Gerard's 2014 Reads

Well, I'm back for another year. I'm still in the middle of my Dewey Decimal Challenge so everything I read this year will be geared toward that. That means a lot of nonfiction for me (which is how I like it). I'm trying this year to read more deliberately and not just to put notches on a proverbial belt. I read over 200 books in 2013, but at such a dizzying pace that I can hardly remember them all. I'm aiming for around 70-100 books this year, so we'll see how that goes.

For a look at my general tastes, here's what I read last year: Club Read 2013 Thread

Books read in 2014 (by Dewey Decimal section):

000s -- General Knowledge:
011: The List of Books by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish (Mar 14)
032: Guinness World Records 2014 (May 6)
059: The Women's Awakening in Egypt by Beth Baron (Jun 26)
060: Robert's Rules of Order by Henry M. Robert (Oct 7)
073: The Captive Press in the Third Reich by Oron Hale (Aug 13)
074: Paris Herald by Al Laney (Jan 17)
088: As Others See Us by Goran Palm (Feb 7)

100s -- Philosophy and Psychology:
100: The Big Questions by Steven E. Landsburg (Jul 22)
107: Experimental Philosophy by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (Feb 2)
113: The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos by Brian Swimme (Apr 14)
118: The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force by Richard A. Lee (Jan 14)
123: As Luck Would Have It by Joshua Piven (Sep 25)
130: Occult America by Mitch Horowitz (Oct 4)
140: The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire (Mar 13)
149: The Rationalists (Aug 30)
148: First Principles (Foy) by Donald Foy (Jan 2)
182: The Music of Pythagoras by Kitty Ferguson (Jan 4)
188: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Jun 14)
191: The Philosophy of George Santayana by George Santayana (May 20)
196: Three Spanish Philosophers by Jose Ferrater Mora (Jan 8)

Books read in 2014 (by Dewey Decimal section):

200s -- Religion:
202: Armageddon Now by Jim and Barbara Willis (Jul 5)
206: Pillars of Faith by Nancy T. Ammerman (Apr 9)
212: The Proof of God by Larry Witham (Sep 23)
213: God, the Devil, and Darwin by Niall Shanks (Feb 22)
215: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman (Mar 11)
228: A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch (May 12)
229: Reading Judas by Elaine Pagels and Karen King (Aug 6)
254: Forbidden Fruit Creates Many Jams by Mary and David Compton (Jun 6)
273: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe by Edward Peters (Sep 5)

300s -- Social Sciences:
315: On an Average Day in Japan by Tom Heymann (Feb 27)
317: Datapedia of the United States By George Kurian (Aug 2)
350: Three Victorian Women Who Changed Their World by Nancy Boyd (Sep 15)
356: To Dare and To Conquer by Derek Leebaert (May 3)
357: Chariot by Arthur Cotterell (Jan 31)
363: Puppetmaster by Richard Hack (Mar 18)
366: The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas (May 27)
375: The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1893-1958 by Herbert Kliebard (Jun 20)
379: Turn Away Thy Son by Elizabeth Jacoway (Aug 20)
381: Store Wars by David Monod (Apr 13)
386: Wedding of the Waters by Peter Bernstein (Jul 11)

Books read in 2014 (by Dewey Decimal section):

400s -- Language:
409: Philology by James Turner (Jul 27)
419: Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language by Scott Liddell (Jan 23)
440: The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow (Apr 4)
460: A Brief History of the Spanish Language by David A. Pharies (Jan 12)
465: The Evolution of Spanish by Thomas Lathrop (Apr 27)
475: Essential of Latin Grammar by W. Michael Wilson (Sep 8)
494: Passions of the Tongue by Sumathi Ramaswamy (Jun 12)

500s -- Science:
518: Principles of Numerical Analysis by Alston S. Householder (Apr 16)
537: The Path of No Resistance by Bruce Schechter (May 14)
541: The Periodic Kingdom by P.W. Atkins (Jul 23)
556: Fieldwork by Christopher Scholz (Jul 7)
563: The Star-Crossed Stone by Kenneth McNamara (Sep 17)
570: Signs of Life by Ricard Sole and Brian Goodwin (Jun 9)
575: The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould (Sep 2)
576: Evidence of Evolution by Mary Ellen Hannibal (Mar 22)
587: Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks (Aug 4)

Books read in 2014 (by Dewey Decimal section):

600s -- Technology:
608: Victorian Inventions by Leonard de Vries (Jun 5)
618: Lamaze: An International History by Paula Michaels (Jan 25)
653: Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified by John Robert Gregg (Jul 1)
660: Shrinking the Cat by Sue Hubbell (Aug 8)
676: Papermaking by Dard Hunter (Mar 8)
677: String (Adam) by Adam Hart-Davis (Sep 7)
684: Measure Twice, Cut Once by Norm Abram (Apr 25)
687: Jeans by James Sullivan (Sep 28)
690: Collapse: When Buildings Fall Down by Phillip Wearne (Apr 6)

700s -- Fine Arts:
715: Landscape Plants by Ferrell Bridwell (Apr 23)
718: Last Landscapes by Ken Worpole (Feb 4)
720: Gaudi by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot (Feb 24)
733: The Elgin Affair by Theodore Vrettos (May 23)
769: The Error World by Simon Garfield (Jun 28)
771: Vermeer's Camera by Philip Steadman (Sep 10)
776: Metacreation by Mitchell Whitelaw (Mar 30)
790: Mongo by Ted Botha (Aug 10)

Books read in 2014 (by Dewey Decimal section):

800s -- Literature:
802: Literature Lover's Book of Lists by Judie L.H. Strouf (Sep 21)
836: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (Feb 25)
840: French Literature Before 1800 by Bradley and Michell (Jan 19)
842: No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre (Jan 8)
843: Candide by Voltaire (May 21)
855: Italy's Foreign and Colonial Policy (Jun 17)
865: In Search of the Present by Octavio Paz (Apr 18)
878: Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch (Jul 20)
889: The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis by Vassilis Vassilikos (Mar 29)
894: Snow by Orhan Pamuk (Aug 25)

900s -- History and Geography:
902: Encyclopedia Idiotica by Stephen Weir (Jun 23)
907: Eiffel's Tower by Jill Jonnes (Mar 21)
936: Attila by John Man (Aug 16)
939: The Road to Ubar by Nicholas Clapp (Oct 1)
944: Blood Royal by Eric Jager (Jan 26)
960: The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith (Jun 3)
963: Chameleon Days by Tom Bascom (Mar 2)
983: The Dictator's Shadow by Heraldo Munoz (May 9)
986: Even Silence Has an End by Ingrid Betancourt (Jul 16)
996: The Bounty by Caroline Alexander (Feb 15)
997: The Falklands War 1982 by Duncan Anderson (Apr 14)
998: At the Ends of the Earth by Kieran Mulvaney (Sep 12)

Book read in 2014 -- First Quarter:

January - 12 books read
Jan 2: First Principles (Foy) by Donald Foy
Jan 4: The Music of Pythagoras by Kitty Ferguson
Jan 8: Three Spanish Philosophers by Jose Ferrater Mora
Jan 8: No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
Jan 12: A Brief History of the Spanish Language by David A. Pharies
Jan 14: The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force by Richard A. Lee
Jan 17: Paris Herald by Al Laney
Jan 19: French Literature Before 1800 by Bradley and Michell
Jan 23: Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language by Scott Liddell
Jan 25: Lamaze: An International History by Paula Michaels
Jan 26: Blood Royal by Eric Jager
Jan 31: Chariot by Arthur Cotterell

February - 8 books read
Feb 2: Experimental Philosophy by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols
Feb 4: Last Landscapes by Ken Worpole
Feb 7: As Others See Us by Goran Palm
Feb 15: The Bounty by Caroline Alexander
Feb 22: God, the Devil, and Darwin by Niall Shanks
Feb 24: Gaudi by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot
Feb 25: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Feb 27: On an Average Day in Japan by Tom Heymann

March - 10 books read
Mar 2: Chameleon Days by Tom Bascom
Mar 8: Papermaking by Dard Hunter
Mar 11: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman
Mar 13: The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire
Mar 14: The List of Books by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish
Mar 18: Puppetmaster by Richard Hack
Mar 21: Eiffel's Tower by Jill Jonnes
Mar 22: Evidence of Evolution by Mary Ellen Hannibal
Mar 29: The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis by Vassilis Vassilikos
Mar 30: Metacreation by Mitchell Whitelaw

Book read in 2014 -- Second Quarter:

April - 11 books read
Apr 4: The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow
Apr 6: Collapse: When Buildings Fall Down by Phillip Wearne
Apr 9: Pillars of Faith by Nancy T. Ammerman
Apr 13: Store Wars by David Monod
Apr 14: The Falklands War 1982 by Duncan Anderson
Apr 16: Principles of Numerical Analysis by Alston Householder
Apr 17: The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos by Brian Swimme
Apr 18: In Search of the Present by Octavio Paz
Apr 23: Landscape Plants by Ferrell Bridwell
Apr 25: Measure Twice, Cut Once by Norm Abram
Apr 27: The Evolution of Spanish by Thomas Lathrop

May - 9 books read

May 3: To Dare and To Conquer by Derek Leebaert
May 6: Guinness World Records 2014
May 9: The Dictator's Shadow by Heraldo Munoz
May 12: A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch
May 14: The Path of No Resistance by Bruce Schechter
May 20: The Philosophy of George Santayana by George Santayana
May 21: Candide by Voltaire
May 23: The Elgin Affair by Theodore Vrettos
May 27: The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas

June - 11 books read

Jun 3: The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith
Jun 5: Victorian Inventions by Leonard de Vries
Jun 6: Forbidden Fruit Creates Many Jams by Mary and David Compton
Jun 9: Signs of Life by Ricard Sole and Brian Goodwin
Jun 12: Passions of the Tongue by Sumathi Ramaswamy
Jun 14: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Jun 17: Italy's Foreign and Colonial Policy
Jun 20: The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1893-1958 by Herbert Kliebard
Jun 23: Encyclopedia Idiotica by Stephen Weir
Jun 26: The Women's Awakening in Egypt by Beth Baron
Jun 28: The Error World by Simon Garfield

Books read in 2014 -- Third Quarter:

July - 9 books read

Jul 1: Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified by John Robert Gregg
Jul 5: Armageddon Now by Jim and Barbara Willis
Jul 7: Fieldwork by Christopher Scholz
Jul 11: Wedding of the Waters by Peter Bernstein
Jul 16: Even Silence Has an End by Ingrid Betancourt
Jul 20: Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch
Jul 22: The Big Questions by Steven E. Landsburg
Jul 23: The Periodic Kingdom by P.W. Atkins
Jul 27: Philology by James Turner

August - 9 books read

Aug 2: Datapedia of the United States by George Kurian
Aug 4: Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks
Aug 6: Reading Judas by Elaine Pagels and Karen King
Aug 8: Shrinking the Cat by Sue Hubbell
Aug 10: Mongo by Ted Botha
Aug 13: The Captive Press in the Third Reich by Oron Hale
Aug 20: Turn Away Thy Son by Elizabeth Jacoway
Aug 25: Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Aug 30: The Rationalists

September - 12 books reads

Sep 2: The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould
Sep 5: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe by Edward Peters
Sep 7: String (Adam) by Adam Hart-Davis
Sep 8: Essentials of Latin Grammar by W. Michael Wilson
Sep 10: Vermeer's Camera by Philip Steadman
Sep 12: At the Ends of the Earth by Kieran Mulvaney
Sep 15: Three Victorian Women Who Changed Their World by Nancy Boyd
Sep 17: The Star-Crossed Stone by Kenneth McNamara
Sep 21: Literature Lover's Book of Lists by Judie L.H. Strouf
Sep 23: The Proof of God by Larry Witham
Sep 25: As Luck Would Have It by Joshua Piven
Sep 28: Jeans by James Sullivan

Books read in 2014 -- Fourth Quarter:

October

Oct 1: The Road to Ubar by Nicholas Clapp
Oct 4: Occult America by Mitch Horowitz
Oct 7: Robert's Rules of Order by Henry M. Robert

November

December

2013 Reading Stats: (more to come)

The first round of Christmas book acquisitions are in:

* 1,001 Facts that Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader by Cary McNeal (DDC 031)
* F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers by Richard Benson (DDC 371)
* F for Effort: More of the Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers by Richard Benson (DDC 371)
* The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place by Michael Dolan (DDC 721)
* Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner (DDC 791)
* You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News: Shocking but Utterly True Facts by Cracked.com (DDC 818)
* Passionate Minds: Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaire, and the Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment by David Bodanis (DDC 848)
* At the Ends of the Earth: A History Of The Polar Regions by Kieran Mulvaney (DDC 998)

>12 NielsenGW: Oh, the porch book sounds intriguing. So sad that they are mostly only decorative now, since the advent of the back deck. The internet has become our front porch now! (interesting that no sooner do we retreat to our more private back decks, we throw our privacy away on social media sites...)

>13 avaland: interesting that no sooner do we retreat to our more private back decks, we throw our privacy away on social media sites
To that I'd say, speak for yourself. Many of us do not throw away our privacy but guard it closely. The only places on the internet I divulge anything truly personal, are locked down with only people I've "invited in," and even then I still rarely say anything of that nature. I know plenty of people who do likewise, not posting anything personal in the open.

Jan 2: Foy, Donald. First Principles: A Return to Humanity’s Shared Traditions. (DDC 148)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 140: Specific philosophical schools and viewpoints
• 148: Dogmatism, eclecticism, liberalism, syncretism, and traditionalism

I honestly have no idea where to start with this one. Perhaps, just simply this: Don Foy’s The First Principles is a philosophical and moral look at both traditionalism and liberalism. It would be a simple book if that’s all it was. But Foy decides to ride the train way off the rails and take the reader into a thicket of personal animosity towards the state of many current institutions. He bases his invectives on C.S. Lewis’s List of First Principles, sprinkles in a little turn-of-the-century heathen-bashing from G.K. Chesterton, and runs amok all over aspects of the postmodern world. Sounds like fun, right?

First off, here are the First Principles:

• Obey the spirit of Truth
• Do good and be helpful to others
• Provide for and cherish parents, elders, and ancestors
• Provide for and children and their posterity
• Take special care of family and friends
• Be just and trustworthy in private and public life
• Be brave for the Good
• Restrain appetites and desires for the sake of the Good

But the wheels fall off the wagon very early in this one. He believes that the current tenets of Big Business and free market enterprise are unjust and untrustworthy when their decisions cause cities to lose their employment base. He argues that same-sex marriage corrupts the idea of a family by not allowing for the mother/child and mother/father bonding apparently required to raise proper humans (this constitutes not taking special care of family). I guess one of the good things I can say about this book is that Foy splits his tirades among both the Left and the Right. He makes them two sides of the same progressive coin, then melts down the coin, and pours it down the philosophical drain.

Foy’s basic message that we need to get away from some of the slippery slopes that he feels we’re on and get back to traditional value systems and community structures. This would be a valid opinion to write book on if he weren’t so curmudgeonly about the whole thing. Not only does he rail against the social ills of greed and expanded marriage rights, he also doesn’t like the prevalence of divorce, new education programs, and personal choice. The whole thing just seems like the boisterous, innocuous rambling of an old man trying desperately to be heard. The First Principles (which aren’t fully revealed until you get 90% through the book) are for the most part altruistic and morally praiseworthy. It’s just Foy’s interpretation that makes things heady and combative. I don’t recommend this one unless your looking to raise your blood pressure.

"The whole thing just seems like the boisterous, innocuous rambling of an old man trying desperately to be heard." I call these books "crabby pants books." They don't necessarily have to be written by old men, but they all express the same sort of woe-is-everything attitude.

I'm not trying to raise my blood pressure, so I'll happily skip this one.

Re your first post - I'm curious about your reasons for reducing your reading this year.

17> Welcome back, Dan! My reason for tapering my pace is to synthesize more of what I read. I read a dizzying amount of books last year, but I can hardly remember any of it. It was all mostly interesting, but when I go to talk about it, I find myself struggling to remember titles, authors, or salient details, so I think slowing down is in order. I still have a lot of fun stuff planned for the first half of the year and will probably end up over my goal (maybe somewhere around 125ish), but for now a little now patience and deliberation are in order.

Jan 4: Ferguson, Kitty. The Music of Pythagoras: How an Ancient Brotherhood Cracked the Code of the Universe and Lit the Path from Antiquity to Outer Space. (DDC 182.2)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 180: Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• 182: Pre-Socratic Greek philosophies
• 182.2: Pythagorean philosophies

All that is left of him is an equation: a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared. Every person going through basic geometry hears it. And yet for its ubiquity and almost-infinite proofs, there is very little known of the man who first discovered it in the Western world (there were earlier proofs in Babylon and India). Pythagoras (ca. 570 BCE – ca. 495 BCE) is a man surrounded by mystery. He formed a philosophical cult, but forbade anyone to write anything down, and yet his theorem survived. Kitty Ferguson’s The Music of Pythagoras attempts to separate fact from fiction on behalf of this ancient Greek thinker.

The lack of credible, contemporaneous sources make any biography of Pythagoras tricky at best. While his contributions to mathematics are indispensable, it is his philosophy that Ferguson is after. Greek historians and biographers (writing centuries after his death) described the cult of Pythagoras as an odd one. They were strict vegetarians, believed in the transmigration of souls, and that the Earth, Sun, and all other celestial bodies revolved around a Central Fire. Also central to their system was that numbers could explain the true nature of the universe.

Ferguson does her best to compile a good biography but falls at times into the same traps as others, conjecturing when the evidence is scant. After she goes through the life of Pythagoras, she posits an intellectual heritage that extends from his time through to the present day, going from Ptolemy to Kepler to Bertrand Russell. The writing is good but not stellar. On the plus side, you really learn a lot about ancient Greek philosophy. If you want a book about a mathematician that isn’t all about the math, then this one will do just fine.

It sounds like she doesn't know beans about Pythagoreans.

Robert

I'm wondering if she touches on Newton.

21> Good Sir Isaac is indeed part of the tapestry. In much the way that Pythagoras believed in an orderly and numeric universe, so did Newton. He even attributed part of his theory of gravitation on work supposedly done by Pythagoras.

Jan 8: Ferrater Mora, Jose. Three Spanish Philosophers: Unamuno, Ortega, Ferrater Mora. (DDC 196.1)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 190: Modern Western and other non-Eastern philosophy
• 196: Modern Spanish and Portuguese philosophy
• 196.1: Modern Spanish philosophy

Jose Ferrater Mora’s Three Spanish Philosophers is a look into the current philosophical work being done by Spanish thinkers. Mora, a philosopher in his own right, tries to interpret, blend, and comment on the works of Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) and Josa Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). These two analyses form a sort of prelude to his own work, which is presented as the third part of the book. It’s a rather odd situation for this work. Mora died in 1991, and this edition came out in 2003. His widow Priscilla Cohn and fellow philosopher Prof. Josep-Maria Terricabras have curated and updated this edition. Each chapter is from a separate work he wrote, but here they are combined to show a progression in Spanish thought from the beginning of the 20th century to the end.

Starting with Unamuno, he sees a contrarian stance that he attributes to years of political repression. But it wasn’t contrary for contrary’s sake. It was agitate the spirits of the nation, to rattle the cage, so to speak. Unamuno believed that to be, you must first be against one’s self. To be Spanish, to be a member of country that created the Quixote, you had to rail against the windmills of reality to truly understand it. Ortega, following a few decades later, wove Spanish philosophy into discussions on art, music, life, culture, history, and every else he encountered. As he matured as a thinker, he progressed from objectivism to perspectivism to ratio-vitalism (I’m still fuzzy on the distinctions between these, however). Teachings culminate in the belief that human life is the basic reality because all other realities are perceived from within it. While Unamuno pressed for the edges of and the antidotes to reality, Ortega tried to find its core. Mora’s philosophy, coming in the latter half of the 20th century, seeks to integrate the others. His investigations into the philosophies of life and death incorporate ideas of what makes the reality of life and existence a reality at all.

Suffice to say, it’s all pretty heady stuff, but Mora’s compilation isn’t terribly difficult to understand. You just can’t let yourself get distracted by other things while reading. This one takes some time, but there are some genuine insights here. There’s also a fair amount of modern Spanish history that helps to explain some of the contexts that each philosopher lived in. If you like reading philosophy, then this one would not be a bad one to add to your shelves. A thick but interesting read.

