Book of the week: The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes

Richard Holmes upends current notions of the Romantic Era in his "hugely enjoyable” new book about the enthusiasm for scientific discovery during the late-18th and early-19th centuries.

(Pantheon, 552 pages, $40)

In December 1783, nearly half a million­ Parisians assembled in the Tuileries Gardens to watch inventor Jacques Alexandre Charles attempt the first manned flight of a hydrogen balloon. The experiment did not disappoint. Over the next two hours, Charles and his assistant flew north some 27 miles and touched down gracefully in front of another waiting crowd. But when Charles’ assistant stepped out in Nesle, the balloon shot skyward, taking its frightened inventor with it. He ascended to 10,000 feet before regaining control. “Never,” he said later, “has a man felt so solitary, so sublime—and so utterly terrified.” Charles chose never to fly again, says author Richard Holmes, but the ­episode captured the spirit of the age.

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