![]() ![]() 1-7: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (1990) The Cartoon History of the Universe I, Vol. Pictured at right you can see my first editions as I collected them over the past two decades: I'm going to focus entirely on his historical contributions here, but he's written similar guides to statistics, genetics, and many other topics. ![]() Who is the genius behind all of this? None other than Larry Gonick, a Harvard mathematician who decided to draw cartoons about science and history. (Young gents out there: the right kind of lady loves a literate man.) I was one of two people to get an A the other being a girl that I was courting and with whom I was sharing a lot of that great cartoon history. In a college World History course, I recognized the inferior quality of the assigned texts, and used TCHOTU I & II as my source material for exams. The first book in this series was edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (she saved it from the reject pile at Doubleday) and the work was praised by Carl Sagan among others. Now, for those of you that are beginning to smirk at the idea of me reading "comic books" as a teenager and grown adult, I will kindly ask you to kiss my Scots-Irish ass. That was the first step in a 20-year journey that ended last week. He asked for it for Christmas, and received it. In the fall of 1990 a 14-year old Benito read about something called The Cartoon History of the Universe in the science magazine Discover. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |