Category Archives: Books

Andrew S. Curran – Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Comments Off on Andrew S. Curran – Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

Andrew S. Curran – Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

Diderot is best known for editing the Encyclopedie, the first volume of which was published in 1751. Though little-read today, it was one of the most influential works of the Enlightenment. Other than that, most people pay Diderot little mind, aside from noting that he was more vocal about his atheism than most other Enlightenment thinkers, who mostly were, or pretended to be, deists. Curran shows that there was much more to Diderot.

He was a polymath, writing as many as 7,000 articles for the Encyclopedie on a wide variety of subjects. He also wrote plays, dabbled in science, was imprisoned for his beliefs, opposed slavery and advocated for women’s rights, befriended and then fell out with Rousseau, pushed the boundaries of sexual discourse, was a respected art critic, and spent several unhappy months in Russia in the court of Catherine the Great.

After his 1784 death at age 70, Diderot was, ironically, buried in a church. Perhaps fittingly, his grave was disturbed during the French Revolution, and though he is still somewhere in the church, nobody is sure quite where.

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Posted in Books, History, Philosophy, Uncategorized

Richard Panek – The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Comments Off on Richard Panek – The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet

Richard Panek – The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet

More philosophical than I expected. Panek gives an excellent history of gravity, from Aristotle on down through Philoponus, Galileo, Newton, and on down the line. Philoponus, an Egypt-born 6th century Byzantine philosopher, was someone I was unfamiliar with, and it was a treat learning about a new figure in the history of science. He figures prominently early in the story, and more or less came up with the modern understanding of inertia, which he called impetus.

Unusually for his time, Philoponus was not content to rely on Aristotle and Plato’s works as settled fact. He preferred some measure of empiricism. He did not go as far as Francis Bacon’s audaciously titled New Organon (intended to replace Aristotle’s Organon, which was all but an eternal sacred text), but Philoponus’ empiricism was still controversial.

While Panek ably explains the science of gravity at a popular level, he is clearly more interested in the philosophy surrounding it. In particular, if you ask a scientist not what gravity is, but why it exists, they have no choice but to tell you they do not know. That, more than anything, is what interests Panek, and what drove him to write this book.

A good scientist has no problem admitting they do not know something, of course. A lifetime of study and experiment tells even the most brilliant scientist nothing about why, only about the what. Maybe someday we’ll gain that level of knowledge. But after so many attempts from Aristotle to Philoponus through today’s sophisticated experiments, Panek is not optimistic.

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Posted in Books, Certainty, History, Philosophy, Science, Uncategorized

Kim Stanley Robinson – Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, Book 1)

Posted on November 7, 2019 | Comments Off on Kim Stanley Robinson – Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, Book 1)

This lengthy 1992 sci-fi novel is the story of the first permanent colony on Mars, founded in 2026. Rather than a Star Wars-style shoot-‘em-up in space, this book is more a mix of science and philosophy. The main conflict is about terraforming. Should the colony be permanent?  At what point can terraforming be said to begin? Is it ethical to terraform a planet that might have native life? What if it is the only opportunity we’ll likely ever have to observe extraterrestrial microbes? Should that life be made extinct, or does it have the right to be preserved? Is Mars a stepping stone to the outer planets, or is this going to be the only colonized planet?

The colony is initially made up of a First Hundred, a mostly American and Russian contingent which includes John Boone, the first man to walk on Mars on a previous mission. Other countries are also represented, though to a lesser degree. His Neil Armstrong-like celebrity give him a high status, and though he is a good person and has a decent head on his shoulders, he at times does have a little but of an ego about it. The extreme pro-terraforming position, called the “Green” or ‘Russell” position, is personified by Sax Russell, while Ann Clayborne personifies the extreme anti-terraforming “Red” position. Other characters take intermediate positions. Another character, Hiroko Ai, who is in charge of many of the farm operations, injects a bit of mysticism into her philosophy of nurturing and spreading life wherever possible.

There is also a lot of science content—much more than one would expect in a novel. I enjoyed this immensely, and for me was one of the book’s draws. Other readers might feel differently. To that point, several explanatory passages run too long or feel forced in, and don’t always tie in with the plot or Robinson’s larger philosophical, social, and political themes. Red Mars is still a great way to learn about radiation, gravity, regolith, Martian atmosphere and geology, and how life can survive in hostile conditions. As far as I can tell, most of its science has held up pretty well, though obviously we now know much more about Mars thanks to the rover missions and growing collections of satellite and telescope data. Red Mars also touches on longevity treatments and genetic engineering. And, of course, the speculative science of terraforming.

