Remarkable review of the topic

I was left with a huge respect for the author's painstaking analysis and reconstruction of the evolution of our modern understanding of energy and entropy, from its early beginnings, right up through Boltzmann (with a final chapter on Information Theory). The book doesn't purport to cover developments since the mid-1900s, so it would be unfair to fault it for not doing so.

I listened to most chapters two or three times. I was amazed at how little I knew about certain things - case in point, I had no idea how the concept, or even the word, "energy" came into being. There were references to equations, but I was mainly interested in the historical development, so was not concerned about not having the equations at hand (most or all of which are pretty basic and could be found in any text, had I wanted to review them).

The writing style is clear and precise. The narrator's enunciation and pacing is flawless, but I suspect he's not mathematically literate - for example, he says "divided by" repeatedly when any maths person would say "over". One other minor quibble - maybe it's just me, but I think that reading out the parenthetical birth and death years every time they're in the text could have been omitted.

But I still have no idea what entropy is (joke).

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