The Age of Wonder by Sir Richard Holmes

The Age of Wonder by Sir Richard Holmes

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.

RICHARD HOLMES is the author of The Age of Wonder, which won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books and the National Book Critics Circle Award, was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and was one of The New York Times Book Review's Best Books of the Year in 2009. His other books include Falling Upwards, Footsteps, Sidetracks, Shelley: The Pursuit (winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize), Coleridge: Early Visions (winner of the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Award), Coleridge: Darker Reflections (an NBCC finalist), and Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage (winner of the James Tait Blake Prize). Holmes is an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and was awarded the OBE in 1992. He lives in Great Britain.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780375422225
ISBN 10	0375422226
Title	The Age of Wonder
Author	Sir Richard Holmes
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2009-07-14
Number of pages	552
Prizes	Winner of National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) 2009, Winner of ALA Notable Books (Nonfiction) 2010, Commended for L.A. Times Book Prize (History) 2009, Short-listed for Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.