Timekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed with Time (Main)
SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016
OBSERVER SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016
Not so long ago we timed our lives by the movement of the sun. These days our time arrives atomically and insistently, and our lives are propelled by the notion that we will never have enough of the one thing we crave the most. How have we come to be dominated by something so arbitrary?
The compelling stories in this book explore our obsessions with time. An Englishman arrives back from Calcutta but refuses to adjust his watch. Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored. A moment of war is frozen forever. The timetable arrives by steam train. A woman designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar. Roger Bannister becomes stuck in the same four minutes forever. A British watchmaker competes with mighty Switzerland. And a prince attempts to stop time in its tracks.
Timekeepers is a vivid exploration of the ways we have perceived, contained and saved time over the last 250 years, narrated in the highly inventive and entertaining style that bestselling author Simon Garfield is fast making his own. As managing time becomes the greatest challenge we face in our lives, this multi-layered history helps us tackle it in a sparkling new light.
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Hugely enjoyable--ROB MCKIE "Observer "
Time well spent . . . Simon Garfield has made his name as an author who can spin fascinating narratives out of subjects that seem, on the face of it, narrow to the point of being dull--Financial Times
Delightful - unlike most books on time, it's not scientific or philosophical; he has no interest in whether time is really an illusion or whether it existed before the Big Bang. Instead, he focuses on how human beings actually experience time. . . Mr. Garfield, a British journalist and author, maintains a light tone throughout.--The Wall Street Journal
Garfield devotees and readers who relish this sort of breezy romp through temporal trivia will find it time well spent.--Booklist
One of those dogged journalist-writers the British seem to have invented and produce in abundance. (His previous subjects include maps, type fonts, stamp collecting.) And so the hours here pass agreeably, full of fascinating facts, bits of storytelling and wonderful digressions.--The Dallas Morning News
Narrated in the highly inventive and entertaining style that bestselling author Simon Garfield is fast making his own.--Bookbrowse
Garfield is an engaging and lightly witty writer, and approaches his topic in a lot of thought-provoking ways, from investigating experimental calendars to talking about the watch that went to the moon--Winnipeg Free Press
Lively, wry, and captivating work of pop science ... exhibiting dry wit and fizzing with insatiable curiosity.--Publishers Weekly
Digressive, gossipy, thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining . . . Simon Garfield is an exuberant truffle-hound of the recondite and delightful factoid--The Sunday Times
An eclectic collection of explorations of our relationships with time . . . Very readable--The Times
