by Simon Winchester
MAP is 3/5 because half of it is geology and most people are not fascinated by geology. so, it's a weaker Winchester book although apparently the crowd disagrees and rates it 3rd in overall popularity. in fact, according to GR, it's half as popular as Krakatoa and twice or even four times the Winche...
Not as good as The Professor and the Madman, IMHO - some portions seemed oddly disjointed with regard to chronology, and some information was duplicated in later sections in almost the same words. An interesting story for the most part, about another one of those "hidden heroes" of the Age of Enlig...
A great book with 2 interesting stories, how William Smith almost single handed figured out the geology of England and also a more important and damning one about how class fixations in mid 19th century England conspired against talented and gifted individuals. Hmmm not much has changed.
I adore Simon, and enjoy his books, but he's so much more engaging live than he is on paper. This book reminded me of several people's characterization of male British dating habits; they tend to hang around quite a bit without making a move before even attempting to mention that they'd be happy to...
While I liked The Map that Changed the World well enough, it was a slow read (about 25 pages a night). I preferred Winchester's OED-related books, perhaps because I'm actually interested in the picky details of dictionary development, and because with a focus on words his Byzantine sentences don't s...
This is the tale of William Smith, the first guy to create a geologic map. He identified the strata that makes up what comprises the ground for quite a ways down and figured out that it was standard. The story is an interesting one, about a poor bastard beset by the rich types who stole his work and...
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