"Stone Breaker is a fascinating and beautifully written biography. Using the unusual mind of James Gates Percival as an exemplar, Kathleen Housley deftly weaves together the science, art, and literature of early 19th century New England. A wonderful read."
~Robert M. Thorson, author of Stone by Stone and professor of Geosciences, University of Connecticut
"A wonderful, carefully researched biography of this deeply impressive, multidisciplinary intellectual."
~John Hay, associate professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
"Stone Breaker is a lively and engaging biography of a fascinating man. This is a captivating portrait of a brilliant and relentless geologist and polymath whose work helped lay the foundation for generations of Earth scientists working in New England."
~Maureen D. Long, Bruce D. Alexander '65 Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University
"Housley's insightful and readable biography illuminates the potent combination of poetry and science that defined Percival's undeservedly neglected life and works, offering a new perspective on this critical moment when the true scale of the earth's history was coming into focus."
~Clare Stainthorp, author of Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet
""Stone Breaker is, like its subject, a deeply layered book that situates Percival at a time of enormous upheaval in science, religion and industry. Through most of Percival's life, most people of intelligence still believed the world was 6,000 years old. College students were then drilled in Greek, latin, ecclesiastical history, theology, geometry, ancient history, logic, rhetoric and ethics–and no lab science.""
~Tracey O'Shaughnessy, Republican American
"Stone Breaker is an accounting of a life that is as remarkable and messy as the young nation in which [James Gate] Percival lived - his experience offers an interesting window into the overlapping worlds of science, literature, industry, mining, and medicine in the early American republic."
~Lily Santoro, Isis
"In Stone Breaker Housley has done an exceptionally nice job of remind- ing us of how important to Percival and his work his native Connecticut always was. Especially welcome is her portfolio of images, most of them in color, reproducing the landscape paintings of Percival's fellow Kensington native Nelson Augustus Moore (1824–1902), many out of view in private hands today."
~Wayne Franklin, Connecticut History Review
