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Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist Kindle Edition

4.3 out of 5 stars 264

A “thoroughly surprising” chapter in the life of Isaac Newton, with a “vivid re-creation of 17th-century London and its fascinating criminal haunts” (Providence Journal).

When renowned scientist Isaac Newton takes up the post of Warden of His Majesty’s Mint in London, another kind of genius—a preternaturally gifted counterfeiter named William Chaloner—has already taken up residence in the city, rising quickly in an unruly, competitive underworld. In the courts and streets of London, and amid the tremors of a world being transformed by ideas Newton himself set in motion, Chaloner crosses paths with the formidable new warden.
 
An epic game of cat and mouse ensues in
Newton and the Counterfeiter, revealing for the first time the “remarkable and true tale of the only criminal investigator who was far, far brainier than even Sherlock Holmes: Sir Isaac Newton during his tenure as Warden of the Royal Mint . . . A fascinating saga” (Walter Isaacson).
 
“I absolutely loved
Newton and the Counterfeiter. Deft, witty and exhaustively researched.” —Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
 
“A delicious read, featuring brilliant detective work and a captivating story . . . A virtuoso performance.” —Sylvia Nasar, author of
A Beautiful Mind
 
“Through a page-turning narrative, we witness Isaac Newton’s genius grappling with the darker sides of human nature, an all too human journey reflecting his deepest beliefs about the cosmic order.” —Brian Greene, author of
The Fabric of the Cosmos
 
“Levenson transforms inflation and metallurgy into a suspenseful detective story bolstered by an eloquent summary of Newtonian physics and stomach-turning descriptions of prison life in the Tower of London. . . . [The book] humanizes a legend, transforming him into a Sherlock Holmes in pursuit of his own private Moriarty.” —
The Washington Post

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description
In 1695, Isaac Newton--already renowned as the greatest mind of his age--made a surprising career change. He left quiet Cambridge, where he had lived for thirty years and made his earth-shattering discoveries, and moved to London to take up the post of Warden of His Majesty's Mint. Newton was preceded to the city by a genius of another kind, the budding criminal William Chaloner. Thanks to his preternatural skills as a counterfeiter, Chaloner was rapidly rising in London's highly competitive underworld, at a time when organized law enforcement was all but unknown and money in the modern sense was just coming into being. Then he crossed paths with the formidable new warden. In the courts and streets of London--and amid the tremors of a world being transformed by the ideas Newton himself had set in motion--the two played out an epic game of cat and mouse.


A Q&A with Thomas Levenson, Author of Newton and the Counterfeiter

Q: Why did you decide to write Newton and the Counterfeiter?

A: I first encountered the connection at the heart of Newton and the Counterfeiter when I was working on a very different project in the mid '90s. A long out of print book quoted from one of the few letters between my counterfeiter, William Chaloner, and Isaac Newton--and on reading it I wondered: what on earth was such a scoundrel doing in correspondence with the greatest mind of the age? The question stuck with me for a decade, and finally I made the time to dig a little deeper. Once I did, I discovered two things that made this book both possible, and from a writer's point of view, inescapable. The first was a trove of original documents that chronicled Newton's involvement in the pursuit and prosecution of not just Chaloner, but dozens of other currency criminals. The second was the insight this one story gives into Newton himself--and of the real extent and impact of the revolutions (plural deliberate) which he so prominently led. Isaac Newton is best remembered, of course, as the man at the vanguard of the scientific revolution--a status established by his discoveries: the laws of motion, gravity, the calculus, and much more. But I found that this story gave me a sense of what it was like to live through that revolution at street level. It provided an example of Newton's mind at work, for one, and for another, it involved Newton in the second of the great 17th century transformations, the financial revolution that occurred in conjunction, and with some connection to the scientific one.

