Increasingly, scholars in the humanities are calling for a reengagement with the natural sciences. Taking their cues from recent breakthroughs in genetics and the neurosciences, advocates of -big history- are reassessing long-held assumptions about the very definition of history, its methods, and its evidentiary base. In Scientific History, Elena Aronova maps out historians- continuous engagement with the methods, tools, values, and scale of the natural sciences by examining several waves of their experimentation that surged highest at perceived times of trouble, from the crisis-ridden decades of the early twentieth century to the ruptures of the Cold War.-The book explores the intertwined trajectories of six intellectuals and the larger programs they set in motion: Henri Berr (1863-1954), Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938), Lucien Febvre (1878-1956), Nikolai Vavilov (1887-1943), Julian Huxley (1887-1975), and John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971). Though they held different political views, spoke
