Books like The Age of Wonder by Holmes, Richard

Richard Holmes vividly documents the final decades of the eighteenth century, when a wave of British explorers and scientists carried the flame of inquiry across oceans and into the heavens. Beginning with Joseph Banks’s 1769 Tahitian voyage aboard Cook’s Endeavour, the narrative follows a succession of expeditions—astronomical, chemical, and philosophical—that framed the era as the Age of Wonder. Holmes centers on three pivotal scientists: botanist Banks, astronomer William Herschel and his sister Caroline, and chemist Humphry Davy. Their work, from Herschel’s telescopic discoveries reshaping our view of the Milky Way to Davy’s triumphs in gas chemistry and the miner’s lamp, propelled Britain to the forefront of scientific research. The book also explores how religious conviction and empirical investigation intersected, revealing a period of intense intellectual fervor and boundary‑pushing achievement.

First publish date: 2009