Book review – Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan

Fawning reviewers of Ubiquity: The Science of History… or Why the World is Simpler Than We Think (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000) included Niall Ferguson, Chris Lavers, John Gribbin, Edward Skidelsky.

My review:  disparate collection of facts and quotes masquerading as a theory of history. I want my money back.

If Buchanan didn’t have a PhD in physics and had not edited Nature and been involved in New Scientist, no responsible publisher would have touched this with a barge pole. Its absence from NYRB probably says enough.

Almost as bad as the crap, and they knew it to be so as 4Corners pointed out, which Bantam Press a division of Random House published as “1421: The year China Discovered the World” by Gavin Menzies.