  Great Biography, mediocre mystery
What do you think about when you think of Sir Isaac Newton?
Most people would only be able to say he discovered gravity.
And yet the life of Sir Isaac Newton encompassed so much more than that. He invented calculus, the silver standard, and prosecuted the most notorious counterfeiter in English history.
And it is through Thomas Levenson's Newton and the Counterfeiter, the Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist that we are introduced to this multifaceted life of Isaac Newton.
Newton and the Counterfeiter, the Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist is a brilliant biography of Sir Isaac Newton. Readable and enjoyable, Levenson introduces us to the genius, Isaac Newton, and makes him a flesh and blood character rather than the bland name we learned in history books. Levenson's love of Newton is apparent as Levenson makes the reader experience the excitement and importance of Newton's discoveries and shows how Newton literally changed the world. At the same time, Levenson takes the reader on a tour of seventeenth century England, including the criminal element of that time. At the end of the story the reader has learned about alchemy, economics, prison systems, and the details of counterfeiting in Newton's day, all in a page turning enjoyable read.
One of my only qualms with the book in fact was that it was severely misrepresented. From reading the back cover and other information on Newton and the Counterfeiter it was marketed as a mystery novel, and an intricate one at that, but after reading it, Newton and the Counterfeiter has proven to be almost anything but. It showed intricate and interesting information about Newton, his life, his experiments, but when it came to any aspects dealing with the mystery part of the book, it was slow, repetitious, and lacking on any mysterious element. In fact if one thing is to be said about Newton and the Counterfeiter it is that it's a wonderful biography, but only a relatively mediocre mystery.
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Newton a Detective?
I heard about this book on NPR, the source of most of the great books I read. The author intrigued me by talking about Sir Issac Newton changing careers; reinventing himself so to speak. I was hooked. This is a great read -- a bit scholastic in places but so very interesting.
Who was Isaac Newton?
The book title is a little misleading, since the story of Newton's campaign to convict the counterfeiter is only used as a peg on which to hang an excellent summary of the life of Newton and the social background (Grantham, Cambridge and London) within which he lived. The author paints a vivid picture and does his best to reconstruct the major events in what was a very chequered career: farm boy to scholar, internationally recognized mathematician to alchemist, and technocrat to detective. He even attempts to fill in the blank of Newton's hypothetical love-life.
Although this is not a scholarly text, it is an excellent 'read' and touches on many aspects of Newton's character and career that are not exactly common knowledge. For any reader who would like to delve deeper, the sources used by the author are all listed.
Who Knew?
What a fascinating book. I was totally enthralled from page one. One always thinks of Newton as a dry physics lesson, but think again. I wish that my high school science teacher had read this book, what a totally different outlook I might have had. Anyone interested in science, money, history, detective stories, mysteries, or just a cracking good read should pick this book up.
Newton As Bureaucrat
Isaac Newton is almost universally known as a mathematical physicist, with images of a selfless scholar who stood on the shoulders of giants. Relatively little is known of him after he left the scholarly life for a sinecure in bustling London, ultimately leading to his involvement in petty national politics, for which his knighthood was a prop.
But before then he managed to save England's commercial economy by applying his intellect to diagnose a problem of economics and not physics, recommending a rational solution that was ignored, and then save the realm by helping to make its money worth something. That effort exposed him to an ugly underworld, which he eventually mastered with few scholarly methods other than intense analysis. Newton always had a hard side, and placing him in a position where he was figuratively judge, jury and executioner, made that side even harder.
Almost like reading a crime novel, and often just as exciting, this well written book explores Britain's social and economic system, including the counterfeiting underworld that he had to learn to control. To his credit he accomplished this within the letter of British law, with relentlessness typical of dedicated career government bureaucrats. There were no giants in this, his second career, but there certainly was far more personal involvement than we would expect from someone who explained the system of the world.
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