Why read The Lighthouse Stevensons?

Book cover of The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson

Book description

The epic story of how Robert Louis Stevenson's ancestors built the lighthouses of the Scottish coast against impossible odds.

`Whenever I smell salt water, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors,' wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in 1880. `When the lights come…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Lighthouse Stevensons as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Eric Jay Dolin

Author

In the late eighteenth century, and throughout the nineteenth, the Stevenson family were great innovators in lighthouse design and construction. While not the first to successfully tackle the engineering challenge of building a massive stone lighthouse offshore, where it would be subject to the merciless thrashing of the ocean, the Stevensons did become the most famous and respected group of engineers doing that kind of work. Their signature lighthouses off the Scottish coast, including Bell Rock and Skerryvore, served as standards for lighthouse builders who followed in their footsteps. Bathurst’s elegantly written book is a captivating profile of this consequential…

From Eric's list on The best books on lighthouse history.