ARTHUR O'CONNOR was an Irish revolutionary whose historical importance has been vastly underappreciated. He was the most important leader of the United Irishmen, the powerful conspiracy that culminated in the Rebellion of 1798. Although that uprising ended in failure, it was a watershed event in Irish history that left an important legacy of revolutionary precedent for later generations of Irish republicans and nationalists. The conflict in Ireland that persists to the present can be traced in an unbroken line to the war between the British government and the United Irish army in 1798.

Although Arthur O'Connor has not become an icon of romantic legend in Ireland, his revolutionary career was full of color, drama, and controversy. He was a skilled conspirator and a charismatic orator who was capable of charming the likes of Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Many of his allies expected-and his rivals feared-that O'Connor would have become Bonaparte's anointed king of Ireland if the French had succeeded in driving the British out.

Jean-Paul Marat's role in the French Revolution has long been a matter of controversy among historians. Often he is portrayed as a violent, sociopathic demagogue. This biography challenges that interpretation and argues that without Marat's contributions as an agitator, tactician, and strategist, the pivotal social transformation that the revolution accomplished would not have occurred. Clifford D. Conner argues that what was unique about Marat - setting him apart from all other major figures of the revolution, including Danton and Robespierre - was his total identification with the struggle of the propertyless classes for social equality. Fresh ideas surrounding the Champs de Mars Massacre, his assassination, the cult of Marat and the Legende Noire are all explored.

The tragedy of American science is that its direction is determined by private profit rather than by the desire to improve the human condition. As a result, Conner argues, Big Science has been irredeemably corrupted by Big Money. This corruption threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the medicines we take. The Tragedy of American Science explores how the U.S. economy's addiction to military spending distorts and deforms science by making it overwhelmingly subservient to military interests. The primary motive driving American science and technology has become the search for new and more efficient ways to kill people. This transforms science from the classic ideal of a creative force for the advancement of humankind into its destructive and antihuman opposite. That those trillions of dollars in resources and scientific talent are not devoted to solving the problems of poverty, disease, and environmental destruction is one of the greatest tragedies of our times. While the underlying problems may appear intractable, Conner compellingly argues that replacing the current science-for-profit system with a science-for-human-needs system is not an impossible, utopian dream. But to get there, we'll need to grapple with this important history.

The tragedy of American science is that its direction is determined by private profit rather than by the desire to improve the human condition. As a result, Conner argues, Big Science has been irredeemably corrupted by Big Money. This corruption threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the medicines we take. The Tragedy of American Science explores how the U.S. economy's addiction to military spending distorts and deforms science by making it overwhelmingly subservient to military interests. The primary motive driving American science and technology has become the search for new and more efficient ways to kill people. This transforms science from the classic ideal of a creative force for the advancement of humankind into its destructive and antihuman opposite. That those trillions of dollars in resources and scientific talent are not devoted to solving the problems of poverty, disease, and environmental destruction is one of the greatest tragedies of our times. While the underlying problems may appear intractable, Conner compellingly argues that replacing the current science-for-profit system with a science-for-human-needs system is not an impossible, utopian dream. But to get there, we'll need to grapple with this important history.

We all know the history of science that we learned from grade school textbooks: How Galileo used his telescope to show that the earth was not the center of the universe; how Newton divined gravity from the falling apple; how Einstein unlocked the mysteries of time and space with a simple equation. This history is made up of long periods of ignorance and confusion, punctuated once an age by a brilliant thinker who puts it all together. These few tower over the ordinary mass of people, and in the traditional account, it is to them that we owe science in its entirety. This belief is wrong. A People's History of Science shows how ordinary people participate in creating science and have done so throughout history. It documents how the development of science has affected ordinary people, and how ordinary people perceived that development. It would be wrong to claim that the formulation of quantum theory or the structure of DNA can be credited directly to artisans or peasants, but if modern science is likened to a skyscraper, then those twentieth-century triumphs are the sophisticated filigrees at its pinnacle that are supported by the massive foundation created by the rest of us.

ARTHUR O'CONNOR was an Irish revolutionary whose historical importance has been vastly underappreciated. He was the most important leader of the United Irishmen, the powerful conspiracy that culminated in the Rebellion of 1798. Although that uprising ended in failure, it was a watershed event in Irish history that left an important legacy of revolutionary precedent for later generations of Irish republicans and nationalists. The conflict in Ireland that persists to the present can be traced in an unbroken line to the war between the British government and the United Irish army in 1798.

Although Arthur O'Connor has not become an icon of romantic legend in Ireland, his revolutionary career was full of color, drama, and controversy. He was a skilled conspirator and a charismatic orator who was capable of charming the likes of Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Many of his allies expected-and his rivals feared-that O'Connor would have become Bonaparte's anointed king of Ireland if the French had succeeded in driving the British out.