About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks

by David Rooney

For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611, Enlightenment observatories in India, and the high-precision clocks circling the Earth on a fleet of GPS satellites that have been launched since 1978. Clocks have helped us navigate the world and build empires, and have even taken us to the brink of destruction. Elites have used them to wield power, make money, govern citizens, and control lives—and sometimes the people have used them to fight back.

Through the stories of twelve clocks, About Time brings pivotal moments from the past vividly to life. Historian and lifelong clock enthusiast David Rooney takes us from the unveiling of al-Jazari’s castle clock in 1206, in present-day Turkey; to the Cape of Good Hope observatory at the southern tip of Africa, where nineteenth-century British government astronomers moved the gears of empire with a time ball and a gun; to the burial of a plutonium clock now sealed beneath a public park in Osaka, where it will keep time for 5,000 years.

Rooney shows, through these artifacts, how time has been imagined, politicized, and weaponized over the centuries—and how it might bring peace. Ultimately, he writes, the technical history of horology is only the start of the story. A history of clocks is a history of civilization.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Technology, Politics, World History, Microhistory

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 10, 2021

About the author

David Rooney is a historian and curator specializing in transport, technology, and engineering, and the author of About Time and The Big Hop. For almost twenty years he worked at the London Science Museum, which houses the 1919 airplane first flown across the Atlantic. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review So I was reading that this giant clock in Jeddah, the Makkah clock tower. The arrogance of the Saudi officials astounded me,

The Makkah clock, fully completed in 2012, looks remarkably like London’s Big Ben, albeit much bigger—each dial on the Makkah clock is 141 feet in diameter, compared with Big Ben’s 23 feet—and designed in an Islamic architectural style. I also know that, when the clock was completed, Makkah officials lobbied to get the world’s prime meridian, currently running through Greenwich, changed to the meridian of Mecca. “Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time, this is the goal,”

So the whole world would have to adjust their clocks by 3 hours in the Saudi's pursuit of a Caliphate covering the entire world and them running it! Without oil, this wouldn't even be a main market for Rolex.

I was Googling Jeddah and time to see what I could find and discovered a site saying that Jeddah never slept and it was the most fun at night. I'm not sure who it is fun for or what their idea of fun is. No clubs, no bars, no alcohol, no weed, no dancing, no music, no going there with your boyfriend if you are a girl, no going to Saudi Arabia with your boyfriend if you aren't a girl, no going out at night by yourself if you are a girl. And in the daytime 'it is advisable to be with another woman or male relative. Saudi women do not generally go out by themselves,". No dates, no eating out in cheap restaurants if you are a girl - only takeaway is allowed. And definitely no sex at all if you aren't married.

Another site said that should you think you are pregnant and you are not married, you can only confirm it by a home test, but because pregnancy in single women is illegal, it is best to leave the country. So what do they mean by 'fun' at night in Jeddah?

I did learn a few interesting things from the book. I had always thought the Bohemian Reformation was akin to a modernising of the Church but I didn't know how it started. It was pretty horrifying and considering the Catholic church in Germany and Italy in WWII nothing changed for the Pope and his minions.

What became known as the Bohemian Reformation had begun in the mid-fourteenth century as a backlash against the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. In Easter 1389, the Prague clergy incited a pogrom against the Jewish community living in the city; 3,000 Jews were killed, and their homes were ransacked and burned to the ground.

So not everyone is really happy with this, not the murder of the Jews necessarily, after all it was ordinary people that did it, neighbours and the like, as in Germany but against the authority of the Pope at any rate. Jan Hus was one of these objectors, and very bravely preached against the corruption and excess of the Catholic clergy for 17 years until they burned him at the stake for 'heresy'. This incited 25 years of armed conflict between the Hussites and the Catholic Church controlled army, and hence the Bohemian Reformation.

