Top Architectural Books of 2017

25 Architecture and Design Books to Read This Fall
From Michael Bierut's thoughts on the Oreo cookie to the best of Fritz Hansen and new insights into the Polar landscape




Just in time for fall, Metropolis editors have assembled a list of 25 essential additions to your bookshelf, reading list, or coffee table—from facsimile editions of icons such as Learning from Las Vegas to new perspectives on topics ranging from graphic design to cacti.
Architecture



Albert Frey and Lina Bo Bardi: A Search for Living ArchitectureWritten by Daniell Cornell and Zeuler R. Lima Prestel, 192 pp., $49.95


Architects Albert Frey and Lina Bo Bardi have more in common than you’d imagine—both were Europeans architects who moved to the Americas where they each created own regional adaptations of Modernist architecture. A Search for Living Architecture explores this interesting and shared dynamic. The book stems from a Palm Springs Art Museum exhibition of the same name (senior curator Daniell Cornell and Bo Bardi scholar Zeuler Lima put together the book) and features ample color photographs and drawings taken from a wide variety of sources, primarily historic magazines, books, and exhibitions. The images provide a rich visual archive while six essays delve deeper into these two Modernists’ oeuvres.




A New History of Modern Architecture
Written by Colin Davies Laurence King, 500 pp., $80


As its title suggests, A New History of Modern Architecture is an ambitious undertaking. Its author Colin Davies (an architecture professor at London Metropolitan University) aims to adjust the canon of architectural history by recognizing Modern architecture’s inherent Western bias and introducing new chapters—literal and figural—on topics like Art Deco, the Chinese National style, and other areas that will be new only to Modernism novitiates. (“This is not a guidebook for connoisseurs,” he aptly notes.) The chapters, which are filled with colorful images and accessible text, are variously organized around individual architects, typologies, regions, styles, and technologies.


As Seen: Exhibitions that Made Architecture and Design HistoryEdited by Zoë Ryan Yale University Press, 144 pp., $35


Architecture exhibitions are tricky: rather than the buildings themselves, such shows are reliant upon drawings, texts, and models. Yet they also serve to crystallize ideas and define historical moments—both within the discipline and society at large. In her new book, Zoë Ryan, the curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago, selects 11 group architecture exhibitions organized between 1956 and 2006 that challenged the status quo and continue to do so, long after the show closed. Building on a 2015 exhibition of the same name at The Art Institute of Chicago, this book—featuring essays by Paola Antonelli, Alice Rawsthorn, Jan Boelen, and others—examines watershed moments in exhibition history, including Memphis held at the Salone del Mobile in 1981, the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s This is Tomorrow in 1956, and the Metabolists’ showing at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. This book—one of the first to scrutinize the legacy of architecture exhibitions—is an essential primer on seminal design exhibitions and a touchstone for the future of architecture shows.


100 Buildings: 1900–2000Produced by the Now Institute, Foreword by Thom Mayne Rizzoli, 304 pp., $25



If given the chance to pick the brains of numerous starchitects about the most important buildings of the 20th century, you’d doubtlessly get a broad—and contentious—spectrum of answers. Pritzker Prize–winner Thom Mayne took on this task after noticing, in the architect’s words, “a declining awareness of historical precedent among my students.” Together with UCLA’s Now Institute, Mayne polled 40 architects—including Tadao Ando, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid, and others—to list the most influential buildings of the previous century. The results, to be released this fall, have been distilled in 100 Buildings, an essential guidebook for architecture students and design buffs alike, detailing the enduring influence of projects ranging from Villa Savoye to the Vanna Venturi House.


Embodied Energy and Design: Making Architecture Between Metrics and NarrativesEdited by David Benjamin Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 232 pp., $40


In Embodied Energy, based on a Columbia University GSAPP conference of the same name, a startling, if unsurprising, fact is tucked away in a small caption: “Buildings account for about one-third of the world’s energy consumption.” (The nugget is cited on the back cover.) The book’s editor, architect, and researcher David Benjamin, chooses instead to highlight metrics constantly left out of the discussion of energy tabulation, use, and expenditure—mainly embodied energy. A largely “invisible” feature of building materials and of the built environment in general (not unlike human labor, to which the concept is inextricably linked), embodied energy is the spur to rethinking architecture as a whole. If, as Benjamin writes, “designing embodied energy requires designing the whole system,” then architects necessarily have to begin reframing their work in terms of global flows of extraction, production, and waste.




Make New History: 2017 Chicago Architecture BiennialEdited by Mark Lee, Sharon Johnston, Sarah Hearne, and Letizia Garzoli Lars Müller Publishers, 344 pp., $50


Even if you can’t make it to this year’s edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, its accompanying exhibition catalogue offers a satisfactory glimpse of the breadth of work and ideas on display. This year’s theme “Make New History” was borrowed from a book by Ed Ruscha—a 600-page tome filled with blank pages. More than 100 international architecture practices, similarly, were given the open-ended task of situating their work within history. In addition to dozens of essays and project proposals by each of the participants, this volume features a foreword by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a conversation between Sarah Herda (the co-artistic director of the 2015 biennial) and 2017 directors, Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee. In the spirit of Ruscha’s book, writes associate curator Sarah Hearne in the introduction, this text “invites you to navigate the material in ways that recombine, sample, and generate new meanings.”
Cities



Learning From Las Vegas, Facsimile EditionWritten by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour New Foreword by Denise Scott Brown Designed by Muriel Cooper MIT Press, 216 pp., $100


Few architecture books of the last 50 years could claim to be as influential as Learning from Las Vegas. The 1972 opus from Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour was an attempt to revitalize Modernism, but instead spawned a countermovement whose effects are still being felt strongly today. Many architecture students had to contend with smaller, less colorful reprints. The original design by Muriel Cooper, while not to the authors’ liking, is still a true marvel: a tour-de-force of rigorous, varied, Bauhaus-inspired graphic design contained within a gold-stamped exterior.



Citymakers: The Culture and Craft of Practical UrbanismWritten by Cassim Shepard Monacelli, 296 pp., $45


What is a “citymaker” and what credentials guarantee one the title? The answer, according to Cassim Shepard’s new book, is less specialist and top-down than you might think. The argument aims to gently demystify the sometimes messy, always pluralistic ways of shaping the conditions and fabric of urban life. In an interview with Metropolis, Shepard, who headed up the online publication Urban Omnibus for years, suggested that planners and politicians do not act unilaterally, but that “the people who are interpreting the city, whether they’re social scientists, writers, photographers, or artists” have a part to play are well.


Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New YorkWritten by Justin Davidson Spiegel & Grau, 256 pp., $40


In his latest book, New York magazine’s architecture critic Justin Davidson takes readers on a journey through seven New York neighborhoods, using the format of a walking tour as a way to discuss the ever-shifting nature of the city’s skyline. Davidson’s first-person account and deft storytelling are like taking a stroll with an old friend: with the aid of maps and photographs, he leads readers through the Financial District and winds his way northward to Sugar Hill and the South Bronx—with plenty of historic interludes along the way. Whether you’re in the middle of Columbus Avenue, or on the couch; a lifelong New Yorker, or a reader in the Midwest, Magnetic City is an entertaining and informative read—so much so, you might forget to look up.


Retooling Metropolis: Working Landscapes, Emergent UrbanismEdited by Chris Reed Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 112 pp.



This compilation of research and studio work from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design investigates the fringe landscapes in and around Houston, up and down the Buffalo Bayou. The projects, which were conceived in late 2016, several months before Hurricane Harvey, take as their premise contemporary notions of ecology and nested concepts of adaptation. Designs for an urban wetland park, for example, co-opt Houston’s freeways, converting them into “hydrologic and ecological scaffolds, and as living and life-giving ruins.”

Design



Barber Osgerby, ProjectsWritten by Jana Scholze and Edward Barber Phaidon Press, 312 pp., $95


Vitra, Hermès, Knoll, Sony, the London 2012 Olympics (yes, they designed the torch)—these are just a few of London-based Barber Osgerby’s diverse clients and collaborators. The firm’s 25 years of work are displayed in this new coffee table book. It features six lengthy essays that each delve into a particular design or project, such as the Tip Ton chair (featured on the cover) and the firm’s Double Space installation at the V&A. Don’t expect messy in-process models or sketches, though—the book’s content and aesthetic stays true to Barber Osgerby’s restrained minimalism.



In Perfect Shape: Republic of Fritz HansenEdited by Mette Egeskov teNeues, 224 pp., $60



We may have reached peak hygge in 2016, but that doesn’t mean our appreciation for great Danish design has dwindled in the least. Case in point: this handsome new tome chronicling the work and legacy of the legendary Danish furniture manufacturer, Fritz Hansen. Featuring now ubiquitous designs from Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner, and others, this book traces the heritage of the brand, beginning with its founding in 1872 to contemporary collaborations with architects and designers such as Bjarke Ingels and Zaha Hadid. Accompanied by more than 150 photographs of furnishings ranging from icons like the Egg Chair to in-situ applications across the world, including the United Nations, the designs in this book will likely outshine that of your coffee table.


Now You See It and Other Essays on DesignWritten by Michael Bierut Princeton Architectural Press, 240 pp., $35



A leading graphic designer and head of Pentagram Design, Michael Bierut is also a sophisticated writer and opiner on all matters design. This dual activity confounds prioritization, as he himself speculates in the preface to this collection of essays, “I may have become a graphic designer because I was a frustrated writer.” Many of the entries here were originally published in Design Observer, the online publication Bierut cofounded in 2003 that helped critics such as Rob Walker and Alexandra Lange find their voice. The pieces are never haughty, only sharp, sometimes witty, and often personal, ranging from graphic design do’s-and-dont’s to keen observations about cultural artifacts (most memorably, the Oreo cookie).



Depero FuturistaWritten by Fortunato Depero Designers & Books, 240 pp., $149



As part of a 1915 manifesto, Italian painter, graphic designer, and writer Fortunato Depero called for a “futurist reconstruction of the universe.” More than a century later, readers are able to experience a reconstruction of Depero’s own universe: following a successful Kickstarter campaign last year, the artist’s iconic 1927 portfolio and monograph, Depero Futurista, has been reprinted as an exact facsimile. The 240-page book features untouched images scanned from an original copy and also includes its signature industrial bolt binding. This idiosyncratic book–as the artist (somewhat narcissistically) wrote himself wrote more than nine decades ago–truly “has nothing in common with other books. It is an artistic object in itself.”



Never Use FuturaWritten and designed by Douglas Thomas Princeton Architectural Press, 208 pp., $25



Futura is everywhere. You can’t escape it even if you tried. It’s not just Wes Anderson, Barbara Kruger, Nike, and Vampire Weekend we have to thank for Futura’s ubiquity. Designed in the 1920s, the typeface has become ingrained in our cultural sense of modernity—or modernism, as author Douglas Thomas argues—from overuse by just about every industry. As curator Ellen Lupton writes in the preface, “Futura seeped into every corner of modern life by exploiting the forces of technology and commerce, taste and convenience, meaning and metaphor.” Thomas’s wonderful book charts that history in an inviting, digestible way.

Landscape

Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar TerritoryWritten by Lola Sheppard and Mason White Actar, 472 pp., $30


The Canadian Arctic’s salient features are familiar by themselves (indigenous populations, extreme weather, vernacular architecture, climate change, resource extraction, rapid development, and geopolitical jockeying) but when combined, they create a unique landscape. Many Norths’ authors, the architects who helm Toronto-based Lateral Office, draw heavily from other fields (anthropology, sociology, glaciology, even hunting) to chart a regional past, present, and near-future. Equipped with ample images (photos, maps, drawings, diagrams) this book delves into a rapidly evolving region.

Read an excerpt from Many Norths.



100 Years 100 Landscape DesignsWritten by John Hill Prestel, 224 pp., $45



Architecture writer John Hill (of A Daily Dose of Architecture fame) assembles 100 landscapes built from 1917 to 2016 for this new book; each project gets about three paragraphs of description joined by one or two images (this amounts to an extremely short overview). The global collection of works ranges from solemn (UNESCO Garden of Peace) to exuberant (Il Giardino dei Tarocchi), urban (Millennium Park) to remote (Spiral Jetty). Along the way, the book features some lesser-known projects and touches on a wide variety of related disciplines, from preservation to urban planning.



Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a PlanEdited by Daniel Ibanez, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White Actar, 352 pp., $75



Third Coast Atlas is a weighty tome, the product of years of research on the Great Lakes region. Its four editors—all architects and urbanists—and numerous contributors explore the deep connections between the region’s geography, ecology, economy, infrastructure, and urbanism, all to produce a foundation for later planning efforts. The book is primarily divided into two different types of chapters: “Potentials” (which are topical and cover subjects like political borders, hydrology, and trash disposal) and “Prospects” (which focus on specific cities like Chicago, Buffalo, and Montreal). Laden with diagrams, maps, and photos, Atlas skews toward an academic audience even as its sprawling essays dissect an entire region’s complex past, present, and potential near-future.


The Japanese GardenWritten by Sophie Walker Phaidon Press, 304 pp., $70



London-based garden designer Sophie Walker packs visual beauty and multifaceted substance into The Japanese Garden. Walker, who studied art history and horticulture, has penned 11 chapters that are lengthy meditations on the Japanese garden design (with titles such as “Beauty, Terror and Power,” “Duality and Reflection,” and “Inner Space: The Courtyard Garden”) accompanied by other essays from a diverse cast of authors, including Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng, Japanese architect Tadao Ando, and artist Anish Kapoor.

Read an excerpt from The Japanese Garden.


Xerophile: Cactus Photographs from Expeditions of the ObsessedProduced by the Cactus Store Designed by Help Ltd. Hat & Beard Press, 352 pp., $65



In 2014, three friends in Los Angeles banded together to establish a store that would sell solely cacti and succulents. The shop (aptly named the Cactus Store) is now a cultish retail fixture in L.A.’s Echo Park. Equally esoteric are the owners’ own intellectual sojourns into the beautiful yet alien world of cactus connoisseurship. Xerophile: Cactus Photographs from Expeditions of the Obsessed documents the far-flung (and often fanatical) collecting expeditions of 22 amatuer botanists, spanning more than eight decades. The tome, by Hat & Beard Press, features hundreds of amatuer photographs of ultra-rare species, in their strange, nearly extraterrestrial contexts–from the fuzz-covered Austrocylindropuntia floccosa in the nose-bleed altitudes of the Peruvian Andes, to the human-sized Ferocactus diguetii in the Baja California peninsula.

People

Michael Graves: Design for LifeWritten by Ian Volner Princeton Architectural Press, 304 pp., $30


The dedication of Ian Volner’s new “critical biography” reads, poignantly, “For Michael.” It’s a personal touch, backed by real feeling: Volner, a writer and journalist, had recorded hours of conversation with Michael Graves, with the intention of fashioning a memoir out of these dialogues. Graves suddenly died in 2015, however, and Volner changed tack and expanded the project’s scope. Over the subsequent year he interviewed former students and colleagues, conducted archival research, and visited several of the architect’s buildings including the Portland Building (1982), which Volner describes as Postmodernism’s Seagram Building. The text itself is as much about Graves’s person—his Midwestern mien, his tastes (Armani jackets and silk scarves), his general vitality (“always finicky”)—as much as his work.



Portman’s America & Other SpeculationsEdited by Mohsen Mostafavi with new photographs by Iwan Baan Harvard GSD and Lars Müller Publishers, 356 pp., $35



It’s been half a century since John Portman’s Hyatt Regency Atlanta opened. It’s the kind of building that gives rise to prefixes: there was architecture before the Hyatt Regency and there was architecture after it. Portman’s America explores the architect-developer’s enormous influence, which, editor Mohsen Mostafavi argues, extends beyond the hospitality industry. One of the book’s discoveries is Mostafavi’s exploration of two of Portman’s domestic projects, where building becomes environment and architecture and landscape fully merge. Featuring additional commentary from K. Michael Hays and Portman himself, the text is engaging on its own, yet it yields ground to stunning photography by Andreas Gursky, Jordi Bernadó, and Iwan Baan. The book is rounded out by Harvard University Graduate School of Design student work in which Portman’s delirious atria are subjected to all sorts of transformations.



WORKac: We’ll Get There When We Cross That BridgeWritten by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood Designed by Neil Donnelly Monacelli, 360 pp., $50



“We’ve been working on this book forever,” write WORKac partners Amale Andraos and Dan Wood in the preface to their new monograph. Forever, being something like seven years–a note in the acknowledgments sets the starting point to 2010–or 15, if you go way back to the firm’s founding in 2002. The book unfolds according to “five-year plans” and corresponding points of interest that Andraos and Wood set up for themselves along the way; moving from interiors to urban planning, followed by “a return to architecture” and “a renewed intensification of a building’s boundary.” The duo establishes an engaging and refreshingly off-the-cuff repartee while discussing wide-ranging projects such their passive Arizona House. “I grew up in a rural place in a house that was heated by fireplace,” Wood offers prompting a groan from Andraos, who responds, “Here we go again.” See? Refreshing.

Read more about WORKac, one of Metropolis’s 2017 Game Changers.


The Incidents: Architectural EthnographyAtelier Bow-Wow with K. Michael Hays Designed by Abake Harvard GSD and 

A Romance of East and West: Interiors by Mona Hajj

Apr 16, 2019

by Mona Hajj

Eligible for Shipping to Israel

Hardcover

, 80 pp., $14



The fourth volume in the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) publication’s dialogue series, The Incidents investigates the practice of Tokyo-based Atelier Bow Wow—in particular, the firm’s concept of an “architectural ethnography.” The conversation, held to coincide with a Spring 2017 exhibition on the firm at the GSD, revolves around two key themes: construction and occupation. According to cofounder Yoshi Tsukamoto, “both are parts of spatial practice for the ecology of livelihood,” which encompasses all environmental, hence “non-architectural” factors (e.g. sunlight, noise, social interactions). Says Tsukamoto, “We listen to people and observe their behaviors—with a lot of passion—to understand what is really happening in each context.”



Muriel CooperWritten by David Reinfurt and Robert Wiesenberger MIT Press, 240 pp., $60



While you might not know her name, if you work in graphic design, you’ve likely felt her influence. Muriel Cooper (1925–1994) worked at MIT for more than forty years as a graphic designer and educator, teaching within the Visual Language Workshop and MIT Media Lab (she was a founding faculty member of the latter) and designing many MIT Press books (including the MIT Press logo). With decades of work to unpack, this sumptuous purple tome starts with two essays from the book’s editors then features more than 100 pages of Cooper’s designs and research.

The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder Paperback – February 23, 2016 by Peter Zeihan (Twelve / Grand Central Publishing

The raw, natural, unique geographical potential of the US been, perhaps, hardly noticed and in this early 21st century we can see that is barely realized. The US emerged from WW2 as the only standing power of the age and an accident of circumstance to rebuild the world. Without much notice or aplomb, the accident turned real and changed the world as we know it at 1944 Bretton Woods. Zeihan's premise is that the US has seemed to mature beyond its needy detractors and lukewarm allies and might reconsider the strategic US role in the world away from the position of an active enforcer of global institutions. Zeihan's premise is that we can do better for ourselves without a whole lot of effort. Such an imagining has been inconceivable since the US has been an energy importer. The US must invest insane volumes of national capital to defend the worlds free market resource and energy flows. But that's changed in such fundamental ways that we might reconsider it all and change the century for much better. Zeihan explores discarding WW2's promulgated political maps and considers the world from a space station vantaged eye view.

Zeihan provides a sage, quantifiable grand tour of where that future is peeking through. Everyone can see that there's something different in the air for better or worse. Most recently, we have the huge discount at the gas pump. The global hierarchy is stressed. Strange things are happening in distant places and here in the US. The dynamics of current changes in the geopolitical construct will fill the future history of this century.

Zeihan is an excellent, logical writer. He masterfully knits the pieces of his thesis into an enjoyable coherence. The historical evidence and critical variables are exercised on the grand scale ... geography, politics, human patterns, resources, fundamental `money'/'wealth' and simple luck.

"Accidental Super Power" pulls the reader through the looking glass and out of the comfort zone to consider the way forward ... a better way ... different for sure. For this reader's part, the relevant factors of the past are well framed. The exploration of the future is rooted in the accidental genius of Bretton Woods that would stand for 70 years. Everything geopolitical that living men have experienced is anchored to that 1944 event. The world simply has no experience on a global socio-economic existence without the Bretton Woods rules. So stunning was the outcome, Zeihan posits that Bretton Woods seems to have induced a 70 year coma over heavey weight geopolitics. The world is restless 'confined' by the construct of a world frozen the in place since WW2.

The economic demands of competing big players are stressing Bretton Woods. The US, for its part, is effectually easing out the leadership mantle repelled by its extraordinary costs. Zeihan delves into an America weary of intervening and policing.

The US has been bound in the past 50 years by energy dependence on extorting oil `haves'. American oil and potential independence heralds an American exit opportunity from the troublesome web of pent-up geopolitics and ideologies among rebellious, unlikable oil powers. America's strategic need to spend blood and capital resolving other people's problems to keep shipping lanes and chokepoints free might be over for a very long time with US oil independence

You can read your own political worldview into Zeihan's treatise and decide the credibility for yourself. It's a great work of connecting the dots. The book will challenge every reader's basic premises and constructs.

Anyway, you're lucky as all get-out for being born in America. 5-star ... one of the best I've read in a long. It's an important book.

HOW TO RIG AN ELECTION By Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas Yale. 310 pp. $26

Election rigging by dictators is too easy, and the West often looks the other way. In their book “How to Rig an Election,” Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas issue a plea to American and European leaders: Take a more skeptical look at fraudulent elections and recognize the danger of endorsing rigged votes. The book is an instructive, though thin, primer showing that sham elections are depressingly common. Today, “more elections are being held, but more elections are also being rigged,” write Cheeseman, a professor at the University of Birmingham, and Klaas, a fellow at the London School of Economics (and a contributor to The Washington Post’s DemocracyPost blog). The authors warn that “counterfeit democrats” have figured out not only how to rig elections but also how to dupe Western observers and governments into accepting the outcome — and often emerge stronger.

The book details rigging strategies from the outrageous (disappearing ballot ink in Ukraine and three candidates with the same name on a St. Petersburg ballot) to the familiar (gerrymandering and voter suppression). In 23 percent of recent elections, violence, intimidation or harassment was found to have played a role; vote buying occurred in nearly 40 percent. The “smartest way” to rig, according to the authors, is to start early, “when observers are likely to be thin on the ground, and [questionable tactics] can be presented as technical or legal decisions as opposed to political skulduggery.

Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan celebrate his reelection last month. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Cheeseman and Klaas argue that Western democracies either have not looked hard enough for election abuses or have willingly looked away. “Despite the wide range of rigging strategies that have been documented,” the authors write, “Western observation missions only raised the problem of fraud in 20 percent of the elections, and foreign aid was only stopped in the aftermath of around 6 percent.”

The payoffs for autocrats that successfully rig elections can include reinvigorated ruling parties, fractured opposition groups, and increased foreign financing, investment and aid. The “unsettling reality at the heart of this book,” the authors note, is that “their regimes have a better chance of survival if they hold elections and rig them than if they avoid holding elections altogether.”

The argument is provocative, and the authors’ plea would be more persuasive if the book contained a comprehensive list of the counterfeit democracies that have gotten a new lease on life after rigged elections and the Western governments and financial institutions that have helped prolong the reigns of the despots.

Cheeseman and Klaas criticize the United States as well as a number of other countries. They describe the role of former congressman Michael McMahon in monitoring the 2013 presidential election in Azerbaijan. Although the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) detected serious problems at 58 percent of the polling locations it visited, the New York Democrat deemed the election “honest, fair, and really efficient,” enthusing that unlike at U.S. polling sites, there were no lines in Azerbaijan. Cheeseman and Klaas write that while it is tempting to attribute McMahon’s comments to the naivete “of a single deluded Western official,” a European parliamentary delegation also declared that the vote in Azerbaijan represented a “free, fair and transparent electoral process.” According to the authors, Western governments were more concerned about access to the “energy rich Caspian region” than a clean vote.

In another telling incident, the authors recount Turkey’s 2017 constitutional referendum that granted sweeping new powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The OSCE described an “unlevel playing field,” and a member of the Council of Europe mission said 2.5 million pro-government votes could have been manipulated. Nonetheless, President Trump phoned Erdogan to congratulate him on his victory, prompting Cheeseman and Klaas to ask: “Why would Erdogan care about a report from the OSCE” after receiving “unfettered praise from the most powerful man in the West?”

Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices First Edition by Jeb J. Card (Editor), David S. Anderson (Editor, Contributor), Jeb J. Card (Contributor), Christopher Begley (Contributor), Stacy Dunn (Contributor), James S. Bielo (Contributor), Tera C. Pruitt (Contributor), Denis Gojak (Contributor), Evan A. Parker (Contributor), Terry Barnhart (Contributor), Deborah A. Bolnick (Contributor), Bradley T. Lepper (Contributor), April M. Beisaw (Contributor), Kenneth L. Feder (Contributor) (University of Alabama Press)

Lost City, Found Pyramid delves into the fascinating world of sensational “pseudoarchaeology,” from perennial discoveries of lost pyramids or civilizations to contemporary ghost-hunting and reality TV. It examines how nonscientific pursuit of myths and legends warps both public perceptions of archaeology and of human history itself.

