James Nasmyth, Engineer

A fugitive grabs a sledgehammer, breaks its shaft, and is exposed by a shout: “Ye’re nae smyth!”

That family legend opens Scottish engineer James Nasmyth’s late-nineteenth-century autobiography, which begins not with a machine but with the ancestors whose stories shaped him. He follows the Naesmyths through royal service, family feuds and the fierce religious struggles of Scotland, where a kinsman’s survival could mean exile and the loss of his home. Yet Nasmyth insists that an honoured name is no substitute for diligence, self-control and self-help. How will he turn a heritage marked by war into a life devoted to mechanical art?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.