A new book by acclaimed science writer
Timothy Ferris (Coming of Age in the Milky Way) was won by HarperCollins executive editor
Tim Duggan in a heated weeklong auction involving six publishers. It's called
Science and Liberty and traces the parallel development over the past 400 years of the growth of scientific knowledge and the spread of democracy and political freedom. It's Ferris's contention that the extension of human knowledge has spurred human rights and undermined the mystique of power upon which despotism traditionally depended. Duggan bought North American rights in what he calls "a brilliant, eye-opening book" from
Owen Laster at William Morris. Ferris's previous books have been widely praised; he is a contributor to the New Yorker and edited the anthology The Best American Science Writing 2001.
