Books reviews, current events, and other musings

Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's is a breezy overview of that decade written in 1931. Some chapters cover conventional political history: Wilson dealing with the aftermath of the Great War, the Harding scandals, and the business-friendly Coolidge Presidency. He also outlines the major business developments, culminating in the Bull Market of 1928 and the Crash of 1929. The most entertaining portion of the book describes the culture of the era: the Red Scare, Prohibition and the gangsters, the rise of radio, fads such as Mah Jong and crossword puzzles, the flappers, and the Florida real estate frenzy. Though a more recent book would provide better accuracy and perspective, Allen's account possesses the liveliness and immediacy that comes from describing events that you've recently experienced.

I've read a couple of Jane Austen novels: Pride and Prejudice and Emma. They both involve leisurely mannered courtships among member of the British upper crust. Pride and Prejudice held my attention reasonably well, and I became interested in how the romance between the two main protagonists would unfold. In Emma, the characters seemed to talk incessantly about uninteresting events, and I didn't care what happened to any of them. Both books illustrated the stilted social atmosphere of early 19th century Britain.

Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook provides good ideas about how to maintain a blog and why you might want to. Reading it didn't change my personal blogging style much, partially because I had already picked up many of her ideas and partially because, like most people, I am resistant to change my entrenched way of doing things. Her schoolteacher-like attitude of "Look at all the great things you can do!" ironically made me less motivated, as I realized that I possessed neither the ability nor the dedication necessary to put together a first-rate blog. Putting aside my personal quirks, The Weblog Handbook provides helpful pointers and perspective, making it well worth reading for anyone considering blogging.

The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century, is a collection of 25 essays by various science writers. Some essays are better than others, with a few authors wimping out and talking about current research instead of the future, but the overall quality is much better you find in most anthologies. The subjects include mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, psychology, and computer science. The essays were clear and informative without spending too much time on the basics. Also, after reading the most appealing essays, I can proceed to books by their authors, such as biologist Robert Sapolsky and psychologist Alison Gopnik.

In The Clinton Wars, journalist Sidney Blumenthal, one of Bill Clinton's senior advisors during his second term in office, describes the Clinton Presidency, focusing on administration scandals. Blumenthal, who greatly admires Clinton, provides a very thorough account. The relentless Republican attacks on Bill Clinton are infuriating, once you take in their cumulative intensity, viciousness, and lack of substance. Of course, Blumenthal isn't an unbiased observer, but hardly anyone can view Clinton from an impartial perspective. Almost half of the 800-page book describes the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment hearings in incredible detail. Blumenthal tries to highlight Clinton's accomplishments, but their meagerness weakens the characterization of Clinton as a great President. The book concludes with Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and, in a chapter called The Stolen Succession, the 2000 Presidential race. The Clinton Wars is the book to read about Bill Clinton, at least for liberal politics junkies.

Cal Cunningham, the central character in John Colapinto's About the Author, is a would-be author who's unable to start the novel he aspires to write. Then Cal's quiet law-student roommate Stewart dies in a bicycle accident, and Cal finds, among Stewart's papers, an unpublished novel that Stewart wrote, based on Cal's own carousing and womanizing. Cal claims authorship of the novel, which he recognizes as a work of genius, and it becomes a massive success. That portion of About the Author is quite entertaining, but the remainder of the book falls flat. Cal contends with living in deceit, a romance under false pretenses, and a blackmail threat. Cal's life spins out of control, following an all-too-familiar fictional pattern. Colapinto just couldn't follow through on the innovative groundwork he begins with.

T. J. Cornell’s The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) is a thorough, somewhat academic examination of early Rome. Much of the book focuses on the historical evidence for various claims: Livy says this, these archeological findings imply that, and so on. Cornell discusses the political, military, cultural, and social history of Rome. He describes the organizational structure of the Roman state and how it dealt with conquered people and client states, giving Rome the ability to expand throughout the Italian peninsula. He incorporates recent research, rebutting, for example, the conventional belief that the Etruscans had a dominant influence on Rome. Though the book is dry at times, it provides insight into how historians study the ancient world. For someone who has read a broader treatment, like Michael Grant’s History of Rome, The Beginnings of Rome provides the best English-language description of Rome’s early history.

Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is a mixed bag. Franken’s discussion of the right-wing media isn’t that exciting, since I don’t watch Fox News, but it’s good to know what their viewers are exposed to. Several of his topics were familiar from the liberal books and blogs that I’ve read, but there’s nothing wrong with hearing them again. The strongest part of the book was Franken’s description of Paul Wellstone’s memorial service and how the right-wingers distorted it. Many of Franken’s jokes fall flat, but he has some choice lines, such as “Clinton-hating was to the Bush White House what terrorism-fighting was to the Clinton White House.” It’s a very fast read – I got through it in a weekend – and it serves as a lighter companion to the more draining Bush-bashing books by Paul Krugman and Molly Ivins.

Atul Gawande's Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science presents a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of medicine. He starts off describing his first surgical procedures, exploring the conflict between the need to learn the technique through practice and the fact that any patient would be better off with an experienced physician. He brings up other important topics that are rarely discussed in public: when capable doctors make mistakes, how the medical profession deals with incompetent physicians (or fails to do so), and the intrinsic uncertainty of medical diagnoses and decision making. In the remaining chapters, Gawande comes across as a journalist more than a medical insider, when discussing blushing, nausea, pain, overeating, autopsies, and other subjects. Complications is very readable and interesting, though the ethical and practical challenges facing a surgeon are the most compelling part of the book.

James Gleick, author of the excellent Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, examines an even greater genius in Isaac Newton. Gleick bases the biography on original material: Newton’s publications, private notebooks, and correspondence. The book lacks the vitality of Gleick’s earlier work, possibly because less is known about a 17th and 18th century personality. As a former physicist, I was curious to learn how Newton, the son of an illiterate farmer, became one of the most significant scientific minds in history. Gleick fleshes out Newton’s life story – his childhood, education, alchemy research, theology concerns, stewardship of the British Mint, and disputes with Leibniz over the invention of calculus. The book’s highlight was, naturally enough, Newton’s scientific discoveries, specifically the gradual discovery of the laws that became known as Newtonian physics. There was a steady build-up of excitement as Newton worked towards calculus, F=ma, and the proof that a 1/r^2 gravitational attraction led to an elliptical orbit. Isaac Newton is well worth reading for physics geeks, though it’s not clear how much it would appeal to other people.

John Grisham's The Brethren was very weak, even as an airplane book. It centers around three incarcerated judges, who are pulling off a scam from behind bars. I was curious about what the "wickedly brilliant extortion scam," as the back cover describes it, would be, but it turns out to be rather uninspired. The character development of the judges was so lousy that I didn't bother to keep their identities straight. The other storyline involves an unimpressive Republican candidate, backed by certain hidden interests, campaigning for President by arguing that the US needed to double defense spending in order to protect itself. Though he did anticipate W, Grisham has a very simplistic view of politics. Unfortunately, The Brethren lacks the intricate legal maneuvering that has been the only redeeming virtue of his other books. Plus, in the lame culmination of the underlying conflict, both sides basically got what they wanted. The Brethren is a book to avoid, even for Grisham fans.

Michael Grant's History of Rome is an excellent overview of Rome, from the earliest archaeological discoveries to the collapse of the Western portion of the empire. The book was very accessible, even though my prior exposure to Roman history consisted of historical fiction: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Robert Grave's I, Claudius, and Gore Vidal's Julian. Grant alternates between chapters of traditional political and military history and chapters discussing Roman society and culture. Though the traditional history was a little more interesting, it's good to see the full perspective. Such a broad treatment covers a lot of ground rather quickly, but it suggested time periods to read more about. Overall, History of Rome does a good job of outlining the rise and fall of the Roman empire.

Michael Grant’s The Twelve Caesars is a biography of the first dozen Caesars of the Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Though Grant reviews the prior life of each emperor, their personalities and actions as emperor receive most of the focus. Compared to their portrayals in I, Claudius, Grant has a more positive view of Tiberius and Caligula and a weaker view of Claudius. The Twelve Caesars provides a clear understanding of the later civil wars, when multiple claimants fought over who would become emperor. It’s a very readable and accessible account of a century-and-a-half of Roman history, as viewed from the top.

