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One of the best non-fiction books I've read this year. It's about the development of the steam engine and invention in general. It covers history not just from an industrial perspective but also legal (patent law and "intellectual property), social development (monasteries in the Medieval period were iron workers) and goes back to ancient Greece and Rome.
I'm old enough to remember steam trains when I was a kid, when I lived in Germany, '71-'76 there were still many of them running. But for the most part the US rail system was mostly diesel/electric by the mid-'50s. So I never really paid much attention to the actual method of how steam engines worked. This book really opened my eyes.
The writer, William Rosen, has a great sense of humor and uses it to make his points and tie everything together in an interesting narrative.
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