Over ten years ago I devoured a history of science series by Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser that played a large part establishing my basic adult understanding of science. While reading it, I was particularly fascinated by the role that the Royal Society played in the scientific revolution, and it has remained an object of interest ever since. The Royal Society is a very brief history of the titular institution, from its beginnings as an informal gathering of ‘natural philosophers’ and continuing to the present day. Its quite readable, but lamentably short: scarcely over a hundred and twenty pages, in fact, because there’s a hefty appendix with biographies of some of the Society’s more notable Fellows. The Society’s early decades are easily the most interesting, given the period of science they capture: this was an era where amateurs could make significant contributions to scientific fields, when polymaths and generalists predominated instead of hyper-specialists. The best minds of Europe were beginning to unravel some of the most fundamental secrets of nature, laying the foundation for the industrial revolution, modernity, and the conquest of humanity by its own devices. The Society was part of this, publishing papers and funding expeditions across the world — or, badgering ship captains to bring them something interesting. Although some women had connections to the society, presenting lectures and even receiving medals, not until after 1945 when corporations and the like were banned from discriminating on the basis of six were women admitted as Fellows of the society. Although I enjoyed this as a light history of the Society, Bill Bryson’s edited collection of essays on the Society’s influence, Seeing Further, is more substantive.