Good lord this is a massive book (don't let the page count fool you).
In terms of writing style:
- everything is written clearly, there are no unexplained references to political or scientific figures, no over-use of scientific wording or reliance on other works to explain concepts (the importance of this cannot be overstated)
- sentences kind of flow together too much, I found myself highlighting dozens of pages at once, because that's quite literally how long it took to state something sometimes
- there was an overuse of question -> long unpacking of question -> answer posed as question -> unpacking of answer posed as question -> proof of answer. I get that the question needed to be asked in an appealing way, to get people like me to keep reading, but for backtracking this is going to be painful as shit.
On the content:
- detailed to death, especially as an amateur it got very overwhelming at some points, especially as there are sometimes pages of what I felt like completely unnecessary context
- an actually fresh view of history is given, not just a slightly different reiteration of "common-sense" projected backwards in time
- on top of my previous point, it's also optimistic in spirit
In terms of information
- if you're going into this to have the "Origin of Everything" question answered with some brand new scientific breakthrough you will be sorely disappointed. Most of questions that I had are not answered, but rendered useless in this new view of history the authors show
- it's up to date and references very recent (and very old) research
- there's a lot of information given out in general, as I've explained it's very detailed, so you do kind of get a decent overview of history as well, although if that's what you're after there's better books