The Lunar Men : Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World

Rating:
Summary: First Rate Book on Intellectual History
Review: A fantastically intriguing book for anyone with a decent sense of science and the industrial revolution who wants to explore a finely researched set of biographical stories about a group of the earliest of the wild amateur experimenters. The Lunar Society's remarkable set of characters (Darwin's grandfather, Priestley, Watt, Wedgwood) are like a who's who of the famous. The reading is a wonderful dive into the heady days of a new cultural paradigm similar to the recent silicon valley and dot.com phenomena. Literally everything they touched turned to gold.....a great story of a small group of thinkers who were in the right place at the right time to make a marvelous series of things happen.

Rating:
Summary: too long
Review: At half the length this would be a dandy group biography. But we see too much of the Lunar Men away from each other, too much of their children, too much domesticity. This drags after a while, and obscures the main point of interest: the men themselves, as a group and a fellowship.

Rating:
Summary: First Rate Book on Intellectual History
Review: Excellent book on a fascinating group of men. It is interesting the realize the close connection between these brilliant people, and it is interesting learning about the lesser known members of the circle, who made important contributions in the history of science.

Rating:
Summary: Scientific Friends Sparking the Industrial Revolution
Review: Many books, especially Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, have given insight into the London club and coffee house conversations devoted to literature and wit. At the same time were meeting in the city of Birmingham a diverse group of men who were involved in scientific efforts for their careers, and even more importantly, were pushing scientific investigation into all areas as a hobby, and who met for what one called "a little philosophical laughing." They called themselves the Lunar Society, because they had their meetings (dinner at two, continuing into the night) every month on a date near the full moon. (This was not a convention merely for scientific men; music concerts and assemblies were customarily clustered within the nights of the month when a bright moon might assist the audience in getting home.) They are the subject of _The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), a large and detailed history by Jenny Uglow. Uglow has given us a look at London in her fine biography of Hogarth a few years ago; now we have Birmingham, and the boundless optimism of serious scientific amateurs. Uglow demonstrates that they really did change the world, bringing on the industrial revolution and making science the way to get things done.

The locale of Birmingham in the eighteenth century was made for such bustling men, for manufacturing had taken hold. One of the Lunar Men was Matthew Boulton, who at age eighteen invented just the thing for fashion, the inlaying of steel buckles with enamel. He became an industrialist whose patronage helped further the inventor James Watt. Watt was busy as a young man trying to prevent the primitive steam engines from wasting energy, and having done that spent his life perfecting them, installing them around the country, and trying to keep others from stealing his ideas. Josiah Wedgwood, the great manufacturing potter, also had a practical interest in science in such matters as regulating his kilns. He also had a particular interest in the Lunar Men's project of the canal system, which was a focus for their technological and geological enthusiasms, as a way of getting raw materials to his factories and finished wares to London. Perhaps the figure most central within the book is Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the founder of the theory of evolution. Erasmus himself had a primitive idea about evolution, and his ideas about competition were similar to those of Malthus, who would inspire Charles Darwin's central thesis. Joseph Priestley experimented with gases and identified oxygen (under the eventually discarded phlogiston theory), as well as discovering the fundamentals of photosynthesis and inventing soda water. He was as well a dissenting minister, within the Unitarian church, and his house was burned by the mobs rioting against intellectualism (there were fears that the philosophers would institute changes like those of the French Revolution), and his eventual self-exile to America was a mark of the end of the Lunar Men's most active time.

Uglow gives wonderful personal details about these men and a multitude of minor characters. The amazing detail here represents a triumph of careful scholarship and digging into letters, chapbooks, and forgotten volumes. The Lunar Men helped form their society in significant ways; Uglow is very good, however, in showing historic influences on them, and a reader will learn plenty here about the American and French Revolutions, as well as the Industrial one, and in science, the revolutionary schemes of Linnaeus and Lavoisier. Best of all, this is a preservation of remarkable friendships cemented by the happy communal activity of learning things and experimenting.

Rating:
Summary: Creators of the Industrial Revolution
Review: The best history books are those that place the subject squarely in the time period; those that reproduce the thought patterns and day-to-day details which make the subject come alive. With The Lunar Men, Jenny Uglow has achieved a masterpiece of historical writing. She manages -- by following the lives of five exceptional individuals who lived and worked during the second half of the Eighteenth Century -- to weave together strands of the incipent Industrial Revolution as disparate as the advances in medical sciences (Dr. Darwin); progress in pottery and porcelain manufacture (Wedgwood); improvements to the steam engine (Boultin and Watt); evolving philosophy and social science (Day); chemistry; the discovery of oxygen and other chemical components (Dr. Priestley); advances in electricity; canal building in the Midlands; patent law. These individuals live and breathe, literally step out of the page. Her sources are very extensive and for the most part original (letters, etc.). The style is elegant and very readable, and (as one would expect from a professional editor) every sentence is a gem.

This book shows what historical writing can be, and it places Ms. Uglow in the Pantheon of modern historical writers such as the late Barbara Tuchman, Paul Johnson, Norman Davies, John Julius Norwich. I hope it is the beginning of a long series of books on historical subjects by the same author.

It's the book any reader of history would have liked to write.

Rating:
Summary: No main character, or story line ¿ but what a great read
Review: There are many very good books on the broad subject of the History of Science. This is different to most if not all, in that there is both no central character, and no story to tell. If that sounds like a book that is doomed to failure, then you are wrong, because these two seemingly negative points are precisely its very strong points. Perhaps Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz were the last two natural philosophers (read 'scientists') who were able to encompass vast swathes of the then knowledge in their work, and be seen to be almost all embracing. Such action by one individual was not possible in subsequent times.

