Steam to Steel

The Industrial Revolution reshaped not only economies but the very fabric of human life. Steam to Steel traces this extraordinary transformation from the first steam engines and textile mills to the rise of steel, railroads, and urban society. Drawing from factory records, workers' diaries, and technological archives, the book reveals how invention and ambition powered progress while altering class, labor, and the environment. It examines the birth of industrial capitalism, the spread of mechanization across continents, and the social movements that followed in its wake. This vivid historical study connects innovation to inequality, showing how machines forged both prosperity and disruption across the nineteenth century and beyond.