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Summary: Masters of lighthouse construction
Review: "Extraordinary" is certainly the appropriate term for Bathurst's excellent documentation of the incredible Stevenson family of lighthouse engineers. Up to this time, most of the attention toward this families accomplishments has focused on the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, and left others of his amazing family in the dust. Bathurst's research is impressive and her ability to tell this story is thorough, yet highly enjoyable(I missed my bus twice.). The most exciting part really is about patriarch Robert Stevenson's building of the lighthouse at Bell Rock. You can feel the sense of horror as Stevenson notices their ship has pulled away from it's moorings, and his realization that death may be near as the tide rises. If you don't have a summer book yet, and you like good non-fiction. Try this one!
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Summary: Irritating typos spoil the reading quality
Review: A pity about all the typos - I agree with the other reviewers on that. I looked at the flyleaf to see if the author thanked anybody for proofing and editing - she didn't, and it shows, regrettably. This got a great review from the Sunday Times in England, they obviously had the better edition.
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Summary: A great story well written. I enjoyed it.
Review: A wonderful book about the Stevenson's and their fantastic lighthouses. I throughly enjoyed reading this book. Several small errors; Robert Stevenson could not have used Dynamite in the early 1800's because it was not invented by Nobel until 1862. If the NBL was still consulting with Michael Faraday in 1883 it must have been by ouija board because Faraday died in 1867. The weight of a square foot of water is zero while a cubic foot of sea water weights 64lb.
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Summary: Typos and mistakes galore! So how solid is the history?
Review: After visiting Scotland last summer, I was excited to find this book. The wild Scottish coast is an intriguing context for adventure, courage, and (here) amazing engineering achievement. However, the book is a huge disappointment. The story is potentially quite a compelling one, but the HUGE number of mistakes--both in the editing and proofreading and factually--detract to an overwhelming degree from one's possible enjoyment of the book. If this were a paper from one of my students, it would get about a C-. Given the number of mechanical errors in the book, one might be very skeptical about the historical facts, as well. And if it isn't good history, it sure doesn't cut it as decent fiction. If you want to read this one, check it out of the library. Don't waste your money on a flawed book.
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Summary: The Other Scottish Enlightenment.....
Review: Bella Bathurst is a bit of a conjurer. In just over 260 pages, she has managed to provide a lot of fascinating, exciting and even quirky information concerning the construction of the Scottish lighthouses, plus well-crafted biographical portraits of members of four generations of the Stevenson family. She gets the reader hooked immediately, interestingly enough, by writing about someone who was not even a member of the Stevenson clan - Captain George Manby. Manby, around 1805, came up with a method of keeping rowboats afloat in heavy seas, to be used in conjunction with a "rescue line" tossed out to foundering ships which were close to shore. In conjunction, these would be used to rescue seamen before their ships sank and they drowned. This didn't appeal to the people called "wreckers," who depended upon booty from the sunken ships for their livelihood. In their view, it was better to let crew members drown - after all, they might put up a fuss concerning the theft of the ships' cargo. When, in 1807, the naive Manby let some wreckers take him out on a boat so he could test the seaworthiness of his new and buoyant rowboats, the wreckers intentionally capsized the boat - hoping to drown Manby, who couldn't swim. (Fortunately for Manby, he managed not to drown.) This anecdote ties into the rest of the book, because when the Stevenson family started building lighthouses, the wreckers weren't too thrilled with that development either. So, a lot of the people in the seaside communities didn't exactly put out the welcome mat. Not only that, but the Stevensons' had to put up with "press gangs" trying to shanghai workers so they could man merchant and military ships. Part of this book reads like an adventure tale - with the workers battling the mighty forces of mother nature on remote spits of land that were sometimes 10-15 miles off of the Scottish coast. The workers, at some locations, would have to be transported daily from the mainland - fighting against seasickness and terrific winds and rain. They would sometimes be marooned on the desolate pieces of rock where the lighthouses were being constructed, as savage storms would blow for days or even weeks on end. There is even an Egyptian flavor to the construction - as huge blocks of carefully carved and smoothed stone are transported and painstakingly put together. Each block had its own unique place in the puzzle, and the margins for error were slight- 1/8 of an inch per stone in some cases. This was a case of bullwork being combined with fine craftmanship - all being done under atrocious climatic conditions. It is a tribute to Ms. Bathurst's writing and organizational skills that, even with all of this activity swirling through the pages, we don't lose sight of the Stevensons. We see the patriarch, Robert Stevenson, with his formidable work ethic, energy, and devotion to public duty. Even in his late seventies he was still going, by ship, all along the Scottish coast, on long inspection tours of "his" lighthouses. Religion is also a part of this story - in particular, the Scottish belief in a stern, no-nonsense God: On one project Alan Stevenson, one of Robert's sons, made his men work on the Sabbath days. Later on in life Alan came down with a neurological disorder (which the author speculates was muscular dystrophy). Alan was convinced that God was punishing him for his sins. He tried to atone through prayer and through whatever work he was still able to do. When the disease went into remission, Alan thought he was finally being forgiven. When he got worse, he thought he wasn't doing enough to earn God's forgiveness. This makes heartbreaking reading. The writer, Robert Louis Stevenson (known as Louis), also enters into the story, as his father, Tom, wanted him to continue in the family tradition. Louis made some youthful efforts to accomodate his father but, although engineering and lighthouses were in the blood, this life wasn't for him. We'll never know if this was engineering's loss, but it was certainly literature's gain. When they weren't dealing with 100 mile-per-hour winds and, sometimes, 200 foot waves, the Stevensons also found time to build roads, bridges, harbors, breakwaters, etc. In the preface, Ms. Bathurst says that she didn't attempt to write a definitive biography of the Lighthouse Stevensons, but she hoped the book "will be seen as a kind of taster for the subject, and that anyone wanting to search further will be able to do so." This reader, for one, found this remarkable book to be very tasty indeed.
