“48 Hours to Chaos: An Engineer Looks at Life and How the World Really Works” by John D. Waterman is a book that covers a lot of territory, from what our planet was like before man up to present day mankind. The first part is interesting when Mr. Waterman is giving us the time-line for earths 4.6 billion years of history (Chapter 1) and the meaning of life (Chapter 3), but gets really interesting when he starts talking about how our societies evolved and how we are affected by choices we make or that we let others make for us.

Mr. Waterman keeps his own beliefs out of this book and presents to the reader the facts. He discusses how pecking orders in society come about and what motivates humans in our actions. He covers the different kinds of governments and the pros and cons about them. What I particularly liked was that Mr. Waterman kept a sense of humor throughout the book, mostly in his footnotes. For example, in Chapter Two, footnote 4 is as follows:

[4] Full disclosure: The scene featuring the time machine is a fictional device used to illustrate the points about life on the early Earth. Time travel is actually impossible under the current scientific understanding of reality, and will remain so until the second law of thermodynamics is superseded by a more sophisticated explanation of the underlying principles.

In many of the chapters, Mr. Waterman also provides stories to help illustrate his point and often a summary of the chapter. This book would be a welcome addition to any classroom and I am more informed than I was before. Mr. Waterman is able to talk to the reader as an intelligent human being and also shows that you can inject humor into any subject.

**This book was received for free through Goodreads First Reads. That in no way influenced my review.** ( )