Jean Paul Van Bendegem is (was?) one of my favorite professors during my postgraduate studies (MEng, and PhD) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. I followed courses on the Philosophy of Science and Ontologies. His enthusiastic teaching and charismatic presence were admirable. We also share the same native city, Ghent. Although I recognize Ghent as my hometown, others questioned whether me being a true Ghentian while growing up. This is why I “fled” to Brussels, where I was among other Zinnekes. Anyhoo, I always enjoy reading his works, and this book allowed me to learn a thing or two about my hometown. While the book was OK, it was still enjoyable to imagine how he would utter the phrases he wrote down.

Three things annoyed me in this book, however. First, his use of URLs to refer to sources that are dropped in the text. I prefer the use of footnotes for URLs as they distub the flow of the text. Secondly, he sometimes uses numbered references (fourteen in total) in the text and I couldn’t figure out what those references were. Other references to the bibliography followed a different style. Either I missed something, or something went wrong in the publishing process. It could be that the book was written in MS Word and those were anchors. As such, the book could have then been written for users of eReaders. Thirdly, the quality of the images. The images are small and printed in grayscale, as such, some images had little to no added value other then allowing one the confirm whether they have the right reference if they were to look for high-quality images. That said, it could be that the book as primarily inteded for eReaders that allow users to zoom in on pictures.

My rating: ⭐⭐