As a high school student in Kansas, Polly discovered the intellectual world and began to apply himself, getting into Princeton, where he became enthra...moreAs a high school student in Kansas, Polly discovered the intellectual world and began to apply himself, getting into Princeton, where he became enthralled with martial arts and Chinese studies. After reading Mark Salzman’s Iron and Silk, Polly became determined to go to Shaolin to study kungfu. This was in 1992, when there was little information available on Shaolin, and no World Wide Web to initiate global contact, so it took a bit of courage and a bit of temerity for Polly to fly to China, without an introduction or appointment, and ask to sign up for kungfu classes at the legendary temple – but that is exactly what he did. Arriving in Beijing, he discovers that even the Chinese are not sure if Shaolin still exists, but he presses on anyway, and to his credit, he manages to arrive. Not understanding the Chinese tradition of haggling (or extorting the foreigner), Polly agrees to an outrageous price to be taught kungfu at Shaolin, and his journey begins.
The account of Polly’s time in Shaolin is both hilarious and informative; it’s a coming-of-age story blended with a travelers-abroad tale. Polly experiences all the shocks that China gives the Western traveler (I was interested to see that he describes his personality as splitting in two, an American Matthew Polly and the dopey, grinning Chinese version, always struggling to process what was going on – a phenomenon similar to that described by Peter Hessler in River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze; he also describes the same resentful, helpless feeling in the face of emotionless, unspeaking, staring crowds), but takes them in stride. Eventually he is quite at home in Shaolin, distinguishes himself in kungfu tournaments, meets a few wastrel and pretender Westerners who follow in his footsteps, and even does the unthinkable: he dates a Chinese woman. Polly’s memoir is a terrific read, but it’s also valuable in two main ways. One, it documents the training process and some outstanding martial arts techniques studied at Shaolin, such as the Iron Forearm or Iron Head or Iron Dong (they all involve focusing qi through breathing and then punishing the specified body part daily until it is as tough as steel), which are fascinating. Two, in addition to all the cultural mores that Polly diligently records (the little rituals of polite language that I find enthralling), because Polly revisits Shaolin ten years later, he is able to document how China has changed – not just in the ease of transport or shopping opportunities, but the emerging confidence and higher expectations of the Chinese people. It’s an insightful, first-rate memoir. (less)
A collection of humorous essays, both autobiographical and based on journalistic assignments. A homosexual and a Jew, Rakoff plays up his neuroses and...moreA collection of humorous essays, both autobiographical and based on journalistic assignments. A homosexual and a Jew, Rakoff plays up his neuroses and fears as he discusses his early career in publishing as the bottom rung of the assistant ladder; the cancer that forced him to leave Japan where he worked as a translator; his work as a bit actor in television. He’s self-effacing and funny, but also startlingly perspicacious; his insight on how teachers think (in his piece on Austrian cultural-exchange teachers in New York City) is full of empathy and understanding. He comes off as a far more erudite David Sedaris, name-dropping writers, classic movies, Freud’s Dora, and characters from literature, all with wit and élan (of a bluff old retired pilot who fixes up houses: “there’s a sad whiff of mortality… like watching ‘This Old House’ hosted by Beaudelaire”).
An actor, writer, spoken-word performer and not-too-bad draftsman (he did the chapter illustrations for this book), Rakoff comes off in this book as a talented man weighted down by fears and neuroses, the classic over-educated person whose very learning causes distress by revealing the complexity and indifference of the vast world – which made it all the sadder when I learned that he died of cancer last year. All of the pieces in this book have humor, pathos, and poignancy; they really do evoke a sense of being alone in the world. I enjoyed “In New England Everyone Calls You Dave,” an account of hiking up a small mountain in New Hampshire and how it brought to mind Rakoff’s ill-fated time on a kibbutz, and “Christmas Freud,” in which Rakoff plays Freud for a Christmas window at Barney’s, the most. They’re easily the funniest stories, and let Rakoff explore the absurd in the quotidian, and self-reflection in the absurd. (less)
A collection of studies on how expectations and belief can control our performance, even our very biology. Investigating the fields of sports psycholo...moreA collection of studies on how expectations and belief can control our performance, even our very biology. Investigating the fields of sports psychology (especially the reasons for top athletes’ “choking” in the clutch), medicine (with its use of placebos and their lesser-known opposites, nocebos), wine tasting (breaking down not only the experts’ claims for superior sensory discrimination but also their consistency), and others, Berdik shows the many and varied ways in which what we expect, even what we are explicitly told to expect, can influence our perception and ability. From actual fear reactions during virtual reality experiences to being rated as more leader-like simply after striking a certain pose, these studies confound and delighted me, as they do all those interested in how we can use the hard-wired functions of the brain to improve our everyday lives.
I don’t like reviewing a book for what it is not (which is like saying “this cupcake is bad, because it is not a donut”), but I was expecting there to be a practical aspect to all these studies: now that we know, for example, that studies prove that most people are overconfident about their abilities, what do we do? How does can we adapt these findings – such as that people who play taller, handsomer avatars in video games act more attractive in real life – to our work lives? Instead it was study after study, with no conclusion or general thesis. Fascinating, but not particularly cohesive or utile. (less)
A volunteer for the Peace Corps, Hessler lived in Fuling, a little town in Sichuan province, on the delta of the Yangtze and Wu rivers, for two years...moreA volunteer for the Peace Corps, Hessler lived in Fuling, a little town in Sichuan province, on the delta of the Yangtze and Wu rivers, for two years teaching English. As one of the few Westerners in the town since World War II, Hessler becomes the focus of not always kind attention in town, but as he learns more Chinese and more of the Chinese way of doing things, he sees his place more clearly and almost, at times, seems to fit into the daily life there. Of course, nearly everything in China is political: the literature he teaches is used by his students as a springboard to analyze their own lives, even as Hessler learns how hard it is to broach certain subjects in a culture where everyone is brought up to believe the same things.
