Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Richard Holmes’s dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement.

The story opens with Joseph Banks, a botanist on Captain Cook's first voyage, setting foot on a Tahitian beach in 1769, expecting to find Paradise. In Britain, the same Romantic revolution that inspired Banks prompted other great thinkers on their own missions of artistic and scientific discovery - astronomical, chemical, poetic, philosophical - which together constituted the 'age of wonder'.

In this astonishing group biography, Richard Holmes tells the stories of the period's celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries: from telescopic vision to the miner's lamp, and from the first hot-air balloon flight to the exploration of Africa.

Pages: 380, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm