Reviews and Comments

This prequel to Taking Manhattan, fills in the backstory and the lore that surrounds Shorto’s previous master-work. Great characters and providing tons of informative backstory, this one somehow falls just a bit short of the last. In this story, the narrative thread is not quite as strong and the dramatic tension is lessened, partly due to the extended time periods covered in the book. Really liked this one, but a bit less than the last.

Really enjoyed the colorful prose style and honest, frank story telling. Learned a lot about wild animals. Mary Roach is a great, entertaining writer and I look forward to seeing more from her.

A very quirky and interesting telling of how Bayesian statistics have shaped our world. There is a descent amount of math, but the author is self-conscious about the use of it and it did not doom this book, though I felt it could have been stronger with a bit less. He tries to be objective in comparing the Bayesian view to the frequentist view even though his bias is clear. He talks a lot about how statistics are used in science the consequences of this and I found that to the compelling. While I struggled a little bit with this one, its quirky nature and interesting prose kept my attention long enough for me to care about the content.

This book was an eye-opener for me. Henrich presents research that explains human achievement in a completely novel way that is non-intuitive and challenges widely held beliefs about human intelligence. In short: we are not so smart as we think we are even compared to our closest living relatives like the Chimp and the Orangutan. He demonstrates this through research and story telling in an interesting and convincing way. Then once he has stripped us of our preconceptions he artfully builds his case for how we have in fact come to dominate the planet: Social Learning. It is one of those ideas, that once you hear it, it seems like common sense. Not only that it changes the way you see our society. I feel like this is an important work that should be more widely understood.

An interesting analysis of historical events that show how a fair approach to managing people and distributing benefits can yield superior outcomes over income maximizing approaches. It suffers from being cherry picked and anecdotal . While the case studies are well researched and valid examples, without considering counter examples more broadly the arguments are less than convincing.

Well written and researched the arguments in this book are compelling and rational. In the end the book feels one-noted and repetitive.

I loved this book. Once again Neal Stephenson has managed to combine an education on historical, scientific, technological and societal events with a gripping tale of intrigue and adventure. The story itself includes fascinating settings and characters from a little told tale of a forgotten time leading up to World War 2. Looking forward to the next chapter in the Bomb Light series.

Loved this book. I feel like this book did a better jobs than the more well-known Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker at making the case that people are basically good. Pinker fell in the trap of trying to present specific evidence from research that was impefrect and most of the arguments against his thesis have been around that evidence and the validity of that research. Bregman does a good job of avoiding that trap without presenting unsupported arguments.Also, the way he structures the book helpds. Pinker was saying look at this macro evidence we are clearly good on average, whereas Bregman breaks down human behaviors in a micro way and shows the roots of these behaviors. It is a more satisfying approach and I feel more effective.

As an avid reader of science and math books who also has a degree in Physics and Maths, I often end up reading books about topics I have some level of familiarity with. This research into the science of sync was totally new to me. This was also my first Steven Strogatz book. His writing style is great. He is able to communicate the most complex of ideas using simple easy to understand language. I loved this book and am looking forward to reading other books by this author.