Customer Reviews

Ideas That Changed the World

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is an enticing mile-a-minute overview of big ideas that have influenced human history.

Be careful: this is specifically a book for voracious skimmers, it is not an enclyclopedia or suitable reference for scholars. Nor does it offer an ongoing thread of analysis of topics to lend any continuity. There is a lot of real estate taken up with graphics and layout, so the text content is even more concise than might be inferred from the one or two pages devoted to each topic. This serves as a ready and accessible reference, mainly because the topics are extremely well chosen for both their timeless significance and their diversity, and the author does a very competent job of surveying most topics, in spite of their widely varying difficulty.

Technical scientific ideas are handled much less well than cultural and philosophical ones, so the focus of this book doesn't really reflect the modern emphasis on science and technology to the degree some might expect. It does however do a good job of placing scientific ideas into broader cultural context. For example, discussing the Uncertainty Principle, the author almost exclusively discusses the way it has been interpreted as having significance for the macroscopic world, rather than its significance for our understanding the microfabric of nature. This accurately reflects the impact of the idea for most of us, but not its significance within physics.

The blessing of this book is its brevity, and it generally offers a small reasonably good choice of sources for followup on each topic. The topics are not neccessarily treated even-handedly, since the author doesn't seem too hesitant to put his own spin on each topic, although they usually come close. It is not an overly opinionated book considering how compressed the entries are. At the very least, when a controversy is described over an idea, reasonable sources for the main protagonists are offered.

That brevity is also the curse of this book for those who may be fascinated by the samplings of ideas here, but not quite want to dive into the scholarly sources often offered as further reading. It will also frustrate people very familiar with particular topics and disagreeing with what the author focuses on to make the entries concise. That's what distinguishes this for me from an enclyclopedic treatment.

I would recommend this book as an excellent and exciting whirlwind tour of ideas and a painless way to learn broadly about philosophy and culture without having to read an encyclopedia, but it won't adequately replace either the original sources or the encyclopedia.

This is a "coffee table" book of ideas to spend a few minutes with at a time rather than a book to sit and read from cover to cover. As a kid I used to read through the World Book Encyclopedia; this book provides the same kind a service and sometimes excitement for selected important ideas that have "changed the world".

Brief, concise, pointed sketches of important ideas are on target for their selection and coverage. Perhaps far from perfect, but there is nothing else nearly as good. Selected notes direct one to books to purse any idea further. Many ideas will be familiar and the short essays and photos may stimulate memories or reflection. A few will be new - or commonly misunderstood. Either way the open minded reader will learn something and be stimulated. Except for the tired cynic, most will find some intellectual entertainment and perhaps even stimulus to deeper thought.

This unique book illustrates how our world has become what it is today: by thinking and using imagination. The fundament of this book is that ideas are the driving force behind change and progress. Ideas are as old as mankind. Discoveries and inventions, economic systems and politic movements, our contact with people, animals and daily objects: all find their birth in an original idea. From cannibalism to Zen, from time to the unconscious, from pure logic to the chaos theory...

The `idea' behind this book is as remarkable as it is refreshing. It all starts in prehistoric times and takes the reader on a long, but exiting trip through time. One hundred ideas are briefly discussed and presented to the reader as some fast food for the mind. Not all ideas are as natural as for example the invention of writing, but put into a boarder perspective each of them shows significant influence on the course of history. As a consequence of this book's setup every idea only takes up two pages. No one can expect that this limited coverage is enough to fully communicate what each idea really signifies. This is certainly the weakest point of this anthology. It is certainly not surprising that not everyone will agree to the interpretation of certain ideas. But at least this book gives the incentive to numerous interesting discussions.

As a remedy to the compactness the author has added a `further reading' section to each idea, a gesture that is highly appreciated and that is certainly one of the main assets of this thought provoking book. A great starting point for everyone who frequently asks the question: why?

Appearances CAN be deceiving. At first glance this appears to be an intruiguing coffee table book - large size, lavishly illustrated, extremely interesting, universally applicable to young and old. But upon closer reflection one notes the vast scholarship that went into this work which was obviously a joyous task for the esteemed author.

It is arranged chronologically, starting approximately 30,000 BC (I refuse to use that absurd "BCE"). What is noteworthy is that the most important, most far-reaching, the most elemental ideas came so early. For example, the notion of a spirit world, the idea of magic, of communicating with spirits, of matter....these are all concepts that we take for granted now since they are such a part of our evolutionary cultural psychology as humans.

Many ideas are still controversial - racial superiority, evolution, cosmology - but these have not been with us since the dawn of history. This is an exciting intellectual quest for our heritage in the world of ideas. What is especially gratifying is the inclusion with every two page article of particular works - one could say a mini-bibliography - with which one can delve deeper into the subject.

The work is amazingly non-parochial, putting the "human" ahead of the specific culture. That does not preclude him from listing some ideas that have particular meaning only to certain groups, such as jihad or anti-semitism. But even these limited application ideas affect groups outside the ones they affect directly. What is especially appealing is the ability to pick up the reading at the next idea. Since each is only two pages long, there is not much possibility of "losing one's place."