Newton, I found, was a bureaucrat, a man with a job running England's money supply at a time with surprising parallels to our own: new, poorly understood financial engineering to deal with what was a national currency and economic crisis. He was asked to think about money, and he did--and at the same time, he was given the job of Warden of the Mint, which among other duties put him charge of policing those who would fake or undermine the King's coins. So there I had it: a gripping true crime story, with life-and-death stakes and enough information to follow my leading characters through the bad streets and worse jails of London--and one that at the same time let me explore some of critical moves in the making of the world we inhabit through the mind and feelings of perhaps the greatest scientific thinker who ever lived. How could I resist that?

Q: Are there comparisons to be made to the financial times we are living in today in this country?

A: When I started writing this book, (c. 2005) the American and the global economy was seemingly in robust health. The American housing market was booming; financial markets the world over were trading happily back and forth, the Dow in June, when I started working in earnest on the project, stood comfortably over 10,000, with a 40% rise to come through the first and second drafts of the work. And then, of course, things changed--and by that time (too late to do my own financial situation any good) I realized that in the story of Newton's confrontation with Chaloner I could see many of the pathologies that define our current predicament. England's currency and its system of high finance--the big loans and big banks behind them needed to fund government--were both under increasing strain when Newton arrived at the Mint.

Part of the damage was being done through imbalances of trade, as silver flowed out of England to the European continent and ultimately to India and China. (Sound familiar?) That loss of metal had huge economic consequences when you remember that money itself was made of silver back then. No silver, no coins. No coins--and how are you going to buy a loaf of bread, a pound of beef, a barrel of beer (which was a staple, and not a luxury given the state of London’s drinking (sic) water). At the same time, England was waging a war it could not pay for. (Sound familiar?) The Treasury was broke. Financial engineering got its start in the ever more desperate attempts by the government to raise the money it needed to keep its army in the field against France. Newton and his counterfeiting nemesis William Chaloner both found themselves operating on unfamiliar territory, with paper abstractions standing in for what used to be literally hard cash. This was when bank notes were invented--and Chaloner forged some. This was when the government began to issue what were in essence bonds--and Chaloner forged some of those too. Personal cheques were coming in, and--you guessed it--Chaloner passed a couple of duds. Most significantly, the Bank of England invented fractional reserve lending--lending out a multiple of the actual cash reserves it held at any one time. This was the birth of leverage. Put it all together and you have most of the crucial ideas in modern finance appearing at almost the same instant. These are fantastically useful tools; the enormous expansion of wealth, of material comfort, of human well being that we’ve seen over the last three centuries, derives in part from the fact that the English and their trading counterparties were so impressively inventive in those decades. But at the same time, as we know now all too well, each and every one of those financial ideas are capable of abuse. Now add to the usual temptations to financial sin the besetting danger of ignorance, of the sheer unfamiliarity of the new instruments, and you have the makings of an almost inevitable disaster.

In 2009, we are dealing with that double trouble: deliberate frauds combining with the larger problem that the complexity and sheer deep strangeness of new financial products allowed a lot of so-called smart money to make big bets they didn’t understand. Exactly the same kinds of pressures were building in Newton's day, and the financial crisis that Newton helped resolve in the 1690s kept spawning sequels, until in the 1720s, Newton himself got caught up in a disaster that in many ways eerily anticipates the one we are living through now. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 was born of a good idea--what we would now call a debt-for-equity swap--but rapidly turned into a fraud and then at the last a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. What I found most striking is that Newton, who of all men had the mathematical chops to figure out that the South Sea promises couldn't possibly be met, still got sucked in by the promise of outsize returns. Avarice, desire, or perhaps in Newton's case just the agony of the thought that others were getting richer while he was not, propelled him into investing in the bubble at its very peak. According to his niece, he lost 20,000 pounds in a matter of months--which in today’s money would be roughly three million pounds, or close to five million dollars. The moral, at least the lesson I took from this personally? No one, not even Newton, and certainly not me, is smart enough to be smarter than one's own emotions. And that grim fact, as much as any specific financial innovation, lies behind our current economic woes, and surely caught that great thinker Isaac Newton in its grip as well.

Q: Tell us about your research.

