James Gleick Books

This book is comprehensive in addressing the themes of Newton's life, though the introversion of the subject limits the detail which the author could provide. More simply stated, this book is well versed and written, so enjoy!

The shape of the world we live in has been mostly determined by a few hundred people. Newton is one of those. This is a concise, readable, entertaining bio of one of history's really great thinkers. Anyone who uses gravity should read it.

How can you sum up the life of Newton in roughly 190 pages. This is nothing but a pamphlet of one of the greatest lives of discovery the world has ever known. If your IQ is below 130 and you are looking for good reading go for it, but if you need meat and deeper substance about Newton, this is not where you look.

I really wish I had liked this book, but I didn't.
First thing that I noticed is the small volume, I had just read IKE's bio by Ambrose and in comparison this book seemed more like a brochure than an inclusive biographical work.
What I hated the most was the style. Too pompous for my taste, the author gets in lengthy descriptions on the period and the landscape that surrounded Newton while only giving Isaac himself a mere sentence here and there. I think the author was trying to appeal to a public that doesn't know who Newton was and did, and therefore finds it appropriate to remind us, on multiple occasions that 'yes, Newton is the one that invented calculus and before him there was darkness'. I gave the book away to somebody that could appreciate it, hopefully. Fortunately now I know not to buy "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman" by the same author, I would have been much more upset to read it instead of this book since I've been a Feynman fan for years.
Numerous repetition in the descriptions of the era and in the contributions on Newton, I could not force myself to keep on reading. I do not consider this book a serious read, not on the subject Isaac Newton anyway.

Most of the reviews of this book seem to be reviews of Newton, not the book. To be sure, Newton is one of the most influential scientists who ever lived, but that is not the point. Rather, the point is how good is this book? I liked the book, but not as much as I had hoped to. I found the book to be somewhat flat and un-exciting, the same impression it gives of Newton's life. There are areas of Newton's life that could have been presented more dramatically, most specifically his conflict with Robert Hooke. The author paints Hooke as one of those people who claim to have done everything before anyone else. In this book, he is depicted as a blowhard, but in other accounts his claims are given much more weight. (For instance, see "The Scientists" by John Gribbin.) Another point of contention is exactly how indispensable was Newton. Had he not lived, how long would it have taken for others to discover what he did? Being a biography of Newton, it is not surprising that he is painted as being indispensable. Again, this is a point of contention, not hinted at in this book. Much of what Newton did was also done by others (calculus was developed at the same time by Leibniz and it is his version that we use today, not Newton's). Newton could not have formulated gravity without the work of Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes. Gribbin believes that within a decade of Newton's death others could have used this same background to develop "Newton's laws". The point is not whether Gleick or Gribbin is right, but that Gleick does not even acknowledge that this controversy exists.

All in all, the book lays out the scope of Newton's life (including the fact that he spent much of the latter part of his life as an alchemist), but in a rather unexciting manner. The important areas of controversy, which aim to evaluate Newton's position in the pantheon of great scientists, are not even broached. I think that such a discussion would have enriched the book and broadened the outlook of the reader, so that Newton would not be just "the man", but rather a man among many.

A book about the Information Age that is of course becoming dated every day, but still a rewarding book to read. A book that forces a reader often in the midst of a daily struggles with technology to take a step back and review the progress that has been made when one is often so close too the action to appreciate it. The author gives a little overview to show the overall plan of the technology and where it is headed, and discusses some very interesting ideas, such a cyber-dollars. Money that would be good only for internet purchases, only if people will have enough faith in an internet monetary system. The book is a collection of previously published articles by the author. The book is easy to read, thought provoking when discussing the future, and his summaries of the recent past remind the reader of the progress being made in just a years of the information age. Well worth reading.

