Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. A Rural Place and a Rural People -- Chapter 2. Building Factories in the Country -- Chapter 3. Rise of the Rural-Industrial Workers -- Chapter 4. Prosperous, Independent...

How did Britain sustain faster rates of economic growth than comparable European countries, such as France, during the Industrial Revolution? We argue that Britain possessed an important but underappreciated innovation advantage: British inventors worked in technologies that were more central...