A: I was fortunate in this project--in fact, I only took on the book--because there was a rich lode of little-known documents that told the story of the clash between Newton and Chaloner. Five large folders survive of Newton's own notes, drafts and memos covering his official duties at the Mint. Examining them, especially drafts of replies to some of Chaloner's most audacious attacks on him at Parliamentary hearings, it is possible to see across time to Newton's mounting frustration and anger at his antagonist: his handwriting gets worse, more cramped, swift, and in general ticked off as he works through his responses. I was also able to find the handful of documents that can be unequivocally attributed to Chaloner: a couple of pamphlets he had printed to display his expertise in the making and manipulation of coin, and to allege incompetence, or worse at Newton's Mint. To that I added a marvelous, if not entirely reliable, moralizing biography of Chaloner, hastily written and published within days of his execution. That was one of the early examples of what became a staple pulp genre--edifying and titillating accounts of the wicked, in which any admiration for the rascals being chronicled were carefully wrapped up through the appropriate bad ends to which all the subjects of such works were doomed.

But of all the wellsprings of this book, none were more important than the file it took me over a year to find. I knew that some of the records Isaac Newton's criminal interrogations survived, because I found reference to them in a couple of the older biographies and other secondary sources. But in the reorganization of British official records that took place in the decades after World War II, the cataloguing systems for Mint files had undergone enough changes that this crucial set of documents had slipped out of sight of the contemporary Newton scholarly community. I managed to track it down to its current location in the Public Records Office, and then I had writer's gold: more than four hundred separate documents, most countersigned by Newton himself, that allowed me to retrace his steps as a criminal investigator informer by informer. Most fortunately--Newton’s nephew-in-law reported that he helped his wife's uncle burn many of his Mint interrogation records. But the entire Chaloner case remained in the one surviving folder, and it made for fascinating, gripping reading. Once Newton realized how formidable an opponent he had in Chaloner, he proved relentless in reconstructing not just particular crimes, but the whole architecture of counterfeiting and coining as it was practiced in London in the 1690s. You get to see, smell, hear how the bad guys worked, in their own words, as elicited by a man who (surprise!) proved to be exceptionally good at extracting the evidence he needed to solve a problem.

(Photo © Joel Benjamin)



Review

“As the great Newton recedes from us in time, he comes increasingly into focus as a man rather than a myth—thanks in no small measure to this learned and lively new study from the estimable Thomas Levinson.” —Timothy Ferris, author of Seeing in the Dark
 
Newton and the Counterfeiter is both a fascinating read and a meticulously researched historical document: a combination difficult to achieve and rarely seen. . . . Recommended for anyone who wants to know the real story behind this astonishing but largely overlooked chapter of scientific history.” —Neal Stephenson, author of Cryptonomicon and Anathem
 
“I loved Levenson’s book. It’s a rollicking account of the fascinating underbelly of seventeenth-century London—and reveals an aspect of Newton I’d scarcely known of before, yet which shaped the world we know. A tour de force.” —David Bodanis, author of
E=mc2
 
“Levenson’s account of this world of criminality, collusion and denunciation is meticulously researched and highly readable. . . . The tale of Newton the economist is one worth telling.” —
New Scientist
 
“Levenson demonstrates a surpassing felicity in his brisk treatment of this late-17th-century true-crime adventure. . . . Swift, agile treatment of a little known but highly entertaining episode in a legendary life.” —
Kirkus Reviews
 
“Highly Reccommended [sic].” —
Library Journal
 
Newton and the Counterfeiter packs a wonderful punch in its thoroughly surprising revelation of that other Isaac Newton, and in its vivid re-creation of 17th-century London and its fascinating criminal haunts.” —Providence Journal
 
Newton and the Counterfeiter is as finely struck as one of Newton’s shillings.” —The Oregonian

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003K16PAA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books (April 12, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 12, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2737 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 331 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 264

About the author

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Thomas Levenson
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My day job has me professing science writing at MIT, where I teach in the Institute's Graduate Program in Science Writing.