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Summary: Unfair Customer Reviews?
Review: I found this book to be a fast and informative read. I am neither a lighthouse enthusiast nor a Stevenson literary junkie but still managed to enjoy my time spent reading the book.I can see where this blend of biography, history, and engineering would be too thin to please serious lighthouse fans, literary historians, or marine engineers. However, for the general reader, the book succeeds nicely in combining a selected history of the Stevenson family, their works for the Northern Lighthouse Board, and the family's impact on Robert Louis Stevenson. It is an interesting account of the difficulties overcome in the creation of some of Scotland's most magnificent lighthouses. The author knows how to turn a fun phrase which adds to the reading a bit of an Easter egg hunt for bon mots. The typographical errors previously mentioned have been corrected in the paperback edition.
Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable read
Review: I found this book to be a fast and informative read. I am neither a lighthouse enthusiast nor a Stevenson literary junkie but still managed to enjoy my time spent reading the book. I can see where this blend of biography, history, and engineering would be too thin to please serious lighthouse fans, literary historians, or marine engineers. However, for the general reader, the book succeeds nicely in combining a selected history of the Stevenson family, their works for the Northern Lighthouse Board, and the family's impact on Robert Louis Stevenson. It is an interesting account of the difficulties overcome in the creation of some of Scotland's most magnificent lighthouses. The author knows how to turn a fun phrase which adds to the reading a bit of an Easter egg hunt for bon mots. The typographical errors previously mentioned have been corrected in the paperback edition.
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Summary: Great history of Engineering Feats
Review: I like the books by R.L.Stevenson so its really cool to see how he came by his experience. Granddad was a driven guy who forced everyone into the family business. R. was lucky to escape to become a no-account writer. Well books turn out to last longer than bricks. But still, its amazing to read that some of these lighthouses took ten years to build. The first summer's work having been washed away by the winter's storms. Plus the social aspect of the coastal towns which made their living from plundering the treasure (recycling?) of wrecked boats. They weren't all that interested in helping to put these lighthouses up. Eventually shame at the death of the sailors and persistence by the Stevensons got the job done. Anyway if you love books about the sea, you'll like this one. (typo's not withstanding)
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Summary: An interesting read for those who love the sea !
Review: I must disagree with the earlier reviewers. While the book would have benefited from a more thorough editing and proofreading process, I nonetheless greatly enjoyed reading it. It appeared to be well researched and the author obviously has a passion for the subject. I found the Stevenson family fascinating. The descriptions of the building of the lighthouses, particularly the great ones; Eddystone, Bell Rock, and Skerryvore, imparted a sense of both the excitement in attempting such daunting projects and the tremendous difficulties that were overcome to build the structures. I also enjoyed the illustrations, but wish that more had been included. I would recommend this book to anyone having an interest in the history of lighthouses or maritime engineering.
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Summary: Reads Well, But Not Terribly Filling . . .
Review: Thanks to the staggering success of Dava Sobel's _Longitude_ a few years back, we now have a flourishing subgenre of similar works. It might be called something like: "Smallish books about great achievements in the history of science and technology and the amazing people behind them." Bella Bathurst has written a fine example of the subgenre; if you liked _Longitude_ and _The Professor and the Madman_ you'll like this one too.
On the good side: Bathurst can write smooth, engaging prose that keeps you turning the pages. She sketches the landscape and her main characters neatly and economically, and has a nice eye for anecdotes. She keeps you interested and gives you a fair sense of what it was like to build lighthouses in the 19th century.
On the bad side: The character sketches remain just that--sketches. I don't feel like I know *any* of the Stevensons as rounded human beings; nor do I have a sense for the changing millieu in which they worked. The descriptions of the lighthouses have the same problem. Bathurst clearly doesn't care much about the details of the technology or the construction methods . . . but I *want* her to care, and to explain them to me, because that's a big part of what makes the Stevenson story so extraordinary. How *do* you hoist multi-ton blocks of stone off a pitching barge onto a slippery rock, anyway?
Let me be fair: I *enjoyed* the book as I read it. Ultimately, though, it left me feeling unsatisfied. This is history-of-technology lite . . . a pale imitation of modern classics like David McCullough's _The Great Bridge_ and _The Path Between the Seas_ or Stephen Ambrose's _Nothing Like It in the World_. It's a pale imitation, too, of journalistic work about extreme environments, like that of Sebastian Junger, John McPhee, and Jon Krakauer. All those authors give better value for the money than Bathurst: fully rounded characters and total immersion in the details of the events and processes they're writing about.
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