As financial writer and historian Morris (The Tycoons) makes clear in his latest book, the perfect storm of universal white male suffrage along with the evolutionary perfection of mechanized, large-scale industry, and the strength of an active and influential middle class helped usher the United States to the forefront of economic prosperity at the dawn of the 20th century. While historians have already sewn these large themes together, Morris seeks to highlight the individuals who brought about the revolution, their mechanical inventions, innovations, and technological processes-from firearms to meat-packing to plows- that drove America out of the shadow of Great Britain's industrial dominance. Often bogged down by too much detail and some clunky, modern-day analogies (he compares newly inexpensive paper to crack cocaine), Morris nevertheless breezes the reader through America's industrial trajectory, beginning in the 1820s, toward a mass-consumption society. Arguably Morris's analysis shines brightest in the final chapter as he compares the United States' past economic growth with the current hyper-expansion of China. Only then, by examining the hurdles China faces in its ascendance to economic superpower, does Morris show how truly innovative the transformation of America was and why it will be impossible to repeat in the future. Illus.
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A Daily Beast Favorite Book of the Year
A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of the Year
Kirkus
“The author is at his best when he focuses on the people behind the technology…. Morris' research is thorough…. Ambitious.”
Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief of ProPublica and former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal
“Charles Morris, fast becoming our leading narrative historian of economic success and scandals, tells how nineteenth-century America outproduced, outmarketed, outdistributed––and stole technology from––the former No. 1 power, Great Britain, to displace it on the world stage. The fascinating tale also holds crucial lessons for Americans as China races to unseat the U.S. as the world leader.”
Charles H. Ferguson, director of Inside Job and author of Predator Nation
“A fascinating book that pulls together the strands of American development into a sweeping and vivid account of the nation's rise to economic preeminence. Charles Morris has a special gift for making complicated subjects accessible and even entertaining.”
Booklist
“[A]n illuminating narrative that shows, among much else, what happened when Yankee ingenuity met the Industrial Revolution…. Post-Civil War industrialization had an important and largely overlooked predecessor in the first decades of the 19th century. It is a story well worth telling, and Mr. Morris tells it well…. The author's in-text illustrations and diagrams are very helpful in showing the cleverness and ingenuity of mechanisms designed by such forgotten giants as the clockmaker Eli Terry, the gun maker Thomas Blanchard and the steam-engine designer George H. Corliss. Mr. Morris's deft character sketches bring them to life as well. The steam engine powered the steamboat and the railroad, which knitted the country together into one huge common market, allowing industrial economies of scale that would, in the later 19th century, astonish the world….”
Civil Engineering“In an elegantly written assessment of how the current situation is like—and unlike—its 19th-century analogue, Morris flashes the knowledge and insight that landed him on the Council on Foreign Relations and crafts an effective coda for his paean to American innovation.”
Michael Lind, New York Times Book Review
“An unprecedented 3.9 percent average annual rate of economic growth—sustained for more than a century—propelled the U.S. to global economic leadership. Morris chronicles the remarkable story behind the remarkable number… Morris concludes with a provocative comparison of the nineteenth-century duel pitting the U.S. against Great Britain and today's rivalry between China and the U.S. Economic history freighted with social and political relevance.”
USA Today“Morris obviously possesses an inquiring mind…. [He] explicates … developments skillfully.”
PublishersWeekly.com“Morris's analysis shines brightest in the final chapter as he compares the United States' past economic growth with the current hyper-expansion of China. Only then, by examining the hurdles China faces in its ascendance to economic superpower, does Morris show how truly innovative the transformation of America was and why it will be impossible to repeat in the future.”
Tyler Cowen, New York Times Magazine, One-Page Magazine“The early 19th century as a pep talk for today.”
John Steele Gordon, Wall Street Journal
In this historical overview, Morris (The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets, 2009, etc.) asserts that American industry in its early days was far more concerned with growth and large-scale mass production than was Great Britain. "By comparison with eighteenth-century Britons, Americans were strivers on steroids," he writes. To illustrate this point, the author looks at several pioneering British and American inventors and engineers and describes key innovations in a wide range of early American industries, from clock making to furniture making. In one long chapter, Morris examines the manufacturing of guns, a topic to which he returns in another chapter. The author also briefly looks at a few major post–Civil War industrial figures, including Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, both of whom he wrote about at length in The Tycoons (2005). In a closing chapter that feels a bit tacked-on, Morris discusses how the past America-Great Britain rivalry resembles and differs from the current economic relationship between the U.S. and China. The author is at his best when he focuses on the people behind the technology--e.g., Eli Whitney, who became a "talented artisan and entrepreneur," but was, in his early career, "something of a flimflam man." While Morris' research is thorough, his prose is often long-winded. His account of naval warfare during the War of 1812, for example, hardly seems worthy of a 36-page blow-by-blow chronicle featuring multiple tables and illustrations. Other sections get bogged down in engineering minutiae; many of the highly detailed diagrams will be of interest to engineers, perhaps, but not to casual readers. An ambitious but overlong historical study.
