September 18, 2017
Biographer and science writer Maddox (Rosalind Franklin) follows the trails of multiple Victorian geologists in this account of the era popular avocation and pastime. Maddox proffers general overviews of the field, which book-end a series of minibiographies that focus on noteworthy figures from 19th-century British geology and their contributions to modern understandings of Earth’s structure. Leading lights such as Charles Lyell, whose 1830 publication of Principles of Geology spurred interest in the field, and Charles Darwin star in multiple chapters, while other lesser-known figures, including Mary Anning and Roderick Murchison, only feature once. By following several people, Maddox allows readers to see the rise and fall over time of particular ideas regarding geology. Unfortunately, she stumbles a bit in describing the many intersections of those lives. The individual chapters are well written and accessible, but taken as a whole there is a lot of overlap in how the material is discussed. Events repeat as individuals move in and out of each other’s lives, and there are also passages in the text that are near duplicates of each other. Interspersed contemporaneous poems on geologists add some extracurricular interest, but better treatments of these people and ideas already exist.
September 1, 2017
The word "scientist" is Georgian, but the scientific habit of mind is Victorian--and quite British, as this popular history ably shows.Award-winning biographer Maddox (Freud's Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis, 2007, etc.) nicely blends literary and scientific biography in this study of 19th-century British geology and its practitioners, some of them poets as well as naturalists. Against the modern backdrop of evolution denial and the 6,000-year-old Earth, Maddox notes that the science had "been introduced at Oxford expressly in order to prepare the many students about to enter the Church to defend religion against science." Indeed, she adds, some of the foremost early British geologists were clerics, not least among them Charles Darwin. The revolutionary central ideas about the Earth that Charles Lyell, James Hutton, Mary Anning, Louis Agassiz, and other early scientists formulated or added ammunition to were not just that Earth was unfathomably old, and far older than the biblical genealogy of Archbishop James Ussher--the one creationists now follow--could permit, but also that "all matter is atomic" and that all things evolve through processes of natural selection. Reading the rocks, as Maddox's title would have it, reveals as much, but geology also gave material support and inspiration to scientists in other areas, including Darwin. Writing in accessible if sometimes overly dutiful prose, the author observes that the rise of these sciences helped bring the Romantic era to an end, for "no one cared about an individual perception but rather knowledge that could be exchanged as data and, as in scientific practice, duplicated and replicated." Maddox's investigation lacks the dazzling heft of John McPhee's Annals of the Former World (1998), but it makes for a gentle introduction to early modern natural history, one of the last eras in which a gentleman (or gentlewoman) scholar might ever hope to have a solid grasp of every branch of science.
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October 1, 2017
Stones may not speak, but they have quite a the? story to tell. As Maddox outlines in this engaging group biography, the early years of the science of geology were filled with lively debates and fascinating characters. In nineteenth-century Britain, geology was a young but important field of study, with its potential for uncovering the secrets of the history of the planet and its practical use for discerning the location of valuable coal deposits. The study of rocks and fossils, with its rugged, outdoorsy application, attracted all types of enthusiasts, including clergymen, women, and a certain naturalist named Charles Darwin. The stakes were high as this community debated the tension between the accepted biblical account of an Earth 6,000 years old and the increasing evidence that lifeand, perhaps, even some ancestors of modern humanshad been around for much longer. With her practiced biographer's eye, Maddox distills the scientific exploration of these matters into the stories of the vibrant pioneers who pushed to increase our understanding of the world's long history and humanity's place in it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
June 15, 2017
How did Darwin write On the Origin of Species without knowledge of genetics or biochemistry? Maddox (Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA) offers an answer. Using Victorian geologist Charles Lyell's career as a central theme, the author supplies vignettes that explain evolution's foundations through three 19th-century geological principles: the Earth is extremely old; the biblical flood never occurred; and species come and go. With silky prose, Maddox opens the world of gentleman geologists, enriching the text with social and historical background, quotes, and poetry. She also emphasizes the contributions of women and those not independently wealthy. However, there are several minor flaws: Maddox does not mention that uniformitarianism allows for natural cataclysms and asserts that genomics, not big data and computer simulation, revolutionized modern paleontology. Despite these issues, this is an accessible, enjoyable, and authoritative read. VERDICT Anyone curious about evolution, geology, or paleontology's roots won't want to miss this work, especially fans of Rob Wesson's Darwin's First Theory and Edmund Blair Bolles's The Ice Finders.--Eileen H. Kramer, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston
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