This is a good book within its limits, and those limits are that it is the book of a TV series. It is quite readable and quite informative, although perhaps lacking in detail. It concentrates on the human history and is very light on engineering details. I find the informal chatty style a little superficial, and I don't like the quotes from a handful of historians and experts who speak of Brunel and Stephenson in the present tense - again, probably all the result of the TV series it's based on. While I acknowledge that Brunel was the greater all-round engineer of the two, a "polymath" as the book frequently calls him, I would still have liked to see more detail on Stephenson's life. It has some nice illustrations. Worth reading, but not a heavy-duty history of these two great engineers. ( )