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marct22's reviews
674 reviews
Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
4.0
I am actually a little disappointed in this book. First off, the main title is wrong. Babylon itself is only a small fraction of this book, maybe at most a 1/6 of the contents of the book. It is really about Mesopotamia and the birth of civilization. About that second part, still, while mostly about it, I could do without the periodic references to today's world. That whole introduction I think could have been rewritten to talk more about the past. I guess i was hoping it wouldn't quite be such a 'pop' history book.
Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of AD 800 by Jeff Sypeck
3.0
Was rather disappointed. While it was about Karl, former king then emperor of Rome(!!), it seemed kinda like skimming without digging in. I'm still not sure why King Karl was so great, seems like he was always battling the Saxons, lost heavily to the Basque, yet the book kinda felt to me like he was Forrest Gump, a nice likeable guy who seemed to be in the right place at the right time. It seemed he went here, then there, then over there, then back, but did anything significant happen here, there, or over there? Kinda not really, at least I didn't get a sense of anything major, because the descriptions were so short.
Don't want to leave spoilers, but wow, you read most of the book, and you don't know why he's Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, Karl, etc. yes, but not Charlemagne). Then near the end, at page x he's alive, at page x+1 he's dead, and you don't know what happened until later. I am now more curious about him and the times he lived in (around 800 AD), but it was just so short and lite (deliberate mispell), it could have been so much better.
Don't want to leave spoilers, but wow, you read most of the book, and you don't know why he's Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, Karl, etc. yes, but not Charlemagne). Then near the end, at page x he's alive, at page x+1 he's dead, and you don't know what happened until later. I am now more curious about him and the times he lived in (around 800 AD), but it was just so short and lite (deliberate mispell), it could have been so much better.
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins
5.0
A long but very comprehensive and interesting book! He pretty much starts with humans, and works backward in time, describing each branchpoint where humans and other living organisms branched from each other, yet pointing out that we could have picked any current living organism and follow it back, nothing special about us humans! Dawkins does point out where there's still questions, especially as he approaches the point where all animals, plants, and fungi joined as the common ancestor. I did learn some new things, and even though the hardcover is 614 pages, and there are parts where it helps to know some mathematics (but he points them out), but those parts are rare. Highly recommended!