Entries Tagged 'books' ↓

- The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, by Robert Middlekauff.  A history of the American revolutionary period, from the end of the French and Indian Wars through the writing of the Constitution.  I picked this up when Julie and I were visiting Colonial Williamsburg a couple months back and I realized that I didn’t know enough about this era.  The book gets a little dry sometimes, but provides a good overview of the period, covering military, political, diplomatic, economic, and lifestyle history of this time.  It gave me what I wanted, which was a solid overview.  My biggest takeaway?  The crucial role that mob violence held in the founding of this nation.  America was born in a series of riots, and the first founding fathers were not shy about using threats to life, limb, and property in order to enflame the mob against British encroachments on their lives.

- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith.  Graham-Smith answers the question “What addition would improve the classic regency romance novel?”  His answer: zombie mayhem!  He takes Austen’s text and adds scenes here and there of zombies attacking, and of the warrior Bennett girls trained in the eastern arts of the warrior.  A really fun read for those who enjoy both Jane Austen and George Romero - come on, there must be a few more of you out there!

- Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell.  A present from my son Andy, and an excellent one: I strongly recommend this book.  Gladwell is expert at putting together a collection of fascinating bits of data and using it to illustrate a broader point.  In this case, he looks at what makes a person successful and concludes that the myth of the astonishing natural talent who achieves great things due to native ability is just that - a myth.  Instead, to succeed you need a combination of hard work, the luck of being born at a time and place where you have the opportunity to succeed, and a cultural background that prepares you for the challenges you are likely to face in life.  A few of the many data points that he uses to illustrate this:

– Of the 75 richest people in history, 14 were born in one nine year span in the 19th century, putting them in a cohort that came of age at just the right time to become gilded era robber barons.  (The two richest men in history, John Jay Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, are among this 14.)

– In one conservatory class, musical ability correlates exactly with the amount of practice each student has done over his lifespan.  The virtuosos all have done 10,000 hours or more of practice over their lives, the talented-but-not-top-notch have done 8,000 hours, and the also-ran future middle-school music teachers have done 6,000 hours or less.  (To show how much practice this is, if you practice 40 hours a week for 50 weeks in a year (basically, a full-time job), you’ve put in 2000 hours for that year.  Do that for five years and you’ve got your 10,000 hours.)

– The rate of plane crashes correlates directly with the assertiveness level of the culture that the crew comes from.  This is due to the fact that copilots from non-assertive cultures are less likely to force pilots to pay attention when they see a problem occurring.

BUT, there’s good news, especially on this last front.  You can overcome your cultural biases when you are aware of them and take steps to address them.  The book talks about how Korean Air Lines (KAL) was one of the most dangerous airlines in the world around ten years ago, but after instituting an assertiveness class for its flight crews, accident rates dropped dramatically and it become one of the world’s safest airlines.

- The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland, edited by Roy Foster.  A survey of Irish history, with each period covered by a different author.  Julie and I are planning a trip to Ireland and I read this in partial preparation.  But I really can’t recommend it - it’s awfully dry and downplays some of the more dramatic elements of Irish history.  What’s worse for a survey, it assumes a lot of knowledge from the reader.  Often it mentions key figures in passing without explaining why they are important, or how they came by their reputation.  I had read another history of Ireland a few years back and so was not entirely lost, but if you come to this book cold, you’re asking for tedium and confusion.  If you are looking for an Irish history, look for that other one - Malachy McCourt’s History of Ireland.  McCourt is quite opinionated, and you won’t mistake his book for a scholarly history.  But you’ll learn a lot, and it’s a fun read.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman. This is a young adult/older kid’s book about a young girl who finds herself in an alternate world with an evil version of her parents. Entertaining, though slight - and there is going to be a stop-action movie of it made by Tim Burton coming out this year. (And oh - Gaiman’s Graveyard Book, which I wrote about here previously, just won a Newberry Medal. Well deserved, in my view.)

The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’m a big fan of Bujold - she’s one of the handful of authors who I’ll read whenever she comes out with a new book. I’m much less of a fan of this series, which is a combination romance and fantasy-adventure. Not bad, but not her strongest work. But this, volume four, appears to be the end, so I can look forward to having her write in other worlds again.