Novelist Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic describes Rome’s transition from republic to empire. The exciting events of those times, from around 100 BC to 30 BC, involved several colorful personalities, including Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Cicero, Cleopatra, Pompey, Sulla, and Spartacus. Along the way there were civil wars, marches on Rome, revolts, territorial expansions, and two triumvirates. Holland captures the mood of the times, at least among the oligarchy, as very ambitious individuals attempted to seize power while others chose sides or tried to preserve the traditional institutions, such as the Senate. He brings to life the temperament, perspectives, and strategies of the major players, along with the social milieu they operated in. Though other books may lay out the facts in a more concrete fashion, Rubicon does an excellent job of weaving together the story behind them.

Will Hutton's The World We're In is a mixture of two books, one that's quite rewarding and one that's rather boring. In the book's better portion, its British author condemns American conservatism, praises the European economic framework, and urges Britain to model their society on Europe instead of the US. Hutton presents a strong, convincing argument that the American socioeconomic system serves its citizens poorly and actually weakens its economy. In the remainder of the book, Hutton advocates British acceptance of the Euro, a tiring monetarist argument of limited interest to most Americans. I'd give the overall book a weak endorsement, though it's well worth reading if you skip the boring parts.

Henry James was the only author, out of the four discussed in Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, who I've never read, which inspired me to pick up his novella Daisy Miller. Its main characters are upper-class Americans in late 19th century Switzerland and Italy. Winterbourne, the straight-laced protagonist, has an exceedingly proper relationship with Daisy Miller, a vivacious young woman touring Europe with her mother and younger brother. The exacting mores of the upper crust are a continual undercurrent, with Winterbourne's snobbish aunt disapproving of the perceived improprieties of the Millers. Later on, Daisy become involved with a suave Italian, to the dismay of the higher society of American expatriates. Though the fussiness regarding proper behavior is rather alien to the modern reader, the book was a pleasant, though not particularly dramatic, depiction of a forgotten age.

In Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, author and comic-book writer Gerard Jones argues that fictional violence is good for children's psyches. Violent shows and games provide a release for the anxieties, fears, and aggression that all children feel. He points out the weaknesses in the often-cited studies linking exposure to violence and aggressive behavior. Jones convincingly debunks that conventional wisdom by describing his own observations of children outside the confines of a contrived psychology experiment. As additional evidence, violent crime has been steadily decreasing in the US over the last few decades, and Japan continues to have low crime rates despite its hyper-violent entertainment. Killing Monsters paints a believable and balanced picture of the role of pretend violence in children's lives.

R. M. Koster, an American-born writer who spent most of his life in Panama, set his novel The Prince in Tinieblas, an imaginary Central American nation. The story centers on Kiki, who has various improbable adventures as a student, lover, gun runner, political prisoner, presidential candidate, and numerous other roles. During much of the book, a paralyzed Kiki deals with life and contemplates revenge against the man who shot him; that portion is less captivating than the remainder. Koster provides a detailed history of Tinieblas, clearly inspired by actual events. That history is the book's strongest aspect, including frequent transfers of power (occasionally through elections) and the relationship with the gringos (Americans). I'd recommend The Prince, if you don't mind a certain amount of violence. Though self-contained, it's the first part of a trilogy, and I just ordered the next segment, The Dissertation, a Ph.D. dissertation about Tinieblas.

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century is a collection of Paul Krugman’s New York Times editorials, along with a couple other articles and some introductory material. Krugman, an economist, has been one of the strongest critics of the Bush administration’s policies. Some of his economic analyses were a bit dull and out-of-date. However, his numerous discussions of tax cuts, the national debt, social security reform, and corporate corruption are informative and infuriating, as he reveals how much damage Bush’s policies have caused. Krugman wrote each essay to be read in isolation, and going through them in bulk can be repetitious and overly intense. Mainly, The Great Unraveling crystallizes, in the liberal reader’s mind, the disastrous policies of the Bush White House.

In Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom, Cynthia Lee examines the legal standards that determine the punishment that the killer receives. The defendant's actions are generally compared to those of a reasonable man to determine whether the killing was justified or whether mitigating factors should reduce the sentence from murder to manslaughter. Some men commit murder after discovering their wife's infidelity or after a receiving a homosexual advance; the claim that those murders are a normal response seems totally incomprehensible to me. It's trickier to deal with questionable claims of self-defense, such as Bernhard Goetz shooting four black teenagers in a subway or the Japanese exchange student who was shot when he went to the wrong house for a Halloween party. Lee's analysis and proposals are poorly organized and repetitive, but she brings up some important questions about our criminal justice system.

Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books centers on an all-woman book club that she led in Iran. The book's main appeal is her depiction of life after the Iranian revolution, as seen by a female intellectual. You can see how she and her students contend with an oppressive society that limits their activities and tries to dehumanize them. Interspersed throughout the narrative, she discusses the authors whose books she taught: Nabakov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen. Being familiar their work makes the literary analysis more appealing; I've read a couple of Austen novels lately but haven't encountered the others for at least a decade. Nafisi spends too much time describing what people are wearing and what they are eating, but that's just her technique for conjuring images of her world.

In The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why, psychologist Richard Nisbett investigates the conventional wisdom about Eastern and Western thought processes. For example, Westerners are more focused on the individual, which Easterners consider things in terms of relationships. Nisbett describes studies that generally support that conventional wisdom. For example, American news coverage of two prominent murders focused on the killers' personal traits, while Chinese stories about the same incidents emphasized the killers' relationships and societal environment. Most of the cited research seemed plausible, though occasionally it's unclear how that research supports his overall claims. He traces the differing thought patterns back to Aristotle and Confucius, but his attempts to explain what caused those differences are unconvincing.

George Packer's Blood of the Liberals is an excellent political family memoir. Packer's maternal grandfather was a Congressman from Birmingham, Alabama from 1915 to 1937 who viewed himself as a Jeffersonian Democrat, started off Progressive, but had mixed feelings about the New Deal. Packer's father was a Jewish legal scholar who, as a Stanford administrator, dealt with student unrest in the late 1960's, which eventually led to a stroke and his suicide. Packer himself drifted between college, the Peace Corps, construction work, socialism, and journalism. With his family history as a backdrop, Packer explores the evolution of liberalism, and the tensions and changing circumstances that forced it to change. For example, Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers with minimal government interference. However, subsequent developments, such as massive wealth and power inequities, required substantial changes in that vision, with the government playing a major role in addressing those inequities. Blood of the Liberals contains the best analysis I've read of American liberal thought.

Richard Pells's Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture Since World War II is reasonable, though not spectacular. Some of the material is rather dry, such as the growth of American Studies programs in European universities. US efforts to promote its virtues to Europeans, as a cultural component of the Cold War, were more interesting. Pells describe the misconceptions that America and Europe has about each other, and how various influences spread both directions across the Atlantic. The effects of American mass culture, especially movies and television, are the most compelling portion of the book. Pells differentiates the variety of European responses to America, based on nationality, class, political leanings, and individual personalities. Not Like Us contains a wealth of information, sometimes including a bit too much detail for my taste.

The title of How the Mind Works forces Stephen Pinker to attempt a daunting task. He takes a black-box approach, largely neglecting neurobiology, and instead relying on thought experiments, psychology, computer science, evolutionary biology, and perception research. He advocates a computational theory of mind, viewing the brain as a sophisticated computer, though he acknowledges the weaknesses of current neural network models. He uses evolutionary biology to explain why the mind acts as it does - to better survive in the world humanity evolved in. For example, people are intrinsically afraid of strangers, heights, and wild animals because those factors were threats in the evolutionary environment. Pinker strongly challenges the Standard Social Science Model, which views human nature as a blank slate shaped solely by the individual's environment and culture. How the Mind Works has varying quality, with the fact-based analysis of perception being more convincing that the less grounded speculations regarding the origins of art, but overall it's worth reading.

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community analyzes the decline in social capital over the last few decades. Putnam examines a wide variety of social activities -- political, religious, organizational, informal, and others -- and demonstrates a steady across-the-board decline in all of them since the 1960's. He then investigates possible reasons for diminishing social involvement by baby boomers and later generations compared to their parents. Television is the largest factor, though greater time pressure and suburbanization also have an impact. Bowling Alone is an excellent, fact-filled analysis of the increasingly solitary nature of American life.

Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror, edited by Betsy Reed, is a feminist take on various post-9/11 concerns, though many of its essays were written before 9/11. Like most anthologies, its essays vary in quality. The most compelling selections dealt with the complex and often violent relations between Hindus, Muslims, and others in India. Other essays on Muslim fundamentalism revealed interesting details about life in specific places: Algeria, Iran, the U.A.E, and Palestine. More general discussions on women's life in the Muslim world and Afghanistan contained material that I've seen elsewhere. The Christianity section went all over the place: Jerry Falwell's pro-life campaign, a history of American fundamentalism, and internal struggles within the Catholic Church. Several of the essays, especially the ones regarding terrorism, were more analytical than informational; unfortunately, their ideas were either obvious or too abstract to grasp. Nothing Sacred is worth reading but not spectacular.

In Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World, computer security expert Bruce Schneier illustrates how to think about security issues in real-world domains such as home security, business security, and terrorism. He emphasizes five factors to consider when evaluating a possible security solution: the assets being protected, the risks to those assets, how well the solution mitigates the risk, other risks that the solution may introduce, and trade-offs that arise when implementing the solution. Schneier provides a framework for tackling security issues, along with specific examples applying those ideas. For example, he argues that most airport security measures following 9/11 were "security theater" that doesn't actually improve security significantly, though they might reduce anxiety among travelers. Though much of Beyond Fear seems like common sense, Schneier has many worthwhile ideas to convey.

Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones is an account of how the family and friends of a murdered 14-year old girl cope with the situation, as told by the deceased teenager in heaven. Despite the contrived settings of the novel and my inclination to dismiss the supernatural, it worked quite well. The depiction of heaven is attractive, as Susie Salmon, the girl, watches over her survivors on Earth, interacts with other dead people, and conjures up comforting surroundings for herself. The first half of the book grabs you, as Susie’s loved ones struggle to deal with her murder and move on. Things stall a bit later on, though that’s partially to due to my frustration in her family’s difficulty in getting on with their lives. The Lovely Bones is one of the best novels I’ve read in years.

Jane Smiley's Moo is a parody of academic life, populated by a colorful assortment of professors, students, and administrators at a Midwestern agricultural university. For example, one professor is determining how large a pig could grow if continuously fed, another prof is pursuing his leftist goals, and a third struggles to find the secrets to animal cloning before his grant runs out. Meanwhile, four roommates with diverse backgrounds were adjusting to college life and each other, and the provost's administrative assistant is actually running everything. Moo captures, in exaggerated tones, the petty squabbling, ego conflicts, crises, and eccentricities of academia.

In A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, UC Berkeley professor Ronald Takaki describes the experiences of the major ethnic groups in America. Though I was familiar with what Blacks, Native Americans, and Jews went through, he provides a lot of details I hadn't seen. On the other hand, the stories of Chinese, Japanese, Irish, and Mexican immigrants were totally new to me. For each group, Takaki covers the circumstances in the home country that inspired the migration to America, the kind of people who arrived, their experiences, their children's experiences, and how other Americans treated them. The narrative gets depressing at times, as you hear the hardships that each ethnicity faced. Overall, A Different Mirror is an important alternate viewpoint to the traditional history we learned in school.

Steven Vogel’s Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle describes everything you’d ever want to know about muscle. He builds up from the microbiology and cellular structure to how the entire organism interacts with the environment. Different kinds of creatures – cats, horses, flies, squid, and so on – have muscles physiology tuned towards their own kinds of physical motion. Vogel delves into the variety of tools, such as pliers, axes, oars, bicycles, spears, and numerous others, that amplify and redirect human muscle power. Though I learned a great deal from Prime Mover, it never really grabbed me.

Peter Watson's The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century is a very impressive review of the last century's developments in science, the humanities, social science, art, and numerous other areas. Unlike most treatments by non-scientists, Watson views scientific discoveries as significant and his presentation of modern physics is largely accurate. The science, social science, and philosophy portions were more compelling than the discussions of art, music, literature, and architecture, but that's just a reflection of my personal preferences. Watson manages to weave an exhaustive range of intellectual works into a more-or-less coherent narrative. Modern Mind is well worth reading, if you're sufficiently dedicated to get through an intense 800 page treatise.

I recently read a collection of three Oscar Wilde plays, none of which I’ve seen performed. The Importance of Being Earnest was a delightful comedy, full of witty remarks and rejoinders flying back and forth. The storyline, involving men assuming false identities and romantic entanglements, is light but fits together perfectly. Lady Windermere’s Fan is amusing but doesn’t rise to quite the same level. It includes several famous epigrams, such as “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Salome is a retelling of the Biblical story in which King Herod’s wife and daughter drive him to kill John the Baptist. The poetic rendering didn’t quite resonate on paper, though it’s probably a lot more powerful on stage and my ignorance of the underlying story detracted from its meaning.