A review by graywacke
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes

informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

A terrific book. I didn't expect a series of detailed biographies, but that's largely what this is - Joseph Banks - 1st president of the Royal Society, Humphry Davy - his successor, and William Herschel - discoverer of Uranius, and builder of a 40ft reflecting telescope. Herschel was the first to develop the reflecting telescope. There are numerous other people covered, especially Herschel's sister, Caroline, and his son, John, Mongo Park, an early explorer of Africa, Michael Faraday, who began as Davy's assistant, a chapter on balloons, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Other major figures who get some coverage include Captain Cook,  Antoine Lavoisier, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sir William Lawrence - the first prominent physician to deny the soul,  Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, Mary Sumner, and the romantic poets, Samuel T. Coleridg, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats and the German poet Novalis.

 

Holmes makes his point at the end, that the history of science is over-simplified. That the ideas came of experiences and people that were complex and should be studies in depth. And it's in this light that he combines these detailed biographies. It seems strange from a distanct, but it was quite pleasant close up. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.