Blueprints and Borrowed Letters
Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:21 am
One of the things I do like about this book is that its got pictures and diagrams! It's ages since I last read a book with pictures!!
One of the things that annoy me about the book is his tendency to be well, not quite correct. He asks on page 216 '. . .today almost all Japanese and Scandinavians are literate but most Iraquis are not: why did writing nevertheless arise nearly four thousand years earlier in Iraq?' Well ok he finished the book in 1988, but in 1995 literacy in Iraq was 58%, rising to 74% in 2000 and dropping to 40% in 2003 (after sanctions and the beginning of the war).
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=iz&v=39
One of the things that annoy me about the book is his tendency to be well, not quite correct. He asks on page 216 '. . .today almost all Japanese and Scandinavians are literate but most Iraquis are not: why did writing nevertheless arise nearly four thousand years earlier in Iraq?' Well ok he finished the book in 1988, but in 1995 literacy in Iraq was 58%, rising to 74% in 2000 and dropping to 40% in 2003 (after sanctions and the beginning of the war).
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=iz&v=39