Robinson is also interested in how social and political dynamics would work in such a colony—and how they impact things back on Earth. Most of the First Hundred have become household names on Earth, where their daily lives on Mars are daily news. After a rough-and-tumble first few years of construction, establishing infrastructure, and creating a self-sustaining food supply, a rough first few years become gradually easier. A lot of this book’s appeal is in seeing the progress.

Once the hardest of the pioneer phase is over and the habitats have enough room, the First Hundred are joined by more and more colonists, and after a few decades the population has boomed into the thousands. There are now the equivalent of multiple cities, each with neighborhoods and even ethnic enclaves as immigrants from Earth self-sort to be closer to people like themselves. The First Hundred had envisioned a more cosmopolitan growth.

There are also jostling governments and corporations, a space elevator, and a revolution. I liked it enough where at some point I will read the next volumes, Green Mars, where the terraforming has progressed to the point where plants can survive outside in the thickened atmosphere, and Blue Mars, where Mars has warmed enough to have liquid surface water.

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Posted in Books, Literature, Science, Uncategorized

Justin Marozzi – Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World

Posted on November 6, 2019 | Comments Off on Justin Marozzi – Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World

Marozzi injects travelogue and portraits of modern post-Soviet life throughout the book far more often than a book about Tamerlane calls for. He is also a little prone to purple prose. But when Marozzi stays on topic, this is a good biography.

Tamerlane was born in a small town in what is now Uzbekistan in 1336. While he spent much of his life on campaign, he also spent many winters and breaks in Smarkand and Tashkent. He was known as Timur or Temur during his lifetime; spellings vary, as do written alphabets. He acquired a limp at an early age, though history has forgotten exactly how; multiple stories circulated in his time and ours, some less honorable than others. Some of his detractors referred to him as Timur-al-Lam, or Timur-the-Lame, hence the Anglicized Tamerlane.

The sources are scarce for Timur’s early life, even after he began to develop a formidable military reputation and the territory to match. As a result, Marozzi spends as much time writing about himself and his travels through Timur’s lands as he does the intended subject of his biography. He also relies more heavily than he should on the 16th century Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine as a source, though he does offer some insightful literary analysis, and is careful to point out that Marlowe was not only writing fiction, but he was writing nearly two centuries after Timur’s death, and in a country, culture, religion, and language that were alien to Timur. Marozzi also has much to say about the impressive architecture Timur sponsored, even if some of it was rushed and eventually collapsed.

The last two decades of Timur life are better covered, and Marozzi does a good job balancing Timur’s political and the personal lives, while also giving the greater regional and historical context Timur operated in.

Timur conquered a huge swath of Asia. From his Uzbek origins, he conquered much of Persia, Baghdad, Mongol-controlled parts of Russia, Seljuk Turkey, Mamluk Egypt, Syria, and India. Every good story needs villains, and Timur had the Golden Horde’s Tokhtamysh, who took multiple campaigns to subdue. A final campaign to China at age 69 proved too much for his diminished health, and his death en route in 1405 may have been the only thing that spared China from his army.

As with Genghis Khan, Timur’s empire fell apart after his death, though his grandson Ulugh Beg was an accomplished scientist as well as an able monarch, and was nicknamed the Astronomer King.

Unlike Genghis Khan, Timur didn’t connect his distant realms to each other with roads, trade, and cultural and intellectual exchange. He seems to have enjoyed the thrill of campaigning and conquering more than the responsibilities that came afterwards. He also used constant campaigning as a way to stay in power. He needed an army’s support against usurpers. But at the same time, that army needed his support. Hence the constant campaigns. They not only subdued rivals, but the spoils kept the army happy and on his side. Timur’s career would be fascinating to view through the lens of Mancur Olson’s theory of roving and stationary bandits. Tamerlane was somewhere in the between, and of course his empire’ stability did not outlast him.

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Posted in Books, History, International, Uncategorized

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Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina

Posted on November 5, 2019 | Comments Off on Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina

My first exposure to Tolstoy, and I loved it. He writes with a beautiful eye for scenic detail and social dynamics, and how inner thoughts and motives are outwardly expressed in the most subtle ways. But where Anna Karenina really shines is in character study. He explores Anna’s psyche most deeply, but she is not the only character of depth. Nobody in Anna Karenina is without fault in some way. But neither does even the worst character lack redeeming qualities or some sympathetic characteristic or circumstance. Just as in real life, every character has a different balance which changes over time.

