Uncovering Writing

4 of 5 stars

A good and enjoyable read on one of my favorite topics. I’ve been enamored with this space station since grade school, I even wrote a poem about Skylab (and Apollo & the Shuttle) back then. There were lots of great interviews, insights and history in this pretty thorough work.

Echoing some other commenters, I do think it could have used more editing. There were several examples of repetition throughout different chapters. At first, I doubted myself for the “deja vu” sense, but then I started keeping track and noticed the duplications. Part of this might be due to having multiple authors working on the project.

3 of 5 stars

A mostly fun read, hence the 3 stars. It is a neat idea but I wish there had been some coherence to why these equations were chosen, over other ones or why it has to be 17 instead of the top 10 or the top 20? There was no overarching theme other than each one is important, nor did I feel was there any attempt to flow from equation to equation. It was like a collection of individual papers stapled together and sent out to the printers.

As for the complexity of this book, it definitely is not an entry-level or casual book. I’m glad, since I was hoping that it wouldn’t be watered down. Some of the chapters were pretty basic, some were quite complicated, especially the quantum mathematical ones. The author made it somewhat accessible but at times, the descriptions needed more words to flesh it out.

Overall, I’m glad to have read it and it taught me some new things and reminded me of some things I learned in the past.

5 of 5 stars

An excellent collection of journal entries, poetry, blog posts and articles on Antarctica, from the first explorers up to the present scientists. These are their own words, with introductions and some commentary by the author Rebecca Priestley. The best pieces convey both the science and the emotions of the writers, illustrating the importance to me of rolling back a STEM-only trend in education and incorporating the humanities broadly, even in the hardest of hard sciences.

The book is broken up into four sections. The first is a collection of mostly log entries of the earliest explorers who sought out Antarctica, including British, French, Russian and American explorers. These were very enjoyable and I felt like I was right there with them. The second section is on the first explorers on Antarctica, which had many exciting, exhausting, depressing, and joyful moments. The third section covers science work from the late 1950s onward, with pieces that ranged from slightly boring to delightful commentary to shear awesomeness. The last section was on Antarctica as a “Global Barometer”, studying the climate and geology to find insight into climate change and what we might expect on our planet. There is hope in this last section for what the world might do to slow and reverse climate change. Sadly, with the rise of rightwing denialism and anti-science, that hope isn’t as bright today as it was when this was published in 2016.

As I said, I really enjoyed all the entries in the first section. In the second, I loved Frederick Cook’s piece on sleeping “beneath the aurora australis”; Erich von Drygalski’s “balloon ascent”; Johan Gunnar Andersson’s “Penguin eggs and fried seal”; Edgeworth David’s “Hunting the south magnetic pole”; Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s harrowing and depressing “Worst journey in the world”; George Murray Levick’s “The hooligan cocks of Cape Adare” (unpublished for decades due to its perceived naughty nature); and Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic and powerful “Geologising on the Beardmore.”

In the third part, Colin Bull’s “Innocents in the Dry Valleys” was delightful, Lloyd Spencer Davis’s “The accidental penguin biologist” was excellent; John Long’s “An average day in the field” was cool; Michael S. Becker’s “Antarctic time capsule” was great and Katie Mulrey’s “Neutrinos on ice” was flat out awesome.

In the last section, the pieces were mostly okay, but Kathryn Smith’s “March of the King Crabs” was very good and Rhian Salmon’s “Waiting for the polar sunrise” was an excellent narration of science, everyday work and prepping then waiting for your experiments to begin.

Rebecca Priestley has done an amazing job putting together this collection. I heartily recommend reading it. It was hard to put down once you picked it up.

5 of 5 stars

What an exceptional set of lectures from an amazing scholar. This gift from my love was such a joy to read. I read it slowly, savoring it and working through it.