I continue to do what I did before I joined the professoriat: write books (and the occasional article), and make documentary films about science, its history, and its interaction with the broader culture in which scientific lives and discoveries unfold.

I've written six books. "Money for Nothing" explores the connection between the revolutionary advances in science of th 17th century with the birth of financial capitalism by retelling the story of the first great stock market boom, fraud and crash: the South Sea Bubble of 1720. "The Hunt For Vulcan" tells the story of the planet that wasn't there -- and yet was discovered over and over again. It is both a tale of scientific undiscovery and breakthrough, and an investigation into how advances in science really occur (as opposed to what they tell us in high school). My previous books include "Newton and the Counterfeiter" -- which is a great story from a little-known corner of Isaac Newton's life -- and "Einstein in Berlin," which is, I have reason to hope, on the verge of reissue.

Besides writing, film making and generally being dour about the daily news, I lead an almost entirely conventional life in one of Boston's inner suburbs with a family that gives me great joy.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
264 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2011
This is an example of the best of non-fiction writing. The book is well-written, interesting and highly informative. Everyone knows of Newton the physicist, but this book shows him to have been much more. It focuses on the last 25 years or so of his life, when he was involved with the British mint. The book is the true story of Newton's uncovering of British coin counterfeiters and his pursuit of a particular master counterfeiter. However, the book is about much more than Newton and the counterfeiter. It covers such diverse topics as:
1) Newton's early life and physics (but the physics is covered in only the most general sense, and in a way that should not dismay the physics phobic)
2) Newton as an alchemist
3) Newton's tenure as Warden and later as Master of the British mint
4) How coins were counterfeited in Newton's time
5) How Newton improved the production of British coins
6) Late 17th and early 18th century economics and the development of the British monetary system
7) British law and court systems, and how trials were conducted at the Old Bailey
8) The South Sea Company, South Sea Bubble and Newton's loss of money when the bubble burst

I found these topics to be much more interesting than the title discussion of Newton's pursuit of a particular counterfeiter and the counterfeiter's eventual trial. In fact I found this to be the least interesting facet of the book.

I highly recommend this book to those interested in Isaac Newton, history (particularly British history and the history of science) and early economics.
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2011
Newton and the Counterfeiter presents the reader with a compelling crime drama which took place among sweeping changes in science and economics. The reader is first introduced to the more classical presentation of the great Sir Isaac Newton and his accomplishments, predominantly in physics. From this, the author builds a picture of the way Newton's mind operated and his systematic approach to problems. Meanwhile, Britain is increasingly in danger of economic collapse due to price imbalances in foreign markets, war, and of course, counterfeiting. Levenson's description of the counterfeiter's trade is very interesting, well detailed, and reveals the history behind many of the current innovations of our own currency. In fact, the master criminal here, William Chaloner, and his techniques are clearly driving forces behind many changes in the way people thought about money. Today we take it for granted that bank notes, such as our federal bank notes, are "cash" and have almost inherent value. In fact, these are abstractions which have proven very useful for the world, especially for the explosive growth of the British Empire, but simultaneously lend themselves to crime. Chaloner comes on the scene during a time when counterfeiting could be done by small-time crooks or could involve the most skilled craftsmen working with new technologies. His skills and intelligence lead him to become the greatest counterfeiter of his time while always keeping one step ahead of the law. In fact, Chaloner plays both sides of the law throughout his life, lending his expertise both to his criminal enterprise and the English Mint, telling them what they're doing wrong. This criminal has a flare for the dramatic and walks a fine line between trying to gain a foothold in the mint itself and being revealed as the master counterfeiter. The author also gives us a very good look at Newton's investigations into alchemy. The irony of one of the world's most dedicated alchemists pursuing one of the world's greatest counterfeiters cannot be lost on the reader. Newton, as Warden of the Mint, catches the scent of the elusive Chaloner and the two duel it out. Newton tries to build a case against the criminal even as Chaloner works to undo any possible prosecution. Interrogations, rounding up the usual suspects, human intelligence networks, jailhouse spies, and double agents are all brought to bear in a battle that spans years. Some jailhouse scenes are worthy of Dickens' Fagin himself. Many Dickensian staples are visited throughout the book: Newgate prison, the Old Bailey, and Tyburn's Hanging Tree.

