The Fire of His Genius; Robert Fulton and the American Dream

by Kirkpatrick Sale

• ISBN13: 9780684867151
• ISBN10: 068486715X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-04
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Kirkpatrick Sale is a contributing editor for The Nation and the author of nine previous books, including Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision, Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Conquest, and Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution. He is the secretary of the E. F. Schumacher Society.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
The North River	5	(17)
Precursors	22	(18)
1765--1797	40	(23)
1797--1803	63	(33)
1804--1807	96	(24)
1807--1812	120	(26)
1813--1815	146	(29)
Legacies	175	(27)
Epilogue	202	(5)
Acknowledgments	207	(1)
Notes	208	(7)
Sources	215	(2)
Source Notes	217	(17)
Index	234