Lunatic circle

Will Hammond on The Lunar Men | What Just Happened?

The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future
Jenny Uglow
Faber & Faber £9.99, pp588

The Lunar Men were a small circle of doctors, craftsmen, engineers and artists who would meet on the night of the full moon to share their thoughts, their theories and a few bottles of wine. But these pioneering inventors had a phenomenal impact on the world around them, and of their astonishing number of discoveries and inventions, ranging from steam-power to laughing gas and from electricity to the first evolutionary theory, their greatest legacy is our understanding of science itself.

Balancing sympathy with suspicion and minute detail with cultural themes, Jenny Uglow has written a magnificent history, charmingly illustrated and meticulously indexed, not just of their lives, but of the eighteenth century as a whole, as she identifies in this microcosm of men the patterns of thought which shaped a nation. Throughout she deploys an ingenuity, craftsmanship and encyclopaedic knowledge matched only by The Lunar Men themselves.

What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line
Art Linson
Bloomsbury £7.99, pp181

Try as we might, it is hard to nurse any illusions about Hollywood these days. After all, this is the town where 'dignity' is more taboo than incest, and where 'even the women executives get erections'. Art Linson, producer of The Untouchables, Heat, Fight Club and more straight-to-video howlers is in a position to know. His book is a series of self-deprecating anecdotes about a series of humiliating feature-failures. We learn why Alec Baldwin refuses to shave, and why you should always wear socks around Dustin Hoffman and how to sweet-talk Murdoch's money-men. Throughout, Linson retains a wickedly ironic but ultimately sane and attractive sense of humour. In a place like that, he needs it.

Today's best video

Today in pictures