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Tom Shactman

Biography

Tom Shactman

Tom Shachtman has written or co-authored more than three dozen books, written and produced documentaries seen on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and BBC. His articles have appeared in The New York Times,Newsday, Smithsonian, environmental magazines, and such blogs as The Huffington Post, History News Network, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post’s “Book Beat. ” He lives in Salisbury, Connecticut.

Tom Shactman

Books by Tom Shactman

Gentlemen Scientists and Revolutionaries: The Founding Fathers in the Age of Enlightenment
by Tom Shactman - History, Nonfiction, Science

Science and experimentation were at the heart of the Founding Fathers’ philosophies and actions. The Founders relentlessly tinkered, invented, farmed by means of scientific principles, star-gazed, were fascinated by math, used scientific analogies and scientific thinking in their political writing, and fell in love with technologies. They conceived of the United States of America as a grand “experiment” in the scientific meaning of the word. This is the full story of how the intellectual excitement of scientific discoveries had a powerful influence on America’s Founding Fathers.