Drawing on economic, social, and cultural history, this revisionist work presents a fascinating overview of the early industrialization process in the 18th century. Challenging conventional economic historians, Berg demonstrates that the age of manufactures was rather a complex web of improvement and decline, large- and small-scale production, and machine and hand processes. Berg looks well beyond the factory system and cotton industry to the whole range of metal and textile industries, analyzing the ubiquity and success of workship, artisan, and domestic systems of manufacture.