Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets: A History of Technology (Norton History of Science)

The title is rather misleading. One would expect the writer to focus on wheels clocks and rocket invention. The book is about the History of technology. In fact, its focus was on the various engines.I almost gave up when I was a quarter the way through this book. I agree with one of the critic that the book seems to lack organisation. The material and research done on the book is thorough. The language he used is not straightforward.Be warned. If you have no technical background do not buy this book. The 500 odd pages of the book are rather technical. You will not be able to understand it.On of the critic mentioned that he gave his grandma this book and she loved it. She must be kind to her grandson.

Book has too few illustrations and detail in illustrations is insufficient to comprehend how the machines functioned.

I can not leave feed back with Ipad

This book pretends to have a structure, but the lack of organization is quite frustrating. It seems like the author wrote 1,000 short thoughts about the history of technology on index cards and then threw them up in the air. There are a lot of interesting bits, but there is no apparent organization. There have got to be better books on this subject out there.

The book's purpose is to cover the history of technology from pre-history to the modern times. In trying to do that, the book both suceeds and fails as follows:The good...Engaging language, depth of content and presentation. The author has a wonderful way of constructing his sentences and of drawing the reader into his subject matter. He doesn't just recite facts, instead he does a great job of explaining how, for example, Gutenberg invented printing by movable type, how Richard Arkwright came to develop his water frame machine for the textile industry, how James Watt's pumping engine worked, etc. Anyone who loves technology will be moved from the way he writes.The not so good...The book has a major concentration around the Industrial Revolution and 1700 to 1900 AD receives most of the book's treatment. The author on his preface explains why the book may seem to have "an undue emphasis on British experience," and in that, it does. Not much is said of the Chinese or Islamic contributions to the world's technology.All in all, the strength of this book is also its weakness. If one wants to read one short book about the Industrial Revolution, I can't think of a better one. For a more rounded introduction to the history of technology, however, one will need to look elsewhere. Arnold Pacey's "Technology in world civilization" puts technology in a global perspective and provides plenty of space to China, Turkey, India and Japan, though, by comparison, little about the Industrial Revolution. In a sense, then, the two books together should provide a nice global overview with minimal overlap. For a more detailed overview through 1900 AD, check out the 5 volume "A history of technology" by Charles Singer, E J Holmyard, A R Hall and Trevor Williams.