Author: Kevin Twohig

The period surrounding the American Revolution is rife with opportunity for scholars to investigate ideological and political trends that contributed to the shaping of the United States in its formative years. Susan Branson does that just that in her book, Scientific Americans, an exploration of the intersection of scientific thought and education with national identity in American history with emphasis on the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Branson received her PhD from Northern Illinois university in 1992 and has earned several awards and grants, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is currently a professor of history at Syracuse University who specializes in early American history with an emphasis on society and culture, science, and women.

Scientific Americans argues that ideology alone is not enough to affect real change and, thus, there are other factors in play, like scientific thought and motivation, which act on and with ideology. The ideology of early America worked with the increasing interest in and emphasis on scientific education drove a desire for Americans to seek change through what they felt was improvement at all levels of society. Ultimately, “developing technology was a national endeavor” (198) which became a central part of American life and society at all levels. Branson makes these arguments in six chapters which range in scientific and cultural topics from the 1790s through the antebellum period with a conclusion that focuses on American society during its centennial celebration.

In the first chapter, interest in informal knowledge sharing and acquiring became more prevalent and available for a variety of Americans, not only rich, educated elites. These ideas were built upon the groundwork laid early in some of America’s colonies, such as by William Penn and later Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania who both believed in the capacity of improvement through collective effort possible through scientific education. Mass education at formal levels was still largely exclusive to select elites, but knowledge-sharing and dissemination of practical information was practiced regularly through printing, primarily through almanacs which focused on useful and applicable information such as astronomy, weather, and farming. Men formed philosophical societies and engaged in sociable events to promote the discussion and demonstration of scientific discovery. Women, too, participated in knowledge acquisition and engagement through reading, attending public lectures, and even private experimentation, though often through the application of household duties.

Chapter two discussed the increasing ambition of young America as it related to scientific efforts and achievements, most notably air travel in the form of the air balloon. The ability to fly had always captured the imaginations of humans, but especially after the first successful flight of a balloon in Paris. Many Americans witnessed this flight, others both successful and not, through illustrations in almanacs. Not long after did Americans begin their own balloon flights in amusement for the general populace but also as a demonstration of the ability and possibility of scientific endeavors. Balloons became a pervasive symbol of American pride and celebration in the early nineteenth century and came to represent the rising and falling ambitions of politicians. There were even thoughts of potentially weaponizing balloons as Americans approached the outbreak of the Civil War.

Chapter three explored the drive and fascination of Americans with machines, especially in the search for a machine operated by perpetual motion. Steam power became what believed was the first step in discovering perpetual motion through machines that improved the efficiency and output of America’s manufacturing and travel industries. So great was this fascination that many in the public were eager to buy into the claims of men like Charles Redheffer who convinced many that he had developed a machine that operated on perpetual motion. Steam was, however, real and far more imagination-capturing, especially in the rise of “The speculative fiction of the early nineteenth century [which] posited a vanished natural world replaced by steel, concrete, and robots” (98). Machines were yet another aspect of the various and seemingly unavoidable effects of science on American culture.

Chapter four demonstrated the realities behind the “speculative fiction” which imagined a world changed and reshaped by scientific ambition and power. American ingenuity became a driving force for perceived progress which led to the stunning and zealous efforts to affect the landscape for development of cities and infrastructure. These efforts were most often focused on changing the access and use of water and waterways. The early nineteenth century saw the development of public water and sewage in cities, the building of the Erie Canal, and eventually the beautification of public spaces with fountains and ponds. Meanwhile, as discussed in chapter five, while the efforts of water works provided tangible goods, the practice of phrenology preyed on a dangerous and persistent mindset in America. Phrenology, the claim “that an individual’s character and talents could be determined by examining the size and shape of the head” (124), became a force for sinister efforts to justify and promote racist ideology and practices. Advocates were often distinguished men of medical practices who spoke and demonstrated publicly phrenological practices in cities across America. The work around phrenology was used in a variety of ways, but most damagingly against non-white race, particularly African Americans, to demonstrate innate inferiority of other races. The drive for progress and ambition for a greater America were not always so noble.

The final chapter shows the culmination of the pervasiveness of science in society through the public celebrations and showcases of the nineteenth century in extravagant fairs and in public-facing institutions. Institutions like the Franklin Institute and the American Institute worked to demonstrate, once again, the possibilities of progress through science by showing the public what was achievable or imaginable through small public fairs. Fairs thus grew to become the natural home of large exhibitions to show off cutting-edge science and prototypes that were often more influential in culture than in science itself.

