The author writes with a thesaurus at his elbow, but doesn't know how to use it. Utterly disappointing. ( )

Truly painful to read because the he writing is comically and absurdly pretentious. Despite the billing, this is really a look at some of Newton's discoveries rather than his life, which is so poorly chronicled that to call this a biography does the term injustice. Even the sections that do attempt to provide a biographical review are absurd, with the author either claiming that little is known about a particularly period of Newton's life, and then using his imagination to illustrate what might have taken place, or offering a personal embellishment on other events. To top off this bizarre approach, the language used to describe these imaginary events is so florid and ridiculous it makes it impossible to stay engaged as the author and his writing style fight to take center stage instead of the story. There is some entertainment value here as I'd wager some of the passages in this book may be the worst ever written, (certainly the worst I've ever read) but on the balance it wouldn't be a bad idea to skip this book. ( )

HARD

7/9/22