First Hardcover Edition of E.G.Richards' Mapping Time - The Calendar and Its History

by E.G. Richards

Brand New. Will be shipped from US.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Religion

Unknown Binding

First published March 4, 1999

Reviews

[Stan · Rating 4 out of 5]

You kind of have to be a nerd for calendars, time zones, astronomy, etc to really enjoy this book. It is pretty academic in many parts. And it is really too thorough for my desires. Having said that, I really enjoyed this book--it was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to understand how the world came up with the calendar; how it became universal; how they became more and more precise with the leap year calculation; how Pope Gregory changed the calendar; why it took some countries hundreds of years to finally adopt the Gregorian calendar; what happened to those days that disappeared when they switched from the Julian to the Gregorian; what other sorts of creative calendars and time divisions have been tried.

I was looking precisely for answers to these questions, and this book provided them for me. I really enjoyed it.

[Zorlon Zorlon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decently interesting history of the calendar and its development, which suffers from the flaw of its own wealth. The historical sections on the Why and How of calendars tend to get bogged down on mind-numbing tables and charts and maths. These are largely confined to the latter half of the book, so it's easy to skip them if you want. There are some earlier swathes of more hard sciencey stuff though that makes the historical narrative clumsy. I was more interested in the history bits, and there is plenty of that, with a pretty universal sweep, including East Asian and Judeo-Islamo calendar keeping.

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a fascinating study of calendars, clocks and almanacs, Richards falls often into the prose of computer programmers. This one may be of most interest to those who like to write conversion programs and deeply penetrate the mathematics behind calendar systems.

[Carlos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Richards answers all the questions any reader may have about the history and function of the calendar, and many more besides. His pursuit of exactness in the mathematical calculations will probably be more than the casual reader was expecting as will the minutia of the many variations on calendrical calculations across place and time. Nonetheless, the discussions about the hidden complexities of calendars, the difficulty of any reform and the surprising commonalities across multiple societies make for enough interesting reading material to keep the reader going (skipping all algorithm calculations along the way though).

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Calendar and Its History" A thorough book, often with more technical detail than I needed, that traces the way different cultures and eras have tried to deal with the inconvenience of lunar and solar periods that do not mesh.

[Shelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read I just skimmed it to get the jist of the history of our calendaring system. The book is very detailed for those who want to details. if you want a summary I suggest a different book.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sheer calendar nerdery

[Lulu · Rating 5 out of 5]

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