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Here, from a master of science writing, is a work that will
plunge anyone who reads it into a sharpened perception of the universe and the
life forces that have made us. A miracle of research and synthesis, this book
is the first to combine complete graphic and verbal depictions of our cosmos in
time and in scale, from the Big Bang to the space shuttle. Timescale
begins with an overview of exciting new methods of dating events and a look at
our conception of time itself, continues with a narrative of what has happened
to the world, to life and to humankind, and culminates in a fascinating index
that cross-references important dates of topics and concepts, from abacus and
amphibian to work and Zoroastrianism. Beginning with measurements in the billions
of years and ending in decades and years, an ingenious "timescale,"
logarithmically calibrated, runs at the foot of the page, while sixteen pages
of specially drawn full-color maps portray the Earth's biography. "Chronography"
is what the author calls the attempt to put in order the significant events between
the origin of the universe and the present. The book pulls together data about
the past from such diverse fields as high-energy physics, cosmology, astronomy,
geology, climatology, paleontology, molecular and human genetics, evolution, anthropology,
archaeology, history and linguistics. What Mercator was to geography, Nigel Calder
is to chronography, and Timescale is our first true chart and guide.
Nigel Calder, after being educated at Cambridge University
and working briefly as a research physicist, turned to writing about science.
He wrote for, and was for a time editor of The New Scientist and also was
science correspondent for The New Statesman. He has authored or edited
19 books on science, most recently The Comet Is Coming! (Viking,1981),
Nuclear Nightmares (Viking,1980), and Einstein's Universe (Viking,1979);
and he has been involved with ten television science specials, either as scriptwriter
or as presenter in the past fifteen years. Referred to by The Wall Street
Journal as "one of the finest interpreters of scientific subjects for
general readers," Mr. Calder has been chairman of the British Association
of Science Writers, and in 1972 was the recipient of the UNESCO Kalinga Prize
for the popularization of Science. Mr. Calder lives in Sussex, England, with his
wife and five children, where he finds time to sail as well as to write. In 1983
Viking will publish his 1984 and Beyond: Into the 21st Century. |
