Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization
Queeney gets a bit huffy that history books don’t make rope the headliner ... Queeney opens several chapters with arresting anecdotes ... If only Queeney had kept things as lively throughout. After the third or fourth page on the rigging involved in raising theater scenery, I admit I lost the thread ... However whimsical, the sections on tightrope walking and double Dutch seem less than central to the case for rope as a handmaiden of civilization.
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In terms of manufacturing the product, this is a shallow dive rather than a deep one ... Rope is light on some background in the interest of moving forward to further explore the functionality ... Queeney finds a great way to infuse drama into the story of an inanimate object ... Where Queeney excels is in finding individualized and intimate narratives discussing rope as an object and tool. One of the best of these comes from the age of sail ... Rope, while fundamental, is rarely thrilling, but somehow Queeney manages to create drama and suspense ... If there is one complaint here it is in the lack of any connective narrative.
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Writing an entertaining book that combines science and history is a whopping undertaking, and on the whole Mr. Queeney succeeds, leavening the authority of an academic with the sly banter of the office wiseguy. But his success is not unqualified. The exposition on rope use through history and the details of how synthetic ropes are made can get a bit dry ... I was disappointed to see that the author hardly mentions the bowline, universally regarded as the king of knots ...
These faults are more than offset by the wealth of interesting nuggets one might use to impress someone at a party ... Rope attempts to cover an awful lot of ground. On the whole, it does this admirably.
