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Gould could be an Englishman in his mastery of the language and literature.

Bohr has modeled the atom as having discrete, non continuous electrons and glimpsed quantum theory. Harry Mosley is killed fighting near Gallipoli and an American physicist eulogizes his death as enough for WWI to be a world disaster. Fritz Haber and Otto Hahn justify the means with the end and develop poison gas warfare. Gotha bombers and Zeppelins kill civilians bombing England. The shape of things to come.

This current essay is an interesting review of the lengthy poem Im Memoriam by Tennyson. The author had an excellent education.

“I cringe every time I read that this failed business, or that defeated team, has become a dinosaur in succumbing to progress. Dinosaur should be a term of praise, not opprobrium. Dinosaurs reigned for more than 100 million years and died through no fault of their own; Homo sapiens is nowhere near 1 million years old, and has limited prospects, entirely self-imposed, for geological longevity.”

Excellent. I also heartily recommend essay collections by the same author including The Panda’s Thumb and Eight Little Piggies. One essay I recall from “…Thumb.” Those who consider evolution false cite nature’s perfect constructions. Gould cites the panda’s thumb as supporting evolution as it is a modified wrist bone.

An example of his gift for general knowledge was his observation with hominid paleontologists at Olduvai gorge.

“Trained incapacity” =
Your expertise helps you see certain things and at the same time can blind you to other features.

* The paleoanthropologists: focused on hominid teeth
* Gould (trained as a paleontologist of invertebrates): notices mollusk fossils

* Observation depends heavily on training.

Stephen Jay Gould knew evolution and mollusks. He was also a generalist with an excellent memory who saw connections everywhere. If you are a natural scientist, or not, I think k you will love his essays. Most of his books, like this one, are a collection of short monthly essays written over several decades for Natural History magazine. Great knowledge and concepts in small packages.

Ernest Rutherford discovers the essential make up of the atom a few years after radio waves are discovered by Hertz in 1883, and x rays in 1895 by Roentgen. In a 140 years man goes from measuring invisible rays to today.

Leo Szilard, Hungarian scientist, has left Hungary following WWI, like the host of Hungarians who came to be known as the Martians. Brilliant and original. He switches from electrical engineering to physics and studies directly under Physics icons like von Laue, Wigner, and Einstein.

Rereading for the 3rd or 4th time? Last was 2019. Beautifully written comprehensive single volume summary that details 20th century physics to include biographical information and the wars. Reads like a well written novel. I read it the second time and began to understand the physics I’d let flow over me the first time. A truly terrifying topic that we struggle with today. One of my top five science books ever.

Written by a studious expert who wrote books to bookend his Father’s classic Gettysburg novel The Killer Angels. He knows the history and applies that knowledge to the battlefields as they exist in the 21st century.

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Not a quick or easy read. If you read this you will learn (and confirm) a lot of important information in decision making. In my view the information herein is easily worth many thousands of dollars if you can learn it. You have a number of biases against effectively learning it.

Superb.