What's wrong with books on industrial history
The deeper I get into this project, the harder it is to find good books.
At the start, I found some OK ones, such as the books I read onĀ cottonĀ andĀ concrete, and some excellent ones, such asĀ The Alchemy of Air. I was disappointed in theĀ first book on plasticsĀ I read, but theĀ second oneĀ was OK.
At that point I was sampling topics somewhat at random by what looked interesting. By now, though, the big picture is starting to come into focus, and Iām going through more systematically to fill in the gaps: agriculture and medicine, railroads and automobiles, mass manufacturing, etc.
And Iām shocked at how hard it is to find good books on some of these topics. TheĀ first book I read on steelĀ left me very fuzzy on the details of important processes such as Bessemer, so Iām now on myĀ secondĀ (out of print, only four copies available on Amazon). TheĀ first book I got on railroadsĀ was so boring I quit after a few chapters; all it did was list which railroads got built where by whom on which dates. I picked upĀ another book, which is better, but still has bizarre priorities; it omits almost all the details of surveying thousands of miles of track, but contains the exact wheel diameter and piston arrangement of every engine built in the 1800s.
And agriculture is even worse. So far I havenāt even found a book that purports or attempts to be on the topic I want: the history of agricultural technology and progress. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of books in this field, but none of them are right: some are political history considered from the viewpoint of agriculture, like how farmers participated in peasantsā revolts; many are too narrowly focused on one time and place; one was so focused on economic data and different theories of technology diffusion that the actual innovations got buried.
This is all so frustrating that I feel the need to lay out my requirements for a great work of industrial/technological history aimed at the general reader. It should:
Tell a coherent storyĀ and not be arbitrarily limited in scope (either in place or time, e.g., āAgriculture in North Carolina 1860ā1910ā).
Describe what came beforeĀ the technology existed, setting the context for why it was needed and what it evolved out of.
Explain the problemĀ that the technology solved, how people dealt with the problem, and why those approaches were inadequate.
Explain the solutionĀ itself, in terms the layman can understand, but in as much technical detail as possible for that audience.
Describe the impactĀ of the technology, including its applications (for instance, a book on steel should explain what things were made out of steel, and why this was an improvement over previous materials).
QuantifyĀ whenever possible. Better, visualize: show graphs of performance increasing or costs decreasing over time.
Eliminate almost all other detailĀ that does not contribute to these goals, save perhaps for a few entertaining side stories or intriguing historical connections.
This is the standard I aspire to on this blog, although I havenāt been as good at impact as I have atĀ problem-solutionĀ (and Iāve done very little quantification so far). Most books fall woefully short.
If you sympathize with these priorities, please promote them to your favorite technology historian. And if you read any books that meet these criteria, please let me know!
Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/whats-wrong-with-books-on-industrial-history