Forgotten
How One Man Unlocked the Modern World

What if humanity's most important invention wasn't the steam engine or the printing press, but a machine that you've never heard of, built by a man that history forgot? Eight billion people owe their lives to a man you've never heard of. In Forgotten, Jaime Dávila uncovers the astonishing true story of Cornelis Corneliszoon, a 16th-century Dutch tinkerer whose simple invention – the wind-powered sawmill – unleashed a chain reaction that built the modern world. Faster ships. Global trade. Stock markets. The Industrial Revolution. None of this would have happened without this single millwright's practical innovation. A rigorous, revelatory, and unflinchingly subversive challenge to our understanding of how the modern world was built, and a long-overdue correction of a historical injustice.