Books I'm Reading: The Invisible Century

Richard Panek's The Invisible Century (Penguin, 2004) is a slim volume that makes some moderately obvious points, yet it makes them clearly and in lucid prose. The book looks at the modern period through brief biographies of Einstein and Freud—the former at the forefront of a transition in scientific thinking from curiosity about the nature of matter and life toward curiosity about aspects of the universe we cannot see, the latter spearheading a movement in philosophy directed at attempting to answer questions about the nature of the unconscious. An interesting read.