While all were thought provoking, I found these lectures the best of the series: On the Shoulders of Giants; The Absolute and the Relative; Paradoxes and Aphorisms; and Untruths, Lies, Falsifications. Coming up right behind these were the talks I thought were very good: Beauty; Ugliness; The Invisible; and On Some Forms of Imperfection in Art. The remaining essays were okay or good, but still worth the time to read through them.

I came to Eco through his novel, The Name of the Rose. It’s amazing to see him strut his stuff on more semiotical and philosophical grounds. He has a depth and breadth of knowledge and, unlike many academics, has an amazing fluid and fluent way with words. Whether it’s getting across a complex idea, or giving a snarky aside, Eco is a joy to read. By the way, my favorite snark was on the first page of the first essay: “Medea is hardly someone who will have a nursery school named after her” (p. 1).

4 of 5 stars

A powerful read with many examples of how many people knew what was going on but still turned a blind eye. Some were scared, others profited, and some rejoiced and then prayed they’d never be found out for their actions. And by people, I mean not just Germans, but French, Italian, American and British actors. Britain and the US looked the other way in order to profit off the technical expertise of Nazi scientists. The French pretended that they were all in the Resistance and then even forgave and glorified some of the top-level collaborators, including Marshall Pétain. Fascists in Italy were pardoned in bulk and integrated back into society with nary a trial or investigation.

As I read it, it was truly frightening to see the similarities (though certainly without the magnitude of deaths) of the rise of Nazism and the rise of Trump and the far right in the United States. The author cites that as one reason she wanted to write this book.

The book has many great quotes, but I selected three for this review. One was on the German Evangelical Church, but one could shift the time frame and easily see this as some of the evangelical churches across the US that have embraced racism and hatred and thrown their support blindly behind Trump. “After all, the German Evangelical Church, which was a strong guiding force for Oma’s conscience, had given the Führer its blessing, hoping that the hated democracy would be followed by a Christian-authoritarian regime. On holidays, some churches unabashedly flew the Nazi flag from their steeples, letting its blood-red fabric flutter around the Christian cross.” (~ 34% into book)

Later, talking about how political leaders, including Hitler and Mussolini (and one can certainly see Trump in this mix), Schwarz looks at the impact the French thinker Gustave Le Bon had on these leaders. “To manipulate a crowd, Le Bon emphasized that a leader must use terms that bring up strong, impressive images, flatter the passions and desires of his audience, satisfy the taste crowds have for what is legendary, confuse the line between the unbelievable and the real, and above all, renounce all reasoning. In this way, he will obtain deference, self-sacrifice, and a sense of duty, to the point that the crowd will renounce deeply anchored human values.” (~ 81% into book)

Near the end of this memoir, Schwarz quotes Hannah Arendt for insight on spreading lies and conspiracy theories today: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” (~ 95% into book)

4 of 5 stars

The first essay, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”, was excellent, 5 stars easy and reminds me a little of his Notes of a Native Son. Two good quotes from this part are: “The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.” He later adds: “You must accept [white people] and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”

The second essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in my Mind”, was good but also felt less focused than his other essays, wandering a little. Maybe if it had been broken up a little more into subsections, I’m not sure. I’d go with 3 stars.

So, overall, I’d give this book a rating of 4 stars.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading this dual biography & analysis of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley. The interleaving of chapters on each woman made the book easier to read and also kept it interesting. I learned a great deal more about Wollstonecraft than I knew before and also found some interesting tidbits on Mary Shelley. But, some of the greatest bits in this work are the discussions of the people, ideas, culture and events surrounding these two impressive women. A great resource to have on hand for future reference.

My rating: 3 stars.

This was an impulse buy based on my love for Oxford World’s Classics paperbacks. I hadn’t heard of the author before, but after a few quick peeks around the ‘net, I found it interesting. I’m glad to have read the book and it’s neat that it’s a dual-language edition, with the original French on the left and a new English translation on the right. It lets me try to practice my French and also enjoy the translation process.

