"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...

"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...

The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines--on punishment of death--and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction....

Hugh McVey moves from Missouri to the agrarian town of Bidwell, Ohio. He invents a mechanical cabbage planter to ease the burden of famers, but an investor in town exploits his product, which fails to succeed. His next invention, a corn cutter, makes him a millionaire and transforms Bidwell into a center of manufacturing. McVey, perennially lonely and ruminative, meets Clara Butterworth, who attends college at nearby Ohio State and is perennially...

In this book, early fluent readers will learn about the causes, main events, key players, and lasting impacts of the industrial revolution. Interesting photos and carefully leveled text will engage young readers as they learn about this important period in American history. An infographic enhances understanding of the industrial revolution, and What Do You Think? sidebars encourage deeper inquiry. A timeline highlights key events and dates. Industrial...

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.

Annabelle Stirling is a cloth merchant in Leeds in Regency Britain who, in her enthusiasm for the industrial revolution, runs afoul of a group of Luddites, one of whom is her fiance and another her brother, Wesley who destroy her new milling machine. When the authorities refuse to help, Belle naively thinks a royal audience will get justice done, and she journeys to London from Yorkshire to present her case at Parliament. The prince regent isn't much...

"London 1868: the Industrial Revolution fattens the purses of the privileged while the working class struggles to survive - until a pair of assassins emerges from the underworld to rally to their defense."--Container.

Describes industry in America between the War of 1812 and the Civil War and how this period of growth in the first half of the century built the platform for Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan in the second half.