What do the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia have in common, as opposed to every other nation in the world? The answer is that they are the only nations not to have embraced the metric system. Inevitably, they will; their scientists all use it, and cars are made by it, and trading with other nations requires it. The inevitability of victory of the metric system is something Napoleon himself recognized: "Conquests will come and go," he declared, "but this work will endure." The work he spoke of was the defining of the meter, and it was a task begun in the final days of the French monarchy. In 1792, two French astronomers set out separately on the quest to make an accurate measurement of the globe, a measurement that would enable people to use the constant of the size of the globe as the foundation for rational weights and measures. Their plan was to measure enough of the distance of a north-south meridian through Paris that they would then be able to calculate the distance from the equator to the north pole, and one ten-millionth of that natural distance would be the meter. They aimed for unprecedented precision, and they got it, but they didn't get it exactly, for fascinating reasons all wonderfully told in _The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World_ (The Free Press) by Ken Alder.

It seems a simple task; a line of longitude from Dunkirk south to Barcelona would be mapped and calculated by triangulating high points, like mountains and steeples, along the line. In practice, it was devilishly, maddeningly, and lethally difficult. Weather, disease, the ravages of time, superstition, politics, and war all conspired to make the work of a few months stretch into years. The astronomer Delambre, heading north, was mistaken for an aristocrat, detained, and suspected of using a church tower as a royalist beacon. His partner Méchain, who took the southern route, had similar problems, and worse ones, as war with Spain erupted while he was in Spain. He had a fiendish obsession with exactitude, and made measurements of Barcelona's latitude by reckoning from the stars. Unfortunately, they were wrong due to refraction from the atmosphere, and Méchain knew they were wrong, but couldn't get them right. The knowledge of the error tortured him for the rest of his life. Méchain's error is not the error referred to in the book's subtitle. All the triangulation work had shown that the critics had been right from before the beginning, for the work could not produce a perfectly precise meter; the world was too irregular for that. The astronomers' work had produced, however, documentation of the more interesting fact of Earthly irregularity.

This story could not have been presented in a more dramatic and entertaining manner. An epic about the foundation of the metric system might seem to be impossible, but Alder has made the personalities interesting. He has also made clear the process of triangulation, the equipment required, and the scientific philosophy of what an error actually is. He has well described the history of the period, and the failures of the French Revolution, such as the calendar containing twelve months of three ten-day weeks each, or the clock with ten one-hundred minute hours in a day. Beside the origin of the admirable metric system of weights and measures, Alder has also given a brief history of how the world has adopted the system, which Americans ought to know about, since, with reluctance, we are having to use it more and more

The Measure of all Things - Ken Alder

This is a fascinating book! The subject (A French expedition to determine the length of the meter) sounds deadly dull, but the author weaves a thoroughly engrossing tangled web of science, personalities and French history around the time of the revolution. Do not be put off getting the book if science scares you: There is little science in it. If you are a scientist and lover of France, as I am, you will find yourself in heaven as the many of the places mentioned are places you may have visited. For example, the Pantheon in Paris, now a final resting place for many famous French, was one of the sites used for triangulation. But I learned more about its history in this book than in any other! In short, buy this book!

THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS is a delightfully written account of the quest by Delambre and Mechain, two astronomers who, in the midst of the French Revolution, attempt to use the latest technology (at that time) to triangulate various points along a meridian to find the perfect measurement, the meter. (One ten millionth the distance between the North Pole and the Equator) Along the way, they combat rapidly changing governments, ignorance and fear of the unknown, and most importantly (in Mechain's case), a crippling fear of error. The twists and turns of this enterprise are amazingly well-researched by Adler, and they are written in a style that is both informative and entertaining. Adler suggests that this quest led to nothing less than the transformation of how science was perceived by its practitioners; the change from the idea of savants (who believed in certain absolutes in science) to scientists (who were "engaged in a struggle to quantify their [scientists] uncertainty. ") The metric systems importance to France and the world at large is explained in political and economic terms that are easily digested by the reader, but at the heart of this book is the basic concept that how man deals with error; it can be his salvation or in the case of Mechain, his downfall. This is a wonderful examination of this momentous undertaking and well worth the time of anyone interested in man's constant efforts to utilize science for the improvement of the human condition.

This is resoundingly the photography book of the millennium...Nars is able to capture the fantasies and characters we all have hidden within us through an extraordinary variety of photos. As I viewed the book I felt that I was being transported to an entirely different planet...one, I might add, that I would like to visit. All inhibition has been set aside so that we may (as an audience) participate in a festival of photos which are clearly the magic of Francois Nars. This book deserves nothing less than to be displayed on every coffee table...then we'll see who (or what) becomes the life of the party!

As a lover of photography, I found this book to be something worth its weight in gold. Francois Nars has managed to seize hold of the readers mind and take us into a world of his making. Famous faces, both glamourous and ugly come together in a splendid gathering of provocative images that titillate the mind. Nars has somehow managed to create sites that both shock and please the eyes with their revealing as well as concealing nature. This is not a book about Nars' cosmetics, as some might expect, but rather about the imagination and creativity of Francois Nars, the artist. It is not meant to be all brightness and beauty; it is a meeting of opposite forces, dark and light, pretty and ugly. I thoroughly enjoyed it and still, after having gone through the pages many times, find this book to be as exciting to read as I did the first time I picked it up.

I discovered Francois Nar's book, X-Ray, two days ago, and I cannot stop thinking about it. There are really no in-between's with this book: you love it or you don't. In photography, I especially love good portraiture, and since, have liked portraits done in black-and-white. In X-Ray, Nars combines all my favorite loves: fashion, make-up, and personality-- in wonderful, vibrant COLOR!! A particular eye can appreciate the sequence of monographs, one by one: the full-face photo of Cindy Crawford au naturel! Every portrait is a surprise...And to think that Nars did the styling, make-up, and picture-taking himself makes this book all the more precious. This book can show us how big and small this world is, our differences and preferences and similarities. How we each have different sides to our personality, some more obvious than others.

besides being a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, with a map ,it takes you out of this world for a few days: early America circa 1802. Lack of mention of names of people this french traveler encountered makes you think that michaux is just recounting his father's earlier trip to the usa.

This is not biography in a traditional sense. In fact if you expect to follow thru Malraux life, you will be disappointed. Highly philosophical, and complex, the author is focusing so much on deconstructing Malraux's work and life, rather than telling us who Malraux is. Not recommended as a biographical work.