Interesting stuff on the Spanish philosophers.

Jan 8: Sartre, Jean-Paul. “No Exit”. In No Exit and Three Other Plays. (DDC 842.914)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 840: Literatures of French and Romance languages
• 842: French drama
• 842.9: 20th Century to the present
• 842.91: 1900 to 1999
• 842.914: 1945 to 1999

Jean-Paul Sartre’s play “No Exit” is an interesting look at human interactions when nothing else can distract them. The play involves three people, valeted into a room in Hell one at a time, and then coming to grips with what exactly Hell means. Sartre’s famous quote—“Hell is other people”—is the culmination of their interations. There’s Garcin, the serial philanderer who deserted the army and was executed by firing squad, Inez, the postal clerk whose affair with a woman led that woman to kill her husband, and Estelle, the aristocrat whose affair bore a child that she subsequently killed. Each firmly belongs where they are, but they squabble with other over petty things. The room they are in has no mirror, so each person must trust the other’s perception of how they look.

Sartre sets up the frenzied dialogue as a human analogue to the three-body problem in mechanical physics. If there were just two, they co-habitate amiably or destroy each other fully. The addition of a third, however, creates chaotic opinions and reactions whenever a new story is told or character is revealed. They are cruel, loving, tender, and distrusting all at the same time. I would actually like to see a production of this play, and watch how each actor relays the facial expressions lined out in the script. When it came out, the New Republic wrote that “It should be seen whether you like it or not.” I agree with them. If you get a chance, see it. If only for a little while, it may change the way you interact and perceive others around you.

>20 Mr.Durick:

Good one!

Nice review of No Exit, Gerard. I loved reading the script, and I'm eager to see it performed live on stage.

Jan 12: Pharies, David A. A Brief History of the Spanish Language. (DDC 460.9)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 400: Language
• 460: Spanish and Portuguese languages
• +09: History

Anyone who speaks a language understands that they have a history. Words, phrases, and pronunciations have changed over time, bringing with them new constructions, new ideas, and new ways of expressing ourselves. David A. Pharies’s Brief History of the Spanish Language sets out to show how all that happened for a single language: Spanish. Starting with a refresher on the concepts of sociolinguistics, phonology, and morphology, he takes the reader through the last two millennia, from Latin to Castilian to Modern Spanish. He stops along the way to take a look a few pieces of the language in more depth, such as the noticeably lisped sounds in Castilian Spanish and the way that modern Spanish is taking on a decidedly more English air.

While the individual pieces of information are interesting to encounter, it’s still a textbook at heart, with questions at the each chapter and everything. Of the books I’ve now read on linguistic history now, this one is better and more interesting than Antonsen’s Elements of German but not as good as Ostler’s Ad Infinitum. A more robust speaker of Spanish will gain a fair deal of insight from this text and may even find ways to shape their fluency, but in the end, it was only ho-hum for me.

Jan 14: Lee, Richard A., Jr. The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force. (DDC 118)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 110: Metaphysics
• 118: Force and energy

Richard A. Lee’s The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force is a complex foray into how the concept of force, depicted here as the basis for violence and power, interweaves itself into our realities, thoughts, and cosmologies. At least that’s what I’m pretty sure it’s about. Lee hits fast and hard with complex philosophical arguments right off the bat and never really lets up. It’s a short book, but requires a lot of energy to get through. He examines the history of the concept of force from the ancient Greeks through Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas and then on to Pierre d’Ailly and Thomas Hobbes. He also looks as force from both a human and a natural perspective. Human force gets linked to power and violence pretty easily, but force in nature is linked to simple movement.

Folks with a decent level of philosophical know-how will get a deeper dive with this one. As for me, I was just struggling to keep up, but you can’t encounter this much philosophy without some of it sticking. Maybe someday, way in the future, I’ll be able to conjure up some of Lee’s arguments and amaze myself, but for now, I’ll leave these texts for far better thinkers than me. My head is still spinning, thank you very much.

Nice review of A Brief History of the Spanish Language, Gerard. I speak Spanish to Latino families in the hospital almost daily, and I'll make my first trip to Spain in June. I'm planning to do some refresher work to improve my Spanish in the next few months, so I may get and read this book soon.

I won't be reading The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force in this lifetime, though.

A Brief History of the Spanish Language sounds fascinating - and I love languages. Regrettably, my knowledge of Spanish can fit on an index card... Probably won't stop me from reading it if I get the chance though...

30> It'll certainly deepen your understanding to get a proper genealogy of the language. Don't worry about the philosophy book. There were many times when I thought about giving up but I'm a stubborn SOB when it comes to tough books.

31> Same here, and I'm half-Mexican. But I can read French, so the linguistics made some sense to me.

Jan 17: Laney, Al. Paris Herald: The Incredible Newspaper. (DDC 074)

Dewy Breakdown:
• 000: Computer science, information, and general works
• 070: Documentary media, educational media, news media, journalism, and publishing
• 074: Journalism and newspapers in France and Monaco

James Gordon Bennett, Jr. had lost a duel and couldn’t bare the shame of living in New York any more. He was a rich socialite who had had several brushes with public and personal shame and so decided to sail his yacht to Europe. He was already the publisher of the New York Herald and when he got to Paris, he launched a newspaper in Paris for expatriates in 1887. He was a man of extreme whim and wild ambition. He had a habit of firing reporters and copyreaders and then forgetting about it the next day. In the end, his paper helped to transform the Paris reporting scene and bring new life to Americans living abroad.

Al Laney’s Paris Herald primarily focuses on the period when Laney was working for the paper (1924 to 1930), but he does some digging to get the early history of the little paper that could. The newspaper’s headquarters on the Rue de Louvre was a bastion of merriment, torturously long nights, beer-fueled column writing, and all-around alacrity. Pieces would be written on the fly and many a reporter found themselves under pressure to get the news out before anyone else. Ralph Barnes, who became a brilliant war correspondent after he left Paris, got his first major stories covering Ederle’s historic English Channel swim and interviewing Charles Lindbergh after he completed his iconic flight across the Atlantic. Sparrow Robertson covered the sports scene, but his column often included large sections of him touring the bars in the city and relaying social news about his “Old Pals”.

Laney’s history of the paper is clearly colored by his experience there and he offers no footnotes or bibliography to back up some of his claims. In some ways, that lends itself to the charm of the book. It feels like you’re at his place and he’s just telling you stories of the old days, when men scrambled amidst a drunken crowd to get out the results of the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney boxing match of 1926 or when, on a hunch, they surmised before anyone else that Alfred Loewenstein (a titan of Belgian banking) had disappeared from his plane over the English Channel. The stories are fun but also a little bit sad. You can tell that all Laney wants back are the good old days of reporting and repartee. He understands that journalism is a business, but the camaraderie amongst the writers is anything but businesslike. If you get a chance, you should read this one. It’s a lot of fun and well worth the time.

Book acquisition news: Picked up The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (DDC 343) by Jack Balkin and Beth Simone Noveck for a couple of bucks on Amazon.

Great review of Paris Herald, Gerard. Apparently it was published in London, so I'll look for it when I go there in March.

Thanks, Darryl. Good luck finding it there -- I scooped it up on Amazon when it was $4.

So did The Paris Herald eventually become The International Herald Tribune (now The International New York Times)?

Actually, yes. The Herald was bought by the Tribune in 1924 to become the Herald Tribune and was eventually christened the International Herald Tribune in 1967. Laney recounts the various purchases and business decision made by the paper's owners through the 1940s.

Jan 19: Michell, Robert Bell and Robert Foster Bradley, eds. French Literature Before 1800. (DDC 840.8)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 840: French literature
• 840.8: Collection of literary texts of French literature in more than one form

The history of French literature can trace its roots back to the Chansons de Roland about the brave and chivalrous life of Roland, knight of the court of Charlemagne. From there, poetry, drama, and novels evolved to showcase the philosophy of their respective eras. Classical forms gave way to more modern and progressive ways for expressing the human condition. Robert Michell and Robert Bradley’s French Literature Before 1800 is a volume intended to give the reader a major overview of the lives, techniques, themes, and philosophies of those who shaped the landscape of French up to the 19th century.

The authors’s present selection of every major (and even some minor) writer in the original French. That made it almost impossible for me to read this in its entirety. But, their descriptions of each author and epoch proved incredibly rich in giving writers I have heard a lot about a more solid context than before. Voltaire is a man who, while writing ingenious satires lampooning society, did not favor rampant revolutionism. The earlier thinker Pascal never published his Pensees during his lifetime. The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in France were ones of upheaval, action, and reaction.

Each group of society, be they the Jansenites, the court aristocrats, the mathematical philosophers, or those in between, was trying to carve out their space in the culture. What remained was an marvelously diverse pool of writers who challenged each other to produce interesting and innovative art. Sometimes it amazed the populace and other times, it fell flat, but contributed in their own way. Michell and Bradley take the reader from the Roland writer all the way to Andre Chenier, picking up Rabelais, Le Rochefoucauld, Balzac, Madame de Sevigne, Moliere, and Diderot (among many others) along the way. If you’re looking for a decent overview of early French literature, then this is the place. I’m now better prepared for any French writing I’ll come across in the future.

French Literature Before 1800 sounds fascinating, but may not so easy to read all the way through.

Jan 23: Liddell, Scott K. Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language. (DDC 419.705)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 400: Language
• 410: Linguistics
• 419: Sign Languages
• 419.7: American Sign Language
• 419.705: Grammar and syntax of ASL

Until the 1950s, the signing language that deaf Americans used to communicate with each other was even considered a real language at all. William Stokoe, teaching at Gallaudet University (a school for the deaf), after taking a crash course in signing and watching his students, came to realize that was a full-fledged language. There are a finite number of hand shape, but when combined with position, motion, and facial expression, users can communicate an almost infinite variety of words and concepts. Scott Liddell’s Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language is a veritable crash for us all and a window into a world seldom explored until absolutely necessary.

While Liddell’s book reads much like a textbook, you will find yourself hard-pressed to not practice the examples of the signs he writes about. Starting with Stokoe’s work on the classification of American Sign Language, he illustrates the complexity of signs and how grammar works without sound. For as much as English requires our aural attention when spoken, ASL requires your absolute visual attention. The physical space in front of the signer from the top of their head to their waist and extended out to the length of their arms is the 3-D space where language is represented. Sign combination and directionality can completely change the meaning of a sentence, so once must be vigilant. Liddell’s exploration of the grammar of ASL is detailed almost to the point of being overwhelming, but is interesting nonetheless. This would make a good companion for anyone who is learning the language to get a deeper understanding of the both the construction and the context of some of the signs used.

I love all the language books that you are reading and reviewing.

Thanks, Kris. You may be the only one who does. I've got a few more planned for later in the year as well.

>43 NielsenGW:, How can that be possible? Language and linguistics is so engrossing!

>44 fannyprice: I agree, it's definitely an interesting subject. :)

You have done some interesting reading, as usual, Gerard. How is your Dewey Challenge progressing?

46> I'm currently 40% done with all the Dewey sections. Should finish late 2017.

Due to a very tempting $2 Kindle sale at Amazon, I picked up four new novels:

* Banks, Russell. Lost Memory of Skin: Nominated for the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award
* Bowles, Paul. The Spider's House: Nominated for the 1956 National Book Award
* Miller, Madeline. The Song of Achilles: Winner of the 2012 Orange Prize
* Powell, Padgett. You & Me: Winner of the 2012 James Tait Black Memorial Prize

Hi Gerard and Happy New Year - you're off to a good start I see with Stuff that Will Scare the S**it Out of You! That's funny. Did you dip into it between chapters of Force and Reason to give you some balance?

I'm late getting caught up on this year's thread and look forward to staying caught up with yours! and maybe fixing the numbers on my Dewey thread and catching that up.

Hi Merrikay! No, I tend not to read two books at once, and that one was a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law. Sadly, I already have an 031 under my belt, so it'll sit on the shelf for a while. Good to see you back, though!

Jan 25: Michaels, Paula A. Lamaze: An International History. (DDC 618.4509)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 610: Medicine and health
• 618: Gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics, and geriatrics
• 618.4: Childbirth
• 618.45: Natural childbirth
• +09: History

In the early twentieth century, women faced one of two certainties when giving birth: either be awake during the labor and experience all the pain that comes with it or be placed under general anesthesia and have the baby delivered with forceps. Neither one of these scenarios were particularly enjoyable. And on top of all that, doctors and fathers were more likely to make the decisions before the mother would. But around the 1940s, the two interests of hypnosis and natural living combined to form a new practice in medicine. Paula Michaels’s Lamaze looks into the interesting amalgamation that became psychoprophylaxis, more commonly known as the Lamaze Method.

Dr. Fernand Lamaze, a French obstetrician visiting the Soviet Union in 1951, witnessed a curious birthing technique. Dr. I.Z. Velvovskii trained his patients to disregard the pain associated with childbirth by focusing energy on breathing and conditioned responses to contractions. It is curious that Lamaze was both a) able to observe medical practices in the Soviet Union during the beginning of the Cold War and b) allowed to report his findings to the world. The techniques which were born (pardon the pun) in the most stoic of nations led to a movement that allowed women to be both part of the process and control (or at least attempt to control) their own bodies at the same time.

Michaels’s historical investigation of the Lamaze method is as interesting as it is straightforward. It’s a small book (under 140 pages), but covers everything you need to know about the subject. I would have never guessed that Lamaze learned the method from Russian doctors. Also, Michaels places the medical practice in a broader social context, one that grew from the women’s liberation movements of the 1920s and 1930 and includes many letters from women of the time. If you’re at all interested in medical history, then this one will be a good one for you.

Fascinating. I had no idea that Lamaze was Russian. Looks like this book isn't out here yet, but I'll keep a look out for it.

Jan 26: Jager, Eric. Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris. (DDC 944.026092)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 940: History of Europe
• 944: History of France
• 944.02: Medieval period, 987 to 1589
• 944.026: Reigns of Charles VI and Charles VII, 1380-1461
• +092: Biography

In the 1660s, a magnificent scroll was discovered. At thirty feet long and dated to 1407, it contained the original investigations of the provost of Paris, a Monsieur Guillaume de Tigonville. He was tasked with an unenviable crime to solve: the death of Louis of Orleans. The death of a noble man was already enough stress to deal with, but Louis was a famous relative: his brother was the King of France. Charles VI, sometimes labeled the Beloved and other times called the Mad, periodically left the country under Louis’s rule when he wasn’t feeling well. And now the surrogate monarch had been murdered. Eric Jager’s Blood Royal sifts through the historical records to bring us a tale of treason, aristocratic intrigue, and medieval forensic techniques.

Tigonville’s investigation of the matter (which I won’t spoil here) is the first part of this book. He deposes many interesting (and many rather mundane) folks to get to the truth of the matter. The details provided in the scroll are both riveting and numerous. Once Tigonville’s involvement ends, the book takes on a more academic flavor, describing the machinations of the various dukes of France after Louis’s death. Jager’s research is thorough and exciting and does its best to balance the salacious with the simple. I really this history of both Paris and police work in the 15th century. If it weren’t a real historical document, you’d swear this was a work of fiction. A pleasant and engaging read.

#53 That sounds fascinating.

53 > Ooooo! It is now on my TBR.

Wow Blood Royal does sound fascinating!

54,55,56> Thanks all! I do heartily recommend it when it comes out.

Jan 31: Cotterell, Arthur. Chariot: From Chariot to Tank, The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World’s First War Machine. (DDC 357.1)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Science
• 350: Public administration and military science
• 357: Mounted forces and warfare
• 357.1: Horse cavalry

There are two great inventions in the early history of humanity: writing and wheels. While writing helped transmit information from place to place faster, the wheel actually got people from place to place faster. Attach newly domesticated horses to the front of a basket with wheel and you have yourself a chariot. Early chariots were invented in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE and they are seen in mosaic reliefs dated to five hundred years after that. They served as parade vehicles, battle taxis for archers, and used in races for public spectacle. For a while, they were the greatest weapons used in large-scale warfare, but strategists and inventors found ways around them. Forcing the battle onto uneven terrain or immobilizing the horses left the chariots unable to effectively take the field. Arthur’s Cotterell’s Chariot is a spectacular look into the history of, uses for, and stories about the first great war machine.

Cotterell’s history moves around the globe in search of new and inventive source material about chariots. He follows its use from Mesopotamia to Egypt to Europe proper, and then to India and China. While there are great stories and illustrations of chariots, there is no full definitive timeline included. Nor is there a good bibliography, and he even goes so far as to use Homer’s works and the Bible as source material. I would have liked a slightly better scholarly approach to the subject, but the history was interesting nonetheless. Any history buff or military history enthusiast should give this one a look-see.

It's interesting to follow history through one object like that I think. I enjoyed doing it with Chocolate Wars. Great review.

Yeah -- I like to call these "object biographies" and there's a bunch out there. So far, I've done one on cod (the fish), calendars, glass, soda, and the pencil. They're a lot of fun.

Feb 2: Knobe, Joshua and Shaun Nichols, eds. Experimental Philosophy. (DDC 107.2)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 107: Education, research, and related topics of philosophy
• 107.2: Miscellaneous research topics of philosophy

Experimental philosophy is defined as a field of inquiry that uses data gathered through surveys to inform research on philosophical questions. The philosophy we all know and love has traditionally been done behind closed doors: one person puzzling through the questions of the universe and existence. Experimental philosophy uses traditional thought experiments to understand the intents, motivations, consciousness, and origins of certain concepts, but then tries to see if the analysis done by the thinker matches that of the population being studied. In this way, it more closely resembles psychology or sociology. In Experimental Philosophy, Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols bring together eleven different philosophical experiments to show how we can better understand ourselves by asking more people important questions.

Since philosophy goes after the big ideas, the surveys given to study participants try to do the same. Many of the studies offer people vignettes about a particular set of circumstances, motivations, and outcomes and records the reactions to and thoughts about them. These reactions and thoughts can be gathered from people of differing backgrounds, ethnicities, incomes, and religions to find out how different philosophical upbringings affect a person’s understanding of the world. The experiments in this book range from simple and straightforward to those that are bogged down in intricate statistical analysis of the findings (which, to be frank, I did not understand). But it’s the questions that are asked that are the most important. Does knowing the motivation behind a murder change your assessment of it, and how? Do you have to know a thing exists to believe in it? What moral processes go into jury deliberations? These are truly interesting questions, and I’m glad to have thought about them, if only for a short time. A thick but insightful book.

60 > I hear/see them called microhistories. Book Riot has a post with some titles: http://bit.ly/1n8CeKR

great info lesmel! Thanks.

Feb 4: Worpole, Ken. Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West. (DDC 718)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Fine Arts
• 710: Civic and landscape art
• 718: Landscape design of cemeteries

“Architecture in Western Europe begins with tombs,” Ken Worpole tells us. His Last Landscapes is a prescient look into the proliferation and metamorphosis of graveyards, cemeteries, churchyards, and burial sites over the last two millennia. From the simple burial mounds of England’s early inhabitants to the ornate sculptures of Victorian graves, Worpole’s discussion of Western cemeteries is complex, nuanced, and beautiful. To understand places like these, you have to see them, and there are plenty of photographs of modern and classical graveyards and mausoleums included in this book. The author writes about death, burial, and landscapes from many angles—cultural, social, artistic, and personal. While his travels to various cemeteries are centered around England, he goes to the Netherlands, North America, and Italy to look at burial architecture in a more global light. Journeying into Eastern architecture would have made this volume a great deal larger, but I think that contrast would have made the book that much richer. All in all, though, this was quite an interesting book.

It really sounds fascinating. The way death and burial is handled in different cultures is so intriguing.

Feb 7: Palm, Goran. As Others See Us. (DDC 088.7)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 000: Computer science, information, and general works
• 080: General collections
• 088: General collections in Scandinavian languages
• 088.7: General collections in Swedish

Goran Palm may not be known to a lot of reader in the United States, but in Sweden, he has been ranked highly over the last four decades. He has won the Samfunder De Nio Grand Prize (1985), the Selma Lagerlof Prize (1998), and the Stig Dagerman Prize (2005) (just to name a few). His writings in Sweden have championed the causes of society equality, free speech, and literary activism. In As Others See Us, he forces the reader to view other countries at their level, almost taping your eyes open as a lowlight reel of social ills is projected in front of you.

