Swapnil

I never thought I will finish this book. It's so dense, not necessarily due to its content but inability of mine to comprehend the ideas that were presented. I don't know why I started reading this book, may be because I wanted to see how great philosophers think. I am not at all convinced whether it will bring practical value to me either in personal, social or professional life (apart from bragging right, whatever that worth). May be its wrong to have such expectations from such Platonic book. Most of the ideas were idealistic photograph of reality.

Funny, witty and sometimes thought provoking. Whoa bro!

Tolstoy has famous quote saying – All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I think it's apt quote but in reverse direction when we apply it to current state of Nations. When I talk with friends we often talk about how media is biased towards former ruling party and not portraying the correct picture of the current ruling party in India. They say if somehow they show the correct picture then people will appreciate what government is doing (or what they are not doing, for that matter). And exactly same problem Chomsky talks about in detail and he present it so eloquently that you starts to wonder whether there is any hope of expecting for media to behave sanely. I mean, one of the most powerful country has this flaw, then what chance India has. The problem is that with America its media working for government and for India is media working against it. Not to mention how horrific situation of world is due to this power-play. Again you have to take every opinion of every activist with grain of salt and don't fall for the trap that the activist itself is promoting to solve. One thing for sure though, I starting to see pessimistic but somewhat clear picture of the problems in the world and now pondering whether there will ever be any solution to such problems.
A side note: I picked up this book after reading Aaron Swartz's review of this book in his blog post and I think you too should read his opinion of this book in his blog post

I must say, never I have enjoyed a history book as this one. Bill Bryson explains the earth's history succinctly but at the same thoroughly. He has knack of storyteller and interweaves the stories of historian (which almost ends with historian dying unhappy life) that you feel like you are reading novel and not history (and in good sense). It covers everything from Big Bang, formation of environment, to evolution of life, the repeated cycle of evolution and extinction, purpose of life, from subjects ranging from (apart from history) geology, biology, palaeontology, to cosmology, anthropology and genetics etc.

Insightful, entertaining but it suffers the same problem that author quote in the book, namely - confirmation bias. Author chose only those subjects whose story matches his theory.