I read this book hoping that it might serve as an anchor for a class on technological change. I cannot in good conscience advise this book for anyone. Hobsbawn offers an account of an industrial revolution that is almost absent of technology, or of change. Rather he describes Britain's preeminance as a result of its martime power, leveraging historical dominance in textiles to absolutely superiority in all manners of shipping and goods.

Britain undoubtedly won the first industrial revolution of water-powered spinning jennies and automated looms, but fared less well in the second industrial revolution of steam-engines and railroads, losing in relatives terms to America and Germany. For a supposed Marxist, Hobsawm seems fuzzy on the generational shift from rural agricultural laborers to an urban and industrial proletariat, or the relationship between scientific knowledge and technological progress.

Decent charts, and a mass of words that signify little and explain less.

Maybe I just don't like economists.