Chris
Excellent takedown of the American fast food industry and its cultural and economic effects around the globe. Schlosser's text is rigorously researched and examines the fast food industry from several angles; he essentially takes for granted that the reader is aware of the health effects of fast food consumption and dedicates more time to explaining other elements of the fast food restaurant's impact in the U.S.A. and in the world.
As the book progresses, Schlosser tackles not just the restaurants themselves but also their suppliers. While the observation is entirely unoriginal, I must concur that Schlosser's muckraking is highly reminiscent of Upton Sinclair. Chapter 8, “The Most Dangerous Job,” describes working conditions in the meatpacking factories that sell to fast food chains. While Fast Food Nation does not have an explicit ideological bent, this chapter serves as one of the most stirring condemnations of American capitalism that I have ever read. The conditions suffered by the laborers whom Schlosser interviews are unfathomably, indescribably horrific, and that he manages to express it so effectively is astounding.
If you are looking for motivation to make more conscious choices about your diet, Fast Food Nation will certainly provide it, but not necessarily for the reasons you might expect. Prepare to confront a reality that is more emotionally challenging than most would imagine.
Luis Enrique es un hombre más maduro, sabio y compasivo de lo que podía imaginar. Sufrió tantas experiencias durísimas, pero al final triunfó. Por lo tanto, su autobiografía resulta ser muy inspiradora. Después de leerla, comprendo mucho mejor, de manera más profunda, las letras de sus canciones. Habla en estas páginas de sus luchas, de su música (por supuesto), y también de su espiritualidad (cosa que no me interesaba tanto como los demás temas abarcados en el libro, pero tampoco puedo juzgar a Luis por plasmar lo que para él es parte imprescindible de su vida).
Una lástima que ya no esté con la novia de la que habla a fines del libro. Ojalá este hombre encuentre el amor que busca.
If you are interested in a biography of Sarah Vaughan: read it. You don't need the specific critiques of reviews to guide your decision. I happen to believe that Queen of Bebop is about as good of a biography of Sassy as we are likely to ever get.
Vaughan was a relatively guarded woman who seldom spoke of her personal life, and Hayes does admirable work piecing together her life story from available sources. Hayes is a musician and brings a high level of technical awareness and analysis to her descriptions of Vaughan's output. I, as a musician, appreciated this effort.
While a great deal is known about Vaughan's career (naturally), from Hayes' writing it seems that much less is known of her personal affairs apart from her oftentimes tumultuous relationships with men. I admire that the book respects Vaughan enough as an artist to focus primarily on her art. Greater insight into personal matters would have been appreciated, but my sense is that this deficit is due to a paucity of sources rather than any lack of effort on Hayes' part.
I also respect the fact that Hayes does not shy away from discussing Vaughan's life and work in historical, social, and cultural context, which naturally includes the implications of race and gender. After finishing the book, I read James Gavin's review in The New York Times, in which he asserts that Hayes may have been a bit overzealous in assigning political motivation to individual actors, including Vaughan. I'm inclined to agree with him.
One of the best takeaways from the book is the understanding of how Vaughan and other jazz artists had to balance their most artistically valuable work with more commercial output, especially earlier in their careers. Importantly, she does so without judgement and lambasts the jazz critics of the day for their condemnation. Jazz artists are/were real people, with all the complexity that that entails! Vaughan and others were under great pressure by record executives to record subpar material, and they had to financially support themselves somehow. (Billy Eckstine's polemic against jazz critics who would seemingly rather he die of an overdose than live long enough to record pop music was incisive.)
Hayes doesn't create an explicit list of recommended listening, but if you are a jazz fan, she has done the work of separating the wheat from the chaff. As of finishing Queen of Bebop, I have several more Sarah Vaughan records to listen to, and I also know which ones to skip entirely.
I highly recommend Hayes' biography to any jazz musician. The tradition is in the music itself, of course, but it is also in the stories of our heroes, and The Divine One is far from the least of these.
A mixed bag.
