historiblogography

worst book ever

begin rant:

so this week in the class i ta, the students are reading a 'popular' book on global warming. it won a bunch of popular book awards. im confounded. it's one of the worst books i've ever read. it is convoluted in the way it presents the narrative (switching time), it doesn't give easy to follow scientific descriptions of theories, it is merely a convoluted amalgam of people, events, and names. there is some attempt to put things in a broader context, but it is limited to the very shallow "the cold war provided a lot of money to science, and some trickled down to climatology" type. i fell asleep TWICE reading 90 pages.

granted, i've only read 1/2 of it so far, but i canNOT figure out how to make a good discussion out of it. whatever i do, i'm afraid i'm going to be wasting their time. i'm uber-frustrated. and so baffled how such a horrible book could have won ANY awards. hm. maybe i'll just have them come up with a critique of the book.

this book is like an octopus in the pasture of my politics. (no i didn't make that phrase up, but i wish i had.)

end rant.

posted by Sameer @ 9:39 AM