Rating: 
Summary: Enlightening And Entertaining
Review: This delightful book is what we all wish all our Science classes were like. Mr. Burke shows amazing correlations between events and inventions, from the button to the Bomb and back again. The book starts out with the subtle events leading to a huge Northeast blackout. We observe how technology is a double-edged sword which first frees us, then ultimately makes us entirely dependent on our own conveniences. Many everyday expressions and ideas such as "lime light" are traced to their anachronist origins. Lots of fun!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Will someone explain to me what this book is really about? I get the general premise, that scientific discoveries are often the result of unconnected work, people looking for one thing but finding another, etc.. The problem is, I don't agree with that and the author doesn't really prove it.
Did crop rotation and the invention of the stirrup really bring about northern Europe's rise to power? If it did, Burke doesn't explain how. Did chimney flues really change society, because people could spend more time indoors? That's not likely, and such a statement really needs more proof and documentation than Burke gives us.
These are some of the lame theories that Burke uses to explain major scientific developments in Europe and America.
It's true for example, that Bell was trying to invent a hearing device, but instead invented the telephone. But so what? Both kinds of devices involved vibrating graphite and other loose materials by means of electric surges. In fact, the telephone receiver actually is a hearing device that you put to your ear.
At one point in his career, Einstein said "How do I work? I grope." Okay, but he probably said a lot of other things as well, like, "It's cold today".
Sometimes half the ideas a writer or painter or software developer comes up with occur while he or she is writing, painting or coding. But that's part of the creative process, which writers and painters have understood for centuries. No doubt the same thing happens when inventors and scientists are working, except that they often have to test hundreds of materials, chemicals, formulas to arrive at a solution. Newton compared this process to the way a small boy sifts through sand to find the shiniest pebble.
On the other hand, Burke's attempts to connect inconsequential events, people and theories are confusing, obscure and ultimately boring. I always thought that Newton's "I have stood on the shoulders of giants," meant that he based his work on that of people like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, etc. He built on their discoveries, and let their work be his initial guide to make discoveries of his own. Generally speaking, I always thought this was how most scientists work, although some of them (like Einstein) did rebel against contemporary opinions.
Hmmmm...
Maybe the cure for cancer will be discovered by a chef in New York who notices that blue cheese causes a certain type of rat to grow twice its size. The chef then tells this story to his dentist who studied animal husbandry at Dartmouth and remembers an experiment in which a pound of bleu cheese could keep an ant colony feed for six months. But then the telephone rings and...
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