7 books like Wedgwood

By Brian Dolan,

Here are 7 books that Wedgwood fans have personally recommended if you like Wedgwood. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Lunar Men: A Story of Science, Art, Invention and Passion

Nicholas Hudson Author Of A Political Biography of Samuel Johnson

From my list on why the Enlightenment is the beginning of the modern world.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teacher and writer, I am a passionate believer in the ideals of the Enlightenment. In my understanding of these ideals, they include a belief in reason and honest inquiry in the service of humanity. More and more we need these ideals against bigotry, self-delusion, greed, and cruelty. The books recommended here are among those that helped to inspire me with continued faith in the progress of the human species and our responsibility to help each other and the world we live in.

Nicholas' book list on why the Enlightenment is the beginning of the modern world

Nicholas Hudson Why did Nicholas love this book?

What really attracted to me about this book was Jenny Uglow’s ability to bring the eighteenth century alive in her biographies of five men – Josiah Wedgwood, Mathew Boulton, James Watt, Eramus Darwin, and Joseph Priestley – who met every month near Birmingham when the moon was full (so that they could see their way home).

These men genuinely transformed the world with their discoveries that created and powered the first factories and revolutionized our understanding of the natural and chemical worlds. For some reason I always remember Uglow’s description of Wedgwood, who invented the process for mass producing china, being so scientifically curious that he insisted on sitting up to watch his own leg being amputated.

This book is a wonderful, personal introduction to the English Enlightenment.

By Jenny Uglow,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Lunar Men as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the 1760s a group of amateur experimenters met and made friends in the English Midlands. Most came from humble families, all lived far from the center of things, but they were young and their optimism was boundless: together they would change the world. Among them were the ambitious toymaker Matthew Boulton and his partner James Watt, of steam-engine fame; the potter Josiah Wedgwood; the larger-than-life Erasmus Darwin, physician, poet, inventor, and theorist of evolution (a forerunner of his grandson Charles). Later came Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen and fighting radical.

With a small band of allies they formed the…


Book cover of Men of Iron

Martin Hutchinson Author Of Forging Modernity: Why and How Britain Got the Industrial Revolution

From my list on industrial revolutionaries.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 1972, I enrolled in Professor Alfred D. Chandler's Business History course at Harvard Business School, exploring the business strategies and organization structures of U.S. businesses during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chandler impressed upon me the value of examining businesses' strategies and their outcomes. His lessons ignited my interest in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the prequel to the American story. Combining a business background and proclivity for historical knowledge, I discovered that the period's successes depended on more than just production technology. Effective marketing, control systems, and logistics played key roles, while on a national scale, the scientific method and commercial competition were also crucial.

Martin's book list on industrial revolutionaries

Martin Hutchinson Why did Martin love this book?

Men of Iron examines the Crowley Iron Works, one of the eighteenth century’s foremost industrial enterprises.

Sir Ambrose Crowley founded it and used his understanding of the period’s logistics to undercut competitors by setting up a nailery in Sunderland, moving to Winlaton in 1691. There he could import bar iron from Sweden and ship products by sea to a London warehouse complex, avoiding the era’s slow and muddy roads.

With the good fortune of two lengthy wars, he built a major military supply business, with 1,500 employees, becoming a City of London Alderman and a Tory MP. At Winlaton, he established the “Law Book of the Crowley Iron Works” which instituted enlightened personnel policies and an old-age pension scheme.

Crowley’s life shows that the Industrial Revolution, which included new techniques of HR and logistics management as much as steam engines, was already stirring before 1700.

By Michael Walter Flinn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Men of Iron as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Last published in 1962, this renowned work of industrial and social history is now made available to a new generation by the Land of Oak & Iron, thanks to the kind permission of the author's sons, Mark and Hugh Flinn.Until the Land of Oak & Iron Project brought the site to public attention, the fact that Winlaton, Winlaton Mill and Swalwell had been the site of the largest early ironworks in Europe was largely forgotten.We may never know why Sir Ambrose Crowley chose the Derwent Valley as the manufacturing and distribution centre for his London-based company, but what we do…


Book cover of James Brindley: The First Canal Builder

Martin Hutchinson Author Of Forging Modernity: Why and How Britain Got the Industrial Revolution

From my list on industrial revolutionaries.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 1972, I enrolled in Professor Alfred D. Chandler's Business History course at Harvard Business School, exploring the business strategies and organization structures of U.S. businesses during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chandler impressed upon me the value of examining businesses' strategies and their outcomes. His lessons ignited my interest in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the prequel to the American story. Combining a business background and proclivity for historical knowledge, I discovered that the period's successes depended on more than just production technology. Effective marketing, control systems, and logistics played key roles, while on a national scale, the scientific method and commercial competition were also crucial.