Branson’s argument and evidence work together so well that they fall together naturally and need virtually no further persuasion to convince the reader that the promotion of science and technology in America has been inextricably linked with national identity and ideas of progress. Scientific Americans is well researched and well written, illuminating moments in early American history which are often represented in a manner which obscures the driving forces Branson articulates or which have been forgotten almost entirely. Her conclusions work to show that these forces have been in American minds from the start and have only changed, never disappeared. The only place where Scientific Americans seemed to lack is in a consistent and regular inclusion of the affect and role of the different marginalized groups – women, African Americans, and Indigenous people – which was argued would be the case in the introduction. Branson fell a bit short of this goal, though likely not due to a lack of effort; however, this aspect of her argument should not have been presented so forwardly based on the final product as information came intermittently and as confirming the exception of this kind of history rather than the rule.

Often in the discussion and exploration of the history of science, scholars find themselves engaged to some degree in the history and application of mathematics as well. This understanding of mathematical applications and their communication in history often allows historians to better recognize exchanges and production of information necessary in the development of the Scientific Revolution as a concept. Benjamin Wardhaugh attempts just that in his work, Poor Robin’s Prophecies. Wardhaugh is a historian of mathematics with interests in history, science, math, and music who earned his PhD at Hertford College, Oxford. He is currently the Quondam Fellow at the All Souls College at Oxford University.

Poor Robin’s Prophecies tracks the history of mathematics, specifically the transmission and use of mathematical information as it concerned the average, less educated person living in England in the eighteenth century. Using mathematics with a focus on the ordinary English people, Wardhaugh hopes to elucidate the aspects of life surrounding this information, such as application of the information, how calculations could go wrong and what effect that had on people, how everyday people learned and understood math, and how math could be used for entertainment. Through these questions and lenses, Wardhaugh endeavors to show the many ways math was used and understood by those who fell below the class and academic strata of royalty, gentry, and academics like Isaac Newton. The book is organized into eight chapters, each covering some aspect of popular mathematical application in the eighteenth century.

The first chapter introduced the argument and angle of the book through an explanation of the background of almanacs, most especially a popular humor almanac, Poor Robin’s Almanac. Almanacs were often used by people to understand some aspect of life, usually involving weather, seasons, farming, calendars, and astrology which would affect the everyday lives of ordinary people frequently. These almanacs became so widely understood and used by the end of the seventeenth century that some began publishing almanac parodies for humor and entertainment, often emulating the formulaic prescriptions and advice of traditional almanacs to become more politically and socially savvy as a means of entertaining readers and irking some in positions of power. The topics covered often revolved around themes that utilized some form of mathematics, like astrology, “so if we wish to know about popular mathematics in this period, it’s astrology we must look at” (7). Astrology provided a way to create jokes that people could only understand with basic knowledge of mathematics, more often how complicated it was and how often mathematicians would get things wrong thus demonizing complicated calculations for predicting in general. The second chapter continued the focus on mathematical mistakes and subsequent distrust and ridicule at the everyday level with a look at predictions and prescriptions of math in events such as a solar eclipse in 1699 and the South Sea Bubble financial crisis. These events were written about and discussed in not only almanacs, but also newspapers, pamphlets, and textbooks which utilized math in order to explain to readers their importance and impact. These disastrous events in particular damaged the reputation of math and its practitioners for decades in England among the general populace.

The third chapter outlined examples of formal instruction of math from the view of two children as well as those who wrote instructional material for use in teaching. These particular children learned arithmetic from Spitalfields Mathematical Society in workbooks filled with notations and work by the children and their instructors. While these workbooks provide a different view into the world of math at this time, the practical application of it, discussed in chapter four, further expanded motivation behind learning through potential use, even in spite of earlier mentioned skepticism. The first and most obvious example of everyday use of math was in personal accounting, such as was kept in the family of Margaret Frank for several generations, a not unusual phenomenon which showed the access of basic mathematical understandings by women. Accounting also extended beyond one home to provide a profession which allowed someone to use math to keep records of transactions for individuals, families, and businesses. Another example of common use given was surveying which utilized specialized tools and math in order to measure and plot land. Thus, as professions like these became more common in the early eighteenth century, almanacs began to engage with practical math once more, “inserting into their publications mathematical information intended to be of practical use” (113).