Enter the group centred in the midlands of England in the 3rd quarter of the eighteenth century, the so-called Lunar men, named after their meetings, scheduled to co-incide with full moons. The well-researched and scholarly work charts the areas that they experimented upon, discussed, presented and wrote about, but in all these activities, they were a prolific bunch. Seeds of later work is evident in some of the publishings of Erasmus Darwin (Grandfather of the more well-known Charles Darwin, of the Beagle, Galapagos Islands and 'The Origin of the Species' fame) and others. The loosely formed group, with some central characters, but many others on the fringes, had a central creative role in the many strands of scientific thought, down to the current day.

I knew none of the main characters very well beforehand, but had enormous enjoyment finding fleeting references to people and places that I am more familiar with - John Harrison and his work on chronometers has a quick cameo appearance, for example. Your points of contact will be different to mine, but you will not be disappointed. It is these references to other events (the American War of Independence) that place the book in context. What appears is not that the other events and people are anchors for the activities of the Lunar men, more that Erasmus Darwin, Joshia Wedgewood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, James Keir, Thomas Day etc. set the other events into context.

Use this book as a jumping off point to explore both earlier and later scientific advances. It will lead you onwards to amazement at the extent of the amateur scientists involvements, and an understanding of whether science influences society, or whether society influences science. There is no story, yet many stories, no central character, but multiple heroes. As a group, they succeeded, affected they way society moved, and had a good deal of fun along the way, whilst working very hard. Enjoy their story.

Peter Morgan ([e-mail]) 16/5/2004

Rating:
Summary: Great Idea...The Construction is Lacking
Review: There is much to enjoy about Jenny Uglow's "The Lunar Men". Here, we have the tale of a group of men, known to each other, who truly helped shape the modern world. The names are a "whose who" of early Industrial Age science and industry: James Watt, Erasmus Darwin (yes, the grandfather to Charles), Josiah Wedgewood and Joseph Priestley amongst others. It would have been marvelous to have been in the company of these men; to have been a fly on the wall at their meetings.

Yet, for all the wonder that these names invoke, Jenny Uglow's work fails to provide the reader with a true sense of understanding. The book's theme or direction is not clear. She seems to jump about without explanation and the reader is left to catch up. This is a great shame. Indeed, if the events could have been more succinctly tied together, "The Lunar Men" could have been a great book. As it is, the concept is great but the follow through is lacking.

My recommendation to readers is that the book be read (albeit only with luke warm encouragement) but beware that a theme is missing and no one character stands out. This is a pity as the concept behind the book is grand.


Rating:
Summary: Makers of the Modern World
Review: This extraordinarily well researched book about some extraordinary men is a wonderful discourse on the impact of the few on the many. It is a big book, richly filled with its illustrations and portraits, passionate for its subject, and a machine for readers wishing to be transported to another, most glorious, era. The time is the early industrial revolution in England and Scotland, and the men are the inventors and scientists, movers and shakers, who transformed England from a pastoral society into the cutting edge, world class industrial power.

Foremost among them were James Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton, masters of the dramatically improved steam engine, which was to be critical in the parade of innovations to come. Erasmus Darwin and William Small, inventors of all sorts of peculiar things, performed the essential sociological act of keeping the circus of contacts going and diplomatically holding the center. And Priestly, discoverer of early chemical science, inventor of soda pop, makes his majestic performance in the drama. And we can even behold the trapeze-work of such lesser known figures as Keir and Wedgewood, who developed the business practices that finally got large scale industry churning. Hardly making an appearance in this treatise are the churchmen, politicians, activists for the poor, and other clowns and negativists who impotently resisted them.

This book is not just about the innovations of these men, but about their character, philosophy, and political views during those tumultuous, even riotous times. And characters they must have been. In this book you'll discover all of the weaknesses and trivialities that made them human, and the romance and perseverance that made then heroes. How I should like to have known them!

These men, and they were all men, we discover in Uglow's book, worked the rough edges of wealth and bankruptcy all their lives. The risks they took seem almost unimaginable today, with all of its restrictions, safety committees and assorted paranoias.

This is a real feast for anyone interested in discovering the courage and intelligence of these Northern Europeans, and the story of their headlong rush to transform the world.

Rating:
Summary: Makers of the Modern World
Review: This extraordinarily well researched book about some extraordinary men is a wonderful discourse on the impact of the few on the many. It is a big book, richly filled with its illustrations and portraits, passionate for its subject, and a machine for readers wishing to be transported to another, most glorious, era. The time is the early industrial revolution in England and Scotland, and the men are the inventors and scientists, movers and shakers, who transformed England from a pastoral society into the cutting edge, world class industrial power.

Foremost among them were James Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton, masters of the dramatically improved steam engine, which was to be critical in the parade of innovations to come. Erasmus Darwin and William Small, inventors of all sorts of peculiar things, performed the essential sociological act of keeping the circus of contacts going and diplomatically holding the center. And Priestly, discoverer of early chemical science, inventor of soda pop, makes his majestic performance in the drama. And we can even behold the trapeze-work of such lesser known figures as Keir and Wedgewood, who developed the business practices that finally got large scale industry churning. Hardly making an appearance in this treatise are the churchmen, politicians, activists for the poor, and other clowns and negativists who impotently resisted them.

This book is not just about the innovations of these men, but about their character, philosophy, and political views during those tumultuous, even riotous times. And characters they must have been. In this book you'll discover all of the weaknesses and trivialities that made them human, and the romance and perseverance that made then heroes. How I should like to have known them!

These men, and they were all men, we discover in Uglow's book, worked the rough edges of wealth and bankruptcy all their lives. The risks they took seem almost unimaginable today, with all of its restrictions, safety committees and assorted paranoias.

This is a real feast for anyone interested in discovering the courage and intelligence of these Northern Europeans, and the story of their headlong rush to transform the world.