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Title details for The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes - Available

The Age of Wonder

by Richard Holmes
ebook
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The Age of Wonder is a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. 

When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science—an era whose consequences are with us still.

BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Richard Holmes's Falling Upwards.
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Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Awards:

Kindle Book

  • Release date: July 14, 2009

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9780307378323
  • Release date: July 14, 2009

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780307378323
  • File size: 10462 KB
  • Release date: July 14, 2009
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Science Nonfiction

Languages

English

The Age of Wonder is a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. 

When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science—an era whose consequences are with us still.

BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Richard Holmes's Falling Upwards.
Expand title description text
Biography & Autobiography History Science Nonfiction
Check out what's being checked out right now Content of this digital collection is funded by your local Minuteman library, supplemented by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.