"Most importantly, [this] is a book that can be relied on. The style of presentation is a judicious mix of diachronic and synchronic modes—how ideas evolve across time—as he tracks the movements of his actors through time. The author handles such a challenge in presenting his ideas well. . . . All in all, the present compilation, together with The Newton Wars, is an impressive body of work and a signal contribution to the history of mathematics and of science generally."

The Mathematical Intelligencer

"An interesting and complex story. . . . The author has written a beautiful book and a very valuable contribution to the history of mechanics. . . . The almost exclusive emphasis on the context invites a new discussion about the relation between the internal history of mechanics and the contextual history."

zbMATH

"The book is exhaustively researched, highly informative, and a valuable contribution to the history of early modern exact science. It is a worthy successor to the author’s earlier book on Voltaire and the dissemination of Newtonianism in France."

Journal of Modern History

“In Before Voltaire, Shank offers a complete reinterpretation of the early history of analytical mechanics. The book displays an impressive mastery of a wide range of sources that are rarely brought together in a single work. These include not only technical accounts of mathematical and scientific work but also broad histories of science and institutional and cultural histories of the era of Louis XIV. The emergence of the insular and mathematically complex field of analytical mechanics becomes in his telling an inseparable part of the intellectual and cultural life of France at the turn of the 18th century. Before Voltaire recasts the debate over the origins of analytical mechanics, and thereby of modern science itself, and is one of the most significant works on the scientific revolution to appear in recent years.”

Amir Alexander, University of California, Los Angeles