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Review
Highly entertaining . . . [Voltaire's] life emerges as a gloriously adventurous interweaving of slapstick, cops-and-robbers chases, exploding privies and rags-to-riches stunts (SUNDAY TIMES )
Their story is chattily told... [and] full of relish for the escapades in it . . . Irresistible (FT MAGAZINE )
He has taken up one of the great stories of the period, a potent mix of romance, science and history . . . there is never a dull moment (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
Bodanis vindicates emilie impressively (LITERARY REVIEW )
Their story is chattily told... [and] full of relish for the escapades in it . . . Irresistible (FT MAGAZINE )
He has taken up one of the great stories of the period, a potent mix of romance, science and history . . . there is never a dull moment (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
Bodanis vindicates emilie impressively (LITERARY REVIEW )
DAILY TELEGRAPH
'[Bodanis] has taken up one of the great stories of the period, a potent mix of romance, science and history . . . there is never a dull moment'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Émilie du Châtelet was a mathematician, a theoretical physicist, and a philosopher. She and Voltaire were lovers for several years, and they remained devoted friends for the remainder of Émilie's short life.
This is a story a writer of fiction would hardly dare invent. Romance, political intrigue, duels, financial scams, complex machinations with royalty and their hangers-on; Émilie's life would seem extraordinary even without her significant contributions in mathematics and physics. This is a woman who translated Newton's "Principia", not just from Latin into French, but also casting the equations into a far more comprehensible calculus. And she did that in the last months of her life, during the pregnancy that she sensed would kill her.
Bodanis has an easy, highly readable style. The book has fairly copious end notes, and while I found myself wishing for more details of Émilie's work, they would have made the book much longer, and perhaps diluted its effect. He includes a long and inviting list of further reading. The one thing I felt the book lacked was an index; there are so many people named, and sometimes I wished I could quickly find where they'd appeared earlier in the book.
After her death, Voltaire wrote of her,
"I have lost the half of myself--a soul for which mine was made".
The story of this astonishing woman moved me more than many a novel.
This is a story a writer of fiction would hardly dare invent. Romance, political intrigue, duels, financial scams, complex machinations with royalty and their hangers-on; Émilie's life would seem extraordinary even without her significant contributions in mathematics and physics. This is a woman who translated Newton's "Principia", not just from Latin into French, but also casting the equations into a far more comprehensible calculus. And she did that in the last months of her life, during the pregnancy that she sensed would kill her.
Bodanis has an easy, highly readable style. The book has fairly copious end notes, and while I found myself wishing for more details of Émilie's work, they would have made the book much longer, and perhaps diluted its effect. He includes a long and inviting list of further reading. The one thing I felt the book lacked was an index; there are so many people named, and sometimes I wished I could quickly find where they'd appeared earlier in the book.
After her death, Voltaire wrote of her,
"I have lost the half of myself--a soul for which mine was made".
The story of this astonishing woman moved me more than many a novel.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is the first biography that I have ever read and it has certainly pursuaded me of the merits of the genre. I have studied french political thought of the period but reading this book gave me a whole new insight into the consequences suffered by those, Emilie and Voltaire, who wished to take thinking and understanding forward. The style in which it is written avoids all the pitfalls of dry academic text as the story captures the imagination and takes you forward. The best of all worlds.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Long before I read this book, three features had placed it firmly at the top of my Christmas hint list. First, it is set in my favourite period: that mid-eighteenth century era of artistic and scientific advancement that was to become known as The Enlightenment; secondly, because I knew its author's previous work, E=mc², which, despite its academically-sounding title, is the gripping story of Einstein's most famous discovery; and finally because I had heard its author speak fervently about it at the Hay Literature Festival.
The book's cover does not reveal - unless you recognise their pictures - that the "passionate minds" referred to are those of France's foremost woman physicist, Emilie du Châtelet, and the country's unquestioned literary genius, François-Marie Arouet - better known as Voltaire. The book is the story of their tempestuous affair.