No particular science background is necessary to enjoy this book. It would have been helpful to have an easy way to reference the relative value of different English denominations of the time which American readers such as myself may be less familiar with. Levenson does a good job explaining the economic forces driving the drain of precious metal currency from England into Europe then Asia which helps counterfeiting to flourish. The book has VERY extensive notes comprising roughly the last %43 of the book according to my Kindle. I did not, however, feel shortchanged as the length of the book was comfortable for the material. This book is a solid read for a little history, and little economics, and a lot of crime. Recommended.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2020
First I want to say that this is the third biography of Isaac Newton that I have read (though only the first few chapters are biographical) and I learned more about the man than in the other two books combined. In particular, Levenson makes a case for the connections between Newton's optics and physics (natural philosophy) and his 'esoteric' work in the Trinity (which led him to Aryanism) and alchemy. Other biographies treat these as inexplicably independent (why was Newton interested enough to spend most of his life on esoterics). Levenson explains, and makes a very reasonable case for these all being relevant to Newton's larger research program (if you could call it that).

As Levenson describes in his Author section, Newton's investigation of Chaloner is in itself a great story and gripping read. Levenson makes the most of this, and writes well. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and have purchased 'Money for Nothing' as my next read. It would be great if Levenson could get his earlier books into Kindle format.
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Arm Chair Phil
5.0 out of 5 stars Good deal!
Reviewed in Germany on April 5, 2018
I bought this as a present for a friend. The quality of the book was as stated. The shipment was on time and the item was well packed. Very satisfied with the purchase.
Laurence Paul
5.0 out of 5 stars An Absolutely Addictive Story Of Truth Being Better Than Fiction - This Is A Well-Written Must-Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 10, 2016
Sir Isaac Newton summons immediate thoughts of and a belief in the greatest scientific thinker of 17th Century England. A loner and reclusive man who applied himself to mastering a full understanding of calculus, mathematical interpretation and, in mechanical completeness, those physical laws such as motion, energy, light, optics, etc. which could definitively explain his and our understanding of, essentially, God as Creator of His 'system of the world.' In recent years his less well known but long-term embracing of alchemy, divinity and biblical prophecy, have all been revealed. Two books which cover these essential aspects of Newton's life are the succinctly explanatory 'Newton's Gift' by David Berlinski and the first-rate 'Isaac Newton The Last Sorcerer' by Michael White.

Adding further now to Newton's colossal cerebral achievements, Thomas Levenson, a most wonderful raconteur and storyteller, has written the fluid yet truthful account 'Newton and the Counterfeiter.' It reads as well as all good novels should, yet remains true to the facts - no easy feat - so that we can now be made aware that in The Royal Mint's direst hour - when England's currency had become bastardised, debased and brought so low in worth that the country teetered on the edge of monetary ruin, it was the self same Newton who, as Warden of the Mint, oversaw and implemented a complete overhaul of the production of the coin of the realm, arguably saving England from national fiscal insolvency.

Yet the book does not confine itself to Newton's planning, management and production skills for his country's newly-revitalised currency. Enter William Chaloner, master counterfeiter, and often times a most worthy and cunning opponent for the greatest analytical mind of the age. Even if the story of Chaloner's efforts to swindle the nation, and to produce counterfeit currency on an enormous scale never quite reaches the dizzy heights of Holmes versus Moriarty, the game was clearly afoot and a ripping yarn awaits. Except that that this ripping yarn is true. Newton certainly needed all his resolve, single-mindedness, detective skills and a certain police-like control of a network of informers and 'thief-takers,' who assisted him to defeat all who stood against England's glorious and wealthy future. Chaloner never realised that Newton equated counterfeiting and debasing of the currency with profane crime, almost blasphemy, and a crime that threatened divine law itself. That Newton was on a mission from Parliament was obvious, but the author shows us a side of his character that embraced such a ruthlessness and unforgiving aspect of his nature that it can only properly be explained by accepting that Newton himself believed that he was also engaged in God's work. Newton was not a hater. Put simply, he was a driven man and this book reveals him as such.