It is important to understand that this book was written in the 1960s, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and from the perspective of a peace-mongering Swede. He is quick to point that human civilization begin well before Western civilization did, but somehow Westernism is the measuring stick used for the majority modern achievement. The world was quick becoming a more interconnected place and foreign correspondence made the world just a little bit closer to your television set. He urges the public, through this collection of essays, to become a more global individual, to understand the origin and plight of your fellow man and treat him as you would your family. There are many moments when it seems as if all Palm has is his rage and despair, but for all his didacticism, Palm is still hopeful. He ends the collection: “Perhaps there is no hope. We just hope anyhow.” It’s an obscure book, but if you can find it, it’s well worth your time.

Feb 15: Alexander, Caroline. The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. (410 p.; finished 15 Feb 2014)

In December of 1787, the HMS Bounty, under the leadership of commanding lieutenant William Bligh, set out for the island of Tahiti to obtain breadfruit plants to grow in the West Indies. It was a routine trade mission. But Bligh’s return trip to England was far from routine. On the morning of April 28, 1789, ship’s mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Bligh and took the ship. Bligh and 14 crewmen were placed on a small 23-foot launch and sent to go back home while the mutineers steered towards Tahiti. Without charts or a chronometer, Bligh still made it over 4,000 miles to Australian shores and eventually got home. The story of the infamous mutiny and aftermath are the subject for Caroline Alexander’s The Bounty, a complex and nuanced tale of leadership, loyalty, and love.

While the details about the mutiny are still unclear, the core issue was that many among the crew wanted to stay on Tahiti with those whom they were enamored, and Commander Bligh ordered them back to the ship. The mission was a moderate success—over 1,000 plants had been secured for transport—and the crew had spent a wonderful five months on the island. It was quite possibly the easiest mission there could be. But, several men of the Bounty, including the master’s mate grew attached to local women and didn’t want to leave. Bligh, being a man of dogmatic intensity and fierce devotion to his job, ordered them back or face severe consequences.

Alexander’s history tries to give a less heavy-handed version of the events than previous writers. Bligh is traditionally seen as a taskmaster with no real heart or humanity. Fletcher is the idealized image of every person finding happiness in a far-off land. But, the historical documents at hand tell a slightly different tale. True, there was a mutiny and, true, the men did disobey orders. Bligh was the only real officer on board and had to be the sole administrator of discipline and justice, but the extent to which his orders become tyrannical is up for debate. The author does an interesting job of countermanding previous assumptions and laying out a more balanced view of the story. A lively and entertaining book.

I enjoyed Alexander's book abut the Shackleton expedition, The Endurance, and this one sounds good too.

Feb 22: Shanks, Niall. God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory. (DDC 213)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 210: Philosophy and theory of religion
• 213: Creation

It is almost impossible to mention evolutionary theory without hearing echoes of the creationist ideology. In a country where opinions and ideas are tragically polarized, so too are theories on the creation on the universe and the beginnings of the human race. The interesting middle ground of the evolutionary debate is the rise of the idea of intelligent design. The central tenet of intelligent design is that the existence of Earth, its inhabitants, and the universe around it are best explained by the presence of some intelligent creator or cause. Traditional science holds that life emerged from an interesting, fortuitous, and random combination of proteins in the primordial soup of Earth around a billion years ago which then developed over the ages into the variety we see all around us. Intelligent design does not hold to the randomness of evolutionists, but rather to ascribes the origin of life to a guiding hand. Niall Shanks’s God, the Devil, and Darwin takes a look at the arguments of those who support intelligent design and argues for a different interpretation of their beliefs.

The one thing Shanks does very well is to thoroughly lay out all the arguments and beliefs of the supporters of intelligent design. Because his ultimate goal is to show through rational dialogue and measured arguments where the hypothesis of intelligent design is flawed, he gives intelligent design its fair day in court. Each argument of the proponents of intelligent design, unfortunately, simply does not hold up when set against actual experimentation and evidentiary exploration. In the end, intelligent design’s base argument that some molecular structures and biological events are too complex to be completely natural does not hold water. Shanks accomplishes a two-pronged feat: a fair and complete rebuttal of proposed pseudoscience AND manages to keep a level head while doing it. An interesting and detailed read.

"...intelligent design’s base argument that some molecular structures and biological events are too complex to be completely natural...

I have always wondered so much about this argument - how in the world does anyone decide what is "too complex"? - compared to what? If some things are too complex to have evolved through a process of trial and error, does that mean other "less complex" things came into existence another way?

It's a precarious argument because there are two kinds of complexity in intelligent design: Irreducible complexity (where a system is so complex that any single thing changing can bring down the entire system) and specified complexity (where a single item of high complexity--such as DNA information--is deemed is have an impossibly low probability of occurring and thus must be intelligently designed).

Feb 24: Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo. Gaudi: An Introduction to His Architecture (DDC 720.92)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Fine Arts
• 720: Architecture
• +092: Biography

Antoni Gaudi i Cornet (1852 – 1926) was perhaps one of the most inventive architects of all time. His works were Seussian before Seuss was Seussian. The building he conceived, drafted, and had built have to be seen to be believed. From the Neo-gothic windows on the Palacio Episcopal de Astorga to the bulbous terraces on the Casa Mila, his innovations and additions to the field gave people a new interest in how buildings were made. His most significant work, the Basilica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia, won’t be finished for another 12 to 14 years. Juan-Eduardo Cirlot’s Gaudi is a splendid look at the life, philosophy, and leaps of intuition that Gaudi experienced as one of the foremost designers of his time.

One of the most impressive things about Gaudi was his simplistic view of a complicated field. Man is a creature of nature, so his buildings must surround him in natural shapes. He was skilled in so many disciplines that he designed not only the main look of each of his buildings, but also created wrought-iron sculptures to surround them, the stained glass to adorn them, and the ceramic tiling to cover them. The illustrations in this volume are full color and absolutely incredible. It’s a short book, and the biography is a little thin, but the overall impression of his life and work are good enough to keep your interest. You’ll come for the facts and stay for the photos. A quick and delightful book.

Feb 25: Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by M.D. Herter Morton. (DDC 836.912)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 830: Literatures of Germanic languages
• 836: German letters
• 836.9: 20th century
• 836.91: 1900-1999
• 836.912: 1900-1945

In 1902, 19-year-old cadet Franz Kappus wrote to Rainer Maria Rilke for his thoughts on some poems he had written. Rilke was known for a few acclaimed books of poetry and was beginning to really hone his craft. Kappus wanted genuine criticism and was trying to decide between a career in the army or a life as a writer. The ten letters he saved and subsequently published as Letters to a Young Poet are some of the most genuine and honest assessments of the field of poetry and the duty of the poet.

Morton’s translation of Rilke letters is all at once succinct, plain, and gorgeous. Rilke needs few words to impart to Kappus the importance of poetry and how one should go about writing it. “Nobody can advise you and help you,” he says, “nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself.” Rilke decries the professional critic, the editor, and even the friend who seeks to help the poet. All poetry must come from a place free of outside judgment. Rilke also helps Kappus through a series of crises, including ones of sexuality, intimacy, and professionalism. Rilke takes a little longer to respond to each letter, almost trying to wean Kappus off using him as a critical crutch. In ten simple letters, Rilke gives a very good master class in poetry. If you’re a writer or a lover of poetry, this one will make for a grand and quick read.

Feb 27: Heymann, Tom. On An Average Day in Japan. (DDC 315.7)

Dewey Construction:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 310: General statistics
• 315: General statistics of Asia
• 315.7: General statistics of Japan

This is another one of Tom Heymann’s collections of demographic statistics. Only a few special writers have ever made statistics/demographics interesting. Tom Heymann isn’t one of them. On An Average Day in Japan is a dated collection of demographics about the Japanese people and what happens on the average day. Each page has a quick set of stats on consumerism, medical behavior, births and deaths, addiction, news media, etc. Most of the figures given are then contrasted with the same general measure for the American population. Read it if you have to; skip it of you don’t.

Mar 2: Bascom, Tom. Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia. (DDC 963.06092)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 960: History of Africa
• 963: History of Ethiopia and Eritrea
• 963.06: History of Ethiopia from 1941 to 1974
• +092: Biography

In 1964, the Bascom family moved from Kansas to Ethiopia. Tom Bascom’s father was a doctor and a religious man, and so, felt a calling to help struggling folks in Africa with both medicine and faith. At the time, little Tommy was just three years old and had to adjust to a completely new set of circumstances. Bascom’s Chameleon Days is a grand look at the both the small scale details of living in Ethiopia as a American and the social and religious landscape of the country under Haile Selassie.

Everything here is filtered through both the experiences of Tom the young child and Tom the narrator. The years at the Soddo missionary camp and his experiences at the local boarding school leave Bascom at an interesting crossroads of personal reflection, world history, and social responsibility. There are noticeable collisions of faith all around him as folks refuse to go to the missionary hospital for fear of the Christians. The good thing about this book is that it isn’t all preachy, and Bascom’s writing is about as genuine as one would expect from someone who grew up in this environment.

Throughout the larger narrative, it’s the microscopic details that are the best—the changes in the chameleon he keep as a pet, the construction of a weaver bird’s nest, the smell of the red earth. This is where Bascom is at his best. I grew up in Europe as a military dependent and the experiences of a child who has to learn a new culture resonated well with me. A great many people can find a footing here, not just evangelicals or memoir enthusiasts. It’s a decent book, with a very interesting tale to tell.

Mar 8: Hunter, Dard. Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft. (DDC 676)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 670: Manufacturing
• 676: Pulp and paper technology

Dard Hunter’s Papermaking is the landmark text on the practice and history of turning wood pulp into a woven, writable surface. He traces the history of paper from its invention by the Chinese eunuch Ts’ai Lun in 105 CE to the current industry of worldwide production and consumption. Hunter is probably the only person to make a career out of hunting every available source on the history of paper and this book represents the culmination of all that research. He covers the science of choosing the right plant material, the history of printing presses and their use of paper materials, and the progression of industrial machines used in the making of paper products. Also included is the history of paper watermarking and its role in company identification, forgeries, and counterfeiting. While the text can be a little dry and tedious, there are plenty of illustrations to move the reader through the history. If you ever had a question about the world history of papermaking, this book will answer them without fail.

>71 NielsenGW: - Interesting
great reviews as always

Mar 11: Kauffman, Stuart A. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. (DDC 215)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 210: Philosophy and theory of religion
• 215: Science and religion

For those people who say that the evidence for God is in nature, Stuart Kauffman is a good way to bridge the gap between a godless universe and one where spirituality pervades the fabric of existence. After reading Niall Shanks’s God, the Devil, and Darwin, I got an understanding of the differing theories of complexity and how they sometimes form the basis for creationist thought. Kauffman’s analysis of nature and molecular complexity goes even deeper than that, however. In Reinventing the Sacred, Kauffman plunges into a scientific universe of systemic breakdowns and synthesis to rechristen what we think of spontaneous, divine, and even religious.

I will confess to having to run to the Internet many times while reading this one to get more context for his concepts and phrases. Things like “the adjacent possible” and “autocatalytic sets” took me a minute to wrap my head around, but in the end, his thorough reading of the universe leads him take God out of the heavens and put him in the helix of DNA. Kauffman’s spirituality lies in the magnificence of molecular spontaneity and the emergence of the human consciousness. I think this is a better way of thinking about the universe. There are still dark places where science cannot yet shed light, and while we shouldn’t immediately ascribe their beginnings to God, we can hold them in a place of wonder until understanding comes. This book takes some effort to get through, but the best conclusions usually come after a bit of struggle. A dense but rewarding book.

Ah Gerard that is so well said. While the reading sounds too dense for me, you condense it to just how it appears to me when you describe God in the helix and holding in a place of wonder. So beautifully said. Thank you. I just don't understand those who work so hard to keep science out of their faith. Wonderful review.

You're going to post it, right?

>79 mkboylan: Of course, Merrikay, I will (although I'm a little unsure of the question: post it where?). I'm going on a tear this weekend with backed up reviews (about ten or so, maybe more), so you're in for a bevy of new books to hear about.

Mar 13: Sire, James W. The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog. (DDC 140)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 140: Specific philosophical schools and viewpoints

James Sire caught me with my proverbial pants down (so to say) with his Universe Next Door. Ostensibly, it goes through the six to ten (depending on how you count and group them) major philosophical schools and examines each one for strengths and flaws. He indeed covers the whole spectrum, from theism to nihilism to naturalism to existentialism to postmodernism. And his dutiful explanations of each school are decent; I’ll give him that. But sadly, it’s the last chapter that wallops you on the side of the head. After a competent exploration of the world of philosophy, he dumps all but one into a bucket labelled “Not Worth Your Time.” The conclusion he brings the book to is to that to live a “well-examined” life, one must be a Christian theist. That left a sour taste in my mouth. That is not to say that Christian theism isn’t a worthy worldview for some people. But simply dismissing billions of people as not living a good life is both insulting and deflating. If you must read this one, stop just before the end—trust me, you’ll feel a lot better about it.

>80 NielsenGW: posting it on the book's page so we can thumb it and all can see it.

Oh -- absolutely! Although I think there's a bug where the number in the reviews box on the book's main page shows "None" for everything. If you scroll down, they're there though.

>81 NielsenGW: oh ouch! Think I'll skip that one! All that work for such an ending! The only philosophy class I took was logic, which was fun but just about killed me. I can't seem to pin down philosophies and have to keep my phil for dummies book close at hand. I can't tell you how many times I have looked up all those different schools and just can't keep them in my head. That tells me I haven't developed any understanding of most of them. Very frustrating.

Actually, I'm experiencing a glitch when I go to a book's page. It says up top no review, but there are reviews. Sorry.

Mar 14: Raphael, Frederic and Kenneth McLeish. The List of Books. (DDC 011)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 000: Computer science, Knowledge, and General Works
• 010: Bibliography
• 011: Bibliographies

Let us say you are building a private library. Let us also say that you want to read in a large variety of subjects but suffer from a crippling inability to either do a lot of research or make wise decisions. Well, Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish, with their List of Books, can come to your rescue. In this slim volume, they collect what they believe to be the best and key books in various fields, summarize them briefly, and organize them for your collecting pleasure. With over 3,000 books in 35 different fields, you would be hard-pressed not to find something here that didn’t pique your interest.

The List of Books is organized, curated, and marked rather well. There are symbols telling you if the book is a major work by the author, if it’s a little dense but worth the effort, if the book is good for beginners in the field, or if the book may just change the way you think. There are also symbols denoting good illustrations or a good bibliography. The lists here are seemingly thorough without being overwrought. The book is a little dated, that’s for sure, but the books listed here, I believe, can stand the test of time. Happy collecting!

That sounds like fun!

Mar 18: Hack, Richard. Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. (DDC 363.25092)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 360: Social problems, services, and associations
• 363: Other social problems and services
• 363.2: Police services
• 363.25: Detection of crime
• +092: Biography

There are about as many myths about J. Edgar Hoover as there are truths. While head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1935 to 1972, there were stories of homosexual trysts with his assistant director Clyde Tolson and that he routinely wore women’s clothing. While these are rumors just the same, they linger in the national psyche. Richard Hack’s Puppetmaster tries to get a more complete picture of the man behind one of the nation’s largest investigative groups.

While most of the information presented in Puppetmaster is good and interesting, the writing is simple and clunky. Hack goes off on too many tangents and includes too many minors details for the history to matter. To be fair, he has gathered a great deal of information about the life of J. Edgar Hoover and how he came to lead the nation’s police force for the better part of five decades. He dispels many of the popular rumors as meager and unsubstantiated, and tries to get to the meat of the story. Unfortunately, he misses the mark. This is a good starter biography, but I’m sure there are other better ones out there.

Mar 21: Jonnes, Jill. Eiffel’s Tower: The Thrilling Story Behind Paris’s Beloved Monument and the Extraordinary World’s Fair that Introduced It. (DDC 907.44361)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 907: Education, research, and related topics of history
• +44361: Paris, France

There is only one true Eiffel Tower. There may be copies in China or Las Vegas, but the Tower only has its sense of power and sheer gravitas amidst the Parisian landscape. While it is not viewable from every window in Paris (contrary to its depiction in movies), it is an iconic and uniquely noticeable landmark. Originally conceived and drafted in 1884 by Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier—engineers under the employ of Gustave Eiffel—, it received the go-ahead for construction in 1887 to be ready for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Jill Jonnes Eiffel’s Tower is quite an illuminating look into the history of, reaction to, and culture surrounding France’s steel pyramid.

Sadly, the construction of the Tower is hardly dramatic. Each piece was painstakingly measured and assembled in a factory, then carted out to the work site for placement. Eiffel and his team of engineers thought of many things to get ahead of possible problems: there were hydraulic jacks in each of the “feet” to help re-align them in case the joining levels were off-center and stringent safety protocols meant that only one person died during its construction. What makes for more fun reading is the social landscape during the lead up to and culmination of the Exposition. Annie Oakley, Thomas Edison, Vincent van Gogh, and even the future Csar Nicholas II of Russia attended the fair, each bringing an interesting perspective to this global event. Thankfully, their stories help to spice up the rather tidy and bland history of the tower itself. All in all, it was a fun read that ends just when it needs to.

>88 NielsenGW: & 89 What interesting books!

Mar 22: Hannibal, Mary Ellen. Evidence of Evolution. (DDC 576.8)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 570: Life sciences (biology)
• 576: Genetics and evolution
• 576.8: Evolution

In a word, Evidence of Evolution is exquisite. Mary Ellen Hannibal’s discussion of evolution and genetics pairs wonderfully with Susan Middleton’s crisp photographs of collected specimens from the California Academy of Science. Hannibal goes through a brief history of Darwin’s expedition to the Galapagos Islands and highlight the basic lines of thought leading up to the theory of evolution. From there are dual treatises on the processes and patterns in evolution in the natural world.

But the text is really just a backdrop for the main attraction: the pictures. If ever there was to be a coffee table book highlighting both the case for evolution and the sheer beauty of the natural world, this would be it. Specimen examples cover a wide range of the tree of life, from insects and sea creatures to birds, turtles, and primates. Sample images from the book can be viewed at the CAS’s website. This is a great book for any lover of the natural sciences or natural photography.

Mar 29: Vassilikos, Vassilis. The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis. (DDC 889.334)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 880: Literatures of Hellenic and Classical Greek languages
• 889: Modern Greek literature
• 889.3: Modern Greek fiction
• 889.33: 1900 to present
• 889.334: 1945 – 1999

Known for his landmark 1967 novel Z, Vassilis Vassilikos is one of Greece’s foremost literary talents. The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis functions on many different levels. It is a meditation on the act of research and writing; it is an autobiography written about someone else; it creates a person out of the literary ether from someone who is real. Ostensibly, the book covers the travails of the narrator trying to find out the truth about the fictional writer Glafkos Thrassakis. Thrassakis is supposed to have been killed at the hands of New Guinea cannibals, but this story quickly falls apart. After discovering new manuscripts, he gains different picture of his elusive prey, but never fully captures him.

Thrassakis, we find out, is really a pseudonym for Lazarus Laziridis, a political dissident, and here’s where the dance between distance and intimacy start. Each layer is really just another façade for the author, but he keeps the reader caring about all three people. While the novel tends towards the Borgesian with its stories within stories, the feeling is delightfully European. There are times when Vassilikos becomes very cheeky and knows full well what he’s doing, and there are other times when his poetry cannot contain itself and creates remarkable passages, but overall, this book is both bewildering and satisfying.

BEAUTIFUL review!

Mar 30: Whitelaw, Mitchell. Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life. (DDC 776)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Fine Arts
• 770: Photography, photographs, and computer art
• 776: Computer art

When a computer generates an image, is it art? Can the image be random pixels, or must there be human guidance of what the computer generates? In Metacreation, Mitchell Whitelaw looks at the history of computer-generated and computer-related art from the perspective of both an art curator and a historian. Whitelaw’s first concern is introducing the reader to the field of artificial life art, or “a-life art.” In this case, artificial life is the creation of biological processes in a technological environment, or having a computer simulate complex natural interactions using code and rule sets. Then, using the simulated processes, the artists create works that show how the worlds of technology and biology interact.

