Customer Reviews

Another Point of View

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This is what I love about British radio. You can tune in, spin the dial at any given time, and find someone talking about Tudor underwear or the political origins of daylight savings time or who invented the tea kettle thermostat that automatically turns off the kettle when it starts boiling.

In fact, those are all topics that Lisa Jardine touches on in Another Point of View: A Little Book of Big Ideas. These short essays were originally broadcast on radio. They move effortlessly from one topic to another, making connections while mixing science, history, and art. There's nothing stuffy about these pieces. They are more like conversations than lectures. She chats about the size of her Christmas turkey and why she prefers traveling by train rather than by plane. She discusses global warming, which leads to why the Falklands War was really about oil. A discussion about an art installation at the Tate Modern leads to an observation about the changing nature of museum-going.

Another Point of View is quite short, fewer than 200 pages, 22 essays. Each is only a few pages long, and runs nine or ten minutes on radio. The amount of information, connection, relationships, conclusions, and observations that Jardine can fit into such a short time is impressive. They're like power bars for your mind -- they look small but they are quite filling.

I finished the book quickly, but I find that bits of it keep coming up in my own conversations and thoughts, even weeks later. And I am pleased to discover that I can listen to or read the new essays as they are posted on the BBC Radio 4 website. There is also a book that came before this one, A Point of View, which I am looking forward to reading soon.