Chapters five and six focused more on the beauty and reason of math and its ability to precisely explain and quantify nature. In print culture of the eighteenth century, math could be used to explain reason instructionally, but also creatively such as in stories, but also in puzzles which entertained and engaged a wider variety of people beyond gentry and professionals. Social organizations, like the Gentleman’s Society of Spalding, were also created and united in knowledge-sharing practices, often based in mathematical pursuits and related disciplines. These knowledge-based organizations promoted the flow of ideas in an age of “Newtonianism” where mathematical understanding was applied to the natural world as a means of explaining order. Math, therefore, became as much a philosophy as a discipline. In chapter seven, the philosophy of math became the basis of debate beyond social circles to those of larger application, including navigation and military endeavors in order to gain some form of advantage. However, Wardhaugh argued in the first chapter, the fun of math was the topic of chapter eight. Thus, math’s popularity was to blame for ideas of statistical fun in the case of the state lottery or logic puzzles found in publications. In all such cases and examples throughout the book, Wardhagh contended, math provides a unique lens into the lives and society of those in eighteenth century England which held a complicated relationship with the discipline that faced ridicule and respect and was applied in both reason and jest.

Poor Robin’s Almanac is an odd book with a unique subject. Wardhaugh appears to have written a book both focused on and distracted by some combination of math and publication in eighteenth century England. The work is clearly presented as a work of popular writing seeming to emulate the almanacs it intermittently discusses throughout in order to present a fairly rudimentary topic of modes of knowledge sharing especially as it related to math. However, Wardhaugh presents his argument without any formal introduction or conclusion and with a somewhat incoherent flow of information. Most alarmingly though is the lack of any substantial sourcing; the book contains less than six pages of notes for the eight chapters and those notes included are haphazardly and informally written for each chapter which, as the author notes, is not even “an exhaustive list of sources used or consulted” (238). While there is much to criticize, the topic itself is an interesting one, but one that should be more thoroughly and explicitly researched and written more formally to provide a sound and clearly verified basis of information.

Historian Walter W. Woodward presents a unique and novel view of seventeenth-century New England in his 2010 book, Prospero’s America. In this book, he reframes colonial New England Puritan culture and life based on the life of John Winthrop, Jr., son of the first Massachusetts Bay governor and governor in his own right of Connecticut, and his Winthrop’s primary interest in religio-scientific pursuits through alchemy, a foundational piece of the developing New England culture of the time.

Woodward is a historian of Early America and the Atlantic world with a particular focus on public history and the history of Connecticut. Woodward earned his B.A. in English from the University of Florida, his Master’s in History from Cleveland State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut where he later became a professor until his recent retirement in 2022. In addition to his professorship, Woodward served as the Connecticut State Historian, now emeritus, and was the fifth person to serve the role. Woodward’s career in history began later in his life, originally working in the music and advertising industries before pursuing higher education; this tardy career change did not show signs of suffering in his historical work as Prospero’s America demonstrated with its generally positive reception and its winning the Homer D. Babbidge, Jr., Award from the Association for the Study of Connecticut History.

Prospero’s America unfolded the story of seventeenth-century New England through the life of Winthrop and his influence on the region especially in his intellectual, primarily alchemical, interests. The first two chapters lay out this influence by exploring the origins of alchemical practice as well as the succeeding historical views on alchemy as a pseudoscience which either showed flawed attempts at transmutation to get rich or vanity in believing they could reveal God’s secrets about the natural world. Woodward developed a third view of alchemy through understanding Winthrop’s life and motivations that “Christian alchemy,” as Woodward termed it, “fully embraces the goal of economic gain but simultaneously recognizes that such pursuits neither ruled out nor contrasted with the pursuit of alchemy for religious ends” (12). Part of why Winthrop provided a unique and proper lens for this view was his trans-Atlantic ties and his immersion in the opportunities only afforded in New England at the time. For one, New England was “abundant with land and natural resources” (41) which made practical experimentation more likely. Additionally, the ideas developing in the region, primarily in Connecticut as a direct response and departure from the practices of Massachusetts at the time, such as “Puritan Neoplatonism” as well as Winthrop’s engagement with other European thinkers promoted an intellectual culture in New England over time which mingled equally with the existing religious and entrepreneurial ideas of the time.

