No, it’s not about Galactic Guideor from the Library of the excellent series Elevationby David Brin; we are rather in the presence of The ultimate encyclopedia – See and know everything about the worldpublished by Hurtibise editions. Vast program, it goes without saying.
Very extensive program, in fact. How can we condense all human knowledge into a few hundred pages? Especially if you want to garnish everything with polished photographs and neat visuals?
Well, we reduce most subjects to their bare minimum, first of all. And, if it is possible, we go so far as to overload most of the pages with so much information, so many photos, so many visual artifices that we almost feel overwhelmed, even attacked by the content of a book.
It is not, moreover, that the average reader will not appreciate this flood of information, these magnificent photos, these informative graphics. There are simply too many of them. Everywhere. All the time. Almost every page is overflowing with things to read and watch. And the whole thing seems thrown here and there, in no particular order. Not forgetting blocks of text entirely in capitals…
Fortunately – and this is undoubtedly one of the most interesting aspects of the book – we called on several specialists to allow them to talk about their specialties. The thing is brief, but quite complete, and above all particularly interesting. Furthermore, this also corresponds to a less intense visual presentation, the time to be able to read the interview in question. What more could you ask for?
As is the case with other books of the genre published by Hurtubise, the issue is not one of access to information. Because yes, it is more pleasant to have access to condensed knowledge, rather than having to go through dozens, even hundreds of reference works, or even Wikipedia articles. The problem, with The ultimate encyclopediais that the whole thing is so overloaded with information that we frankly wonder if we are not going to get a headache by wanting to learn more about jumping spiders… or about the three blacks . It’s a shame.
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