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Article: Meeting of the Minds
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- July 30, 2009
- Author:
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THE AGE OF WONDER
How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of
Science
By Richard Holmes
Pantheon. 552 pp. $40 Richard Holmes is one of England's most
admired biographers, his particular area of expertise being the
romantic era in England and France. His previous books include
exceptionally lively biographies of the poets Shelley and Coleridge
and two volumes of shorter essays and profiles: "Footsteps:
Adventures of a Romantic Biographer" and "Sidetracks: Explorations
of a Romantic Biographer." In "The Age of Wonder" he shifts his
focus from literary genius to scientific genius, as he traces the
course of English science from roughly 1768, when Capt. Cook began
his ...