Maybe I am being a little picky because this period of history is one of my favorites. I like reading about science & history, but am usually bored by biography, and for my tastes there was too much biography. The parts where the science & the conflict with the orthodoxy were discussed were very good, but the parts where the lives of the scientists were discussed really drug for me. Restoration England basically gave birth to science and the modern world, and the Royal Society was at the heart of it. Gribbon does a nice job of quickly summarizing the influences that made this possible, but then gets bogged down a bit. I'd recommend Carl Zimmer's amazing "Soul Made Flesh" for those interested in this topic. Although Zimmer's book doesn't cover the actual Royal Society foundation so much, it does tell the heart of the story(how folks went from believing that THINKING about things was the right way to figure out how they worked, to realizing that OBSERVING them was far superior).

Of course for people who can't get enough of Restoration England and the foundation of modern thought, this book is still worthwhile.