This book wasn't what I expected. As [the] editorial review explains, but the book description only hints at, this is a collection of previously published work. Since I read the latter, but not the former, I was expecting a retrospective analysis of the .com bubble. Because of the rapid rate of obsolescence of most things written about the Internet, I don't think I would have bought the book had I known that parts of it were written as long as a decade ago, but I'm glad I did anyway.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight at things written about the Internet over the course of the last decade proves to be an illuminating exercise. It definitely seems to be a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Some of the things that have changed a lot since the time the original articles were published are:
* Everyone knows what the Internet is (in his introduction, Gleick explains that in the early `90s, editors made him explain this when he used the term in articles). One of the really interesting things I learned reading the book is that the original development of the Web only dates back to 1989.
* In a 1993 article, he describes people being annoyed by mobile phones ringing in airports. Given the far less appropriate places they ring today, that seems positively quaint.
* In 1993, some people remembered who Dan Quayle was and cared enough to create a newsgroup devoted to making fun of him.

Some current issues that the book demonstrates have a much longer history are:
* Concerns about bandwidth and information privacy (or more accurately, lack thereof).
* Password overload (described in amusing detail in a 1995 column).
* The incomprehensibility of software and Web site user agreements - even to those who bother to read them.

As an added bonus, since it was written as technologies were emerging, the book provides the full name of things that are now only known by their acronyms. For instance, I've never known what ISDN stands for, but now I know that it's `Integrated Services Digital Network.'

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that some of Gleick's predictions were very prescient (e.g. the Y2K anti-climax), while others were less accurate or at least premature (e.g. cash becoming obsolete). All in all, the book provides a very enjoyable look through the rearview mirror.

It's usually a good sign when picking up a collection of essays to find that they have been previously published in some noted periodical such as The New Yorker or Harper's or in this case (with one exception) from The New York Times Magazine. Gleick's focus in these thirty highly polished essays is information and especially the Internet and how the Internet and related technology are changing our lives. There is a personal, and an "I lived it" quality to the writing that I found engaging.

Author of the challenging Chaos and the very long and adoring Genius about physicist Richard Feynman and the more recent Faster, here Gleick gives us short and easy to appreciate recollections of the communications revolution. His observations are trenchant, mildly apocalyptic and/or gee-whizzed, amusing and very well expressed. Having good editors is something Gleick says he has been blessed with, and in these pieces it shows. This attractive book is simply a pleasure to read.

The first piece is from 1992 about the bugs in software, in particular those in Microsoft's Word for Windows; and I want to tell you even though (or especially because) I use WordPerfect, I identified. I felt the aggravation. Gleick notes that software is unlike any other product in its complexity, an observation that no doubt pleases Microsoft's software engineers. However, he reports that Microsoft, unable to cope with the bugs munching on their code and unable or unwilling to excise them, came to an accommodation with the world by declaring that "It's not a bug--it's a feature," while compiling an in-company list of known bugs dubbed, "Won't Fix."

And then, I guess, had lunch.

My favorite essay in the collection is the one entitled "The End of Cash" beginning on page 143 in which Gleick notes among other things that issuers of digital cash cards expect to "profit generally from lost cards." He adds that "telephone companies and transit systems already figure gains ranging from 1 percent to a phenomenal 10 percent." (p. 152) This is an example of privatized "escheatment," an aptly named phenomenon in which governments have traditionally benefitted from lost coins and paper money, or people dying without heirs. Gleick reports that billions of pennies "simply vanish from the economy each year" which he cites as a "hidden cost of money." (pp. 157-158) But credit cards too have their hidden costs. They amount to a tax on those who do not use credit cards (basically the poor) because "the credit card companies have mostly succeeded in forbidding merchants to offer discounts for cash purchases." (So everybody buying the product shares the credit card transaction costs.)

Gleick also looks into the changes that a cashless society will bring, noting what kinds of crime will no longer be worth doing (e.g., kidnaping for ransom, armed robbery.) He reflects on the phenomenon of "float" in which digital money can be used by financial institutions to earn interest for themselves. Gleick observes that holders of the Yankee dollar at home and world wide (think of the large safe-deposit drawers of Arabian sheiks) are actually lending "their wealth to the United States, interest free, just as holders of American Express traveler's checks lend their money to American Express." (p. 153)

I also liked the essays on advertising ("Who Owns Your Attention") and on the growing lack of privacy ("Big Brother Is Us") and on the awesome power of Microsoft ("Making Microsoft Save for Capitalism"). There are lesser essays on political websites... web browsing ("Here Comes the Spider") and software contracts between vendor and user ("Click OK to Agree"), etc. Finally Gleick notes that we are "Inescapably Connected" and gives on page 299 a weird but telling example of how we are being transformed. We are not yet "neurons in the new world brain," he observes, yet we have gotten so much in the habit of knowing things, or at least being able to find them out that "You get a twitchy feeling that you ought to push a button and pop up the answer."

I've felt that, and soon a connecting chip may be inside my brain that really does do something like twitch as my synapses are activated by the World Wide Web.

I've read Gleick's Faster, and when I saw What Just Happened in the bookstore, I picked it up immediately. Gleick's candid analyses of technological triumphs is an enjoyable walk through the computer and Internet revolution of the 1990s; however, the book was lacking some of the critical interprative edge that one finds in Faster, and for that reason it fell a little short of my expectations. Although What Just Happened does offer an opportunity to step back and think about the implications of the IT revolution, I found myself reading it more for entertainment.

I received my copy of the new (2001) printing of NATURE'S CHAOS earlier today. While the Porter photographs are both unusual and beautiful, it's great pity that this edition is poorly printed. I've not seen the original edition for comparison. In this printing, color is poorly balanced for many photographs, often to the point that the original vision is obscured. Plus, some photos are very "soft" and lacking in detail, which is surely the fault of the printers as well. What a shame, and what a surprise coming from Little, Brown.

As a graduate student, there is little time or mental space for pursuits beyond the academe-especially one that does not operate in the verbal realm. At nights, on weekends, and in reveries induced by deoxygenated library atmospheres I am a photographer. An early inspiration for me was Eliot Porter. Very early on I became enthralled by the careful studies of trees and fields. I was drawn to the intense, microscopic details in his works, which could not be characterized as minute in any regard. I was amazed at how, by capturing a dizzying array of detail in his work, he could portray the raw, intricate, complex beauty of something I had stared upon, vacuously, every day. Later, when I first became interested in chaos theory, dynamic systems and complexity, I enjoyed a new appreciation of Porter's craft. I found that in the visual sense I was always looking to portray the orderly chaos, or the chaotic beauty of nature. Once, whilst in the office of a professor that I am writing book with (about cognition-emotion interaction as a self-organizing system) I came across the book "Nature's Chaos" by Porter. I immediately recognized the photography and picked the book up from the shelf. To my amazement, Gleick, whose book "Chaos" started a revolution of sorts in the biological science community, was a co-author. I was enraptured. I borrowed it. I tried to buy it from my colleague. I wandered through used book stores on my way to the campus. I made inquiries at the publisher.

Nihil.

So I ordered it through Amazon.com. It arrived, ahead of schedule. I justified the price to myself because I had won a small award for a photograph that was inspired by Porter.

The book is astounding. The text is lyrical and erudite, it flows and meshes with the startling images. I can't say much more-but if you are a photographer, or chaos buff, or god-help you both, then this is a requisite volume. Don't hesitate. Ta panta re!

Jason Ramsay

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to listen...does it make a sound? Is there any sense, order or meaning to the universe beyond our human projections?

These photographs of Eliot Porter--selected to provide an illustration and counterpoint to James Gleick's eloquent text--are among the most rapturously beautiful ever produced. They are the visual equivalent of poet Wallace Stevens' attempt to grasp that which lies beyond the limits of sentience. Looking through the original hardcover edition is both an act of meditation and of homage--to the greatness of creation, in all its mystery, as well as to the human need to think, feel, and reach for meaning. As I journey through these images, I ask myself, do we look out upon the universe from afar--or do we do so from within, as integral parts of the greater mystery? Let go...allow Gleick's text to pose the question--and Porter's photographs to frame the answer.

A popular science type of book (the popular part you can see from the numbers), where Gleick takes a look at the science of Chaos theory.

Not in a rigorous mathematical way, but more in a history of and introduction and overview of the subject, with of course examples of what he is talking about throughout.


