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

The book provides a reasonably good overview of industrial revolution. However there are unnecessary details and quality of writing is uneven. I also have some specific complains:
- Various patent disputes are described, but nowhere does the author give any account of how patent system came into existence.
- In some places, like during description of steam engines, a few diagrams would have made the subject much easier to grasp. Likewise, a few maps would have come handy in the chapter about the early railway lines.
- The chapter about Morse code is poorly written and is a way too long - and so anti-Morse.
- At the very end of the book, the author belittles the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond, as if the ideas promulgated in that book somehow negate the accomplishments of European inventors and entrepreneurs. I certainly don't think so. Diamond's book is about macro level of human civilization, while books like this deal with micro level of our civilization.

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An interesting way of examining "industrial revolutions" and the development of the modern world

ByMr. A. Melloron September 22, 2009

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

The author has written a clear and valuable text to complement much of the arcane material that is available on the process of modernisation.
In some ways it is a return to an earlier way of considering the means by which the modern world developed, but supplemented with lots of local detail to illustrate the process at work and avoiding silly generalisations. We are not submerged in a mass of statistics or consideration of econometric models and the book does not suffer as a consequence of this fact. Rather, the emphasis is on the inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs whose actions helped to create our current world. Thus individual efforts, whether successful or otherwise, are pieced together so that we are able to put together the individual pieces into our own mental jigsaw, aided by the interconnected nature of much of the material; thus, after someone has invented a process often we are reliant on other people to introduce the process into use.