Deborah Cadbury

This is an account of the early discoveries of fossils of dinosaurs and other early creatures, and the evolution (pardonable pun) of knowledge of and thought about the early history of life on earth, throughout the first half of the 19th century. Two key early discoveries are those of the icthyosaur by Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, and the iguanadon by Gideon Mantell in Lewes in Sussex. These two come across as appealing and very ordinary human individuals, often taken advantage of by others. show more This is especially so for Anning, discovering fossils very early on as a girl and young woman in the 1810s and 20s; but also in a different way for Mantell, who, lacking the advantages of inherited wealth and free time of other early pioneers in the field, had to make his mark as a country doctor, helping and sometimes saving the lives of his poor patients, while trying in his spare time to pursue his passion for geology, a passion that strained his happy marriage to eventual breaking point.

One of the key themes as the book goes on is the bitter rivalry between Mantell and anatomist Richard Owen, coiner of the word "dinosaur" and later the founder and first director of the Natural History Museum in London. Owen, while a brilliant man in his own right, was also unscrupulous in claiming credit for discoveries made by Mantell and others, and diminishing their achievements for the sake of his own self-aggrandisement; this worked for him, and he became tutor to Queen Victoria's children, and played a pivotal role in the organisation of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Even after Mantell's tragic death in 1852, wracked by pain caused by being thrown from a carriage a decade earlier and injuring his back, and only able to function by managing the pain with opiates, Owen rubbished Mantell's work and character in an ostensibly anonymous obituary. In a bizarre and rather unsavoury twist of fate, Mantell's twisted spine ended up as an exhibit in Owen's collection. (as an aside, the spine remained in the Royal College of Surgeons until the mid-20th century; Cadbury says it was bombed in the Blitz, though other sources say it was voluntarily destroyed in 1969 due to lack of space).

Another key theme in the book is the battle between science and religion, but it is not cast in the simple Darwinism vs. creationism paradigm; rather it was a gradual movement of the centre of gravity of mainstream scientific opinion along a spectrum of thought where, for much of the three or four decades before Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, the growing evidence for the development of forms of life and the relations between them was accepted (in the teeth of opposition from creationists), but along with an assumption that God provided the original spark for life in the first place and that he wrote the rules by which life forms developed (in modern parlance, "intelligent design"). Owen was an epitome of this view. Darwin and Huxley of course changed the paradigm in the 1860s and later, such that Owen's reputation was ironically itself trashed somewhat unfairly after his death in 1892, and his life's work dismissed due to his opposition to Darwinism.

This was a fascinating read. Unfortunately this Kindle version lacked the illustrations in the print version (which I used to have, but which has annoyingly disappeared from my shelves!). show less

This material, despite its inherent interest (Victorian dinosaurs, man!), could easily have been dull in the hands of another writer. Thankfully, Cadbury keeps it very interesting, by turning it into a sort of group biography. This is the birth of paleontology, as told through the life histories of William Buckland, Mary Anning, Gideon Mantell, Richard Owen, Thomas Henry Huxley, and more. I particularly liked the story of Mary Anning, from carpenter's daughter to a key figure in show more paleontology, but always disadvantaged due to her class and gender. She sketches all these characters in with great deftness, and one enjoys learning little things about them as we go from "undergroundology" to the first instance of dinomania. I am so disappointed that I did not know about the Crystal Palace dinosaurs when I went to London! show less

This book provides some fascinating insight to the royal families of Europe by seeing them as real people with flaws and intimate relationships beyond the duty of the crowns they wear. It's so easy to simply define historical figures by the roles they play instead of considering them as fully developed human beings. In this book, we get a glimpse of Victoria not as queen but as grandmother with the same desire to keep her children and grandchildren safe while still seeing them lead show more productive lives as any parent or grandparent might--it just so happens that in this case "productive" means controlling a couple continents. The book may be titled Queen Victoria's Matchmaking, but the two primary relationships it explores in detail were not Victoria's doing and, in fact, Victoria demanded on several occasions that they not happen. Instead the book is really about presenting the idea that WWI and the Russian Revolution was all a rather tragic family affair, and in many ways it was. While the beginning of the book can be a bit dull, things get much more engaging when you realize that Franz is *that* Franz and Nicholas is *that* Nicholas and you realize you already know how these stories end. However, there are several interesting tidbits of information that I didn't know previously, and focusing on the individuals involved in these major historical events really shines a new light on just how tragic is all really was.

Having said that, I had to discount a few stars because of how difficult it was to follow the author's discussion in some places. It was difficult at times to keep up with some of the family relationships primarily because of Cadbury's liberal use of indefinite pronouns despite having mentioned three different people in a sentence. Which "he" was she referring to? It took me three times reading a sentence and considering the context of the paragraph before I could figure it out sometimes. Also, and I know this is nitpicking, but the dates were wrong on at least three occasions. I don't mean she said something happened in 1891 and it was really 1892; I am not the kind of reader who would catch an error like that. I am, however, the kind of reader who would notice that the book says Eddy was writing a letter to someone in 1990 or that Victoria had tea with Alix in 1996. Just a simple matter of transposing a number, and the right year is obvious, but it was still a smudge on Cadbury's professionalism in my opinion. That and her need to dramatize and use archaic or unusual adjectives seemingly to impress the reader. The events themselves are dramatic enough without that kind of embellishment.