There’s one glaring issue with this book: a lot of the works of art aren’t very good, or even thought-provoking. Whitelaw does his best to explain the place of each work in the history of the medium, but the pieces collected are just underwhelming. A lot of it has to do with the performance capacity of the computers used in the early days of a-life art (think graphics from the original Tron or Lawnmower Man movies). Some of the best pieces are the technological sculptures of Yves Amu Klein which present a world of crisp, futuristic biology. Much of newer a-life art relies on chaos theory and fractal equations to show how the equations that pervade everyday life result in interesting works of art. With some time, this field can grow and rival traditional pieces of brush and bronze, but for now, I think there is still some work to be done. An interesting but ultimately uninspired book.

Apr 4: Nadeau, Jean-Benoit and Julie Barlow. The Story of French. (DDC 440.9)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 400: Languages
• 440: French and Romance languages
• 440.9: General history of French and Romance languages

Currently, French is the fifth-most spoken language in the world. In the Middle Ages, it was the gateway to the aristocratic lifestyle and the lingua franca of the Western world. While it has been eschewed to the milieu of wine drinkers, film buffs, and expatriates, French is still as dynamic and contentious as it has ever been. There is even a group of people—the Academie Francaise—that presides over the language and sets the guidelines on new words and phrases that enter. Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, in The Story of French, try to do what many other linguists have done before them: make the early history and morphology of a language interesting and relevant to modern readers.

In the early days of the French language (the 11th and 12th centuries), the land of the Franks was littered with languages. There was Breton, Angevin, Gascon, Savoyard, Limousin, and even Picard French. Early French evolved from the combination of the Langues d’oil (in Northern France) and the Langues d’oc (in the South). The Crusade sent many Frenchmen to the holy lands in the Middle East, and men from all over France had to communicate with each other and their leaders had to relay messages from the monarch to the men. This combined with the creation of the Kingdom of France in 1204 spawned a unified nation that needed a unified language. The 1634 creation of the Academie arose amid a need to preserve the culture and language of the French against incursions from other nations.

Apart from the history of the language, Nadeau and Barlow also look at the spread of French across the globe, either through natural expansion or through colonial means. French is spoken not just throughout Europe, but also in the US, Brazil, Madagascar, Djibouti, and Vietnam (and many, many other countries). In many respects, the cultural aspects of the French language are far more interesting than its linguistic history. How French and French-speaking peoples are depicted is equally engaging. For the most, the authors keep the topics relevant, well-paced, and scholarly. There are moments of digression into minutia, but there are neither intrusive nor incompatible with the rest of the text. Overall, this was a decent and not too thick read.

95 -
That sounds really interesting. As a native French speaker it's interesting to see how my language developed and I love the fact that we work so hard to preserve it unlike the US where English is just getting butchered. I teach high school students and their total inability to write a complete sentence is mind-boggling.

Apr 6: Wearne, Phillip. Collapse: When Buildings Fall Down. (DDC 690)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 690: Buildings

Buildings are supposed to stand forever. It’s a pretty simple assumption. You build something, and it should stay there. Rarely are things so simple in life, however. Phillip Wearne’s Collapse catalogs eleven of the worst structural engineering failures of the past century and show how simple human miscalculation, incompetence, and even greed led to their downfall. From the Hartford Coliseum roof collapse to the 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse to the crippling bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Wearne’s detailed analysis of each failure helps those thinking about getting into the field of engineering. Each fall prevents the next (we hope). The writing here is dutiful and mildly interesting. Wearne takes official reports into account along with eyewitness interviews in an effort to paint a complete picture of each event. While the book’s design and cover look like something from a B-movie, Wearne takes his subject matter very seriously and it shows. All in all, it was a perfectly competent book.

Apr 9: Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners. (DDC 206.50973)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 206: Leaders and organization
• 206.5: Religious organizations and organization of religious activities
• +0973: United States

Nancy T. Ammerman’s Pillars of Faith covers the seven main religious traditions from an interesting light—to see how the their congregations have evolved over time and how those evolutions relate to American society as a whole. What are the traditions covered, you may ask? In order of size, they are Conservative Protestantism, Mainline Protestantism, African-American Protestantism, Catholic and Orthodox traditions, “Other” religions, Sectarian groups, and Judaism. Each of these groups brings something different to the proverbial melting pot, and each is shaped and influenced by the other.

Ammerman’s analysis of each congregational history is interesting and complex. The base groups themselves are formed by looking at congregational practices and are borne more from their similarities and not their differences. She takes a look at how each congregation was built, how it engages with its members, and how their organization and practices intersect with the others. She argues that organized religion is thriving and even necessary for the growth of the nation. Now, that being said, this is not a book you can pick up on a lazy Saturday afternoon and just stroll through. But if you’re genuinely interested in the intersection of American religion and American sociology, you’ll find a great deal here. This book is as much about American history as it is about American religion. While this book is not raucous or fun, it is well-researched and measured in its tone, and for those reasons, I found it intriguing enough to finish.

>97 NielsenGW: It seems bizarre that the Alfred P. Murrah bombing would be considered a building collapse (it's the cover of that book, btw). That sort of thinking leads me to imagine the author finds fault with the construction of the building. Does he discuss the World Trade Center?

>99 lesmel:: I thought that was off-topic as well, but Wearne does go into detail into exactly how the blast weakened the building and what that means for future projects. Also, the book was written in 2000, so the WTC attacks are not discussed.

Apr 13: Monod, David. Store Wars: Shopkeepers and the Culture of Mass Marketing, 1890-1939. (DDC 381.10971)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 380: Commerce, communications, and transportation
• 381: Commerce and trade
• 381.1: Marketing channels
• +0971: Canada

Between the close of the 19th century and the Second World War, the commercial landscape of Canada underwent a massive transformation. Corporate conglomerations emerged and the era of big box versus independent merchants began. There is this interesting and clichéd historical narrative that creeps into everyone’s minds that the birth of large, faceless companies leads to immediate hostilities from smaller ones. But the truth is never that simple. David Monod’s Store Wars tries desperately to set the records straight on how exactly the growth of the capitalist culture in Canada impacted the social and economic landscape.

One of the main problems with this book, other than the fact that it’s a book on foreign commercial history, is that the author tries too hard to let you know that he’s deliberately usurping assertions of previous historians. He constantly harps on years of the simplistic research, and rather than letting it go and moving forward with his subject matter, he keeps poking at other authors and highlighting their “mistakes.” Canada’s economic history is, like all other subjects, nuanced, complicated, and interesting. Monod’s main thesis is that the supposed merchant class that existed in Canada (which didn’t really exist at all) cannot be seen as one homogenous group of people with a united agenda and an equal antagonistic attitude toward the new corporations. Different shopkeepers responded differently to changing economic trends and retail atmospheres. But Monod does all he can to aggrandize his research and not his subject matter. The topic is dry enough without compounding it with veiled vitriol. For all its faults, though, this is still a decently researched book on a niche topic that scholars should still consult, if only to inspire them to write more about it. It’s heavy-handed, sure, but still a competent look into another country’s history.

Apr 14: Anderson, Duncan. The Falklands War 1982. (DDC 997.11024)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 990: History of the Pacific Ocean Island, other parts of the world, and extraterrestrial worlds
• 997: History of Atlantic Ocean islands
• 997.1: Falkland Islands, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, and Bouvet Island
• 997.11: Falkland Islands
• 997.1102: British period, 1832 to present
• 997.11024: Falkland Islands War, 1982

In the spring of 1982, Argentine military leaders decided to invade the South Georgia and Falkland Islands, which had been under British control for 150 years, and reclaim their former territory. Not wishing to seem too hesitant, British Prime Minister Thatcher immediately sent a retaliatory naval and ground force to re-occupy the Falklands. After 74 days of fighting, the British emerged victorious and British troops held a celebratory march through London for the first time since the Second World War. Duncan Anderson’s The Falklands War 1982 is a whirlwind tour through the background, battles, and history of the quick entanglement.

Anderson’s volume is a slim, but it covers everything rather well. There are plenty of illustrations, photographs, and maps to show how all the events took place. His descriptions and analyses are decidedly biased toward the British; however, the facts are still presented in a straightforward manner. The bibliography is rather sparse, but it was still recent history at the time of publication. To be fair as well, the war was a bit more nuanced than an invasion and a quick counterstrike, and Anderson’s history does at least take a look at both side of the fighting. If you’re looking an introductory, non-academic piece on the Falklands War, then this one will do fairly well.

Apr 16: Householder, Alston S. Principles of Numerical Analysis (DDC 518)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 510: Mathematics
• 518: Numerical analysis

Before I earned a degree in library science, and before became a major in English literature, I wanted to be a mathematician. I was even decently proficient at it. Integrals, differentials, infinite sets—these were all a lot of fun for me. So, for me, Alston Householder’s Principle of Numerical Analysis was a trip down memory lane. Here, he discusses the use and derivation of calculation errors, linear and nonlinear equations, matrix and vector mathematics, and yes, integrals and differentials.

Two years ago, I read a treatise on functional fields in Italian dialectical construction. This book was much like that one. For a fair amount of the time, I could understand the words being used, but at other times, it went way over my head. It turns out I’ve lost a fair amount of my former mathematical prowess. Interestingly enough, however, the author starts with a discussion in mathematical error and how to calculate it. Most of the time, this is reserved for after the main points have been discussed. There’s a wonderful line in that section: “Blunders results from fallibility, errors from finitude. Blunders will not be considered here to any extent.” It’s a wonderful no-nonsense approach to what can be a very heady subject. To those that read this one, I tip my hat to them, for they are better equipped than I. A dense and formulaic book.

>95 NielsenGW:, The Story of French sounds really neat. I am currently listening to a podcast series about the history of English and its got me wanting similar information about other languages.

Apr 17: Swimme, Brian. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story. (DDC 113)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 110: Metaphysics
• 113: Cosmology (Philosophy of nature)

Brian Swimme’s The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos is one of the weirdest books I’ve read in a long time. In one fell swoop, he declares capitalism the new cult of our age and urges parents to replace evangelist doctrine with teachings of astronomy, science, and cosmology. His main invective is against the constant barrage of advertisements, product placement, and consumer behavior that gets ingrained into children, thereby teaching them that the meaning of life is in things and not ideas. While this is not an entirely crazy notion, his hippy-dippy awe of the universe sometime gets in the way of his message.

Swimme truly believes science has better lessons to teach than anything else. It has rules, champions rationality, and gives understanding (when it can). He believes that if people truly understood the workings of nature and the universe around them, then they would devote more of their lives to understanding more. He does a pretty good job of illustrating how earlier scientific revolutions played a large part in bettering society and how a new revolution is just what we need, but the purple prose surrounding the awe and majesty of the universe can be a little much. It’s a quick read, but it will leave your head swimming (sorry about the pun) in an odd philosophical fog.

Apr 18: Paz, Octavio. In Search of the Present: 1990 Nobel Lecture. (DDC 865)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 860: Literatures of Spanish and Portuguese languages
• 865: Spanish speeches

When the Nobel Committee announced Octavio Paz as the laureate in literature in 1990, it was the first time a Mexican writer had been elevated to the position. The committee cited his “impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.” Every year, if the recipient can, each laureate is invited to Oslo to give a speech to both accept the award and share a little bit of their vision of the world. Paz’s speech, In Search of the Present, is a quiet reflection on his history as a writer, as a reader, and as a lifelong pursuer of the “modern.”

Paz’s talk centers on the rise of modernity in our culture. He reminisces about his boyhood and reading in a small home library, going on adventures with Cervantes and other great writers. He talks about the disconnect between the “present” of a story and our collective “present,” and how poetry (or at least poetic writing) intermingles the two. “Poetry,” he says, “in love with the instant, seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present.” To Paz, the literatures of the world are seeking a new present in which to connect to the reader. Each literature seeks this present while continually hunting the “modern.” This is the inner turmoil of literature. Earlier in his career, he said that “there can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.” The speech is endearing, lofty, poetic, and insightful and definitely worth a read if you can spare a moment.

Apr 23: Bridwell, Ferrell M. Landscape Plants: Their Identification, Culture and Use. (DDC 715)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Fine Arts
• 710: Civic and landscape art
• 715: Woody plants in landscape architecture

Ferrell Bridwell’s Landscape Plants is exactly what it advertises. Bridwell catalog all the plants that can be used in outdoor landscaping, plain and simple. While the book is essentially a catalog of plants, there is a fair amount of discussion on which plants are more commonly used than others, how to arrange materials to create an appealing landscape, and which plants grow better in different geographic locales. The book focuses more on the decorative appearance and care necessary for the plants, so don’t expect too deep a discussion of plant biology and morphology. There are, however, sections on each plant dealing with pest control, growth rates, and many other maintenance subjects. If you’re looking to landscape your own property or need some answers to questions you have about your foliage, this is a very good book to turn to. It’s not a page turner, but rather a fairly decent reference tool.

Apr 25: Abram, Norm. Measure Twice, Cut Once: Lessons from a Master Carpenter. (DDC 684)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 680: Manufacture of products for specific uses
• 684: Furnishings and home workshops

If you’re anything like me and you’ve ever watched an episode of This Old House, you will find it both mesmerizing and engaging. Master carpenter Norm Abram would spend each episode guiding the viewer through a woodworking construction project, giving helpful tips and tricks for doing the job correctly the first time. Measure Twice, Cut Once, a collection of his short essays, is much the same way. He talks about growing up in a carpentry family (his father and grandfather each built their own homes), his relationship with the craft, and his impressions on different tools and techniques. This short book covers a lot of basics, from which tools work better in different situations to how past jobs have led to current techniques when on a project. This book actually got me thinking of which tools I have in my toolbox and how to best use them. Luckily, Abram stays away from the sappy and lands this collection squarely in the realm of the sentimental. For anyone looking for casual information about classic carpentry or a quick jolt of folksy-ish memoir, this one should not disappoint.

Those who know me know that I can't go on vacation without ducking into every bookstore I find. After a week tooling around Lake Erie, I came back with another representative haul:

* de Bernieres, Louis. Birds Without Wings -- Nominated for the 2004 Whitbread/Costa Award for Fiction
* Doctorow, E.L. Loon Lake -- Nominated for the 1980 National Book Critic's Circle Award for Fiction and the 1982 National Book Award
* Doctorow, E.L. World's Fair -- Nominated for the 1986 National BOok Award for Fiction
* Eng, Tan Twan. The Garden of Evening Mists -- Nominated for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
* Homes, A.M. May We Be Forgiven -- Winner of the 2013 Orange Prize for Fiction
* Johnson, Denis. Tree of Smoke -- Winner of the 2007 National Book Award for Fiction; nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
* Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior -- Nominated for the 2013 Orange Prize for Fiction
* Mason, Bobbie Ann. Feather Crowns -- Nominated for the 1993 National Book Critic's Circle Award for Fiction
* Miller, Sue. Family Pictures -- Nominated for the 1980 National Book Critic's Circle Award for Fiction
* Tyler, Anne. Breathing Lessons -- Winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; nominated for the 1988 National Book Award
* Updike, John. Rabbit Redux -- Nominated for the 1972 National Book Award
* Updike, John. Rabbit, Run -- Nominated for the 1961 National Book Award

Apr 27: Lathrop, Thomas A. The Evolution of Spanish. (DDC 465)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 400: Language
• 460: Spanish and Portuguese languages
• 465: Grammar and syntax of standard Spanish

One of the more interesting parts of a language is how individual words form over the years. In English, some words were formed from the fusing together of two existing words or from the spontaneous creation of a word that fills a gap in our collective description. Most of the time, however, words just evolve. Starting with one spelling and meaning, they slowly morph into new forms and new contexts. The same process happens in nearly every language in the world. Thomas Lathrop’s Evolution of Spanish is a look into the roots of the language, and from these roots, he hopes new understanding can grow.

Lathrop’s history of the Spanish language starts with a look at Vulgar Latin. Because Spain and Italy are so proximal and Spanish is Latinate in origin, it stands to reason that an understanding of Latin is necessary for an understanding of modern Spanish. While a lot of this may not be exciting, it is actually the only real expository section of the book. After this is page after page of pairs of word lists and verb conjugations. These lists show the evolution of the one word to the next, starting with simple vowel shifts and then moving to various grammatical forms. For linguistic historians, this is a nice compilation and a basis for a more in-depth comparative analysis, but for a casual reader, it is bone dry. Thankfully, it wasn’t too terribly long.

May 3: Leebaert, Derek. To Dare and To Conquer: Special Operations and the Destiny of Nations, From Achilles to Al Qaeda. (DDC 356.1609)

Dewy Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 350: Public administration and military science
• 356: Foot forces and warfare
• 356.1: Infantry
• 346.16: Troops having special combat functions
• +09: History

Almost everyone in the Western hemisphere knows the story of the Trojan horse. A small band of fighters hid inside a giant wooden horse left at the gates of Troy while the Greeks pretend to sail away. Once brought inside, the men crawl out of the horse and wreak havoc on the sleeping city. Throughout history, there are many stories of elite groups of soldiers outwitting, outfighting, or outflanking a much larger army. Whether through perfect subterfuge or simply engaging the enemy with better tactics, special operations forces often change the course of a battle, a war, and even history itself. Derek Leebaert’s To Dare and To Conquer is a voluminous catalogue of such forces and how their stories intertwine with both their culture and their history.

There are a lot of histories in this history. At more than 600 pages, Leebaert suffers from a bit of information overkill. After discussing the Trojan War, he moves through Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire then the Middle Ages, Spanish conquistadors, pirate tactics, colonial Revolutionary espionage, the French Revolution, the two world wars, the Bay of Pigs, and missions to the Middle East. Then after all that, there is a discussion of politics and the use of special forces. While the histories themselves are the most interesting part, there are inconsistencies and complacent writing. Most noticeable is the clichéd discussion of the Spanish forces in the Amazon. I’m not entirely sure these can be classified as special forces, but rather an invading brigade. Also, Leebaert tends to be a little overdramatic, wordy, and politically biased (especially when discussing the CIA). However, the bibliography is immense and can point the reader towards more focused sources. It’s a very thick book and requires some gumption to get through, but there are some rewarding historical tidbits if you stick it out.

May 6: Guinness World Records 2014 (DDC 032)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 000: Computer science, knowledge, and general works
• 030: General encyclopedic works
• 032: General encyclopedic works in English

I remember when I was a kid and first read the Guinness Book of World Records. Seeing pictures of the person with the world’s longest fingernails and the largest dog and the oldest person on Earth was astounding. Here catalogued was the extremity of humanity. Back then, there were very few “zany” categories, but now people seem destined to hold records in very niche areas. In the 2014 edition, there are records for the fastest assembly a seven-layer chicken bucket pyramid (35.72 seconds), fastest downing of 200 mL of mustard (20.8 seconds), and most Rubik’s cubes solved while running a marathon (100).

While most of the book is jammed with useless (but still fun) trivia, there are interesting tidbits to discover. For instance, researchers are experimenting with the feasibility of zero-gravity surgery, performing the first one on September 27, 2006. Also, in 1803, Joseph Samuel survived three separate hanging due to equipment failure. Further back in history, Pliny the Younger gave the earliest known description of a volcanic eruption (Vesuvius in 79 CE). Slogging through the entries in the Guinness Book of World Records is all at once wondrous, insane, and revelatory. It’s basic a book of lists, so the writing is inherently monotone, but if you’ve got a free afternoon, give it a whirl. I guarantee you’ll find something fun.

May 9: Munoz, Heraldo. The Dictator's Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet. (DDC 983.065)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 980: History of South America
• 983: History of Chile
• 983.06: Period of later republics, 1861 to present
• 983.065: Period of military rule, 1973-1990

Following a US-backed coup d’etat to overthrow Salvador Allende in 1973, Commander-in-Chief of the Army Augusto Pinochet became the totalitarian leader of the country of Chile. He ruled with an iron fist for the next seventeen years, rounding up political opponents and dissidents, until he opened the country to democracy and was defeated in an election in 1990. Heraldo Munoz, former Chilean Ambassador to the United Nations and survivor of both the Allende and Pinochet governments, brings to light the day-to-day struggle during the country’s period of military rule in The Dictator’s Shadow.

You can tell Munoz is working through a lot of issues in this book. He recalls mass executions of political dissidents and diligently tries to tie their deaths directly back to Pinochet. While Pinochet died in 2006 and the country has been more or less democratic for the last 25 years, there is still a lot of healing to do in Chile. On its face, it’s a political memoir and Munoz tries to place the history of Chile in a greater global context, but each detail, each event, and each vote cast brings it back to the personal. This book is decidedly biased, but Munoz gets to tell his tale just like everyone else. Supporters of Pinochet will scoff and flail while modern citizens enjoy the new Chile. An interesting and eye-opening book.

May 12: Kirsch, Jonathan. A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization. (DDC 228)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 220: The Bible
• 228: Revelation (Apocalypse)

After vexillology (the study of flags and their designs) and ichthyology (the study of fishes), my third favorite “ology” is eschatology: the study of the end of times. It is simultaneously incredibly easy and infinitely impossible to posit what the future will hold, and even more so when talking about the end of the future. How will humanity live out its final days? Will we relocate to a new planet? Will we succumb to our own destructive forces? Or will a grand creator revisit their creation and judge those left on the last day? Jonathan Kirsch’s A History of the End of the World looks at the Biblical writing concerning the end of days and finds that a lot of the prophecies influenced culture, history, and even civilization itself.

The Book of Revelation is the last book in the Bible, purportedly the product of the visions of John (either John the Apostle or John of Patmos) and written sometime between 60 and 95 CE. These visions are jam-packed with images, symbols, numbers, and scenes that are to occur as both a warning and a part of the end times. Kirsch’s history looks at how people at different times have interpreted these writings to structure their lives. People saw signs from the Book of Revelation in the Fall of Rome, the Black Death, the Inquisition, and every 20th century war. Like the visions of Nostradamus, the human imagination is capable of gleaning symbolism from almost any pattern of events. And much like those odd visions, the end times of Revelation fail to come to fruition (at least so far). Kirsch’s tone is equal parts scholarly, arrogant, and slightly condescending, and makes for a more interesting reading of both the Bible and Western history. All in all, a very intriguing book.

May 14: Schechter, Bruce. The Path of No Resistance: The Story of the Revolution in Superconductivity. (DDC 537.623)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 530: Physics
• 537: Electricity and electronics
• 537.6: Electrodynamics and thermoelectricity
• 537.62: Electric conductivity and resistance
• 537.623: Superconductivity

Alright, first a primer on superconductivity: When electricity flows down a wire, some of the flow is lost due to the resistance of the material. The opposite of resistance is conductance. Superconductivity occurs when a material is cooled to such a ridiculously low temperature that the near-absence of heat allows electricity to flow without loss. The temperature at which this happens is called the critical temperature. High-temperature superconductivity physics seeks to find materials that allows for superconductivity at a critical temperature above 77 kelvins. Everybody with me so far? Good. Here we go.

Bruce Schechter, in The Path of No Resistance, documents the early pioneers in the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Regular superconductivity was discovered as a property of matter in 1911. For 75 years, no one had come up with a material that superconducted above 23K. Then, in 1986, Bednorz and Mueller induced superconductivity in lanthanum barium copper oxide at 35K (trust me, the 12K difference was earth-shattering news). They were immediately awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics the next year. (By the way, for those that care, the current record (as of 2014) is mercury barium calcium copper oxide at 133 kelvins.)

Then, things really got fun. Research teams from across the world theorized a new frontier of superconductive ceramics where electricity could flow and maglev trains could travel across countries without energy loss. The problem was that all this was very pie in the sky talk. The only samples that could produce such effects were small and fragile at best. Schechter’s interviews with scientists a few years after the fact show just how scientific thought changes from year to year and what happens when the media gets a hold of scientific discoveries before the techniques are properly vetted. It’s an interesting book, albeit slightly dated, but fun nonetheless.

Due to my late arrival in Club Read and other excuses I am just now getting around to your thread. As a former librarian (but not a cataloguer), I am loving your romp through the Dewey Decimal System. So many of the books you have read sound interesting, but I am definitely adding The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau to my wish list. I shall refer to your thread if I need to give myself a shot in the arm.

Welcome, welcome Poquette! I'm a bit of a nutter about the DDC, and this project has certainly been taxing, but I'm enjoying the variety all the same. Cheers!

May 20: Santayana, George. The Philosophy of Santayana. (DDC 191)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 190: Modern Philosophy
• 191: Modern Western philosophy of the United States and Canada

Let’s start with the basics: George Santayana was born in Madrid in 1863, but was reared in the United States. He was educated at Harvard and eventually taught there. Among his students were the writers T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Gertrude Stein. The great American poet Wallace Stevens counted Santayana among his friends. Much of Santayana’s philosophy pervades modern culture in the form of aphorisms and quick bon-mots. The Philosophy of George Santayana is a dense book filled to the brim with the life’s work of one of the twentieth century’s most prodigious thinkers.

First, a few excerpts:
• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
• When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.
• Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.

It would neither befit the breadth and scope of Santayana’s work to try and sum it all up here. His writing flows well and goes into the philosophies of religion, war, art, beauty, fashion, society, and love. He did not adhere to any particular religion, but generally considered it to be a benign entity (it was the deeds of the believers that caused him consternation). His philosophical stances take pieces from but still question the pragmatic, the metaphysical, and the epiphenomenal. This, quite frankly, is what I believe should be the proper stance of philosophy—to synthesize, to grow, and to ask. Santayana does all these things particularly well. I don’t recommend reading this one straight through like I did. It’s best for small consumption over a long period of time. A heady but enlightening book.

May 21: Voltaire. Candide, or Optimism. (DDC 843.5)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 840: Literatures of French and related languages
• 843: French fiction
• 843.5: 1715-1789

If you’re looking for one of the most satirical, rollicking, odd, philosophical, and whimsical novels in history, then you needn’t go any further than Voltaire’s Candide. Voltaire’s canonical 1759 work examines the conflict between optimism and realism, between Old World and New World experiences, and between upper class and lower class conditions. But even these dichotomies are too simple for this work. The title character’s adventures begin when he kisses Cunegonde, a relative of the Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh and is expelled from the estate with his mentor Pangloss. And then the real fun starts.

Candide’s adventures through the great earthquake of Lisbon, the New World, and Asia Minor to be reunited with Cunegonde reflects just how sheltered he was raised. Pangloss, ever the optimist, explains that even though there is pain and suffering and loss in the world, we are living in the “best of all possible worlds.” Candide never stops being about things: it’s about first impressions, love, loss, culture, philosophy, foreign relations, religions, etc. Voltaire clearly has a lot to say, but luckily, this novella is just long enough to pack them all in without being too overbearing. Candide finally gives up on optimism, but the funny thing is, he never says what his new philosophy will be. That’s left for the reader to figure out. Much like Animal Farm and 1984, society as a whole is Voltaire’s fodder—he laughs at us all. And we all could use a good laugh. A delightful and witty book.

It's a long time since I read Candide but I remember loving it.

May 23: Vrettos, Theodore. The Elgin Affair: The True Story of the Greatest Theft in History. (DDC 733.309385)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Fine Arts and Recreation
• 730: Plastic arts and sculpture
• 733: Greek, Roman, and Etruscan sculpture
• 733.3: Greek (Hellenic) sculpture
• +09385: Ancient Attica to 323 CE

From 1801 to 1812, the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, acquired some of the greatest sculptures in the Western world. His agents loaded priceless pieces of art onto barges and boats so that he could sell them to the British Museum for safekeeping. By 1812, he had removed 17 statues, 15 metope panels, 247 feet of frieze, and several other pieces of the Parthenon from Greece. Needless to say, this was all highly suspect and entirely illegal. Theodore Vrettos’s The Elgin Affair chronicles the history of the displacement and how the selfishness of a single 19th century official can lead to strained relations two hundred years later.

Vrettos’s history starts with Napoleon at the close of the 18th century and follows the life of Lord Elgin as through his youth, his ambassadorship, his rocky marriage, and his underhanded acquisitions. Very few can argue that Elgin’s transfer of the pieces from Greece to England was legal, and the intricate and shady methods he employed hammers the point home. None of his documentation had original signatures, and he basically forced the British Parliament to buy the pieces for the Museum. Lord Byron himself protested to the acquisition. But since interest in classical Greece was picking up just around this time, the marbles found a ready audience in the British public, and thus they have stayed in the British Museum to this day.

This book doesn’t go through the nuanced legal arguments that some make to prove whether the pieces truly belonged to the Ottoman Empire or whether Great Britain had any right to purchase them at all. It is more about the machinations of the theft itself, the sheer audacity of Lord Elgin to remove them in the first place. The story is interesting and the detail rich. Most people who know anything about Greek sculpture know about the Elgin Marbles, but this book places them in a deeper historical context. If you’re a fan of art history, then this will entertain you for a short time. An enjoyable read.

May 27: Knight, Christopher and Robert Lomas. The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus. (DDC 366.1)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 360: Social problems and services; associations
• 366: Associations
• 366.1: Freemasonry

Christopher Knight’s and Robert Lomas’s The Hiram Key is a laughable “history” of secret societies, the Freemasons, Judeo-Christian historical figures, and Egyptian Gnosticism. Therein lies the problem with writing about secret societies. Not much can either be proven or disproven. Their very clandestine nature requires that they do not leave a lot of historical documentation in their wake. Lomas and Knight try unflaggingly to connect small clues in artifacts and letters together to illustrate an alternate reading of history. They include the classic story of Jesus’s hidden family and the Rosslyn Chapel conspiracy along with evidence of an Egyptian influence on Judaism and the existence of secret scrolls that tell the true story of Freemasonry.

This book is laced with conspiracies, conjecture, and confusion. Luckily, each chapter has a handy-dandy conclusion section that you can skip to when you get too overwhelmed by the writers’ avalanche of secret knowledge. The whole book is basically a call to arms to dig up a church so that they can “prove” some of the more outlandish theories that they propose. There is little here by way of a bibliography or even footnotes, so tracing their scholarship is nearly impossible. You just have to sit back and enjoy the ride they take you on. And trust me: it is quite a wild ride.

Jun 3: Meredith, Martin. The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. (DDC 960.32)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 960: History of Africa
• 960.3: 1885 to present
• 960.32: 1945-1999

In the late 19th century, European powers went to work dividing up the continent of Africa among themselves. Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, and Italy each took a piece in hope of increasing their own economies and their own power. By the 1950s, however, African population groups began to declare independence from their European overseers. One by one, countries emerged to form a modern Africa, but then, one by one, those same countries began to crumble under their own problems. Rampant cronyism, unmitigated illness, poor education, and a severe lack of infrastructure have led the continent of Africa to the state it’s in now. Martin Meredith’s The Fate of Africa is an unflinching look at the people and processes that have formed Africa as we know it today.

Each chapter of Meredith’s enormous treatise is a case study in poor governmental choices. Dictator after dictator emerges, corruption plagues the populace, and proper services cannot reach those that need them. Meredith makes no apologies for his views, but neither does he offer solutions. The problems are too complex for easy, book-length answers. It is true that the global community is still sending aid to Africa, but improper oversight of that aid means that it oftentimes ends up in the wrong areas or the wrong hands. Meredith’s history is replete with sadness, misery, and pain, but we as readers should not look away. In some cases, it is the only time we do look. A heavy but eye-opening book.

>121 NielsenGW: Seeing the small slice of the Elgin Marbles on display at the British Museum was one of the minor thrills of my life. And seeing how much better preserved they are than what is left standing in Athens gives one pause. The Elgin Affair sounds very interesting indeed!

>124 Poquette: There is a very interesting debate on whether the British have actually taken better care of their ill-gotten goods than Greece could have. Even though I lived in Europe for ten years, I never made it to the British Museum. It's one of my biggest regrets. London and Paris still hold a special place in my heart for all the wonderful art they contain.

Jun 5: de Vries, Leonard. Victorian Inventions. (DDC 608.7)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 608: Inventions and patents
• 608.7: Historical, geographic, and personal treatment of inventions and patents

If you’ve ever stayed up too late watching television, you’ve probably seen all manner of infomercials for interesting, crazy, outlandish, unnecessary, and even usable products. The thing is, someone had to invent all those items. From new bacon microwave racks to foot mops to gyroscopically-stabilized snack bowls, each one required thought, design, and materialization. This phenomenon is by no means a recent one. Folks have been coming up with new products and devices for hundreds of years. Leonard de Vries’s Victorian Inventions highlights one such era of imagination to show that we are not as removed from our past as we think.

De Vries’s stories come from three sources—Scientific American, De Natuur, and La Nature—and are divided into five major categories: transport, electricity, optics, telephony, and of course, miscellaneous. They span many areas of daily life from 1865 to 1900. Right off the bat, there is the Pedespeed, a pair of small side wheels one attaches to one’s shoes to skedaddle faster through the city. Then, there are devices to mechanically deliver food to one’s table, to bore tunnels through solid rock, to project advertisements into the night sky, to simultaneously play the cello and piano, and so on and so on.

This coffee table book offers a varied glimpse into the past. From the photographic rifle to the theatrophones, each invention brought something of the amazing into people’s lives. Much like today’s technology, each item seems slightly weird but useful in the right environment. De Vries’s writing is many time secondary to the large illustrations, but interesting nonetheless. A fun and inviting book.

Jun 6: Compton, Mary Katherine and David Compton. Forbidden Fruit Creates Many Jams: Roadside Church Signs Across America. (DDC 254.4)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 250: Christian observances in daily life
• 254: Parish administration
• 254.4: Public relations and publicity

Mary and David Compton’s Forbidden Fruit Creates Many Jams is probably as simple a book as one can conceive. Go around, collect witty saying from church signs, and present them in a compact volume to be consumed quickly without much fluff. I literally cannot say much more about it. Some are funny, some fall flat, some are judgmental, and some are uninspired. There’s no real originality or synthesis here, just two hundred or so pieces of text from signs.

For the sake of expedience, here are a few examples:
• A backbone is better than a wishbone.
• Many children are afraid of the dark. Many adults are afraid of the light.
• Don’t like the Devil’s fruit? Stay out of his orchard!

It’s a quick book. I blew through it in about twenty minutes. It’ll at least conjure up a chortle or two.

Jun 9: Sole, Ricard and Brian Goodwin. Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology. (DDC 570)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 570: Biology

If you’ve ever seen an array of beetles in a natural history museum or gone snorkeling, you have no doubt marveled at just how complex biology can be. There are millions upon millions of species on Earth, each following their own patterns. Those patterns encounter and interfere with other patterns to create the massive biosphere we have today. Ricard Sole and Brian Goodwin, in Signs of Life, try to parse out those patterns and how the science that occurs at the intersection of chaos, mathematics, and biology.

Sole and Goodwin’s investigation traverses almost the entire map of living creatures. From the patterns on mollusk shells to the swarm maps of invading ant populations to mutation rates in viruses to neural pathways, complexity is a large part of biological study. They even expand their research into stock market fluctuations and urban sprawl. This book is heavy in both illustrations and mathematical formulae, but you don’t have to be versed in the math to understand the concepts at hand. This book at what I would consider an advanced introductory level. The science is attainable, but the writing gets a little technical at times. All in all, a very intriguing book.

Jun 12: Ramaswamy, Sumathi. Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. (DDC 494.8110954)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 400: Languages
• 490: Other languages
• 494: Altaic, Uralic, Hyperborean, and Dravidian languages
• 494.8: Dravidian languages
• 494.81: South Dravidian languages
• 494.811: Tamil
• +0954: South Asia/India

In the 1960s, men began to sacrifice themselves in the name of the Tamil language. Steadfastness to the Tamil language by inhabitants of Southern India was tantamount to a religion. But what lead to these beliefs? And what can be learned from both history and language when we view through the lens of language devotion? Sumathi Ramaswamy, in Passions of the Tongue, proposes a very new and interesting kind of linguistic study, and along the way, shows how both a people and a language evolved.

Language devotion is a new subject in the study of linguistics. When viewed in the culture of South India, the Tamil language became to its speakers a kind of goddess. At the turn of the 20th century, Tamil became a life-force for those who spoke it, and when the language itself was threatened by Hindi and other sources, purity movements and self-immolations began. Because Tamil was anthropomorphized as a female deity, the rise of Tamil speakers was paralleled by a rise in motherly metaphors in both the language and the culture. While India was trying to become its own country, Tamil was trying to secure its own power in the culture. Tamil purists could be likened to the Academie Francaise in that any change or adjustment to the language was ardently vetted.

You would be hard pressed to find a book on Tamil more thoroughly researched than this one. Ramaswamy doesn’t get into the morphology of the language so much as the culture of the speaker, which is good because the history is far more interesting. If you’re looking for an intermediate level book on South Indian languages and history, then this one is the book for you. A rich and interesting book.

Jun 15: Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. (DDC 188)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 180: Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophies
• 188: Stoic philosophy

Marcus Aurelius was Emperor of the Roman Empire from 161 to 180 CE. Considered the last of the Five Good Emperors, he oversaw his empire with stoicism and equality. In his Meditations, written while on a military campaign in the last decade of his life, he sets forth a series of aphorisms, letters, and principles that he tried to live by. As a stoic, he thought that powerful emotions were the cause of errors in life and so sought to live a life of a more moral and intellectual manner.

The Meditations aren’t really written for an audience, and this translation is a little stilted. But what you can tell is that Marcus Aurelius is trying to reflect upon a rather interesting life. There are times when he is contented in good memories and times when the ennui of his stoic life gets to him. But the overall message is to live a good life (“Death hangs over you: while you live, and while you may, be good”) and try not to be too overly swayed by things outside of one’s control. “It is not right to vex ourselves at things,” he says, “for they care not about it.”

In the end, Marcus Aurelius’s message is both honorable and interesting. The writing takes a little getting used to, so it would behoove readers to find a good translation. It is, however, a rather good beginning look into stoicism and its effectiveness in the proper hands. Marcus Aurelius, when set against the likes of Nero and Domitian, rules in the vein of a philosopher king and tries desperately to do right by his people. All in all, a refreshing and intellectual book.

Jun 17: Italy’s Foreign and Colonial Policy: A Selection from the Speeches Delivered in the Italian Parliament by the Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Senator Tommaso Tittoni During His Six Years In Office (1903-1909). (DDC 855)

Right off the bat, I feel I need to warn readers of this book. It’s a book of speeches given by a middlingly important government official to members of his country’s parliament. These are not remarks given on the world stage or by anyone that a majority of people have even heard of. Tommaso Tittoni was the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1903 to 1909, then again in 1919. He served a small stint as the Acting Prime Minister for 17 days in March 1905. He worked in various capacities for the Italian government for the majority of his life and as such became familiar with the ins and outs of world politics. The speeches collected in Italy’s Foreign and Colonial Policy show just how intertwined the world was at the turn of the 20th century.

Tittoni’s speeches are grouped into three major categories: foreign policy, immigration, and colonial proceedings. These thirty-four speeches, while confined to the arena of foreign affairs, still show how varied and political the purview of his office of Foreign Affairs Minister was. He has to worry about economic compensation, agricultural tariffs, negotiating existing treaties and agreements, and even the internal workings of other countries. One speech in particular expounds upon a case before the United States Supreme Court about social legislation and insurance laws. The nation of Italy was only just cobbled together not even fifty years before Tittoni’s tenure in office, so their relation to the rest of the world has to be established tenuously and judiciously.

I can’t say that I derived a great amount of pleasure from reading this book, but every once in a while, a snippet would pique my interest. Those moments, however, are few and far between. The inner dialogues of the Italian government during the 1900’s isn’t nearly as exciting as one would think. If you’re a scholar of political history or Italian government, then here’s a book for you. If not, move on.

Jun 20: Kliebard, Herbert M. The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1893-1958. (DDC 375.00973)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 370: Education
• 375: Curricula
• +0973: United States

If you’ve ever heard a parents talking about their child’s education, then you have at least encountered one person who thinks there is a better way to teach children. Trying to implement a curriculum that will have better and lasting effects on so many students is perhaps one of the hardest tasks there is. Teachers have to deal with countless varied personalities and an ever-increasing knowledge pool. From the 1890s onward in America, educators, philosophers, and legislators have tried to steer the course of education, and Herbert Kliebard’s Struggle for the American Curriculum traces each school of thought to see how they fared.

Kliebard starts with the state of the American education system in the late-19th century: textbooks and readers were becoming regular and nationalized, widespread newspapers were encouraging people to read regularly, and the last vestiges of the British model of teaching were being phased out of schoolrooms. The influx of immigrant children, financial panics, and new philosophies all came together to upheave American teaching. Almost every figure in the history of education is presented, including The Committee of Ten, Charles Eliot, and John Dewey. From curriculum theory to social meliorism to social efficiency, we see many different perspectives on what exactly a school curriculum should do. Should it be designed to find the best and the brightest or to make everyone socially competent? Or should it be engineering to make people better? These are heady, interesting, and complex questions, and Kliebard does a very good job of exploring the answers.