Lots of legitimately insightful points, particularly regarding how women approach dating and sex differently than men and the evolutionary reasons why. The authors provide actionable advice for how to develop attractiveness, with self-improvement at the core.
Things like the nutritional claims make me doubt the veracity of other claims in the book. Max and Miller say that you should stop eating grains, period. Sorry, but I'm not convinced that if I eat a diet of vegetables, fruits, lean meats, nuts, legumes, etc., that putting my veggie burger on a whole-grain bun is going to harm me in any way. They also advocate for doing weightlifting exercises as fast as possible, which seems like the exact guide for what not to do—slower motions tear muscle fibers more efficiently and therefore contribute more to progressive overload.
(Edit: The more I think about the nutritional advice, the dumber it seems. For a book ostensibly about empowering men to form social bonds with women more effectively, the social function of food is completely overlooked. Good luck trying to date a Hispanic woman whose rice and beans you refuse to eat because Max and Miller told you that grains are a no-no.)
It's worth a read, but you have to assess for yourself what's valuable and what's not. If nothing else, you'll probably finish the book with more consideration of the different factors at play in human courtship. I can also say that I feel that my outcomes are more within my control than I did before—there are many ways for a man to be attractive, and the authors do a good job of demonstrating this point.
A couple of the jokes are home runs, but most are mildly grating. It would have been nice to read a text with similar ideas, but with either a more mature sense of humor or a commitment to a serious tone.
I will give the authors credit for the list of books on human sexuality, which looks quite promising.
I have read five of Dr. Ehrman's books so far, and Armageddon is certainly not the least of these. Dr. Ehrman provides an excellent analysis of the Apocalypse of John from many different perspectives. Topics covered include but are not limited to:
The contents and symbology of Revelation in historical context
A history of apocalyptic predictions based on misinterpretations of Revelation
Contemporary effects of misinterpretations of Revelation
The genre of the apocalypse and John's inspiration from the Book of Daniel
The ideology of Revelation compared to the ideology of the Gospels
The Christ of Revelation compared to the Christ of the Gospels
I can't do justice to Ehrman's wonderful treatment of the above topics. If you have any interest whatsoever in Christian eschatology, no matter what your personal beliefs may be, please just go ahead and read Armageddon. If you are relatively new to the topic, this book will be revelatory; if you are familiar, I wager you'll still enjoy reading Ehrman's perspectives on the above topics and find many valuable takeaways, even if you disagree.
Ancient Sea Reptiles joins the ranks of numerous other excellent paleontology books released in recent years. Dr. Naish's book goes into relatively great technical detail to explain the evolutionary history, fossil records, and inferred behaviors of all major groups of marine reptiles present in the Mesozoic Era. Naish neither obfuscates his points with unnecessary jargon nor belittles his readers' intelligence by presenting his information in an overly simplified fashion. In other words, while Ancient Sea Reptiles is accessible to readers outside of paleontology, this book (not unfairly) asks a lot of them. It is scholarly and information-dense, not a breezy read, in spite of its deceptively low page count.
Accompanying Naish's text are fabulous illustrations and photographs that allow the reader to more easily visualize the creatures described in the book. The reconstructions do not shy away from from speculative, but plausible, features (e.g., I adore the Suevoleviathan with the colorful tail fluke on p. 111). Where I concur with other readers in their criticism is that more maps should have been included to clarify proposed ranges and migratory routes. For those who enjoy reading scientific journals, the lack of citations is also quite disappointing, and there were numerous typographical errors that should not have made it past an editor.
This is the only book of which I am aware that offers a comprehensive and up-to-date examination of Mesozoic marine reptiles. If the subject at all interests you, this is undoubtedly the text to read.
