Tamara Plakins Thornton, “Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life” (UNC Press, 2016)

UNC Press Presents Podcast · Aug 27, 2017 · 47m

To remember Nathaniel Bowditch today primarily for his famous navigational textbook is to acknowledge only one of his many achievements. As Tamara Plakins Thornton demonstrates in her book Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), Bowditch’s legacy is one that endures in a surprising range of fields. The son of a luckless merchant captain, Bowditch grew up in the early years of the new republic. At an early age he was apprenticed at a young age to a ship’s…