Wow! A marvellously entertaining book, despite the horribly boring title. This must be one of the best exposures of the destructiveness of Big Government yet. Anyone who thinks that the free market is OK for making shoes and pizzas but that the really "serious stuff" like scientific research wont happen unless paid for by government should get a load of this book. From Roman times, through the Industrial Revolution to the present, the author shows that nearly all the important scientific and technological advances in history have come from private sources, from tradesmen or industrialists who had a "problem" and needed to fix it, and not from tax-funded laboratories. Worse than that, the more government has spent on science the slower has been economic growth. Should be required reading for all Ministers for Science Policy, not to mention Prime Ministers, Presidents and Heads of Treasuries.