As for the work itself, there were several maxims I really liked. I list some below. I also enjoyed several of his Miscellaneous Reflections (Réflexions diverses), first completely translated in this volume. His reflections on Conversation (RD #4) was the best, an early example of the art of listening and interacting with people rather than pontificating at them and waiting to speak.

• If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people. (#31)
• We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves from other people, that in the end we disguise ourselves from ourselves. (#119)
• We often do good so that we can do evil with impunity. (#121)
• The glory of great men should always be measured against the means they used to acquire it. (#157)
• When our hatred is too intense, it puts us on a lower level than those we hate. (#338)
• Average minds usually condemn whatever is beyond their grasp. (#375)
• Most friends make us lose our taste for friendship, and most pious people make us lose our taste for piety. (#427)
• We try to pride ourselves on the faults that we do not want to correct. (#442)
• Our enemies’ judgements of us are nearer the truth than our own. (#458)
• When you cannot find peace within yourself, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. (#49, withdrawn after 2nd ed.)

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this collection of Matthew Arnold’s critical essays more than his poetry. This volume wasn’t as good as his lectures on translating Homer, but I enjoyed my time. In each essay covering a particular writer, he first dissects the praise directed at them, trying to show that they are great writers but maybe not for the reasons they have been praised in the past. He takes on Milton, Thomas Gray (a favorite of mine), Keats, Wordsworth, Byron, Percy Shelley, Tolstoy and Amiel.

He praises Milton and he is very fond of Gray, who wrote too little poetry. He praises who Keats could have become, seeing in him a love of beauty. I can’t agree as to Keats potential as I’m just not a fan of his, preferring the storytelling and arrangements of Byron or the political force of Shelley. Interestingly enough, Arnold says something I’ve often said about Byron, that while he isn’t the greatest or most engaged poet, and certainly one who doesn’t develop his characters in any major way, you viscerally experience his works. You feel like you were there and the scene just washed over you. I was pleased to see that Byron had the same effect on Arnold as he has on me. Arnold loves Wordsworth, who I liked at my first meeting, but haven’t enjoyed as much upon revisiting. At least Arnold notes that Wordsworth’s best work was between 1798 (Lyrical Ballads released) and 1808. Much that came before or after was just not up to snuff.

I feel Arnold misses much about Shelley, focusing more on the man and his relationships with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and William Godwin rather than Shelley’s poetry. In Shelley, I see a revolutionary, a man who cares deeply about people and ideas and who makes strong political points with his writing. Unfortunately, his writing isn’t the greatest and I think his points can get lost by those who aren’t held by the words long enough for the ideas to take seed in their minds.

The Tolstoy part was primarily on Anna Karenina and closes with Tolstoy’s religious writings. I skimmed through this chapter. But, I was interested a bit in the work on Henri-Frédéric Amiel, a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic whom I’d never heard of before. I was taken by a statement he made about America in the 19th c. that is still spot on today in 2017:

For the Americans, life means devouring, incessant activity. They must win gold, predominance, power; they must crush rivals, subdue nature. They have their heart set on the means, and never for an instant think of the end … They are restless, eager, positive, because they are superficial. To what end all this stir, noise, greed, struggle? It is all a mere being stunned and deafened!” (p. 328).

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Using Plutarch’s Parallel Lives model of comparing and contrasting two people, Spence chose Antonio Magliabechi (1633-1713) of Florence and Robert Hill (1699-1777) of England. The former was a famed bibliophile, scholar and librarian to Cosimo III de' Medici. The latter was much lesser known, who worked as a tailor and taught himself Latin, Greek and Hebrew to study the bible and religion.

Following Plutarch, the text is laid out in three parts: an essay on Magliabechi, one on Hill and then a compare and contrast of the two people. The first two parts were fascinating and filled with interesting trivia. The final piece sought to show how similar the two were but Spence then illustrates how Hill was the better person in that he wasn’t simply a repository of information with an eidetic memory as Magliabechi seemed to be, but that Hill was able to exercise judgement and use the knowledge he gained.

