A spellbinding, rich history of the American Enlightenment-think 1776 meets The Metaphysical Club.

How did the fact become modernity's most favored unit of knowledge? How did description come to seem separable from theory in the precursors of economics and th

A short, provocative book about why "useless" science often leads to humanity's greatest technological breakthroughs A forty-year tightening of funding for scie