A literate and lucid account of the eighteenth century's great race to understand the elements—and found a modern science.

Antoine Lavoisier—who lived at the zenith of the Enlightenment and died at the hands of the Revolution—was himself a revolutionary. Closely followed by the burgeoning international scientific community, he competed with the best minds of his time to be the first to explain how chemical processes really work. Aided by a large fortune and his accomplished wife, he employed the most ingenious and expensive technology of his time in a series of innovative experiments that forever buried medieval alchemy and established a chemical language still in use today. Yet his personal triumph was short-lived, and the glory his achievement brought France could not protect him from the ravages of the Terror.

Madison Smartt Bell, building on his celebrated trilogy about the eighteenth-century Haitian uprisings, dramatically re-creates this turbulent era of reason and revolution, and the work of a man who so thoroughly exemplified its spirit. 8 illustrations.

麥迪遜．貝爾（Madison Smartt Bell）

著有十二部小說，最新一部是《建築工人拒用的石頭》，為「海地三部曲」的最後一部。他目前是古歇學院（Goucher College）克拉茨創意寫作中心的主任，現居美國馬里蘭州巴爾的摩。

黃中憲

政大外交系畢業，曾任出版社叢書主編、網路媒體國際新聞編譯，現專職筆譯。譯作有《1776——美國的誕生》、《企業理想國》、《國家地理攝影精技》、《發現非洲》、《伊斯蘭世界》、《破解古埃及》等。