Written in calm, meditative prose, this is an excellent entry into the annals of the Westerner-in-China body of memoirs. Hessler is wise beyond his years, and his China (or rather, his Fuling) is never of the sadly typical “oh look how foreign everything is” variety. He recognizes full well how foreign he himself is, and even during his lowest points of cultural contact – when men try to pick fights with him simply because he’s a Westerner – he reports with a detached and reflective eye. He learns rather quickly how to deal with some of the illogical bureaucracy – I enjoyed his clever face-saving solution when confronted with the lie that he was required to get a chest X-ray to participate in a foot race, for example – but he is troubled and bemused by certain other aspects of Chinese culture. He cites the lack of empathy and collectivist thinking that he saw in Chinese crowds, and the disturbing lack of fixed individual values in a culture where “wrong” thinking can become “right” as easily as it takes for an authority to say it. In his own small circle of students and friends, he hears of two deaths, a suicide, and a kidnapping (of a woman to become a forced bride). Near the end of the book, he muses that he can only brush against “the slightest sense of the dizzying past” that informed the values and behaviors that he encounters. His Fuling is, as he says, “a human place,” and that puts his memoir in the top ranks of its kind. (less)
A cheery analysis of how and why scientists have observed, recorded, and theorized about human sex behavior, since gynecologist Robert Dickinson’s cas...moreA cheery analysis of how and why scientists have observed, recorded, and theorized about human sex behavior, since gynecologist Robert Dickinson’s case studies in the 1890s, through the Masters and Johnson reach, Kinsey’s questionnaires, Marie Bonaparte’s studies on the relation of clitoral position to enjoyment of sex, and so on. Roach travels to Denmark where she observes pig inseminators sexually stimulating the sows for better results; watches penile enhancement surgery in Taipei; peeks into the small and unsettling world of sex machine hobbyists; interviews the maker of a suction device for women (to increase blood flow to the clitoris); discusses the strange history of testicle grafts; and opens many other windows into the vast array of human sexuality. Stuffed with the kind of tidbits of information that make you cross your legs and squirm (there is a great deal of historical insertions of objects into urethras, for example), and told in vivid, bold, often hilarious prose, this is a hugely entertaining book. It’s not exactly a definitive study of human sexuality, being wide in scope but not deep and with very little in the way of general thesis; however, Roach’s winking, irreverent prose style, her wisecracks, and her wordplay set this book in the highest ranks of popular science surveys. (less)
A linguist explains for the layman, in easy, readable prose and affable wit, the professional view on languages: they are Ingrown, Disheveled, Intrica...moreA linguist explains for the layman, in easy, readable prose and affable wit, the professional view on languages: they are Ingrown, Disheveled, Intricate, Oral, and Mixed. He tries to dispel the ludicrous and unfounded belief that some languages are more “real” than others (which are thought of as “primitive”) simply because they are better known or have a tradition of literature. Rationally, with no dogmatic axe to grind, he explains the prescriptivist view of language – all languages – as ever-changing oral traditions, most of them a macedoine of borrowings from neighbors, colonists, conquerors, and subcultures. He inverts the layman’s suppositions about “primitive” creoles – it’s writing which is the perversion of language, not the other way around; and it’s the baffling impenetrability of, say, Navajo that is unusual, rather than the more simplistic grammars of Persian and English - which have been streamlined over time by an influx of adult immigrants who honed off some of the intricacies while learning them orally, as well as infusing some of their own language into the pot.
This is a terrific book, full of fascinating tidbits about individual languages (the English word “notch” used to be “otch” but the initial n was transferred to the indefinite article; Mandarin uses some shape-based classifiers for its numbered nouns; the African language Serer has ten genders; Twi uses various particles to indicate how you have come to know a statement; Berik nouns specify the time of day things happened to them) as well as wise, compelling pronouncements on language as whole. McWhorter looks at a language’s entire background – its history of colonization or conquest, its geographic setting – to explain its own individual quirks. As McWhorter notes, languages have fetishes over different things – English's insistence on differentiating the indefinite and definite articles of nouns baffles Mandarin and Russian speakers, who don’t use any articles, while other languages are anal about specific counting words or the relations of objects to the speaker. This doesn’t make them “strange” or not “real” languages, just individual, and it’s that variation that is so endlessly fascinating to us language geeks. Where I think McWhorter fails to convince is in his argument that textspeak and the slipping of written standards results in just as “real” a language than the AP Manual of Style; this may be true, from a linguistic point of view, but the actual criticism is that slipping standards are worse, not less real, than the heavy precedent of our vast, complex written tradition, which has ennobled us, and which is being forgotten. This aside, the book is charming, captivating, and compelling; anyone who makes misinformed comments about what language is – and that is so many otherwise perfectly rational people – should be forced to read it.(less)
The tale of the Chinese-Canadian author’s long path from a deluded, naïve red-to-the-core Maoist to a cynical reporter who sees just how wrong she was...moreThe tale of the Chinese-Canadian author’s long path from a deluded, naïve red-to-the-core Maoist to a cynical reporter who sees just how wrong she was. Wong’s life is enthralling in its sheer unlikeliness, even if Wong herself comes off as an unrepentant spoiled fool in the first half of the book. Wong dismisses the concerns of her wealthy father (born in Canada, the son of an emigrant) to become one of only two Westerners allowed to attend Beijing University in 1972, in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, and demands to work in the fields, so she can be “purified” by labor. She is far too stupid to understand that Mao’s policies were insane and destructive, and actually believed what millions of Chinese knew to be madness. If Wong were Chinese, she’d be merely naïve, or a tool of the system – as an educated Canadian who should have known better, she comes off as dangerously stupid, and her book is full of excuses and alibis for her actions. She takes pains to cite the turbulent political times, the anti-American sentiment, her youth… but those are not valid excuses. Millions of Americans criticized their government in the ‘60s and ‘70s without swallowing Mao’s gnomish madness, and tens of millions of teenagers may have impulsive tendencies but manage not to be raving absolutists about things which are obviously untrue.