The book begins with Anna’s sister distraught over her husband’s dalliance with a maid. Anna helps them to reconcile. Later, Anna, who is married, gradually falls for a man named Vronsky. He is a little more dashing and adventurous than her husband Karenin, and a bit of a womanizer; he had previously been flirting with Anna’s friend Kitty. They begin an affair and Anna eventually leaves her husband, but does not divorce him. Her husband could have also handled the matter better, nor was he a particularly caring husband. And while Anna admittedly isn’t much of mother to begin with, Karenin cuts her off from their son entirely. On the other hand, Karenin also later develops a close bond with Anna and Vronsky’s daughter.

As time goes on, the dashing Vronsky turns out be something of a drama queen, to the point of a failed suicide attempt after Karenin forgives him. As the years go by, Anna and Vronsky’s relationship loses its initial spark. Anna takes up a morphine habit, and is shunned from high society due to her relationship with Vronsky, even as Vronsky faces no such disapprobation. Anna’s husband continues to refuse her a divorce mostly out of spite, though he vacillates on the question throughout the novel. Anna eventually takes a cue from Vronsky’s earlier behavior, and the book ends with the family dealing with the aftermath, though the snubbed Kitty’s eventual marriage turns out to be a vision of pastoral Tolstoyan happiness, which spreads to most of the other characters in varying degrees.

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Sidney W. Mintz – Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

Posted on November 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Sidney W. Mintz – Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

Sidney W. Mintz – Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

Mintz tells the story of sugar from an anthrolopogist’s perspective, with a focus on working-class Britain. A weakness is that he views economics through a Marxian lens (though not ideologically Marxist), with an emphasis on concepts such as ownership of the factors of production, power relations, and class structure that seem odd to contemporary readers. This instantly dates this book in the reader’s mind to the mid-20th century, when this approach was fashionable. A quick bit of research shows that Mintz was born in 1922, so his scholarly training and career began precisely at the peak of this movement. This book came out in 1986, towards the end of Marxian analysis’ credible period. As an older scholar by then, Mintz still retained much of his earlier training. That said, Mintz does recognize that slavery was not a capitalistic mode of production, and that economists such as Adam Smith opposed both slavery and imperialism.

Other oddities include his use of the term “balancing the accounts of capitalism,” the meaning of which is unknown to this trained economist. Mintz also does his credibility no favors when he describes sucrose-heavy modern diets among lower-class people as a form of intentional, culturally-approved population control, which operates by depriving children of protein and other nutrients. Mintz then cites the Reagan administration’s school lunch policies as an additional form of population control.

Mintz’s analysis is much better on non-economic parts of sugar’s history. His emphasis is not on the science of sugar, or its culinary or nutritional properties, but he is strong on its cultural impacts. The meat of the book on Britain’s working classes from roughly 1600-1900, presumably his specialty in his scholarly research. Mintz goes into how sugar is farmed and processed, how it related to other crops, where it sat in people’s diets and how the growing sugar trade changed diet and nutrition worldwide for people of all classes, though again with an emphasis on Britain. He also goes into sugar’s pre-Atlantic history, which is mentioned in Europe as far back as the Venerable Bede in the 8th century. Henry VIII was an avowed fan, and his court was a major user of the then-expensive spice.

He doesn’t go extensively into sugar’s non-British history, but does mention the Arabic enlightenment physician Avicenna’s (d. 1037) views on sugar. Also of interest are historical views on sugar’s medicinal value in various forms that no longer pass muster, such as powder for the eyes and smoke for the lungs, as well as its usefulness for disguising both medicines and poisons. Some doctors viewed sugar as a cure-all in the early 1700s, though its role in diabetes was also discovered around the same time. Its effects on weight and teeth were also well-known; Elizabeth I apparently had quite a sweet tooth, which had turned black by her old age. There was also a harmful superstition that eating large quantities of fresh fruit was harmful to one’s health. But I do share the time’s positive view of honey, which in my opinion is underrated as a sweetener.

Another historical quirk is how intimately the British paired sugar, imported from thousands of miles to the West, with tea, imported from thousands of miles to the East. Mintz argues that this is partially because tea displaced beer as the working class’ favored drink. In a time of poor sanitation, beer’s germ-killing alcohol made it safer than water. It also made up a non-negligible portion of daily calorie intake for many poorer people. Tea did away with those calories and other nutrients from wheat, which had adverse health consequences. This may explain why the English so commonly replace those calories by putting sugar and milk in their tea, whereas many other cultures do not.

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Posted in Books, Economics, History, International, Uncategorized

John Steele Gordon – A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable

Posted on October 31, 2019 | Comments Off on John Steele Gordon – A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable

John Steele Gordon – A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable

The story of Cyrus Fields, a 19th century entrepreneur who laid the first transatlantic cable. Fields was a man of rare persistence. As Gordon puts it on page 12, “But it was Cyrus Fields alone who made it happen, for he served the same function in the enterprise of the Atlantic cable that a producer serves in a theatrical production. A producer does not act or direct or design scenery. But without him, neither does anyone else.” Fields was around at the right time—but he also the right person.

