New Books in the History of Science
Episodes
Anthony Chaney, “Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness” (UNC Press, 2017)
01 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony Chaney teaches history and writing at the University of North Texas at Dallas. His book Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Ris...
Michael Wintroub, “The Voyage of Thought: Navigating Knowledge Across the Sixteenth-Century World” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
04 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If you are an enthusiast of The Cheese and the Worms (1976), The Great Cat Massacre (1984), or The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), then Michael Wintro...
Iwan Rhys Morus, ed.,”The Oxford Illustrated History of Science” (Oxford UP, 2017)
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What is science? A seemingly profound, yet totally ridiculous question to try and answer. Yet, when Oxford University Press reached out to the brillia...
Tamara Plakins Thornton, “Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life” (UNC Press, 2016)
27 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
To remember Nathaniel Bowditch today primarily for his famous navigational textbook is to acknowledge only one of his many achievements. As Tamara Pla...
Britt Rusert, “Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture” (NYU Press, 2017)
26 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early Afric...
Tara H. Abraham, “Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s Transdisciplinary Life in Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
11 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Fueling his bohemian lifestyle and anti-authoritarian attitude with a steady diet of ice cream and whiskey, along with a healthy dose of insomnia, War...
Helen Anne Curry, “Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
08 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Nowadays, it might seem perplexing for the founder of a seed company to express the intention to “shock Mother Nature,” or at least in bad taste. ...
J. C. McKeown, “A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Healing Arts of Greece and Rome” (Oxford UP, 2017)
29 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The back cover of J. C. McKeown‘s new book, A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities (Oxford University Press, 2017), is adorned not with review quo...
Tania Munz, “The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language” (U of Chicago Press, 2016)
25 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Tania Munz‘s new book is a dual biography: both of Austrian-born experimental physiologist Karl von Frisch, and of the honeybees he worked with as e...
Grace Davie, “Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
19 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Apartheid in South Africa formally ended in 1994, but the issue of poverty and what to do about it remained as contentious as it had been a century ea...
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT, 2014)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: T...
Raz Chen-Morris, “Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s Optics of Invisibility” (Penn State UP, 2016)
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Raz Chen-Morris‘s new book traces a significant and surprising notion through the work of Johannes Kepler: in order to account for real physical mot...
Susan E. Cayleff, “Nature’s Path: A History of Naturopathic Healing in America” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Susan Cayleff’s Nature’s Path: A History of Naturopathic Healing in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016) offers a fascinating alternativ...
Meredith K. Ray, “Margherita Sarrocchi’s Letters to Galileo: Astronomy, Astrology, and Poetics in 17th-Century Italy” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
13 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Meredith K. Ray’s new book contextualizes and translates a range of seventeenth-century letters, mostly between Margherita Sarrocchi (1560-1617) and...
Damion Searls, “The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing” (Crown, 2017)
07 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and The Power of Seeing (Crown, 2017), Damion Searls presents the first biography of...
Matthew James Crawford, “The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800” (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
23 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew James Crawford’s new book is a fascinating history of an object that was central to the history of science, technology, and medicine in the ...
Matthew L. Jones, “Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
23 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew L. Jones’s wonderful new book traces a history of failed efforts to make calculating machines, from Blaise Pascal’s work in the 1640s thro...
Projit Bihari Mukharji, “Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Science: (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
16 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s new book explores the power of small, non-spectacular, and everyday technologies as motors or catalysts of change in the hi...
Joshua Howe, “Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
10 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2016 was the hottest year on record, and in recent months, drought and searing heat have fanned wildfires in Fort McMurray Alberta and in Gat...
Robert Brain, “The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (U. of Washington Press, 2015)
12 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” Oscar Wilde famously observed. Wilde’s waning romanticism can be read in stark contrast wit...
J.D. Trout, “Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science” (Oxford UP, 2016)
15 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The social practice we call science has had spectacular success in explaining the natural world since the 17th century. While advanced mathematics and...
Marc Raboy, “Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World” (Oxford UP, 2016)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Our modern networked world owes an oftentimes unacknowledged debt to Guglielmo Marconi. As Marc Raboy demonstrates in Marconi: The Man Who Networked t...
Ahmed Ragab, “The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, Charity” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In his shining new book The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, and Charity (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Ahmed Ragab, Assistant Prof...
E.R. Truitt, “Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art” (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s third law, coined in 1973, expresses the difficulty that people...
Greg Eghigian, “The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth-Century Germany” (U. of Michigan Press, 2015)
09 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When I first read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish as an undergrad, I remember wondering, “What does this look like, though? How might the discipl...
James Rodger Fleming, “Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology” (MIT Press, 2016)
26 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book about the future – the historical future as three interconnected generations of atmospheric researchers experienced it and envisioned...