Chapters 3-5 develop on the background of the first two to show the forming of a new intellectual center in Connecticut; quite literally, the forming of a “New London” with Winthrop leading the way. Winthrop’s plan was to found and settle a new city at a prime location disputed by Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay which would serve as an economic and intellectual hub based around alchemical experimentation and practice. The idea of this new settlement helped to distinguish Connecticut from Massachusetts Bay by highlighting, through Winthrop’s plans, the divergence in cultural approach and pursuit of intellectual endeavors, especially as they related to religious ideas. Thus, Connecticut history becomes less of “a pastoral and largely insignificant mirror of the history being written to the north and east in Massachusetts Bay” (92). New London also served to highlight physical and political conflict between the colonies as well as with Native American Indians, particularly the Pequots and the Mohegans. Despite sustained conflict, New London did eventually take hold, in no small part due to Winthrop’s vision of alchemy’s influence, growing economic stability, and Winthrop’s own reputation built up through his own efforts as well as through the connections made possible in part due to alchemy, such as with Jonathan Brewster’s experiment which eventually attracted more attention, and people, to New London.

The last three chapters focus more on different aspects of Winthrop’s life and career as even more reflection of the importance and influence of Christian alchemy in colonial Connecticut during this time. Once again, Winthrop’s view of the importance of alchemy, particularly as it related to medical practices, made him a widely-sought physician that helped further develop New London and Connecticut as a whole. This was one major aspect of how alchemy fit into the larger network-building practice of the time, as was also featured in Elaine Leong’s Recipes and Everyday Knowledge. This same network would further help Winthrop build credibility and power in the community which he utilized to turn Connecticut’s aggressive witch trials around in 1660s, virtually stopping almost single-handedly. This, too, played a key role in Winthrop’s continued effort through his participation in and eventual leadership of the Royal Society at Whitehall to show his colony’s deference to the crown while also subtly asserting its autonomy. Ultimately, these factors served as prime examples of the interconnectedness of the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the machinations of cross-Atlantic politics.

Woodward’s work is highly engaging and extremely compelling in the way he structures his argument in Prospero’s America. He is thoroughly convincing in the integral relationship between natural philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge with the developing politics and culture, primarily between England and the New England colonies. Woodward also convincingly argued for Connecticut’s importance in its own right and separate development from Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially through Winthrop. Uniquely, despite the throughline provided by a heavy reliance upon his writings, Winthrop features more as a vehicle for understanding the culture of the period rather than being the absolute focus of the work. Additionally, Woodward, as he expounds in the introduction, crafts a history which supersedes any one specific topic of history, such as science and politics; it is this amalgamated story which he argues, and rightfully so, that the story of Winthrop, Connecticut, and the centrality of alchemical and “scientific” exploration in many aspects of New England life provides a quite unusual but no less important understanding of culture of New England colonies of the seventeenth century.

Once in a blue moon, a discovery in historical records may reveal monumental findings which reshape the way scholars think about and interpret events of the past; Robyn Arianrhood is one such contributor to one of these great rediscoveries in lost information. Arianrhood is an Australian researcher and scholar who specializes in general relativity theory and the history of mathematics. She is an adjunct research fellow at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University. Though not a historian by trade, Arianrhood’s scientific and mathematical interests have led her to write books on key figures in the world of science. These include Seduced by Logic about two female mathematicians, Émilie du Châtelet and Mary Somerville, who proved highly influential to scientific developments, especially as related to Isaac Newton, and Einstein’s Heroes about the influence of James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Newton’s scientific discoveries on Albert Einstein. Her latest work, Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science, brings new light to the titular forgotten man of science in the early days of the discipline.

Early in the book, Arianrhood professes the importance of the intellectual fervor of Harriot and argues that telling the story of his life and discoveries help “fill in some of the gaps in our picture of that transitional era” (2) in the development of modern science. His contributions are especially important “because of the quality and versatility of his best work, which, like Newton’s, spanned a range of topics, mathematical, theoretical, and experimental” (3). Many of these discoveries took place contemporaneously to the minds of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei and prior to the likes of Newton and René Decartes, to all of whom he worked in similar fields of discovery as well as others. His interests knew no bounds, from linguistics to optics and refraction to population growth estimates and others still. Truly a peculiar man of intellectual history, most puzzling is how his discoveries and works were never learned of until fairly recently, the most important question which Arianrhood works to recover and share in this cohesive and accessible biography.

