What on Earth Happened?: The Complete Story of the Planet, Life and People from the Big Bang to the Present Day by Christopher Lloyd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There are some times when you read books that change your worldview, if even slightly (I mean, OK, realistically, what book will change your world view completely?). They make you think, stay with you for some time, making you want to talk with others around you about the fresh things you’ve just found out but for some reasons nobody seems to care about. What on Earth Happened has been one of those books for me.
It’s a beast. It took me slightly less than 3 months to read it all, but at times I remember reading a lot of it every day. WoEH is just incredible in i’s variety of subject material. The title truly says it all. Where else are you going to find the stories of giant dragonflies, the tectonic plates, why Europe’s only hope out of decadence was to go out exploring and colonising (ie destroying), prehistoric man, dinosaurs, ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, America (etc), the first species of marine wildlife, how ants, bees and termites are in some ways civilizations of their own, etc, etc, in one tightly packed, well-knit, intriguing package such as this?
WoEH, as it does claim to do, looks at the bigger picture. It delivers nicely: this is quite possibly the biggest picture of anything I’ve ever imagined, and it’s not cheesy at all, contrary to what I suspected at first… If the age of the universe can be shrunk into 24 hours, we humans have existed for the last 20 minutes of that and history is just a mere second thereof. Think about that for a second (pun intended).
You know what? It’s 6 o’ clock in the morning. I’ve slept very little and have to catch a ship. This book is genius, I love it, I can’t recommend it enough, I feel as if it’s going to be quite inluential to the way I see things. It’s bound to teach you someting new and fascinating, lots of stuff you always wanted to know but were too afraid/bored to ask. And of course other things you would have never imagined could be true. This review is a mess. I should come back to fix it sometime.
I second this review! I haven’t finished it yet but it’s been a great and pleasant read till now! Gives great food for conversations within any group of ppl i hanged out with. Little or big trivia are always fun to know and i swear i bothred the hell out of anyone close to me with all the new fascinating things i learned or revisited while reading it.
Definetly a must-read for everyone!