A collection of twelve engaging and insightful essays, Lost City, Found Pyramid does far more than argue for the simple debunking of false archaeology. Rather, it brings into focus the value of understanding how and why pseudoarchaeology captures the public imagination. By comprehending pseudoarchaeology’s appeal as a media product, cultural practice, and communication strategy, archaeologists can enhance and enliven how they communicate about real archaeology in the classroom and in the public arena.

The first part of Lost City, Found Pyramid provides numerous case studies. Some examine the work of well-intentioned romantics who project onto actual archaeological data whimsical interpretative frameworks or quixotic “proofs” that confirm legends, such as that of the Lost White City of Honduras, or other alternative claims. Other case studies lay bare how false claims may inadvertently lead to the perpetuation of ethnic stereotypes, economic exploitation, political adventurism, and a misunderstanding of science.

Offering much of interest to scholars and students of archaeology, archaeology buffs, as well as policy-makers involved in the discovery, curation, and care of archaeological sites and relics, Lost City, Found Pyramid provides an invaluable corrective and hopeful strategy for engaging the public’s curiosity with the compelling world of archaeological discovery.

What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives by Christine Hayes Princeton University Press, 432 pp., $26.95

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A Judean, a Stoic, a Jewish philosopher, a Jesus follower, and a rabbi walk into a seminar room at Yale, and Professor Christine Hayes asks them, “What do you mean when you say divine law?”

Speaking first, Ezra the Scribe holds up a scroll and declares, “This is the Teaching of Moses with which God had charged Israel. He came down on Mount Sinai and spoke to them from heaven; He gave them right rules and true teachings, good laws and commandments.” The laws of the Torah certainly aim to instill righteousness, faith, and continuity, but their authority and divine status derive not from their contents or their aims but rather from their source. This divine law is particular to the people of Israel as part of a mutual covenant, which God can change at will. Indeed, humans can even instigate a change, as when the daughters of Zelophehad petitioned to inherit from their father.

Cicero, representing the Stoics, defines divine law as “right reason, in agreement with nature, diffused over everyone, consistent, everlasting.” The divine status of such law rests on its character, not its origin. It is universal and therefore not subject to interpretation, modification, or variation. If it could be changed and improved, then it was not perfect or true to begin with. For Cicero, Ezra’s written scroll has all the markings of human, fallible law. To a biblical Israelite like Ezra, on the other hand, the idea that a law can be divine not because God commanded it but just because it is rational would sound like gibberish, if not blasphemy.

These two world views could be kept separate for only so long. With Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Middle East, Hellenism penetrated into every crevice of the empire. Alexander may not have discussed the nature of God and divine law during his storied meeting with the Jewish high priest as he passed through Judea, but the subject was discussed in Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Rome over the next centuries. How might a committed, Bible-loving Jew react to the Stoic’s definition of divine law? 

During the early 1st century C.E., the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria reconciled his Hellenistic world view with the Bible by boldly retrofitting biblical law to conform to the standards of Greek divine law. Philo answered that the Torah is divine law precisely because its statutes are eternal expressions of the law of nature. While the Bible, for the most part, commanded the laws to Israel alone, Philo predicted a day when Israel’s law would become the universal law of a single world polity. This law preceded Sinai; even Abraham observed the law, not because he was commanded by God but because the law was ingrained in his natural constitution. 

Ironically, Philo’s defense of Torah as natural law opened a path toward dispensing with it altogether. If one could access and internalize the laws of nature directly as Abraham did, then what need was there for the external rituals? Paul’s answer to Professor Hayes’s question is that divine law certainly isn’t the Torah. Mosaic law was a temporary set of rules promulgated at Sinai in order to keep the sinful Jews in check until Jesus’s redemption by faith. 

Finally, Rabbi Joshua exclaims, “The Torah is not in heaven!” Divine law is not immutable natural law. It was given from heaven at Sinai, but it is now the possession of the sages to interpret as they best see fit. 

A less confident moderator might not have the courage or talent to keep such a symposium of strong, clashing voices under control, but Hayes keeps the discussion proceeding civilly and productively in What’s Divine about Divine Law? She sets up Philo and Paul as polar opposites who both accept the Greek dichotomy between human and divine law and pull the Torah to one extreme or the other. 

For Hayes, however, these and other writers in the Second Temple period serve as foils for rabbis such as Rabbi Joshua. The authors of the Talmud and midrashim inherited Ezra’s definition of divine law and affirm the authority of the Torah on account of its being commanded by God. They were aware of claims like Cicero’s that divine law must conform to reason, but they took the bold step of acknowledging the Greek canons of reason and rationality while subsuming them within a system of law based on God’s will.

Thus, the rabbis derive hundreds of laws from biblical verses through a fortiori, or kal va-chomer, reasoning and other modes of Greco-Roman rhetoric. More generally, in classical midrash, human rational interpretation is presupposed as a necessary ingredient for unpacking the meaning of scripture, since it is addressed to a thoughtful, logical reader. Nevertheless, Hayes demonstrates that, according to the rabbis, Torah law need not always conform to logic because divine fiat ultimately trumps human reason. 

Divine law, for the rabbis, then, incorporates rational logic, but need not answer to it. In fact, Hayes shows that the rabbis defined truth, emet, not in the Platonic sense of a universal static fact, but rather as an affirmation of trustworthiness, sincerity, and, in legal contexts, procedural validity. They viewed scripture as a legal code of divine origin that was nevertheless flexible, multilayered, and subject to interpretation. Various midrashim describe the Sinai experience as a revelation that provided the basis for 49 ways to reason for one ruling and an equal number of ways to argue for its opposite. Thus, the famous formulations: “These and those are the words of the living God,” and “There are 70 facets to the Torah.”

It is true that the Talmud accepts the concept of a single correct ruling, or din. However, Hayes shows that even in these cases, the Talmud feels free to declare that the normative ruling must, on occasion, deviate from the formal truth. Thus, in some halakhic texts, the value of peace outweighs that of truth so that a compromise settlement between two parties is preferred over a ruling based on strict justice. Other talmudic texts distinguish between the theoretically correct law (shurat ha-din) and the superior operative ruling (lifnim mi-shurat ha-din) that will engender a better outcome.

