|
|
Article: E.C. Spary. Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Utopian Studies
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Society for Utopian Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. xv + 321 pp.
Tins PROVOCATIVE AND WELL-WRITTEN WORK will be read with profit by historians of science as well as specialists in a wide range of disciplines, including social, political and institutional history. The author delves into the extraordinary circumstances whereby the Jardin du Roi in Paris, preeminent in the field of natural history during the long tenure of intendant Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1739-1788), was transformed into the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in the turbulent revolutionary era. As Spary puts it, "How could a royal establishment survive the extremes of the French Revolution, when so many ...