So the first half of the book is infuriating, though still fascinating. Very early into Wong’s first visit to China, she started noticing that the Cultural Revolution had trashed standards throughout China, that “some people seemed more equal than others,” that food stores were sparse; but still she remains deluded and committed to Maoism. What kind of mind must she have had to be so blind? At one point she is so brainwashed (not, it must be noted, by anyone but her own faulty reasoning and stupidity) she denounces students who want her help to escape China. Wong realizes that this was a low point in her development, but she maintains a defensive attitude about even this, comparing herself to other Chinese denouncers. (She doesn’t seem to realize that they, who had to live there, may have had practical reasons to denounce others, such as to avoid more severe punishment for loved ones who may have been implicated.) As with all brainwashed zealots, it is only after her personal desires or freedoms are impacted that she truly begins to question what she believes: “I was sick of the double standard… How dare he interfere in my life. I had changed… I refused to endure the same kind of humiliation every Chinese endured,” she writes about the authorities’ attempts to prevent her from seeing her future husband. Wong’s stupidity and self-interest is rather pathetic, and she is a highly unsympathetic narrator – but as I say, the book is fascinating, if only because her experiences are so unreal and rare. After her apostasy, the book gets even more interesting, because of Wong’s unique ability to blend in with the Chinese people and get stories for the New York Times. She writes about the lead-up to the Tiananmen reprisals, when students went on “hunger strikes” in turns (with snack breaks), and how it suddenly turned from a rather jovial sit-in to a massacre. She gives in-depth reports on execution fields and the practicalities of summary executions; she visits entire villages made retarded and dwarfed by pollution; she investigates modern women trafficking; and she marvels at the breakneck pace of China’s embrace of capitalism, with its McDonald’s run by ex-cadre leaders, the new extravagance of penis and breast reconstruction (though the former has roots in China’s early rural economy, when boys had their penises bitten off by feral pigs as they defecated in fields at night). “Even my maid had a maid,” she writes, bemused at the changes. At this point Wong seems very clear-headed, but even late in the book, she claims that China was “an unrelentingly pure country” in 1980 because guards didn’t take bribes, compared to the pervasive bribery rampant in China today. But surely she realizes that bribery sprouts from lawlessness, and the lack of bribery is more likely rooted in fear of a mad despot than some ideological “purity” that never existed? It left me wondering if Wong ever really learned a lesson, or just got tired of being treated like a Chinese person. That aside, it’s a fascinating look at Chinese written from a unique perspective. (less)
The author, an internist and poet, writes brief vignettes about a variety of patients – the resigned, the anxious, the pathologically neurotic, the de...moreThe author, an internist and poet, writes brief vignettes about a variety of patients – the resigned, the anxious, the pathologically neurotic, the demanding and blustering. With the longest at around ten pages and most of them no more than four, these are brief scenes, ruminations on what a patient’s words or actions may actually be saying about their inner feelings.
The last word in the subtitle – “healer” – is aptly chosen, as Dr. Watts attends to not only his patients’ colons and esophagi, but their fears and hopes and memories. Using as his precept “So you’re a doctor, but don’t go around acting like one,” he does a masterful job of checking his ego, putting himself in his patients’ shoes, allowing them their moments of fear or bravado. As the kind of doctor who sees himself as a healer, listener, counselor, and fount of compassion, he also has a few rather pointed and amusing things to say about insurance companies and red tape. As a poet, he is a talented storyteller with a gift for evoking a scene of high emotion in a few lines and ending it on the perfect, ambiguous, moving, or wryly humorous note. I did not like the way in which he eschewed all quotation marks; Watts may be a poet, but this is not poetry, and it was a distracting affectation. (less)
Not a cohesive memoir so much as a personal diary of the author’s time in Tuscany, now twenty years on since her bestseller. Perhaps because this is h...moreNot a cohesive memoir so much as a personal diary of the author’s time in Tuscany, now twenty years on since her bestseller. Perhaps because this is her fourth volume of Tuscan ramblings (I have not read anything else by her), she does not take the time to introduce characters but rather just drops their names – is Ed her second husband? Third? Common-law live-in partner? Is her grandchild’s mother her daughter, or Ed’s, or what? Who are all these neighbors, and their relation to her? It’s not terribly important, perhaps, but a nagging distraction for those who have just picked up this one book. In a similar vein, she drops the names of such things as “DOC wines” without explaining that this is an official quality assurance label. In this sense the book is, ironically, very off-putting and exclusionary, since she is trying to write as if composing letters to close friends. It’s very poetic, adjective-drenched, sensual language, light on events and drama, and even lighter on chronological sense. It’s predominately the scents of food and vibrant colorful flowers and thick soft warm cloths, mountains and wooden furniture and Renaissance paintings and fireside sing-alongs.
There is a brief point at which something approaching a conflict of interest or drama approaches. She is caught up in local politics, and – and after a build-up that makes it seem as if a loved one will be tortured in front of her – she relates a slightly unpleasant event that shook her up a bit. Her fear soon passes without further incident, as does her telling of it, and after a few pages musing on the bad things that happened to people she’s known, it’s off again with menus, museum tours, shops, flowers, page after page after page about paintings, apparently cribbed from museum tour guides or books on art history – to me the absolute pinnacle of boring reading. All this, with no particular progression or thought to build up a coherent narrative journey: near the very end of the book is when she chooses to ramble about her struggles with the Italian language – why then? – and of course then switches gears abruptly, droning about what might have been if she’d stayed in Georgia – which can be of no interest to anyone but herself. All this museum-visiting and garden-planting and wine-tasting and restaurant-lingering and pasta-making and house-renovating is perhaps fascinating stuff to those who read to live vicariously, but it is not for me. In the end, Mayes’ personal prose style says very little about Tuscany itself, and quite a lot about what a wealthy woman writer from Georgia enjoys doing all day. That, to me, is not what travel writing is all about. The final chapter is pseudo-metaphysical pretentious nonsense (“is the universe – at some distance – shaped like the bones of a cranium?”). Boring. Utterly boring. (less)
A collection of essays and autobiographical pieces by the veteran character actor, amounting a book that is both memoir and pop philosophy. He’s a wit...moreA collection of essays and autobiographical pieces by the veteran character actor, amounting a book that is both memoir and pop philosophy. He’s a witty and self-deprecating story-teller who seems to have an inexhaustible cache of bizarre anecdotes, from his childhood escapades hunting poisonous animals in Texas fields to the surreal experience of working under eccentric director David Milch on “Deadwood,” from the inexplicable and nasty vendetta an acting professor maintained against Tobolowsky when he was at SMU’s drama school to being thrown out of a hotel in France for punching a toilet, from his rocky relationship with his first love who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright to being held at gunpoint while shopping and trying to talk the crazed gunman down before police jumped him.
