Congratulations to Larry Stewart, whose Practical Matter : Newton's Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687-1851 (co-authored with Margaret C. Jacob) has just been published by Harvard University Press. The book aims at a general audience and examines how, despite powerful opposition on the Continent, a Newtonian understanding gained acceptance and practical application. There was nothing preordained or inevitable about the centrality awarded to science. "It is easy to forget", they write, "that science might have been stillborn, or remained the esoteric knowledge of court elites. Instead, for better and for worse, science became a centerpiece of Western culture." Click here to learn more.