Full name: On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life and Tumultuous Times of Sir Christopher Wren

Author: Lisa Jardine Year: 2002 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Biographies, History, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780060959104 9780060199746 006095910X 0060199741

Everything Sir Christopher Wren undertook, he envisaged on a grander scale -- bigger, better, more enduring than anything that had gone before. A versatile genius who could have pursued a number of brilliant careers with equal virtuosity, he was a mathematical prodigy, an accomplished astronomer, a skillful anatomist, and a founder of the Royal Society. Eventually, he made a career in what he described disparagingly in later life as "Rubbish" -- the architecture, design, and construction of public buildings. Through the prism of Wren's tumultuous life and brilliant intellect, historian Lisa Jardine unfolds the vibrant, extraordinary emerging new world of late-seventeenth-century science and ideas. Similar books: Ingenious Pursuits by Lisa Jardine Brief Lives by John Aubrey Going Dutch by Lisa Jardine Nell Gwyn by Charles Beauclerk Disraeli by Robert Blake Samuel Pepys by Claire Tomalin That Woman by Anne Sebba Victoria by Julia Baird Disraeli by Andre Maurois The Rockefellers by Peter Collier Mistress of the Elgin Marbles by Susan Nagel Mrs. Jordan's Profession by Claire Tomalin Five Sisters by James Fox Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey History of William the Conqueror by Jacob Abbott The Unruly Queen by Flora Fraser Morgan by Jean Strouse The Wright Brothers by David McCullough Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester