Promethean Ambitions

"With close attention to historical and textual detail that is never less than engaging, Newman unpacks the historical accidents and political machinations that led to alchemy's marginalization, bringing sympathy, wit, and imagination to his account." - Simon Ings, New Scientist "Newman chooses the fascinating topic of alchemy as his case study in the long history of human efforts to breach the barriers between nature and human artifice....A thought-provoking book." - Iwan Rhys Morus, Science "Newman argues [that] the methods and ideas of modern science, including concepts of experimentation, far from breaking with alchemical researches, evolved out of them....Newman, a clear and graceful writer, keeps his goal in view. He is an initiate - tapping, testing, and transmuting - until something different, still called alchemy, gradually takes shape." - Edward Rothstein, New York Times"