The Industrial Revolution (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Lewis Helfand and Naresh Kumar
| The Industrial Revolution (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Lewis Helfand and Naresh Kumar | |
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| Category: Children's Non-Fiction | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A perfectly pictorial primer for the many changes the various revolutions wrought, but not a perfect book. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 92 | Date: June 2017 |
| Publisher: Campfire | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9789381182284 | |
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It's 1455, although you can bet that a fair few across Europe don't know that. Basic knowledge is very hard to come by – if anybody does see an actual 'book' it is likely to be a section of, or related to, a Bible – and a full one of those takes five years for a man to copy out. But here is Johannes Gutenberg, and his printing process will cause an explosion in the industry of information. And man has thrived on knowledge – the only way we have been able alone to go from intelligent ape to planet-wrecking animal is through the power of speech and communication. If we didn't have that we wouldn't be where we are today. But what that knowledge gave us was a host of important steps along the way, from weaving tools and industrial waterwheels to steam trains and beyond. The industrial revolution sometimes doesn't work in having the definitive article, as there were so many elements to it – but this book tries to show us all the key parts of them all – even ones still in the future…
It's an all-encompassing text, going back to Gutenberg – a lot further than the regular guide to the industrial revolution might, but it makes sense. The wonder and power of the information that printers were then able to give us is the key to all the progress since, and it's what this book itself wants to latch on to – giving the inspiration of seeing how someone did something once, and creating the person who can do better in the future. But it's not a perfect script, at times – sometimes the bare bones are not fleshed out at all, and we get pure exposition. We might have trouble getting this engine out of Great Britain says one chap to another, who knows this already. I know, Robert. Fearing oversees competition, British politicians are hesitant to let any British inventions out of the country is the reply to Robert, who knows this already.
At times the artwork is similarly awkward – one chap looks 20 on one page, and about eight on the next. But generally things here, both written and pictorially, work. The design tries its best to not bore, so all the panels are differently sized and positioned to enliven the page – until we get powerful full-page images. And the script allows for such variation because it isn't in the end just a list of achievements. Here indeed are the dutifully diligent, doing their bit for mankind's evolution, but here too the eye-witnesses scoffing, the copious people put out of employment through machinery, and here the people using the very steam engine of a few pages beforehand to emigrate to a better world, one with a brighter future.
The actual information we find here I'll leave to you to discover, but it is just as lively as the visuals. Here is a boy growing up with an inquisitive mind, then we jump to a man painting a society portrait. Then the lad is grown up, and inspired to work on cotton gins, allowing the artist to change his mindset. The cotton gins don't earn a fortune, so he goes into something else entirely, just as the second man's industry comes to fruition… The fact remains that this is higgledy-piggledy due to the non-linear progression we had at the time, but the fact also remains this book isn't too pell-mell and random for us not to learn a heck of a lot from it. Let's face it, when I studied the subject at school it was confined to Britain, and therefore all weaving shuttles and the spinning jenny, and never cotton gins. And we certainly never heard of the fourth industrial revolution – yes, this book speeds us way beyond the Carnegies and the Fords and gets us right up to date, promising great things from Indians everywhere (well, it is an Indian publisher, after all…).
So I can point to this clunky bit of writing, and that unconvincing image, but I can assure that this book covers the basics just well enough to hide said flaws, and shows progress to be an open-ended subject.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
We've seen different history titles from this publisher, such as the superior Against the Rising Sun.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Industrial Revolution (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Lewis Helfand and Naresh Kumar at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Industrial Revolution (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Lewis Helfand and Naresh Kumar at Amazon.com.
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