Acknowledging that not much record existed of Harriot’s early life, Arianrhood briefly described Harriot’s character and background, from a “plebian” family in England, Harriot was able to improve his lot in life by receiving a degree from Oxford and moving to London where he managed to attract the attention and patronage from the eclectic Walter Raleigh. The first several chapters discussed their relationship and the work Harriot did for Raleigh, including working on navigational methods in preparation for one of Raleigh’s first of many trips to the Americas and, after their return, learning the Algonquin language as well as developing a universal phonetic alphabet to use to write in the Carolina Algonquin language. Harriot eventually made his way to America himself during the trip where Raleigh had attempted to create the first English colony on Roanoke Island, a trip where Harriot recorded some of the first interactions between the English and Native American Indians. Association with Raleigh led to Harriot’s introduction to Henry Percy, the 9^th Earl of Northumberland, who became Harriot’s long-term patron which gave him the ability to explore any and all intellectual pursuits he desired. At around the same time, Harriot was pulled into the first of many controversies related to Raleigh, this being accusations of atheism, a serious charge in Elizabethan England.

Beginning with chapter twelve, Arianrhood, detailed Harriot’s scientific and mathematical developments under Northumberland’s patronage. Harriot continued to work through issues with navigation, exploring the use of the heavens as well as exploring the issues with cartographic representations of the world and their use in sailing. In addition, he began to branch out into other areas of science beginning with a fascination with optics and the refraction of light. He also developed a system of symbolic algebra, more closely related to modern day expressions of mathematics, in order to express his ideas in the sciences accurately and concisely then the traditional “rhetorical” algebra of his day. In the meanwhile, Harriot’s association with Raleigh led to more dire problems as both – as well as Northumberland – became implicated in the infamous Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Harriot was imprisoned for several weeks but released due to extremely tenuous evidence. Raleigh and Northumberland, more controversial and higher-status men, were still held imprisoned in London Tower. Despite the imprisonment of his friend and patron, Harriot was still looked after by Northumberland, allowing Harriot to continue his work in which he further explored the nature of light through rainbows, and then further still to the heavens once more. His increased interest in astronomy led to his corresponding with Johannes Kepler who acted as one of his intellectual sounding-boards for ideas and discoveries, including mapping the surface of Earth’s moon and the discovery of Jupiter’s contemporaneous to Galileo. Raleigh once again inadvertently caught Harriot up in another controversy before Raleigh’s execution in 1618, a deeply troubling event for Harriot. Harriot continued to work through his issues and interests in sciences making several important breakthroughs despite his failing health. In 1621, Harriot succumbed to cancer that had spread through his body. Arianrhood closes the work with an exploration of the numerous volumes of work that Harriot had developed but never published which subsequently disappeared for centuries, only to be finally rediscovered in the ancestral home of Harriot’s patron, Northumberland.

Despite the lack of coverage in much of the past, Arianrhood is able to reconstruct an extremely thorough view of this intellectual giant largely lost to history. She vehemently and persuasively argued that much of the work that Harriot had done was truly foundational to much of the works of other great men of science if only they had been discovered. She acknowledges that because much of his work was never published, Harriot was little more than a footnote for some and unknown to many of his scientific and mathematical successors. Overall the book provides an entertaining, engaging, and enlightening view of early modern England and the origins of modern science. The material, despite being highly technical and quite niche, is fairly accessible to most readers, a consequence of Arianrhood’s goal to write this as a popular history in order “to join [other scholars’] efforts by bringing Harriot to a general readership” (6). Arianrhood is by no means the first to reveal the work or history of Harriot, a point she acknowledges several times, citing most influentially the work of historian John W. Shirley who wrote about Harriot in 1983 and on whose work Arianrhood relied most heavily. This is the basis for the strongest criticism of Arianrhood’s work; despite its lofty topics and noble goal, the work is not the most scholarly from a historical perspective, relying mostly on synthesis of secondary sources and lacking generally throughout on endnote citations. To clarify, this by no means should deter a reader from grabbing this book off the shelf as it is quite a good work, but it by no means should be the last stop on exploration of the life and work of Harriot. Additionally, paucity of evidence available can be excused somewhat by the nature of the person discussed as well as the difficulty of the topics which need to be explained to any layperson who wishes to read the work.

The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Kepler’s Fight for his Mother was written by Ulinka Rublack, a German historian of sixteenth and seventeenth century culture in Europe. Rublack received her PhD in history at the University of Cambridge where she has also taught history since 1996. Her research has earned several prestigious awards and recognitions including a lifetime achievement award, the Reimar-Lüst Prize, from the Humboldt and Thyssen Foundations. The research and scholarship for The Astronomer and the Witch also earned her the Deutsche Historikerpreis, Germany’s highest historical award. Rublack, a scholar of cultural history, focuses much of her work in material and religious culture of Europe during her period of study.

Rublack’s The Astronomer and the Witch highlighted the intersectionality of several aspects of life in the region occupied by modern-day Germany during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries through the witch trail of famous astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mother, Katharina. The work explored the religious conflict and theology in the post-Reformation German states, the nature of witches and witch trials, the lives of women, particularly widows, and the effects of scientific thought during the period. One major focus of the book, a story woven throughout as a means to discuss the earlier-mentioned themes, was how Johannes’ relationship with his mother, particularly during the trial, “[recasts] our sense of Johannes Kepler himself” (8).

Rublack began the story by setting the scene of the region and period through explaining Katharina’s life. Katherina grew up in sixteenth century Eltingen during tense theological debates following the Reformation. She married a merchant’s son, Heinrich Kepler whom she had four children with before he left them in 1589. Background of Katharina’s life was followed by a description of the life of a woman named Sybille, wife of the Duke Frederick of Württemberg. The anecdote showed the life in a Lutheran court and intermingling of noble interests with science and religion. Rublack, too, highlighted the frenzy of witches and witchcraft, particularly focusing in on the year 1615 in Württemberg, the time and place Katharina was accused, to assert the complexities of witchcraft accusations as they “were not made in the poorest areas and cannot be explained as a simple scapegoating mechanism in villages” (75). These early elements served to set up the background and environment in which Johannes Kepler lived and worked which, as Rublack contended, influenced Kepler’s scholarship, beliefs, and skills.

The main portion of the book was dedicated to the trial of Katharina more directly, utilizing archival documents as well as the writings Kepler, especially to his family members. The trial, firstly, emphasized the complex interconnectedness of life in German communities as accusations required the trust and confidence of peers and betters in order to build cases of condemnation or defense, such as Christoph had tried early after Katharina was accused of witchcraft. Additionally, the importance of reputation and education was displayed plainly through Johannes’ involvement. Kepler’s prestige and education allowed him to contact ducal councillors who indeed helped Kepler and his mother. Kepler was able to become Katharina’s guardian through the trial, a requirement during this time as women needed a man to act on their behalf in courts. During his guardianship of his mother and throughout the trial, Kepler wrote about his thoughts on the cosmos and their relationship to God which served to help him reflect on his own relationship with his mother, complex feelings which humanized Kepler and cast him in a slightly varied light. In fact, throughout the whole account of the trial, Kepler’s character and skill was constantly shifting in minute ways, especially towards the end as he worked even harder in conjunction with family and colleagues to mount a persuasive defense of his mother. Rhetoric might usually prove to be an unusual skill for a figure renowned as a mathematician and astronomer but given the trial and its relation to and influence on Kepler, as well as the time and circumstances of his life, make far more sense.

Rublack presented The Astronomer and the Witch as a microhistory, “designed to complement our sense of this period by taking us into the Lutheran world as the Reformation came of age, celebrated its first centenary in 1617, and moved into the Thirty Years’ War” (306). She compared her work to other traditional microhistories, most famously the story of Menocchio described in The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg; however, The Astronomer and the Witch is in some too grand to be a true microhistory. It certainly contains the main ingredients for a microhistory as the core of the history lies in the account of a specific case which serves to relate the vast intersectionality of themes and topics of the period, ranging between gender relations, theological debates, and natural philosophy/science as a discipline as compared to Kepler’s own approach.

The focus on the trial of Kepler’s mother does, at times, feel as just that, a trial about Kepler’s mother. The book grants much of its time and space to Kepler, his upbringing, and his work and scholarship as they engaged with the events of the period. It also works, as Rublack asserted, to recast Kepler, becoming in some chapters very biographical. These are not detractions from the work; on the contrary, these scholarly choices help to ground the book in something – or rather, someone – that is familiar to far more people than some of the other themes and people in the book. The extremely thorough research and excellent writing style masterfully weaves these many elements together in a way that gives the reader a far greater historical understanding than one might get from a straightforward biography.

The only criticism that one could perhaps derive from the work is its breadth versus depth. A traditional microhistory would likely be more focused on depth of understanding in one or two specific historical elements to derive meaning; The Astronomer and the Witch ties in far more which can, at times, confuse the story and take the reader down several themes at once. This issue could likely be best solved by reorganizing chapters to follow themes more rigidly or perhaps narrowing the scope of the topics discussed slightly. This is, however, a minor issue and one that does not too significantly detract from the overall skill in scholarship demonstrated by Rublack in her depiction of Johannes Kepler, the post-Reformation period, and witch trials.