Hagley tells the stories of the du Pont family and their 19th-century gunpowder company, DuPont, both of which made their homes along a mile-long stretch of the Brandywine River, where a sparsely populated area became a major industrial hub that reshaped the nation in just a few generations. This story begins in Paris, France, in the 1790s during the turmoil of the French Revolution, when the well-connected du Pont family had already been at the center of major events since the 1760s. The family patriarch, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, was a widely read author and publisher who held important government posts in France before and after the Revolution. He knew and corresponded with Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte, and he also knew prominent Americans including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. With his first wife, Nicole-Charlotte Marie-Louise le Dée de Roncourt, Pierre Samuel had two sons who survived to adulthood, Victor Marie and Éleuthère Irénée.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones (CC0)