Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1) - Neal Stephenson

The first novel in the Baroque cycle is an engaging picture of life in 1600s and 1700s England and America, where former Puritan Daniel Waterhouse is mixing it up with the greatest minds of his day, including Isaac Newton and the young Benjamin Franklin, among others. I don't have much to say about the plot (such as it is), but it is full of interesting philosophical discussions, such as this:

“And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle--all in the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe--for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient.”

An interesting book. I've set down The Confusion, which has a different cast of characters and didn't grab me as much, but I may return to it.

Stephenson's Novels

• The Big U (1984)
• Zodiac (1988)
• Snow Crash (1992)
• Interface (1994) 
• The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995)
• The Cobweb (1996) 
• Cryptonomicon (1999)
• The Baroque Cycle
• Quicksilver (2003), volume I
• The Confusion (2004), volume II
• The System of the World (2004), volume III
• Anathem (2008)
• The Mongoliad (2010–2012)
• Reamde + Colin's review (2011)