Last week I thumped The System of the World (pictured left) down on the nightstand, finally completing Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.  Generally a fan of historical fiction, I picked up the first volume, Quicksilver, at Changi Airport, Singapore in 2005, wanting something hefty for a long flight.  Now, 3000 pages  later (with many detours and interruptions), I can confidently say it was worth it.  Meticulously researched, the narrative spans roughly 1640 to 1715 encompassing religious wars, the enlightenment, the establishment of the monetary system, and the rise of the natural sciences.  In fact several of the central characters are ‘natural philosophers’ including historical figures such as Isaac Newton, Gottfried Liebniz, Robert Hooke, and John Churchill.  Stephenson skirts the supernatural in some cases, in the way Cornwell deals with the Arthurian legends in his Winter King trilogy, but otherwise these books were a perfect storm of historical fiction and science.  Loved it.