Editor |
Barrett, Andrea |
Year |
2013 |
First published |
2013 |
Language |
English |
Publisher |
New York: W.W. Norton |
ISBN |
9780393240009 |
Number of pages |
238 |
Edition |
First |
Keywords |
scientist main character, biology, women in science, physics, historical, evolution |
Abstract
<p>During the summer of 1908, twelve-year-old Constantine Boyd is witness
to an explosion of home-spun investigation—from experiments with
cave-dwelling fish without eyes to scientifically bred crops to
motorized bicycles and the flight of an early aeroplane. In 1920, a
popular science writer and young widow tries, immediately after the
bloodbath of the First World War, to explain the new theory of
relativity to an audience (herself included) desperate to believe in an
“ether of space” housing spirits of the dead. Half a century earlier, in
1873, a famous biologist struggles to maintain his sense of the
hierarchies of nature as Darwin’s new theory of evolution threatens to
make him ridiculous in the eyes of a precocious student. The
twentieth-century realms of science and war collide in the last two
stories, as developments in genetics and X-ray technology that had once
held so much promise fail to protect humans—among them, a young American
soldier, Constantine Boyd, sent to Archangel, Russia, in 1919—from the
failures of governments and from the brutality of war. <em></em></p>
<p><em>Author’s webpage</em><br /></p>
<p> </p>