The writing is polished and Tobolowsky can make you chuckle as well as tug your heartstrings, but what I think makes this book stand out as something beyond a collection of actor’s stories is the heart behind it. Whether talking about his reluctant attachment to an abandoned dog that bounds back from the brink of death or relaying his gentle argument with an atheist in a hotel bar, Tobolowsky comes across as a gentle soul who realizes how lucky he’s been, and appreciates the ride. It makes his book a pleasant and affecting experience, not just an interesting or amusing one. (less)
A chronological survey of lost books and books that never were, from ideas for novels that never materialized on paper to valuable manuscripts burnt...more A chronological survey of lost books and books that never were, from ideas for novels that never materialized on paper to valuable manuscripts burnt or censored or mislaid, from the anonymous ancients who assembled Gilgamesh and possible attributions to Homer to Sylvia Plath’s never-completed novel of adultery and the hecatomb of her manuscripts by Ted Hughes. Each chapter is a page or two, five at most, of musings on what this or that author might have accomplished, or how his or her reputation would have changed, if the work in question had survived or been born in the first place. At times there is so little of a “work” to have been “lost” that Kelly merely gives a précis of the author’s most-known work and its importance, as in the Dante or Pound chapters (the Cantos were never lost so much as never unified into Pound’s ambitious, later crazed, vision).
As with any book with so wide a scope, especially one that stops so briefly at each way station through history, this book is heavy on anecdotes, but fails to take the time to convey any deep understanding to the reader. That’s not to say that Kelly doesn’t know the material; he appears to have read everything, indeed he comes off as a bit too clever and writes with a sometimes off-putting erudition: he uses even obscurer forms of already archaic words (exegete, euclionism, daundering, fallalery, etiolated, versifex), sometimes to rather poor effect (“he scurried like an inverted smolt” – what?!); he doesn’t translate French titles (although he translated the other languages); at one point he abruptly writes a paragraph as a logogram without the letter e, and without explanation either. There’s a good bit of intriguing information, of course, such as Kelly’s suggestion that the lack of a trial in The Trial might be “due to textual fragmentation” rather than a philosophical point; but the choppy format and frenetic pace ensured that little stuck with me, I’m afraid. (less)
The authors, married Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalists, write about the emergence of capitalist China in the mid-1990s. Alternating au...moreThe authors, married Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalists, write about the emergence of capitalist China in the mid-1990s. Alternating authorship of the chapters, they analyze China in terms of its progress in the areas of civil rights and business in the face of government repression. The authors argue that the communist government is remarkably similar to those of past dynasties but that, given their entrepreneurial energy, Chinese people are living better now than ever before. At the time of the writing, the authors seemed unsure whether the communist government would last much longer, but their observations lead them to conclude that rotten as the whole system is, with its routine bribery and brutality, the slow change of Chinese culture indicates that the “dynasty” was not yet moribund. On a positive note, they see China as a nation that is beginning to appreciate the benefits of law, as well as material wealth, over imperial rule.
A well written, perspicacious, trenchant series of observations, the book is an easy, accessible read that covers several issues of major interest to Western observers (human rights, pollution, energy production, women’s rights, modernization), relying heavily on "human interest" type stories; in this case, these are vignettes such as a retarded man who is beaten to death by police to clean up the streets of Beijing before the Olympics, a girl who is kidnapped and sold into slavery, a journalist friend who is jailed for criticizing the government, a political refugee turned smuggler, and so on. Their emphasis on the rotten aspects of the communist dynasty has drawn criticism from other reviewers, who say that a particular brand of corruption and specific scandals are hardly representative of any country, especially one as large and heterogeneous as China. However, the authors themselves note the limitations of their “human interest” approach; in one memorable passage they imagine that the tables are turned, and a Chinese journalist who covered an American beat strictly in terms of its horrifyingly violent street crime would be scandalized that despite the high murder rate, most Americans simply go about their everyday lives not thinking much about it, and the journalist would go away with a very skewed understanding of America. The book is also, inevitably, outdated, but remains a fascinating time capsule of the state of China watching post-Tiananmen Square. (less)
Troost, in no way a China expert but a veteran traveler, spends several months in China, from Beijing to Hong Kong, from small villages to Ferrari dea...moreTroost, in no way a China expert but a veteran traveler, spends several months in China, from Beijing to Hong Kong, from small villages to Ferrari dealerships in Shanghai. Troost does his homework and gives a good account of some of the history behind the places he visits, such as how the Yongle emperor, Zhu Di, exterminated his enemies’ families “to the tenth degree.” His own personal observations, such as just how pestilential the polluted air of China’s cities is, are of more value than statistics about China’s carbon footprint. Troost is a highly amusing and empathetic writer and has produced a very good resource for someone’s first book on Western travel in China.
If, however, if it is one’s tenth or twentieth travel book on China, this book offers mostly the same old same old: the language uses ideograms instead of an alphabet; Chinese people have no sense of personal space; they hack big nasty loogies on the street; they eat dogs and cats and live octopus; they drive at unsafe speeds and never stop laying on the horn; they don’t form orderly lines. And so on. Troost has no understanding of the Chinese language and at one point gives misinformation on how dictionaries are used. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would go to, say, Poland knowing nothing about it and come back confident enough to write an entire book, starting with such wide-eyed ignorance as “their language has a lot of k’s and j’s and l’s!” Yet this is exactly what every new Western traveler to China does. This is a well-written and often funny book, but a non-essential addition to the endless parade of “China sure is foreign” books. (less)
The author, a mathematics and philosophy professor, writes about the basic concepts of simple arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, divis...moreThe author, a mathematics and philosophy professor, writes about the basic concepts of simple arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), starting with the premise that numbers exist outside of human endeavor, then on to the definition of addition (which is just adding by one), lingering at the problem of zero, then through some rather convoluted proofs of various theorems, to stop at the abstract algebraic concepts of rings (structures which include sets of integers and provide the definition of addition and multiplication) and fields (which define division through multiplicative inverses).
