Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
Narrated by Simon Winchester
Simon WinchesterUnabridged — 11 hours, 46 minutes
Narrated by Simon Winchester
Simon WinchesterUnabridged — 11 hours, 46 minutes
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement-precision-in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools-machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras-and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider.
Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today's cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia.
As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?
The Perfectionists succeeds resoundingly in making us think more deeply about the everyday objects we take for granted. It challenges us to reflect on our progress as humans and what has made it possible. It is interesting, informative, exciting and emotional, and for anyone with even some curiosity about what makes the machines of our world work as well as they do, it's a real treat.
★ 03/19/2018
Winchester (The Professor and the Madman) smoothly mixes history, science, and biographical sketches to pay homage to the work of precision engineers, whom he credits with the creation of everything from unpickable locks to gravity wave detectors and the Hubble Telescope. He credits the start of modern precision engineering to “iron-mad” John Wilkinson, an eccentric 18th-century English engineer whose method for casting and boring iron cannons led to the manufacture of smooth-running pistons and cylinders that were then used in the steam engines of James Watt. The son of a precision engineer, Winchester clearly delights in the topic, relating his stories with verve, enthusiasm, and wit. Henry Royce and the Rolls-Royce automobiles he designed contrast with Henry Ford’s inexpensive, “reliably unreliable” bare-bones assembly line cars. The author paints historic characters vividly, including engineer Joseph Whitworth, described as “large and bearded and oyster-eyed”; cabinet-maker Joseph Bramah, who patented the flush toilet; tech aficionado Prince Albert; and rapacious businessman Eli Whitney, who lied about using Frenchman Honoré Blanc’s idea for standardized parts for flintlocks in his winning bid for a U.S. government contract for 10,000 muskets. Winchester’s latest is a rollicking work of pop science that entertains and informs. (May)
Winchester is a longtime journalist turned author, a meticulous researcher and catholic thinker.” — James Gleick, The New York Review of Books
“Another gem from one of the world’s justly celebrated historians specializing in unusual and always fascinating subjects and people.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Winchester’s latest is a rollicking work of pop science that entertains and informs.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Praise for The Men Who United the States: “Entertaining. . . . A pleasure.” — New York Times Book Review
“Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.” — Tom Brokaw
“An enthusiastic popular-science tour of technological marvels…readers will love the ride.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A rousing tribute to the alliances, agencies, and inventions—from Lewis and Clark to the Internet—that underpin our more perfect union. A stunning, highly original feast of a book.” — Stacy Schiff, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cleopatra
“Vivid, valuable. . . . An extraordinary, propulsive tale.” — Wall Street Journal
“[M]esmerizing and fascinating. . . . Mr. Winchester is a master storyteller, and all the individuals, places, and events that he passionately writes about come to life in exquisite detail.” — New York Journal of Books
Another gem from one of the world’s justly celebrated historians specializing in unusual and always fascinating subjects and people.
[M]esmerizing and fascinating. . . . Mr. Winchester is a master storyteller, and all the individuals, places, and events that he passionately writes about come to life in exquisite detail.
Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.
Vivid, valuable. . . . An extraordinary, propulsive tale.
Praise for The Men Who United the States: “Entertaining. . . . A pleasure.
A rousing tribute to the alliances, agencies, and inventions—from Lewis and Clark to the Internet—that underpin our more perfect union. A stunning, highly original feast of a book.
Winchester is a longtime journalist turned author, a meticulous researcher and catholic thinker.
Vivid, valuable. . . . An extraordinary, propulsive tale.
Ever-improving precision in engineering has been the key to industrial growth from the start of the Industrial Age to today. Author/narrator Simon Winchester chronicles this progression in a series of profiles. Each section focuses on a single individual, such as Henry Royce of Rolls-Royce and Frank Whittle, who invented the turbojet engine. Winchester’s writing style is straightforward, which makes it effective in audio. He spices his narrative with numerous interesting facts and ironies, which make listening even more pleasurable. He defines technical and scientific terms in a way that makes it easy for general listeners to understand them. Winchester also does the narration, adopting a conversational tone that is highly suited to the work. R.C.G. 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
★ 2018-02-20
An ingenious argument that the dazzling advances that produced the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and the revolutions that followed owe their success to a single engineering element: precision.Early on in this entertaining narrative, bestselling journalist and historian Winchester (Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators and Fading Empires, 2015), whose father "was for all of his working life a precision engineer," points out that James Watt (1736-1819) invented a vastly improved steam engine, but John Wilkinson (1728-1808) made it work. Watt's pistons generated enormous energy but moved inside handmade sheet metal cylinders that leaked profusely under the pressure. After years of frustration, he was rescued by Wilkinson, who had invented a machine that bored a precise hole through a solid block of iron. It had already revolutionized cannon manufacture, and it did the same for Watt's steam engine. Human precision made the Rolls-Royce, which earned the reputation "for precision products made beyond consideration of price," expensive, but engineering precision made the Model T cheap. An assembly line must stop if one mass-produced part doesn't fit perfectly into the next, so Henry Ford spared no expense to ensure that it did. Winchester tells the story of a series of increasingly impressive inventions, usually introduced by a journalistic "hook" to engage readers—e.g., an account of an explosion aboard the world's largest commercial airliner in 2010 precedes his history of the jet engine. In the final chapter, the author does not deny that something vital is lost when human craftsmanship bows before technical perfection, but it's clear where his heart lies. He sought some answers in Japan, which displays "an aesthetic sensibility wherein asymmetry and roughness and impermanence are accorded every bit as much weight as are the exact, the immaculate, and the precise."Less a work of scholarship than an enthusiastic popular-science tour of technological marvels, and readers will love the ride.
| BN ID: | 2940170355396 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 05/08/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
