I sadly can't say i enjoyed this book, since the entire thing felt as if the author pushed everything in a specific direction and shaped everything he was taking about to fit exactly what he wanted it to be. Not my personal style of "Non-fictional" reading.

Meandering esoterica managing to provide inadequate scientific communication and a grossly superficial of humanities so to create what is essentially a nonsense book with little to no value for anyone in any field. This was an aggressive disappointment.

This book is not for me.

Volk's diction and style are convoluted and overly complex, at least in my opinion, leading to virtually impenetrable writing. The preface tries to pitch this as something that a reader of pop sci books will like, but the tone of this book is about as far from pop sci as you can get. It’s closer to a philosophy text on the order of Foucault or Castells, in terms of semantic density.

There’s nothing wrong with this sort of thing if that’s what you’re wanting from a book. It’s not what I was looking for right now.

Since I did not finish the book and stopped, in fact, quite early in, I won’t be posting a review on Goodreads, since I don’t think that would be fair to the book. It’s not that I disliked it; I just lost any interest in attempting to wrangle meaning from Volk’s writing. A more dedicated or more interested reader might find this book very enjoyable.

Sorry I could not provide a more full review.

Excellent book that will keep many readers very entertained. You do not need to be a scientist to enjoy this book. The author takes us on a journey through how physics has changed and shaped the way we live our lives and the way that society had developed.

Brilliant book that explore our life from the beginning (quark, atoms, molecules etc.etc.) till the actual situations: nations. Key words for this travel trough time are combogenesis and alphakit. All the situations are clearly explained and the author is also witty and funny, plus this is a way to see the evolution of things that I have never considered.

Libro brillante che esplora la nostra esistenza dagli inizi (quark, nucleoni, atomi, molecole, etc.etc.) fino all'attuale situazione geopolitica. Le parole chiave per questo viaggio nel tempo sono compbogenesi ed alphakit. Tutti i capitoli sono spiegati in modo chiaro e divertente inoltre, ´questo é un modo di vedere il mondo che non avevo mai considerato.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

Volk tries chart a course from the laws and facts of the smallest and most fundamental aspects of nature up through the myriad social systems of complex culture and loses me about 50 pages in. It's just too big an undertaking for a 300 page book.

The concept of combogenesis has that "oh wow obviously yeah that could make total sense" quality to it, but there's no room for him to make a more nuanced argument for it in this book because it is so ambitious. The book substitutes thoughtful discussion of alternative interpretations at each step with single sentence references to an endless number of studies that I have no interest in tracking down. I'm sure they all strongly support his point, but it makes the reading a bit of a slog.

The author also does this distracting compulsive thing where he apologizes for getting "too philosophical" anytime he touches something approaching philosophy. It kind of undercuts his authority in the entire last third of the book.

I think this book just wasn't for me. I can see where it would be a decent quick read for someone who reads more science books than me, and I can see where it could definitely open up a lot of avenues for further reading. It has the potential to be a good launchpad. I just came out of it feeling a little bewildered though.