If the summary above makes it seem as though this is a jaunt through the math you learned in elementary school, think again: “The recursion theorem justifies definitional descent by drawing a connection between the recipe or algorithm embodied in definitional descent and the existence of a unique function, the one that definitional descent has presumably defined.” Berlinski is often this recursive; I often found myself wondering what was being proved or defined, and what was being simply assumed. But aside from tortuous mathematical definitions, the book is written in an airy, conversational, sometimes jocular (sometimes smug) tone, with many sentences given their own paragraphs in order to give them Weight. Berlinski is even quite funny, as when he discusses Guiseppe Peano (whose axioms provide the groundwork for what Berlinksi attempts to show) and his bizarre simplified Latin that no one used or understood, or when he imagines early mathematicians’ dialogue when encountering the apparent absurdity that is negative numbers (“Can I do that?” “Why not?” “I’m just asking.” “What next? I mean besides giving up. That always works”). As a philosophical treatise on the concept of mathematics itself, the book makes some trenchant points (“across the vast range of arguments [in psychology, logic, physics, etc.]… it is only within mathematics that arguments achieve the power to compel allegiance because they are seen to command assent”). But as a tour of elementary abstract principles, it’s a bit abstruse for the layman. I enjoyed his insights on sets and some of the simpler chapters, but finished the book feeling as though Berlinski was a bit too clever for his own good, and yet not quite clever enough to make it all clear. (less)
A collection of Gladwell’s articles from “The New Yorker” – musings on what makes people tick, why some ideas fail, and how well we can predict a pers...moreA collection of Gladwell’s articles from “The New Yorker” – musings on what makes people tick, why some ideas fail, and how well we can predict a person’s success in a particular field, profiles of leaders, “obsessives,” and quirky geniuses. As with all of Gladwell’s books, he turns every story into a human-interest story, every idea into a lesson about what humans believe in their innermost souls. So the tireless Ron Popeil (of Ronco fame) and Cesar Milan and the female copy writers behind hair dye ad campaigns have in common not just “obsessiveness” and passion, but also a knowledge about what makes the world tick that makes their success seem inevitable. He investigates the unusual approach to the stock market of Nassim Taleb (of Black Swan fame, although the profile predates that best-seller), the Enron collapse, the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster, not by rehashing old stories but by looking at them through the eyes of his subjects.
This is the main point shared by the various stories: can we learn from those who see things differently? What is Cesar Milan thinking when he trains a dog? (He seems to be thinking you’re not a very intelligent person if you fawn over a dog after it misbehaves.) More to the point, what is the dog thinking? (Here is someone who will tell me what to do, at last.) What were the Enron executives thinking? (As it turns out, they were victims of what Carol Dweck called the “fixed” mindset in her very good book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success). Why don’t we manage hopeless cases of alcoholism and homelessness better, by setting them up to succeed rather than picking them up and hospitalizing them every time they fall? (Because we don’t find the idea fair, although it would be cheaper.) Not everything in the book is pure genius. The section on what it takes to be a good teacher, while well-intentioned, is so ignorant of the subject (he swallows what the “experts” tell him without question) that I wondered what else he might have missed that I don’t know enough about to catch. But even when Gladwell’s conclusions are a bit off, the book still beguiles. Gladwell’s moody, affable, warm prose is a huge help, but his real skill is in social psychology, of making even the most discussed events (such as Enron and Challenger) fresh by looking at them as a human story: not populated by villains and victims but by flawed people who fall into patterns and make mistakes and start getting lax about the future because things have worked out in the past. By turning dry news stories into compelling tales of everyday life that can teach us about what we like and don’t like (why doesn’t ketchup come in varieties?), Gladwell makes us think about cause and effect, and may just make us think about why we do the things we do. (less)
The author, a general surgeon, discusses some challenges and discoveries of the medical field, and what qualities it takes to improve performance. Dra...moreThe author, a general surgeon, discusses some challenges and discoveries of the medical field, and what qualities it takes to improve performance. Drawing on the history of medicine and his own experiences, he investigates not only what makes improvement, but how it is implemented. For example, the simple act of hand-washing nearly removed the risk of “childbed fever,” an infection which killed newborns; but the successful implementation of hand-washing in an institution comes not by diktat but through spreading positive deviance – seeing where it has become acceptable and trumpeting those practices – hoping to turn the deviance into the norm by giving a voice to those already successful at it. He also writes of watching doctors in India campaign to eradicate polio, a gargantuan endeavor which works not through some miracle pill but through diligence, the simple but exhausting legwork of knocking on doors and spreading the word. He looks at innovation, such as Virginia Apgar’s eponymous test, which is so simple and so obvious, yet drastically improved infant survival rates simply by quantifying results and giving surgeons a number to beat. Or Watson Bowes, a doctor of obstetrics who also improved infant survival rates simply by treating premature babies as though he expected them to thrive. Gawande also discusses some other facets of medical culture, such as malpractice, wages, and lethal injection, but these – while interesting – are vaguer musings compared to the book’s overall arguments about the application of improvement.
It’s a compelling book, written in clear, assured, intelligent prose. Gawande posits that success comes not through science but mainly through performance (as with Indian doctors whom he witnessed perform surgeries in impoverished hospitals with very few instruments, make do with what they had and improvise where they could, but in no event just give up). This conclusion is both heartening and demoralizing, the former because it is so simple – merely expanding current know-how and following basic guidelines can improve survival rates dramatically – but it is also demoralizing because it raises the question of why these simple steps are not already being taken, and it makes us realize that our doctors are fallible, sometimes arrogant and stubborn, humans like the rest of us.(less)
A collection of short fiction pieces – parodies, flights of fancy bordering on the absurd, and the blackest of black-humor riffs on dysfunctional fami...moreA collection of short fiction pieces – parodies, flights of fancy bordering on the absurd, and the blackest of black-humor riffs on dysfunctional families – followed by Sedaris’ debut and best-known memoir, “SantaLand Diaries,” and a few other humorous essays.
As a great fan of Sedaris, I’ve read all of his work, and enjoyed this book the least. As a fiction writer, Sedaris makes a damn fine essayist; I found his stories to be either too fantastic to be meaningful (“Don’s Story,” in which an obnoxious unemployed man is fawned over by Hollywood, and everyone else, for no reason at all; “Parade,” in which an obnoxious man has a series of unlikely lovers, from Charleton Heston to Mike Tyson), or simply too grim to be funny (“The Last You’ll Hear From Me,” in which a woman plans to incite violence at her funeral, “Season’s Greetings,” a truly repulsive story in which a psychotic woman kills a baby by putting it in the dryer and tries to blame it on her husband’s Vietnamese war child; “Barrel Fever,” in which a man recalls his mother’s passive-aggressive nastiness, and defends his own obnoxious behavior when drinking).
Of course there’s humor to be found in dysfunction – it’s what Sedaris made his career out of – but in fiction, Sedaris treats his demons not as things to be deflated through observation, but as therapy. “SantaLand Diaries,” which I’ve heard before, was fantastic, and the other essays, about smoking, being an apartment cleaner in New York, and writing for a kink magazine, were good as well, but they did not make up for the sour taste the stories left. (less)
The author trained to be a surgeon in the Navy and worked with Special Operations and attached to a SEAL team, as well as working as a trauma surgeon...moreThe author trained to be a surgeon in the Navy and worked with Special Operations and attached to a SEAL team, as well as working as a trauma surgeon in El Paso. He describes his medical training, which took place in the days when interns were on call for mind-numbingly long hours, for days on end, or saw patients for an entire shift without a food or restroom breaks. He discusses the details of operations to address gun shots, stabbings, motorcycle wrecks, attempted suicide by crossbow, and brutal beatings. He also relates the grueling conditions under which he served as a surgeon in Iraq after 9/11. Through it all, Cole muses on the human capacity for evil and for recovery; he also expounds on how the military and medicine have blessed him with the opportunities to do good, an expanded world view, and a sense of empathy.
It’s an interesting book to the layman; Cole does an admirable job of explaining the steps of various surgeries, though he can’t help but deluge the reader with medical jargon. The book could have used a surer hand at the editorial wheel: Cole is prone to overblown phrases such as “sanguineous fluid” for “blood,” uses “so” as “very,” makes minor mistakes such as saying “no more painful than” when he means “no less painful than,” and litters commas without much thought as to their relations to clauses. Absentee editorship aside, this is a very interesting book, a look into two worlds – that of intense life-saving surgery and that of the military – that the layman rarely sees so up close and personal. Cole comes across as proud of his extensive and admirable accomplishments, as he should be, but his authorial voice is reined in, expansive, and empathetic as he provides candid insight into these worlds. (less)
The author, a professor of economics, writes about everything food-related, from “how American food got bad” (answer: Prohibition, watered-down immigr...moreThe author, a professor of economics, writes about everything food-related, from “how American food got bad” (answer: Prohibition, watered-down immigrant food, the modern mania for catering to kids’ tastes) to eating great barbecue, from the delusion of the locavore movement to how to shop astutely at small groceries, from tips on finding a great restaurant (answer: find a hole in the wall with low overhead and loyal customers) to why Mexican food tastes better in Mexico (answer: America’s ingredients are fresher and safer but perforce blander due to transport, regulations and freezing; Mexico’s cheeses are richer and unpasteurized so banned in the USA).
I enjoyed this book, some sections more than others. His long chapter on barbecue covered some very old ground gone over years ago by Calvin Trillin; his “finding great food anywhere” section is disappointingly vague (London is expensive if you’re not eating fish and chips; you can get good ingredients in Germany thanks to the EU). The chapter on Mexican food, with its discussion of Mexican traditions of dry aging (again, largely considered unsafe in the USA) and fresh though limited ingredients, was highly informative. And although I’m not sure his claim that Prohibition hit American dining so hard is still valid today, he makes a thought-provoking case about American blandness. Despite the title, much of this book might have been written by anyone who enjoys food and travels a lot. That’s too bad, because Cowen is most interesting when he uses economic arguments. For example, he makes a case for GMOs (which lower overall food prices); attacks the locavore movement by noting that food transport costs are very low and what would really help the planet would be eating less meat, not fewer French cheeses; suggests that eating sardines has ecological value because they are at the bottom of the food chain; and advocates the spread of modern agribusiness giants to combat starvation. I don’t agree with it all, but it’s always interesting to see things from a new angle. I would have liked to have read less of Cowen’s salivating over barbecue and more economic analysis of the politics of food. (less)
The author, an economist and columnist, uses cost-benefit analysis to tackle some thorny social issues, from the polygamy of the title to such varied...moreThe author, an economist and columnist, uses cost-benefit analysis to tackle some thorny social issues, from the polygamy of the title to such varied topics as giving to charity, overpopulation, euthanasia, the global preference for baby boys vs. girls, disaster relief, the benefits of being tall and/or beautiful, the American propensity for self-denial, flaws in the justice system, and outsourcing jobs. Not only does he apply the principle of costs vs. benefits to these issues, he argues that this is the only rational way to approach them, dismissing in most cases such flimsy notions as patriotism or religion or human compassion. (In fact, he would say that cost-benefit analysis is the only compassionate route in the case of, say, taking a comatose woman off a respirator, since that respirator is then freed for someone who will presumably gain more benefit from it). He’s an intelligent writer who argues deftly, and his writing has the cocksure tone of the experienced professor, mixed with the somewhat defensive attitude of one who has heard many counter-arguments and gotten a lot of mail about his opinions before. The crux of his political thought is that if you’re not “footing the bill” (in various ways, not always with actual dollars), what others do is none of your business; this free-market libertarianism allows him to argue that, for instance, companies are doing the right thing by outsourcing jobs, as the jobs in India are just as “valuable” in an economic sense as an American one. That this should not be true to an American is lost on him.
Reading this book, which of course I found much to disagree with about, I was reminded of Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge, which makes a distinction between Humans, who do not always act rationally and have preferences for things that sometimes are not valuable, and Econs, who think everyone always knows what their neighbor is doing and include all available data in their calculations before acting. Landsburg is the consummate Econ – absolutely uncompromising, equating rationality with validity in every case, and nearly pod-like in his refusal to understand why his solutions would not work in the real world of irrational, patriotic, religious, humans, who cry over a picture of one hurt puppy but don’t blink at news reports of human massacres. This leads Landsburg to some bizarre conclusions, such as his argument that the world needs more people or that the world’s oil will not be over-used: since over-population and oil use must, according to Econ-style analysis, be voluntary, it will always serve our needs. (This is, of course, total nonsense; even if there was one person in the world and one can of oil, he could burn all his oil in one day and then be cold for the rest of his life, thus over-using it; and in the real world no one knows what others are doing with their oil use.) Landsburg’s Econ analysis also leads him to appear creepy and off-putting, as when he describes his daughter as a “cost.”