I enjoyed reading about sun dials, early clocks - water clocks - in Egypt and Rome, but a great deal of the book was about how clocks were the tools of imperialists and those who wished to control people for their own ends. No longer could one sleep when the candles went out and wake with the sun, eat when hungry and work when it was light. Once there was a clock it had to be done to the hours. The churches loved clocks predictibly enough, as did those who wished to impose their lifestyle on others, the British in India. Markets run on clocks, and without clocks there would be no way of getting trains or buses as who would know what time it was at the next station?

But although we run our lives on clocks, the actual time is becoming less important in our daily lives, I think. If we live in a city, we can shop 24 hours a day, if we work from home we may not have set hours to complete our work, if we are attending college online, prerecorded lectures can be played at any hour of the day or night. I think we will end up a 24 hour world, at least the first world, except for the majority of farmers who produce our food. They will still have to abide by the clock and the seasons.

I can't say I enjoyed the book. I skimmed over vast, tedious swathes of it about the financial markets and over-detailed descriptions of the how and why of building more and more accurate clocks until it got laughable, like a clock accurate to within one second of a time longer than the universe has been presumed to be in existence.

So some of it is 4 star, but a lot of it 2 star as it was boring. A waste of my time, you might say.
__________

Reading Notes I have no idea when clocks started. I don't even know why we have 24 hours of 60 minutes, why not 8 hours of 180 minutes or 48 hours of 30 minutes each? When was the first watch invented? I think watches have had their day except as jewellery and status symbols especially for men as there isn't much jewellery that is acceptable for them. Gold chains on a hairy chest, with matching identity bracelets and half a dozen giant rings is not a good look!

But which of us wears a watch anymore? We look at our phones. They are more useful to having alarms. I know there are Apple watches which are little round phones, and Fitbit which isn't a watch but looks like one. But I don't see hardly anyone wearing a time piece on their wrists anymore.

[Blaine DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most unique books I have ever read. It is a book all about the history of clocks, or as it is known in the business “Horology.” The author is a clock historian, has worked at the Greenwich Observatory and has been the president of the worldwide horological society. I can think of nobody else better qualified to write such a book. Now this is not a book that everyone is going to want to read, and even if you read it it's not exactly the book you're going to read at breakneck speed. There is a lot of great history in there, as he examines 12 different clocks and how those clocks represent different ways in which the clock and time have been used to organize society. I never realized how many wonderful clock stories there are, nor did I realize how many different types of clocks were out there and what were the reasons behind the uses of these clocks.

He begins by the downing of Korean Air flight 007 and explains how that attack would have been preventable had there been GPS navigational systems in place. From there he takes us all the way back to Roman times with the Sundial which was used to create order in society. A lot of people weren't happy with the sundial because they didn't want to be told what time to eat or to do something. The clock was telling society it was time to do certain activities at certain times. Later chapters take a look at how clocks, and all different types of clocks, were used to instill faith, virtue as well as order in the marketplace. We see clocks used for manufacturing purposes, or misused in some cases, as well as for morality and resistance. It truly is a fascinating and wonderful book, for me. This might not appeal to everyone out there but if you like nonfiction reading this is a real winner.

Now you may wonder if I extol the virtues of this book so much why I only gave it a four star rating. The reason being that this is a book of 12 chapters and I found the last 1 1/2 chapters to be more philosophical about clocks and society as viewed by the author. There's nothing wrong with that, but to me if you only have 12 chapters and a little more than one chapter is not that great then you don't get a five star rating. But other than that this is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. I have regaled my family with clock stories during the time I have read this book. I had never heard of this book until I was listening to a podcast called Constant Wonder where the author was being interviewed and it was a fascinating interview that made me want to go out and buy the book. I am very happy I did and I'm very happy to recommend this book to anyone who wants to read about the history of clocks, and the history of our global civilization.

[William Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you enjoy technology and history, don't let my 3-star rating stop you from reading this book. It had a couple of chapters that I found to be absolute gems.

My biggest critique of David Rooney's About Time is that it could've used more polishing and editing. The narrative waffled between how clocks impacted civilization and Rooney's personal viewpoint (almost to being preachy). I'd rather it had stayed unbiased but I do appreciate Rooney is an expert in his field and of all people he'd have insight to share.

I found the chapter "Empires" (clock #6) absolutely fascinating and wish more of the book had gone into the technical details this one did about time-syncing and navigation. And for the same reasons the chapter "War" (clock #11) had the same effect on me.

Would have enjoyed more technical descriptions of how clocks work along with the history provided.

[Korcan Derinsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dünya tarihinde inşa edilmiş 12 saat üzerinden zaman kavramına ve etkilerine dair bütünlüklü bir çalışma. Bilmediğim çok şey öğretmesi açısından faydalı bir okuma oldu. Bazı bölümler kuru bazı bölümler de tekrar hissi uyandırıyor ama yazar fena bir hikaye anlatıcısı değil yazdığını okutuyor bir şekilde. Genel olarak tatmin edici bir kitap olduğunu düşünüyorum. Konuya ilgi duyanlar illa sever.

[Camelia Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Civilization's timekeeping technologies, from sundials and water clocks to pocket watches, atomic clocks and GPS systems, and what timekeeping and standard time mean to societies throughout our history.

Interesting topic. Dry, repetitive, not well organized.

[Kalyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice book. I like the topic and theme of the book. Author did his research and presented it in an interesting way. I got to know about many new things, events, people while listening to the book ( I listened to audio version of the book in Audible).

I want my kids to read this book.

I felt book was very short and did not get enough of it. Listening it again. ;-)

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are lots of books “about time” in one way or another. You can read brief histories of time or book on the “order of time” by physicists (Hawking, Rovelli). There are histories of how changes in keeping time and thinking about it have changed economic life (Landes). There are even books by philosophers considering how assumptions about time shape one’s cosmology (Collingwood).


David Rooney’s new book provides a personal history of time in terms of twelve clocks, indicating how our views of time have changed over the years and what that means. To be clear, in discussing “twelve clocks”, it is not an itemized listing of a dozen specific clocks, but rather different general types of clocks, with a number of examples presented and discussed. So certain types of clocks came into use at different times and were used in various ways.

I like discussions of historic clocks, but that is not the program here. Rooney’s book is brilliant in situating his discussion of different types of clocks in their historical contexts to show how they were used and how the meaning of the clock is best identified by looking at its use in context. He presents a rich, thoughtful, and well documented discussion in each chapters, and the chapters differ widely from each other, although there are of necessity some overlaps. This makes the book very different from the typical “top N examples of X” format that is fairly common in trying to hook an audience.

I do not want to go into too much detail on the chapters - this is a book that should be read by many. The major use areas can be anticipated somewhat: political power, military prowess, wealth and economic success, religion and worship, scientific development. Readers could have guessed this ahead of time so I am not giving anything away. If there is a broad intellectual punchline to the book, it is that clocks have been and are likely to remain instruments of power for national elites - which occasionally generate resistance in their wake. It is a good story that rings true and is well told.

Mr. Rooney capably of guides his readers along. Each chapter is filled with details about its subject. There is also a lots about the details of how big changes were put into practice. His discussion of how the longitude problem was addressed and solved is a good example, but there are other examples throughout the book. I also enjoyed the variety of examples presented and discussed, in that the book highlights new sites to visit once European travel becomes more possible.

I highly recommend the book.

[Chris Chester · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really thought I was going to like this book. I've been a watch nerd for three years now and I'm fascinated by the technological aspects of horology. Moreover, I find the philosophy of time and its mutable nature to be one of the most interesting topics to think about. And as someone on the leftward end of the political spectrum, I am sensitive to the political nature of time and what it means for each of us and our relation to each other.

Rooney really only addresses that last area and not in an especially comprehensive fashion. His principal insight seems to be that instruments for measuring and conveying time are artifacts of political power and control. This has been true from Roman times through the globe-spanning European powers to modern capitalist timekeeping today.

That's an interesting insight... that is probably worth a magazine article?

Rooney completely neglects the philosophical aspects of time. Why not touch on Zeno's paradox or actually sit down and try and explain Einstein's theory of relativity. He doesn't seem to relish the engineering aspects of horology either. I had to seek out YouTube videos of how clepsydra water clocks work because his description is so wanting. And he doesn't even attempt to paint a picture of how a mechanical clock works. Or what about watches? They represent the most intimate relationships people develop with time in the last century, but there's no anecdotes about them or really any description of them at all.

