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Seeing Further: Ideas, Endeavours, Discoveries And Disputes — The Story Of Science Through 350 Years Of The Royal Society (2010)

by Bill Bryson(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0007302568 (ISBN13: 9780007302567)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harper Press

review 1: If a book is marketed as a Bill Bryson book, I expect humour, whimsy, and wonderful tidbits of information. I'd have enjoyed this more if they had collected essays from authors that write like Bill Bryson. Instead, there is a lot of tedious wanking on and I felt like a teacher's aide sentenced to grading freshman term papers. The enjoyable exceptions to this were Bill Bryson's intro, Simon Schaffer's essay on lightning rods and Richard Holmes' essay on the history of scientific ballooning. Read those and skip the rest in my opinion.
review 2: Covered a wide variety of topics, from space and time, to evolution, engineering and climate change and many topics in between. I found many of the essays to be very readable and enjoyable -- for example, the discu... moression on bridge engineering, and the chapter focused on applied vs pure science. I was also fascinated by the essays on climate change, and especially the questions of what we can and cannot really know about climate change.But, a few of the chapters were just beyond my level of understanding. And, a few seemed oddly out of place, such as the chapter that seemed to focus on apocalyptic fiction.I was actually expecting more of a pure history of the Royal Society and its members, compared to the various essays. less

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