Telegraphy had been around for a bit by the time Fields got started, and people had also figured out that it was possible to lay cable underwater. Earlier initiatives had crossed the English channel, and of course the U.S. had a transcontinental cable over land. But Fields’ grand project required a new suite of innovations everywhere from sea exploration, knowledge of water physics, electric conductivity, cable insulation, ballast and weight for ships, diplomacy, and international finance. Fields, often through sheer force of will and personality, headed up a multi-year effort using  massive amounts of capital to successfully finish the project. There were numerous setbacks, and the on-the-ground (water?) problem-solving his ships’ crewmembers were able to improvise, at times during hostile weather, are both impressive and inspiring.

Fields paved the way for today’s transoceanic cables capable of carrying not just phone calls, but Internet traffic, video communications, and more around the world. As heroes of invention go, Fields deserves a much more prominent place on the list.

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Posted in Books, Economics, History, Innovation, International, Technology

George Will – The Conservative Sensibility

Posted on October 29, 2019 | Comments Off on George Will – The Conservative Sensibility

George Will – The Conservative Sensibility

This book displaces 1983’s Statecraft as Soulcraft as George Will’s grand statement. Early on Will explicitly disavows much of his earlier book’s thesis, having learned since then that government is neither capable nor interested in improving a nation’s character. One reason for this is that nations do not have character, individuals do. The sentiments of even the most stirring campaign speeches do not apply to everyday life.

I have never entirely shared Will’s worldview or his policy positions, yet I have long enjoyed reading and learning from him. For some reason I will always remember his infamous column inveighing against blue jeans as an ur-text for old fuddy-duddies everywhere. Like Will, I do not own a pair. At the same time, I do not share his animus for the casual, easygoing philosophy they apparently represent.

Unlike many political pundits, Will has also evolved over time—though likely not sartorially. Always a staunch conservative, he was one of the few prominent Republicans to criticize George W. Bush’s post-9/11 overreactions, from the PATRIOT Act to the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also looked askance at Bush’s runaway spending, deficits, and his enactment of the largest new entitlement program since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, four decades prior.

After eight years of President Obama normalizing the dangerous new trajectory Bush established, Will was deeply disappointed when Republicans chose Donald Trump as their 2016 nominee. The GOP had a chance to stop 16 years of Bush-Obama excesses, and return to what Will saw as the party’s traditional emphasis on limited, responsible government—though this reviewer disagrees that this tradition existed anywhere in policies the GOP has actually enacted when in power.

Instead of a return to Reagan or Goldwater, Republicans nominated a populist who has neither knowledge of nor interest in conservative policies or principle. In line with its nominee’s personality, the GOP has doubled down on its mistake rather than owned up to it. Shortly before this book came out, a disappointed Will left the GOP and became an independent.

Unusually for a book released in 2019, Will does not mention Donald Trump once in its more than 600 pages. Not only will this decision help the book age better—presidents come and go every few years, while ideas are timeless—it also helps to keep Will’s spleen in check. And in true George Will fashion, ignoring Trump is also a deliberate insult that is both understated and effective. It’s not about him.

Despite the title, The Conservative Sensibility plainly shows that Will’s sensibilities have become more liberal, in the correct sense of the word. I still part company with him on many areas, from his over-emphasis on cultural and political tradition to a borderline Manichean view of family structure—one model is almost purely good, while all other models are almost purely bad.

But he does do nuance in other areas, and I find agreement with many of them. The grandest of all traditions is organized religion, and Will uses this book to come out of the closet as an “amiable, low-wattage atheist.” This is an especially brave move since many conservatives are arguably more prejudiced against atheists than they are even against gay people and immigrants.

Will, fortunately, has an open mind on these issues as well, and he also shows good sense throughout on international trade, which has become another flashpoint in recent years. Increasingly, as historian Stephen Davies has argued, the relevant political divide is no longer progressive-conservative or capitalist-socialist. It is nationalism vs. cosmopolitanism. As the GOP takes a nationalist turn, Will has turned in a more cosmopolitan direction, hence his break.

While, again, I do not agree with all of Will’s views, this is a fascinating document. It comes out during a major political realignment. Will has clearly taken one side, and his longtime party is increasingly choosing the opposite side, leading to a well-publicized break. It also shows the evolution of a careful thinker. Most people become reflexively more conservative and even crochety as they age; Thomas Sowell comes to mind. Will has become more liberal, without turning to the left. Even as Will reflects inward more than he used to, he has adopted a more outward-looking, liberal worldview. He admires the American founders not because they were the founders, but because he genuinely admires their Enlightenment values.

