Richard Trevithick: Giant of Steam

Two hundred years ago, Richard Trevithick invented the "Cornish engine," the world's first self-propelled steam vehicle. Yet fame and fortune obstinately eluded this great engineer whose reckless, headstrong nature often made him his own worst enemy. Despite dying in poverty and relative obscurity, he is now recognized as one of the most remarkable figures of the Industrial Revolution, and his extraordinary career, which took him from his native Cornwall to London and then on to 17 years of adventuring in South America, makes for wonderfully lively reading in this biography.