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Title: Poorly Written and Full of Inaccuracies
Review: I bought this book because I liked its premise. However, I was thoroughly disappointed before I could even finish the first chapter. The book is filled with repetitious statements on the one hand and inconsistancies on the other. If you can get over the poor writing style, you will come up against the flagrant factual errors. For example, Teresi denegrates the Greeks for thinking the world is flat. Huh? Most of the greatest Greek philosophers, including Pythagoras and Ptolemy, thought Earth was a sphere. Aristotle even used the evidence that Earth casts a round shadow on the moon during an eclipse to support this idea.This was just one of many factual errors that popped out at me while I tried to read this poorly executed book. As an archaeologist myself, I couldn't agree more that non-Westerners have made great contributions to science. However, believe it or not, so have Westerners!
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