In The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke examines eight periods in history when our view of the world shifted dramatically: in the eleventh century, when extraordinary discoveries were made by Spanish crusaders
in fourteenth-century Florence, where perspective in painting emerged
in the fifteenth century, when the advent of the printing press shook the foundations of an oral society
in the sixteenth century, when gunnery developments triggered the birth of modern science
in the early eighteenth century, when hot English summers brought on the Industrial Revolution
in the battlefield surgery stations of the French revolutionary armies, where people first became statistics
in the nineteenth century, when the discovery of dinosaur fossils led to the theory of evolution
and in the 1820s, when electrical experiments heralded the end of scientific certainty. Based on the popular television documentary series, The Day the Universe Changed is a bestselling history that challenges the reader to decide whether there is absolute knowledge to discover - or whether the universe is "ultimately what we say it is."