This is the fourth book by Dr. Ehrman that I have read, and it is certainly my favorite. Jesus appears to be one of Ehrman's first “popular” works, and his prior experience writing exclusively academic works has a pleasant impact on his style here. Of all Ehrman books I have read, this one is the most information-dense. His case is thorough and highly persuasive. Rather than leaping straight to his thesis, the author takes his time to establish his historical methodology and to examine a range of potential sources. Ehrman's meticulous analysis of the Gospels of course forms the heart of this work; I don't think that anyone with an open mind could come away from having read Jesus thinking about the Nazarene, or the religion founded in his name, in the same way as they did before. Jesus is the best book on the subject of religion I have read thus far.
Finding Home is a fabulous book for what it is: a celebratory look at the entire history of In the Heights for fans of the show. The text, which appears to have been written largely by Jeremy McCarter, traces Heights from its genesis as Lin-Manuel Miranda's college project all the way to the production of Jon M. Chu's film version. Interspersed are plenty of vivid, eye-catching photographs, essays by Quiara Alegría Hudes explaining some of her most important contributions, and complete song lyrics with annotations by Miranda. If you are looking for a feel-good retrospective on a show that is already close to your heart, look no further. If you are looking for a critical perspective on the work, look elsewhere. As much as I enjoyed this book, I am interested to continue reading more about Heights from a critical/academic framework.
Another fine work by Dr. Ehrman, this time detailing modifications to the text of the New Testament. Ehrman dedicates chapters to topics including but not limited to:
Historical attempts to reconstruct the original text
The methods used by textual critics
Theological motivations for modifying the text
Social motivations for modifying the text
As is typical of his books written for laypeople, Ehrman gives a general overview of his arguments but does not delve into great detail. Perhaps I ought to attempt one of his academic works one day. For anyone unfamiliar with the field, I think that this book would serve as an excellent introduction to Biblical textual criticism.
Ehrman makes a compelling case regarding the authorship of the books of the Bible that he discusses. I wish he had discussed some of the evidence in greater depth, but this is a book for laypeople, after all. To me, Forged did not reach the heights of [b:Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife|50793705|Heaven and Hell A History of the Afterlife|Bart D. Ehrman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575812957l/50793705.SY75.jpg|71431323], the other Ehrman work I have read. The tone of Forged is noticeably more strident, and one gets the sense that Ehrman wants to “own” the opposition—I can practically hear the Avengers theme playing in Ehrman's head on p. 130, when he talks about getting his Arabic-speaking colleague to translate a document in order to prove that Pythagoras's students did not attribute their books to their teacher.
It's worth a read if you're not up-to-date on Biblical scholarship. I had no idea of the authorship issues surrounding the Pauline epistles, etc. If you are aware of the scholarly consensus regarding these issues, you may not find many revelations here.
A lovely and worthy addition to a growing number of excellent layperson's paleontology books released in recent years. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs presents a series of fictionalized scenarios that immerse the reader in various points on the K–Pg extinction timeline. For instance, we follow a Tyrannosaurus specimen before the asteroid impact, then see the world through the perspective of an Edmontosaurus as the bolide hits the Yucatán peninsula, and so on and so forth. The style is reminiscent of a nature documentary, although Black certainly has her own style and tone; the text would feel incongruous if read by, say, David Attenborough. I do find it curious that Black is criticized in Goodreads reviews for employing a speculative, nature documentary-style approach, while other (excellent) authors such as Thomas Halliday are lauded for the same. Black does an excellent job in the appendix of explaining which parts of the book are near-certain and which are more speculative. Notably, the speculative elements are all relatively conservative.
Black weaves a narrative depicting the K–Pg event as not only a time of great destruction, but as a time of growth and recovery. Mammals, non-dinosaurian reptiles, cephalopods, plants, and algae do not go neglected in this telling of the story. While some of Black's prose could have undergone just a bit more revision, make no mistake that this is a worthwhile book that any paleontology fan will enjoy.
Un texto sólido agobiado por una traducción pésima e inconsistente que está llena de errores tipográficos. Si las matices de la obra de Puente te interesan, lee este libro, que consta no sólo de detalles biográficos sino también de un análisis cultural y musical del trabajo de Puente, además de varias entrevistas. Pero busca la versión original en inglés si la puedes entender.
