Books in Brief: The Road to Colossus

The Road to Colossus: A Celebration of American Ingenuity, by Thomas Kiernan (Morrow, 332 pp., $16.95)

This aptly titled book is a chronological series of impressive portraits of the leading industrial geniuses of American history. In a mere two hundred years, Mr. Kiernan reminds us, America has transformed itself from a loosely organized body of “subsistence farmers, fishermen, merchants, and cottage craftsmen into the richest, most powerful colossus of industrial and technological prowess and variety the world has ever known.” And although Kiernan’s interest is more in the whos that brought about this majestic metamorphosis than in the hows, he is well aware of the durable and flexible political system that encouraged the colossal creativity of America’s determined wizards. Nor is Kiernan unaware of the deep problems that the United States has had to confront during its dynamic growth. His discussion of Teddy Roosevelt, for example, speaks directly to the “bitter ideological conflict between the well-entrenched principles of survival-of-the-fittest capitalism, as espoused by Herbert Spencer earlier in the century, and the precepts of industrial socialism that had more recently washed ashore on the continuing flood tide of immigration from Central Europe.” Meanwhile, those enshrined in Kiernan’s Industrial Hall of Fame include Ben Franklin, Eli Whitney, Robert Fulton, Francis Cabot Lowell, De Witt Clinton, Peter Cooper, Cyrus McCormick, Samuel Morse, Elias Howe, Charles Goodyear, Richard Hoe, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, John Roebling, Henry Ford, and David Sarnoff. His discussions are notable for his ability to extract the most salient contributions of each to American history, and at the same time to make us aware of their human struggle. (Yes, even Commodore Vanderbilt had a heart.) Admirably, he is able to work on the social, industrial, and political levels almost simultaneously. Finally, Mr. Kiernan closes with the following caveat: “It was not the sociologist, the economist, the political scientist, the statistician, the technocrat, or the bureaucrat who built the America of material plenitude. It was the country’s unique breed of inventors, creative technicians, engineers, and, yes, financiers. And it is that very breed the country has grown progressively short of.” All this fine book lacks is a bibliography.

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Phillip Corwin

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The Road to Colossus: A Celebration of American Ingenuity, by Thomas Kiernan (Morrow, 332 pp., $16.95)

This aptly titled book is a chronological series of impressive portraits of the leading industrial geniuses of American history. In a mere two hundred years, Mr. Kiernan reminds us, America has transformed itself from a loosely organized body of “subsistence farmers, fishermen, merchants, and cottage craftsmen into the richest, most powerful colossus of industrial and technological prowess and variety the world has ever known.” And although Kiernan’s interest is more in the whos that brought about this majestic metamorphosis than in the hows, he is well aware of the durable and flexible political system that encouraged the colossal creativity of America’s determined wizards. Nor is Kiernan unaware of the deep problems that the United States has had to confront during its dynamic growth. His discussion of Teddy Roosevelt, for example, speaks directly to the “bitter ideological conflict between the well-entrenched principles of survival-of-the-fittest capitalism, as espoused by Herbert Spencer earlier in the century, and the precepts of industrial socialism that had more recently washed ashore on the continuing flood tide of immigration from Central Europe.” Meanwhile, those enshrined in Kiernan’s Industrial Hall of Fame include Ben Franklin, Eli Whitney, Robert Fulton, Francis Cabot Lowell, De Witt Clinton, Peter Cooper, Cyrus McCormick, Samuel Morse, Elias Howe, Charles Goodyear, Richard Hoe, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, John Roebling, Henry Ford, and David Sarnoff. His discussions are notable for his ability to extract the most salient contributions of each to American history, and at the same time to make us aware of their human struggle. (Yes, even Commodore Vanderbilt had a heart.) Admirably, he is able to work on the social, industrial, and political levels almost simultaneously. Finally, Mr. Kiernan closes with the following caveat: “It was not the sociologist, the economist, the political scientist, the statistician, the technocrat, or the bureaucrat who built the America of material plenitude. It was the country’s unique breed of inventors, creative technicians, engineers, and, yes, financiers. And it is that very breed the country has grown progressively short of.” All this fine book lacks is a bibliography.