History

I’m looking for first-person accounts of life during the 1st Industrial Revolution in Europe and then the United States.

The ideal writer is capturing their experience close to real time, and is educated in business and economics.

Either unpolished manuscripts or edited books are fine.

Even better if not digitized.

Any recommendations?

Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England comes to mind

also Babbage's Machinery & Manufactures:

Healthcare investor by day, web3/AI tinkerer by night. 🟪 Host: /venturecapital /theitinerant

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building roc.camera, writings: july.rocks

Thanks, both look great.

RE: Marx (and Adam Smith), it’s a good reminder. I’m overdue to revisit the classics.

Ideally looking for less politicized / academic works. 

For example: a banker, trader, lawyer, etc writing about the times from their personal perspective.

Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England comes to mind

also Babbage's Machinery & Manufactures:

https://rybn.org/human_computers/articles/Babbage_Charles_On_the_Economy_of_Machinery_and_Manufactures.pdf

A bit later, but the world of yesterday by Zweig is excellent

A bit later, but the world of yesterday by Zweig is excellent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Yesterday

Fiction, but the Armor of Light by Ken Follett fits this description

The Jungle came about after Upton Sinclair spent time in some meat packing plants in Chicago around then. 

Not first person, but potentially directionally useful.