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Summary: Hyperboyle in the title
Review: Stacey gave me this book last year for Christmas. It is written by Simon Winchester, who also wrote The Professor and the Madman, which was a fascinating book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. This story was a bit more challenging to get through. I did learn many interesting things, but the topic was just not as thrilling, nor was the story or the telling as compelling. And clearly the title engages in hyperbole. Not entirely sure I can reccomend this book in general, perhaps if your really into geology.One interesting fact: the largest division of time is eon, of which there have been four, the current being the Phanerozoic, which means "visible life". The division goes from eon, to era, periods and epochs.
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Summary: Why was this a best seller?
Review: Disappointing sums it up for me. If I wasn't interested in geology already I would be even more disappointed. The author could have done more with this interesting saga in the history of geology if he hadn't tried to blow it up into something more earth-shaking than it really was. I think his editors were asleep with all the repetitive foreshadowing and over-the-top declarations of at-the-time unappreciated genius. For a good geology read try John McPhee.
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Summary: Zero to Hero...for Real
Review: Simon Winchester successfully and masterfully spins this non-fiction biography with the twists and turns of a well-plotted fiction. It is clearly evident that Winchester left no stone unturned (pun intended) when researching the story behind the story of William Smith, the father of geology.
Our main character and "hero", William Smith, the orphaned son of a blacksmith, is the first person in history to discover and record the different layers of earth (in England) and the rocks and fossils within them. Smith spends most of his adult life literally walking across England to accomplish this allthewhile creating words and concepts (a language, if you will) that we now associate with geology and civil engineering. According to the class strata and clashes of his day -- rich v. poor, educated v. uneducated, royal v. peasant -- our hero begins, not only his geological journey, but his life, as an underdog and should have no right or chance to succeed at his goal. Our "villians" (some of the rich and educated and royals I mentioned above) try to discredit, discourage and disallow Smith's work nearly from the moment he started it (and they succeeded some of the time). In the end of the story (and of his life), our underdog is recognized, honored and rewarded by (literally) King and country. He is given the now-a-day equivalent of a pension until his death and the priceless, timeless title of the Father of Geology. Simply said, this is a wonderful tale of zero to hero. Enjoy the read! Matthew Munyon
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Summary: A Serendipitous Pleasure
Review: My wonderful book club is fond of taking field trips, and so when one member suggested "Longitude" we knew that a trip to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich was inevitable, despite the distance from Tidewater Virginia. A wandering member was e-mailed to meet us in London for the occasion,and he quickly wrote back saying that "Longitude" was a guy book and a disappointment, and begged us to read "The Map That Changed The World" in addition to if not instead of the former. So we did and he was right. "Longitude" was an o.k. quick read, but did not measure up to the hype which suggested that Harrison had dicovered longitude or at least "solved the greatest scientific problem of his time." How disappointing to realize that astronomers had long before figured out the measurment system; what Harrison did was develop the chronometer, a dependable clock which would give reliable time readings during the longest sea voyage. A brilliant man, indeed a genius of clockmaking, and we look forward to actually seeing H-1, H-2 and H-3. But... Now William Smith, there was a genius! He solved a scientific problem that no one even knew existed. If he didn't discover, he at least uncovered (sorry) the science of geology. It seems almost not to be believed that several hundred years after the timing of the orbits of the moons of Jupiter was known to astronomers,the strata that make up the layers of our terrestial orb were unimagined. Seen, of course, by miners, but never even thought of as stages of the creation of our world as we know it. Fascinating subject, fascinating book. And if they will let us in, we will go to Burlington House and ask to have the curtains pulled.
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Summary: overloaded with geologic details...
Review: After reading Winchester's book "The Professor and the Madman" I was very interested in reading some more of Simon Winchester's work. The Map That Changed the World was the book that he wrote after The Professor. It took me some time to get around to read it, but I was looking forward to it. Winchester does a prodigious amount of research for his books and it shows as we learn about the stated subject of the book as well as all the details that surround it. The Map That Changed the world deals with William Smith, an amateur geologist living at the end of the 18th Century. William Smith had a driving ambition and interest in finding out exactly what was under the ground in England. This may not seem like much, but the methods and knowledge that Smith acquired during his research and over decades of work were the building blocks for modern geology and for discovering everything we know about the geology of our planet. William Smith is rightfully called the father of geology. This book is filled with details of geology: rocks, strata, the ages of the earth, the Geological Society of London, etc. On one hand, this is a very interesting work. It tells the story of how one man pretty much established the ground rules for geology and what it can begin to know. On the other hand, this book is so heavily detailed that it is dry reading. I don't have a strong interest in geology, so I was interest in this book more for the historical implications rather than the geological ones (even though they overlap at times). I think this book is worth reading for anyone interested in the social/scientific history of the time, and without reservation for anyone interested in geology. This is a well written book.
