The Economic History of India Under Early British Rule, From the Rise of the British Power i... Book

This book is about Howard Burton's role as the head of the Perimeter Institute, a theoretical physics research institute initiated and largely financed by Mike Lazaridis, who founded the company Research in Motion (RIM) and developed the Blackberry phone.

Overall, the book is very disappointing. Throughout most of the book, Burton merely describes the various of events in the creation of the institute. He provides an astonishing lack of insight into the scientists or their thoughts. For example, he spends pages relating his interviews with some of the greatest living physicists at the Princeton Institute, while relating virtually none of their ideas or the feedback that he was soliciting through the interviews.

The author describes the process of his being acquired by Lazaridis as an almost passive event. Again, no information as what ideals or objectives they shared, or why Lazaridis chose Burton over any other candidate. Burton was a recent PhD graduate who Lazaridis seems to have chosen at random.

Throughout the book, the author makes reference to his fear of having to speak to the work carried out at the institute. On page 103 he describes being at a party of first rate physicists expounding on current thinking. On page 102 he says that he had long given up trying to comprehend quantum theory. Yet his PhD work seems to have been largely on quantum gravity!

Chapter 12, "The 3 Percent Solution", is the most thoughtful wherein Burton speaks of the importance of science education and the development of Perimeter's outreach program. He concludes with the belief that if we could get just 3 percent more students into science, it would change the world. In 2005, their science festival Einsteinfest attracted 28,000 participants over a month.

In 2007, Burton was suddenly terminated at Perimeter. Strangely, his first thought is that it is because of his book, although he is at a loss to identify any offensive content. Secondarily, he feels that perhaps it was due to "... some absurd clash of egos, with Mike and myself vying to take credit for building the institute."