3.5 out of 5

Okay, so it was a bestseller. That doesn't mean you didn't miss it. It doesn't mean you shouldn't read it again. Order in chaos and vice versa, the butterfly that creates a typhoon, fractal geometry, wildlife populations and dripping faucets (about which, more in a future Soupletter) - a book about ideas formerly on the scientific fringe that are now considered on a par with Relativity Theory (which, you will remember, made a considerable bang). ContempIating this review, I picked up CHAOS at the library (three or four years had elapsed since my first read) and was sucked in afresh. Meet a scientist who experimented with 26 hour days, another who found an operational definition of free will. Fascinatin' Rythms, Smooth Noodle Maps, Ice Ages and heartbeats. This is physics where the rubber meets the road. You don't need to follow the math (I don't, I just roll on by ...) to appreciate the ride. "Beautifully lucid," according to the San Francisco Chronicle which one notes, is published beside a once lucidly beautiful bay.

James Gleick changed my view on the scientific world forever in his book Chaos. I feel that I've removed my old, Euclidean perception of the world and have replaced it with a more complex, organic, and dynamic view. This book is a great introduction to chaos and is not meant to describe the applications of this theory. The applied sciences of chaos, complexity, or systems theories are readily available in journals and other pubs, just do a little research.

No, this book won't change your life or anything, but if you're an enthusiastic reader of lay science books, like me, it's a must read. Gleick's style can get dense and repetitive at times, but the concepts that he is conveying are slippery, at best. It's hard to get an intellectual bead on them. So the repetition is appropriate.

And if you've ever wondered how in the universe order could evolve out of chaos, this book gives us a peak at the best clues there are to what lies behind the kimono.

This is another excellent book from Gleick, surely one of the best writers alive right now.

Biography and popular science description of Feynman's work tells the personal story of one of modern physics most unique minds. Feynman won a Nobel Prize in the field of quantum physics in 1965, and was a leading thinker in the Los Alamos project. Gleick does a decent job of making the physics understandable at a popular level.

Never a manager or administrator of the "big science' that 20th century physics created in the war and post-war periods, Feynman stuck to his theoretical roots.

He was a bundle of contradictions:

He seldom read in the literature, reading only enough of books and papers to understand the problem, then resolving it in his own way, often quicker and better than others.

He was a devoted husband to his tubercular first wife, then a womanizing scoundrel afterwards.

He was a professor who disliked teaching, a theorist who thought in concrete analogies, a middle-class Jewish boy from Long Island who was only admitted to anti-semitic Ivy League institutions (with their shameful quotas in the pre-war period) because of the brilliance of his mind at that early stage, who became the highest-paid professor at CalTech during the post-war years.

He was even called by many who knew him and worked with him by the label "Genius". Gleick spends some time talking about what constitutes genius and how to identify it. I believe Feynman defines his genius in this statement: "A theorist who can juggle different theories in his mind has a creative advantage, Feynman argued, when it comes time to change the theories." (p. 368) Feynman's genius consisted of his ability to envision complex physical analogies, and quickly compute complicated formulas from the many in his memory.

An inveterate story teller and shaper of his own legacy, he memorized and crafted stories and anecdotes to mold his image. As Gleick recounts one story about the difference between colleague Murray Gell-Mann and Feynman: "Murray makes sure you know what an extraordinary person he is, they would say, while Dick is not a person at all but a more advanced life form pretending to be human to spare your feelings." That's genius.

This makes a good companion to Richard Rhodes "Making of the Atomic Bomb" which covers the Los Alamos period from a broader perspective.

Richard Feynman was one of those individuals that appear on the scene and like the stars, burn bright for a short time before flickering out. In Feynman's case it is the story of a one-of-a-kind, an iconoclast who broke all the rules and relished in his bad boy reputation. He was a rampant womanizer, someone who liked to have fun but mroe than anything he was a man possessed by a brain and work ethic that causes one to gasp.

Reading the book, one discovers that it was not just his thought experiments or math skills or polymath catholicism of knowledge that impressed. All of these (or even one of these) would have have been exceptional but it was the ferocious speed of thought and the range of ideas that spewed forth. Indeed, even he admits he was not always right but like a bubbling cauldron, the conjectures and propositions kept rising to the top.

