The rise of the mass media and professional science makes the years before the Great War an important formative period in the history of popular science. Peter Broks explores the magazines of the time and uncovers the scientist as hero and villain; science for and against religion; animal biographies and a new empathy with nature; technology as evolutionary progress; utopian visions and degenerationst fears. Through this cultural analysis of popular science he shows how Victorian hopes turned into Edwardian disillusion.