In Men of Achievement Phillip Hubert writes about inventors Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton, Eli Whitney, Elias Howe, Samuel Morse, Charles Goodyear, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as many others. He reviews their inventions and also examines the inventor: their origins, hopes, aims, principles, disappointments, trials and triumphs ,and their daily life and personal character.

With over forty-five illustrations, Men of Achievement discusses the value of their work – the invention of steam power, electricity, the telegraph, the telephone, phonograph, the camera, and Goodyear's vulcanized rubber. With the patent laws of the time it also highlights how these men contributed thousands of millions of dollars to the nation's wealth and, in some cases, received comparatively little in return.