Subject archive: history of science

Below is a list of all book reviews under the subject heading of history of science published to date in reverse chronological order. Click here to return to the subject menu or click here to return to the list of all reviews.

  1. Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography
  2. The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science
  3. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? How Eighteenth-Century Science Disrupted the Natural Order
  4. Kingdoms, Empires, & Domains: The History of High-Level Biological Classification
  5. Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
  6. The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus
  7. The Story of Earth’s Climate in 25 Discoveries: How Scientists Found the Connections Between Climate and Life
  8. Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould
  9. Metamorphosis: How Insects Are Changing Our World
  10. Mysteries of the Deep: How Seafloor Drilling Expeditions Revolutionized Our Understanding of Earth History
  11. Full Fathom 5000: The Expedition of HMS Challenger and the Strange Animals It Found in the Deep Sea
  12. Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species
  13. On the Organic Law of Change: A Facsimile Edition and Annotated Transcription of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Species Notebook of 1855-1859
  14. Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace
  15. Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest: The Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger and the Birth of Modern Oceanography
  16. Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science
  17. The Age of Mammals: Nature, Development, & Paleontology in the Long Nineteenth Century
  18. The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet
  19. The Art and Science of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
  20. The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning
  21. The Greywacke: How a Priest, a Soldier and a Schoolteacher Uncovered 300 Million Years of History
  22. Paleontology: An Illustrated History
  23. Scientist: E. O. Wilson: A Life in Nature
  24. Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis
  25. Land of Wondrous Cold: The Race to Discover Antarctica and Unlock the Secrets of Its Ice
  26. Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
  27. On the Origin of Evolution: Tracing ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ from Aristotle to DNA
  28. The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries: The Evidence and the People Who Found It
  29. The Genesis Quest: The Geniuses and Eccentrics on a Journey to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth
  30. A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane
  31. Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
  32. Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene
  33. A Polar Affair: Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero and the Secret Love Lives of Penguins
  34. Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle
  35. American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie’s Plaster Diplodocus
  36. An Atlas of Geographical Wonders: From Mountaintops to Riverbeds
  37. Why North is Up: Map Conventions and Where They Came From
  38. Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations
  39. The Weather Machine: How We See Into the Future
  40. Gravity’s Century: From Einstein’s Eclipse to Images of Black Holes
  41. Unravelling the Double Helix: The Lost Heroes of DNA
  42. The Story of the Earth in 25 Rocks: Tales of Important Geological Puzzles and the People Who Solved Them
  43. The Art of Animal Anatomy: All Life is Here, Dissected and Depicted
  44. King of the Dinosaur Hunters: The Life of John Bell Hatcher and the Discoveries that Shaped Paleontology
  45. Luminous Creatures: The History and Science of Light Production in Living Organisms
  46. Volcanoes: Encounters Through the Ages
  47. Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity
  48. Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go
  49. The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
  50. The Tectonic Plates are Moving!
  51. She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
  52. The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet
  53. Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth
  54. Creatures Born of Mud and Slime: The Wonder and Complexity of Spontaneous Generation
  55. Patrons of Paleontology: How Government Support Shaped a Science
  56. Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome with CRISPR-Cas9
  57. Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past, 1830-1980
  58. Discovering the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science