In one famous midrash, God throws truth to the ground in order to sway His judgment toward mercy so that He can forgive humankind for its sins and allow the world to survive. As Hayes observes, “The divorce of law and truth is not in itself remarkable”; after all no one imagines that the rules of a legal system express metaphysical truths. But “[w]hat is remarkable is that the Rabbis divorce truth from divine law, not human law.” And yet she argues that it is really surprising only if one adopts Cicero’s definition and those within the classical natural law tradition.

Some groups in Jewish antiquity did express more or less this kind of outrage over the rabbinic and Pharisaic willingness to divorce law from reason and mind-independent reality. The Greeks and the Qumran sect tend toward realism, while the Rabbis tend toward the nominalist position that some legal categories and definitions exist only in the minds of jurists and can incorporate subjective intentions and legal fictions. For example, the Qumran scrolls describe a solar calendar of 364 days in which each holiday always occurs on the same day of the week every year without change or need for human calculation. One scroll warns the members of the sect not to “make their times earlier nor postpone any of their holidays.” The Rabbis, in stark contrast, legislate a lunisolar calendar requiring witnesses to testify to each new moon and a court to continually intercalate months and declare when the holidays would fall. In one well-known story, Rabban Gamaliel the Patriarch declares the new moon on the wrong day. He then pressures Rabbi Joshua to accept his legal authority to do so, even to the point of violating the day they all know to be the astronomically correct date for Yom Kippur. After some anguish and deliberation with his colleagues, Rabbi Joshua accepts Rabban Gamaliel’s calendar along with the nominalist lesson that rabbinic authority trumps natural truth because God grants humans the right to legislate divine law. 


One way that Hayes shows how various conceptions of divine law play out in different historical periods is by carefully tracing the development of the laws of conversion to Judaism. The Pentateuch allows for the possibility of foreigners joining the Israelite nation through circumcision and marriage. Ezra, the priest and scribe, however, requires that “holy seed” never become intermingled with foreign seed. This requirement of genealogical purity is picked up by the Qumran sect in the Second Temple period and coincides with its view that Torah law must map onto natural reality. The Talmud, continuing the earlier tradition, accepts the possibility of conversion, and some rabbis offer a legal fiction to explain conversion as being newly reborn as a Jew. For these rabbis, even something as essential as Jewish genealogical identity is decided by a human court without recourse to heaven or nature. 

Although the legal fiction that a convert is a newborn has enough force to sever his or her family relationships for some legal purposes (for instance, inheritance or testimony as a witness), Hayes notes that it “does not take hold completely, for rabbinic law is cognizant of the convert’s foreign origin” in that a convert cannot, for instance, marry a priest. One’s non-Jewish origins are not entirely erased and remain a factor in determining class status.

Indeed, the Mishnah rules that converts may not recite “God of our fathers” in their prayers. However, Rabbi Yehudah in the Yerushalmi disputes this since Abraham was the father of all nations. On this point, Hayes writes, “R. Yehudah . . . shows his notion of lineage to be statutory and nominalist, rather than realist.” Although Hayes is undoubtedly right and generally illuminating on the nominalism of the Rabbis, this is probably an overstatement, since Rabbi Yehudah seems to be basing his ruling on the simple historical claim that Abraham was indeed the father of the nations.

In one of the most fascinating insights of her book, Hayes demonstrates that the Rabbis were keenly aware of the realist criticism directed at their nominalist views. One poignant example that illustrates her point involves a woman whose husband leaves on a trip and does not return. A reliable report comes back that he has died, and a court accepts the testimony, allowing her to remarry. One day, the first husband returns alive and well, making her an adulterer with the second man, whom she must now leave, and rendering their children illegitimate mamzerim. To add insult to injury, the Mishnah forbids her from remaining married to her first husband now that she has been with another man. In order to resolve this woman’s tragic situation, the 3rd-century Babylonian sage Rav proposed a bold legal fiction quoted in the Talmud Yerushalmi:

Rav Nahman bar Jacob said in the name of Rav: “If she married based on two witnesses [who testified that her first husband was dead], then even if he returns, we say to him, ‘You are not him.’”

Rabbi Samuel the son of Rav Isaac queried: “Ask yourself, what if he is a specifically known person like Imi?”

Rabbi Yose the son of Rabbi Bon responded: “Are there not many people who resemble Rabbi Imi?”

Such a case came before the rabbis there [in Babylonia]. They told him, “You are not him.” Aba the son of Aba arose and whispered to him in his ear; he told him, “By your life, give her a divorce document just in case.” The students of Rav arose and hit [Aba the son of Aba] . . . Such a case came before Rabbi Imi. He [Rabbi Imi] told him [the second husband], “Indeed it is clear that she is permitted to you. However, you should know that your children are mamzerim before Heaven.” Rabbi Zeira praised him that 
he upheld the matter with clarity.

Rabbi Imi’s formulation of Rav’s law reveals his assimilation of the Stoic categories of human versus divine law. Every line of the Yerushalmi tussles with the tension between a realistic acknowledgement of the first husband’s return and Rav’s nominalist legal fiction, which conveniently ignores him. The Bavli, however, describes the sages of Israel laughing at Rav’s opinion: “In the West, they mocked him, saying, ‘The man came and stands here, and you say there is no requirement to divorce [the second husband]!’” Hayes insightfully analyzes this as an indication that the Rabbis were aware of the realist critique. While she admits that one can point to some talmudic statements that assume a Greek notion of truth and divine law, nevertheless, she shows that the vast majority of the rabbinic corpus is comfortable with the biblical notion of law as divine will that incorporates human involvement. 

Far from being universal, unchanging, and true, God authorizes and takes pride in the human endeavor to augment, amend, and sometimes even to correct His law. One midrash has Moses arguing with a repentant God over His biblical threat to visit the guilt of parents upon their children. This is an extreme example, but there are hundreds of times when the Rabbis self-consciously legislate enactments, safeguards, modifications, and interpretations that serve to uproot, limit, and redirect the biblical law. As Hayes writes, “for the most part rabbinic sources represent divine law as responsive to the shifting conditions of human existence, and humans as active participants in its ongoing evolution.” She elegantly explains that the Rabbis “constructed a portrait of divine law whose very divinity was enhanced rather than impugned by its divorce from truth, its particular and arbitrary character, and its susceptibility to moral critique and 
modification.”

