Edward Dolnicks smoothly written history of the scientific revolution tells the stories of the key players and events that transformed society.Charlotte Observer

From New York Times bestselling author Edward Dolnick, the true story of a pivotal moment in modern history when a group of strange, tormented geniusesIsaac Newton chief among theminvented science and remade our understanding of the world.

At a time when the world was falling apart in an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of Londona group of men looked around them and saw a world of perfect order. Chaotic as it looked, these earliest scientists declared, the universe was in fact an intricate and perfectly regulated clockwork. This was the tail-end of Shakespeares century, and these were brilliant, ambitious, confused, conflicted men. They believed in angels and alchemy and the devil, and they believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws. This is the story of the bewildered geniuses who made the modern world.