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Title: Informative and entertaining
Review: Simon Winchester has rather made a name for himself taking offbeat and obscure topics and making them accessible and entertaining for the casual reader and I think this may be one of his better books. I actually read this particular history a number of years ago (and I recall enjoying it) but I think I got more out of it in subsequent reads. The difference, I think, is that in the interim between the first and later reads I also read a lot of books about creationism, Darwinian evolutionary theory and the impact an influence of modern geological science on those areas. After reading about the religious uproar which occurred once the immense age of the earth and the form of its structure began to contradict certain long held beliefs it was very interesting to see how the whole fuss got started.
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