If you are someone who is fascinated by the history of the world, this is a book for you. All the snippets of information that you learned during history classes in school will come together in your mind to form the big picture. To me, many secrets were revealed and almost everything that I read blew my mind. I found Beyond the Known on a list of highly anticipated Fall 2019 books and took my search to NetGalley to see if I could read it. Many thanks to Simon and Schuster who approved my request, and Andrew for writing this book, as they allowed me to go on a journey back in time and then back to the present and the future, without leaving the comforts of my home.

I have always been fascinated by history and did not realize how much I wanted it all to play out like a movie in my mind until I read about this book. When we learn history in school, it is usually very centered around the country we live in. My education in India was no different and while many of my years were full of the happenings in South Asia in general, and India in particular, in the 1900s (those are the years I clearly remember), a lot about the foundations of civilizations has long escaped my memory as I have grown older. This book was the perfect way to learn more! And I was not disappointed.

Beyond the Known begins at the very beginning, when our ancestors were still in Africa. It goes all the way into the time humans landed on the moon and how we might go forward. Andrew did an amazing job of putting together a volume of history that touches on the whole world. You won’t find the details of everything in this book, but you will learn many little things that you might not have known before. Many of the curiosities that I had as I read the book were answered in subsequent chapters and I was quite impressed with that. It is the only book in my memory so far that took me to the depths of the unknown, things I had known but hadn’t pondered for long on before. This is a book I will go back to time and time again when I am looking for some inspiration about not just mankind but also the things we have accomplished and the things we are capable of.

I hope you will pick it up!

#BeyondTheKnown #NetGalley

Beautiful time traveling around the civilization, evolution and space race. Andrew provides a depth and fresh about how technology transformed human including dark side of sciences. A very interesting read.

Great science/history writing

I loved this book. It has everything I want in good non-fiction writing, including a conversational tone and a good sense of humor. As a book about exploration, it falls into the overlapping areas of history and science, with emphasis on the former, and with the latter well-explained. The footnotes were also great, adding a lot of clarification, additional information, and humor. I strongly recommend this book.