At times he is being jocular, as when he suggests that firefighters should be paid in the loot they save from fires; at other times he seems to be serious when he suggests the President of the USA be paid in land grants across the country, as if anyone becomes president for the big cash salary. All the time, his insistence of every action being a “cost” makes him appear downright obtuse, as when he claims that while a polluter might be costing a swimmer the ability to swim, the swimmer is costing the polluter the chance to dump gunk in the water! He really goes off the rails when he equates conservation with robbing the poor (people today) to give to the super-rich (our grand-children, who will surely be more prosperous than us!) – he seems truly unable to understand that a conservationist is not interested in transferring income but slowing consumption. Finally, although he’s clearly a very smart guy, he cheats on some of his own arguments, as when he claims that a husband who wants to bury his brain-dead wife is “preventing” the woman’s parents from feeding her and thus the parents have the greater claim – but he never classifies the parents as the “preventers,” who are stopping the husband from enjoying his right to bury. He also ignores his own respirator argument from earlier in the book: in feeding the daughter, the parents are selfishly “preventing” others from benefiting from the respirator, but he never mentions this. In short, some of Landburg’s arguments made me consider my assumptions. Some made me want to be in his class so I could ask follow-up questions. Some made me want to punch him in his stupid face. This must be, then, a very successful book: it captivated me and made me think about some things from an angle I’d never considered. I was engaged and enraged, and isn’t that a good thing? (less)
The 1940 Newbery winner, this biography of the Kentucky frontiersman is a mixture of fact and probable legend. It tells of Boone’s life in bits and pi...moreThe 1940 Newbery winner, this biography of the Kentucky frontiersman is a mixture of fact and probable legend. It tells of Boone’s life in bits and pieces, from his birth in Pennsylvania to his trapping and trading and Indian-fighting in the wilderness of Kentucky. The picture Daugherty paints is of a bluff, honest, uncompromising but friendly figure. The Boone this book gives us is a family man, patriot, and resourceful hunter, and little else. He fights against the British and the Indians, is captured by Chief Blackfish and is adopted into the Shawnee tribe, but escapes and returns to his countrymen, of course. He founds a frontier town in Kentucky, Boonesborough, and works as a pathfinder in the wilderness. A simple man who can read and write, but not nearly as well as he can shoot and hunt and track, Boone tries his hand at farming, public office, soldiering, even land speculation (though he is far too kindhearted and naïve to make money at it, and loses all the land he fought so hard to claim). Poor for much of his life, hunting skins to make a living, stoic about the death of his son Israel, he is portrayed here as the consummate early American: tough, proud, self-sufficient, uncomplaining.
Daugherty has a way with words and there are some quite lyrical passages. It also can be bombastic, reveling in what Daughtery considers natural glory but what the modern reader might consider land-grabbing colonialism. At times the book tries so hard to be home-spun and aw-shucks and evocative of frontier spirit (“they waddled west as soon as they could stagger… they wrassled the wild cats and they romped with wolves”) that it comes of as totally charmless. But it also has some charm, as when, for example, Daughtery quotes Boone as saying he was never lost, “but I was right bewildered once for three days.” (less)
The author, a psychologist who came to believe that the power of spiritual assurance and community had more of a healing power than therapy, explains...moreThe author, a psychologist who came to believe that the power of spiritual assurance and community had more of a healing power than therapy, explains how the Talmud can help parents raise children sensibly. She asserts that the three pillars of Jewish teaching – moderation, celebration, and sanctification – can be applied to areas such as chores, eating, self-control, and stress. She starts with the premise that children do not belong to their parents, but are a gift on loan from God, born to leave their parents. If you accept this, is logically follows that it is a parental duty to allow their children to be a little cold or a little hungry at times, to develop their ability to handle misfortune. She also makes use of the principle “deed over creed” – that is, good works inform good thoughts. It’s perfectly all right for children to feel irritated, or less than compassionate, but they should discipline themselves to act appropriately.
I was astounded at how similar this book is to Simplicity Parenting: subtract the admonition that God is commanding you to do these things, and Mogel’s book is an echo of Kim Payne’s: kids need to have good role models; kids need room to explore and fall and get up on their own; kids need less material goods so they learn to feel gratitude for what they do have; families need a day a week or an hour a day to have quiet reflection and connection; kids should get less media overload; kids need to eat what their parents eat. Mogel’s book does have quite a few nuggets of wisdom of her own beyond the basics, though, such as her advice to reframe children’s “bad” behavior as a strength (bossiness as assurance, complaining as discerning), her sensible tips on rebuking a child so the child keeps his dignity, or her precept that it is the certainty of a consequence, not the severity, that counts when teaching children. Still, what this all boils down to, whether cloaked in the language of family counseling or rabbinical teaching, is the most common-sense, simplistic truths. Be a parent, not a lawyer. Say no and mean it. Set boundaries. Don’t bend over backwards for your child. Let children see the consequences of their wrong actions. Model good behavior yourself, obviously. Take time to be together as a family. It’s bizarre that so many parents don’t understand these things without needing an “expert” to tell them, but there it is. (less)
The author, a long-time author and researcher on parenting and child development, outlines seven skills that are necessary for children (and adults) t...moreThe author, a long-time author and researcher on parenting and child development, outlines seven skills that are necessary for children (and adults) to be engaged learners and critical thinkers. They are: (1) focus and self-control; (2) perspective taking – being flexible and reflecting about others’ feelings; (3) communicating; (4) making connections between things learned; (5) critical thinking – learning what sources of information to trust; (6) taking on challenges – overcoming stress factors; and (7) self-directed learning. With a plethora of interesting studies on infant attention, language development, memory, parent connections, object sense, and so on, Galinsky shows how the developing brain has the potential to grasp these complex concepts. Each chapter also has a list of suggestions parents and teachers can apply to help their children along: be the guide, not the arbiter of pretend play; teach deep ideas and explore them, not a shallow overview of a subject; give kids a degree of control over the things that scare them; let kids’ passions guide them through stress and challenges; let children remember by teaching what they’ve learned; make a point of talking about others’ feelings aloud; focus on quality and attitude and open questions rather than the quantity of books or ideas; etc.
