Looking for a good read? Here is a recommendation. I have an unusual approach to reviewing books. I review books I feel merit a review. Each review is an opportunity to recommend a book. If I do not think a book is worth reading, I find another book to review. You do not have to agree with everything every author has written (I do not), but the fiction I review is entertaining (and often thought-provoking) and the non-fiction contain ideas worth reading.
Book Review
Men That Changed the 20th Century
Reviewed by Mark Lardas
August 25, 2024
“From the Early 1900s to the Mid-1900s: Henry Ford to Walt Disney, History’s Most Influential Inventors,” edited by Robert Curley, Britannica Educational Pub, July 2024, 64 pages, $38.86 (Hardcover), $16.24 (paperback)
The first half of the 20th century was a silver age for inventors, exceeded only by the previous half century. It introduced some of the most important technologies of the modern world: mass production, aircraft, and telecommunications among them.
“From the Early 1900s to the Mid-1900s: Henry Ford to Walt Disney, History’s Most Influential Inventors,” edited by Robert Curley, is part of a series of slim volumes with biographies of inventors. The series is divided chronologically.
This volume focuses on inventors who became prominent between roughly 1900 and 1950. It contains thirteen biographies starting with Ford and ending with Disney. Their achievements are spread among a broad spectrum of technology. Chemistry, industrial engineering, aviation, architecture, entertainment, and food preparation are represented.
The biographies in the book include Henry Ford (the assembly line and mass production), the Wright Brothers (aviation), Guielmo Marconi (radio). Robert Goddard (rocketry), Clarence Birdseye (frozen food), Igor Sikorsky (helicopters), Vladimir Zworykin (television), Edwin H. Armstrong (FM radio), Buckmimster Fuller (architecture), Paul Müller (pesticides), Ernest Lawrence (cyclotron and particle acceleration), and Walt Disney (animation).
All created some major innovation significantly shaping modern society. It is hard to imagine a world without mass production, aircraft, remote telecommunications, and access to space. Movies, the geodesic dome, atomic energy, and frozen foods may seem more peripheral, yet all changed the way we live.
The book offers a four to six page biography of each man (or men for Wilbur and Orville Wright). It introduces their childhood and youth, including formative influences on their adult lives. It then presents their accomplishments, discussing how they developed the things for which they are known and the challenges overcome to get there. Finally it gives the impact what they developed had on the world, for good or ill. It also makes an invention’s significance the deciding factor for inclusion, rather than inclusiveness. This is a brave choice today.
“From the Early 1900s to the Mid-1900s” is a short book, only 64 pages. As befits its publisher (Britannica) the biographies read like encyclopedia entries. In many ways they are extended encyclopedia articles, expanding into detail beyond what would be expected in one, but not providing as detailed an accounting as a book-length biography woulkd provide. It serves the purpose for which it is intended. It provides an introduction to each inventor, leaving the reader to decide if they want to explore the man’s life further.
Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City. His website is marklardas.com.