I am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter. I mentioned this in my last blog post. This book examines the nature of human consciousness, walking a fine line between those who claim that consciousness results in some mystical quantity (often referred to as a “soul”), and those who would say that we’re all only a bunch of particles doing their particle thing. Instead, Hofstadter sees our brains as being symbol processing machines that are sufficiently complex to represent and reflect on ourselves. In other words, we are complex feedback loops, capable not only of presenting photographic feedback (as happens, for example, when you turn a TV camera on a television that shows what that camera is recording), but of containing ourselves as a complex symbol susceptible to detailed analytical reflection. Add in a dollop of some of the more interesting math of the twentieth century (the work of Kurt Goedel, who managed to prove that there are truths outside of any mathematical system that cannot be proven using the tools of that system) and you have a book that deeply impressed me.

I’ll go even further: this book has come closest of anything that I’ve ever come across to matching what I think is the source of the self, and will, after some thought, probably go on the short list of books that had a profound impact on the way I think about the world. I’m probably going to write more about this here in the weeks to come - I’m still processing it, deciding where I agree and disagree with Hofstadter, figuring how it all fits into my own world view. But for now, I leave you with this observation by Hofstadter: consciousness is an illusion viewed by an illusion, lacking the solid reality of the things out in the world, but nevertheless real in the eye of the illusion. And we, of course, are the illusion.

Of late, I’ve been reading I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. I am really enjoying this book - it may end up on that short list of books that change the way I look at the world. (I’ll have to post that list here at some point.)

The book is about human consciousness, about what makes up the “I” that we all feel in our heads. Hofstadter’s view is that the “I” is a special kind of feedback loop - that consciousness occurs when a logical system becomes complex enough to represent and reflect on itself in symbolic form. He ties this to the mathematical work of Kurt Godel (some of the most interesting math out there) and to feedback loops of the sort that you get when you turn a television camera to view the television that shows what the camera is “seeing.” Truly fascinating stuff.

On the way home tonight, I was listening to Radiolab. This is a public radio show and podcast about science, and I strongly recommend it. This week’s episode is titled “Yellow Fluff and Other Curiosities” and is about the nature of scientific discovery. In one part of the episode the hosts interview Paul Davies, director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at the University of Arizona. Davies is examining the question of why we are here - why human beings exist. His view is that human beings exist because we provide a mechanism whereby the universe can perceive itself, that because perception comes only from intelligence, the universe found it necessary to form intelligent life as the means by which it can consider itself. (Rather conveniently for him, this means that the highest purpose in life is to study the universe, for in doing so you are fulfilling the universe’s purpose.)

And the final piece of the puzzle: my view of the purpose of human life. Meaning and purpose are purely subjective constructs. They do not exist in the objective world - they only exist in human minds. Therefore, the universe itself would have no meaning, no purpose, were it not for humanity. If you think that meaning and purpose are important, as I do (though recognizing that “importance” is itself a subjective construct), then the fact that meaning and purpose only exist within human minds is the most important possible purpose of human life. (There’s clearly a lot more than just that. I hope to post more on this at some point.)

As I was listening to the Davies interview today, all of these ideas came colliding together. Suppose Hofstadter is right, and consciousness is a special kind of feedback loop that can understand itself. But if Davies is right, then what we are really considering is not only our selves, but the universe. And, of course, we are part of the universe. So the universe itself is a feedback loop that understands itself, but it does so by using us as its mind.

Break it down a little further. When you think of yourself, do you think only of your mind? Or do you think of your mind and body? I suggest that most people think of their mind and body. But if that’s the case, and if Hofstadter is right in his view of consciousness, then only part of your self (that part that you call your mind) contains the consciousness of the whole.

So apply that to the universe. Our minds are the part of the universe that contain its consciousness. Therefore, we are in a true sense the mind of the universe. And, of course, that ties in with my own views of the meaning of life, because meaning exists only in the mind, and therefore the meaning of the universe exists in its mind, which is our minds.

