The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Topic, Only Fair Execution
Review: While the concept of emergence is quite interesting, this book lacks enough depth to really cover the material in a meaningful way. The book is more a collection of brief essays on various topics, and does provide a useful overview of the topic.

However, the same material in a more masterful writer's hands could have been a fascinating work. Each of the chapters only contained a skeletal outline of the emergent behavior, with nothing to flesh it out. Because the facts were so sketchy (and often amounted to prose hand-waving) I wasn't always convinced that the arguments were sound.