The book is superbly researched, historically titillating and splendidly descriptive of the stink and squalor that made its disgusting home alongside the mercantile expansion, foppery and naive riches of London from the mid 17th Century on.

A worthy addition to all we thought we knew about arguably the greatest original thinking scientist of the modern age. An absolutely absorbing and brilliant read.
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Peer Sylvester
4.0 out of 5 stars Newton, wie man ihn nicht kennt
Reviewed in Germany on August 25, 2013
Dieses Buch erzählt die wahre Geschichte (!) von Newtons "Kampf" gegen den Geldfälscher William Chaloner. Newton war nach seiner wissenschaftlichen Karriere für die britische Münzpresse zuständig und er sah den Kampf gegen Geldfälschung als seine vornehmste Aufgabe. William Chaloner war dabei der Gegner, der ihm am meisten Schwierigkeiten machte.

Die Geschichte ist natürlich sehr cool, zumal sie ja wahr ist. Da wird eine Seite beleuchtet, die man an Newton nicht kannte. Allerdings muss einem klar sein, dass die beiden nur auf den letzten ca. 100 Seiten aufeinandertreffen. Und "aufeinandertreffen" ist auch etwas zu viel gesagt; der "Kampf" zwischen den beiden war in erster Linie von den Schwierigkeiten Newtons geprägt, genug Beweise gegen den Fälscher zu sammeln. Das klingt in den Beschreibungen z.T. etwas spektakulärer. Aber auch so erfährt man viel über Geldfälschung, das Problem der Währung im ausgehenden 17. Jahrjundert und über die Rechtslage. Das ist sehr interessant!
Schwächer sind die ersten 100 Seiten, auf denen der Autor versucht einen Überblick über das Leben der beiden vor ihrem zusammentreffen zu geben. Bei Newton ist er dabei sehr knapp und macht aus seiner Bewunderung für den Wissenschaftler zudem keinen Hehl. So unterschlägt er den Konflikt mit Leibnitz fast komplett und beschränkt sich auf die Bemerkung, Leibnitz hätte alles von Newton abgeschrieben (was aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach nicht stimmt). Und von Challoners Leben ist eben wenig bekannt, insofer muss sich der Autor auf eine dünner Datenlage und viel Spekulation beschränken.
Dennoch: Sobald Newton für die Münzpresse verantwortlich wird, findet das Buch seinen Schwerpunkt und wird interessant - und genau dafür kauft man es ja auch!
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R Helen
4.0 out of 5 stars A different side of Isaac Newton
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2012
The fact that we are introduced to a part of Newton's life to which few have paid attention, is probably the biggest pull to this book. I would not say this is a gripping story, though. There is not much tension or drama in it. The author has tried to pull more out of the battle between Newton and Chaloner than there really was. Newton's "deadly struggle" with Chaloner was really only deadly for Chaloner, who risked being caught and executed for counterfeiting. As for Newton, it was all part of the job. However, it's an interesting read from a historical perspective. For those with an interest in the subject, but little background, this book provides a glimpse into some of the monetary troubles facing England in the late 17th century and the beginnings of the use of paper money. Basically, it's a look at Newton's successful time at the Royal Mint. And for all that, the book has done a great job. The brief biography of Newton in the first half of the book is worth reading, and I found particularly fascinating Newton's fervent wish to "prove" G-d through alchemy. An interesting subject worth further reading. Readers should just be forewarned that, although it's a good story, it's by no means a thriller. But that shouldn't discourage anyone from picking it up, for after all, it's an enjoyable little book.
Bryan
2.0 out of 5 stars Heavy going
Reviewed in Canada on March 10, 2018
I found the narrative slow going, with a large number of old-English quotes that were time-consuming to decipher. This might be of interest to academics.
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