My knee-jerk reaction was to dislike this book for the same reason I dislike the notion of reading a newspaper headline rather than the article, or skimming through the guidebook rather than experiencing a place. It's melodramatic, but I always saw these things as symptoms of a culture bent on cheapening itself, where being able to act and talk like an expert was just as good as being one.

But as a worked through this thick little book my dislike softened a bit, and even if it never really became anything warm it did turn into a kind of begrudging acceptance. In the end, I'm glad I didn't buy this book myself -- it was a gift -- but I'm also glad I read it.

Most of the book's value, I think, comes from the context it builds. I did not find any single chapter extraordinary, and quite a few seemed disappointing (this is not the fault of author Felipe Fernandez-Armesto -- after all, how can anyone adequately describe anti-Semitism or theories about the afterlife or the history of time in a mere two pages?). But together they formed a mosaic that from a distance gives a pretty good picture of current thought and where it came from.

Nobody will become an expert -- real or otherwise -- at anything by reading this book. But Mr. Fernandez-Armesto clearly is an expert, and I admit that his efficient and often opinionated writing does a good job at laying everything out in easy-to-understand terms.

In the end, reading this book is a little like taking a spoonful of everything on a restaurant's menu in order to figure out what plates might be worth eating more of later. That sort of thing usually leaves me with heartburn, and rather than picking this volume up again I would prefer to refer to the original sources or, at worst, an encyclopedia. But for the world's enthusiastic skimmers, Ideas Than Changed the World is probably worth considering.

There's much truth in the other reviewers' comments, this book has many aspects and could just as easily be hated by a die-hard academic and it could be loved by a science degree 'haver' like myself.

The book is a time-line of sorts spanning the first (as far as we can imagine) idea in mankind's history through to modern inventions (spawned by an idea, of course) in society.

Ideas are presented in chapters of sorts by what evolutionary/historic time period/epoch they ocurred in, yet the whole book glides along easily and isn't at all broken up by this.

Nice air-brushed pictures, quotes, further-reading suggesitons dot the page to break up well-written shortish textx on the idea at hand.

So far I paint a nice picture but the downside, for some readers, will be that there isn't a deep/sound treatment of the ideas (conversly every idea has a further-reading list), since the scope is so broad; and for some, the smooth style will be too sickly-sweet glossy magazine (for others an anti-dote to heavy text-vomiting uni-course texts).

I'd recomment this strongly to anyone like me who needs to gain an overviews/perspective, to have interests awoken and so forth. I'd also recommend it to teachers of subjects like philosophy, history, society, culture etc.

For me, it's an idea-a-day new year's resolution to learn more about the world I tread and the history of my species... a gem of a book. 4.49 stars.

This book focuses on ideas thought to be important or pivotal to the development of history and humans. It's a somewhat cursory examination which is both a blessing and a burden. A blessing from the aspect that you don't get bogged down on one idea for a long period of time and also a burden because sometimes certain ideas interest you to the point where you want to read more about them. The book contains many nice illustrations and captions which tend to liven the subject and make it more alluring. The breadth and scope of ideas covered is another nice feature, however, some ideas (such as those on fascism and national superiority) tend to be overlapping and can become tedious. All-in-all though I would recommend it as a good refresher book or something suitable to get your thinking cap on.

the kind of book that would appeal to history buffs and/or thinkers. a manageable and agnostic assortment of the ideas that defined history. an inspiring read.

This book is perfect toilet-reading, if you're so inclined. One idea is presented on two pages, which makes it a quick read. The book is in no way an essential reading, so I cannot give the book more than three stars. Still, it is a good book in the toilet-reading category.

This is a rich book that, quite interestingly, explores history through predominant ideas that made an impact. It is more or less chronologically organized, and this gives a special effect to the whole production. Of course, internal links between ideas are helpfully provided to create a network of thought. The book is very well illustrated, and this makes each contribution in the book beautiful in appearance as well as interesting. Also, it is a good idea, I think, that each idea treated is allotted one single spread page. This makes it easy and convenient for teachers to use the book with students. Most of the essays presented in the book are very well-written. Some of them, however, I find to be too restricted, maybe revealing certain Westernized biases that could be corrected with a better, and more inclusive, critical eye. Also, the book perhaps gives the strong impression that human history is a progression of ideas that changed the world. Maybe it would have been more precise to search for the source of ideas in prevailing social conditions and means of production. Ideas, I think, rest on, and arise from, these, rather than the opposite. In other words, though the ideas presented are all interesting in themselves, perhaps it is not made sufficiently clear WHY these ideas, and maybe not others, arose at all; what was their reason for existing. One final point I would like to make is this: though Fernandez-Armesto makes a special effort not to ignore ideas arising in other traditions apart from the Western one, he still could have included ideas coming, for instance, from Africa (which is almost completely ignored) and other parts of the world (such as the Caribbean, islands, small states, etc.). Having said all this, I do recommend this excellent book. At least, it makes you see the world in terms of the ideas that fly about, shaping our mind and lives.