Rating: 
Summary: Just as good as the creators
Review: If you liked the creators you will enjoy this audio book. Great for a long car ride. The only problem is that the reader is not top caliber.
Rating: 
Summary: Is it possible to give six stars???
Review: Boorstin, the former Librarian of Congress, seems to have distilled that entire collection into one book. This is the story of man's inquisitive mind, why some cultures are curious and why others are not. The variety of subjects covered are astonishing - exploration, science, art, politics. Boorstin reminds me of the historian Paul Johnson in that he combines a moving plot line of events with quirky, interesting biographies of the famous and not so famous. This is an epic story stretching from pre-history to the present. One is continually amazed and thrilled at what human beings have thought and accomplished. The author has been quoted as saying that his book was only a prelude to his next work, the Creators. I can hardly wait.
Rating:
Summary: Adventure of the Mind
Review: Boorstin is neither a scientist by training nor a sailor by profession, but he has a superb intellect and a writing style that is breezy and sometimes witty. This book is certainly the best in his trilogy. I only have a few criticisms about his idiosyncratic selections. There's not enough coverage of Newton. When you're writing a three-part intellectual history of the West running to 2000 pages, you ought to devote at least a full chapter to the greatest discoverer of all time. Like most historians, Boorstin underestimated the importance of Franklin to science. His contributions to electricity were far more than just a kite experiment. I.B. Cohen of Harvard pointed this out long ago. So Boorstin puts Franklin among the Creators - just because he wrote a famous autobiography. A common enough error, forgiveable since Boorstin is no historian of science. There's little mention of Hume and none of Schopenhauer among the Seekers, though these were two of the greatest minds in philosophy. Mozart's life gets all of three pages in the Creators, although he was probably the greatest artistic genius of world history. Einstein was not included in the Discoverers, but rather classified as one of the Seekers - i.e., among the philosophers - even though Newton and Darwin were Discoverers to Boorstin. Bohr is completely out of the whole story. Mathematics is the queen of the sciences. It is mathematics which distinguishes Western science from the Eastern. But Boorstin's treatment of mathematics and mathematicians is awfully thin. Neither Gauss nor Riemann was part of his adventure. A major disappointment. The Seekers is disproportionally short, making the trilogy rather asymmetrical. Not that symmetry is important per se. It's more important to say what needs to be said than worry about the length. But there are so many non-scientific, non-artistic thinkers to talk about that it seems odd not to write more or expand upon the ones he does talk about at greater length. One gets the impression that Boorstin thinks little of the people he calls the Seekers. If so, I agree with him. Philosophers so far have only made a marginal direct contribution to finding objective truth, even though they have exerted an indirect influence on the natural sciences. Modern philosophy, at least of the Western kind, is merely a successor to medieval scholasticism and mysticism. One does not have to read Wittgenstein to feel that had philosophers not existed the natural sciences might not have been any worse off (as Steven Weinberg keeps emhasizing). Overall, a great book in an excellent trilogy. This book gives me hours of sheer pleasure - a great discovery on my part.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating
Review: The constant battle for a history teacher is to look for new sources to update what you teach. I read "The Discoverers" as part of my readings during summer school and was pleasnatly surpirsed by the fascinating topics covered.
From water clocks, to T-O maps, to stories of antipodes; "The Discoverers" gives us a glimpse of how humanity lived in a period without the knowledge or things we now take for granted. If there's any lesson that can be gleaned, it is the importance of appreaciating how far we have gone.
Boorstin's book was a boon to my class who found the notion of antipodes, fiery equator, & T-O maps funny.
Rating:
Summary: Exciting and full of wonder
Review: In The Discoveres, Daniel Boorstin uses his traditional technique of using vignettes of important events and people to chronicle the story of human discovery from the very understanding of time itself to the wonder of modern science. Every chapter is highly readable, and the work itself forms a whole that, after completion, requires one to simply ponder for a time rather than read anything else. My main criticism of the book is related to my particular field of interest: Boorstin pays little attention to Islamic science and discovery. I would have loved to see him turn his talents to Ibn Sina and others upon whom much of European science built, as well as Indian Ocean trade which had been going on since the Hellenistic period. Nonetheless, that's more an omission I regret than a serious flaw, given the way the work is constructed. Specialists may find stuff to quibble with, but on the whole this book is itself a voyage of discovery which makes one wonder what the human race will achieve in its hopeful future.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite book
Review: I read almost exclusively non-fiction, perhaps fifty books a year for the last thirty years and this remains my all time favorite book. Boorstin writes non-fiction in the most compelling manner, and here he makes the history of human discovery simply facinating, complete with all the small, interesting details of significant events and people not normally discussed. He is able to explain the thinking of a people at a given time in history and the thinking of the significant people in history, the "why" of discoveries that happened or were delayed, the problem in moving forward with any discovery, the obstacles that were to be overcome, and how it was achieved.
Rating:
Summary: A completely refreshing view of history
Review: While I enjoy reading history, I recollect so little of my reading that I can hardly call myself a 'history buff', which I wish I were. 'The Discovers' has given me handles with which to recall historical events. It has given me a completely new appreciation of the intelligence, courage, and foibles of such men as Newton and Columbus. History is so full of important violence that it would seem that avoiding focus on wars would make a history dilute both in substance and in interest. Yet this book is incredibly readable, exciting, and provides a much deeper understanding of history than I have been exposed to before. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Truly an epic on World History
Review: From where did time come? Why is North north and West west? When does the moon stay in the sky the longest? Similar to a child's inquiries, this is how Boorstin shows his readers just how things came about. With precision, Boorstin decisively moves forward in time, explaining the steps our world had taken in becoming more complex, intellegent and competent. From water clocks to gear clocks, from costal navigation to the discovery of longitude and from lunar calendars to the Gregorian Calendar, Boorstin is intrepid in writing with description without digression. Needless to say, reading this book will enrich your life with knowledge. However, Boorstin gives you a sense that you have the ability to contribute to our world's understanding of who we are, why we are here and what we are here to do.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating View of Intellectual History
Review: Boorstin provides an intriguing view of man's intellectual history. From the measurement of time to the orgins of modern science, Boorstin's account of the history of knowledge is lucid and captivating. Any aficionado of history will love reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: i loved this one
Review: i read most of the books in this series (creators, seekers) and this is definitely the best: it made me think and rethink about simple concepts that mean everything to us but were actually inknown at one point in time...
take time for a start...hours, days, weeks, months, years...it all just seems simple now but these were all invented by people...the move from lunar to solar...the need to change the calendar avery decade or so because of the problems later solved by leap years...
i just read one chapter at a time and it was great food for thought.
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