Description: More extraordinary than the far-flung and intimate connections that William Small maintained with some of the most influential men of the eighteenth century, more remarkable than his impact on the social, political and economic transitions rapidly taking place in the era of enlightenment, more unexpected than his transcontinental connections and influence, is the fact, until this investigation, no detailed or even cursory study on the complete life of Small has ever been undertaken. The difference in this narrative is that it is as much a mystery being solved as it is a story being told; that this new look at Small's life and of the ramifications of his aggregate auctoritas is derived chiefly from primary rather than secondary sources-and therefore is less likely to be the source of error, conjecture or opinion.
Brief description: MARTIN CLAGETT has investigated the connections between the Scottish Enlightenment, the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution for over twenty years. His research has taken him to the archives of America, England and Scotland. In the course of his investigations he received a grant from the Earhart Foundation; he was a Visiting Scholar to the James Wilson Programme at St Andrews; named a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Virginia; appointed as the Gilder-Lehrman Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville, and served as the Omohundro Scholar in Residence at the College of William and Mary. Among his written works have been William Small and James Wilson: The Scottish Connection, a Study in the Influences of the Scottish Enlightenment (Charlottesville: Robert H. Smith Center for Jefferson Studies, 2007), The Portrait of William Small by Tilly Kettle. Privately Printed (Richmond: Dietz Press, 2007), Scientific Jefferson: Revealed (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), Jefferson and Science, Dictionary of Virginia Biography (2013), James Wilson-His Scottish Background: Corrections and Additions, Pennsylvania History A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Spring 2012), and Thomas Clapp and the Scottish Enlightenment, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, Vol. 1 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2015).
Review Quotes:
Martin Clagett is a world-class historical detective. Now his sleuthing has given us both a deliciously satisfying account of a man who mentored the author of the Declaration of Independence and midwifed the invention of the modern steam engine - a man who, in Clagett's exact image, sparked both the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution - and an eye-opening, often-astonishing account of the Williamsburg and Birminghammilieus in which he worked.
--Michael Zuckerman