Peter Wade, et. al. “Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America (Duke UP, 2014)
02 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past quarter-century, scientists have been mapping and exploring the human genome to locate the genetic basis of disease and track the histor...
Sabine Arnaud, “On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sabine Arnaud‘s new book explores a history of discursive practices that played a role in the construction of hysteria as pathology. On Hysteria: Th...
Miranda Brown, “The Art of Medicine in Early China: The Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Miranda Brown‘s new book takes a sustained look at the role and significance of the medical fathers in the historiography of Chinese medicine. Payin...
Gabriel Mendes, “Under the Strain of Color: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
15 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In his 1948 essay, “Harlem is Nowhere,” Ralph Ellison decried the psychological disparity between formal equality and discrimination faced by Blac...
Michael F. Robinson, “The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent” (Oxford UP, 2016)
03 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Michael F. Robinson‘s new book is such a pleasure to read, I cant even. It’s not just because you get to say Gambaragara over and over again if yo...
Rebecca Lemov, “Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity” (Yale University Press, 2015)
27 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Lemov‘s beautifully written Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity (Yale University Press, 2015) is at once an exploration o...
David J. Meltzer, “The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of Americas Ice Age Past” (U Chicago Press, 2015)
26 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
David J. Meltzer‘s new book is a meticulous study of the controversy over human antiquity in America, a dispute that transformed North American arch...
Sigrid Schmalzer, “Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China” (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
11 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sigrid Schmalzer‘s new book is an excellent and important contribution to both science studies and the history of China. Red Revolution, Green Revol...
Justin E. H. Smith, “Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy” (Princeton UP, 2015)
02 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nat...
Carin Berkowitz, “Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform” (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Carin Berkowitz‘s new book takes readers into the world of nineteenth century London to explore the landscape of medicine and surgery along with Cha...
Erik Linstrum, “Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire” (Harvard UP, 2016)
30 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire (Harvard University Press, 2016), Erik Linstrum examines how the field of psychology was employed in...
Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015)
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Janet Gyatso‘s new book is a masterfully researched, compellingly written, and gorgeously illustrated history of medicine in early modern Tibet that...
Nick Hopwood, “Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud” (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
30 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Hopwood‘s Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (University of Chicago Press, 2015) blends textual and visual analysis to answer t...
Jorg Matthias Determann, “Researching Biology and Evolution in the Gulf States: Networks of Science in the Middle East” (I. B. Tauris, 2015)
29 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jorg Matthias Determann‘s new book looks at the history of modern biology in the Arab Gulf monarchies, focusing on the treatment of evolution and re...
Anita Guerrini, “The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
04 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Anita Guerrini‘s wonderful new book explores Paris as a site of anatomy, dissection, and science during the reign of Louis XIV between 1643-1715. Th...
James E. Strick, “Wilhelm Reich, Biologist” (Harvard UP, 2015)
06 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“Life must have a father and mother…Science! I’m going to plant a bomb under its ass!” The author of the line above – who scrawled it in his...
Federico Marcon, “The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan” (U of Chicago, 2015)
22 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Federico Marcon‘s new book opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan’s relationship to its natural environment. The Knowledge of Nature...
Dana Simmons, “Vital Minimum: Need, Science, and Politics in Modern France” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
15 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Dana Simmons‘s marvelous and thoughtful new book takes on a question that many of us likely take for granted: “What is a need; what is a want, a d...
Kelly J. Whitmer, “The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: Observation, Eclecticism, and Pietism in the Early Enlightenment” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
30 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Kelly J. Whitmer‘s new book offers a history of science set in the Halle Orphanage, a building that was founded in the middle of the 1690s in the Pr...
Eva Hemmungs Wirten, “Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information” (U of Chicago, 2015)
01 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When we study the history of a famous scientific figure – especially one that has gone on to become a cultural icon – we are dealing not just with...
Raf De Bont, “Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870-1930” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
24 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
While museums, labs, and botanical gardens have been widely studied by historians of science, field stations have received comparatively little attent...
Meredith K. Ray, “Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy” (Harvard UP, 2015)
08 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
According to sixteenth-century writer Moderata Fonte, the untapped potential of women to contribute to the liberal arts was “buried gold.” Explori...
Kocku von Stuckrad, “The Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800-2000” (De Gruyter, 2014)
06 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Science and religion are often paired as diametric opposites. However, the boundaries of these two fields were not always as clear as they seem to be ...
James A. Secord, “Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)
03 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
James A. Secord‘s new book is both deeply enlightening and a pleasure to read. Emerging from the 2013 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography at the Cambri...
M. Alper Yalcinkaya, “Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State, and Society in the 19th-Century Ottoman Empire” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
15 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What were Ottomans talking about when they talked about science? In posing and answering that question (spoiler: they were talking about people), M. A...