I’m sure all of this seems fairly confusing. I’m lost in a swirl about this myself. (I literally felt my flesh tingle on hearing the Davies interview as all of this started coming together in my mind, and it isn’t all together yet.) I could only babble about it to Julie at dinner as I ate a rather excellent chicken marsala that she made. And I’m not at all sure where all this is taking me.

But I can’t wait to get there.

It’s been several months since I’ve last listed what I’m reading.  I’ve read many good pages in that time, though, so let’s catch up with a special year’s-end edition.

- The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.  A huge fantasy series, four books and counting, each book running from 800-1000 pages.  My kids love them, which pretty much make them required reading for me, if only so that I understand the dinner conversation.  I’ve read all four: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows.  The books center around a massive civil war set in a fantasy world that is a rough analog of England in the high medieval period, with some clear overtones of the War of the Roses, but with magic, undead, and dragons thrown in for good measure.

I’ve got a love-hate relationship with these books.  They are entertaining, with a vast array of generally interesting characters.  But they often lack narrative drive, they bludgeon the reader with ugly war scenes (please, George - I’ve read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror (which I highly recommend, by the way) - I get that medieval warfare is an ugly thing, one village full of raped and mutilated peasants is enough), and much of the plot is driven by characters doing truly stupid things, which always annoys me.  Most of all, we’re already at around 4000 pages, the story shows no sign of nearing a close.

I’m a fan of large sprawling novels: I don’t believe a book really gets going until around page 800.  But Tolkien and Tolstoy both managed to tell their war stories in around 1200 pages - does Martin’s war really require an order of magnitude more?

So tentatively recommended, but there are definitely some caveats here.  Most of all, Martin, who says there’s still at least three more volumes to go, is already three years late on volume 5, and is getting a little long in the tooth.  Commit to these, and you may be committing to a series that will never reach its end.

- No such caveats for The Graveyard Book, by Neal Gaiman.  Published as a young-adult novel, I found this to be an absolute delight.

The book opens with a dark stranger called “the man Jack” stalking through a dark house with knife in hand.  Having just killed the parents and older child, the man Jack is in search of one last victim, a toddler.  But the unnamed child slips away to a nearby graveyard where he is taken in by the Owenses, a couple of ghosts, who, after arguing about who he looks like, conclude that he looks “like nobody but himself.”  Thus, they name him Nobody Owens, or Bod for short.

The book recounts Bod’s childhood raised in the cemetery by the various ghosts who “live” within, with each chapter taking place two years after the last one.  Young Bod learns much from the ghosts, including how to fade into invisibility, how to instill a frightful chill, and to avoid the ghouls and the less reputable residents.  Finally, when the man Jack returns to take care of unfinished business, Bod is ready, and the final confrontation is a delight that ties together many of the threads that sprang up in the various chapters.

I always love Gaiman’s work, and I particularly loved this one - recommended for anyone.

- Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.  I was talking with a friend recently about the battle of Midway, the turning point in WWII in the Pacific, when the American navy, after being dominated by the Japanese for the six months following Pearl Harbor, finally struck back, sinking four Japanese carriers and seizing the initiative for the remainder of the Pacific war.  (Yeah, I know.  I’m a geek, with lots of geeky friends.  So?)  I mentioned a couple of the standard points told about that battle, how the American torpedo bombers came in low and were shot up by the Japanese fighters, but that put the fighters out of position when the American dive bombers came swooping down from on high to sink the carriers, and how the carriers blew up quickly because their decks were crammed with aircraft getting ready to go attack the Americans.  He gave me a knowing look and said that I really needed to read Shattered Sword, how it would change everything I thought I knew about the battle.  And so I did.

I’m happy to report that the book is excellent, and showed how wrong I was.  Shattered Sword is a revisionist history of the battle of Midway, told largely from the point of view of the Japanese forces, that challenges much of the common wisdom about the battle.  (Those two points I mention above, for example, don’t survive Parshall and Tully’s analysis.)  Apparently, much of the common wisdom was based on the writings of Fuchida Mitsuo, a Japanese officer at the battle, who wrote an early self-serving account of the battle, one that has shaped much of the American understanding of what was the Japanese experienced during the battle.  But Fuchida’s account has been largely debunked in Japan for the past 20 years, though that news hasn’t reached American historians until recently.

