Review by Choice Review
In this biography of the Smithsonian Institution's benefactor, architectural historian Ewing presents a social portrait, as well as a portrait of science, of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. James Smithson, born illegitimate, was a second-tier scientist who lived in an era when lineage was considered a most precious commodity. Smithson took the name of a distant relative and dropped his original surname, Macie. While a student at Oxford, Smithson took an intense interest in chemistry and subsequently gained membership to the Royal Society, which was at that time composed of gentlemen with a general interest in science. Smithson shuttled back and forth between London and Paris to avoid the Napoleonic Wars. He never visited the US, yet he personally believed that America was the future, in part because of its meritocracy. His will was not specific regarding the Smithsonian Institution; it was "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Whether to accept the money, where to locate the institution, and what its mission was to be were issues later to be worked out. Summing Up: Recommended. General collections/public libraries. S. L. Recken University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Smithson (1765-1829) was the British chemist, mineralogist, and philanthropist whose $500,000 gift to the U.S. helped establish the Smithsonian Institution in 1836. The bequest to build the foundation in Washington for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men resulted in an international lawsuit and a decade-long congressional feud. Ewing, an architectural historian, found documents relevant to Smithson's story that revealed facts concerning his mother (lawsuits exposed her manic profligacy and made clear that she left her son much less than she might have) and uncovered his writings on the subject of chemistry, to which he dedicated his life. Most of them were written in an antique language now indecipherable except to a few specialists. As background, Ewing recounts the history of England from 1782 to 1807, much of it focused on Oxford University, where Smithson studied. Ewing has written a hugely ambitious biography that is likely to be the definitive one on the subject. --George Cohen Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This pleasing biography (the second recent one of Smithson, after 2003's The Stranger and the Statesman by Nina Burleigh) tells the story of the enigmatic Englishman who left the United States a vast sum of money to found "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Ewing, an architectural historian who has worked at the Smithsonian, traces John Smithson's development as a "gentleman-scientist," describing his study of chemistry at Oxford in the 1780s; his membership in the Coffee House Philosophical Society, where learned men discussed scientific news; and his well-received scientific papers. Two of the most fascinating chapters focus on Smithson's will. Ewing hazards a few suggestions about why an English scientist would leave a huge bequest to the United States government, and she examines the controversy Smithson's gift set off-some argued against accepting what they viewed as Smithson's self-aggrandizing bequest. This book is possible only because Ewing is a dogged researcher in countless archives. References to Smithson in his friends' letters and diaries reveal not the dour recluse historians had once thought him to be but an exuberant if eccentric man with a zeal for learning and for life. Ewing ably conveys all this as well as the mysterious roots of the institution that bears his name. Illus. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The Smithsonian is known to most Americans, whether or not they have visited its main Castle or any of the attendant museums. However, Englishman James Smithson (born James Louis Macie), whose bequest created the Smithsonian, is an enigma. A disastrous fire at the Smithsonian in 1865 destroyed his on-site papers, manuscripts, diaries, equipment, and more. Seeking to build a picture of this man and discover what prompted his bequest to the United States, architectural historian Ewing has little to work with as she digs deep into the past, but she follows every scrap of information, from letters to bank records, and comes up with a vigorous picture of Smithson as a son, friend, companion, man, uncle, and scientist. She also marvelously re-creates the age in which Smithson lived, detailing his travels, his friends and their complicated relationships in society, his scientific contributions and connections, the politics of his times, the excitement new discoveries brought to science, as well as the excitement in society generally, with events such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Required for history of science collections and highly recommended for all libraries.-Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences, Research Triangle Park, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lost, indeed: Architectural historian Ewing has labored heroically to write the biography of a man whose letters and papers were nearly all consumed in a fire that swept the nascent Smithsonian Institution in 1865. Undaunted, she pursued bank records, legal documents, professional society archives, diaries and letters from James Smithson's many correspondents. Smithson (1765-1829) was the illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland; his mother, the Duke's mistress, could claim also highborn connections and sufficient wealth to enable Smithson's matriculation at Oxford, his membership in the beau monde, the maintenance of sumptuous bachelor's quarters in London and an extensive Grand Tour. The tour was not a young man's pursuit of fun and games (though Smithson did love gambling) so much as a means of meeting the continent's leading men of science and of adding to his mineral "cabinet." In the early 1800s, geology, mineralogy and meteorology were the rage, and chemistry was becoming a true science. Smithson, already the youngest member ever admitted to the Royal Society (in 1787), published some papers but mostly enjoyed the company of such leading lights as Priestley, Lavoiser, Cuvier and Davy. He and his circle shared a sense of optimism and progress that led them to admire the Americans' War of Independence and support the French Revolution. Rough moments in the political aftermath, however, led to Smithson's imprisonment in Denmark, a country then at war with England. Eventually resettled in London, the lifelong bachelor wrote a will that left his fortune "to found at Washington . . . an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." That the will survived the courts as well as a contentious Congress is in itself an amazing tale--and it might never have happened, Ewing avers, had it not been one man's heartfelt desire to perpetuate a name that marked him as illegitimate. Absorbing social history, if not quite a flesh-and-blood story. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
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