Benjamin Schmidt, “Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
19 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Schmidt‘s beautiful new book argues that a new form of exoticism emerged in the Netherlands between the mid-1660s and the early 1730s, than...
Christopher J. Phillips, “The New Math: A Political History” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
26 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher J. Phillips‘ new book is a political history of the “New Math,” a collection of curriculum reform projects in the 1950s & 1960s that...
A. Mark Smith, “From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
21 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A. Mark Smith‘s new book is a magisterial history of optics over the course of two millennia. From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Moder...
Nick Wilding, "Galileo's Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge" (U Chicago Press, 2014)
16 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Wilding's new book is brilliant, thoughtful, and an absolute pleasure to read. Galileo's Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and The Politics of Knowled...
Nick Wilding, “Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge” (U Chicago Press, 2014)
15 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Wilding‘s new book is brilliant, thoughtful, and an absolute pleasure to read. Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and The Politics of Know...
Donna J. Drucker, “The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organization of Knowledge” (University of Pittsburg Press, 2014)
10 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Donna J. Drucker is a guest professor at Darmstadt Technical University in Germany. Her book The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organiza...
Orit Halpern, “Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945” (Duke UP, 2014)
09 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The second half of the twentieth century saw a radical transformation in approaches to recording and displaying information. Orit Halpern‘s new book...
Kimberly A. Hamlin, “From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America” (U Chicago Press, 2014)
23 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Kimberly A. Hamlin is an associate professor in American Studies and history at Miami University in Oxford Ohio. Her book from Eve to Evolution: Darwi...
Matthew Stanley, “Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon: From Theistic Science to Naturalistic Science” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)
10 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“Show me how it doos.” Such were the words of a young James Clerk “Dafty” Maxwell (1831-79), an inquisitive child prone to punning who grew in...
Nicolas Rasmussen, “Gene Jockeys: Life Science and the Rise of Biotech Enterprise” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)
30 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nicolas Rasmussen‘s new book maps the intersection of biotechnology and the business world in the last decades of the twentieth century. Gene Jockey...
Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain, “Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)
16 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In lucid prose that’s a real pleasure to read, Karen Rader and Victoria Cain‘s new book chronicles a revolution in modern American science educati...
Daniel Margocsy, “Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
09 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Margocsy‘s beautiful new book opens with a trip to Amsterdam by Baron Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, and closes with a shopping spree by Pet...
Lawrence Lipking, “What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution” (Cornell UP, 2014)
05 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Lawrence Lipking‘s new book, What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2014) examines the role of imagination...
John Tresch, “The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon” (U Chicago Press, 2014)
30 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
After the Second World War, the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs described National Socialism as a triumph of irrationalism and a “destruction of reas...
David Wright, “Downs: The History of a Disability” (Oxford UP, 2011)
30 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
David Wright‘s 2011 book Downs: The History of a Disability (Oxford University Press, 2011), offers readers a history that stretches far beyond the...
Mary-Jane Rubenstein, "Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse" (Columbia UP, 2014)
29 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Where can the the boundaries of science, philosophy, and religion be drawn? Questioning the nature of the universe is an excellent place to rethink ho...
Michael Osborne, “The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
11 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Michael Osborne offers a new way to think about and practice the ...
Daryn Lehoux, “What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
16 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Daryn Lehoux‘s new book will forever change the way you think about garlic and magnets. What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and World...
Gregory Smits, “Seismic Japan” (University of Hawaii Press, 2013)
16 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In two recent books, Gregory Smits offers a history of earthquakes and seismology in Japan that creates a wonderful dialogue between history and the s...
David N. Livingstone, “Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
06 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
David N. Livingstone‘s new book traces the processes by which communities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that shared the sam...
Alice Conklin, “In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850-1950” (Cornell UP, 2013)
29 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Host Jonathan Judaken and author Alice Conklin discuss the thorny relationship between science, society, and empire at the high water mark of French ...
Craig Martin, “Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
14 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Craig Martin‘s new book carefully traces religious arguments for and against Aristotelianism from the eleventh through the eighteenth centuries. Bas...
Jane Maienschein, “Embryos Under the Microscope: The Diverging Meanings of Life” (Harvard UP, 2014)
12 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we study the history of science? Historians of science don’t just teach us about the past: along with philosophers of science, they also help...
Omar W. Nasim, “Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
02 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In Omar W. Nasim‘s new book, a series of fascinating characters sketch, paint, and etch their way toward a mapping of the cosmos and the human mind....
Marwa Elshakry, “Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
23 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The work of Charles Darwin, together with the writing of associated scholars of society and its organs and organisms, had a particularly global reach ...
