Yale Press Log: "Elegant and erudite," Harkness' Jewel House is a gem

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In an enthusiastic review in the American Scientist, history professor Anthony Grafton praised Deborah E. Harkness and her book The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. Grafton says, "She has charted the local and cosmopolitan worlds of science in Elizabethan London with a learning, precision and intelligence that compel admiration. Like the instrument makers who nested near St. Paul's, moreover, she has crafted a shiny, complex and effective new analytical mechanism—one that may well transform the practices of historians of early modern science, if others can muster the courage and energy to follow her example and analyze in similar depth and detail the scientific worlds of Florence, Nuremberg, Antwerp and Paris."

This captivating book is the first to focus on the array of ordinary men and women who shared a keen interest in nature and scientific inquiry in Elizabethan London. Throughout the vibrant city, lawyers, prisoners, midwives, merchants, and others developed the tools and techniques, as well as the collaborative yet contentious culture, that became the hallmarks of the Scientific Revolution.