This addition to the Great Lives series offers 409 essays covering significant inventors (27 of them female) worldwide and throughout history. The essays are arranged alphabetically from ‘Abbas ibn Firnas to Zworykin, Vladimir. The inventions that are covered occurred in a wide variety of disciplines—physics, mathematics, agriculture, astronomy, and more. The essays are generally three to four pages in length, and each one begins with basic biographical information, such as the individual’s name, nationality, and birth and death dates, as well as primary fields and primary inventions.
The body of the essay is arranged into three sections: “Early Life,” “Life’s Work,” and “Impact.” A sidebar in each essay spotlights one of the individual’s key contributions. The essays conclude with a brief list of suggestions for further reading in addition to cross-references to essays on related topics. The writing is clear and easy to follow. Black-and-white illustrations are scattered throughout the text. Each of the four volumes offers a comprehensive table of contents. Also included in the first volume are a pronunciation key and a listing of the inventions that are covered in the set. The fourth volume offers a short article on the history of U.S. patent law as well as a chronological listing of entries. The final volume contains a time line covering significant inventions in history from ancient times (2,500,000 BCE) to the present (2009) and a “Biographical Directory of Inventors” offering brief entries on the 413 inventors profiled in the set as well as 598 others. Readers looking for more information will appreciate the annotated listings of electronic resources and the extensive, annotated bibliography. Lastly, the final volume includes a category index, an index listing essays by their subject, and a geographical index. This set includes many useful tools for researchers and would be suitable for the student as well as for the layperson. It’s worth noting that, although some of the titles in the Great Lives series are revisions and expansions of previous publications, all the entries here are new.
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