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The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3)

Harper Perennial

List price: $15.99
Lowest new price: $5.00
Lowest used price: $2.38

Average customer rating: 4.5 stars

Book delivered on time

It was the book I needed for an upcoming trip and was delivered in good condition and well before I needed it. Thanks much.

Even better on the second reading - Dense but worth the effort!

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is one of the most ambitious series of historical fiction in recent years and he does an excellent job of bridging the distance between 17th century and today by focusing on putting the ideas and persons in the context of their time. Having read through the voluminous series when it came out, I was a little hesitant to re-read the three books (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) but my curiousity won out. I'm glad it did. There is so much information packed into the series that the second reading really made me appreciate the ideas and historical personalities invovlved.

I also noticed something that had slipped by me the first time. Daniel Waterhouse, rather than just being a neutral participant in the storyline, really came out as a catalyst for all the events in the book. Even more, his transformation from a person scared into inaction by the fear of others' disapproval into a man capable of exerting his will to make the world a better place is absolutely central to the storyline and I'm sad to say that I missed it the first time. This slow transformation permeates all three books and I think it must something very personal to Mr. Stephenson.

The other arguement for a second reading is that the events are so complex and the historical descriptions of warfare, economics and natural philosophy are often so detailed that catching everything after only one reading is difficult. I think of this as a strength of the book rather than a weakness, although some people probably do not appreciate the density of background material in the books.

The Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon form an interwoven historical narrative and I think that they will stand as a great literary achievement. I do wish he'd intersperse more of his shorter novels Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) and The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book) alongside his large works (Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon, Anathem) but I'll happily read anything Neal Stephenson writes since he has a gift for conveying complex ideas in an exciting and compelling way.

I read it on the Kindle2

Enough people have commented on the substance of the book that I can't add anything new, so my 5-star rating will have to suffice. I do have a couple of observations, however, related to the Kindle2. I read all three novels of the trilogy on my brand-new one, and was delighted with it.

1. Stephenson loves words, and the trilogy is loaded with obscure (to me!) and archaic ones. Fortunately, the Kindle2 comes with a dictionary, and it's a simple matter to point and click, to look up a word in mid-read. It's certainly a lot easier than carrying around a thousand-page dictionary with a thousand page novel. The dictionary is quite good, and contained most of the words I fed it, along with their sources.

2. Where the Kindle2 suffers is in its poor display of graphics; I think this is part of a larger problem that also leads to poor rendition of pdf files. The maps provided in the trilogy are fuzzy and pretty much useless. That's annoying, given the geographical scope of the books. In particular, System of the World focuses on early 18th century London, and I found myself wanting a good map to orient myself. I finally settled on this one, and printed out a copy to keep with the Kindle2 as I read the book:

http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/dickens_london_map.html

Granted, it's of a London more than a century later than the period of the novel, but it did contain most of the buildings and streets mentioned, plus very brief descriptions and histories of key locations.

A better solution would be for the Kindle to have a comprehensive atlas to complement its dictionary. But that will require a major upgrade to the graphic display capabilities, and probably a faster processor. Maybe we can look forward to it in the Kindle4.

Excellent...a stew of Ideas with a melange of historical and philosphical spices

Read this book, and all of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and be amazed at this man's acumen, storytelling wizardry, and of course adroit sense of humor. Highly recommended for those who enjoy books that educate as well as tittilate.

Epic History Made Readable

This three-volume, 9-book set is, believe it or not, a *prequel* to his previous massive effort, Cryptonomicon. In the Baroque Cycle we find the ancestors of no less than NINE characters of that modern day tale of cryptography. But the Baroque trilogy covers much more ground. The fictional characters are used to take the reader through the lives of very real historical characters. The topics that Stephenson deals with in detail are the history of banking, medicine, international finance, cryptography, espionage, mathematics and computing. Not a light read by any stretch of the imagination, it is still enjoyable.

On a personal note, I gained great insight into the turbulent period when William of Orange chased the Jacobites out of Ireland. I had always wondered why my ancestors departed Ireland for Penn's Colony in 1689 until Stephenson documented William's march across Ireland in that same year. My pacifist Quaker ancestors had seen enough.