Book review: Weighing the World

I’ve just finished reading Edwin Danson’s book Weighing the World — The Quest to Measure the Earth.

It is a historical tale of how we began to understand the physical shape of the world in which we live, although it does have some technical descriptions of the methods used. It also contains a lot of historical context, which while useful, distracts from the main thrust of the book. There is also a lot of explaining who people are, what rank they are of have just become, and who their friends and enemies are at that current point in time.

It is not exactly the book I thought it would be from the cover, and while it was an interesting read, I would have preferred to read more of the technical aspects and less about the history of relationships between those who undertook the surveys. But then, I am an engineer.

If social history is more your thing, you might find there to be too much technical jargon, so it is a difficult balance for the author to strike.

Overall though, an interesting read, but probably not something I’d go back to