The writing here is neither incredibly technical nor needlessly scholarly, but don’t expect this to be a quick read. Education history is a rather intriguing lens through which to view a society, and there’s always a news story every year which places the education level of Americans against that of other countries. How we got to our current “progressive” education system is quite a winding tale indeed, but on the whole, Kliebard’s book is rife with important details. A rather informative book.

Jun 23: Weir, Stephen. Encyclopedia Idiotica: History’s Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them. (DDC 902)

Imagine only being remembered for the worst or most unintelligent thing you’ve ever done. Your history, rather than a subtle continuum of up and downs, is seen as the outcome of a single, unflattering moment. Stephen Weir’s Encyclopedia Idiotica does just that. From Menelaus’s war all in the name of a runaway wife to King Leopold’s grab for power in Central Africa to the Enron Scandal, Weir’s assessment of history is bleak indeed. While the writing is mildly satirical and meant to showcase some rather insidious blunders, it begins to wear thin after a dozen or so chapters. The fifty events collated here are mostly focused on 20th century Western history.

There were some interesting tidbits, however. For example, in 1991, Gerald Ratner, chief executive of the jewelry company Ratners Group, jokingly called some of his company’s products “crap” and almost immediately devalued his company by around $700 million. Also, the Icelandic colonization of Greenland in the 10th and 11th centuries was more extensive that I realized (until disease and pirate raids forced its abandonment). Weir’s collection, while interesting, is more sad than satisfying. He harps on a few people a little more than most and the writing is a bit more sarcastic than I would have liked, but for a bathroom or a nightstand reader, it works well in small bites.

Jun 26: Baron, Beth. The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press. (DDC 059.927082)

In the decades leading up to the 1919 Egyptian revolution, stirrings were taking place. Publications after publication were being churned out advocating for a voice from an often silent population: women. One after another, each one sought out a larger place in society for Egyptian women. Beth Baron’s The Women’s Awakening in Egypt shines a light on this unremembered and culturally rich movement. Her study shows that it was not just the men who were fighting for independence, and that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

This is a history in two parts: the first lays out the history and the consumption of these new publications, and the second looks to analyze their integration into the culture of early 20th century Egypt. These were journals written by women for women, and while each one didn’t last for very long, there was always another one to takes it place. From 1892 to 1920, these journals were a way for Egyptian women to interact with both each other and the culture at large. The spread of “new” ideas, such as companionate marriages and social reform, is seen here as a sort of revolution within a revolution.

Baron’s writing is scholarly and slightly dense, but there is a wealth of Egyptian social, cultural, and political history here. If you are already versed, then you get a little more depth; if not, then you get a whole lot of information. This perspective of the Egyptian revolution bears reading, if only to reinforce that historical events often have a multitude of perspectives. A deep and interesting book.

Jun 28: Garfield, Simon. The Error World: An Affair with Stamps. (DDC 769.56092)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Arts and Recreation
• 760: Printmaking and prints
• 769: Prints
• 769.5: Forms of prints
• 769.56: Postage stamps and related devices
• +092: Biography

We are all of us collectors. Be it books, baseballs cards, or Barbie dolls, what we gather into our lives defines us in some way. Simon Garfield’s life seems to be one of not only collecting, but of crisis and loss. From his first experience with stamp collecting, he was hooked, but his pseudo-obsession with philately would cost him more than money. In his The Error World, he looks at the history of both stamp-making and stamp collecting as well as the trajectory of his own life in relation to his hobby.

Stamps began in Britain in 1840 and from there began a worldwide obsession with acquiring newer and interesting pieces. The 1840 Penny Black started the whole thing. Stamps are now printed in every country and include an almost infinite variety of subject matters. There are those that just collect British monarch stamps or island airmail stamps or stamps from a certain decade. Garfield concerns himself with errors. At various points in the printing process, ink can be misapplied or entire figures can be missing from the stamp. Errors, because they are inherently rarer than the stamps themselves, are a bit more valuable and have more character. Garfield details the history of famous collectors and the prizes they sought after, counting himself among their number.

Garfield’s collection of stamps is counterpointed with his collection of experiences. His father died early in his life and then his mother, and he can’t quite ever keep his relationships or his collections whole. He cheats on his wife and has to sell his collection to pay for the divorce. Garfield’s life is unfortunately underwhelming when set against the field of philately (which is saying quite a lot, I believe), but the stories he tells are genuine. In the end, the book reads fast and has a good amount of information about stamps, so it’ll fit nicely in a free afternoon.

Jul 1: Gregg. John Robert. Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified. (DDC 653.42)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 650: Management and public relations
• 653: Shorthand
• 653.4: Handwritten systems
• 653.42: English-language systems

One of the things that has always fascinated me about newspaper reporters is their ability to take handwritten notes of a meeting or an interview in real time, without interfering the flow of the conversation, and then reproduce it word for word in print. You can’t just write down the whole thing verbatim and expect to keep up. Turns out, they use a stenographic method called shorthand, and Gregg shorthand is one of the most used styles in the world.

Gregg shorthand breaks down vocal language into groups of sounds and then seeks to reproduce those sounds by using different elliptical pen strokes. Words are compressed, abbreviated, and mashed together to form a version of text-speak on acid written by a doctor. This manual, written in 1956, is basically a how-to guide on Gregg’s style of stenography (as opposed to the Pitman method which uses more angular strokes and ink thickness to differentiate sounds).

While I didn’t spend a lot of time trying out the lessons taught in the book, I found it more interesting how the author broke down spoken English into its phonemes and tries to capture those sounds in something other than letters. It brings English back to a form of pictographic language. The book takes the user through a multitude of common words and how to construct larger words from the individual pieces. Much of it is geared towards business or newspaper writing, so the more poetic words are left out. However, the book does well in achieving its only goal: to function as an introductory manual to this style of writing. Other than that, there’s not much else here.

Hit a Half Price Books near Pittsburgh yesterday and came back with a mini-haul:

* Carey, Peter. True History of the Kelly Gang -- Nominated for the 2001 Man Booker Prize and the 2002 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
* Jin, Ha. Waiting -- Winner of the 1999 National Book Award and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Prize; nominated for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
* Morrison, Toni. Paradise -- Nominated for the 1999 Orange Prize and the 2000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
* Nabokov, Vladimir. Pnin -- Nominated for the 1958 National Book Award

Jul 5: Willis, Jim and Barbara Willis. Armageddon Now: The End of the World from A to Z. (DDC 202.3)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 202: Doctrines
• 202.3: Eschatology

While the Book of Revelation covers the intricate and symbolic end of the Christian world, Jim and Barbara Willis are interested in every possible postulated apocalypse. In Armageddon Now, they gather together (alphabetically) every conjectured end of the world. From the Abomination of Desolation to Zoroastrianism, they cover Armageddon from an interesting and removed perspective. All of these can’t possibly be true, but each one is given equal weight and description. There are even sections on catastrophic world collapse due to global warming, alien invasion, meteors, and even doomsday cults.

While the writing is good enough, the flow of the book is a little choppy. Because it’s just an alphabetical arrangement of topics, there are no real transitions from one section another. It works well as a bathroom reader or a nightstand book, but reading it straight through is a bit jarring. That said, there are myriad interesting tidbits buried throughout this book and it makes for a decent sideways attempt at comparative religious studies in regards to this one topic.

Jul 7: Scholz, Christopher. Fieldwork: A Geologist’s Memoir of the Kalahari. (DDC 556.883)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 550: Earth sciences (geology)
• 556: Earth sciences of Africa
• 556.8: Earth sciences of Southern Africa and the Republic of South Africa
• 556.88: Earth sciences of Namibia, Botswana. Lesotho, and Swaziland
• 556.883: Earth science of Botswana and the Kalahari Desert

In 1974, Dr. Christopher Scholz, a newly-minted professor of geology at Columbia University, received a rather interesting and unexpected phone call. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization called to ask him if he would want to serve as an earthquake consultant in Botswana. The U.N. was trying to run an agricultural project in the Okavango Delta and wanted to know what, if any, threat was posed by earthquakes changing the way that the delta flows and drains. A simple enough project, everyone thought. As Scholz writes in Fieldwork, “Africa is a continent like no other.” And his work there would be like no other as well.

Trying to record earthquakes in a desert is just about as hard as eating soup with a fork. The seismometers have to be planted in solid rock in order to capture the waves that are propagated by micro-earthquakes. Much of Scholz’s time is spent looking for suitable areas to place the equipment all while avoiding hazards such as camp thieves, bureaucratic bungling, and funding mishaps. More often than not, it’s the African wildlife that becomes a hazard. He soon learns that it’s the elephants, and not the lions, that actually rule the landscape, and a thundering herd can easy cause for a panic at camp.

This book was entertaining and interesting in a way that you don’t books on geology to be. The only thing missing from this book are more maps and illustrations. It’s part travelogue, part scientific nonfiction, part adventure novel. I learned far more about rift systems in Africa than I ever thought possible. Scholz’s passion and glee for his field bleeds through the writing. He would make for a rather splendid professor if you ever got to chance to study with him. Through all his adventures in the Kalahari Desert, he still manages to gather data that bolster his theory about the East Africa Rift System. All in all, an engaging and fun read.

Jul 11: Bernstein, Peter L. Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation. (DDC 386.4809747)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 380: Commerce, communications, and transport
• 386: Inland waterway and ferry transportation
• 386.4: Canal transportation
• 386.48: Small craft and barge canals
• +09747: United States—New York

At the beginning of the 19th century, the United States was just getting its feet wet as a nation. One of the many problems in governing the country was simply its size. Getting news and goods from one side of the colonies to another could take an inordinately long time. At the time, water-based travel was the fastest, but boats could get to only so many cities. But in 1807, an interesting idea came along to cut a waterway from New York all the way across the state to Lake Erie. Barges could travel from the eastern seaboard to the Great Lakes. From there goods to be delivered to inland cities or even taken to the Mississippi River system. Peter Bernstein’s Wedding of the Waters tells the story of the planning, politics, and piloting of the Erie Canal.

Bernstein focuses more on the political and economic context of the Erie Canal than on actual efforts that went into its construction, but even those are interesting. The sheer amount of cooperation requires to literally dig a trench through an entire state is mind-boggling and the machinations of such an effort are captured well here. One of the most amazing things to remember is that at this time in the U.S., there were no civil engineers. Sure, there were folks who apprenticed with surveying equipment, but the concept of civil engineering was not yet formed.

Still, once ground was broken in 1817, it only took eight years to finish the project. Once completed, numerous town formed at lock sites and boat travel along the route more than tripled. The War of 1812 rocked the American economy, but commerce along the Erie Canal helped at least in some way to repair the damage. The historical context and the engineering problems posed make for interesting reading. As always, I would have liked more maps and diagrams to show both the project’s path and the machines used. Other than that, though, the book was interesting, and in places, fun to read.

Jul 16: Betancourt, Ingrid. Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle. (DDC 986.10634092)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and geography
• 980: History of South America
• 986: History of Columbia and Ecuador
• 986.1: History of Columbia
• 986.106: 1863 to present
• 986.1063: 1930 to present
• 986.10634: 1974 to 1991
• +092: Biography

Without a doubt, Ingrid Betancourt’s Even Silence Has an End is one of the most heart-breaking, gut-wrenching memoirs I’ve read in a long time. In 2002, Betancourt was campaigning to become President of Colombia as a Green Party member. At a traffic checkpoint in Colombia’s DMZ, she was kidnapped by a member of the revolutionary FARC, and then held for more than six years. She was kept with many other captured people from around the world. She found herself among a mix of nationalities, social statuses, and walks of life. Her story is one of hope and loss, of freedom and failure.

Betancourt’s imprisonment caught the attention of the world. As a dual Colombian-French citizen-diplomat, several world governments tried to engage the Colombians for her release. Each year she was captured, at least one rescue attempt or negotiation was started, but it wasn’t until 2008 that she was freed from captivity. Her experiences in the jungle prison are both harrowing and enlightening. While there are some to dismiss her retelling of the events as either politically motivated or self-serving, they are still true. While imprisoned, she endured not only physical torture, but also news of her father’s death. Through all this, she still find ways to connect with those around her and not fall too deeply into despair. It is a long tale, told with excruciating detail, and very much demands your attentions. A lengthy but ultimately necessary book.

Jul 20: Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives. (DDC 878)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 870: Literature of Italic and Latin languages
• 878: Latin miscellaneous writings

Note: This edition of Plutarch’s Lives, published as part of the Harvard Classics, is not the complete set written by Plutarch. The original collection consisted of 23 pairs of biographies, each containing a Greek and Roman figure, and four unpaired biographies. My version covers Themistocles, Pericles, Aristides, Alcibiades, Coriolanus, Demosthenes, Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Antony. Alcibiades and Coriolanus are paired together as well as Demosthenes and Cicero.

If you want a pretty decent picture of both the everyday lives of Greeks and Roman as well as an overview of ancient, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Plutarch. Writing in the late 1st century, Plutarch is about as close to a contemporary source as one could want. In the Harvard Classics collection of Plutarch’s Lives, we get a cross section of historical figures:

• Themistocles: Athenian general who saved Greece from the Persians in the 5th century BCE
• Pericles: Successor to Themistocles who instilled democracy into Athenian politics
• Alcibiades: Athenian statesman and general
• Coriolanus: Exiled Roman general who teamed with the Volsci to invade Rome
• Demosthenes: Greek orator who opposed Macedonian expansion
• Cicero: Roman politician and orator who revered Demosthenes
• Julius Caesar: Roman emperor who conquered most of Europe
• Antony: Roman consul who succeeded Caesar

Each of these men lived interested, entangled, and boisterous lives. At a time when Western civilization was emerging from the crucible of the Fertile Crescent, each of these subjects sought to direct the future of their worlds. Whether through words or wars, they put in a lot of effort to live lives that they thought were full of dignity, valor, and righteousness.

Plutarch tries to explore the character of each of his subjects, to search for both the good and bad qualities which help to put their actions in some context for the reader. Unfortunately, the writing in this edition is a bit stilted. It’s a 1969 reprint of a 1859 revision of an 1683 translation, so there’s not exactly a lot of modern narrative construction here. All in all, though, the material is very educational and will get you quickly versed in ancient history.

Hoping to get to Plutarch in the not too distant future. Appreciate your review . . .

Thanks, Poquette! I would recommend a more contemporary translation, but the people he covers are interesting nonetheless.

Jul 22: Landsburg, Steven E. The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics. (DDC 100)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 100: General works on philosophy

I’m going to be open-minded here. I will be. First, I will address the book on its style, its writing, and the information presented. Then, there will be a rant and I do not apologize for that.

Steven E. Landsburg’s The Big Questions is an intriguing foray into the use of non-typical sciences to look at macroscopic philosophical questions. The questions in questions range from why is there something rather than nothing, is there a God, is logical disagreement a sign of inherent meaninglessness, can we really know everything, and so on. These are indeed interesting and challenging questions. Looking into philosophy using physics and economics is kind of fun and gets one thinking laterally and not directly, which on the whole is a good skill to have.

Landsburg’s tackling of these questions is in many ways logical and rich. There are indeed mathematical bases for following both morality and human perception of color (as well as other things in the universe). His main premise is that once you have math, everything else follows. One of the very mind-boggling assertions me makes is that almost no one is deeply religious because crimes are committed on a fairly regular basis and acts of martyrdom are not. That part makes for fun reading. And for the most part, Landsburg’s theories are engaging, flow well, and get you to think a little more critically about the larger picture.

Now for the rant: The whammy comes near the end of the book. Landsburg unequivocally advocates for the near dismissal of English departments in education. He starts with the basis that reading is a leisure activity and is not a serious use of educational time. He argues that one could get just about as much educational content from a night spent watching The Simpsons. To completely dismiss an entire branch of study as useless when you just spent an entire book using disparate fields to look at philosophical questions seems to me both self-defeating and insulting. You never know where the next great piece of information or idea will come from, but apparently according to Dr. Landsburg, literature will never contain it. Boo, Mr. Landsburg, boo to you, sir.

Good rant Gerard

Just catching up with your always varied reading.

>145 NielsenGW: — Landsburg unequivocally advocates for the near dismissal of English departments in education. He starts with the basis that reading is a leisure activity and is not a serious use of educational time.

You've got to be kidding! What a short-sighted view. English is not merely about reading. It is foremost about thinking and analyzing and writing! Everybody who wants to communicate needs to know how to write — and incidentally to read, in many cases critically!

This has hit a nerve. Don't need to preach to the choir. But I am aghast . . .

Jul 23: Atkins, P. W. The Periodic Kingdom: A Journey into the Land of the Chemical Elements. (DDC 541.24)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 540: Chemistry
• 541: Physical chemistry
• 541.2: Theoretical chemistry
• 541.24: Atomic structure

I’ve yet to read a book on science that was one giant metaphor. Normally, authors want to just educate the reader on a concept, flesh it out with rich histories and context, and then move on to the next thing. P.W. Atkins’s The Periodic Kingdom is a completely different beast altogether. He imagines the periodic table, on display in classrooms and science labs around the world, as a geographic map. The eastern borders house the nobility and the western shores are home to the most explosive elements. In between are the Metallic Desert, the southern island (transuranic elements), and the Eastern Rectangle (gaseous elements). And Atkins takes it upon himself to be the tour guide of this strange but rather organized kingdom.

The conceit of the book works until he gets to his real aim, which is to explain the atomic structure and explanation for how certain elements react with certain others. By giving the elements a context in this “kingdom,” he hopes to better educate the reader on chemical processes. The problem comes when he gets to electron orbits and energy states. While the orbital configurations are part of the organizational scheme of the periodic table, viewing it as a geographic region makes little sense at that point. The metaphor only works to a point, and then it becomes a standard science textbook. That being said, though, viewing the elements through Atkins’s lens is novel and worth a read. Chemistry amateurs will find new knowledge and veterans can maybe see their world with fresh eyes. All in all, a decent and interesting read.

Jul 27: Turner, James. Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities. (DDC 409)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 400: Language
• 409: Historical, geographical, or personal treatment of language

In Philology, James Turner makes a fun and rather interesting assertion: all studies in the humanities lead back to philology, the study of languages and their history. In order to engage in the studia humanitatis, you need history. In order to read history in its proper context, you have to read it in its original language. For that you need an understanding of languages, their structure and their history, hence philology. To understand art and architecture requires context, and the urge to understand it as its contemporaries did. This requires chronicles, journals, letters, and yes, philology. Turner traces the grand study of philology through history to show its roots and how it can be again reborn as a proper tool for understanding both our current circumstances and our collective history.

Starting with ancient Chinese and Sanskrit manuals on language organization and construction, he guides the reader through eras in philological study. Early in its day, it was the go-to field for those writing about history, philosophy, or theology. All through Western history and even into 19th century America, philology is found to form the basis for any “complete” education. He moves the narrative between poets, educators, philosophers, artists, and even mathematicians to show how the field of philology both informs and is informed by everything else. Language forms in many ways the common bond between human beings, and so philology seeks to understand those bonds from the inside out.

Turner’s research on this topic is immense and rich. Even though he hedges in his introduction that this book comes up short and his understanding of ancient languages is paltry at best, he still gets across a ton of information and history. The writing is a little stuffy, but so is the subject matter. Philology is by necessity a very minutiae-driven field, so some of the sections tend to feel a bit pedantic. Trust me, if you stick it out, you get a better understanding of what we call the humanities. He laments the fact that a generalist in the humanities could not exist in today’s educational atmosphere of specialization, and in many ways I feel much the same way. Reading this will awaken the polymath in all of us, and hopefully a brave few will make a go of it as a career. All in all, a very interesting read.

Christian Platt has a blog where he points out church sign fails. Here's the latest one:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christianpiatt/2014/08/church-sign-epic-fails-pasto...

>151 RidgewayGirl: Church signs can be funny sometimes when you chance upon them on the road, but collected chockablock in a small book seemed to me rather forced.

Aug 2: Kurian, George Thomas, Ed. Datapedia of the United States 1790-2005: America Year By Year. (DDC 317.3)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 310: Statistics
• 317: General statistics of North America
• 317.3: General statistics of United States

If there’s anything that’s sure to flock readers to your book, it’s five hundred pages of data tables. George Kurian’s Datapedia of the United States is a monumental undertaking. He has curated data from hundreds of sources and collated them into different tables and graphs to show how the United States has changed statistically over the past 215 years. He organizes this information into 25 different major groups, ranging from general stats to agriculture to manufacturing to government. If there’s a statistic you’re looking for, it’s probably in here. Each section starts off with an array of interesting factoids, and then he dives headfirst into the data. Here’s just a sample:

• Up until 1830, deaf, blind, and mute people were not counted on the census.
• The US passed the $1 trillion GDP mark in 1970.
• Nearly 25% percent of the US is federal land.
• The first major highway was built from Cumberland, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois from 1806 to 1840.
• In 1880, only 2,076 new books were published in the US. By 1998, it has increased to 56,129 new books or new editions; 7,096 of those were general fiction.

On and on, it goes for over 550 pages. If you want to how much money was spent on advertising in 1937 or how many cows were kept on farms during the 1970s or the exact vote count cast by party by state for the last 160 years, it’s all here. If you’re going to trot some odd statistic for a report or a talk, you best come here first. It’s one-stop shopping for data wonks. That being said, do not under any circumstances try to read this like a book. The only things to sink your teeth into are the section heading factoids. After that, it’s page after page of data tables. Pages and pages and pages and pages…good luck.

Aug 4: Sacks, Oliver. Oaxaca Journal. (DDC 587.097274)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 580: Botany
• 587: Pteridophyta
• +097274: North America—Mexico—Oaxaca

First of all, this book is about ferns. It’s about people from all walks of life, all educational backgrounds, and all nationalities who love ferns. Oliver Sacks, noted neuroscientist and author, counts himself among their number. He is a legitimate card-carrying member of the American Fern Society. Ferns don’t get a lot of love from supposed plant lovers and botanists. They belong to the plant group Pteridophyta, reproduce by spores, and don’t have flowers. But Sacks loves them all. Some time back, he got to go on a “fern foray” to Oaxaca, Mexico with some fellow enthusiasts from the AFS. Oaxaca Journal takes us with him.

After reading this one, I wish I could have gone with him on his trip. His description of the people, landscape, and flora of Mexico is delightful and rich. Even if you are bored to death by the thought of a botany book, this one is interesting nonetheless, with bits about anthropology, food, and culture to help space out the plant science. He captures some of the glee of being an amateur scientist. He doesn’t have a research paper to write, or a lab to get back to, or even an agenda at all. He just wants to explore a new place that has a lot of the plants he loves to see and talk about. Being surrounded by others who revel in ferns doesn’t hurt either. It’s a short book for a short trip, and makes for a wonderful afternoon of reading. A quick and enthusiastic read.

Aug 6: Pagels, Elaine and Karen L. King. Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity. (DDC 229.8)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 220: The Bible
• 229: Apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, and other intertestamental works
• 229.8: Pseudo gospels

In Christian history, Jesus Christ gathered twelve people to his side to be his apostles and spread his beliefs throughout the world. According to The Bible, Judas Iscariot accepts payment of thirty silver coins from the Sanhedrin priests and agrees to point out Jesus to the local authorities so that he can be captured and tried for purporting to be the Son of God. Judas’s betrayal results in the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection as depicted later in the Gospels. The traditional telling of this matter is done by the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--, but what if Judas himself got a say in the matter? In the 1970s, a papyrus codex was discovered near Beni Masah, Egypt which appears to be from Judas’s point of view. In Reading Judas, Elaine Pagels and Karen King tackle the new text to see if it can shed new light on old mythology.

There are a lot of things to learn from a shredded piece of paper from 1,700 years ago. First, Christianity was, is, and will always be an infinitely nuanced and an infinitely personal set of beliefs. Each iteration of the religion in each person begets a new system. In the Bible, each voice has a different Christianity, and in this new text, we hear the voice of the oft-reviled Judas Iscariot. The text is short, but packed with historical details, research, and annotations to the original document. It is a Coptic translation of a 2nd century Greek text, so things can definitely get lost through the years. Judas’s act, seen through Gnostic eyes, is one of love and loyalty, setting in motion the inevitable resurrection of his friend and the salvation of mankind.

Pagels’s and King’s text is nice and tight. They know that not everyone will be pleased to read about the “good” deeds of Judas Iscariot. Traditionalists will see this as a deliberate blurring of the lines between good and evil, but the codex is still a legitimate piece of history. Scholars can debate among themselves about the literal meanings of certain words and phrases, but they are more qualified than I in this matter. Overall, this was a very interesting book that illuminates a rather shady character in the Bible.

Aug 8: Hubbell, Sue. Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes. (DDC 660.65)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 660: Chemical engineering and related technologies
• 660.6: Biotechnology
• 660.65: Genetic engineering

Every living thing on the planet has been genetically modified. Each generation forces changes on the next. Most of the time, this modification is natural and inevitable, but sometimes a helping hand intervenes. Ever since humans learned how to grow food, they have been selectively breeding crops that begat more and more resources. In Shrinking the Cat, Sue Hubbell looks at the history of genetic engineering through four species—the corn plant, the silkworm, the cat, and the apple—to get a better sense of the ethics and benefits of human tinkering.

Hubbell’s dubs the human race homo mutabilis: human that changes things. We cannot help but modify our environment to suit our needs, but so does every other animal (although not nearly on the scale that we have). Each living thing has found a way, at least for now, to sustain itself, grow, and proliferate. But human intelligence has allowed us to change more than just the environment; we can change the core of things. Hubbell’s look at a few modified organisms gives us a chance to step back and assess how those changes have affected the present. The hybridization and genetic modification of corn has led to disease-resistant strains and high-yield crops, but basically inaugurated the age of corn syrup. Breeding silkworms to produce a good amount of fiber kick-started trade between Asia and Europe.

Genetic engineering has been around for ages, but only now are we doing it more precisely and more deliberately. Those who oppose genetically-modified organisms will be hard-pressed to find something that isn’t modified in some way, but do have valid concerns about the possible side effects of said modifications. Hubbell’s book tries to create a more balanced picture of genetic modification by giving a deeper historical context and interesting connections to sociology, art, and anthropology. This book is short enough to keep your attention, but does well not to become a sermon on the “good of science.” All in all, quick and enlightening read.

Aug 10: Botha, Ted. Mongo: Adventures in Trash. (DDC 790.132)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Fine Arts and Recreation
• 790: Recreational and performing arts
• 790.1: General kinds of recreational activities
• 790.13: Activities generally engaged in by individuals
• 790.132: Collecting

If you’ve ever seen an object on the side of the road or fished something from a dumpster or a trash pile, then you’ve engaged in mongo. In the traditional sense, mongo is any object that been discarded but now retrieved. Mongo can either be for profit or pleasure (or sometimes both). Mongo culture comes with many different subdivisions: people mongo for food, books, furniture, car parts, antiques, or just for decoration. For some, mongo is their only way of surviving, and for others, it’s a side project. Ted Botha’s Mongo is look into this often-invisible subculture.

Botha covers pretty much all areas of mongo in New York City. There are the freegans, those who forage for food thrown away but that is still edible. There are book hunters who scour alleyways and stoops for piles of material that can be resold for a few bucks. There are those who dig up backyards to find hidden treasures from the 19th century. And then there are those can’t bear to see anything thrown away and keep trinkets for themselves. These variations on a theme give New York an even richer character than previously seen.

I found this book immensely intriguing. My mother used to scour European junkyards and flea markets for pieces for our house and many times, she came back with large, grungy items only to restore them to a perfectly respectable state. Treasures can be found in another person’s trash, but one must be judicious and patient. Botha’s interpretation of mongo culture is with a sympathetic eye as he is a collector himself. His prose clips along nicely and is all at once funny, interesting, descriptive, and kind. After reading this one, you’ll never look at trash in the same way again.

Aug 13: Hale, Oron J. The Captive Press in the Third Reich. (DDC 073)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 000: Computer Science, Information, and General Works
• 070: News media, journalism, and publishing
• 073: Newspapers in central Europe and Germany

One of the best ways to make sure everybody’s on the same page, is to make sure thtey’re all reading the same pages. Part of the Nazi propoganda machine was to fully subvert German newspaper companies and publishing houses. Through an intricate weaving of interviews, business documents, and military records, Oron Hale details this process in The Captive Press in the Third Reich. This book goes through how the Nazi party outright bought some newspapers, put members in key positions at others, and then choked out any opposing viewpoints in the remaining news media, thus ensuring universal saturation of their message and mandates.

Hale’s account of this media sublimation is about as comprehensive as it can get. The vast majority of the book covers the pre-war machinations of the Nazi party, showing how simple, slow maneuvers quickly added up to a populace quietly surrounding by the Nazi message. The Captive Press is not really a casual read, but contains a immense amount of information about German publishing and journalism leading up to World War II. A dense but interesting read.

Aug 16: Man, John. Attila: The Barbarian King Who Challenged Rome. (DDC 936.03092)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 930: History of the ancient world to 499 CE
• 936: Europe north and west of the Italian Peninsula to 499 CE
• 936.03: 200 BCE to 499 CE
• +092: Biography

We learn from early history classes in school that Attila the Hun was a brutish, savage leader, bent on beating down the mighty Roman empire. Attila sprang from the dark recesses of northern Europe to lay siege to the civilized people of the Mediterranean. But this story is decidedly one-sided and lacking in nuance. In John Man’s Attila, he tries to gives flesh and blood to the skeleton of the tale. Man attempts to give this historical ghost a context and finds much more than we expected.

While Attila’s birthdate is unknown, by about 434 CE he had become the leader of the Huns and an empire that stretched from the Ural Sea to the Baltic, and from the Rhine River to the Danube. Man’s history gives a fair amount of space to the pre-Attila relationships between the Roman Empire, the Goths, and the Huns. This is necessary because of the intricate and delicate political bonds throughout Europe at the time. From then until his death in 453, Attila cements his place in history by gaining the loyalty of millions and repeatedly challenging the might of the Roman Empire. Apparently, the only thing that could stop Attila was his rather anti-climactic death (from possibly a peptic ulcer that drowned his lungs in blood).

Man relies heavily on Mierow’s 1915 translation of Jordanes’ 6th century History of the Goths. He couples this with both the histories of Procopius and the contemporaneous writings of Priscus. These works have their flaws and biases, but it’s really all we have to work with. New archaeological finds and secondary sources also help to flesh out the tale. I did find the lack of direct footnotes a bit worrying, but the biography is about as detailed and intriguing as it can get. While scholars will look elsewhere, the casual enthusiast of ancient European history or the Roman Empire will find a lot to enjoy here. A rich and adventurous read.

Aug 20: Jacoway, Elizabeth. Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis that Shocked the Nation. (DDC 379.2630976773)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 370: Education
• 379: Public policy issues in education
• 379.2: Specific polcy issues in public education
• 379.26: Educational equalization
• 379.263: School desegregation
• +0976773: Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, United States

In September 1957, nine students attended their first day at Little Rock Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. Normally, this wouldn’t have made for national news, but these nine students were African-American and they were the first ones to ever attend this school. They were surrounded by a military escort and news cameras. Elizabeth Jacoway’s Turn Away Thy Son is an in-depth look at the political and social atmosphere that pervaded the decision to desegregate Arkansas schools.

Jacoway’s tries to get as comprehensive a picture of the struggle at Little Rock Central High as possible, including a look into the lives of the Little Rock Nine today. The story of filled with politics, social rhetoric, and heartache. From our modern perspective, it seems almost unheard of that just sixty years ago students were railed against for the color of their skin. From the Brown v. Board Education decision in 1954 to superintendent Virgil Blossom’s careful plan to desegregate Arkansas schools to that fateful day in 1957, we get an enthralling picture of Civil Rights-era America.

At times, this book is a little hard to read. Some of the stories of outright racism, bullying, and political grandstanding make one cringe at just how hurtful people can be. The account of the Little Rock Nine is immensely important, if for the only reason that we are perpetually cautioned against its recurrence. Jacoway’s writing is fluid, filled with detail, and well-researched. An excellent read.

The story of the integration of Little Rock Central High is an embarrassing one -- the things grown adults did and said to children were indefensible.

>160 NielsenGW: I was surprised when your review said 1957, because I remember either seeing it on TV or reading about it in the newspapers. I would have been 11 at the time, and it made an impression on me. We were so far removed from any of the civil rights troubles in the rural area where I grew up, and yet I know that our teachers spent quite a bit of time discussing the events from that time through the early 60's.

Interesting reviews.

It is always shocking to me that so many of the civil rights advances happened during my lifetime.

Aug 25: Pamuk, Orhan. Snow. (DDC 894.3533)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 890: Other literatures
• 894: Literatures of Altaic, Uralic, Hyperborean, Dravidian languages; literatures of miscellaneous languages of south Asia
• 894.3: Turkic literatures
• 894.35: Turkish literature
• 894.353: Turkish fiction
• 894.3533: Authors born between 1850 and 1999

In Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, a man comes home. As always, the context is excruciatingly important. Ka, a Turkish poet, who has lived for a while in Germany, returns to his home country to investigate a series of young suicides in the town of Kars. It’s a small town, and religious tensions run high. Ka doesn’t write much poetry any more, but the folks in Kars, when not dodging political subterfuge or looking for angles, give him more credit than he deserves for his writing. In the town of Kars lives Ipek, a woman recently separated from her political candidate husband, a woman who reminds Ka of better days, a woman who he thinks can save him and his poetry. In the dead of winter, Ka soon learns, however, just how heavy and silent the snow can be.

Pamuk’s work comes from a country scarred by centuries of religious debate. While the government still desperately clings to idea that it can be secular and separate from the fight, those who run for office or speak out against those in power do so from the perspective of their faith. Ka’s business in Kars is constantly bombarded by people with questions about his faith. Does he believe in God? Did he leave Turkey because he no longer has faith? Does he think the suicides in town are due to the head-scarf debate? All Ka really wants is an answer to a single question: Will Ipek marry him? His indifference to all else leads him on a journey into the weird Orwellian political underbelly of Turkish culture. He meets with rebel leaders and local police on equal footing so long as it gets him in Ipek’s good graces.

Snow presents itself as a gathered story. The narrator has found Ka’s journals, newspaper clippings, video tapes, and official documents and tries to piece together Ka’s story as the suicides unfold. Presumably, Ka keeps very extensive notes. The glaring exception here is that all of Ka’s poems are missing. He is even asked to recite a poem on local television, but he never gets the chance. All we get are snippets and environments, but never the finished products. In short, we keep seeing the inspirations, but never what was inspired. Even though Snow is about a foreign culture and debate, I never felt completely removed from the tale. Pamuk’s words are rich, haunting, detailed, and dripping with commentary. If I ever get a chance, I will definitely read more by him.

Aug 30: The Rationalists. (DDC 149.7)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 140: Philosophical schools of thought
• 149: Other philosophical schools and doctrines
• 149.7: Rationalism and related systems and doctrines

The Rationalists is a collection of philosophical treatises by Rene Descartes, Benedict de Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. You get Descartes’s Discourse on Method and Meditations, Spinoza’s Ethics, and Leibniz’s Monadology and Discourse on Metaphysics. By the middle of the 17th century, philosophy was finding its way out of the tired debates on religion and started to become a bit more scientific. The natural philosophers of the Renaissance started to place more importance on observable phenomena and experimentation rather than dictated dogma. The three philosophers collected here show how the school of rationalism started, matured, and culminated in an entirely different way of thinking.

Descartes’s writing tries to strip away all the nonessential from philosophy. If it isn’t absolute and eternal, then it isn’t true knowledge. Using reason alone, one can understand the universe. Even sense experiences aren’t absolute. His famous “cogito ergo sum” is a corollary showing that self-recognition isn’t something that is sensed, but rather reasoned, and being is absolutely true. Spinoza carries the rational baton a little further and tries to combine mathematical axioms and geometrical theorems into both philosophy and psychology. While Spinoza is often times dense and even purposefully obtuse, his propositions on emotions and human thinking are an interesting look at a proto-psychological science. Lastly, Leibniz’s works tries to both fundamentally break down human thought and the physical universe.

These three philosophers, separated from us by hundreds of years, give us an interesting look at humanity entering a new era of thought. They tried to desperately to understand their world and wanted to start from scratch. For those wondering, Descartes is most approachable of the three, and Spinoza’s work can be impenetrable at times, so you have to muscle through it. All in all, these works are intriguing and shed a little light on our philosophical heritage as modern thinkers. A deep and intellectual read.

Sep 2: Gould, Stephen Jay. The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. (DDC 575.0162)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 570: Biology
• 575: Specific parts of and physiological systems in plants
• 575.0162: Natural selection (Darwinism)

Stephen Jay Gould’s Panda’s Thumb is a collection of thirty-one essays all looking at how the natural world has adapted to its circumstances and how we as humans perceive, interpret, and understand those adaptations. Gould’s work on evolution helps to show that sometimes scientists get it wrong, and other times, scientists get it very wrong. Even the science of evolution is evolving, which is the overall premise of this collection. We see how the early investigations of those with Down Syndrome changed the way people viewed doctors and men of science, how Mickey Mouse’s changes over the years mirror the growth of human beings, and how history of organisms on this planet is not a steady affair.

While Gould can be at times caustic, his passion for science and scientific thought is clearly evident. He understands that science has made major mistakes in the past, but that should keep people from searching for answers. Everything can be questioned, even science itself. By refining our observations and theories, we come to deeper, more nuanced explanations of the natural world. If you stick with Gould long enough, you will become enamored with science and not frightened by it. These essays are all at once delightful, educational, prophetic, and brilliant. A diverse and enlightening read.

Sep 5: Peters, Edward, ed. Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe: Documents in Translation. (DDC 273.6)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 270: History of Christianity
• 273: Doctrinal controversies and heresies in general church history
• 273.6: 6th to 16th centuries

Every person is a unique entity. Because there are billions of people, there are billions of individual perspectives and beliefs. This creates a problem for any organization whose lifeblood is that everybody thinks along the same lines. Almost from the beginning, Christianity has had its share of splinter groups, in-fighting, and outright civil wars. Edward Peters, in Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, traces the path of Christian writers who focus their treatises on heretics, sects, and orthodoxy. From Tertullian to John of Brevicoxa, we get nearly one thousand years of church voices on those who seek to disagree.

For some, even believing that you had a choice in the matter branded you a heretic. You either accepted church dogma or you were damned for eternity. People believed that around every corner was someone who could lead your thinking astray, so hyper-vigilance on the matter of church law was par for the course. The separate spreads of Manichaeism, the Cathars, and the Waldensians lead to continuous proclamations of what exactly was orthodox and what wasn’t. Each edict, each papal bull, and each sermon lead to different church philosophies and laws that had to be parsed through, understood, and protected from heretical thought.

Peters’s collection of church writings is an intense look at church history on a single subject. This isn’t a casual read, but sheds a ton of light on a different struggle within the Christian Church. Here, we get not only founding treatises, but also side documents, backstories, and quick histories on many heretical sects. If you’re at all interested in church history, then this one will have a ton of history and original information. Peters tries not comment too much on the treatises, but rather presents them for the reader to digest. A rich and enlightening book.

I always find something of interest here in your wonderful thread. Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe has grabbed my attention this time.

Sep 7: Hart-Davis, Adam. String: Unraveling the History of a Twisted Piece of Twine. (DDC 677.71)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 670: Manufacturing
• 677: Textiles
• 677.7: Cordage, trimmings, and allied products
• 677.71: Ropes, twines, and strings

Somebody has written a book on the manufacture and uses of string and twine throughout history. It was bound to happen sooner or later, and so it has. Adam Hart-Davis’s String looks at not only the history of string and twine, but the intricate ways that humanity has engineered it to fit its needs. From the oldest cotton strings to modern polymerized nylon, string exists in our collective history as a largely unrecognized product, but Hart-Davis does his best to bring it to the light.

Unfortunately, the downfall of such a book is that the history of string manufacture is incredibly short, so much of the book falls into the “uses of string” side. Egyptians used string tools to align the pyramids, the Polynesians used rope to move and place the Easter Island statues, and the Incas used knotted rope necklaces to keep accounts of various cities. Nowadays, string and rope is involved in toy-making, carpentry, cooking, gardening, boating, and fashion accessories. This book also devotes a fair amount of space to knot-making, as different knots can aid in different applications. From there, we see string used in musical instruments, sailing, science, sports, farming, and folklore.

