Excellent book from a very British Perspective on the birth and glory years of the Royal Society, and the small number of men (and woman) who managed to capture the magic of science while finally grounding it in observational rigor.

The Age of Wonder sounded the final death knell to the mystical sciences that had proceeded from the earliest civilizations up to that point, punctuated intermittently by luminaries like Galileo. Science finally became "scientific", not a branch of natural philosophy, and the volume of observations, discoveries, and inventions is staggering.

An easy read, with great characters, it does bog in the end. Having met the primary characters, we simply watch them grow old and inflexible, and the thrill of their first discoveries does not evolve into a passion for the new generation. You can skip the last 100 pages with little loss.