Good overview of the historical development of Latin styles within the United States. The text is organized by decade, and a good deal of it is dedicated to Latin jazz; I found the book particularly effective at filling in some gaps in my knowledge of that style. The library copy I read was the original edition, which concludes with the 1970s. While an update would obviously be appreciated, I can't blame the author for a lack of precognition when writing this edition. To his credit, he even correctly foretold that salsa music would not break into the mainstream market. A certain degree of moralizing is appropriate in this sort of text, and Roberts rightfully comes out swinging against the showtune “Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me),” yet he treats the even more heinous “All Dressed Up, S*** and Spanish” with a disconcertingly neutral tone—was he unaware of the racial slur? Desi Arnaz features prominently in the narrative, yet his family's tumultuous relationship with the music that made him famous goes overlooked. Roberts also makes the glaring error of claiming in both the main text and the glossary that the Cuban tres has nine strings (it has six strings in three courses). The Latin Tinge can be appreciated for what it is, an introduction. More reading is certainly needed to fill in the music's history in Latin America, and the music's history in the United States post-1980.
While I have not read widely enough within paleontology to make any definitive claims, Otherlands seems to me like a powerful candidate for the definitive history-of-life book for adult paleontology enthusiasts. Paleontologist Thomas Halliday writes with both the authority of an expert and the lyricism of a novelist. The text consists of sixteen chapters, and in each Halliday uses his aptitude for language to revive the organisms of a particular fossil site. Halliday proceeds in reverse chronological order, beginning with Pleistocene Alaska and concluding with the Ediacaran biota.
Halliday makes a point of highlighting lesser-appreciated organisms and geological periods. Of the sixteen main chapters, only three are dedicated to the respective periods of the Mesozoic Era, and even within those sections, dinosaurs are not always the primary focus. The rest of the book concerns Cenozoic, Paleozoic, and pre-Cambrian life, which was a marvelous choice. I love dinosaurs as much as the next person, but they have been written about to death, and it's about time for other incredible extinct taxa to receive their due. Especially during the Paleozoic chapters, plants, fungi, and microorganisms all play a critical role in the author's narrative. Global geography also receives significant attention.
The quality of Halliday's prose is very reminiscent of a nature documentary; he often describes a plausible behavior being performed by a specific individual of a given taxon. It is easy to imagine the text of Otherlands being read aloud by Kenneth Branagh or David Attenborough. Nevertheless, technical terms abound—this is not a book that underestimates the reader's intelligence or forces humor at inappropriate times. Halliday's technical precision clearly comes from a place of love and respect for paleontology rather than haughtiness, and his admiration for his field of work oozes from each sentence. Given the amount of scientific language that this kind of book necessitates, he occasionally steps away from the documentary style to explain a technical concept in an approachable way. However, these digressions never feel out of place.
More than just a celebration of paleontology (and a superb one at that), Otherlands also functions as a rousing call to action against anthropogenic climate change. Halliday's epilogue contextualizes the mass extinction we are currently causing by comparing it to those extinctions about which we have already read earlier in the book. Halliday is neither excessively optimistic nor alarmist; nevertheless, his detailed descriptions of ripple effects in our oceans, soil, and atmospheric systems are truly unsettling to read. He is also absolutely correct to point out that the countries that have contributed the least to climate change are liable to suffer from it the most, and vice versa.
The history of life on Earth is a topic of boundless depth and beauty, and for Halliday to have captured both the grandeur and peculiarity of paleontology (in his debut, no less) is a massive achievement on his part. It is my fervent wish that he continue to write science books for a general audience. This man has a gift, and each of his readers receives it.
(I agree with other reviewers that more illustrations would have been appreciated. I found myself frequently consulting Google Images. Perhaps in a later edition this issue will be rectified.)