Martin's book list on industrial revolutionaries

Martin Hutchinson Why did Martin love this book?

James Brindley built the core elements of Britain’s canal system, which halved the coal price in several industrial cities.

He began as the son of an impoverished rural farmer, then apprenticed to a millwright, before setting up as a craftsman-engineer. Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Gower hired him to survey a potential Trent and Mersey Canal, before introducing him to his brother-in-law Samuel Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater who wanted to connect his Worsley coal mines to Manchester.

Corble’s book centres on the Bridgewater Canal, which Brindley surveyed, developing new “puddling” techniques to seal the bottom. Brindley then used the Bridgewater Canal as a demonstration project for his much larger “Grand Cross” canal system, connecting the Severn, Trent, Mersey, and Thames rivers.

With Gower’s help, Brindley got Parliamentary authorization, raising capital from local landowners and country banks. Brindley’s Grand Cross became a gigantic infrastructure leap forward, kick-starting the Industrial Revolution. 

By Nick Corble,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked James Brindley as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It can be said of few men that without them the course of their nation's history would have been very different, yet through the force of his ideas and sheer bloody-mindedness, James Brindley, the first great canal builder, provided the spark that ignited the Industrial Revolution, united the nation and set Britain on course to become the world's first superpower. Born into poverty and barely literate, Brindley had a vision for the country that defied both established society and the natural order, dividing mid-eighteenth-century scientific and political opinion. Crowds flocked to marvel at this new canals and the engineering feats…


Book cover of Henry Maudslay and the Pioneers of the Machine Age

Martin Hutchinson Author Of Forging Modernity: Why and How Britain Got the Industrial Revolution

From my list on industrial revolutionaries.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 1972, I enrolled in Professor Alfred D. Chandler's Business History course at Harvard Business School, exploring the business strategies and organization structures of U.S. businesses during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chandler impressed upon me the value of examining businesses' strategies and their outcomes. His lessons ignited my interest in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the prequel to the American story. Combining a business background and proclivity for historical knowledge, I discovered that the period's successes depended on more than just production technology. Effective marketing, control systems, and logistics played key roles, while on a national scale, the scientific method and commercial competition were also crucial.

Martin's book list on industrial revolutionaries

Martin Hutchinson Why did Martin love this book?

The Industrial Revolution required machine tools, and machining tolerances far tighter than those prevailing in 1700.

That revolution was chiefly the result of Joseph Bramah and Henry Maudslay. Bramah designed an improved water closet and invented the hydraulic press.

He discovered the need for replaceable parts and tight tolerances after building a complex Challenge Lock, which became commercially viable after Maudslay enabled him to manufacture it in quantity – the Bramah Locks business still exists today.

Maudslay left Bramah in 1797, becoming the pioneer of the machine tool industry, inventing the screw-cutting lathe, the bench micrometer, and the table-top steam engine, as well as the steam dredger.

He was also responsible for the Portsmouth Dockyard Block Mills, a Royal Navy facility that used a production line, two steam engines, and 45 specially designed machines to make 130,000 pulley blocks in 1808 – the world’s first true mass production. 

Book cover of The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing

GG Collins Author Of Anasazi Medium

From my list on the American Southwest respecting the culture & land.

Why am I passionate about this?

The American Southwest never gets old. Exploring any of the Ancestral Pueblo sites is like walking back in time. Anasazi Medium takes the reader there. I love the land and the culture that has brought us to the present. My character, Santa Fe reporter Rachel Blackstone, reflects this. She is sarcastic at times, can be funny, and has her poignant moments as she copes with a “talent” she never wanted. In Anasazi Medium, I concocted a mixture of mystery, Hopi traditions and a journalist’s eye to entertain and inform. What resulted is a climate mystery in the most water-challenged state in the U.S. and a high adventure read. 

