Human excellence throughout the ages has been attributed to everything from luck to sweat. Author Charles Murray puts the "excellence" issue to task by producing (with paper and ink supplied by HarperCollins) a book about the greatest marvels (and the nature of the marvels) of humankind called: Human Accomplishment.

If you didn't catch Charles Murray on C-SPAN touting Human Accomplishment, you might see him in Libertarian mode over at the American Enterprise Institute as he is a scholar there. Murray also is a W.H. Brady Scholar, and an alumni of both Harvard and M.I.T. Mr. Murray writes news articles ad libitum, and has written other books such as Losing Ground, The Underclass Revisited, Income Inequality and IQ, and also was a copilot in a book that raised an ire-storm a few years back: The Bell Curve.

Human Accomplishment is a four act work, broken down into sections of collection, identification, plotting, and finally orientation of accomplishment research. Using statistics as a translation tool, the reader begins to unveil the mystery of achievement from the focused period of year 800 before Christ to 1950 anno Domini. The art and science subjects that are researched in this book are: "Astronomy," "Biology," "Chemistry," "Earth Sciences," "Physics," "Mathematics," "Medicine," "Technology," "Combined Sciences," "Western Music," "Philosophy" (both Western and extra-regional), "Literature" (ditto), "Art" (ditto), and "Chinese Painting." As well as describing who got picked and why, the book explains the trend of accomplishment over the millennia, it divulges what could cause/or not cause the fluctuations, hints at what some elements for success could be, and concludes with what that information implies in our current time.

In context of history this book elevates the illuminating question that in regards to the current situation of human achievement, can understanding of past situations where accomplishment flourished give us the ability to replicate an environment where more achievements can prosper?

POSITIVES:
The thesis was unhurriedly and painstakingly developed. Using the comprehensible mathematics of statistics the book presents a transparent analysis and easily follow-able argument. Although the book may seem to have an intensely scholarly chalk, the ideas and discoveries are fascinating and draw the average reader on. What is more, this book is (although not merely so) a book about the top twenty achieving individuals in the arts and sciences; it is compelling to test one's own knowledge of those who made the list. Personally, I was disheartened to find out that I had only read 35% of the authors on the top twenty "Western Literature" list. "Ibsen?" Doesn't he make guitars? Finally, this book needed to be written, and it will likely have a long and busy shelf life.

NEGATIVES:
Since the book had a largely scholarly dimension, the publisher should have just gone ahead and packaged the book with some graphing software with all the research findings so the reader could play around with the data to make them live a little more. Other than that point, this book is fastened down better than a British Clipper ship.

RATING:***** (out of seven stars)