It may not be a world-changing work of literature, but this is the best damn book about the electric guitar that I have come across. I agree with other reviewers that more emphasis should have been given to female contributors to the art form; in their quest to streamline this immense history into a digestible narrative, Tolinski and di Perna engage in a fair bit of typical “hero worship” with the typical male “heroes.” Nevertheless, I am not aware of any other book that explains the development of this instrument, from its inception to the present day, as well as this one. I am personally not a big rock music fan, but Tolinski and di Perna manage to make those parts of the history engaging even for someone like me. If you love the electric guitar in any way, you will not be disappointed with this volume. The Charlie Christian chapter in particular was excellent. (For me, Carlos Santana's foreword did not add anything of value to the work, but neither did it detract from its quality.)
Como documento histórico, este libro cautivará a cualquier aficionado de la guitarra clásica o de la música clásica latinoamericana. Toda faceta de Segovia despunta en estas cartas: su exigencia, su entendimiento profundo de la guitarra, su sentido de humor, y su lamentable antisemitismo. El libro se concluye con una carta conmovedora que Segovia le escribió a Clema, la viuda de Manuel Ponce, después del fallecimiento del compositor.
La única razón por la cual no le doy a este libro cinco estrellas es la traducción al inglés de Peter Segal, que es más que un poco torpe. Segal suele traducir muy textualmente, y por eso las traducciones de las cartas tienen una voz poco natural, y no parecen para nada que fuesen escritas por un hablante nativo del inglés. Además, un par de veces Segal malinterpreta por completo lo que quiere comunicar Segovia. Para los lectores bilingües no merece la pena leer las traducciones (yo me las salté).
A decent look at the concept of musical temperament from a perspective that is more favorable to 12TET than some other books written on the subject. Isacoff generally does a good job explaining the conceptual foundations of differing tuning systems, though I take issue with some of the diagrams and mathematical formulas used.
The biggest issue with Temperament is that, at times, it seems resistant to actually discussing temperament. The book certainly picks up as at moves along, but I found certain chapters in the first half so frustrating that I considered returning the book to the library without finishing it. Analogies are useful for explaining abstract concepts, but in a book about temperament, I don't want to read entire chapters about what was going on among physicists, or painters, or architects. I get the sense that these passages were included to make the book more interesting to a general audience, but to be blunt, nobody save for hardcore music nerds was ever going to read a book about temperament, of all things.
The writing could have undergone some additional revision, too. Isacoff uses uncommon and frankly distracting words such as “lapidary,” yet he misuses more common words such as “comprised.” While I understand the historical necessity of naming so many figures, the number of names in the book is a bit dizzying as well.
Temperament is a fascinating subject, and I'm glad that this book exists, but a more focused text would have been better. While neither book is perfect, the flaws of Isacoff's book make me appreciate [b:How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony|3377679|How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)|Ross W. Duffin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348127190l/3377679.SX50.jpg|162549] more than I did previously. The two books complement each other decently for a reader who'd like a variety of perspectives on the subject.
A marvelous work of popular science. Gould does not merely describe the fauna of the Burgess Shale: he tells the story of how scientists have reinterpreted their classification, and he argues that this revision fundamentally reframes our understanding of life on earth. Essentially, Gould's thesis is that there is no such thing as an inevitable evolutionary trend towards progression, and that our presence on this world is just as much the product of fortunate circumstances as it is of consistent evolutionary principles.
Gould writes in an engaging and beautiful way. He explains technical concepts clearly and enriches his presentation with a variety of apt literary and cultural allusions. The evidence presented for his thesis is thorough. Paleontology advancing as fast as it does, I have to assume that a good deal of the information is outdated; Gould explicitly anticipates and even welcomes this inevitability. (While I love learning about paleontology, I'm certainly not qualified to comment on particular inaccuracies.)
I am particularly impressed by the amount of understanding that Walcott extends towards Charles Doolittle Walcott, the geologist who first discovered the Burgess Shale fossils. Just as a teacher must look for the logic in a student's mistake, Gould examines Walcott's biography in great detail to establish why he interpreted the Burgess fossils the way he did. Gould's comments about the dichotomy between experimental and historical sciences resonated with me, as I immensely enjoy learning about historical sciences but was confused in school when that love didn't necessarily transfer to the experimental side. Gould's book is subtitled “The Nature of History,” but in many ways it's just as much about the historical qualities of nature.
