Alexandru Ionut Bujdei

loved the writing and the speed of the narative.
however, I feel that something big is missing from the story.

nice storytelling filled with historical information. good stuff. I like this author.
I had not considered the immensity of what was Napoleons campaign in Russia.
also, the book made me search for old motorcycles to buy and I found an old Ural for sale. almost considered it.

some stories were really nice but others too hard to follow

I've watched interviews and listened to podcasts with Graham Hancock for a couple of years now. The pieces of Graham's ideas were a little bit mixed in my mind and this book does a good job of building the puzzle.

Bringing clarity about the past is hard work and there's no doubt that when we're trying to build a timeline of our species we encounter some pretty big anomalies. Outlandish as they may seem, Graham's ideas try to provide an alternative to the current mainstream-historian-approved timeline of our evolution that tries to make room for the current anomalies to fit it. Well, at least he's asking more in-depth questions about them in the first place. Some theories stand on much better ground than others but even the wobbly ones add to the whole mystique of the book.

What's most important is that, since writing this book, there have been at least two discoveries, naming here Gobekli Tepe and neighbouring buried megalithic complexes in Turkey and the Hiawatha crater in Greenland that fit in with Graham's work. Moreover, there's this “shit just keeps getting older” pattern of discoveries from all around the world that make the current narrative more and more out of place as time goes by.

A lot of people either love or hate Graham Hancock, but one thing's for sure, since writing this book he's been more often proven right than wrong. In my opinion, we don't have to close the book and believe Graham's got the answer, we should rather consider that the right questions are not being asked enough.

This is the saddest book I've ever read.

Just as it happens in some industries where the poor are exploited to no end, in the Congo, men, women and children pay the highest of prices in order to gather Cobalt out of the ground.

That Cobalt then goes up a long chain of corruption, neglect and especially greed until it ends up in some of the batteries that power the electrical devices and cars we use in richer areas of the world.

Siddharth does a great job of presenting the history of region, what bought it to this horrible state, the local factions involved in the Cobalt mining industry and what could be done to improve the lives of poorest people on the planet today.

The investigation into the long chain of lack of accountability is often interrupted by heartbreaking stories and interviews.

Somehow, we know that there are monsters in the world who profit off the backs of children yet we are rarely confrunted with such a level of greed and suffering.

Unfortunately, given the current state of the world, the lack of political power in the area and the greed of the economic system, nothing will change for the people of the Congo anytime soon.

Hell is an imaginary place, and given what I've read, the mining regions in the Congo are the closest real thing to it. That I know of thus far.

The book reminded me of a short story written by Ursula K. LeGuin - The ones who walk away from Omelas. I highly recommend you to read it.