Interview with David Rooney, author of About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks
David Rooney, author of About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks recommends some brilliant books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out David's book:
Review from Book Depository:
Since the dawn of civilisation, we have kept time. But time has always been against us.
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About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks
From the city sundials of ancient Rome to the era of the smartwatch, clocks have been used throughout history to wield power, make money, govern citizens and keep control. Sometimes, also with clocks, we have fought back.
In About Time, time expert David Rooney tells the story of timekeeping, and how it continues to shape our modern world. In twelve chapters, demarcated like the hours of time, we meet the greatest inventions in horological history, from medieval water clocks to monumental sundials, and from coastal time signals to satellites in earth's orbit. We discover how clocks have helped us navigate the world, build empires and even taken us to the brink of destruction.
Over the course of this global journey Rooney demonstrates how each of these clocks has shone a spotlight onto human civilisation, and shows us the very real effects clocks continue to have on everything from capitalism, to politics, to our very identity.
This is the story of time. And the story of time is the story of us.
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Book Depository €11.71
Waterstones £8.49
Wordery $12.28
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
I first read Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built in the late 1990s and it fundamentally shifted the way I see not just the built environment, but every aspect of the modern world – the ways people co-exist, over long timescales, with the technologies they and their predecessors constructed. It’s a brilliant and subtle study that I recommend often.
Review From Book Depository
Buildings have often been studies whole in space, but never before have they been studied whole in time. How Buildings Learn is a masterful new synthesis that proposes that buildings adapt best when constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and that architects can mature from being artists of space to becoming artists of time.From the connected farmhouses of New England to I.M. Pei's Media Lab, from "satisficing" to "form follows funding," from the evolution of bungalows to the invention of Santa Fe Style, from Low Road military surplus buildings to a High Road English classic like Chatsworth this is a far-ranging survey of unexplored essential territory.
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How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time if they're allowed to. How Buildings Learn shows how to work with time rather than against it.
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Book Depository €39.06
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
I’m currently reading Joyce Appleby’s The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism. So far I am finding it a richly textured and compelling account of global structures that many take for granted, but which have histories. Understanding those histories better seems crucial if we are to understand the long-term development of society.
Review from Book Depository:
With its deep roots and global scope, the capitalist system seems universal and timeless. The framework for our lives, it is a source of constant change, sometimes measured and predictable, sometimes drastic, out of control. Yet what is now ubiquitous was not always so. Capitalism was an unlikely development when it emerged from isolated changes in farming, trade, and manufacturing in early-modern England. Astute observers began to notice these changes and register their effects. Those in power began to harness these new practices to the state, enhancing both. A system generating wealth, power, and new ideas arose to reshape societies in a constant surge of change.
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The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism
Approaching capitalism as a culture, as a historical development that was by no means natural or inevitable, Joyce Appleby gives us a fascinating introduction to this most potent creation of mankind from its origins to its present global reach.
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Easons €25.19
Book Depository €23.63
Waterstones £17.99
Wordery $26.47
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
A series of books I read and re-read constantly as a kid was Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels. I’ve still got them all here on my shelves so perhaps I’ll give them another spin, actually.
Review From Book Depository
First a legendary radio series, then a bestselling book, then a blockbuster movie, the immensely successful Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams needs no introduction.
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The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Boxset
This paperback boxset collection includes all five parts of the trilogy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless.
A phenomenon across all formats, this paperback omnibus contains the complete Hitchhiker's in five parts, charting the whole of Arthur Dent's odyssey through space and time. Share and enjoy.
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Book Depository €27.99
Waterstones £40.00
Wordery $35.27
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
All three, in their ways. I can flip around the pages of printed books easily and quickly; mark up notes in the margin; and they stay on my shelves forever. The Kindle is great when I’m out and about, or reading in low light (I mean the pub) where I can increase the type size. I’m only just starting to get into audiobooks, which are becoming a great accompaniment to the daily walks of lockdown and beyond.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
I genuinely love all bookshops and all booksellers. Picking just one is invidious. But I shall, hoping the others will forgive me. I’ve been shopping at South Kensington Books (and its predecessors) for about 25 years. Always warm, friendly, welcoming and well-stocked. If you’re in London and visiting the museums, you should definitely call in.
Many thanks to David for recommending some brilliant books! Please don't forget to check out David's book About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks .
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Penguin Books Ltd (About Time), Penguin Putnam Inc (How Buildings Learn), (The Relentless Revolution) WW Norton & Co, Pan Macmillan, Pan Books (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy).
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