Every quarter the British Journal for the History of Science posts a new list of books received on the journal’s website. This can be accessed, along with achieved lists from previous quarters, at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/information/books-received

The journal is interested in commissioning reviews and essay reviews from established academics, emeriti, doctoral students and independent scholars. Prospective reviewers are encouraged to browse the books received list and contact the reviews editor. The reviews editor is also open to suggestions for reviews of books either not on the list, or forthcoming, provided they have been published within the past two calendar years. All enquiries should be directed to [log in to unmask]


Alberti, Fay B., This Mortal Coil: The Human Body in History and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 289. ISBN 978-0-19-959903-5. £20.00 (hardback).

Albritton, Vicky, and Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton. Green Victorians: The Simple Life in John Ruskin’s Lake District. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 209. ISBN 978-0-226-33998-6. £28.00 / $40.00 (cloth). 

Amedeo, Avogadro, (A cura di Ciardi, Marco & Di Mattero, Mariachiara; Presentazione di Conte, Alberto), Relazioni Accademiche. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2016. Pp. xl + 151. ISBN 978-88-222-6437-4. €25,00 (paperback).

von Baeyer, Hans Christian, QBism: The Future of Quantum Physics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. 257. ISBN 978-0-6-674-50464-6. £18.95 (hardback).

Bala, Arun, and Duara, Prasenjit (eds.), The Bright Dark Ages: Comparative and Connective Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. 289. ISBN 978-90-04-26418-2. €115.00 / $149.00 (hardback). 

Beckett, Jon, Nottingham: A History of Britain’s Global University. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, and Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 2016. Pp. xii + 552. ISBN 978-1783271214. £30.00 (hardback).

Bernhardt, Chris, Turing’s Vision: The Birth of Computer Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Pp. 189. ISBN 978-0-262-03454-8. £19.95 (cloth).

Betts, Paul, and Smith, A. Stephen (eds.), Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. 307. ISBN 978-1-137-54638-8. £60.00 (hardback). 

Birkhead, Tim (ed.), Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby FRS (1635-1672). Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xxv + 439. ISBN 978-90-04-28531-6 € 150.00 / $194.00 (paperback).

Blair, Ann, and Goeing, Anja-Silvia (eds.), For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016. Pp. lxxvii + 1082. ISBN 978-90-04-26330-7. €243.00 / $315.00 (hardback). 

Botley, Paul, Richard ‘Dutch’ Thomson, c. 1569-1613: The Life and Letters of a Renaissance Scholar. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xv + 385. ISBN 978-90-04-30824-4. €150.00 (paperback).

Bowker, Geoffrey C., Timmermans, Stefan, Clarke, Adele E., and Balka, Ellen (eds.), Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Pp. 548. ISBN 978-0-262-52808-5. £28.95 (paperback).

Broomhall, Susan (ed.), Gender and Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Destroying Order, Structuring Disorder. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. 267. ISBN 978-1-4724-5327-3. £70.00 (hardback).

Broomhall, Susan (ed.), Spaces for Feeling: Emotions and Sociabilities in Britain, 1650-1850. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Pp. 241. ISBN 978-1-138-82817-9. £31.99 (paperback).

Broomhall, Susan, & Finn, Sarah (eds.), Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. Pp. 213. ISBN 978-1-138-85402-4. £90.00 (hardback). 

Collins, Peter, The Royal Society and the Promotion of Science since 1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xxi + 333. ISBN 978-1-107-02926-2. £84.99 / $135.00 (hardback).

Cunningham, P. Jack, and Hocknull, Mark (eds.), Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages. Switzerland: Springer, 2016. Pp. 306. ISBN 978-3-319-33466-0. £86.00 (hardback).

Cypess, Rebecca, Curious & Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. xix + 307. ISBN 978-0-226-31944-5. £38.50 / $55.00 (cloth)

Decamp, Eleanor, Civic and Medical Worlds in Early Modern England: Performing Barbery and Surgery. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. 277. ISBN 978-1-137-47155-0. £58.00 (hardback).

Doel, E. Ronald, Harper, C. Kristine, and Heymann, Matthias, Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. xiii + 311. ISBN 978-1-137-59687-1. £63.00 (hardback).

Doron, Claude-Olivier, L’Homme Altere. Ceyzerieu: Champ Vallon, 2016. Pp. 587. ISBN 979-10-267-0096-8. €29.00 (paperback).

