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4th out of 76 books
—
65 voters
The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself (Knowledge Trilogy)
An original history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him.
Paperback, 745 pages
Published
February 12th 1985
by Vintage
(first published 1983)
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Three-and-a-half stars for the book itself, which presents the history of human thought in chapters that detail the world's greatest discoveries, scientists and thinkers from astronomy to geography to psychology to religion and dozens of other points in between.
I round my review up to four for the fact that my copy is dog-eared and falling apart because it was my late father's favourite book. He was an armchair traveller and pursuer of knowledge who was curtailed only by his life's circumstance...more
I round my review up to four for the fact that my copy is dog-eared and falling apart because it was my late father's favourite book. He was an armchair traveller and pursuer of knowledge who was curtailed only by his life's circumstance...more
If you were going on a yearlong cruise and could take only one book, this might be my recommendation. I cannot image where else you could find, in a single volume, such a wealth of history organized so lucidly and written so engagingly. The title might suggest that it is the story of Columbus, Magellan, etc., and in part it is, but it is far more. It describes the step-by-step advances in human knowledge in many areas, as societies began to measure time, became determined to explore and map the...more
One of my all-time favorite books. I bought it as an ‘airport’ book for a long flight in about 1985 and could not put it down. My old paper back , dog eared and extensively annotated finally fell apart earlier this year so I bought a second hand hard cover and went on annotating. I have read it three times from cover to cover and several more times in bits and pieces.
Boorstin documents in wonderful conversational and personal prose the historical process of discovery of the heavens , earth and...more
Boorstin documents in wonderful conversational and personal prose the historical process of discovery of the heavens , earth and...more
Sep 16, 2007
Eric
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
people who want perspective.
Shelves:
history
I had no idea this Boorstin guy was well known when I stole the beat up old book from my family's bookshelf for my own perusal. I was pleasantly surprised the entire time, amazed that what I thought was a run of the mill shelf filler would be so consistently interesting an engaging. It's a neat book, one worth reading - it's been a while now and I don't remember most of what is in there, but I can tell you that I'll never think of clocks the same way again.
The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin, published in 1985, is a solid, thoroughly researched and well documented series of 82 essays on the history of human discovery. Some of these discoveries are physical, such as the New World or the trade route around Africa. Some of the discoveries are scientific such as the Calculus, the atom, or Evolution. For me, the book has two aspects that set it well above similar works on scientific history. That is, an exploration of how we discovered things that one m...more
I feel conflicted from having read a book in which quality deserves five stars, but enjoyment deserves 3. I understand its merit; the book is very well written and even better researched. But I grew bored of the relentless onslaught of new facts, new characters, and new situations with only a historical thread tying them all together (Boorstin opts for "a" instead of "an" when prefacing "historical" which I found odd but preserve here). Boorstin demands a rudimentary historical knowledge which,...more
As the former Librarian of the U.S. Library of Congress, Boorstin is one of those people who I would love to meet and sponge up the content of his brain by osmosis. A good start is this book, the first in a series of three. The Discoverers walks through the history of human discovery, including the many fortuitous coincidences that often preceded them. In the thirst to soak up other cultures and traditions, we sometimes forget to learn about their initial discovery and the incremental impact of...more
This is the book that turned me on to nonfiction. My original copy is missing the front cover because I've read it so many times that it has fallen off. I cried when Daniel Boorstin died, and if that isn't enough of a recommendation, I don't know what is.
That said, if you'd like to know more about the book: it's a story composed of the stories of those who have discovered everything from ideas to places. The first section in particular is a description of the discovery of the modern idea of tim...more
That said, if you'd like to know more about the book: it's a story composed of the stories of those who have discovered everything from ideas to places. The first section in particular is a description of the discovery of the modern idea of tim...more
I feel this book on discoverers even surpasses 'The Creators' by the same author. It was strange to see that many of the things I had been taught as inventions in school were infact discoveries only. Galileo's telescope invention for example. The author credits him with the discovery of 4 moons of Jupiter and the fact that he discovered that Milkyway Galaxy is only a conglomerate of stars! Revealing.
I liked the Portuguese efforts charting the seas on the West African coast and the final landing...more
I liked the Portuguese efforts charting the seas on the West African coast and the final landing...more
Jan 29, 2009
Pablo
added it
I enjoyed hearing about human ingenuity over the ages.
