Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury, Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, $25.95, ISBN 0007163061 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
THERE has been a recent outburst of appreciation of the striking feats of engineering in the Victorian era that still impress us as they did contemporaries. Most of the examples in Dreams of Iron and Steel, come from the US, like the Brooklyn Bridge, the transcontinental railway and, spilling over into the 20th century, the colossal Hoover dam on the Colorado river. The Panama canal is included, as is Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s gigantic ship, Great Eastern.
The background to all of these achievements is turbulent, not least the manoeuvring and in-fighting to raise money and the deviousness of the politics involved. These pioneering efforts were large enough to affect whole societies. Ruthlessness was common. In Britain there was appalling use of child labour; and the transcontinental railway line was founded on the dead bodies of thousands of Chinese labourers.
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Deborah Cadbury is a stylish writer and she describes the splendours and miseries of these wonders in their true colours and with understanding of the ethics and aspirations of their times.