NON-ZERO (Robert Wright)

I almost goofed up the book in one session, mind you it’s 400 pages of mind boggling stuff.. but towards the last 100 pages the book started losing its focus. It impressively covered the rise of human society from a primitive species to the modern society, but in the end it goes back to even more historical views, the formation of life & genes and all that. I hardly believe the arrangement seems right. I have still not been able to complete the rest of it. I’m no fan of neat ordering and arrangement, as long as its logical I can digest it. But this book seems to go into details that could have been saved to the reader. Plus, it goes into narratives of other books and authors, and completely loses itself in them. I would have liked it to just continue the commentary. We all know that authors draw from various sources, but to write a commentary on the sources themselves, and set up into a detailed argument into why a particular source was chosen over the other; frankly that should be pushed to the appendices and not into the main book, especially not into the closing chapters. I am keeping myself from throwing it away for good. Next I plan to read Jared Diamond’s Germs, War and Steel and for that I think this book serves a good read. Hence, I’m bent on continuing it.