Ede, Andrew, and Cormack, B. Lesley, A History of Science in Society: From Philosophy to Utility. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. Pp. xvi + 437. ISBN 978-1-4426-3499-2. $54.95 (paperback).

Elcott, M. Noam, Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 306. ISBN 978-0-226-32897-3. $45.00 (cloth).

Flandreau, Marc, Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-226-36044-7. $35.00 (paperback). 

Gay, Hannah, and Griffith, William P., The Chemistry Department at Imperial College London: A History, 1845-2000. London: Imperial College Press, 2016. Pp. x + 490. ISBN 978-1-78326-973-0. £45.00 / $68.00 (hardcover).

Gingerich, Owen, Copernicus: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 98. ISBN 978-0-19-933096-6. £7.99 / $11.95 (paperback).

Godfrey-Smith, Peter, Philosophy of Biology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. 187. ISBN 978-0-691-17467-9. $19.95 / £14.95 (paperback). 

Graham-Smith, Francis, Eyes on the Sky: A spectrum of telescopes. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 235. ISBN 978-0-19-873427-7. £25.00/$39.95 (hardback).

Granada, A. Miguel, Boner, J. Patrick, and Tessicini, Dario (eds.), Unifying Heaven and Earth: Essays in the History of Early Modern Cosmology. Barcelona: Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2016. Pp. 351. ISBN 978-84-475-3960-4. €30.00 (paperback).

Guarneri, Patrizia, Italian Psychology and Jewish Emigration Under Fascism: From Florence to Jerusalem and New York. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. 275. ISBN 978-1-137-30655-5. £63.00 (hardback).

Guenther, Katja, Localization and its Discontents: A Genealogy of Psychoanalysis & the Neuro Disciplines. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 310. ISBN 978-0-226-28820-8. £24.50 / $35.00 (cloth).  

Hallam, Elizabeth, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed. London, UK: Reaktion Books, 2016. Pp. 444. ISBN 978-1-86189-375-8. £35.00 (hardback). 

Heinze, Thomas, and Munch, Richard (eds.), Innovation in Science and Organizational Renewal: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. 290. ISBN 978-1-137-59419-8. €96.29 / £66.99 (hardback).

Hubbard, Jennifer, Wildish, David J., Stephenson, Robert L. (eds.), A Century of Maritime Science: The St Andrews Biological Station. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. Pp. 477. ISBN 978-1-4426-4858-6. $80.00 (cloth).

Iliffe, Robert, and Smith, E. George (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xviii + 637. ISBN 978-1-107-60174-1. $36.99 (paperback). 

Jarzebowski, Claudia, & Safley, Max Thomas (eds.), Childhood and Emotions: Across Cultures 1450-1800. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Pp. 200. ISBN 978-0-415-83196-3. £29.99 (paperback).

Kaiser, David, and McCray, W. Patrick, Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation & American Counterculture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 426. ISBN 978-0-226-37291-4. £17.50 / $25.00 (paperback). 

Kennett, Tom, The Lord Treasurer of Botany: Sir James Edward Smith and the Linnaean Collections. London: The Linnean Society, 2016. Pp. x + 388. ISBN 978-0-9935510-0-0. £25.00 (paperback).

Kepler, Johannes (translated into German and edited by Otto Schonberger and Eva Schonberger), Vom wahren Geburtsjahr Christi, Rahden/Westf.: Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH, 2016. Pp. 187. ISBN 978-3-86757-106-7. €34.80 (paperback).

Kowner, Rotem, From White to Yellow: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300-1735. Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. Pp. xxv + 678. ISBN 978-0-7735-4455-0. CAD$39.95 (paperback).

Krige, John, Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe: US Technological Collaboration and Nonproliferation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Pp. 227. ISBN 978-0-262-03477-7. £24.95 (cloth). 

Leopold, B. Estella, Stories from the Leopold Shack: Sand County Revisited. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi + 325. ISBN 978-0-19-046322-9. $27.95 (hardback).

Lindberg, David C., and Shank, Michael H., Medieval Science – The Cambridge History of Science volume 2. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xxiv + 677. ISBN 978-1-107-52164-3. £26.99 / $33.99 (paperback).

Lucsko, David N., Junkyards, Gearheads & Rust: Salvaging the Automotive Past. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Pp. 263. ISBN 978-1-4214-1942-8. $44.95 (hardback). 

