... engrossing ... Dolnick here conjures up another intricate intellectual caper. With its thrilling dissection of the decoding process, it calls to mind Margalit Fox’s The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code (2013), about three scholars who deciphered Linear B, the 3,400-year-old script excavated from the ruins of Crete’s Minoan civilization. Like Fox, Dolnick exuberantly captures the frustrations and triumphs of scholars as they puzzle out the meaning of long-dead runes, 'seduced by tantalizing clues and then careening into dead ends and losing hope, but then spotting new markers and dashing off jubilantly once more' ... Dolnick’s stirring account makes it clear that both decoders deserve scholarly immortality.
Dolnick has a remarkable ability to explain and contextualize complex topics and create compelling, lucid nonfiction narratives ... In a conversational, accessible tone, Dolnick draws readers into the mystery. He introduces linguist rivals Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion and takes immense care to illustrate the daunting nature of their quest. The result is a book that’s much more than a simple biography or dull history. Readers are immersed in the urgency of these scholars’ task and the weight of why it mattered ... Reading The Writing of the Gods is like tagging along for a dazzling intellectual journey of discovery, akin to listening to a fascinating lecture. Dolnick brings this period of history to life in the same way the Rosetta Stone revived ancient Egypt.
Dolnick tells the fascinating story of one of the world’s most famous objects and the 20-year odyssey to unravel its mysteries ... Dolnick, a former science writer for The Boston Globe, is the author of numerous books on scientific subjects written for a general audience. His clear and engaging style makes accessible the complex science and art of decoding. He does a masterful job of guiding the reader through the labyrinth of false starts, wrong turns, and dead ends that prefaced a fuller understanding of the symbols ... Along the way, the reader is treated to brief, illuminating excursions into related subjects ... an engrossing account of one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history, one that brought a dead language, and a buried culture, back to life.
... Dolnick does a first-rate job of storytelling; his scenes are vivid and his cast of characters wide-ranging. Too, he writes with wit ... A goodly portion of this work instructs us in the art of reading—or, more properly, deciphering the signs and signifiers of the lost Egyptian alphabet. We take small side trips to decoding Linear B and cuneiform, the Zodiac cipher ,and the Nazi Enigma machine. But the bulk of this inquiry takes us through a tortious process of deduction, the way to see a cartouche representing Ptolemy or Cleopatra or the female pharaoh Hatshepaut. It’s a heady business: full of pitfalls, pratfalls, wrong turnings, and dead ends.
As these two brilliant minds decipher the Rosetta Stone, so does the reader. The text dives deep into the method of the stone’s decoding, as well as ciphers and lost languages at large. Prolific nonfiction author and prior science writer at the Boston Globe, Dolnick’s prose is beautifully lyrical, and will engage even those unfamiliar with the three converging subjects of ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone, and Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.
... [a] meticulous new book ... At the heart of this sprawling account full of astonishing takeaways are two 'rival geniuses,' Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion ... Dolnick treats their efforts like a thriller, with both men making game-changing breakthroughs, benefiting from shrewd guesses, and being hampered by preconceptions or bad luck ... While the codebreaking chapters captivate, the supporting material—covering the development of writing, the history and culture of ancient Egypt, Napoleon's military campaigns in the region, the academic milieu of the early 19th century and more—can be every bit as entertaining. Dolnick is a diligent researcher ... He can be didactic and tends to overdo it on the metaphors explaining the challenges confronting Young and Champollion, but he seems genuinely awed by his subject, reflecting on humanity's approach to knowledge, how we judge discovery, and why we either venerate or denigrate what we do not understand. It is indeed a remarkable tale[.]
Dolnick presents a fast-paced intellectual adventure for general readers that surveys the invention of writing and the processes of deciphering and decoding. Highly recommended for anyone who relishes challenging puzzles.
Dolnick lucidly explains the complex steps taken to decipher the relic, and offers brisk and enlightening history lessons on the first appearances of written language, Roman emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, the Scientific Revolution, and Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. The result is an immersive and knowledgeable introduction to one of archaeology’s greatest breakthroughs.
... offers a strong corrective, describing not only how the Rosetta Stone was found, but also how, over several long decades, it was deciphered. He creates an engaging portrait of the two men—Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young—who were mainly responsible for cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs ... Dolnick provides an exciting narrative of the journey to legibility, and he effectively describes why it was such an important—and excruciating—process. However, the author sometimes goes awry when he strains too hard for wittiness...Worse are the banalities that stud Dolnick’s analyses ... Accessibility is no crime, of course, but the author’s desire to make the book accessible to everyone leads him to oversimplify his subject with labored asides ... Despite these flaws, Dolnick makes complicated linguistic challenges not only comprehensible, but also especially vivid for readers new to the subject, and, as in his previous books, his enthusiasm is infectious ... A largely engaging yet sometimes pedestrian look at language and the limits of what we can understand.