The writing hit just the right balance between necessary detail and a layman's attempt to grasp his latest scheme. This is not an easy read for someone not aware of scientific advances or cognizant of recent theories in quantum mechanics. Yet - and this is what I find so distinctive - he managed to break down the most frightenting complexity to smaller problems that could be solved. Despite his abhorance of philosophy, art, music - the liberal arts that have dominated over hard science - his finding had deep philosophical conotations - cause and effect, time, predictability, chaos and order. He hated pretense (the "new" math), rote memorization, a single methodology and any kind of fuzzy thinking. His brilliant mind raced ahead of his speech as he thought of newer and better ways to arrive at solutions.

Like Einstien, he engaged in thought experiments. Einstein rode a beam of light; Feynman inhabited an electron or haydron or photon or meson or any of the innumercable sub-level particles. Like Einstein his work ethic was legendary and he was held in awe by those who knew him best. Unlike Einstein, his formulas were too esoteric for appreciation by the general public, no easy e=mc2. But thankfully he differed from Eingstein in another respect - Feynman remained scientifically creative until the end. He reveled in his allure - to women and men - yet he found peace in domesticity at last. In some ways it is almost impossible to approach such genius - all we can do is follow the path of all probabilities (lol).

I had encountered Richard Feynman's name many times in popular science books covering quantam mechanics and particle physics. So I was intrigued when I saw his biography. If you're interested in the history of quantum mechanics, The Bomb, and the personalities driving modern physics from the 1930's through the 1960's, you will love this book. Gleick is a competent writer, but he gets a bit tedious when he strays from the primary subject of his book (Feynman) into self-indulgent philosophical detours like pondering society's definition of "genius". Also, if you are interested in quirky anectdotes about Feynman's life, you are better off buying Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) or Don't You Have Time to Think, on which Gleick seems to rely heavily.

Richard Feynman, the eccnetric Nobel willing physicicsts, has written two annecdote-driven autobiographies, "Surely You're Joking" and "What do you care what other people think?" Gleik's book, Genius, picks up where they left off, filling in the holes about Feynman's extended background, contributions to physics, and importance above and beyond the curious stories.

This is great for anyone interested in the man behind the science, though clearly not intended as a deep science text. Doesn't replace the autobiographical books, but certainly complements them.

If you love Dr.Feynman and physics, you will love this book too. Impeccably written it charts out four phases in his life,from birth, early education, Los Alamos and the final struggle with cancer which apparently had its origins in the Manhattan project owing to prolonged exposure to radiation. Woven into the body of the text is the same light heartedness and banter that so characterized his life and work but brings home the rampant brilliance of this man in all its profundity. His uncanny sense of bringing the truth, far removed from the official verbose so much in evidence when he was a member of the commission that probed the Challenger disaster, is the recurring theme throughout the book. Gleick illustrates that beyond the free sprit that seems to stick out, an intensely personal side shows up as his tribulations when wife Arlene battled tuberculosis and he frantically worked at Los Alamos .The last few sections are poignant, when a cancer struck Dr.Feynman realizes that his hopes of visiting an exotic but secluded Soviet territory Tuva was fast vanishing, caught in the foliage of government bureaucracy, he so detested; the visa did arrive but by then it was a little too late. Even in the final moment his spirit shines through; his last words being, "I would hate to die twice, it's so boring", as the end came at 10:34 pm, 15th of Feb, 1988 at the UCLA medical college. James Gleick has composed a wonderful book of one of the most inscrutable characters of the world of physics. Surely worth reading!!

The best essays were actually on the history of science. There were memoirs of very little scientific interest, some pop-observations of the field of science, some decent philosophy, some medical adventure stories. Not bad, but certainly not a general survey of good science writing spread over all the sciences, so not what I was hoping for at all. I would have to browse the 2001 edition before buying; certainly not an automatic purchase based on this edition.

