A globe-spanning narrative history of the 1850s - a time of electrifying change - seen through the eyes of the men and women who embraced the adventurous spirit of the times

A narrative history of the 1850s, "Heyday" spans the globe to explore a time of electrifying change. 'Wonderfully engrossing and intelligent... clever and entertaining' Dominic Sandbrook, "Sunday Times"

'This is an engaging history of the capitalist world in the 1850s, which stitches together vivid stories of entrepreneurs and adventurers from the United States to New Zealand. Heyday: Britain and the Birth of the Modern World sometimes feels like an exciting Phileas Fogg travelogue, with Ben Wilson's finger spinning round a mahogany globe in his study and us with it . . . The strength of this magnificent book is Wilson's awareness of "modernity's close connection with barbarism". To acknowledge that progress came at a high price for most people is not to belittle British achievements; it merely puts them into a proper historical perspective'