The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream Book

Robert Fulton was quite a character: bold, infinitely self-confident, lacking in personal integrity, and almost comically obsessed with ideas that never worked. He's the sort of shameless self-promoter that I would dismiss as a sleazeball or a quack if I met him in a professional environment. I'm glad this book exists, if only to reveal what sort of man Fulton really was.

Several little things about this book annoyed me, such as the author's awkward system for incorporating contextual asides into the main story. Also, despite the promise in the title and the introduction, the book said quite a lot about Robert Fulton and nothing much about the American Dream.