The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856

by Ralph O'Connor

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At the turn of the nineteenth century, geology - and its claims that the earth had a long and colorful prehuman history - was widely dismissed as dangerous nonsense. But just fifty years later, it was the most celebrated of Victorian sciences. Ralph O'Connor tracks the astonishing growth of geology's prestige in Britain, exploring how a new geohistory far more alluring than the standard six days of Creation was assembled and sold to the wider Biblereading public. Savvy science writer, O'Connor shows, marketed spectacular visions of past worlds, piquing the public imagination with glimpses of man-eating mammoths, talking dinosaurs,...Read more
  • ISBN10 0226616681
  • ISBN13 9780226616681
  • Publish Date 1 December 2007 (first published 1 January 2007)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of Chicago Press