Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes fascinating, sometimes not.
Review: In my quest to learn more about world history, I bought this book as a starting place.An enormous amount of work must have gone into this (and his other history books), and while I definitely found most of the reading very engaging, there were some chapters that became quite a chore to get through. All in all I came away with a better understanding of historical figures whose names I'd only heard in passing, but who I now understand to have had a significant role in the world's major and not-so-major discoveries. I intend to try another in his series, perhaps "The Creators".
Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive, Interesting and Dry
Review: This book tells the story of mankind's scientific heroes throughout the ages. It focuses mainly on renaissance age discoveries and inventions, and is mostly (but not completely) Eurocentric. Daniel Boorstin has obviously put an amazing amount of time and effort into this comprehensive book. The result is over 700 pages of tightly spaced text that cover everything from geography, to anthropology, to economics, and all the way to physics and chemistry. The book's strengths are also its weaknesses. "The Discoverers" is as comprehensive as a doctoral dissertation, and often reads like one. Latin words and phrases are liberally sprayed throughout the text, and at times I felt as if Boorstin was intentionally trying to use the most obscure terms just for the fun of it. I also found the text and the narration to be mostly dry. This book is not an easy read. I am an avid fan of scientific history books. I enjoyed the awe inspiring scope of this work, and its ability to illustrate the connections and interactions between scientists and their peers, and to show how discoveries and inventions were often based on earlier works. However, I felt that this format does not allow for the proper exploration of each topic. For example, the amazing discoveries of Faraday and Maxwell, are together told in only 4 pages... The bottom line is that "The Discoverers" is not easy to read, and while it gives a tantalizing glimpse into a large number of topics, each of these topics is only briefly discussed. However, the sheer scope of the book gives the reader a fascinating bird's eye view of man's struggle to understand his world.
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