Richard Yeo, “Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
14 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
During the Great Fire of London in September 1666, Samuel Pepys went out to the garden and dug some holes. There he placed his documents, some wine, a...
Robert Mitchell, “Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2013)
16 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Mitchell‘s new book is wonderfully situated across several intersections: of history and literature, of the Romantic and contemporary worlds,...
David Kaiser, “How the Hippies Saved Physics” (W.W. Norton, 2012)
02 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
David Kaiser‘s recent book is one of the most enjoyable and informative books on the history of science that you’ll read, full-stop. The deservedl...
Michael Pettit, “The Science of Deception: Psychology and Commerce in America” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
19 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Parapsychology. You may have heard of it. You know, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis. Spoon-bending and that sort of thing. If you...
Robert J. Richards, “Was Hitler a Darwinian?: Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
21 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In his new collection of wonderfully engaging and provocative set of essays on Darwin and Darwinians, Robert J. Richards explores the history of biol...
Gabriel Finkelstein, “Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany” (MIT Press, 2013)
14 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
“A good wife and a healthy child are better for one’s temper than frogs.” For Gabriel Finkelstein, Emil du Bois-Reymond was “the most importan...
Angela N. H. Creager, “Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
07 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Angela Creager‘s deeply researched and elegantly written new book is a must-read account of the history of science in twentieth-century America. Lif...
Sarah S. Richardson, Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
27 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Men and women are different, there’s no doubt about it. And you might well want to know what the root of that difference is. What makes a man a man ...
Todd H. Weir, “Monism: Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview” (Palgrave, 2012)
25 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
I always learn something when I interview authors, but in this chat with Todd H. Weir I learned something startling: I’m a monist. What is more, you...
Steven Usitalo, “The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian National Myth” (Academic Studies Press, 2013)
13 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Mikhail Lomonosov is a well known Russian figure. As poet, geographer, and physicist, Lomonosov enjoyed access to the best resources that 18th century...
Adam R. Shapiro, “Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Anti-Evolution Movement in American Schools” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
27 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
During the 1924-25 school year, John Scopes was filling in for the regular biology teacher at Rhea County Central High School in Dayton, Tennessee. Th...
Tim Maudlin, “Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time” (Princeton UP, 2012)
17 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Tim Maudlin‘s Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time (Princeton University Press, 2012) is a clear, approachable, and engaging introduction to the ph...
T. J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes, eds., “Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History” (Harvard UP, 2012)
29 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
T. J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes have produced a volume that will change the way we learn about and teach the history of health and healing in Ch...
Alisha Rankin, “Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany” (U. Chicago Press, 2013)
18 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Dorothea was a widow who treated Martin Luther, the Duke of Saxony, and throngs of poor peasants with her medicinal waters. Anna was the powerful wife...
Nathaniel Comfort, “The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine” (Yale UP, 2012)
05 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
“This is a history of promises.”So begins Nathaniel Comfort‘s gripping and beautifully written new book on the relationships between and entangl...
Maki Fukuoka, “The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in 19th-Century Japan” (Stanford UP, 2012)
22 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Zograscope. Say it with me: zograscope. ZooooOOOOOoooograscope. There are many optical wonders in Maki Fukuoka’s new book The Premise of Fidelity: ...
Alexandra Hui, “The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910” (MIT Press, 2013)
30 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910 (MIT Press, 2013), Alexandra Hui explores a fascinating chapter of that...
Nicholas Popper, Walter Ralegh’s History of the World and the Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
01 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Nicholas Popper‘s new book is a thoughtfully crafted and rich contribution to early modern studies, to the history of history, and to the history of...
Sean Cocco, “Watching Vesuvius: A History of Science and Culture in Early Modern Italy” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
28 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The story starts on a high-speed train and ends with six men in a crater, with hundreds of years and a number of explosions in between. Sean Cocco‘s...
Lawrence M. Principe, “The Secrets of Alchemy” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
18 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What is alchemy? Who were the alchemists, what did they believe and do and dream, and what did they accomplish? Lawrence M. Principe‘s new book expl...
Matthew Wisnioski, “Engineers for Change: Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America” (MIT Press, 2012)
26 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In his compelling and fascinating account of how engineers navigated new landscapes of technology and its discontents in 1960s America, Matthew Wisnio...
E. C. Spary, “Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris, 1670-1760” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
18 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
By focusing on food and eating from the dinner table to the laboratory, E. C. Spary‘s new book shows how an increasingly public culture of knowledge...
Audra J. Wolfe, “Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America” (Johns Hopkins, 2013)
04 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Audra Wolfe‘s new book, Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America (John Hopkins University Press, 2013) off...
Joel Isaac, “Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn” (Harvard UP, 2012)
28 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine the academic world as a beach. The grains of sand making up the beach are the departments, institutes, and other bodies and related gatherings...