Although I enjoyed most of the articles, this was not exactly what I was expecting. It appears as though many of the articles came out of popular non-scientific publications (many from the N.Y. Times) and were written for a mainstream audience. Too many of them were articles of the "I'm a scientist and here's my story . . ." genre. One story was about an author's "nervous breakdown" and his decision to pursue a career in music rather than chemistry. A few were about the practice of medicine or medical research. They were interesting articles but didn't contain as much scientific information as I expected - I didn't really learn that much. I don't want to sound overly negative. I did enjoy many of the selections. However, calling this "The Best" science writing of the year is a real stretch.

In general, the BEST collections are the best of the best. First, the essays or books have been chosen for publication and then a few are picked for the collection. These are well written and interesting, covering several areas of science. I especially liked Stephen S. Hall's "Journey to the Center of My Mind" where he describes his experience of an M.R.I. of his brain while being assigned specific mental tasks. Fascinating stuff. And I loved "Lord of the Flies," excerpted from Jonathan Weiner's terrific book, TIME, LOVE, MEMORY, on Seymour Benzer's mapping the genes of the fruit fly.

Each essay in this collection takes you into the world of a specific science and the scientists who are patient enough to stay with their explorations and articulate enough to describe them to others. Some of my favorite authors are in this collection: Stephen J. Gould, Susan McCarthy, and Oliver Sachs. A treat for the mind.

~~Joan Mazza, author of DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE; DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF; WHO'S CRAZY ANYWAY? and 3 books in The Guided Journal Series with Writer's Digest Books.

I liked many of the pieces in this collection and detested just a few. But overall I was very disappointed since I expected essays about SCIENCE, not essays about science history, about preferring music to science, about doctors making mistakes. I'm not saying those types of essays are not interesting reading, but I am saying they're definitely not about real science. Very few of the essays would actually enhance a university science course, for instance.

Furthermore, there would seem to be a weird bias present in the selection of the essays. A lot of them are from the New Yorker or the New York Times, hardly the places to go for good science (even though I do acknowledge that when it comes to newspapers the New York Times does better than most...which are terrible in general). There are some from the Sciences, Nature, but not many from places where real science essays are published. I suspect the net was not cast far in a search. How about Science News, Discover, Analog, Scientific American? I am also sure there were more overlooked great science essays in books that were not read (a few such are included and tend to be among the best in the collection). There is even a farcical "essay" from The Onion here!

Gleick explains/justifies this in his introduction claiming to take a "big tent" approach. After reading the volume I think he failed. The tent wasn't big enough to retain enough science to validate the title.

The essays I like in particular included Lord of the Flies by Jonathan Weiner, Antarctic Dreams by Francis Halzen, Interstellar Spaceflight by Timothy Ferris, Einstein's Clocks by Peter Galison, and A Desinger Universe by Steven Weinberg.

Two stood out in my mind as particular poor examples of science writing mainly because they embrace "anti-science" in order to be "witty." Natalie Angier's New York Times article "Furs for Evening, but Cloth Was the Stone Age Standby" examines the recent realization that 20-30k year old fertility figures are shown wearing complex textiles. She may just be reporting the shoddy methodology of some current archeological practices, but she proudly announces that the old assumption that men created these statuettes is wrong based on the detailed textile carving that requires detailed knowledge of such and the cross-cultural studies of the present population of earth that indicates women create cloth, not men. I think the announcement is quite premature and just as big of an assumption. It feels like one of those essays that projects present-day sensibilities on past times, a form of political correctness that has no place in science.

Worse is "Must Dog Eat Dog" by Susan McCarthy from salon.com. McCarthy attacks sociobiological thought but displays an astounding level of ignorance about the details of the theories involved. She attacks a straw man of her own invention in which men must be homeless, starving, lecherous slobs in order to validate sociobiology. She simply cannot have read some of the thinkers she attacks and have written the piece she did. She argues from a political motivation, not from a scientific one, and I was quite shocked to see this essay included. "Witty" it may be, but science it ain't!

This is an interesting collection, but be aware of what is actually included here. Good science is going on in the world today, and people are writing about it, just usually not in the New Yorker.

There were well written articles by generalists, and good pices by the people who do the research they write about. It's also hard not to enjoy Douglas Hofstadter, even if this was a somewhat weak piece of his.

