Not slick and trendy, but a good, solid introduction, as long as you don't need the latest Milton scholarship.
Nicolson helped me get clear on what Milton might have meant in each major scene, book by book.

This book is my favorite book. I remember the first time that I read it. I would have to get up from my desk, walk around my apartment, and digest what I was reading. It was so exciting.

Nicolson brings together Theology, History of Science and Geology, and Aesthetics in such a beautiful way. She describes what was an important change in western thinking about nature that occured at the end of the seventeenth century.

Ignore, William Cranon's introduction that ties Nicolson's work to today's ecocriticism. But find and read other works that study nature and culture; Clarance Glacken's Traces on the Rhodian Shore (1967), Arthur O. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being (1936), and Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden (1964).

This book, out of print since the sixties, was impossible to find, until I tried Amazon, and it was worth the wait. Shadwell's comedy is an intense satire of the original Geographic Society founded in London. While I wouldn't recommend this to just anyone, those who enjoy a hefty dose of sarcasm and satirical comedy, and who don't mind reading works in the play format should find this to be a very entertaing piece.