About book The Half-life Of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has An Expiration Date (2012)
This belongs to a select category of popular science books which are at the same time essential and worldview-changing, yet are far too lengthy and watery for both their publisher's intended audience (the general public, for whom they were commissioned), and the people their author actually wanted to enlighten (academics in other disciplines). The end-result is a little botched. Other examples that spring to mind are Paul Ormerod's "Why most things fail" and Eric Beinhocker's "The origin of wealth". Because of those two otherwise deeply flawed books, I will never teach economics the way I taught them before I read those. Yet I do understand that they are frustrating for the general buyer.I also do understand that the medium (a popular science book) needs some length, and that without the medium we out here in other disciplines would propably never have got the message, because it would have been lost among countless working papers/blog posts/etc.If you are interested in knowledge, or if you teach anything, do read this. If you want something thrilling back to back, skip it. I did not intend to add this book to my shelves, but upon finishing it, I found it necessary to note my impression that while the concept was an engaging one, its execution left much to be desired. Should every anecdote and speculation on how these dubious mathematics work (which frankly come off as a proud sparkler display of the triumph of Irrefutable, Unfailing Logic) have come up in a conversation rather than a book, I would be summarily intrigued, entertained, and even inspired. As far as a text of two hundred pages goes, however, I feel I only took away about as much as what I was given on the dust jacket.
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Some great little tibdbits and a strong overall thesis. But not totally fascinating.
—MimiM1974
