Quicksilver

I just finished reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Quicksilver is the first of three books in Stephensons Boroque Cycle, followed by The Confusion and The System of the World. I gotta tell ya, that this is one of the most interesting, well-written, imaginative books I've read in quite a while.

Quicksilver is a period fiction that is completely amazing. It introduces us to a fictional character named Daniel Waterhouse, and takes us through many stages of his life, from his early college years at Cambridge to his latter years at a fledgling MIT- with a bunch of revolution, demise of kings, pirates, and open warfare in between. Just as St. Johns teaches within the context of the "great books" Stephenson breathes life into the Natural Philosophers, and helps us climb into the great minds of Hyugens, Newton, Leibniz.

Stephenson uses a three-part book to bring the late 1600s to life- touching on art, religion, science, mathematics with skill- explaining calculus, astronomy, anatomy-within the context of what the men who first ventured into these areas might have been thinking about. His dialog, and his characters' candid discussion of philosophy help us to imagine what it must have been like to peer into a telescope and predict the movement of planets, to perform scientific dissections, to write new geometric theory- all within shifting religious and political climates.

Stephenson manages to infuse this action-packed story with comedy, drama, scientific and mathematical thought, romance, and cryptography, while intertwining poetry, and references to John Donne and John Bunyon.

I'm going to Borders to buy The Confusion.