3 ms·
It is surprisingly difficult to study history chronologically when one gets beyond the scope of a given text/item due to overlap. When I was still reading to m
by WillAdams 2y ago
It is surprisingly difficult to study history chronologically when one gets beyond the scope of a given text/item due to overlap.
When I was still reading to my children in the evening, after running through all the standard texts (Narnia, _The Hobbit_, _The Lord of the Rings_, Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising_, H. Beam Piper's _Little Fuzzy_, &c.), I decided I wanted to read biographies to them, in chronological order, starting in as far back in history as was possible --- that was a surprisingly difficult list to put together (arguably because I missed texts such as: _Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology: The Lives and Achievements of 1195 Great Scientists from Ancient Times to the Present Chronologically Arranged_), so we did a dry run of just American Presidents --- this worked quite well, and I found it expedient to read an "adult" biography to pair with a children's one so as to anticipate and answer questions which came up during the reading. Unfortunately, my wife's job schedule changed and we stopped this at Truman, but it was very helpful in improving my understanding of the ebb-and-flow of American history.
EDIT:
Interestingly, this has been posted about here in the past on multiple occasions, but none of them yielded any prior discussion AFAICT:
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=oldmapsonline.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=oldmapsonline.org
It would be really interesting to see this paired with a dataset such as:
https://www.explorehere.app/ https://www.explorehere.app/
From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42381612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42381612
- leobg 2y agoAsimov was a machine. What did he not write about? Materials, space, science & exploration, physics, the Bible. They say Goethe was one of the last people in history who was still able to understand everything that was known up to then. It seems to me Asimov was as close to that as possible 200 years later. Anyone here know a writer of our time who can match that?
- WillAdams 2y agoYeah, I'm finishing up a compleat collection of J.R.R. Tolkien's writings, and am probably going to collect (and read/re-read) all of Isaac Asimov's non-fiction. There are at least five books with the (partial) title _The Last Man Who Knew Everything_ about: - Leibniz https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15770928-the-last-man-who-knew-everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15770928-the-last-man-wh... - Athanasius Kircher https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119131.Athanasius_Kircher https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119131.Athanasius_Kirche... - Thomas Young https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/763029.The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/763029.The_Last_Man_Who_... - Joseph Leidy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119125.Joseph_Leidy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119125.Joseph_Leidy - Enrico Fermi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34746094-the-last-man-who-knew-everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34746094-the-last-man-wh... Maybe instead I'll start with those biographies... surprised Sir Francis Bacon wasn't described thus....
- pauldelany 2y agoCould be wrong, but think it was Gauss, not Goethe.