Measuring the World
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![Una historia de España [A History of Spain] audiobook cover art](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UaRFExfKL._SL320_.jpg)
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Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infested Siberia. He came up with a radical vision of nature, that it was a complex and interconnected global force and did not exist for man's use alone. Ironically, his ideas have become so accepted and widespread that he has been nearly forgotten.
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Meet an extraordinary man!
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A wrinkle in time and space and the heavens
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It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.
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Engrossing
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Were it not for the calculus, mathematicians would have no way to describe the acceleration of a motorcycle or the effect of gravity on thrown balls and distant planets, or to prove that a man could cross a room and eventually touch the opposite wall. Just how calculus makes these things possible and in doing so finds a correspondence between real numbers and the real world is the subject of this dazzling book by a writer of extraordinary clarity and stylistic brio.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Top Poet among Mathemeticians
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The Buried Giant
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- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,255
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,063
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,071
"You've long set your heart against it, Axl, I know. But it's time now to think on it anew. There's a journey we must go on, and no more delay..." The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years. Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The beauty of the reveal
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Publisher's Summary
Toward the end of the 18th century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates savannas and jungle, travels down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head. He cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula.
Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss had hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men were embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon's fall.
Already a huge best seller in Germany, Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene.
Critic Reviews
"Brilliant." (Kirkus)
"Measuring the World has proved to be nothing less than a literary sensation." (The Guardian)
"Notable for its brisk pacing, lively prose, and wry humor...which keenly complements Kehlmann's intelligent, if not especially deep, treatment of science, mathematics, and reason at the end of the Enlightenment." (Publishers Weekly)
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Overall
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3.5 out of 5 stars
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
- Dirk
- 11-18-10
Love it
I find the story gripping and entertaining. Not being Gauss, I didn't count the large number of times I laughed aloud while listening to it. The narrator isn't my favorite narrator, but he does a good job. There are problems with the translation that bug me, but I ignored them and was thoroughly entertained and even somewhat educated by this novel. I rarely write reviews, but upon finding two reviews that trashed it, I thought it my duty to toss in my 2 cents.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Sofia M.
- 12-19-18
very bad editing. hard to listen
I'm about one third in the book and the editing of the audiobook is very very bad: long pauses right in the middle of conversations, or ending and beginning of two different chapters merged together as part of one sentence. You have to guess what happened from the context. It makes listening to the book more academic and less pleasurable.
I personally didn't feel the narrator chose the right tone for the book as well, but I am not sure if it's just bad editing that threw me off.
Overall, I feel like I'm persevering with this book even though I like the content and would probably enjoy had it been performed and/or edited differently.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Mackenzie
- 01-10-15
Give this a berth -- a wide one
I heard the author reading parts of this and it sounded excellent. The narrator, Rider Strong, reads the book as though he is reading it aloud for the first time and clearly has yet to learn what a full stop and a comma mean. I want my credit back.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
- Henrik
- 04-24-07
Extremely disappointing - please avoid
I was hugely disappointed with this book - as it had been given fantastic reviews (especially in Europe where I live).
There is no clear point to the story, there are no climaxes, it ends very very strangely - and the narrator keeps a monotone voice throughout.
I'm baffled - and I just don't get the point what the author is trying to tell....
15 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- katrina
- 03-24-14
Interesting but confusing
This is a fascinating story but the fact that it's translated I think led to some confusing passages. The narrator also didn't delineate the characters well, which sometimes made it harder to follow who was speaking and what was going on.
3 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
- James S. Cox
- 09-02-08
I agree with Henrik.
He said it all. Do not waste your time.
3 people found this helpful