Where the kindle version falls flat is without more pictures of the actual lighthouses (there are some drawings etc).

The three sons who toed the lighthouse line were Alan who built Skerryvore Light, David who built Muckle Flugga, and Thomas the dreamer. The father, uncles, grandfather and, step great grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson were all pioneering engineers who were responsible for building some of the most remote lighthouses around the Scottish coast. The family had a mild tendency to be obsessed by thoughts of a cruel and vindictive God, Alan felt his disease was punishment for making people work on Sundays to complete Skerryvore faster. During this time he oversaw the construction of many lighthouses, the most famous of which was the Bell Rock Lighthouse. It's mind-blowing that anyone could build on those sites, especially in a era before power tools, as the key building period was the 1790s-1840s.The workforce suffered from sea sickness and inadequate quantities of beer, traditionally lighthouse keepers were expected to maintain a cow and fend for themselves, Skerryvore was so difficult to reach that instead Alan recommended enhanced rations for the lighthouse keepers.

The Stevenson's were also responsible for lights in other parts of the world, and their engineering influenced lighthouse building everywhere. The first formal mention of Robert Stevenson in connection with the Northern Lighthouse Board was when his step-father entrusted him with the Superintendence of the building of Pentland Skerries Lighthouse in 1794. Thomas turned out to be a competent engineer who built Dubh Artach and Chicken Rock, but is probably best known as the father of Robert Louis Stevenson. Most notable was his invention of intermittent flashing lights – marking the lighthouse as the first to use red and white flashing lights – for which he received a gold medal from the King of the Netherlands. Bella Bathurst focuses on the construction of four of the lighthouses, each in its own way the signature achievement of different Stevensons.He also designed lighthouses in Japan, developing a novel method to enable lighthouses to better withstand earthquakes.