Prior to Wonderful Life, I had not read a proper book focused on paleontology in over a year. While I was obsessed with the subject as a child, the last book I read about it disappointed me. Gould demonstrated to me that paleontology is just as captivating a subject as an adult when presented in the right way. I look forward to continue learning about ancient life, even if my childhood aspirations towards professional paleontology never worked out.
It would not be fair for me to assign a star rating to Fluent Forever without having honestly attempted to learn a language with its methods—I simply don't think that its methods would be particularly helpful to me given where I am in the language acquisition process.
Wyner is an engineer and an opera performer, not a linguist; in the Notes section he does a decent job of identifying the linguistic research upon which he bases his proposals, but his method should be taken with a grain of salt, in my opinion. The method is heavily flashcard-based and incorporates a spaced repetition system to work concepts into the learner's long-term memory. To his credit, Wyner does have a lot of very clever ideas about how to use flashcards to learn correct pronunciation, establish a basic vocabulary, and explore basic grammatical concepts, all while beginning to think in the target language. There is probably a great deal of merit to this approach for a language learner who is beginning from scratch.
Outside of his very detailed instructions regarding flashcards, most of Wyner's suggestions are a bit obvious. Yes, it's good to speak and write and get corrections from native speakers. Yes, watching familiar television programs in your target language can help with listening comprehension. Apart from the spaced repetition system, most intermediate–advanced learners won't glean much fresh insight. In one of the appendices, Wyner describes three “tracks” for flashcards, the lowest-intensity track (requiring the fewest cards) being the “Refresher” track for intermediate speakers. It is telling that he admits that many of his own card suggestions will be unnecessary for those who already speak at an intermediate level. His goal is evidently to help readers reach a baseline level of fluency, not an advanced or native-like level of fluency. (The book comes off as somewhat self-promotional too, as it frequently refers the reader to Wyner's website.)
If you are learning a language about which you have no prior knowledge, give Fluent Forever a shot. If you already have a good grasp on pronunciation, basic vocabulary, and basic grammatical constructions in your target language, then skip this book, download an SRS program like Anki, and get to work expanding your vocabulary. If you're still terribly curious about what Wyner has to say, borrow a library copy and skim. He does leave some specific suggestions for intermediate–advanced learners at the ends of some chapters, but those suggestions are not worth the price of the book.
Fluent Forever's greatest advantage is that it offers specific, actionable steps that language learners can take. If anyone is interested in a text that holds more scientific weight but lets the reader to decide how to apply the science to their learning, I would strongly recommend [b:Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language|26176934|Becoming Fluent How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language|Roger J. Kreuz|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440704673l/26176934.SX50.jpg|46142142].
The opening chapters of this book, which truly focus on the development of the electric guitar and the personalities involved, are probably the best narrative nonfiction I have read so far. To hear about the differing opinions and backgrounds of figures such as Leo Fender, Les Paul, and Paul Bigsby, and how those differences influenced their respective approaches to the instrument, was truly illuminating and immersive. Some readers have criticized The Birth of Loud for its focus on relatively technical features of guitar design, but I was living for those sorts of details. I would love to read a similar work that focuses entirely on the instrument development angle, though I understand that such a book would probably be more difficult to market to a general audience.
As Port branches out into the history of rock ‘n' roll itself, The Birth of Loud loses its direction somewhat: many cameos from figures such as The Beatles, Carol Kaye, and James Jamerson are undeniably interesting, but the shape of the narrative grows muddled. I will concede that Port's description of Jimi Hendrix's performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock was superb. (And it was quite satisfying to read about Hendrix taking Eric Clapton down a peg.)
I love the guitar itself more than I love rock music, so your mileage certainly may vary. If you love both the guitar and rock music, this is the ideal read for you. If you're like me, you'll still have a good time.