Although Hayes claims to provide only a descriptive historical analysis, her framework also offers prescriptive wisdom for contemporary approaches to law. What’s Divine About Divine Law? invites readers to rethink their relationship to whatever legal system they subscribe to, be it religious or secular. She quotes legal thinker Robert Cover’s influential essay “Nomos and Narrative,” which argues that law springs forth from a normative world of “history and destiny, beginning and end, explanation and purpose.” Applying this to the framework of biblical law, Hayes writes,

Insofar as biblical law is grounded in the nation’s story about itself—a story that encompasses past historical experience and future aspirations, and employs narrative techniques to mold and shape character—it may be described as teleological and aspirational. . . . [I]ts addressees and ideal human type are members of a covenant community whose historical encounter with a divine sovereign underwrites its continuing fidelity to his will for the formation and preservation of a holy, just, and wise community.

The italics, which are in the original, highlight the elements of historical narrative, divine will, and sensible reason that combine to create a normative world. Hayes’s encyclopedic and nuanced study shows how this biblical model was distorted by Second Temple Jewish writers who accepted a Greek dichotomy of divine versus human law. The biblical vision, however, found continuity in the Talmud, only to be cross-bred again with Hellenistic notions of divine law by later philosophers, kabbalists, and halakhists—though this last medieval and modern development is not really part of her story.

Hayes’s conclusion that the Rabbis were the primary inheritors of the biblical notion of divine law will be certain to provoke many scholars of classical Judaism who take for granted that the Rabbis moved farther away from biblical religion than did other Second Temple groups. The common assumption is that in their struggle to create a version of Judaism that would help them survive the trauma of loss of the Temple, the Rabbis turned to various forms of midrash to radically reinterpret the Bible, while incorporating at least some Greek terms and notions. The Qumran sect and others, by contrast, eschewed Greek and explicitly Hellenistic ideas and insisted upon a more literal interpretation of biblical law. Yet Hayes convincingly shows that although the Rabbis often deviate from biblical law in its details, their fundamental understanding of the divinity of Torah law directly continues that of the Bible itself. Conversely, the avoidance of Greek words in the Qumran scrolls only masks their own thoroughly Hellenized approach to divine law as a permanent natural order. In fact, the rabbinic willingness to modify the Torah’s laws follows from precisely the biblical understanding of law as the expression of a divine will that can change, and, in any case, must be interpreted.

Exploring Wild Alabama: A Guide to the State's Publicly Accessible Natural Areas Paperback – September 20, 2016 by Kenneth M. Wills (Author), Dr. L. J. Davenport (Author), Chris Oberholster M.S. (Foreword) (University of Alabama Press)

Wills and Davenport have compiled an excellent guide to areas of Alabama for the naturalist, tourist, sightseer, vacationer, or just plain vagabond. Concise descriptions and detailed directions are sure to please even the most savvy outdoorsperson in their pursuit of Alabama's wonderful natural treasures. A must have for travelers, hikers, and canoeists!

Exploring Wild Alabama is an exceptionally detailed guide to the most beautiful natural destinations in the state. From the rocky outcrops of the Appalachian plateaus to the sugar-white beaches of the Gulf Coast’s Orange Beach and Dauphin Island, Alabama offers a wealth of remarkable sites to explore by car or canoe, bicycle or motorcycle, or on foot.

Intrepid explorers Kenneth M. Wills and L. J. Davenport divide Alabama into eleven geographic regions that feature state parks and preserves, national monuments and forests, wildlife management areas, Nature Conservancy and Forever Wild properties, botanical gardens and arboreta, as well as falls, caverns, and rock cliffs. Exploring Wild Alabama provides detailed site entries to one hundred and fifty destinations. Each section is beautifully illustrated with color photographs and area maps.

Exploring Wild Alabama includes a large state map and numerous local topographic maps to help readers locate each site. Individual site entries include
·         written directions to each site and GPS coordinates;
·         engaging notes about the ecology, landscape features, and local species of plants and animals of the sites; and
·         international recreation symbols for hiking, fishing, boating, camping, hunting, and other fun outdoor activities.

Wills and Davenport guide travelers to Alabama jewels such as Sand Mountain’s Chitwood Barrens, which harbors the rare Green Pitcher Plant and other exotic botanical species; Blowing Springs Cave in Lauderdale County, named for the cool air and the clear spring flowing out of the cave opening; Jackson Prairies in the Lime Hills region; and Booker’s Mill in Conecuh County, offering diverse habitats and historic structures.


Long a favorite destination for outdoor sports enthusiasts, Alabama is fast becoming a major “ecotourism” destination, with thousands of travelers discovering the state’s unsung natural treasures. Exploring Wild Alabama will be used and trusted by anyone who loves the outdoors—birders, botanists, cave explorers, cyclists, hunters, fishermen, rock climbers, canoeists, teachers, and other outdoor enthusiasts.

Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton by Rob Iliffe Oxford University Press, 536 pp., $34.95

A case can be made that Isaac Newton was the most important man that ever lived. No one would mistake him as the greatest man who ever lived, in the sense of his goodness as a person or as someone with an admirable personality, but he did do more than anyone else to show that the entire universe behaves in a mechanistic manner and is predictable. That insight has had a profound impact on the most fundamental manner in which we live as well as how we perceive of the universe.

Indulge in the fantasy, for a moment, that you are living in the seventeenth century and have a rudimentary understanding of the physical world. One hundred and fifty years ago a monk named Copernicus proposed that the sun, and not the earth, lay at the center of the known universe. The evidence is beginning to mount from the works of Kepler and Galileo that Copernicus was right and that the planets move around the sun in a predictable manner. Galileo has also described mathematically how bodies fall to the surface of the earth. Both the work of Kepler and Galileo were enormous intellectual leaps forward for mankind. But, why was it that objects always fall to the surface of the earth and why is it that planets stay in orbit around the sun and the moon around the earth? The answer to that question may well be the crowning achievement of human thought.

Enter Isaac Newton. Galileo may have already understood inertia – that objects require a force to move a resting object or stop a moving object – but Newton was the first to realize that some kind of force is necessary to change the motion, or accelerate, any object. He then stumbled upon a truly revolutionary insight. What if the force causing an object to fall to the earth and the force causing the motion of celestial bodies to constantly change was the exact same force?

