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A review by audaciaray
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
3.0
I picked up this book because I saw it listed on several "best of 2009" lists, I've been on a history of science kick lately, and because anything about the Romantics gets me geekishly excited.
All of the scientists/explorers and their stories really came to life, and I feel like I understand a whole lot more about the birth of modern science and the exploration of the natural world, especially the way it was entangled with poetry and artistic creation. In this way, big chunks of the book read like a lively novel, which is a really engaging approach to the writing of history.
There were, however, some spots that just got too mired down in detail. Especially later in the book, there is a lot more stuff about the in-fighting in the scientific community and bickering over who did what first and who should be the president of this or that association. I found those details spectacularly boring and found myself skipping around a bit to bypass that detail. Some of the initial strong storytelling got a bit lost toward the end of the book, as Holmes tried to bring it all together and wrap it up. Although the conclusion of a historical period strongly tied to individual personalities is pretty obvious (spoiler: everyone dies), I felt like there could have been a bit more effort to bring the gap into the next generation of scientists, which include the Charleses Babbage and Darwin.
All of the scientists/explorers and their stories really came to life, and I feel like I understand a whole lot more about the birth of modern science and the exploration of the natural world, especially the way it was entangled with poetry and artistic creation. In this way, big chunks of the book read like a lively novel, which is a really engaging approach to the writing of history.
There were, however, some spots that just got too mired down in detail. Especially later in the book, there is a lot more stuff about the in-fighting in the scientific community and bickering over who did what first and who should be the president of this or that association. I found those details spectacularly boring and found myself skipping around a bit to bypass that detail. Some of the initial strong storytelling got a bit lost toward the end of the book, as Holmes tried to bring it all together and wrap it up. Although the conclusion of a historical period strongly tied to individual personalities is pretty obvious (spoiler: everyone dies), I felt like there could have been a bit more effort to bring the gap into the next generation of scientists, which include the Charleses Babbage and Darwin.