"An absorbing and enlightening tale of 'Yankee ingenuity' at the very dawn of the steam age."--John Steele Gordon, author of "A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable""What a ride! It's all there: duplicity, steamy intrigue and scandal, with cameo roles played by Napoleon, Jefferson, Washington, Thomas Paine, and James Watt. My personal hero, the tormented American steamboat inventor, John Fitch, rises above this glorious fray like cream upon milk. His is a story whose incompleteness has dogged us over the years. Indeed, we are, at last, shown the full tapestry of the steamboat invention in one fast-moving book. Hard history and good fun. You'll love it."--John H. Lienhard, author of" The Engines of Our Ingenuity "and "Inventing Modern"