Manez, Kathleen Schwerdtner, and Poulsen, Bo (eds.), Perspectives on Oceans Past: A Handbook of Marine Environmental History. New York: Springer, 2016. Pp. 211. ISBN 978-94-017-7495-6. €83.19 / £59.99 (hardcover).

Manning, Patrick, and Rood, Daniel, Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. Pp. xiii + 401. ISBN 978-0-8229-4454-6. $49.95 (cloth).

Middleton, Peter, Physics Envy: American Poetry and Science in the Cold War and After. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 318. ISBN 978-0-226-29000-3. £31.00 / $45.00 (cloth).

Muller-Wille, Steffan, and Brandt, Christina, Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850-1930. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Pp. 472. ISBN 978-0-262-03443-2. £36.95 (cloth).

Nicolai, Roel, The Enigma of the Origin of Portolan Charts: A Geodetic Analysis of the Hypothesis of a Medieval Origin. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. 544. ISBN 978-90-04-28297-1. €168.00 / $218.00 (hardback).

Norrie, Philip, A History of Disease in Ancient Times: More Lethal than War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. xv + 155. ISBN 978-3-319-28936-6. €96.29 (hardcover).

Omodeo, Pietro Daniel, in collaboration with Friedrich, Karin, Duncan Liddel (1561-1613): Networks of Polymathy and the Northern European Renaissance. Leiden: Brills, 2016. Pp. 322. ISBN 978-90-04-31065-0. €135.00 / $175.00 (hardback). 

Palmieri, Paolo, Hermes and the Telescope. New York: Peter Lang, 2016. Pp. xxiii + 234. ISBN 978-1-4331-3140-0. £58.00 / $86.95 (hardback). 

Panofsky, Aaron, Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genets. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 321. ISBN 978-0226-05845-0. $27.50 / £19.50 (paperback).

Patteson, Thomas. Instruments for New Music: Sound, Technology, and Modernism. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 236. ISBN 978-0-520-28802-7. £29.95 (paperback).

Peters, Benjamin, How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Pp. xiii + 298. ISBN 978-0-262-03418-0. £28.95 (hardback).

Ramachandran, Ayesha, The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pp. 288. ISBN 978-0-226-28879-6. $45.00 / £31.50 (cloth). 

Reeds, James A., Diffie, Whitfield, and Field, J. V. (eds.), Breaking Teleprinter Ciphers at Bletchley Park: General Report on Tunny with Emphasis on Statistical Methods (1945). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2015. Pp. cxi + 673. ISBN 978-0-470-46589-9. £96.95 / €130.90 (hardback).  

Richards, J. Robert, and Ruse, Michael, Debating Darwin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. xvi + 299. ISBN 978-0-226-38442-9. £21.00 / $30.00 (cloth).

Ronalds, F. Beverley, Sir Francis Ronalds: Father of the Electric Telegraph. London: Imperial College Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 604. ISBN 978-1-78326-917-4. £32.00 (hardback).

Ruane, Kevin, Churchill and the Bomb in War and Cold War. London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2016. Pp. xxi + 402. ISBN 978-1-4725-2338-9. £25.00 (hardback). 

Spiller, James, Frontiers for the American Century: Outer Space, Antarctica, and Cold War Nationalism. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. 269. ISBN 978-1-137-50786-0. $59.50 / $99.00 (hardcover).

Stokes, Raymond G., and Banken, Ralf, Building on Air: The International Industrial Gases Industry, 1886-2006. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xvii + 465. ISBN 978-1-107-03312-2. £64.99 / $99.99 (hardback). 

Sysling, Fenneke, Racial Science and Human Diversity in Colonial Indonesia. Singapore: NUS Press, 2016. Pp. 305. ISBN 978-981-4722-07-0. $42.00 SGD (paperback). 

Taylor, Mark Zachary, The Politics of Innovation: Why Some Countries are Better than Others at Science & Technology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 427. ISBN 978-0-19-046413-4. £18.99 (paperback). 

Valier, Helen, A History of Prostate Cancer: Cancer, Men and Medicine. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. 241. ISBN 978-1-4039-8803-4. £66.99 (hardback).

Wheeler, Wendy, Expecting the Earth: Life, Culture, Biosemiotics. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2016. Pp. 276. ISBN 978-1910448-670. £20.00 (paperback).

Wittner, David G., and Brown, Philip C. (eds.), Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. Pp. xx + 290. ISBN 978-1-138-90533-7. £90.00 (hardback).