The Man Who Knew Everything: The Strange Life of Athanasius Kircher

The Man Who Knew Everything is a biography of Athanasius Kircher, a 17th-century German Jesuit and scientist. He was one of the modern world’s first scientific celebrities―the Einstein or Stephen Hawking of his time. In 1638, Kircher was lowered into the smoking crater of Mt. Vesuvius to observe how volcanoes work. After thirty years, he...