“Anyone with a passing interest in economic history will thoroughly enjoy” this account of how industry transformed the world (The Seattle Times). In less than one hundred and fifty years, an unlikely band of scientists, spies, entrepreneurs, and political refugees took a world made of wood and 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. This “entertaining and informative” account 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 (The Wall Street Journal). “Integrating lively biography with technological clarity, Weightman converts the Industrial Revolution into an enjoyably readable period of history.” —Booklist “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.” —The New York Times Book Review

As editor Kenneth E. Hendrickson, III, notes in his introduction: “Since the end of the nineteenth-century, industrialization has become a global phenomenon. After the relative completion of the advanced industrial economies of the West after 1945, patterns of rapid economic change invaded societies beyond western Europe, North America, the Commonwealth, and Japan.” In The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History contributors survey the Industrial Revolution as a world historical phenomenon rather than through the traditional lens of a development largely restricted to Western society. The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History is a three-volume work of over 1,000 entries on the rise and spread of the Industrial Revolution across the world. Entries comprise accessible but scholarly explorations of topics from the “aerospace industry” to “zaibatsu.” Contributor articles not only address topics of technology and technical innovation but emphasize the individual human and social experience of industrialization. Entries include generous selections of biographical figures and human communities, with articles on entrepreneurs, working men and women, families, and organizations. They also cover legal developments, disasters, and the environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution. Each entry also includes cross-references and a brief list of suggested readings to alert readers to more detailed information. The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History includes over 300 illustrations, as well as artfully selected, extended quotations from key primary sources, from Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principal of Population” to Arthur Young’s look at Birmingham, England in 1791. This work is the perfect reference work for anyone conducting research in the areas of technology, business, economics, and history on a world historical scale.