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Summary: A rocky road
Review: Smith's life is fascinating, his passion inpiring, his legacy profound. Winchester takes us on an enjoyable journey accompanying Smith through the English landscape. You don't need to be a geologist to enjoy this book. It's written by someone who has the journalistic skills to be able to bring the era and social context as much as the science of the discoveries alive to the layperson. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Father of English geography
Review: William Smith was the father of English geography. He was the first recipient of the Wollaston Medal. This medal has the significance of a Nobel Prize. Smith was untutored, unlettered, and a genius. The map in question is a map of the substrata of England and Wales devised by one person in his walks, hikes, theorizing, and geological investigations, published circa 1815. The occasion of Smith's discoveries was coal mining and the consequent canal building undertaken to transport the coal to markets. Smith, surveyor and drainer of flood lands, had the opportunity to see below the earth in the various mines created for coal extraction. He ascertained that stratification was orderly in accordance with fossil finds. Although much-honored at the end of his life, Smith underwent many hardships in the course of his career including imprisonment for debt. Winchester does a wonderful job of making the subject matter exciting and the science understandable. He creates atmosphere in his book reminding one of Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen for reason of his description of places, buildings, building materials, and rocks.
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Summary: geology for those who didn't get it in college
Review: The worst charge that can be made against this book is that it is boring for someone without a consuming interest in geology, but it will clarify some issues that come up in college geology courses. The basic points are just two: 1)English geologic strata are tilted from the Northwest to the Southwest, so that exposed rock in the Northwest is much older than exposed rock in the Southeast of England, and all intermediate strata are of an intermediate age. 2)particular fossils are specific to particular strata. I find these two concepts understandable in their relative simplicity. The writing is not perfect, occasionally dense, but one does get a considerable feel for both the energy of the man and for early 18th century England, including coal mining,transport by canal, the Georgian city of Bath, the town of Scarborough, the state of geologic knowlege at the time at the great universities, drainage of fields to make them arable, sheep-shearings,the oolitic limestone of the Cotswolds, and other matters that may or may not be specifically geologically- related. The man is portrayed as an energetic intellectual who had both detractors and supporters. Geology at the time was a matter of theological debate. Before he came along, people really didn't know what to make of fossils, though they were considered collectible. Some of his detractors were in direct competition with him; one attempted to copy his map, which would today be a copyright infringement. His accomplishments were recognized late in his lifetime and presumably he died a happy man, though a pauper.He had serious financial problems starting in middle age. He is at least a poor man's Charles Darwin in stature.
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Summary: Should have been shorter
Review: This book presents the interesting life of William Smith, who created the world's first geological map. The trouble is, William Smith's life is not >>very<< interesting and the material doesn't justify a full length book. A good magazine article would have done the job. The same can be said of Simon Winchester's other good book, the Professor and the Madman. If SW could write a few more of these interesting lives, keep them at say 10,000 words each, and publish them in a collection , then the resulting book would probably merit 4 stars. As it is, 2 will do .
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Summary: A pity - this reads as a 'tabloid' biography on a great man
Review: As you can I was disappointed by this biography - but I have been in the past by Winchester's writing. His first biography "The professor and the Madman" put me off him. Why? because I always feel he overplays the salacious parts of the story at the expense of a what is actually a rootling good yarn. That is this is the story of a William Smith who, without real education orsocial position, managed to overturn a great number of accepted notions about the earth's formation and really open up the underworld to geologists. Instead Winchester begins with a dramatic introduction about how his maps are never seen now, hidden by curtains (to prevent light from fading the colours) and then dwelling lovingly on the time in which William Smith returned from debtors prison to find that he was without a house or belongings. Now, this seemed to me to be hardly the most dramatic moment in his long life of dramatic moments and discoveries - yet this and Smith's mad wife get quite a showing in this book even though both have been expunged from his diaries and not even mentioned in other parts of writings about him and his autobiography. That is - there is so little information it is all speculation - not history. Anyway - I had just come to this book from reading Deborah Cadbury's book on the same period - but about the first discoveries of what fossils meant to the geological timetable of the world - and I have to say that the comparison is not flattering. While Cadbury deals with her subjects, teasing out the known facts about them and letting them almost speak for themselves, I always feel like Winchester is trying to dress up his subjects and speak for them - ordering their world to sound very dramatic. I felt most disappointed in Winchester when he was discussing William Smith's saviour in the geological world, that is Fitton's contribution to his being finally recognised. I just didn't think the way it was told rang true. Winchester made this huge feature of the article Fitton wrote in the Edinburgh review which apparently triggered the change. Yet Winchester admitted in slightly more measured tones later that this didn't actually trigger a change for some years and made no difference at the time at all because a year later Smith was acutally in debtors prison. The lack of real chronological telling of the story, the use of unnecessary side notes to the story and the overdramatisation of various features put me off this book and on a subject I am really interested in. I would recommend you try Deborah Cadbury for a much better representation of this period of geology.
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