It really felt to me like he was just weaving together a handful of sparse anecdotes he had handy about times when he visited murals or observatories or a story handed down through his family about a dial-in time service and tried to just paper over the rest of the book with some cursory research.

The result is just... boring. This is a topic I am interested in and I was bored. Very disappointed.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Technology is never neutral, because objects are made by people with a agenda of some sort. “

I have never thought about clocks and time as political or social things; they are just there. This book was fascinating and eye-opening in its exploration of man’s relationship to time via clocks. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Nat · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Got a little over halfway. It was interesting and informative but the story just doesn't flow, it's not a structured timeline of events it's just choppy and some personal anecdotes and life experiences added into the mix of the clocks. I think I'd enjoy this book if it was more structured like a time line set out and sequential order.

[M Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great concept. Wretched execution.

It's not a history of civilization in the sense that you don't get any sense of the evolution of civilization in this book. Rather it's a series of essays about clocks and how they effect history. Rooney is prone to grotesque overgeneralizations with no supporting evidence (much like that sentence) and while it's pretty clear that he knows clocks forwards and backwards, it's not clear that he knows history that well.

I should add that the focus on European colonialism is excessive. For example, while discussing the clocks marking the 19th century colonial empires, he takes a half page to emphasize the tremendous crimes in the Congo/Belgian Congo even though clocks had absolutely nothing to do with them.

You don't need to read this book.

[Cem Yüksel · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Türkçe aşağıda)
It is a nice reading journey from the first attempts of measuring time through sundials to atomic and plutonium timekeepers . From the need of time measurement for sailors to the need of high frequency stock market dealers. From Al Jazari’s castle clock to GPS satellite clocks. And about the role of time measurement in order, faith , virtue , morality, politics , war and peace. There is a piece for everybody having diverse interest areas. From history to science, from art to engineering, from human behaviour to society. Naturally , it does not go into the details of all these headlines, however it depicts the story of time measurement and clocks in this framework in a good manner. It is a good reading for a calm weekend.

Güneş saatleri ile ilk zamanı ölçme teşebbüslerinden , atom ve plütonyum saatlere iyi bir okuma yolculuğu. Denizcilerin zamanı ölçme ihtiyacından , yüksek frekanslı işlem yapan borsacıların ihtiyacına. El Ceziri’nin kale şekilli saatinden GPS uydu saatlerine . Ve zamanı ölçmenin düzen, inanç, erdem, ahlak, siyaset , savaş ve barış içindeki rolüne. Farklı ilgi alanları olanlar için ilgili olabilecekleri bir parçayı içeren bir kitap. Tarihten bilime, sanattan mühendisliğe , insan davranışından topluma. Tabii ki tüm bunların detayına girmiyor ama zaman ölçümü ve saatlerin bu çerçevedeki hikayesini iyi anlatıyor. Sakin bir hafta sonu okumalık.

[William Mattes · Rating 5 out of 5]

thanks

[Gregory Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Rooney's About Time builds a compelling historical narrative for horology as a useful tool for understanding culture.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like any collection of essays, this one had its fascinating parts, its mundane parts, and it’s uninteresting parts for me.
This books supposedly looks at 12 different time pieces throughout history in these essays. While the time pieces are interesting, they are not necessarily the focus of each essay. I would have found this book more compelling if more time had been spent with describing the era of the timepiece, the architect of each timepiece, and the resulting effects. Instead, the author goes off on other tangents, that while interesting, don’t necessarily have any connection to the topic first presented.

