This is the second recent dual-authored history of a significant figure in eighteenth-century Habsburg science, both pooling the abilities and complementary publishing backgrounds of their authors to great effect. Focusing on an individual man of science (astronomer Maximilian Hell in this case, botanist Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin in the 2017 book by Marianne Klemun and Helga Hühnel), their methods extend beyond simple biography to contribute significantly to enlightenment historiography. Per Pippin Aspaas and László Kontler introduce their work as an exploration of the shape of eighteenth-century knowledge.

The authors focus on what they call Hell's “life worlds” (6), understanding how the experiences of place and communal identity collectively amount to a biography. Their overview of the religious, political, and demographic context in which Hell lived and worked develops themes of Habsburg state-building, the spread of science in the capital and provinces, and the hybrid identities emerging in ethnically complex settings. A longue durée approach sends their scene-setting back into the 1500s, or even earlier, when talking about political history or population movement. Guided by the lack of direct sources on Hell's life, their not-biography also uses the lives and works of many in Hell's orbit—people in the same geographic settings or knowledge circles, though not necessarily directly connected to the astronomer—to craft rich context on the intellectual cultures of Jesuits and scientists across the Habsburg monarchy.

Aspaas and Kontler treat Hell's life from a distance, using a general chronology to explore relationships to places, people, and institutions. There is no day-by-day account of the astronomer's work and travels, nor an immersive narrative of major events like his work in the extreme North during the 1769 transit of Venus. Potential readers should know the book is also not focused on Hell's astronomical science or what the authors term his mechanistic reasoning, except as connected to the sharing or disputing of others’ observations and ideas. The authors intentionally and clearly cover advancements and debates within scientific communities, while avoiding representing Hell as a solitary star. The astronomer's writings on the transit of Venus are thus mined for his strong or weak ties with others and his communal ethos. Mapping such knowledge exchange reinforces Aspaas and Kontler's focus on borders and connections in international intellectual and Jesuit networks and the developing strengths of the Habsburg state and sciences.

The universe Aspaas and Kontler build embraces complexity over well-worn narratives. Maximilian Hell's experiences while traveling show us a Jesuit's concerns about religious persecution in Protestant lands. His success in earning patronage from both the Habsburg Monarchy and Denmark-Norway supports the authors’ depiction of these states as creating empires of knowledge, claiming a place on “the map of contemporary learning” (167). Aspaas and Kontler also establish Hell as a promoter of an ideal of Catholic knowledge and Central European intellectual and linguistic practices that transgress borders. In their telling, cosmopolitan Hungarus and Jesuit identity were neither marginal nor antithetical to Enlightenment knowledge exchange.

While much of their focus is on community and context, Aspaas and Kontler develop a narrative about the royal and imperial astronomer culminating in a focused conclusion. Maximilian Hell's confidence in the strength and intellectual impact of his order made him believe that he could live long and prosper as a court-patronized, international force for astronomical discovery. This security evaporated alongside biting attacks from the international community of astronomers and the Viennese publishing world. Hell did not help his situation as he acted the dilettante in fields far from his knowledge base, publishing some nonsense about scurvy, for example. The well-connected authority who sought to educate the masses in science for the greater glory of God and to establish astronomy in Central Europe transformed into a man jealously lamenting the democratization of knowledge and filled with regret for the state's decisions. The authors cohere these opposites by arguing that Hell's life worlds in the first part of his career were in a harmony later dashed by the suppression of the Jesuits, the growth of Hungarian cultural nationalism, the decline of Latin, and the recalibration of state patronage of science. The interesting quandary they establish for his life is that he succeeded in his intellectual purpose, when science was no longer represented and controlled by him alone, and ex-Jesuit and Central European scientists contributed on an equal footing with West Europeans.

Hell's history includes some controversies, which Aspaas and Kontler use to develop their themes. Some of Hell's published fictions they interpret as the Jesuit's attempt to craft a providential narrative. They weigh his appropriation of subordinates’ work with more uncertainty. When covering the criticisms piled on Hell for not quickly sharing his observations of the transit of Venus in favor of trying to develop a magnum opus, the two review the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment that presents ambitious self-interest as serving the common good. Historians of the past too are exposed, confidently asserting conclusions without a basis in reality so far as Aspaas and Kontler could find. The result is an open but sympathetic portrayal of Hell that documents but does not explain away why his contemporaries accused him of withholding or falsifying data, running an underground network of ex-Jesuits seeking to overthrow the rational, popular Enlightenment, or suppressing Hungarian political ambitions or Calvinist scientists. Nor do we fully understand why past historians depicted Hell as a pseudo-scientist, a liar, and a thief. Instead, the authors focus on the limitations of available sources, unfounded fabrications, and how the man reflects his times, as in the brutality of printed attacks by or about him. Their work may not provide definitive answers about Hell's actions and thoughts, but it exposes sometimes ugly eighteenth-century issues and Central European experiences, like religious intolerance and what constituted scientific practice. Amidst the histories of place and groups of other intellectuals, Maximilian Hell and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe models how Hell and others are positively and negatively formed by place and communities.