Entertaining the Alien

3. Catastrophe: A Quest for the Origins of the Modern World, David Keys

Keys has an interesting premise: some sort of disaster happened around 434 A.D. that was so great it impacted the development of society around the world. Unfortunately, he tries to go about explaining it all wrong.

Rather than present his proposed disaster in the first chapter, Keys shows how each and every civilization experienced a shift in the 500s and how it all came directly from famine and various climactic changes, and everything, EVERYTHING, from the fall of Rome to the bubonic plague to the rise of Islam to the unification of China, came from this one event. By the time he got to how North America was affected, I no longer cared. I just wanted to find out what he said caused this enormous change.

I admit to skimming huge portions of the book, just because his attempt at creating suspense (in a nonfiction book) failed miserably. I finally just skimmed the last chapter, to find out that he thinks an enormous volcanic eruption caused all of these changes. Or maybe a comet strike. But probably a volcano. He can't decide.

I don't know. It's an interesting theory, but it could have been presented much more logically than it was.