The Tech?nol?o?gists by Matthew Pearl is a novel which takes place at post Civil War, Boston. The story takes place in the years dur?ing a very frag?ile time in our history.
Mar?cus Mans?field was a POW & is American Civil War vet?eran attends the first class of the Mass?a?chu?setts Insti?tute of Tech?nol?ogy as a char?ity stu?dent. Even though he is not as affluent as his friends, Mar?cus is brilliant and a sci?en?tist n heart and mind.
Mans?field and his col?leagues decide to inves?ti?gate recent strange occur?rences which hap?pened in the Boston Har?bor and the city itself. What's at stake is the future of MIT as well as mod?ern sci?ence itself.
The Tech?nol?o?gists by Matthew Pearl is an enter?tain?ing read with peculiar his?tor?i?cal detail and a nerdi?ness thrown in just for kicks. I found the char?ac?ters cap?ti?vat?ing and the plot line interesting.
The author does a great job interlacing fiction and non-fiction as well as the dia?log which was spo?ken in that time period. The difficult social norms of the time are pre?sented in the form of a lone MIT female stu?dent who is forced to study by herself.
There were sev?eral interesting views in The Technologists, it is writ?ten almost as a futur?is?tic novel, but of course with tech?nol?ogy most of us con?sider anti?quated. The ones I thought were the most inter?est?ing where the tech?no?log?i?cal aspect, Har?vard's reli?gious aspects, and flash?backs of the pro?tag?o?nist to the Civil War.
The over?reach?ing tech?nol?ogy which the MIT stu?dents dealt with, old in today's stan?dards but pre?sented in the book as the lat?est inno?va?tions are explained in an inter?est?ing way. Tech?nol?ogy, then as is now, is some?times seen as an evil, espe?cially when it looks as if it might cost a whole class their liv?ing wage.
I have always thought of the University of Harvard as a for?ward think?ing uni?ver?sity. This novel, and a quick con?fir?ma?tion on Google, taught me that it wasn't always so. From my pre?vi?ous read?ing on Amer?i?can his?tory it seemed to me that Har?vard has always strove to inno?vate, but it seems that around that time Har?vard upheld its reli?gious stan?dards higher than its sci?en?tific ones. The uni?ver?sity wouldn't admit stu?dents who aren't Chris?tians as well as oppose ideas which do not agree with the Chris?t?ian dogma based on noth?ing but the ridicu?lous idea that reli?gion shouldn't be questioned.
A few of the chap?ters are told in flash?backs to the char?ac?ters' Civil War expe?ri?ence and how that expe?ri?ence came to influ?ence them at the cur?rent time?line. Per?son?ally, I would have loved to read more about that era, chap?ters switch?ing between war expe?ri?ence and how they affect peace time expe?ri?ences. How the war tech?nol?ogy which was meant to destroy can also be used to rebuild.
Over?all, while not a page turner, I found The Tech?nol?o?gists to be a solid, above aver?age mys?tery, which holds itself together well, writ?ten by a gifted author.
Known by the Quixotic pun of "Man of la Book" he is a father, husband, book blogger, software engineer & wood worker who is known the world over as a man of many interests and to his lovely wife as "an idiot".
His bookish blog is at http://www.manoflabook.com/
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