Conquerors of Time : Exploration and Invention in the Age of Daring

by Trevor Fishlock

Trevor Fishlock puts the reader before the mast, on the dusty road, on the sledge, in the stagecoach and the howdah and aboard the clanking pioneer steamer. It is a thrilling journey.Here are the men of the Arctic ice, the desert fire, the jungles and the seas. Here are the engineers who bridge the chasms, build the roads and railways, fashion the machines, lay the cables and string the telegraph wires. Here, too, are the doctors groping for answers to terrible diseases, surveyors and cartographers slowly making sense and shape of the world, the unsung armies of labourers, and the artists and photographers who bring the stories home. Through it all, the vital supporting cast in the saga of triumph and frequent failure, are the elephants, horses, mules, camels, bullocks and sledge dogs. Conquerors of Time celebrates the courage, energy, innovation, resourcefulness and grand ideas of these pioneers. It wonders at the imperatives, beliefs and sheer confidence that powered their extraordinary achievements. Packed with detail, it is a narrative both vivid and moving.

444 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Paul Pensom]

This is a frustrating book. It covers some fascinating subjects, and it's beautifully produced, but it just doesn't hang together, and for that reason I don't think I'll be keeping it.

The thesis seems to be the shrinking of time throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, which allows for such wonderful tales as the great feats of exploration, the growth of the stage coach, the coming of steam and the invention of telegraphy, but the leaps sometimes felt arbitrary, such as the laboured diversion in to the history of army veterinary surgeons, and the more important chapters, such as the ones on the Indian Mutiny or Nile exploration, have been better covered in more detail elsewhere.

I also couldn't help but feel that at times the author was simply regurgitating research: there were several lists running to a paragraph or more which seemed to be there for no reason other than to fill space. Perhaps I could recommend this book for someone who knew nothing of the industrial revolution, but more experienced readers will find little here to interest them.