A very enjoyable and fast read.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book, which felt more like two in one. The first was Galileo’s observational work, where he used a telescope he built to describe the Moon’s surface, stars invisible to the naked eye and the moons of Jupiter. This breakthrough piece was sandwiched between an introduction and conclusion by Albert Van Helden.

To hear Galileo’s work through Van Helden’s translation was thrilling, but the best parts of this work were the introduction and conclusion. In an easily readable style, he fills in the backstory, context and impact of Galileo’s work when it was published. The telescope itself was controversial: did it really show what was in the heavens or did it only create illusions and distortions? Van Helden briefly explores the philosophical, religious and secular impact of the device and its discoveries. It was a fascinating read and well worth the short time required to engage with this book.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Let me say that my choice of 2 stars is more a reflection of my own interest in this book and not necessarily of the book itself. I picked it up from a used bookstore since I was kind of approaching the medieval period from two sides (forward from the ancient world and ever backward from the 17th century). I figured it was time to delve a little deeper. After reading these selections, I can see my interests are elsewhere. However, there were things I learned, including some neat nuggets, and I will keep this volume as a reference for the future.

Of what I liked, there were some that stood out, such as the two pieces on Arnold of Brescia, a precursor to the people who would lead the Reformation (p. 338, 341). I liked reading about the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, a learned man who promoted literature, fought against popes and furthered law and government (p. 362). I enjoyed the selection from the poet Usámah (Usama ibn Munqidh), who wrote of his experiences with the Crusaders (p. 447), although some historians today say his work cannot always be trusted.

It was fun to see that students never change, with some in the 12th century wanting to postpone their studies to play and enjoy life (p. 502). Coluccio Salutati was very cool in his piece on the Defense of Liberal Studies, calling out those religious conservatives who would forbid the reading of Virgil and other “heathen” poets (p. 613). Finally, Leonardo Bruni’s “In Praise of Greek” (p. 618) resonates with me and is still valid today. So much of our logic, philosophy and great poetry came from Greek, so he writes that it is worthwhile to study the language to engage with the texts in their original voice.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is an interesting book, especially in the edited, single-volume version I had from Modern Library. If I were doing research, I would grab the full edition. But this condensed volume provides a wonderful sampling of an upper middle class life from 1660 through mid-1669. Pepys is witness to several important events, including the Restoration of the monarchy with the coronation of Charles II, the Great Plague (1665-66), the Great Fire (1666) and the second war with the Dutch (1665-67).

His entries on the plague are haunting. His first entry that I remember was of a Dutch plague ship with 300-400 dead (9/24/1664). By mid 1665, there are plague houses popping up in London, marked with red crosses. On June 15th, 112 are reported dead for that week. By the 21st, people begin to flee London. He writes on August 31st that there were 6,102 deaths this week. Thankfully, by November 15th of 1665, the deaths were down to about 1,300 per week. By spring 1666, the plague had mostly subsided.

This was just in time for the Great Fire, which came on Sept. 2nd. Pepys, his wife and her maid all could see the fire burning the first night. The fire burned until Sept. 8th. A French shop owner was accused of the fire and hanged shortly afterward. By February 24th, 1667, Pepys still believed that man had done the fire, but modern research suggests that it was likely started accidentally by a baker’s oven.

While Pepys documents some of the greater events of his day, he also gives us an insight into the everyday life of a businessman with ties to the Admiralty, the upper class and his community. He is an avid reader, collecting books and having them bound in the same style bindings (1/18/1665). He studies Latin (6/21/1663) and music, even taking lessons on many different instruments. Many of the things that happened day to day there still go on today: getting mad at a dog pooping in the house (2/12/1660) or being awakened by your sleeping partner elbowing you in the face (1/1/1662). During the Great Fire, he buried his parmesan cheese and wine in a hole in the ground, to protect it from the flames (9/4/1666). By 1668, his vision is getting weaker, he thinks due to his constant diary keeping. For this, he takes a doctor’s cure, having 14 ounces of blood let out (7/13/1668).

