“Beautifully Written and Elegantly Composed….Outstanding”—ISIS

A very nice review of The Philosophical Breakfast Club just appeared in ISIS, the journal of the History of Science Society:

“The Philosophical Breakfast Club is a beautifully written and elegantly composed story….[The book] presents a wonderful portrait of science and university life in the period—the trials and tribulations of trying to be a scientist before professionalization. It nicely evokes the broad interdisciplinary that was taken for granted then and is so rare now. Its contextualization of the first half of the nineteenth century in Britain is outstanding, and it is highly successful in showing the deep intertwining of culture and society with the club members’ work….

“This book will be extremely useful for teaching, students, and interested laypeople. It would be an excellent text for a survey of modern science, a science and society class, or even a course on the history of Britain….”

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About the Author

Laura J. Snyder, Ph.D., is a science historian, philosopher and writer whose most recent book, The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science and Changed the World, was an Official Selection of the TED Book Club, a Scientific American Notable Book, and winner of the 2011 Royal Institution of Australia Poll for Favorite Science Book. Snyder is Professor of Philosophy at St. John's University in New York City and writes frequently about science and ideas for The Wall Street Journal. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a Life Member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, and Past President of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science.   She is currently working on a book about how new optical technologies in the 17th century revolutionized not only science, but also art and the rest of culture. Follow Laura Snyder on Twitter and Facebook.

Laura J. Snyder