The book does an excellent job of describing Japanese naval doctrine, the political maneuvering in their naval command that led to the Midway plan, and the tactics and operational approaches that the Japanese navy used.  That is coupled by a detailed recounting of the day of the battle, one that covers both the military actions, the efforts of the crews of the damaged ships to save them, and detailed descriptions of what it was like to escape from the burning hanger deck of a bombed aircraft carrier.  If you enjoy military history, and thought you knew what happened at Midway, I strongly recommend this book.

Haven’t posted my reads in a while.  Which doesn’t mean I’m not reading…

- Shut Up, I’m Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government, by Gregory Levey.  A memoir of Levey’s time working for the Israeli government.  Levey was going to law school in New York and getting bored, so he decided to apply for an internship with the Israeli delegation to the UN.  (Levey is Canadian, but he is Jewish.)  He was told that they did not have interns, but they offered him a job as a speech writer instead.  Thus began his career with the Israeli government, which eventually led to his moving to Israel and working as a speech writer on Ariel Sharon’s staff.  It’s a pretty funny book, largely centered on the various mistakes that Levey made along the way (including one time that he cast Israel’s vote on a UN resolution without actually knowing what that resolution was, and another time when he used the remnants of his high school French to translate a statement from the French government, a translation that ended up in several news stories, and one where he was not at all confident of his accuracy).  A funny book, though certainly light.

- The Civil War by Shelby Foote.  Somehow, over several years of reading about the Civil War, I’ve never gotten around to reading Shelby Foote’s massive three-volume history.  I’m coming to regret the lapse.  Foote was a novelist who wrote a history of the war, and it is an excellent read.  Further, it reads like a novelist’s view on the war - Foote’s descriptions of the various generals and politicians read like a novelist’s descriptions, complete with piercing eyes and dark black hair.  The books mostly cover the military aspects of the war - if you want detailed discussions of the economics, you should look elsewhere.  I’m through the first two volumes now - putting the third aside for a while.  But they have been a great joy.

One note on the Foote trilogy: I’m finding a real joy in reading his take on the late unpleasantness.  It’s a story that I know well, but hearing Foote’s version makes it fresh.  I’ll also note that while Foote clearly has sympathies for the south, I don’t find them overwhelming.  On the whole, I think he presents a balanced view.  (Though he does degenerate into Lee hero-worship sometimes.  It isn’t too bad, all in all.)

- Hens’ Teeth and Horses’ Toes by Stephen Jay Gould. A collection of essays about various aspects of biology and the history of biology. Gould was an expert as essay writing, mastering the technique of starting with some small but interesting fact and deriving from it a more general and important principle. In this, he champions certain historical scientists, reveals some wild facts about animals (did you know that male angler fish are a fraction of the size of females, and in fact merge with the female, becoming little more than an embedded sperm donor for her), and pays homage to his great hero, Darwin. I haven’t finished all the essays yet - the joy of a collection of essays is that you don’t have to read them all at once. But it’s good stuff - I heartily recommend any of Gould’s works. (I’m a particular fan of his Wonderful Life, which is about how contingency has led to the modern world.)

- Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile. I recently saw and loved the movie, the story of how roguish and scandal-mongering congressman Charlie Wilson got congress to fund the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion back in the 80’s. I came away from that wanting to know more. And boy, does the book deliver. It covers in greater detail Wilson’s various scandals (the night before one of his major trips to Pakistan, he fled the scene of a collision that he caused out of a well-founded fear that he would be arrested for drunk driving if found by the police) and the way he played the Washington political game to keep the war funded. It also tells the CIA side of the story in great detail - Gust Avrakotos, who was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the movie, comes across as even more of a loose cannon. Very entertaining, especially if you want a view into how political power really works when the cameras aren’t rolling.

- The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber. A nice light beach read, a thriller all about art, madness, and international crime, with an engaging prose style and lots of oddness. A nice book to bring on a beach vacation.