A World on Fire

"Joe Jackson's marvelous re-creation of these events takes us back to an age when revolt and revelation were in the air - the final decades of the 1700s and the waning days of the Enlightenment. Where it had recently seemed that reason and science had the power to build a better world, political crises and seismic intellectual shifts were overwhelming the age of reason. Set against the conflagrations of the American Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, and the Reign of Terror, A World on Fire deftly weaves together biography and history, scientific passion and political will, in presenting the story of two brilliant men and their truly revolutionary breakthrough."--BOOK JACKET.