Discoverers
In any case, the book is called “The Discoverers” and it was written by Daniel J. Boorstin about 20 years ago. It’s a great book in that I don’t think I’ve ever learned so many new things about the world at large from any one single book before! In essence it’s a history book, but it’s “a history of man’s search to know his world and himself”. It’s not a history book that’s all about memorizing the dates of events, it’s about how past events in our history affect our world today. It explains a lot of why a lot of things are the way they are.
Before you go out and buy this book, I’ll tell you it’s not the lightest read I’ve ever had, far from it. This particular book is four books in one, for all of 768 pages. Not a small read by any means. It’s divided into four books: “Time”, “The Earth and the Seas”, “Nature”, and finally “Society”. All four books are excellent, and each has some very interesting material. That being said, no book that size can be a continual page turner, and you will find some sections are a little longer than you may want. However if you push through these few longer sections, you’ll find it’s really worth it. For example for me I personally found the beginning of the fourth book pretty long, and I almost stopped. However I’m very glad I pushed on, it got to be very good. I eventually personally found the fourth book to be the most interesting.
As well, you’ll find that Daniel’s writing style is not the simplest. He does not write like John Grisham or Stephen King, so be prepared to take a bit longer reading the book. And don’t think that because he’s more verbose and wordy that his writing style is not exciting, it is. Its just that it might take you a while to work through the book.
Now that I’ve said my negatives about the book, seeing as I’m taking to write about it and strongly recommend it, it should say something about how much I appreciate and value it! This book is well worth the read, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading another one of Daniel’s books. I can’t say how enough how much I learned from this one book, how many things in the world I didn’t fully understand that I now do. Almost everything we do as a society is for a reason, and often we don’t really know why or how, we just accept it. After reading Daniel’s book The Discoverers, you understand a lot more about why and how the world works, and that’s extremely powerful!
· January 2nd, 2007 · 4:00 pm · Permalink
You might also like “Guns, germs and steel” By Jared Diamond. Highly recommended.
· January 3rd, 2007 · 11:06 am · Permalink
Hi Andy,
I did! I read it about a year ago and it was also a great read. I’ve been meaning to also pick up two of his other books that caught my attention: “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” and “The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee”. Do you know of these are anywhere near as good as “Guns, Germs, and Steel”?
· January 5th, 2007 · 6:23 am · Permalink
I have read both the other books. They are both well worth a read IMHO.
· January 5th, 2007 · 11:05 am · Permalink
Thanks, that’s good to hear. I look forward to reading them then.