Traditional biographies of Watt have concentrated on the steam engine, but in this book Ben Russell tells a richer story, exploring the processes by which ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artefacts and the multifaceted world of production upon which Britain’s industrial revolution depended. Generously illustrated, James Watt is a unique, expansive exploration of the engineer’s life, not as an end in itself but as a lens through which the broader practices of making and manufacturing in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries can be explored.