Conville & Walsh
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About the Size of It
The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things
- Author: Warwick Cairns
- Category: Non-fiction Other / General Humour
- Publisher: Macmillan
- Pub date: 21 September 2007
- Length: 150 pages
About About the Size of It
A full and convincing account of why our well-tried and trusted traditional measures make human sense
- Alexander McCall Smith
His direct, engaging conversational prose is a delight to read...inspirational
- Andrew Roberts
Absolutely masterly. Lucid and wise and touching and absolutely right
- Jilly Cooper
ABOUT THE SIZE OF IT is a serious, but seriously funny book about measuring things. Readers will find out: Why an old Wellington boot is as important an instrument of spacial awareness as was ever invented? Why the size of a space shuttle’s fuel tanks has more to do with the proportions of a horse’s rump than rocket science?
How much water it takes to drown you, and how much you can hold in one hand while doing something else are all essential principles that explain how man has balanced and judged his world since the dawn of time. In part a case for the continued use of traditional British measures, this book also celebrates the richness and commonality of systems from around the world, and how they were formed by the one guiding principle of measurement no one ever mentions: that most of us have better things to think about.
About the Author
Warwick Cairns was born in Dagenham in 1962. He studied English at Yale under Harold Bloom, has travelled in the deserts of Northern Kenya with Wilfred Thesiger and has worked drilling wells on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota. He now lives in Windsor with his wife and two daughters.