[Zoe Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has one of the most enthralling opening chapters you will ever read. As for the rest of the book, the subject matter was interesting and the author extremely knowledgeable. I enjoyed how the book was organized by different prevalent aspects of society and human interaction. My one lament is I would have preferred more story telling and less recitation of historical facts. I think it would have made for a richer narrative. I often found myself putting the book down and turning to the internet to research more about a particular event or historical figure to find a deeper understanding.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something about the way this is put together that isn't quite gelling with me. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I find the overall tone and organization of the material a touch...eccentric. Sometimes I felt the author was give me too much material on items I wasn't interested in, and not enough on the items that did fascinate me. It's an unique way of looking at history, but it needs a tighter focus and less rambling.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to really get into this. Contains many interesting anecdotes, but the constant “time is power, time is control,” narrative was a bit overdone, and occasionally a stretch.

The concepts are great and thought provoking, but this would have been better as a long form article than a short book.

[Lis Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a history, not of time, but of timekeeping and clocks, and how clocks have changed our lives.

Rooney grew up with parents who were clockmakers, and pursued a career in the maintenance and history of technology generally and clocks in particular, and is a former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

He's also very focused on how clocks and timekeeping have been politicized and weaponized. Sometimes this can be annoying; sometimes it's just weirdly ironic. He offers us at the start the story of KAL Flight 007, the Korean commercial airliner shot down after entering Soviet airspace on September 1, 1983.

I'm not going to rehash the details, some of which the Russians still dispute, but this was a civilian airliner that made a course error in its navigation system--an error that would have been avoided with now-routine use of GPS to check its actual location. Rooney goes over the details of the course error, why GPS would have prevented it, and notes that the first, experimental, purely military GPS satellites were in orbit. The system wouldn't be available for civilian use for years.

After explaining how 269 lives could have been saved by the precision clocks aboard the GPS satellites, Rooney tells us this system is not benign, because it's military.

Okay. But it still would have saved 269 lives had it been in use that day, and hit has saved a great many lives since. It's not the only thing, by any means, invented by the military, for military use, that has also become tremendously useful in the civilian world.

This is a fascinating history of clocks and timekeeping, and its impacts, economically, socially, philosophically, scientifically. But Rooney is most focused on the impact of clocks as instruments of control, and oppression. He's not wrong, but at the same time, I don't agree that in all cases it's the clocks that are the problem (sometimes they are a major contributing factor, though), or even that all the effects he dislikes are actually bad.

And yet this is a fascinating book to listen to, and the history it tells is absorbing. And Rooney absolutely loves clocks, and describes individual clocks, and the progress of timekeeping technology, in loving and fascinating detail.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

[Çetin Balanuye · Rating 5 out of 5]

İnsanın gerçeklikle ilişkisinin salt insan gözünden yoklandığı anlatılarla yetinilen günler geride kaldı. Bu sevindirici. Bunun yerine, özellikle tarihin, herhangi bir nesnenin merkeze alınarak yeniden okunduğu yaratıcı anlatılar giderek daha sık deneniyor.

Bu kitap da bu tür bir ilginin sonucu: Tarihi, ortaya çıktığı ilk günden bu yana insan hayatını ve onun dolayımıyla gerçekliği "dönüştüren" saat üzerinden yeniden okuyor. Üstelik saatler, saat denen araçların "zaman kavramı" gibi yüksek soyutlama gerektiren kuramsal örüntüleriyle ilişkisi üzerinden ele alınmıyor. Doğrudan, birer gündelik-hayat-nesnesi olarak saatlere odaklanıyor.

Ortaya eşsiz bir anlatı çıkıyor.

Güneş saati, su saati, kurmalı ya da pilli saatler... Abartılmış görkemiyle insanı biçimlendiren, ona çekidüzen verirken dönüştüren saatler.

Yumuşak bir anlatım, dilde ritim ve iyi çeviri bir araya gelmiş.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing is a bit boring at times, and ironically the stories are not presented chronologically, but the subject matter is interesting enough to overcome most of these issues. Clocks and time are such a constant facet of life that we take for granted, its really interesting to look at their origins and to reflect on how they have been wielded as tools to shape and control societies. Makes you see the world differently.

The chapter on GPS and how much of our current infrastructure depends on it gives me similar vibes to how it felt when I first heard about coronavirus, as a (seemingly) distant but looming threat. It felt like hearing Cassandra prophecy the next impending doom, where its a lot more comfortable to live in denial that it could ever come true. Food for thought.