This book is about as long as a book on string needs to be. I truly feel that there is not much else to say on the matter. Hart-Davis scours history for all the uses of twine products and leaves no stone unturned. If you’re looking for a quick diversion after some particularly heady reading, this one will do. At least one string related fact will stick in your mind when you’re done. A quick and easy book.

Sep 8: Wilson, W. Michael. Essentials of Latin Grammar: A Practical Guide to the Mastery of Latin. (DDC 475)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 400: Language
• 470: Italic and Latin languages
• 475: Grammar and syntax of classical Latin

If you really want to get down to the nuts and bolts, the nitty-gritty, and the no-nonsense study of Latin, then this one is the way to go. W. Michael Wilson’s Essentials of Latin Grammar takes a spectacular page from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and omits needless words almost to a fault. There is a two-page preface and then it’s off to the races. One hundred forty-one rules later, you should emerge with a head full of Latin.

Because of its brevity, you will need a side reference on grammatical terms to get through Wilson’s teachings. Trust me, when you’re wading through the weeds of the gerundive case, you’ll be glad for it. Wilson’s lessons are terse but still useful. If you know Latin and want to brush up on the syntax, or even if you’re just starting out, this is an incredibly rich guide to the structure of the language. A short but educational book.

Sep 10: Steadman, Philip. Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces. (DDC 771)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 700: Fine Arts and Recreation
• 770: Photography, photographs, and computer art
• 771: Techniques, procedures, apparatus, equipment, and materials

There have been many times I’ve looked at a piece of art and wondered how they created it. From Escher’s mind-blowing drawings to Calder’s amazingly delicate mobiles, how artists engineer their art is almost as interesting as the art itself. In Vermeer’s Camera, Philip Steadman painstakingly details the use of the camera obscura in Vermeer’s paintings. His investigations not only gives us a peek at the artist’s technique and practical knowledge, but also illuminate the very intriguing intersection of science and art.

Steadman’s history of Vermeer’s works start with the invention of the camera obscura, a room or a box which focuses light from a scene onto a wall or canvas for the artist to trace and paint against. Many of Vermeer’s paintings are set in the corner of the same room and different scenes are depicted. Officer and Laughing Girl, The Concert, The Music Lesson, The Geographer, and Lady Standing at the Virginals all seem to show the same room, but from slightly different angles. Steadman first traces the exact building Vermeer used through historical maps and tax documents, then geometrically analyzes the works to derive exactly where Vermeer would have set up his camera. The science and research presented are astounding (but I would not expect anything less from the Oxford University Press).

In the end, Steadman work finds a way to put the reader more into the paintings than the paintings themselves do. The writing is technical but still readable. The history of the camera obscura was actually more lengthy than I though it would be. Vermeer’s work now seems a bit more masterful after reading this, and puts him in the class of the American painter Thomas Eakins, who used both still and moving pictures to aid in his art. If you’re at all interested in classical Dutch painting, this one is a very good book. A classy and enlightening read.

I'm not going to read the book about string, but I thought your review was subtly witty. I am going to look out for the camera obscure one though.

The possibly reprehensible Penn Jillette and his partner have made a film showing the replication of the technology behind the Vermeer. Professor Steadman gets some screen time. The film is Tim's Vermeer. It held my interest and presented a credible conjecture.

Robert

Sep 12: Mulvaney, Kieran. At the Ends of the Earth: A History of the Polar Regions. (DDC 998)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 990: History of the Pacific Ocean and other parts of the world
• 998: History of Arctic islands and Antarctica

The bulk of history is told through the lens of important events. The narrative of that history focuses on the decisions and people that lead to those events. But what happens afterward? While modern historiography looks at the effects of the historical events on people after any given event, not much attention is spared when people aren’t affected. Kieran Mulvaney’s At the Ends of the Earth takes a different approach to history. His focus is on the effect of man’s presence on the geography, climate, and landscape of the polar regions. Both Arctic Ocean and Antarctica have been changed by the presence of human explorers and researchers and Mulvaney details the history and extent of that change.

The Arctic Ocean and Antarctica were treated in the past as vast wastelands of ice and tragedy. In the beginning, the only question was could a person get to the North or South Pole. Then exploration led to exploitation. Oil drilling in the Arctic, sea hunting, and tourism have changed the nature of the polar regions. These activities create secondary issues as well. Oil needs to the transported by boats which sometimes fail, and ecosystems are thrown off-balance when species are hunted to near extinction. Mulvaney’s look into the historical and ongoing causes of that change are compelling and rich.

This book is equal parts history and social invective. Mulvaney does not hide the fact that he is alarmed by climate change, political deals to divide natural resources, and folks whose actions can forever change the landscape of the polar regions. The large stores of ice at the poles is a key component of world climate and the more we disturb that, the more we invite systemic changes that are hard to reverse. Mulvaney’s work is eye-opening and well-researched. An interesting read.

Sep 15: Boyd, Nancy. Three Victorian Women Who Changed Their World: Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Florence Nightingale. (DDC 350.420922)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 300: Social Sciences
• 350: Public administration and military science
• 350.42: Public administration in England and Wales
• +0922: Biographies of collected persons

Somehow in all my reading across myriad subjects, I seem to have never come across the fact that Florence Nightingale was British. In fact, she was born to British parents in Florence (hence her name). Nightingale, along with Octavia Hill and Josephine Butler, were instrumental in rise of feminism in Victorian England. Nancy Boyd’s Three Victorian Women Who Changed Their World chronicles the lives, efforts, and legacy of these three to show that Victorian England was not as backward and stodgy and folks tend to think.

While Nightingale’s efforts as a war nurse and a health reformer are well-known, Hill and Butler are a bit more obscured. Octavia Hill, with the backing of prominent British thinkers, established the National Trust and the Charity Organisation Society. She championed for the rehabilitation of Britain’s urban homeless while simultaneously creating London’s many open green spaces, including Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill Fields. Josephine Butler, on the other hand, helped to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16 and repeal the vile Contagious Diseases Acts. These laws allowed British police officers to imprison female prostitutes accused of allegedly spreading venereal disease and subject them to forced bodily examinations.

Boyd’s biographical triad is a bit dated but still well researched. Nightingale’s work as a health statistician blew my mind—so much so, that I’m now on a hunt for a proper biography. If you poke around history enough, you’ll find many such stories of social, political, and health reform by those much less fortunate than Boyd’s subjects. The more their efforts are celebrated and championed, the better the world can become. An interesting and enlightening book.

>" Nightingale’s work as a health statistician blew my mind"

You might enjoy Eminent Victorians, which was one of the first books to debunk the role stereo type that Florence Nightingale was a nurse.

However, Strachey's biography is only about 50 pages, and it seems you might be interested in a bit more than that.

Sorry, I do not often comment on your thread. I read it regularly, but your reading is so immensely varied, that I find it hard to keep up. There is always something of interest to me, however, in between many topics that are far off.

>176 edwinbcn: Thanks for the note! I'm actually looking into Nightingales by Gillian Gill (if I ever finish this blasted project).

>174 NielsenGW: I have various books about the poles and polar exploration, but I'm not familiar with that one. Thanks for letting us know about it.

Sep 17: McNamara, Kenneth J. The Star-Crossed Stone: The Secret Life, Myths, and History of a Fascinating Fossil. (231 p.; finished 17 Sep 2014)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 500: Science
• 560: Paleontology and paleozoology
• 563: Miscellaneous fossil marine and seashore invertebrates
• 563.9: Echinodermata and Hemichordata
• 563.95: Echinozoa

In March 1887, a grave was discovered in England. It was an old grave, the interred had been there for thousands of years. But the two occupants weren’t the only creatures there: they had been buried with hundreds of fossilized sea urchins. Historians and archaeologists were puzzled. Why were these fossils buried with the ancient humans? What was their significance? Kenneth McNamara’s The Star-Crossed Stone looks into the discovery, history, and folklore surrounding fossil urchins.

Like many other historical objects, once you go looking for them, they show up everywhere and in the most unlikely of places. Fossilized urchins look much like modern sand dollars, but embedded in stone. They show up in ancient gravesites, church decorations, medieval engravings, and even Egyptian hieroglyphics. Local cottage owners placed them around doorways and windowsills as good luck charms. They were used as fertility charms and used by Vikings as “thunder-stones” to connect them to their mythology. These seemingly ordinary rock formations have been known as shepherd’s crowns, button stones, and fairy loaves.

McNamara’s intricate weaving of paleontology and anthropology is both learned and lucid. Since there weren’t any creatures around that looked like the fossils, ancient peoples thought they were remnants of a time long before, of myth and mysticism. McNamara paints this cachet as more charming than provincial. To this day, there are still cottages and outbuildings that incorporate these fossils into their designs. The five-pointed skeletons of these ancient creatures lend themselves well to decoration (once you get past the fact that you are using an actual skeleton as decor in the first place). A delightful and engaging read.

Sep 21: Strouf, Judie L.H. Literature Lover’s Book of Lists: Serious Trivia for the Bibliophile. (DDC 802)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 800: Literature
• 802: Miscellany

Judie Strouf’s Literature Lover’s Book of Lists is a simple exercise that gather a lot of information. It bills itself as a “compendium of useful, whimsical, and necessary information for people…who love to read.” The 198 compiled lists try to order, categorize, and codify the entirety of literature for those crave such information. It has every Pulitzer Prize winner and their works, poem types and literary devices with examples, landmark books and speeches from every major Western period, lists of literary genres, and so on and so on.

Aside from its very evident Western bias and dated information, I only have one quibble with this volume. In the section on poetic forms, she includes personal compositions for the couplet, sestina, pantoum, and cinquain, as if no there are other classic or seminal examples of these forms. Luckily, she had the presence of mind to stay out of the sonnets. Other than that, you’ll find a wealth of information here. I don’t, however, suggest you read it straight through. It’s a bit of a slog, but as a bathroom reader it works rather well.

>175 NielsenGW: I read Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon by Mark Bostridge several years ago when it came out. It's long and very thorough and honestly I found it a bit dry while I was reading it - felt it could have used some good editing - but I did learn a lot about her life and the history of nursing.

Even though I'm massively backed up on reviewing, I've still found time to get more books for this Dewey project:

* The Loom of God: Tapestries of Mathematics and Mysticism by Clifford A. Pickover (DDC 119)
* The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb (DDC 180)
* The Pope and the Heretic: The True Story of Giordano Bruno, the Man Who Dared to Defy the Roman Inquisition by Michael White (DDC 195)
* Gurdjieff Unveiled: An Overview and Introduction to the Teaching by Seymour Ginsburg (DDC 197)
* Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological & Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor (DDC 358)
* Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould (DDC 560)
* Ammonites by Neale Monks (DDC 564)
* Subnature: Architecture's Other Environments by David Gissen (DDC 710)
* The Mighty Fallen: Our Nation's Greatest War Memorials by Larry Bond (DDC 731)
* Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture by Charles T. Little (DDC 734)
* Faberge's Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire by Toby Faber (DDC 739)
* Borges: Selected Non-Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (DDC 864)
* Earth's Mind: Essays in Native Literature by Roger Dunsmore (DDC 897)
* You Did What?: Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters by Bill Fawcett (DDC 904)
* The First Jihad: Khartoum, and the Dawn of Militant Islam by Daniel A. Butler (DDC 962)
* A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne (DDC 965)

You always seem to have a few gems in your reading plan. Do you figure it will go another year?

>183 NanaCC: So far, the projected end date is sometime in August 2017, so definitely yes.

Sep 23: Witham, Larry. The Proof of God: The Debate that Shaped Modern Belief. (DDC 212)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 200: Religion
• 210: Philosophy and theory of religion
• 212: Existence, ways of knowing, and attributes of God

In the late 1070s CE, Anselm, a Benedictine monk at the abbey of Bec hit upon a wondrous proof of the existence of God. Being a monk, it was rather in his best interest to ensure that one could not think away God’s being, but the argument he devised has guided religious logic for nearly 1,000 years. The Ontological Argument, as it has since been named has influenced the writings of Ockham, Descartes, and Bertrand Russell. On the other side, Anselm has garnered Thomas Aquinas, Kant, and David Hume as detractors. Larry Witham’s The Proof of God is a chronicle of the life of Anselm, and how his work and politics shaped modern religion.

Anselm was caught between the Church of Rome and the English monarch at a time when the relationship was tenuous at best. His rise from novice monk to Abbot of Bec, then to the Archbishop of Canterbury was not without its problems. Twice during his career he was exile from his post. Rather than a politician or a diplomat, Anselm was a religious man and philosophical man through and through. His proof of God is interesting in its simplicity:

1. It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).
2. God exists as an idea in the mind.
3. A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
4. Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).
5. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)
6. Therefore, God exists.

This tight circle is understandably an a posteriori construction and not inductive at all, but philosophers have been stewing over it since the 11th century. Witham’s summary of the proof and the lives of those it affected is very well done and nicely researched. Philosophy and religion buffs alike will find something to chew on here and it really helps the reader navigate the ontological argument cleanly. A very interesting read.

Sep 25: Piven, Joshua. As Luck Would Have It: Incredible Stories, from Lottery Wins to Lightning Strikes. (DDC 123.3)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 120: Epistemology, causation, and mankind
• 123: Determinism and indeterminism
• 123.3: Chance

In As Luck Would Have It, Joshua Piven investigates nine chance occurrences and how they inform our view of the world and the circumstances of our lives. It’s a quick little book, to say the least. It covers the following stories:

• “Steve Roberts” and his $363 million lottery win in 2000.
• The search for Bennet Zelner during a January 1995 snowstorm at Alpine Meadows.
• Gary Dahl’s “invention” and wildfire success of the Pet Rock in 1975.
• The runaway success of Tommy Tutone’s hit “867-5309/Jenny” in 1981.
• The airplane crash of Amy Knowlton and three other researchers off the coast of Georgia in 1987.
• Josh Smith’s 1999 discovery of the first titanosaur in Egypt
• Keith Gallagher’s crash landing of his A-6 plane on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln
• Al Kahn’s marketing of the Cabbage Patch Dolls in 1983 and ensuing hysteria
• The 1969 lightning strike of Steve Marshburn that led to new discoveries in medicine.

Piven’s tales of coincidental luck, heroic luck, and even horrible luck are interesting but not really compelling. The circumstances of and the reactions to the events are often times trivial at best. The good parts of this book come when Piven goes into background history for details. The rise of Tommy Tutone and the career of Al Kahn offer a better view of history than a single event. In many cases, it gives insight into how to act if you’re ever lost in a snowstorm or in a crashed plane. Other than that, most of the info is rather blasé. If you’ve got an afternoon for something not too taxing, then this one could work for you.

Sep 28: Sullivan, James. Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon. (DDC 687.1)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 600: Technology
• 680: Manufacture of products for specific uses
• 687: Clothing and accessories
• 687.1: Specific kinds of garments

Despite how advertisers keep treating as a new and exciting clothing, jeans, and the denim they are made from, have been around for hundreds of years. Blue jeans are named after their place of first import, Genoa, Italy, and denim comes from the material serge de Nimes, a cotton blend from Nimes, France. Materials for jeans arrived in the America almost right after the Pilgrims did. Denim jeans have been part of the social and manufacturing landscape for so long that they seem almost ineffable. James Sullivan’s Jeans, however, goes a little deeper into the history of jeans to find a chronicle of rebellion and globalization.

Sullivan looks at denim jeans in their cultural context, seeing jeans as a symbol for other stories and feelings. From Levi Strauss’s initial pair of jeans in 1853 to help manual laborers in San Francisco to Brigham Young’s denunciation of jean-wearers to the youth rebellions of the 1950s, jeans seemed to exist in the past to show one’s ideals. Lately, not so much. While a fair amount of the book is devoted to Strauss’s company and each generation’s use of jeans, there are far more interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout. Sullivan looks at blue dye manufacturing in Nigeria (even the ink in the book is blue) and the specific advertisement of jeans. All in all, it’s a good book that provides an interesting perspective on an often-overlooked object.

>187 NielsenGW: I am adding this one to my wishlist. I've always had an odd fascination with jeans and how they've gone from cowboy work clothes to the standard default for everyday wear.

Oct 1: Clapp, Nicholas. The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands. (DDC 939.49)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 900: History and Geography
• 930: History of the ancient world
• 939: History of other parts of the ancient world
• 939.4: History of the Middle East to 640 CE
• 939.49: History of the Arabian Peninsula to 622 CE

The ancient city of Ubar is clouded in myth. It controlled the frankincense trade for the Arabian Peninsula and became quite a wealthy oasis. Then, as told in the Koran, it was smote from the Earth for favoring wealth over worship. The city of Ubar was gone forever. Nicholas Clapp’s The Road to Ubar weaves together history, archaeology, technology, and even a little luck to rediscover the history of the Arabian Peninsula. With the help of an archaeologist, a geologist, and a real-life adventurer, he travels through the vast Arabian Desert to take back what the desert hid for so long.

Clapp’s methodology here is quite fun. Many historical figures had traveled through this area of the Arabian Peninsula searching for archaeological insight, and Clapp uses both their insights and new technology to pinpoint the location of a buried city in the sands at Shisr in Oman. Unfortunately, a sinkhole has swallowed a fair chunk of the ruins, but much of the wall remained intact and his team dutifully catalogs the whole experience. After its discovery, he places the city in as much historical and mythical context as he can provide. Clapp’s team’s journey is fairly interesting and also provides a good deal of history on the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. A very fun read.

Oct 4: Horowitz, Mitch. Occult America: White House Seances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation. (DDC 130)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 100: Philosophy and Psychology
• 130: Parapsychology and occultism

In 1774, Mother Ann Lee emigrated from England to New York and started a small but important movement in America: the Shakers. Their belief in a more mystical Christian God led to accusations of heresy from mainline believers. From this small band of radical believers sprang pockets on mysticism throughout America over the last 250 years. Mitch Horowitz’s Occult America takes a slightly off-center look at American history through the lens of those who believed, prayed, practiced, and lived a little differently from the rest of us.

One of the many sticky areas that this book stays away from is conspiracy theories. While many nutters use the symbols on various national icons to point towards a nefarious underbelly of our nation, Horowitz chooses to focus on broader religious history in America. There are tons of minor religious figures here to explore and the author tries desperately to take their work and beliefs at face value. They are a few times where falls into the judgment trap when it comes to some of the more fringe belief systems, but on the whole, Horowitz tends to favor sympathy over cynicism. He finds and explores leaders of fringe movements, including Henry Steel Olcott of the Theosophical Society and Christian Science’s Mary Baker Eddy, and gives them all equal footing.

Overall, there is a lot of interesting history here but at times seems like a mish-mash of people, dates, events, and stories. Because many of these movements were largely temporary and centered on their initial leader, there is no real story to connect them all except the broad theme under which they all fall. Horowitz’s writing clips along, but never makes any grand gestures. It’s amusing, sure, but in trying to capture more than 200 years of American religious history, there is only so much here. Each figure could probably merit their own biography. In the end, though, this book has a fair amount of research behind it to be useful to many readers.

Oct 7: Robert, Henry M. Robert’s Rules of Order Revised for Deliberative Assemblies. (DDC 060.42)

Dewey Breakdown:
• 000: Computer Science, Knowledge, and General Works
• 060: General organizations and museology
• 060.4: Special topics of general organizations
• 060.42: General rules of order

If you’re running even a halfway-serious meeting, assembly, or convention, you need some way of bringing order to the proceedings. Without common rules, deliberative assemblies devolve into chaos. First devised in 1876 by U.S. Army Colonel Henry Martyn Robert, these rules help to allow groups of peoples to understand what happens when, when people can speak, when and how motions can be voted on, and how to decide on many complicated matters.

Robert’s Rules of Order are now in their 11th edition and still going strong. My version—the 1943 5th edition—are mainly for consulting and not straight reading. The funny thing is, once you go through them, watch C-SPAN. Many more things make sense. This little book teaches you what each position in the chamber entails, how committees are supposed to work, and how to maintain a meaningful flow of discourse in a debate. If you’re looking for a career in politics and haven’t read them, you should get very familiar with Robert’s Rules.

And if you are a participant in any organization that calls for their use it is very helpful to know them. There is an official concise edition that serves most people, although on a certain point (the reading of committee reports) recently I found the full edition to be more to the point.

Robert