GG's book list on the American Southwest respecting the culture & land

GG Collins Why did GG love this book?

The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing (A Pot Thief Murder Mystery) is a fun, quick read. Our pot dealer (not the kind you smoke) owns a shop in Albuquerque's Old Town. "Hubie" as he is called, digs for pottery on public lands to sell in his shop. I enjoyed his university meetings and the hierarchy at the University of New Mexico. When things got heated among the profs, he dove into a book until the collegiate clashing was over. Fond of margaritas, and who isn't, I got a kick out of how much mystery solving he could do at this favorite bar. My characters share that trait by stopping by The Shed in Santa Fe with regularity.

By J. Michael Orenduff,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New Mexico pottery dealer cracks a perplexing mystery in this “winning blend of humor and character development” (Publishers Weekly).
 
Hubert Schuze is an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and he has a fairly lucrative side gig digging up ancient relics and selling them. He also seems to have a talent for finding killers. When Hubie discovers a body outside his pottery shop, it appears the victim was stabbed in the back with something resembling a screwdriver. But the story gets a lot more mysterious when a video turns up showing the man collapsing with…


Book cover of Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person

Shaun McNiff Author Of Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul

From my list on art healing.

Why am I passionate about this?

By chance, just over 50 years ago, I became an art therapist in a state hospital on the Northshore of Boston where I have always lived. With support from Rudolf Arnheim at Harvard University and others, I committed myself to furthering personal and community well-being through art. In my mid-twenties I established a graduate program at Lesley University which spawned an international community of expressive arts therapy. I have worked worldwide in advancing art healing and art-based research. Now University Professor Emeritus, and for the first time without a full-time position, I am trying to embrace the unpredictable ways of creation, and as I wrote, Trust the Process.

Shaun's book list on art healing

Shaun McNiff Why did Shaun love this book?

This is a poetic masterwork with the potter’s wheel as a metaphor for creating our lives as “an ongoing process” in which every act integrates all of life. In our current era there is a tendency to cry cultural appropriation when we look beyond our immediate context and study art healing principles within the whole human community and find ourselves in others. Mary Caroline Richards offers good art medicine for this myopia in demonstrating how ideas are not the property of persons “but live in the world” as people and all of nature do. “The deeper we go” in the contemplative process of centering, the more separations “dissolve.”

By Mary Caroline Richards,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A flowing collection of poetry that is also a guide for life.


Book cover of The Ecstasy of Cornelia Day

Aveda Vice Author Of Feed

From my list on short monster romances doing things differently.

Why am I passionate about this?

Monsters intrigue me. I’ve always enjoyed the weird and obscure – the creatures who are recognizably not human. Being a queer, autistic person, I’ve often felt as if I didn’t understand the world…or the world didn’t understand me. Reading and writing about monsters sheds a new light on the parts of myself that I was taught are undesirable. By conventional standards, the monsters in these stories are horrifying, yet they find people who love them and their monstrosity. Monsters get their happy endings – and I can get mine, too.

Aveda's book list on short monster romances doing things differently

Aveda Vice Why did Aveda love this book?

When it comes to monster romances off the beaten path, Magen Cubed is not afraid to play with more macabre themes. I enjoy all of their shorts, but The Ecstasy of Cornelia Day really sold me. When Cordelia moves into a new house, she realizes there are still spirits within its walls, and she starts to feel more than fear for the specters that haunt her. If you’re a fan of the pottery scene in Ghost and aren’t afraid to get a spooky and ethereal…try this. You’ll thank me.

By Magen Cubed,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Ecstasy of Cornelia Day as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Seated at her table, Cornelia squeezed her thighs together under her dress. She found she could no longer restrain her impulses at the thought. For now, however, Cornelia was content to listen to the old house whisper."

Let love take you to dark places in THE ECSTASY OF CORNELIA DAY from Magen Cubed (FLESHTRAP, A MONSTROUS LOVE, and THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC SERIES). In this erotic supernatural romance, a woman falls in love with the nine spirits who haunt her home -- and the man who killed them, known as the Master.

Sensuous, dream-like, and strange, this 4,200-word short story is…


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