I particularly liked hearing about the mapping of the seas.
Points on a map, incrementally added over time, arrived at by
exceptional adventure/vision/luck/greed. Another interesting
theme was the transformation of old ideas to new; the
tenacity of tradition. The often mundane and sometimes
brutality of dogma. How a person forges a new path with
insight and research and encourages those two great tasks; yet,
his followers deify the thinker, create...more
I particularly liked hearing about the mapping of the seas.
Points on a map, incrementally added over time, arrived at by
exceptional adventure/vision/luck/greed. Another interesting
theme was the transformation of old ideas to new; the
tenacity of tradition. The often mundane and sometimes
brutality of dogma. How a person forges a new path with
insight and research and encourages those two great tasks; yet,
his followers deify the thinker, create...more
Great book with lots to think about. One of those books that make the list for silly thought experiments like, "If you were stranded on a desert island, which five books would you want with you?" This one!! I read it a long time ago; it was a gift from my in-laws' library shelves. I love to come back to this book, flip it open and read random bits when my brain needs a Big Question to think about. My favorite section is about the evolution of how man tells time and how society changed with each...more
It took me about six weeks to read this book because I wanted to take my time with it.
The Discoverers is a history of our attempt to understand the world and our place in it. This story of science and exploration is divided into these four books:
1. Time - how attempts to measure hours and years led to examination of the sky and development of increasingly complex machines
2. The Earth And The Seas - exploration of the globe over land and sea; the discovery of New World
3. Nature - Copernican sy...more
The Discoverers is a history of our attempt to understand the world and our place in it. This story of science and exploration is divided into these four books:
1. Time - how attempts to measure hours and years led to examination of the sky and development of increasingly complex machines
2. The Earth And The Seas - exploration of the globe over land and sea; the discovery of New World
3. Nature - Copernican sy...more
The Discoverers is a genial, readable, welcome overview of some of the major scientific discoveries in human history, linked together by theme, and a good candidate for "best book that should have been one of my textbooks in high school but inexplicably wasn't". Boorstin is apparently a generally strong historian, having written several other acclaimed works like the 1974 History Pulitzer winner The Americans, and if that one was anything like this it should be a great read. The Discoverers take...more
This is definitely a book to review while one is reading it. Boorstin has a sense of history as an unfolding story. The book is divided into many small sections, each having its own arc of significance with a beginning, middle and end. I read it almost every morning over breakfast. Never has a history text been so fascinating to me.
July 30, 2010: Finished! After a few pages every morning for about a year. This was indeed an adventure in reading. The final discoverers discussed by Boorstin, Farad...more
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Good LORD it took me a long time to finish this book. Not because of the writing - Boorstin's good at relating history though clear, lively anecdotes. And it's long, but the delay was mostly because of the *size* - I have the 'deluxe illustrated edition' which is two hardback volumes filled with beautiful illustrations. I recommend this edition for the fantastic visual context it gives for the huge sweeps of history Boorstin surveys. I do not recommend this edition for its size & bulk, which...more
This book probably deserves 4 stars. But at over 700 pages, it is a tough slog through history. Very well written and complete as far as a complete history of the discovery of almost everything up to the atom bomb, it is full of names, dates and facts that, while interesting and even fascinating, can bog down after about 500 pages. I have to admit I skipped through some of the last 100 pages as my brain just could not hold any more. I would certainly recommend it to anyone with an interest in hi...more
I have read this twice and I really loved it. This book was the one that sparked my interest in reading more nonfiction, which I tend to do still to this day! Amazingly told tales of how the first working clock was invented, how Columbus was really lost, and many other interesting discoveries that we think we know about but that Boorstin shines a light on revealing how much we do not know. The sequel book, The Creators, I believe it's called, is just as good.
A friend of mine told me he would only join Goodreads if I read a bunch of this book. So I did. I'm always up for a good challenge. But phew! That was some slow reading! The chapters I chose to read were: 1, 6, 10, 11, 13, 27, 65, 66, 70, and 78.
I'm personally not opposed to reading non-fiction. In fact I find that I often enjoy it. And while I found the concept of this book to be interesting I found its presentation to be a bit dry. What could've been said in 2-3 pages was drawn out over 9-10 p...more
I'm personally not opposed to reading non-fiction. In fact I find that I often enjoy it. And while I found the concept of this book to be interesting I found its presentation to be a bit dry. What could've been said in 2-3 pages was drawn out over 9-10 p...more
While Boorstin identifies the aspects of human culture and interaction that define us over time - our self-created myths - with extraordinary insight and impressive documentation (hey, with the Library of Congress at your feet, research is the easy part) he really misses the point on this one.
