Published: London, 1861 4 volumes What better way to begin a journey through the library collections at MIT than with Samuel Smiles’ Lives of the Engineers? Smiles himself had no background in engineering; he trained as a physician, and retained a lifelong interest in social reform. As he contemplated the feats of civil engineering that had transformed his native England during the previous 100 years, he saw hope for the betterment of all humankind. And in the engineers who’d designed the canals, highways, bridges, and railroads that erased distance between places as well as between societies, he saw not mere […]