The so-called "industrial revolution" is most commonly presented as a history of machines or a relentless process of innovation that sprang from a new kind of scientific thought forged in the eighteenth century. But, as it emerges in Gavin Weightman's engrossing social history, machines are mere gadgets unless there are people to make good use of them. "The Industrial Revolutionaries" interweaves accounts of the achievements of giants such as Trevithick, Stevenson, Watt, wedgwood, Daimler, Bessemer and Edison with lesser-known characters who carried industrialism from one nation to another.