Pharmacy History Pictoral Book

Meh—

From the fact that Nassim Taleb recommends the same author’s book on information theory, I had high hopes for this little book on the history of thermodynamics, but ultimately I was not satisfied with Bayer’s treatment of the subject.

There are good moment to be sure: his literary portrayals of the scientists that give them character & presence, his personal anecdotes about statistics and entropy, and his admirable ability to pack and order the history of heat into a neat little narrative with Maxwell’s demon as the protagonist (of sort). But his almost hypochondriac avoidance of any math coupled with the formulaic cliffhanger ending of almost every chapter and his occasional overblown tone (see, e.g., “As we look at Villard’s ungainly engine, Pascal’s wager wraps its seductive arms around us and lulls reason to sleep. We dream…”) ruined the book for me, leaving me wanting for more depth of analysis and understanding than the author is willing—or trusting the reader—to offer.

Overall, a good primer but ultimately unsatisfying.