In 1845 William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, constructed his seventy-two-inch reflector, known as the Leviathan, at Birr Castle, Co. Offaly, in the centre of Ireland. The primary purpose of the telescope was to study the nature of nebulae and discover if these could be resolved as clusters of stars. The telescope was to remain the largest telescope in the world until 1917. This book, the first comprehensive biography of the third earl, seeks to place his life and telescope in their political, social, intellectual and cultural contexts. The edited volume can be divided roughly into two sections; the first looks at the history of the Parsons family and then focuses on the life of the third earl in an Irish context, while the second section concentrates on the earl's contribution to science and the wider scientific world he inhabited.

The opening section of the book seeks to trace the history of the Parsons family and provide a background to the earl beyond his famous telescope. The first chapter (Alison and William Parsons), dealing with the Parsons family's ancestry, is largely genealogical. The second chapter (Trevor Weekes) is a speculative account of the origins of the earl's interest in astronomy. A welcome addition is the third chapter – divided into three sections – which focuses on the third earl's wife, Mary. David Davison's contribution provides an interesting and informative account of the countess's interest in photography. These opening chapters are rather lengthy but will be of local interest.

Chapters 4 (Margaret Hogan) and 5 (Andrew Shields), which are well researched and written, largely focus on Irish politics. Chapter 4, which is a local-history study, outlines the earl's role in the preservation of law and order in King's County (the current Co. Offaly), his political life as an MP and his wider intellectual connections, as seen by his membership of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and his chancellorship of Trinity College Dublin. This chapter also poses some interesting and yet-to-be-answered questions about the earl's role in relief efforts during the Great Famine, 1845–1849. Chapter 5 gives an assessment of the second and third earls' politics and provides those unfamiliar with Irish history with a good introduction to this turbulent period. Shields delivers an overview of the political rationale behind the union of Britain and Ireland in 1800. The second earl's conversion from sceptic to supporter of the union is discussed within the wider political context of Catholic emancipation and the fears it instilled in the minority Protestant population in Ireland. Shields also successfully intertwines the rising sectarianism of the period with the third earl's desire for Catholic Emancipation and subsequent rejection of O'Connell's campaign for the repeal of the union, to explain the third earl's political career. A chapter by the book's editor, Charles Mollan, highlights the earl's engineering interests and gives an overview of the construction of the great telescope.

The second section of the book makes some significant contributions to our understanding of the third earl, his scientific discoveries and his connections to various scientific institutions. It is this section which will be of most interest to students of nineteenth-century Irish astronomy. Wolfgang Steinicke provides the reader with an accessible account of the various discoveries made at Birr and how these fitted into the wider astronomical discourse of the period. A chapter by Allan Chapman, on independent astronomical research in nineteenth-century Ireland, places the observations at Birr in a wider Irish context. This is followed by Simon Schaffer's insightful chapter on the third earl's connections to various scientific institutions across the British Isles. Schaffer succeeds in demonstrating the role that institutions such as the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Irish Academy played in the promotion of Rosse's scientific and engineering endeavours. It also highlights that nineteenth-century Irish science can and must be understood as part of a wider British Isles phenomenon.

This is a collaborative work between members of the Birr Scientific and Heritage Foundation, Irish historians, astronomers and historians of science, with several quite distinct audiences in view. The chapters by Irish historians (Hogan, Shields) provide an engaging and insightful overview of the earl's life in nineteenth-century Ireland, as do those on his astronomical observations and scientific associations (Steinicke, Chapman, Schaffer). Other contributions seem to be directed more at a general, popular and local readership whose interests would extend to the wider Parsons family and its estate. If this is the intended audience then the book's price is a considerable deterrent. That said, this book is a welcome addition to our understanding of astronomy in nineteenth-century Ireland, but a more concise rendering would have allowed greater scope to investigate the wider scientific culture in which the earl's astronomical observations took place.