"In a remarkable piece of historical detective work, Paul Lucier shows how the search for coal, oil, and other resources that led to the industrial transformation of America also fueled the development of the modern scientific career. Filled with surprising stories and extraordinary characters, Scientists and Swindlers offers a fresh perspective on the troubled relations between commerce and intellectual life we face today."

In a remarkable piece of historical detective work, Paul Lucier shows how the search for coal, oil, and other resources that led to the industrial transformation of America also fueled the development of the modern scientific career. Filled with surprising stories and extraordinary characters, Scientists and Swindlers offers a fresh perspective on the troubled relations between commerce and intellectual life we face today.

— Jim Secord, University of Cambridge

"Scientists and Swindlers is a model of how the history of science and technology ought to be done. Drawing on materials gleaned from the scientific journal and the courtroom, the textbook and the business prospectus, Paul Lucier weaves an exciting and original narrative about geology's relations with commerce in the nineteenth century. He shows us how geologists' efforts to classify and understand their materials interdigitated with entrepreneurial ambitions, how the expertise and pretensions of science intersected with the needs of commerce and law, and how geologists struggled to define and walk a line between the ethics of an aspiring profession and the ethics of the marketplace. Lucier enriches our understanding of geology's history while giving us a new appreciation of the continuities between the nineteenth century and our own era of commercialized science. His book prompts pleasure and reflection."