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The main title and subtitle of this well-researched, lucidly written, and engaging book reflect the author’s double-sided approach. On the one hand, David Edmonds uses individual life stories (including Moritz Schlick’s) as a route of access to key philosophical, political, and sociocultural issues and trends in the first half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, in chronicling the broader history of the origins, aims, and legacy of the Vienna Circle, he shows how individual lives were caught up in—and shaped by—the group’s collective endeavor to “marry an old empiricism with the new logic”(p. 3), pioneered by thinkers such as Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the process, Edmonds highlights the impact of the circle’s contributions not just on epistemology, logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science but also on fields as diverse as economic …