I have to say straight away that my four star rating comes with a proviso. I loved this book. And if you, too, are fascinated by the history of British science and are interested in Cambridge University, you will too. What we have here is a history of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (remarkably generously published by Oxford University Press, given it chronicles Cambridge's rise to be a superior science university) - a society that proved surprisingly influential in the rise in the study of science, and physics in particular, at the University of Cambridge. Don't be surprised if you have never heard of the Cambridge Philosophical Society - I hadn't, and I studied natural sciences at Cambridge. (That's 'philosophical' in the sense of natural philosophy - i.e. science - not the wooly stuff, by the way.) The reason it is relatively unknown, I suspect, is that unlike the other philosophical societies and 'lit and phils' that sprang up around the U