Category: Industrial Revolution
-
The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe (2022) by James Belich
“The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe” (2022), by New Zealand historian James Belich – co-founder of Oxford’s Centre for Global History – is a bold, sweeping, and revisionist exploration of how a medieval catastrophe transformed the fate of an entire continent. In nearly 500 pages, Belich’s argument ranges…
-
Andrew Carnegie (1970) by Joseph Frazier Wall
Joseph Frazier Wall’s one-volume biography “Andrew Carnegie” is a “must read” for anyone interested in early American industrial development. However, just as Carnegie’s life was much more than simply the story of steel production, so too is this biography. It is a fascinating look at the half-century of American history between the Civil War and…
-
Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions (1999) by Thomas K. McCraw
It is interesting and usually insightful to contrast influential theses on great topics in history. Take business innovation and capitalist-driven growth in the developed western economies. Alfred Chandler won the Pulitzer Prize with “The Visible Hand,” a comprehensive and penetrating review of US economic history, which argued for the powerful impact of two roughly simultaneous…
-
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000) by Kenneth Pomeranz
Serious people have been trying to explain the genesis of the Industrial Revolution since the days of Max Weber and Karl Marx or later by Arnold Toynbee, who coined the term in 1884. However, it is only relatively recently that it has emerged as something of a cottage industry in academia. “The Great Divergence: China,…
-
From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (1984) by David Hounshell
The United States emerged as an industrial colossus in the early twentieth century. An important component of that rise was the development of mass production, which was pioneered in the automotive industry, specifically Henry Ford’s Model T. In his book “From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the…
-
The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention (2012) by William Rosen
I’ve written several hundred non-fiction book reviews here on Amazon over the years and this is the first one that comes with a spoiler alert. William Rosen has written a fabulously thorough and consistently entertaining history of the steam engine in “The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention”…
-
The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (1990) by Joel Mokyr
Joel Mokyr is known today primarily for his thesis that northwest Europe’s tradition of free inquiry and a culture marked by contestability and doubt is responsible for the remarkable period of technological innovation and economic growth known as the Industrial Revolution. However, in “The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress” (1990), he ultimately…
-
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009) by Robert C. Allen
Two significant pieces of scholarship about the Industrial Revolution appeared almost simultaneously in 2009: Joel Mokyr’s “The Enlightened Economy” and Robert Allen’s “The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.” They offer completely different perspectives as to why the Industrial Revolution occurred when and where it did. Both agree that technological innovation played the critical role…
-
The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700 to 1850 (2009) by Joel Mokyr
According to acclaimed economic historian Joel Mokyr, “Nothing in economic history is simple, clean, and linear.” The same might be said for Mokyr’s magisterial tome on Industrial Revolution era Britain, “The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700 to 1850” (2009). Mokyr throws a lot at the reader in this dense 489-page economic history;…
What's Tim Reading Now? 