I'm the girl who thinks the discipline of economics is a complete waste of time because it has yet to produce a society in which the poor don't remain poor. I'm the girl who says that she doesn't want to know how many wives Henry VIII beheaded, she wants to know what people in Tudor times had for pudding and how they washed their hair or made their shoes. The Shock of the Old is right up my alley. Clearly I can't spend 17 paragraphs talking about these vital points because if I were truly wise enough to make them, I'd have written the book myself. The Shock of the Old spans 212 pages and I have dog-eared 17 of them. But hereabouts, each dog ear represents something vital, something I feel I must tell you about when I review it. Bookbag loved it and if you prefer a historical approach that favours the way people lived over the biographies of kings and queens, you will too.Ī good indicator of how much I enjoyed reading a book is the number of dog ears I made. In 2013, he led the move of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine to the Department of History of King's College London.Summary: Interesting, accessible and full of simple common sense, it's quite shocking to think the perspective offered in The Shock of the Old is actually new, dangerous and radical. He has held a Major Research Fellowship (2006–2009) from the Leverhulme Trust. After teaching the economics of science and technology and the history of science and technology at the University of Manchester, he became the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College, London, and Hans Rausing Professor. David Edgerton FBA was educated at St John's College, Oxford, and Imperial College London. In 2013, he led the move of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine to the Department of History of King's College London.

Edgerton the shock of the old