From time to time I write about the special magic that sparkles the reading of the right book at the right place.
At the moment I am in Quartzsite, AZ, reading William Rosen's "The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention." It came from ransacking the history section of the local public library.
The world changed so much after the Industrial Revolution. We seldom think about it, except in the negative sense that Romanticists and modern Environmentalists like.
For instance I knew next to nothing about the steam engine or James Watt. The whole topic never seemed interesting before.
But Rosen's book does not wallow in microscopic details about the steam engine itself. Instead, he uses it as the focal point for big picture trends that preceded it. For instance, he talks about coal mining, another topic that a spoiled and jaded modern never gives a thought to.
But there is something about camping on the rocky desert ground of Quartzsite that brings out an interest in sharp and varied rocks, hellish winds, mine shafts along your paths,
sunlight, moisture or its lack, fuel from non-existent trees, etc. In other words, uninteresting technicalities and abstractions become vivified into prickly realities that poke your daily life.
I wonder if the local librarian thought about this angle at all when they selected this book to add to their shelves?
At the moment I am in Quartzsite, AZ, reading William Rosen's "The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention." It came from ransacking the history section of the local public library.
The world changed so much after the Industrial Revolution. We seldom think about it, except in the negative sense that Romanticists and modern Environmentalists like.
For instance I knew next to nothing about the steam engine or James Watt. The whole topic never seemed interesting before.
But Rosen's book does not wallow in microscopic details about the steam engine itself. Instead, he uses it as the focal point for big picture trends that preceded it. For instance, he talks about coal mining, another topic that a spoiled and jaded modern never gives a thought to.
But there is something about camping on the rocky desert ground of Quartzsite that brings out an interest in sharp and varied rocks, hellish winds, mine shafts along your paths,
sunlight, moisture or its lack, fuel from non-existent trees, etc. In other words, uninteresting technicalities and abstractions become vivified into prickly realities that poke your daily life.
I wonder if the local librarian thought about this angle at all when they selected this book to add to their shelves?
Comments
https://www.nytimes.com/1860/01/07/archives/the-story-of-the-sewingmachine-its-invention-improvements-social.html
I did find one at Sewing Nest in Winnemucca, NV, highly recommended!