In this witty, engaging, and often moving examination of Newton's life, David Berlinski recovers the man behind the mathematical breakthroughs. The story carries the reader from Newton's unremarkable childhood to his awkward undergraduate days at Cambridge through the astonishing year in which, working alone, he laid the foundations for his system of the world, his Principia Mathematica, and to the subsequent monumental freuds that poisened his sould and wearied his supporters.