Pepys is a bit of a shallow man. He covets his money, regularly making entries about how much he is worth. He regularly yells at and often strikes his few servants. He is perpetually lusting after other women, following them around, having affairs with some, and getting caught and not showing much remorse. He was supposedly a supporter of Oliver Cromwell, but eagerly gets behind Charles II when he was to come to power.

Overall, this diary provides an impressive, daily insight into one man’s life in London during the 1660s and was well worth the time to read it.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve always been fascinated by Antartica, it’s natural beauty, people who’ve tried to explore it, and, to be honest, it was the setting of one of my favorite John Carpenter films, The Thing. (I realize that film was shot in British Columbia, but the id of the place is conveyed, I believe, accurately.)

I was turned onto this book in a weird way, in that I saw a copy of it come up for sale from a rare/antiquarian bookseller. The copy was valuable due to its provenance, being owned by a more recent mountaineer who recently died.

The book is the story of the “Terra Nova” expedition of 1910-1913. This event was the British attempt to be the first to the geographic South Pole. The expedition wasn’t solely for heroics or fame, there was also a rather large scientific component to it. It included physics, marine biology, geology, etc. and many samples were collected over the entire period. Unfortunately, Scott arrived five weeks after the Norwegian Roald Amundsen became the first to have arrived at the Pole. On Scott’s return trip, many problems arose and his entire party died.

I enjoyed reading this book, all the while realizing that it did, at times, romanticize the final Antartica expedition of Capt. Robert Scott. But, it was written by one of the men who was on the expedition, suffered injuries himself, and was writing about Scott less than ten years afterward. So, I did try to set any judgements aside and enjoy the story being told. It was a quick read. One section that captured some of the beauty was in Chapter 8, “The Winter Closes In”:

”One passed out of the hut hourly at least and, on moonlight nights especially, one found something beautiful in the scenery about Cape Evans. At full moon time everything turned silver, from towering Erebus with gleaming sides to the smooth ice slopes of Ross Island in the north-east, while away to the southward the high black Dellbridge Islands thrust up from a sea of flat silver ice. Even the conical hills and the majestic Castle Rock, fifteen miles away, stood out quite clearly on occasions.”

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an interesting romp through some of the mathematics of the 16th and 17th centuries. The author’s larger goal was to tie the battle regarding infinitesimals (which would lead eventually to calculus and modern analysis) to the rise of modernity across Europe. He succeeds on the first part but I think fails on the linkage. It’s a clever hook but it feels like he’s forcing the facts into his thesis to make a gripping story, not because they cleanly fit.

This is not a math textbook, but there are some neat things for the reader to work through. I enjoyed even more the history of the mathematicians: where they were from, how they were educated, what they did, who they worked for, who they collaborated and fought with, etc. That was very interesting and worth reading the book just to get their stories.

The writing was repetitive. Points were made, reiterated, reflected upon and written again. I felt whole chapters could have been reduced to several paragraphs. This topic would have been better suited to a long article instead of a book-length piece. While redundancy can be forgiven (one can always skim), the author was often melodramatic. I can tell he was excited about his topic and that excitement was contagious, but he went overboard in trying to make each paragraph feel like a cliff-hanger of a poor television series. I kept waiting for music to cue up and hear the announcer from Batman say “What will become of Cavalieri? What secrets does Guldin have up his sleeve? Tune in next paragraph to find out.” [Yes, I am being consciously melodramatic here.]

I’d originally thought of giving this book two stars, but I looked at my reviews from the last two years and I thought that would be unfair. So, I gave it three stars. I did learn things and I enjoyed the history of mathematics, religion and politics.