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Quicksilver

By Neal Stephenson

(69)

| Paperback | 9780434008933

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Book Description

Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is here. A monumental literary feat that follows the author's critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Cryptonomicon, it is history, adventure, science, truth, invention, sex, absurdity, piracy, madness, death, and alchemy. It sweeps acrossContinue

Critics

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Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson 927pp, Random House, £16.99 The term "cyberculture" may be relatively new, but one might also regard it as just a new name for a very old sphere of human activity. What were Renaissance alchemists but hackers, rooting a ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

The Best Reviews: Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

"Rich , lush and rivetting historical" Princess Caroline commands Enoch Root to go to Boston to persuade computational systems developer Daniel Waterhouse to come to Europe. The royal wants Daniel to mediate a geometrically growing mathematical squab ... (read full critics)

thebestreviews published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

8 Reviews

Quicksilver

A brilliant book, one of the best I have read. Stephenson tells the story of how many of the foundations of the modern world in terms of economics, politics, science etc... came in to being, whilst managing to maintain an entertaining and engrossing plot. The level of detail is astonishing. Possi ... (continue)

A brilliant book, one of the best I have read. Stephenson tells the story of how many of the foundations of the modern world in terms of economics, politics, science etc... came in to being, whilst managing to maintain an entertaining and engrossing plot. The level of detail is astonishing. Possibly too nerdy for some, but I loved it.

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Andy said on Dec 13, 2009 | Add your feedback

First Edition

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db's.books said on Aug 5, 2009 | Add your feedback

Most entertaining!

This is perhaps the most entertaining historical novel I have read. While it is fiction, Stephenson tells, among many other things, a most interesting story of how our early enlightened scientists dragged themselves and civilization out of the dreggs of superstition and alchemy into the age of empir ... (continue)

This is perhaps the most entertaining historical novel I have read. While it is fiction, Stephenson tells, among many other things, a most interesting story of how our early enlightened scientists dragged themselves and civilization out of the dreggs of superstition and alchemy into the age of empiricism and reason. As described by Stephenson, practicing true science is NOT a pretty picture.
And while we witness the progress of the scientific age, we see that honesty in politics has not progressed one iota.

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BobGoodwin said on Jan 26, 2009 | Add your feedback

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***

How can I put this? Uhm. Right. Let's see.
The Baroque Cycle of Stephenson is one of the best historical novels of the XX century. There, I said it. And I have all of O'Brian's books too, so it's not that I don't have any reference.
Stephenson, after the success of 'Cryptonomicon', whic ... (continue)

How can I put this? Uhm. Right. Let's see.
The Baroque Cycle of Stephenson is one of the best historical novels of the XX century. There, I said it. And I have all of O'Brian's books too, so it's not that I don't have any reference.
Stephenson, after the success of 'Cryptonomicon', which is 'just a kind of SF', if you like, jumps back 400 years and brings to life the ancestors of his previous novel characters. And it works a treat. After reading the beginning - when 'Half-cocked' Jack Shaftoe meets Eliza at the second siege of Vienna, and whisks her off to Amsterdam via the Hartz mountains, meeting Leibniz on the way, right while in London the young puritan Waterhouse contemplates the head of Cromwell on a pike and thinks of his friend Newton - you feel like you've been swept off your feet too, then dropped straight into seventeenth-century Europe and England.
I could not wait to read the whole trilogy, and once I finished it, I read it again. I still do, every now and then.

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KillingTime said on Jan 14, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Quicksilver

Admittedly, the title caught my attention because of the software company (www.quicksilver.com) and the surfing gear franchise, too. Of the many "things" I personally adore, computers and surfing (like, waves in, like, California -- not just the Internet) are at the top of the list. Simply stated, N ... (continue)

Admittedly, the title caught my attention because of the software company (www.quicksilver.com) and the surfing gear franchise, too. Of the many "things" I personally adore, computers and surfing (like, waves in, like, California -- not just the Internet) are at the top of the list. Simply stated, Neal is AHEAD OF HIS TIME, even though he takes us back a few centuries via this masterpiece.
Yet, he is futuristic enough to keep the reader thinking outside of the past and present. Sure, we live in the present grounded in the past... but when you read Neal's books (whether "Quicksilver" or one of his many others), you are transported to another world of thought that stretches your mind and its boundaries as we know them. Or think we know them. I need to re-read parts of this to ensure that I "get" him. He is brilliant, and I need to keep pace with his take on society (past, present and future), technology and their interface.

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Kimberly Petrovic said on Oct 22, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback