Tomlin is fluent and knowledgeable about the great Pascal .. fixing him in accessible ways among his peers (including Descarres) .. his upper class beginnings, and his brilliance are enhanced for readers and biographers, in a way, by his early death .. its tragedy always underpinning the high regard for his intelligence. This is easy read, not too heavy going for people first encountering the world he fit in and his ideas, and inventions.. what I like also is Tomlin's including comment and history of his famous, influential sister who made her own mark. Ever since watching Rosselini's television film about Pascal., I've been increasingly interested in his biography .. he lived in a transitional period in French history, and the Catholic church's history. Recommend for people encountering Pascal in early stages of their study.

Blaise Pascal died in 1662. He lived a relatively short life of 39 years, but he packed a lot into that life, making some momentous contributions to Physics, Mathematics and to Philosophy. He was also surprisingly modern in some of his thinking. He was among the first to wear his watch on his arm, as a wrist watch. And at the end of his life he developed one of the first bus companies, to help the poor travel across the city of Paris.

Pascal was an extraordinary thinker who deserves to be much better known. He comes across with some social awkwardness, but also with a passion for social justice which led him to try to help the poor and disadvantaged.

His mind was constantly occupied, jumping about and making connections which no one else had thought of. For example, at the age of 19 he invented the Pascaline, which became the first calculating machine.

He also planned and carried out one of the first examples of a scientific experiment. He postulated that the air had a weight which would exert different pressures at different altitudes. He then sent people up a mountain with a tube of mercury to confirm that that really was the case.

Pascal also contributed to philosophy and theology. He is well known for his ‘wager’, which is usually interpreted as an argument that it is better for a person to believe in God, rather than risk the consequences of failing to do so. One of the interesting aspects of this book is that it looks closely at Pascal’s wider writings, and then it suggests that it is an oversimplification to think of the wager as an argument for God’s existence.

The author shows that Pascal had a sophisticated understanding of how and why people adopt religious beliefs. He thought that arguments were largely irrelevant, and that people believed due to deeper emotional and psychological factors. It is those deeper factors which his wager is trying to address. So, reading it as an ‘argument’ is potentially to completely misunderstand Pascal’s viewpoint.

That is a very interesting reading of Pascal, especially as the author explains it by drawing heavily upon Pascal’s wider writings.

Some lives of Pascal get bogged down in the theological intricacies involved in Pascal’s dealings with the Jesuits and Jansenists. One of the particularly commendable features of this book is that it manages to narrate those complicated issues in a very focused and accessible way.

This is partly because the author made a thoughtful decision to focus each chapter around specific themes. The book still narrates Pascal’s life in a chronological way, but there are specific chapters dealing with science, theology (etc). This makes it easier for readers to focus on specific areas of interest, and it also means that the book has a tight and focused structure.

One of the things which this book does very well, is that it sets Pascal into his historical context, with an excellent analysis of contemporary events and personalities. It also ranges across later commentators, noting how people like Foucault and Nietzsche (among others) have reflected on Pascal.

There are occasional minor errors in the text. For example, in chapter 16 (at 87%) ‘viaticum’ is confused with ‘mass.’ (Viaticum is the communion host which is consecrated at mass. It is not the mass itself, as the book seems to assume). But tiny errors like that are inconsequential in what is otherwise a masterful portrayal of a complex figure in a complicated era.

Overall, this is a well-researched and well-produced account of a fascinating individual. It is well-written to be accessible to readers from any background, and it includes around 10% of the text as notes and indices for academic readers.

(These are honest comments on a digital ARC (Advanced Review Copy) version of the text).