Description: An award-winning historian of science reveals the riveting and little-known story of a team of eighteenth-century European scientists that journeyed to South America to calculate the shape of the earth.
Review Quotes: Peter C. Mancall, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson
"Doing science in the eighteenth century demanded almost unbearable sacrifices for distant rewards and only the most dedicated could handle the challenges. Larrie Ferreiro's deep research has produced a highly readable account of one of the great scientific expeditions of the age of the Enlightenment, a venture all the more riveting since it unfolded amidst imperial contests and devastating tragedy and tested the psychological and physical limits of those keen to expand knowledge of the shape of the Earth."
"In Measure of the Earth, Larrie Ferreiro tells the dramatic story of the first international scientific expedition to South America to establish the precise dimensions of the globe. The French scientists who led the expedition to the Andes overcame incredible adversities traversing the jungles and highlands of equatorial Peru, surviving near mutiny, attacks by local inhabitants, war, siege, and the skepticism of fellow academicians in their homeland to complete their mission and achieve lasting fame. Beautifully written, Ferreiro's book provides an authoritative and gripping account of one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the Enlightenment."