Mixed in are pieces like Susan McCarthy (from Salon) that use poor argumentative style (numerous ad hominem attacks, the use of Capital Letter sarcasm), poorly researched and develop no thesis of her own. Just scattershot bon mots and drive-by name dropping.

some good with the bad. worth an afternoon, the articles are light on actual content. pop-science.

easily read in layman's terms to understand the basic principles of chaos mathematics.

There's only one bad thing about James Gleick's Faster.. reading it you are constantly aware that you really do live at a much faster rate than you used too.

As always, a detailed look at life from a different perspective. Enjoyed learning about the effects and reasons we feel that things are speeding up.

The master of important trivia, John A. McPhee "Oranges" ISBN: 0374226881, is about to be surpassed by James Gleick, "The Acceleration Guy." The history of chronometry will never be the same. His insights on elevators are uplifting. He discuses the type-A personality and its misconceptions. I will not go through every subject as you do not have TIME to read this review, but I was surprised to find out what "God's speed" meant.

Having read Chaos, I was surprisingly disappointed with Faster. Gleick seemed to want to write about so many things, but never really had much more than a few short factoids about each. I was rather disappointed to find whole chapters of a topic comprising less than FOUR pages of text. Yes, this book is a fast read. So, for the person who seeks notches on his bookshelf, this is certainly a book for you! Of course Gleick discusses some very intriguing items concerning time, but unfortunately his execution falls a bit short of his other work.

Jam-packed with information and covering subjects that range from Richard Feynman's observations of theoretical physics to the rise of MTV, this book reads, well, fastly. I got a kick out of it and learned a lot. It has a very large number of chapters which are not always that closely tied together, but maybe an obvious point is that that is the intent of the author, to make the book read like modern Western society, with information flying at you from all directions. If so, that may make the book a little harder to get in to and less conventional in style, but it also makes it more original, and in a sense, more logical because it is consistent with its own theme. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.

This book has a lot of insights about various ways in which the ' pace of life and learning' have since the Scientific Revolution accelerated. In other words it is a book which gives one much to think about.
The problem is that it also suggests that given the vast increase of information available to us, the vast increase in 'possible alternatives' for our attention, that we will probably have our minds moved away from the insights so rapidly as to not even absorb them.
The obvious reply to such an intense barrage upon our consciousness, is to withdraw. And when we withdraw and close out all that is accelerating around us, we begin to try and make a pace and story of our own within ourselves.
The faster we are forced to go, the slower we may need to go.
I think a companion volume , or perhaps a contradictory volume should be written on all those human activities which might be aided by our ' going slower in them'. And along with this volume should be advice and recommendation of how to keep out of our life these seemingly endless intrusions which disrupt our living by our own rhythm.
"Run slowly, slowly horses of the night".

I obviously did not conducting enough research before buying this book. I am seventeen and this was an easy read, but I was hoping for and expecting a philosophical examination of our speedy lives. Instead I was bombarded by semi-interesting, useless facts about how our world has been struck by "hurry-sickness" and how everything has been accelerated (a fairly obvious fact).

If you are consious enough of our world to buy this book (because of its title) for yourself, it will not raise you conciousness with any deep philosophical questions or with any solutions. The only people who will benefit from this book are the ones who will never buy it for themselves. Therefore I believe this book is basically useless and slightly boring.

Gleick would like us to feel that everything, EVERYTHING is going faster. Ultimately, whetever you are doing now, it will happen faster tomorrow.

Sure, life is getting faster, but that's not the ultimate goal. People want to do MORE, they do not want to simply go faster.

To ignore the need for more is to miss the entire point of why we want to do some things faster: so that we have the leisure to do other things more slowly! I would like to finish my work faster so I have more time to cook a gourmet meal. I like to commute via bicycle so I can combine my workout and commute, but I certainly don't rush!

This book has a lot of anecdotal data, which is all very interesting, but doesn't amount to much. Some of the individual chapters give very detailed analysis of specific people or technologies, but Gleick never pulls it all together.

In short, interesting data, but not enough to support his position. And certainly not nearly enough to appease a skeptic.