​Have you ever wondered how it will all end? And by "all", I mean everything… space, time, matter, light… the works.

The author is a cosmologist. She has a good sense of humor.
First… do not sweat it. The end is not due for quite some time. When it does come, months and months from now, it might come as space unraveling. If that happens, you will not see it coming (because it is moving towards you at the speed of light), and you will not notice when it arrives. Because you, along with everything else, will be gone. 
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I was familiar with about 70 percent of the book's content. These rest was both interesting, and opaque in the sense that the conclusions come from what I assume is very deep math. So rather than summarize it, I will simply list it as a good read. It is quite approachable, even if this is the first thing you have read about the subject.

This book addresses the biggest questions we can ask, or at least many of them.

It covers a lot of ground. The author is a biochemist (and a local), and as you might imagine, the book address physics, astronomy, the history of Earth, etc. and biology, with the emphasis on biology.

It lacks an index which is a real shame. The biology sections of the book introduces many scientific words with  non-obvious definitions. I am not a biologist, and an index would have helped me get through them.

The author is aware of this and does his best to explain complex chains of actions in simple terms. He writes in a very folksy style, likes Douglas Adams, and cracks the odd pun or four.

There is little point in summarizing a book that is summarizing literally everything.

Life started about 4 billion years ago(bya). Then came LUCA, the Last Universal Common  Ancestor at about 3.5 bya. The first categories of life were  Archaea, Eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus), and Bacteria (cells without a nucleus). We are eukaryotes. Over the eons, the Earth has been molten, and then frozen, and then hot again; has had no oxygen to having an atmosphere loaded with it; gone from low CO2 to high CO2 and back, and so on. Sex was invented and evolution took off. There have been several mass extinctions in history, The Permian was the largest, and the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 mya was the last.


I finished this book, but did struggle with biology sections…. Largely because biology is really complex. Worth reading, especially if you have a little biology in your back pocket. 

​Snyder also wrote Bloodlands which I have "reviewed".

This book deal with the geopolitical statehood issues that gave rise to the Holocaust. The book makes several points that are surprising. The main point is that being a member of a state was all important in the survival of Jewish people. If you were a German Jew, your chances of survival were far better than if you were a stateless Polish Jew...stateless because Germany and Russia destroyed the Polish state.

In Hitler's mind at the end of the war was the idea that the defeat of the Nazis was brought about by a worldwide Jewish plot and, if he had only ordered the gassing of a few thousand Jews at the start, Germany's victory would have been assured. Hitler said "A people that is rid of its Jews  returns spontaneously to the natural order." "Lebensraum" was a term Hitler liked. It meant both living space  for the German people and "living room",  as in a cozy room. Hitler's quest for lebensraum was justified by racial theories. Inferior races must be displaced (e.g.: the North American Indian population).

Poland had the lions share of Jews in Europe. Both Berlin and Warsaw supported the displacement of Jews from Europe… possibly to Madagascar or, more likely, Palestine.

Anschluss with Austria was desirable for Germany, mostly because Austria had a lot of money and Germany was in need. Austria took it out on their Jewish population. Humiliation, pain and flight had come to the Jewish people… the Holocaust had started. Neighbor states did not want them.

Jews were stripped of citizenship. Stateless Jews could be mistreated as one pleased... without consequence.

An invention of Hitler was the judeobolshevik plot. There was no such plot. If you were not a Jew, you were a bolshevik, and vice verse. Labels can be used for evil. The Baltic states used this to purge (kill or  deport)  all Jews by the end of 1941. The judeobolshevik  myth was used to kill Jews, with Soviet citizens help. This was done by the einsatzcommandos (special forces). Many people would spontaneously switch sides several times as the Soviets and the Germans exchanged territory.

Who knew? This is question that has troubled me. How many Germans knew about the mass killings of Jews? Snyder said: "It is possible that many Germans did not know what happened at Auschwitz. It is not possible that many Germans did not know about the mass murder of  Jews."  Many German families got rich stealing Jewish property.

Estonia and Denmark were much alike. Both occupied  by Germany; both Baltic states; each home to a small number of Jews, and each declared Judenfrei (free of Jews). But at the wars end, Estonia had the lowest percent of  Jewish survivors and Denmark the highest.

Denmark was maintained as a state. Estonia was not.  Denmark did not border the USSR. It was deemed that the Final Solution would not be acceptable to Denmark.  On October 2, 1943, the Germans captured 401 Danish Jews. They all survived the war.


Anti-Semitism  was baked into many countries. Romania adopted Germany's Jewish laws. France enacted anti-Semitic  laws and as educated Poles were being killed in Poland, educated Frenchmen were getting jobs in the civil service to track Jews in France.

Another cold fact: from July 1944 to June 1945, the US only admitted 4,705 Jews… roughly how many Jews were gassed at Treblinka on any given day.

Of course, there were tales of enormous heroism and bravery as well. The Bjelski brothers in Belarus (see the movie Defiance with Daniel Craig) for example. Raoul Wallenburg was the most effective rescuer of Jews. He died in a Soviet prison. The church was hard to find. Only one Christian Churchman of high rank (Andrei Sheptyts'kyi) acted to save Jews.

The Roman Catholic Church took no stand on the mass murder of Jews because they felt the Jews were responsible for kill Jesus.  

One of the major conclusions of the book is the need for a Jewish state, Statehood was the key to living through WWII as a Jew.

This book is a little dry, but hugely enlightening. It certainly changed my view of the politics of the day.  It also reinforced a  belief of mine, namely that religion poisons everything.