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"Critics described Age of Wonder, a synthesis of history, science, philosophy, and biography, as 'intoxicating,' 'gripping,' and 'juicy.' Rather than a dry account of scientific advances, the book offers lively, compelling portraits of the men and women who made discoveries whose legacies resound today. [Richard] Holmes paints both the big picture of such discoveries and the smaller details that engaged reviewers, from the scientists' intellectual backgrounds to their personal relationships. Despite Holmes's unbridled enthusiasm for the beauty rather than the terror behind the science, he doesn't neglect to discuss scientists' challenges, confusions, and failures—as well as the questions they raised about religion, spirituality, mortality, and the future of the universe.... A timely, fascinating guide to many of today's lingering controversies."—Bookmarks Magazine "Known for his biographies of Romantic writers, [Richard] Holmes turns his attention to the science of the Romantic Age, and demonstrates the extent to which the era's scientific and literary endeavors enriched each other and were animated by common ideals. Holmes begins with Joseph Banks, the official botanist on Captain Cook's 1768 voyage to Tahiti, whose diaries of this paradisiacal island made him a scientific celebrity. Elected to serve as the president of the Royal Society, Banks championed, among others, William Herschel, a composer and self-taught astronomer who discovered the planet Uranus; Mungo Park, a Scottish doctor who embarked on a perilous journey through Africa seeking the riches of Timbuktu; and Humphry Davy, a self-taught chemist and poet who invented a safety lamp for miners. Holmes shows the impact of such discoveries on writers like Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, whose responses, he contends, helped create a mythology of discovery that is still with us today."—The New Yorker
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