This book gets five stars from me for Charles Darwin's original text and for the impact of his thinking on the world. People in Darwin's time were ignorant of many discoveries taken for granted in modern science, and the fact that he was able to construct such a thorough and nuanced argument for natural selection despite some key pieces of evidence being unavailable to him is truly remarkable. Before reading I was concerned that the language might be inaccessible, but Darwin writes in a pleasurable Victorian style that will be immediately familiar to anyone who has read novels of that era. The book is of course imperfect, with the most regrettable mistake that Darwin makes easily being his repeated use of terms such as “savages” or “lower races” to describe people of color. For a man so ahead of his time when it came to his biological theories, that he was unable to see through the prejudices of the day is disappointing.
The central idea, that of natural selection being achieved through descent with modification, had been proposed before (as Darwin himself makes clear in his appendix). Darwin makes the concept scientifically compelling for the first time in world history by providing mountains of evidence from his own expeditions and experiments. This edition's introduction by George Levine does a good job of placing Darwin's argument into its historical context. Darwin supplies so much evidence, some of which admittedly might be tedious to read, because he is tasked with refuting both creationism (or, as it was known then, natural theology) and the Lamarckian view of evolution. Lamarck accepted that organisms evolved over time, but he thought that use of the body in certain ways was the primary cause of this change—that is, he erroneously thought that a giraffe could stretch its neck over its lifetime, and that the increased length of the neck would be passed on to its offspring. Darwin's approach to these differing points of view is more conciliatory than his detractors might expect: he leaves room for the possibility of limited influence by Lamarckian mechanics, and several passages contain religious language. Darwin sidesteps any discussion of humanity's true genesis, but Origin's implications on the topic were not lost on his contemporaries.
A few words on this particular Barnes and Noble Classics edition: this series of books is B&N's way of eliminating practically all the costs of book publishing apart from manufacturing. B&N achieves this goal by republishing almost exclusively books in the public domain (books old enough that their copyright protection has expired). Unfortunately, this business model means that many seminal works are missing from the series, and that many useful supplementary materials are missing from the books that are included. This deficiency is most glaring in the Comments & Questions section of this edition. The teaching of Darwinian views in public schools was a contentious political issue in the U.S. as recently as the Bush administration, which is when this edition was published. However, the most recent commentary in this edition is from 1892! Barnes and Noble is evidently unwilling to pay to license quotations from any more recent sources, regardless of how relevant that commentary might be to the contemporary reader.
George Levine's introduction is nice, and his notes are helpful enough, though I wish he had written more of them. Rather irritatingly, he leaves several passages of French, quoted by Darwin in the appendix, untranslated. Frankly, it would have been better to have notes from an evolutionary biologist as opposed to a literature professor. Many gaps in Darwin's knowledge are explained by genetics, tectonic shift, evidence of Cambrian and pre-Cambrian life forms, and evidence of mass extinction events. As someone who was obsessed with paleobiology as a child and retains a decent amount of that knowledge, I could recognize where modern science fills in the gaps. However, for anyone who is reading Origin as their introduction to natural selection, I would recommend looking for another edition with notes by a scientist. Presumably, rigorous scientific footnotes were not written for this edition because Barnes and Noble was as parsimonious as possible with this series of books.
Origin is certainly one of the most impactful books in the world, and I would recommend it to anybody interested so that they can grasp the full complexity and weight of Darwin's argument. However, Darwin's first version of the theory is understandably dated. To truly understand the complete corpus of evidence backing Darwin's core idea, any reader would also have to consult more contemporary works.
As a piece of theatre, clunky at best. As a takedown of Hamilton, it more or less works. There are some genuinely insightful historical details spread throughout, but they are unfortunately presented in dialogue that comes across less like a tool for plot development and characterization and more like the playwright's rant. Reed, to his credit, is quite transparent about his purpose for writing this play, and additional historical context is certainly needed to challenge the Chernow/Miranda portrayal of Hamilton. The conceit is absurdly hilarious; I just wish it had been executed more cleverly.