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Master Mechanics and Wicked Wizards: Images of the American Scientist as Hero and Villain from Colonial Times to the Present Glen Scott Allen, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.
Oddly enough this book begins by springing back to a previous century, when American "scientists" were few and far between- when the very word "scientist" did not even appear in print until the year 1840, the author claims, and, upon checking, I found his contention is supported by the Oxford English Dictionary. Hence the book starts with a ghastly tale of murder and mayhem at Harvard in 1849, when one faculty member murdered another over a debt of US$1,200. This story is well told, although perhaps, one suspects, merely an attention-getter and something of a distraction. But to what end? To show that "scientists" were neither well paid nor well regarded back then? To demonstrate that in nineteenth-century America "science" was dominated by "charlatanism and quackery" and by hobbyists and amateurs? Allen then goes on to make useful distinctions between "pure" and...