All in all, I enjoyed the perspective and there are even a few things that can be gleaned about current events, but I think a slightly more aggressive editor might be a good idea for her next book. show less

A clearly-written exploration of the race between the USA and the Soviet Union to be first to put a man on the Moon. The story is told through the histories of the two project leaders - Wernher von Braun in Germany, and Sergei Korolev, the Soviet Union's 'Chief Designer of Rockets'.

The author pulls no punches in describing conditions in the Mittelwerk, the underground factory in the Harz Mountains in Germany where slave labour built the V-2s, and comparing that with the Gulag where Korolev show more was imprisoned - the difference being that von Braun never had to suffer the conditions his workers toiled under. The text is quite vociferous at laying much of the blame for conditions in the Mittelwerk at the feet of its SS military commander, a nasty piece of work called Kammler who didn't survive the war to be brought to justice; though an epilogue, which tells the story of what happened after the Moon landings, exposes the charges levelled during the1980s at von Braun as to his role in the use of slave labour; but by then, von Braun had been dead nearly ten years.

Korolev gets a better crack of the whip; his incarceration in the Gulag was laid at Stalin's feet, though Cadbury doesn't explore the charge that Korolev had actually been diverting funds away from the research institute where he worked and putting them to rocketry. His rehabilitation, as a matter of technical expediency, did not involve any clever footwork to avoid difficult questions, as happened when von Braun reached America; and the revelations about his identity and hardships after his death all worked to his posthumous good. Korolev's early death following bowel surgery is described in considerable, toe-curling detail; it was the turning point for the Soviet Moon project and so merits inclusion, whereas von Braun lived to see his dream achieved.

Both men suffered at the hands of their governments, though in von Braun's case that suffering was minimal in comparison both to Korolev and to that his workers had to endure. The book is quite clear that von Braun and his team were very much aware that the collapsing Third Reich would have no qualms at all about executing them to prevent their knowledge falling into the hands of Germany's enemies, no matter how lost the Nazi cause was. Von Braun's urgent need to sell out to the best bidder is quite clearly shown and understood; the Russians made attractive offers to try to entice some of the V-2 team to go east, and some did; but they soon found that once their immediate usefulness was over, their positions ceased to be as comfortable as they had hoped.

Perhaps the most interesting contrast between the two men is the way they reacted to their situation. Whilst von Braun was looking to sell out to new masters (not without good reason), Korolev was surviving the Gulag. Although he was later transferred to one of the special Gulag camps, reserved for highly technically-skilled prisoners where they could do work that would be useful to the State like designing aeroplanes or rockets, he never forgot the harshness of his treatment. Yet such was his patriotism that he never swerved from his course, or expressed any disloyalty to the Communist cause. This was only partly enlightened self-interest; there are many accounts of Russians in the Gulag expressing dismay when Stalin died, or continuing to work for the benefit of the State and the Party when their situations eased.

Both men had to struggle to get official backing; the bureaucracy in the USA was almost as bad as that in the Soviet Union and this delayed the early development of both men's projects. Inter-service rivalry in the USA was in part responsible for the multiple instances of failed launches the Americans suffered. A similar state of affairs in Russia was down more to shortages of equipment, material and facilities. That the Russians were first to launch a satellite, and first to put a person in orbit, was partly down to sheer luck; but once the Americans were spurred to action, they kept pouring resources into their project. The Russians' luck ran out with the design of the gigantic, over-complex N-1 rocket that was the Soviet equivalent to NASA's Saturn V. The complexity of what really is, after all, rocket science had been a pitfall for both sides throughout; NASA got a hold of the problem through improving project planning and being able to devote resources to the project.

The book is a quick and easy read; once the Soviet project fails, though, the story of the Apollo programme is a bit rushed. It talks at length about the Apollo 1 fire (again, some of this spares little detail), and the proving flights of first the unmanned capsules, then the test flights - Apollo 8 to circle the moon, then Apollos 9 and 10 to test out the Lunar Module - are generally glossed over so that the story of the Apollo 11 landing, with Neil Armstrong's split-second decisions over continuing the powered descent despite running the fuel tanks almost dry can be told in detail. Once that's done, the race is won and the epilogue quickly follows, telling something of what happened to von Braun after Apollo (as I said earlier), and the fate of some of the other players on the Soviet side.

The book was written to accompany a BBC television series of drama-documentaries of the same name, broadcast in 2005. But it goes well beyond being just a supporting text and instead is a good single-volume story of perhaps the most high-profile battleground of the Cold War. show less