Friedrich Engels spent more than twenty years in Salford and Manchester, learning the cotton trade and becoming a mill-owner in his own right. Meanwhile he was the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, and funded the life and work of fellow-German Karl Marx. Posing as a respectable Victorian bachelor, Engels also lived a second life with his working-class girlfriend, Mary Burns. Simon Webb's book brings the story of Engels in 'Cottonopolis' up to date by examining new developments, and exploring the relevance of the paradoxical Prussian for the twenty-first century.