To see if this hypothesis, which at first sounds crazy, could be true consider the moon. As the moon orbits the earth, it is constantly falling, but because the earth is curved it never gets closer to the earth as it falls. How much does the moon fall towards the earth over a period of time, say each second? The answer to that question can actually be found using geometry known to the ancient Greeks.

In the diagram above, if s is the distance the moon falls in a second, then x is the distance it moves horizontally in one second. It takes about twenty-nine days for the moon to completely orbit the earth and observations of eclipses allowed mathematicians to calculate that the distance from the earth to the moon is equal to about thirty times the diameter of the earth, which also was known to be about eight thousand miles. The total circumference of the moon’s orbit is two multiplied by pi multiplied by thirty multiplied by eight-thousand miles. That calculation equals 1,507,964 miles per twenty-nine days, or 2,505,600 seconds. The quantity “x” is then 0.64 miles or 3,380 feet.

The full diameter of the moon’s orbit is twice its radius or 480,000 miles. Since there are two similar triangles in the diagram, we have all that is needed to determine “s,” since the ratio of x to s is equal to the ratio of D-s to x. “S” is equal to .0045 feet or about 1/20th of an inch. That’s how far the moon falls each second.

Galileo had already established the mathematics by which objects fell to the earth before Newton was alive. As an object falls to the earth, the distance it travels is proportional to the square of time, with its position given by the equation of one-half times the gravitational constant times the square of time. Under the influence of gravity, all objects will fall directly towards the center of the earth; after one second it will have fallen by sixteen feet, two seconds by sixty-four feet, etc.  Based upon Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Newton deduced that the effects of gravity must be proportional to the inverse square of the distance between objects. The moon, then, should be attracted to the earth at a strength that is one divided by sixty-squared. Using universal gravitation then, the moon should fall by sixteen feet divided by sixty-squared or 1/20th of an inch.

Newton’s genius extended also to mathematics, where he invented the calculus in order to adequately describe the physical laws he illuminated. Using the concept of a mathematical limit, he was able to solve two problems that had long perplexed mathematicians: how to find the slope of an arbitrary tangent line to a curve and a general method for finding the areas under curves. As it turns out and is recorded as the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, these two processes are inverses of each other.

What is the point of rehashing these old discoveries by Isaac Newton? In order to fully appreciate Rob Iliffe’s new book Priest of Nature, it is important to understand just how much Isaac Newton meant to science and mathematics. His achievements in these areas probably surpass anyone else who has ever lived. Alexander Pope appropriately said,

“Nature and nature’s laws

Lay hid in night

God said, ‘Let Newton be,’

And all was light.”

Historians of science and of the enlightenment have been well aware for a long time that Newton’s intellect was not solely, or even primarily, directed towards the physical universe. He seemed much more fascinated by subjects like alchemy and the metaphysics of the bible. His views were heretical to the Church of England at the time and have been something of an embarrassment to the scientific establishment since, which may be why no one has examined these viewpoints so exhaustively until Iliffe. The identity of the “whore of Babylon,” the Unitarian origins of the Christian Church, the biblical chronology pointing to the end times, and a general method of converting elements to gold were far more fascinating endeavors to Newton than the law of universal gravitation.

Newton was inculcated with religious teaching from a very young age, as were most children of his time. He would have been taught the fundamental teachings of the Church and been required to memorize various biblical passages. Between 1655 and 1660 (when Newton was between ages twelve and seventeen) he attended the Free Grammar School at Grantham where he excelled. His father died before he was born and his stepfather was a Reverend, whom Newton despised. His schooling gave him an outlet for his unhappy life at home.

A carving at the Grantham School presumed to be made by Isaac Newton.

Newton’s scientific discoveries were largely in the 1660s and by the 1670s, his notebooks reveal an absorption with the religious doctrine of the Trinity. He believed that the first Christians had no conception of the teaching and that it was only added to Christian teaching in the fourth century. He further believed that Catholic theologians had corrupted the Bible rather than come to terms with this fact.

Among the fascinating sections in Mr. Iliffe’s book is a chapter entitled “Methodising the Apocalypse.” Newton’s proficiency with mathematics and obsession with the Bible made it all but certain that he would turn his attention at some point to the mathematical mysteries of biblical prophecy. At the end of the 1670s, by that point far removed from the twenty-four-year-old man who unlocked the secrets of the heavens, he had developed a sophisticated and original viewpoint on how biblical prophecies had been fulfilled in history. He did not believe the scriptures made literal claims about the physical world, but were instead deeply figurative. He saw the office of the Pope as the biblical Antichrist and calculated based upon that that the world “could” end by the year 2060, although Newton believed it was not possible to affix a precise date to the end of the world.

He interpreted the biblical language of a “remnant” as meaning that only a few people scattered throughout the earth would have the ability to understand the secrets contained within the Bible after centuries of obfuscation and that these men would spread this truth throughout the earth before the end of the world. That was ultimately the driving force behind Newton’s quest: the belief that the once true and pure faith of Christianity had become concealed and hidden to almost all. In that sense, his religious quest was in the same vein as his scientific quest, to unlock the secrets of the universe.

Why has Newton’s religious writings and beliefs not been given much attention until now? Partially it is because they are hard to categorize and still find an audience. They are not scientific and so are discarded by scientists as superfluous. They are eschatological in nature but are so heretical that most movements would turn aside from them.

In reality, Newton’s quest to understand God’s thoughts, can at times seem like a great adventure despite the seriousness and complexity of the work. That’s a tribute to Mr. Iliffe. But, perhaps the greatest thing to come out of the book is an illumination of how Newton saw his scientific advancements. As far back as the Greeks, heliocentric models of the solar system were proposed. Newton saw men like Copernicus leading up to himself as not discovering new truths of the world, but illuminating hidden truths that falsehood had buried. His view of religious truth was identical.

Priest of Nature does a miraculous job of placing Newton’s religious beliefs in the context of both existing Protestant beliefs and Newton’s scientific advances. That is not an easy thing to do and it does so in a way that makes subjects not traditionally enjoyable a true fascination to read.

We ultimately are likely to accept the scientific teachings of Newton and reject his religious writings as the ravings of an unbalanced man. Yet, each one of us confronts some of the same questions that Newton confronted and we often do so with two minds, exploring our surroundings in the language of both the physical and the metaphysical. Science and religion may have moved into two very different disciplines as the centuries have passed but within each heart and mind, they continue to mingle. Four-hundred years later, all of us set off on the same adventure as Isaac Newton.

Memorial to Isaac Newton in Westminister Abbey.