Voltaire was a financial genius as well as a literary one, his astute investments ranging from importing Egyptian cotton via Marseilles in order to avoid import taxes - to rigging the State lottery to ensure that he acquired every ticket. His independent wealth gave his writing a devil-may-care quality: his characters skip from one subject to another like bees in a lavender patch, while his ironic humour and refusal to submit to censorship would sometimes gravely offend the King or the Church - and often both - causing him to spend much of his life either in the Bastille prison or in exile in England or Switzerland.
Emilie's genius showed itself in a more scholarly form, beginning by translating into French the theories of the 17th century English scientist, Isaac Newton, and later by devising experiments that challenged his conclusions.
For more than a decade, despite the fact that Emilie remained married to the Marquis of Châtelet-Lomont, she and Voltaire lived together in one of her husband's châteaux at Cirey, a small village in north-eastern France. Surprisingly, their intense relationship was punctuated by extra-curricular affairs by both parties: Emilie's part-time lover was the Marquis of Saint-Lambert, father of the child whose birth was the cause of her early death, while Voltaire's main dalliance was with his niece, Marie-Louise - to whom he returned after Emilie's death.
Although seldom mutually faithful, the partnership at Cirey was both collaborative and productive. Voltaire wrote many satirical poems, plays and essays there, establishing himself as the virtual chronicler of the Enlightenment movement, many of whose ideals are now enshrined in the European constitution. Emilie's researches were to result in the posthumous publication of her Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a work now generally recognised as a major contribution to contemporary physics.
There is much to enjoy in Passionate Minds: it is an eighteenth century biography told in Romantic style; sympathetically, yet humorously, written, and scrupulously researched. It would make a great BBC costume drama.
Theirs was truly a passionate meeting of minds, an alliance that was best summarised in the words of Voltaire himself after Emilie's death: "I have lost half of myself".
The book's cover does not reveal - unless you recognise their pictures - that the "passionate minds" referred to are those of France's foremost woman physicist, Emilie du Châtelet, and the country's unquestioned literary genius, François-Marie Arouet - better known as Voltaire. The book is the story of their tempestuous affair.
Voltaire was a financial genius as well as a literary one, his astute investments ranging from importing Egyptian cotton via Marseilles in order to avoid import taxes - to rigging the State lottery to ensure that he acquired every ticket. His independent wealth gave his writing a devil-may-care quality: his characters skip from one subject to another like bees in a lavender patch, while his ironic humour and refusal to submit to censorship would sometimes gravely offend the King or the Church - and often both - causing him to spend much of his life either in the Bastille prison or in exile in England or Switzerland.
Emilie's genius showed itself in a more scholarly form, beginning by translating into French the theories of the 17th century English scientist, Isaac Newton, and later by devising experiments that challenged his conclusions.
For more than a decade, despite the fact that Emilie remained married to the Marquis of Châtelet-Lomont, she and Voltaire lived together in one of her husband's châteaux at Cirey, a small village in north-eastern France. Surprisingly, their intense relationship was punctuated by extra-curricular affairs by both parties: Emilie's part-time lover was the Marquis of Saint-Lambert, father of the child whose birth was the cause of her early death, while Voltaire's main dalliance was with his niece, Marie-Louise - to whom he returned after Emilie's death.
Although seldom mutually faithful, the partnership at Cirey was both collaborative and productive. Voltaire wrote many satirical poems, plays and essays there, establishing himself as the virtual chronicler of the Enlightenment movement, many of whose ideals are now enshrined in the European constitution. Emilie's researches were to result in the posthumous publication of her Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a work now generally recognised as a major contribution to contemporary physics.
There is much to enjoy in Passionate Minds: it is an eighteenth century biography told in Romantic style; sympathetically, yet humorously, written, and scrupulously researched. It would make a great BBC costume drama.
Theirs was truly a passionate meeting of minds, an alliance that was best summarised in the words of Voltaire himself after Emilie's death: "I have lost half of myself".
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Passionate Minds, Dull Book
This reader did not venture upon Passionate Minds with unreasonable expectations: a good yarn featuring an enlightened cast was all. Sadly, the effort was not worth the result. Read more
Published on 4 Aug 2007 by Rampaging Hippogriff
Not what I expected
David Bodanis has written some great science books, but this is something different. I was disapointed by it because I expected to read more about science, but it is mostly about... Read more
Published on 15 July 2006 by Charlie T.
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