The opening spread of this colorful and appealingly formatted book states that just a few world-changing inventions have meant that most people travel by automobile or airplane rather than foot, live in cities rather than villages, and use computers and other electrical gadgets. Each subsequent spread focuses on a key inventor. The inventors are James Watt, George Stephenson, Michael Faraday, Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, Guglielmo Marconi, the Wright Brothers, Leo Baekeland, Alan Turing, Martin Cooper, and Tim Berners-Lee. The information presented about each inventor includes a photograph or contemporary portrait; a three-bullet timeline of birth, death, and date of a major invention, an illustration of an exemplary invention, several paragraphs of text, a brief anecdote, and, in some cases, a quotation. Students learn, for instance, that, in 1800, eighty-four cotton mills in England were using Watt’s steam engine, making him famous and wealthy, and that Baekeland invented plastic by accident. Through engaging presentation, the book conveys nuggets of information about important but disconnected subjects. It concludes with a helpful Glossary and list of web sites and books for further information, and an index. The messages, however, that the current way life in advanced societies results from just a few inventions (and that it is universal) are misleading. A book about great inventors could and should let students know that they need not be geniuses to contribute essential, incremental advances. Reviewer: Cynthia Levinson