Lucio Russo

Has some pretty interesting references to ancient Greek science and technology. It appeals to the mad scientist/geeky side of myself. If you like Lenoardo da Vinci's work you'll like reading this.

Sometimes the author seems to be stretching scraps of material to argue some of his points, but I certainly agree with his general thrust that most historians have oversimpified the early history of science.

If you've read fiction like Anathem or Canticle for Leibovitz, this is a nice non-fiction analysis of some of the issues touched on by these books.

I'd love to see more work looking more in-depth at is the reasons why so much information and knowledge began to be lost and what conditions were needed to not only re-discover them but then to create the exponential growth of our current technology and science. The author comes back to these issues, but much of the time in the book has to be spent establishing the high scientific capabilities of the earlier Hellenistic society.… (more)