[Dimitribazos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was really clever how the author used clocks, broadly defined, as a jumping off point to talk about power, empire, colonialism, class and labour relations, industrialism and capitalism, identity, death, and hope. This is not a history just of the technology of clocks, but a history of the human condition, using the clock as the central pivot. I came away with much more than I thought I would, and while I typically am not attracted to “a history of everything in (number)(nouns)” type books, this author is really nuanced and intelligent in the way he links his ruminations on civilization and history with the concept of time-keeping. A well-thought out, and occasionally even poignant and moving, read, in a way I didn’t expect. Well done.

[Brodie · Rating 1 out of 5]

sadly got so bored and irritated with this book i had to give up. it had a promising start; an interesting topic and at one point in the first two chapters he writes about British colonisation in such a clear way that I've rarely encountered white brits do before.

HOWEVER. the book was poorly edited. it felt like reading some dude's travel diary where he'd gotten carried away imagining the lives of historical figures and decided to write about those imaginings as if they were fact and also interesting. frankly i don't care if some painter stood gazing over a square or not, i'd rather learn about how the early makers of hourglasses made them accurate.

[Jordi Morata · Rating 4 out of 5]

No era el que esperava de primeres i el relat és irregular però, de totes maneres, ha resultat ser tot un encert. Més enllà de l'anècdota i la saturació d'informació, és un llibre que fa pensar en el temps, com es mesura i com ens domina. I com qui ens governa ( qui pensem que ho fa) utilitza els rellotges pels seus interessos morals, econòmics o polítics. En resum, no cal que dugueu la ubicació sempre engegada i potser tampoc cal portar tot el temps el mòbil a la butxaca

[Outis · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this book do I still think that the author goes a liiiittle overboard with the importance of clocks? Yes, but it was still really interesting and I learnt a lot, like that unified time zones make me really uneasy.

[Cheryl]

Squee? The blurb for the article in The Economist sounded really interesting and rather important. North Korea recently adjusted 1/2 hour off from Japan, or something?

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

time to get a watch!!!

[Erik Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost gave up around chapter 2-3. But I’m glad I didn’t, as it turned a corner and got more interesting.

[Shell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down, one of the most enjoyable, informative, addictive history books I've ever had the pleasure to read. David Rooney is not a historian who has just picked the topic of clocks to write about but he is a life long expert and enthusiast for every topic surrounding time. The mechanical pieces that count seconds and hours, right from sand dials to the fraction of a second time stamps used on the internet stock exchanges, the political and social effect that living to a clock organised life has, and ranging through such diverse topics as art, books, war, astronomy, astrology, train time tables and drinking up times in pubs. I could not begin to describe how much I loved every minute of reading this book. Although there are 12 main clocks, David just uses these as a spring board for each chapter's delights and even as changing locations and centuries are crafted into a magical story it never feels disjointed and always gives just enough information to leave the reader satisfied. I only had a vague passing interest in clocks, but this isn't really for people interested in the physical pieces, though it has some beautiful descriptions of mechanical clocks, such as al-Jazari's Castle clock. It is more about how the awareness of time has altered history and been used for good and evil. I read the audio version, which David reads himself with his lovely gentle North East accent.
Since finishing reading the book, I keep thinking about all the different parts of it and going back to look up various facts or just to reread sections. It will be one of my most treasured books and I wish I could force everyone to read it too so they don't miss out on such a wonderful experience.

[Edward Canade · Rating 4 out of 5]

How measuring time changed the power structure and allows those in power to control every aspect of our lives. How it all started, from sun dials and hour glasses to water clocks, GPS, atomic clocks and wrist watches, micro second trading. He includes the history of protests against those who controlled our clocks and lives such as the textile millers and suffragists. He delves far into the past, how time and wars go hand in hand, and looks to the future, encouraging us to take the long now view. The future, about which he is not overly optimistic.

I was surprised on how inclusive and wide ranging this small book could be. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.