Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution . By Steven King and Geoffrey Timmins. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii, 402.
本书重新审视1700-1850年英国经济与社会，淡化工业革命作为重大变革的传统叙事，强调同时代人模糊的“有事发生”感，适合对工业革命非传统解读感兴趣的读者。
This book engaged my attention in a way that few textbooks do, and if I have some critical things to say, these do not detract from my overall view that the book is a carefully considered and well-executed account of its subject. The subtitle accurately describes the book as being about “English Economy and Society, 1700–1850.” It is not, however, a conventional textbook treatment. The idea of the Industrial Revolution as great transformation, and any attempt to specify carefully what was transformed and how, is deliberately downplayed by the authors, who repeatedly refer to the view of contemporaries that “something was happening, ” and sometimes seem as uncertain as those contemporaries as to what it was.