And as always, Will is a fine prose stylist. While he has an impressive vocabulary, he is less interested in showing it off than he is in picking the right word to convey his meaning, Better, he puts those incisive words into compact, crisp sentences. He writes to say something, not to ornament the page. While The Conservative Sensibility is easily twice as long as it needs to be, George Will’s late-career magnum opus deserves the label. Both left and right could use more calm and principled voices like Will’s, for whom party identity is not everything.

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Posted in Books, Political Animals, Uncategorized

H.P. Lovecraft – The Call of Cthulu

Posted on October 28, 2019 | Comments Off on H.P. Lovecraft – The Call of Cthulu

H.P. Lovecraft – The Call of Cthulu

Every October I read something from the horror genre. This year, I chose Lovecraft’s most famous story. A common theme in his work is that humans go about their lives oblivious that they are at the mercy of ancient, terrible gods hibernating in the deep. In this story, the narrator, a young man, retraces the steps of his late uncle, a professor of ancient languages. The people he meet become progressively stranger, including a murderous cult in New Orleans, and he travels progressively further, finding exotic ruins in Greenland with ancient texts describing a city called R’lyeh and something called Cthulu. He eventually ends up in the South Pacific, and meets the sole survivor of a ship that landed at R’lyeh, awakened the sleeping Cthulu, and barely survived the encounter. The man was driven mad by the experience, and his story is filled with nightmare-like imagery of shifting forms, non-Euclidean geometry, running, falling, and the immortal, tentacle-faced ancient Cthulu’s relentless pursuit, and instant recovery from its wounds.

Lovecraft’s tale also inspired at least two Metallica songs; guitarist Kirk Hammett is a noted horror fan. “The Thing That Should Not Be” from 1986’s Master of Puppets features lyrics referring to the story. “The Call of Ktulu,” likely spelled that way to avoid copyright issues, is the closing instrumental track from 1984’s Ride the Lightning.

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Posted in Books, Literature, Uncategorized

S. Frederick Starr – Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane

Posted on October 25, 2019 | Comments Off on S. Frederick Starr – Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane

S. Frederick Starr – Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane

It’s fairly well known that the Islamic world preserved classical texts during the dark interlude between Rome and the Renaissance. Plato’s dialogues, Aristotle’s taxonomies, and Galen’s medicine owe their survival to careful Islamic caretakers. It’s also fairly well known that Islamic scholars during this period made important original contributions to math (algebra is an Arabic word), astronomy, philosophy, and medicine. Of course, the same movement also gave us the word “gibberish” from the name of the scholar Jabir ibn Hayyan, who was as indecipherable in his time as he is in ours. But then, few things in the world are purely good or bad.

Starr has put together a superb intellectual history of the Arabic Enlightenment. He doesn’t quite give literature or the arts their due, but that was intentional. Nor is this a larger survey history of the Arab world during its golden age. Starr instead prefers to focus on philosophy, science, and medicine, and covers them thoroughly, while also paying some attention to art and architecture. He also brings the time’s leading personalities to life. Ibn Sina (b. 980), better known in English as Avicenna, for example, comes across as brilliant, and well aware of it. Starr give him a thorough biographical treatment of both his accomplishments and his personal life. Someone who was previously little more than a name I associated with a period in history became a person with likes and dislike, triumphs, pathos, and flaws.

Other figures get similar treatment, and Starr also tells the story of larger movements, such as Sufism, which came to prominence in Iran’s Safavid dynasty and focused on more ritual and mystic elements. Starr also introduces the reader to the heights of Baghdad’s cultural accomplishments, to the Seljuk Turks on the Arabic world’s western periphery, the terrors of Genghis Khan and his descendants, as well as the economic and intellectual contacts and exchange they made possible

Starr finally carries the story forward well into the 15th century, up to the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane, d. 1405)’s descendants. Most prominent among these was his grandson Ulugh Beg, known as the Astronomer King, who was an accomplished scientist as well as a king.

This is a book I wish I had read years ago. Despite intentionally leaving out major aspects of culture and history, it is wide-ranging. It accessibly covers people, movements, events, and accomplishments that are still largely unknown to a Western audience, including this reader. And it satisfies my economist’s interest in interconnectedness, openness, exchange, and how culture can help or hinder prosperity. It pairs well with Justin Marozzi’s biography Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, which I read around the same time.

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Posted in Books, History, International, Uncategorized