All my non fiction and literature buffs. Make sure that you read The Age of Wonder: How the Romantics discovered the beauty and terror of scienceby Richard Holmes. He is an English professor and this book is well researched and great on the Romantic Period of 18th century England. All of the big writers like John Keats, Percy Shelly, Lord Byron, Samuel Coleridge and William Cowper all all there.

Holmes stays in England as you as writers know that this age spread to America. He gives beautiful insights as to why nature is so evident in these authors poems.  A good start is with Joseph Banks the traveler who discovered the island of Paradise. Were it is longitude physics.  Traveling is is goal like the bee going from land to land and taking its honey from Cowper.

Then you will see William Hershel. Who discovered the sky. He found constellations and stars off the Milky Way with a forty foot retractortelescope, and a small telescope that he made for his sister Caroline who outlived him by several years and was able to test from some of the accounts from the British Royal Society. His son John made even more advances with telescopes and astronomy in the Victorian Era. This book is a good read for this weekend for Monday July 20, 2009 is the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon which may have not be possible without Hershel’s discoveries. You will not see that in the news this week so read.

You will see also the scientist Humphrey Davy who first discovered nitrous gas and tried to use it is medicine. He had the major influence of Mary Shelly Percy Shelly wife who wrote Frankenstein. Percy Shelly is the deepest and greatest poet of the Romantic period. This book is in no way scary. It is a true story and a beautiful reflection of that deep blue lamp of Heaven brilliantly described.