Customer Reviews

History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders

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Picked this book up on a whim, because the subject itself sounded fascinating. And I was right, to a certain extent: the details about how our concept of "time" has changed throughout the years, of when clocks were introduced and how different factors played into it, all of that is extremely interesting.

However, the author is NOT writing for a general public. There seems to be an underlying assumption that not only is the reader already intimately familiar with clocks, but that the reader is also well-versed in a variety of European languages. Random phrases in Latin, German, and Italian are thrown around, with no note as to what the translation means. The book could have benefited from footnotes to clarify meanings.

At times, the book also felt disjointed, jumping around from one time period to the next and then back again. That made it hard to keep track of the chronology, somewhat ironic in a book about the "history of the hour." (Unless the entire book is supposed to be a parable of the clock's/the hour's development, in which case it goes over my head.)

All in all, I would recommend the book only for people who have the patience for dense books, and are willing to look up all the foreign words the author has not bothered to explain.