The story of Descartes impact on modern thought, and history surrounding
his burial in Sweden and the exhumation of his remains to return them to France.
Riveting beginning & ending - but my attention wandered in the middle.

Quite interesting. Shorto does wind around the story of Descartes' bones so it's not as straightforward a history as the jacket blurb seems. Shorto also provides an overview of Cartesian philosophy and science which is quite helpful and doesn't overwhelm the reader.

Fascinating historical mystery...especially if you've ever been to Paris. Also works as nice summation of The Age of Reason (vs. Faith).

Russell Shorto describes the very strong influence that Rene Descartes had in fomenting the Enlightenment and establishing reason rather than faith as the best way to discover truths about the world.

But the author traces the influence of Cartesian ideas through the novel approach of following what happened to Descartes' physical remains after his death, a fascinating story in itself. The reason it's a story at all is that Descartes died in Sweden, and was buried there. It wasn't until 16 years after his death that the French woke up to the fact that there was one of their intellectual giants, buried in a modest rural cemetery in a distant country, so they decided they should bring him home. Not everything went to plan...

A really interesting, entertaining and informative read.

This wonderfully fascinating book tells the journey of Descartes' corpse from his deathbed to today, especially that of his skull. With each event that happens to the body, there is a story of another scientist in connection to that body. If you have an interest in Descartes' philosophy, or other Enlightenment figures, or the historic or present-day struggle between faith and reason, or anything of that nature, I would recommend this book to you.

I've been slowed down in a few spots by the French names and places and when the philosophy gets deeper than I care about, but I'm mostly loving this book. I learned about Catholic history. I learned that those on the "pro" side of religion aren't the only ones who kill for their beliefs. I learned that French scientists let their friend scientists perform autopsies on them after they die just to see what else could be learned. Right now I'm reading about their debates and studies of the brain. Does size indicate intelligence? Broca located the speech center of the brain and when he died they carved his name on what is now called Broca's Area. They are debating whether the brain and mind are the same thing and all their religious history is hanging on the answer.

I absolutely adored this book. I finished it about two weeks ago and it was amazing. If you like history and science, this book is for you.

This book was fascinating in looking at history from a different perspective. Most interesting is the path of Descartes' skull.