In the opening paragraphs of the very first chapter, Boorstin celebrates the destruction of the moon as time-teller, essentially invalidating the entire process of human thought and universe understanding u...more
In the opening paragraphs of the very first chapter, Boorstin celebrates the destruction of the moon as time-teller, essentially invalidating the entire process of human thought and universe understanding u...more
"A history of man's search to know his world and himself." This book surveys the "pathbreakers" who propelled human knowledge in such areas as medicine, biology, astronomy, anthropology, and most other intellectual disciplines. Boorstin makes a distinction between those who make initial discoveries and those who consolidate and bring forth the full knowledge. He is perhaps overly enamored of Western Europe.
I re-read this after a hiatus of many years. This is Boorstin's exploration of "discoverers" - those who have pushed back the boundaries of the world in time or space (those who formulated the calendar, or mapped the world, discovered new trade routes, discovered the principles of mathematics or physics or biology, etc). A truly encylcopedic view of the history of discovery - well worth reading.
Facinating view of the key people whose discoveries made a significant change in the history and culture of the world. My only complaint is that it doesn't have the footnotes most works of history have, but it is well written and deserves to be read by those who appreciate the heroics of those who dare to explore beyond the conventional borders of the culture in which they live.
This is extremely entertaining for a dry historio-sociological nonfiction type book. Each chapter is quick enough for a read in the bath or before bed. While I do wish that Boorstin would include cultural trends other than just the Western tradition (how does Chinese astrology compare?), he still draws some neat conclusions that are worth consideration.
Very neat mind food.
Very neat mind food.
Packed full of exciting tidbits, Boorstin surly had the appetite for knowledge like a room full of curious children... the way the book is so dense with info reminds me of the one reason I value Carl Sagans writting. For me, this will be a forever reference book and will also serve to stimulate my thinking if I'm feeling bored and want to get into a state of curious newness.
HHHHHHaaaaaaaaaaaaardddd to read, you have to really be into the chronology of history and extreme details. All very interesting but be in the mood for lessons and remembering critical features the author describes.
I read this a really long time ago, not sure if i would try to dive into it again, but always did want to read his other novel, the creators.
I read this a really long time ago, not sure if i would try to dive into it again, but always did want to read his other novel, the creators.
A second book by Boorstin to feed my interest in the history of ideas. His expressed idea of "the great interuption" as being apt for parts of the Middle Ages and especially how theology shaped maps for centuries was an image of the triumph of sacred belief over what proved to be the physical reality of the world evoked many reflective thoughts for me.
Apr 27, 2013
Hollis Ramsey
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
everyone, age 8 and up
Recommended to Hollis by:
nobody -- i was lucky enough to find it
The Discoverers is a book that can be read and reread innumerable times, always with pleasure. The late Daniel Boorstin (former librarian of Congress) spends a decent amount of time on each segment, resulting in a large tome that might intimidate but shouldn't. Treat it like an encyclopedia with a story, and you can't go wrong.
I really wanted to like this book since I find the subjects it covers to be fascinating. But the dry writing style and the avalanche of terms, dates, names on every page was making my head spin. I wish he'd picked a few examples and stuck with them instead of dumping an entire encyclopedia's worth of material onto our heads.
I was looking for a book to answer "when did people figure out stuff, how did they figure it out, how did that knowledge trickle down, and when and how?" This is that book. It's shockingly readable and engaging while also being as dry and academic as a legitimate "history of knowledge and stuff" needs to be.
A very detailed and in-depth non-fiction work which uncovers many historical facts not found in typical textbooks or other works. Someone very interested in history or simply curious about things like how did we get 12 months in a year or seven days in a week or 60 minutes in an hour will enjoy this book.
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Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.
Boorstin's parents were second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants.
Boorstin was born in 1914 in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father was a lawyer who participated in the defense of Leo Frank, a...more
More about Daniel J. Boorstin...
Boorstin's parents were second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants.
Boorstin was born in 1914 in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father was a lawyer who participated in the defense of Leo Frank, a...more
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