Customer Reviews
Fascinating - By: Kasablanca, 16 Apr 2008 
This is one of the best science books I'v ever read.
I found the story of the rivalry between Mantell & Owen gripping. Owen comes across as almost evil. He even gains possession of part of Mantell's spine after he dies.
I was so impressed with this book that I have bought two of the author's others but this is the best.
Great telling of the human drama of science - By: Rick O'Gorman, 20 Feb 2008 This was one of the best non-fiction books I ever read. It not only told the history of the early days of fossil hunting in the 19th century, just prior to Darwin's theory of Natural Selection, but also the human side of the tale. Those who got the glory, those who were robbed, those who were never entered in the race. Thus, it also tells of the prejudices faced by those who were not of the right class & sex. I rarely feel compelled to proselytize a book, but I bought this one as a gift for several people as a thank you.
Reading this book, it will also help you grasp how Darwinism emerged, how the geological & palaeontological findings helped show the way (though Darwin relied first & foremost on the diversity of life as evidence). But above alll, it is great human drama, embedded in a story of discovery.
Absolutely brilliant!! - By: Rich, 16 Oct 2006 I've just finished this wonderful book & it's one of the best popular science/history works I've ever read. Perhaps the author was a little biased against Richard Owen, but then he was such a lying, plagerising egotist that it's hard not to agree with her presentation. Likewise, it's hard not to feel enormous sympathy for the much-maligned, brilliant & humane Gideon Mantell.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Reviving a long lost fascination. - By: G. Toseland, 25 May 2005 35 years ago I loved dinosaurs. Then I grew up a bit. I forgot that I was fascinated by pictures of a world long lost. Now I have a four year old son & guess what? He loves dinosaurs.
Sitting with him looking at pictures like the ones I looked at as a child has seen my fascination resurface but, hopefully, along more adult lines.
I wanted to find out more of the history of paleontology & the early pioneers of the science. This book fits the bill admirably. It binds together & winds between the lives of some of the earliest fossil hunters from Mary Anning, digging to live, to the French scientist Cuvier, at the peak of his fame & courted around the world. The Machevellian political manouevres of Richard Owen & the obsessive devotion to science of Gideon Mantell.
The first half of the nineteenth century was an era of momentous change in Britain & the world with industrial revolution & theories of evolution profoundly challlenging the way we look at the world we inhabit. This book neatly sets out the role the new science of geology played in that time.
Dinosaurs , but not as we know them - By: , 29 Apr 2005 As a child over thirty years ago, there was nothing more that interested me than dinosaurs. Today, with scientists recently debating the realistic oportunities of studying dinosaur DNA (something laughed at when the film "Jurassic Park" came out ten years ago !!), Deborah Cadbury's excellent book takes me back to the days of my tea card books where the prehistoric animal series featured accounts of Gideon Mantell & Richard Owen - the two protagonists in the early days of dinosaur research. Looking back to these books, our image of the fantastic creatures has changed dramaticallly over the last 30 years & Cadbury's account captures the wonderment of the scientists of the first half of the 19th Century as they tried to make sense of the finds for the very first time. Their reconstructions were often hopelessly wrong & the numerous illustrations in this book are fascinating in their Victorian perception of the prehistoric world. This was a time when Noah's flood was still taken seriously.
As if the account of the early days of palaeontology is not interesting enough, this book is livened up by the story of Mantell's & Owen's rivalry & how the latter managed to suppress the former's theories & eventuallly discredit him. However, the author keeps us guessing as to whether Mantell would eventuallly come to be vindicated keeping the reader guessing until the end. Will the villainous Owen eventuallly get his just deserts ? You will have to read the book to find out !!
With our benefit of 170 years of scientific research, the valiant attempts of the great scientific minds of the age to solve the mystery of the dinosaurs now seem quaint & I kept on thinking just how suprised these people would be if we could tell them what we well know now. All in alll, this is the kind of book that you will find impossible to put down.
