Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making, 1801-1885

xv, 439 pp. On a visit to a Berkshire paper mill, the narrator of a Melville short story views the "wonderful" papermaking machine with awe, calling it a "miracle of inscrutable intricacy." Manifesting a similar nineteenth-century fascination with machinery, paper mill owners and workers made an industrial revolution in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, examined here by Judith McGaw.