In this fascinating, richly illustrated history of the steamboat, Travis Bowman delineates the epic collaboration between the handsome but not entirely successful artist and inventor, Robert Fulton, and the Hudson River Valley aristocrat, Robert R. Livingston. On a sultry summer day in 1807, Fulton and Livingston shocked the world when they sailed their fire-breathing contraption, their devil in a sawmill up the Hudson, stopping at Livingston's villa, Clermont, on their way to Albany. Their invention would revolutionize travel, and set the stage for the Industrial Revolution.