Nature Literature discussion

Hi everyone,

Please add your comments about Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life here.

Thanks,
Becky

I only started this quite late in the month and I'm juggling some other books. But I'm really enjoying it thus far.

I'm a little concerned that Roberts may be doing Linnaeus a disservice. We're comparing an impossibly wealthy man being able to pursue any interest that pleases him vs. an, at times impoverished, scholar from a relatively lowly background. It feels a bit like a pile-on with little regard for the difference in the pressures the two men were under.

Obviously the praises have continued to be heaped on Linnaeus since and we're still using the system he started to catalogue and map diversity and the relations between species. And Roberts is doing a good job dispelling some of the myths about him (that mapping of species interrelationship wasn't something Linnaeus would have reckoned on).

I'm not quite halfway through though, so we'll see where it goes/if I convert fully to Team de Buffon!