American technical discoveries as well as our contributions to the purely theoretical aspects of science." He found "much to be praised ... the book is intelligently conceived, carefully organized, clearly written, and handsomely designed. Unfortunately, the illustrations do not do justice to [the] excellent text." H. D. Allen in the Montreal Gazette wrote that the book's story "makes fascinating reading," and that "[w]hile the treatment of any one discipline may at first seem superficial and chatty, the total impact is most impressive, for the reader is left with an acquaintance with the leading figures of the age of science and some appreciation of how the contribution of each influenced a way of life." He concluded "The breadth of scientific knowledge which this book represents is remarkable, as is the skill with which it has been set down and the effortlessness with which it reads." The Booklist called it "[a] wide-ranging survey [that] reflects the authors' humanistic interests as well as their familiarity with several branches of science and their extensive background reading." Harry C. Stubbs in The Horn Book Magazine included it among "half a dozen books dealing ... with the history of science [that] I can recommend [both] to nonscientists as guides toward the Light [and] to scientists and science teachers as reminders that what we know was long, slow, and hard in coming." He noted that it "give[s] us a series of fascinating biographical and anecdotal items strung loosely on the thread of developing scientific knowledge." Philip and Phylis Morrison in Scientific American felt it "manages to convey a sense of coherence, even though it deals at staccato length with so many men, trends and ideas ... The reason is partly in the expert writing--smooth, unusually candid, cheerful and sometimes a bit condescending (as in the two or three pages about Veblen)." They add that "[n]ot all the dicta of the authors seem reasonable, but to find any personal judgment at work is so rare in this kind of pedagogy that one is pleased by the De Camps even when one disagrees with them." References 1967 non-fiction books Science books Books by L. Sprague de Camp