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Born in 1765 into a poor family on the Pennsylvania frontier, Fulton showed an early aptitude for working with machinery of all kinds, as well as an all-consuming drive to avoid his father's poverty. As a young man he contrived useful inventions at an astonishing rate, a marble-cutting saw here, a canal-digging engine there; he also cultivated friendships and connections with influential men on both sides of the Atlantic, and soon he was doing business with the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte (to whom he sold a prototype submarine, the Nautilus). Fulton's most lasting accomplishment, however, may have been to develop a steamboat fleet that dependably plied the waters in and around New York and eventually extended to rivers in the western interior, providing "a tool by which the dominant commercial interests could extend their reach and power, by which the reigning political forces could communicate and consolidate their influence, by which a restless people could penetrate new lands and develop new industries."
Sale, who has written several books that take modern technology to task, considers Fulton's legacy to be mixed: his steamship line helped enable the settlement of the frontier, but also the destruction of American Indian nations, and it "served to sanction and encourage the domination of technology itself in American society." His critique may not sway all readers, but his well-written life of Robert Fulton will be of interest to students of economic history, transportation history, and early America alike. --Gregory McNamee
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Book Description Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream 0.59. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780743223218
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. None of the spectators who gathered on the Hudson River shore on August 17, 1808, could have known the importance of the object they had come to see and, mostly, deride: Robert Fulton's new steamboat. But as Kirkpatrick Sale shows in this remarkable biography, Fulton's "large, noisy, showy, fast, brash, exciting, powerful, and audacious" machine would -- for better or worse -- irrevocably transform nineteenth-century America. Set against a brilliant portrait of a dynamic period in history, The Fire of His Genius tells the story of the fiercely driven man whose invention opened up America's interior to waves of settlers, created and sustained industrial and plantation economies in the nation's heartland, and facilitated the destruction of the remaining Indian civilizations. Probing Fulton's genius but also laying bare the darker side of the man -- and the darker side of the American dream -- Kirkpatrick Sale tells an extraordinary tale with deftness, zest, and unflagging verve. None of the spectators who gathered on the Hudson River shore on August 17, 1808, could have known the importance of the object they had come to see and, mostly, deride: Robert Fulton's new steamboat. But as Kirkpatrick Sale shows in this remarkable biography, Fulton's "large, noisy, showy, fast, brash, exciting, powerful, and audacious" machine would — for better or worse — irrevocably transform nineteenth-century America. Set against a brilliant portrait of a dynamic period in history, "The Fire of His Genius" tells the story of the fiercely driven man whose invention opened up America's interior to waves of settlers, created and sustained industrial and plantation economies in the nation's heartland, and facilitated the destruction of the remaining Indian civilizations. Probing Fulton's genius but also laying bare the darker side of the man — and the darker side of the American dream — Kirkpatrick Sale tells an extraordinary tale with deftness, zest, and unflagging verve. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780743223218
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