It’s written in an easy, approachable style, with not too much of the repetition that this kind of book often has. I enjoyed reading about the studies, though many of them (such as those that deal with language acquisition or object sense in infants) are not really applicable to my work. There’s definitely value in these pages, but I have the same complaint (it’s not even a criticism, really, since this is an inherent quality of the genre) about this that I do with nearly every other parenting or self-help book I read: the great majority of the advice given is so basic, so common-sense and obvious, that I wonder who exactly needs it. Obviously, there are low-income, low-education families out there who might need to be told such nuggets as, “Create an environment at home where reading is important,” or “Create a bond of trust with your child,” or “Select computer games that promote paying attention” – but are those families really reading this book? Who is it that selects this book and reads it with purpose, and yet also needs to be told to “Talk about shapes, numbers, and quantities with your kids”? Perhaps many people do; I find that depressing.(less)
Thirty-three years after the first book Theroux returns to the route he took in The Great Railway Bazaar, or as near as an approximation as current po...moreThirty-three years after the first book Theroux returns to the route he took in The Great Railway Bazaar, or as near as an approximation as current politics will let him – by train from France to Turkey (via the now-shabby Orient Express), through India (where he smirks at the idea of the new technological India, as so much seems the same as ever), Thailand, Singapore (which he finds hypocritical and arrogant), Vietnam, Japan, Siberia, and back. As on the previous trip, he meets people who surprise him and who fit his stereotypes; he looks for the seedy underbelly of new cities, and seeks out local intelligentsia, especially writers who exemplify their land Most notably, he talks with Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer, who opens Theroux’s eyes about some aspects of Japan. Theroux seems to have read every book imaginable, and is most at home when talking about writers or with writers (or both). It’s a very interesting look, in conjunction with the book that inspired it, at how the west has changed Asia, and how stagnant Asia can be. (less)
The winner of the 1934 Newbery, this non-fiction work tells of Louisa’s family, her deep bond with her loved ones, her struggles in poverty and as a n...moreThe winner of the 1934 Newbery, this non-fiction work tells of Louisa’s family, her deep bond with her loved ones, her struggles in poverty and as a nurse and with typhoid, and finally her writing success. It’s an informative book, written in the rather overly convoluted style of the time, but certainly understandable to anyone who enjoys Alcott’s own works. I had no idea that her father, Bronson, was celebrated in his time for his prescient and bizarre ideas on children’s education and communal living. The family knew Emerson well, and he helped fund some of Bronson’s short-lived initiatives. The section on Louisa’s experiences as a war nurse are also illuminating: they show a dedicated, strong woman, easily identifiable as Jo March.
I can’t quite see why this would be picked as the very best in juvenile literature for the year – it’s a good story, nicely told, but nothing amazing. Still, it’s nice to think that at one point in the pre-TV past, American adolescents and young adults read not only good novels, but liked them so much they sought out books about authors. (less)
The author takes issue with all the “quick-fix” ideas about changing organizations, especially schools. He argues that programs that urge instant refo...moreThe author takes issue with all the “quick-fix” ideas about changing organizations, especially schools. He argues that programs that urge instant reform ignore human nature and are doomed to fail. Evans posits that human nature being what it is, resistance to change and entrenchment in old values, even those that are demonstrably inefficient, is perfectly natural. Even more, this resistance is a necessary part of any change, as individuals need time to reexamine their culture’s values and social structures. Otherwise, any change is merely superficial: teachers will talk up student centered learning all day long, but then have their students memorize facts as usual. Authentic leaders, Evans argues, know how to listen, sympathize, offer feedback and specific recognition, and delegate authority. It’s a fairly convincing idea, and my own limited experience with leadership of small committees bears out his postulates. True reform can’t be thrust upon people unwillingly. (less)
The author, a criminal defense attorney turned prisoner activist, talks about her rough childhood, her unlikely success in law school, and her 25+ yea...moreThe author, a criminal defense attorney turned prisoner activist, talks about her rough childhood, her unlikely success in law school, and her 25+ year work in building truly rehabilitative, not punitive, prisons. Her program, the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project, uses vocational classes but also group meetings in which violent inmates confront their feelings and actions, and use jargon such as “can I get an agreement on…” or “this feeling is deadly peril” to control their feelings of anger. Most importantly, the inmates, while acknowledging bad circumstances, focus blame on their own choices.
It may sound like New Age window dressing, but the good results have been documented, and anything is better than the sick gladiator school, or monster factories, that US prisons are now. The book’s writing style is breezy and light, and Schwartz’s passion for her work comes through. It’s a compelling and admirable book, and ought to be required reading for all those who work with criminals. (less)
The author, a former Marine, a government consultant, and a professor at Georgetown, offers a dramatic thesis: that "special operations” – daring, sma...moreThe author, a former Marine, a government consultant, and a professor at Georgetown, offers a dramatic thesis: that "special operations” – daring, small, commando missions led by people who think outside the box and not the massive thrusts of conventional armies – have repeatedly changed the course of human events. To prove this, Leebaert takes the reader on a fascinating tour of Western military history, from the siege of Troy through the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He not only chronicles military history but also provides readers with a political, diplomatic, technical and cultural tide of events; taken together, this rush of facts, states, empires and timelines constitutes nothing less than a (sometimes overwhelming) overview of Western civilization over 600 pages. (There’s no Sun Tzu, Genghis Khan or Tamerlane, and little on Soviet forces.) The reader is introduced to Ulysses and Gideon, Alexander the Great (and his undreamt of scaling of a mountain pass guarded by Oxyartes) and the Roman Empire, of course, but also meets the Carolingians, the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Huguenots, Joan of Arc, Cortez, Pizarro (recast as special operators) and the pirates of the Caribbean. After more than 250 pages, we arrive at the American Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Civil War and, by around page 450, World War II.
This shows admirable sweep; Leebaert spends almost as much time putting the conflicts in context as he does describing the special operations themselves. (I found myself wishing I could read a whole chapter about a mad brave escapade that Leebaert devotes a few lines or a paragraph to, but the author, and the sweep of history, moves remorselessly on.) Within the context of each era, he offers nuggets of fascinating, bold, decisive actions, from taking down castles to robbing Spanish gold under false flags to Nazis landing gliders on Eben Emael, all of which attest not only to soldiers’ ingenuity and daring but also to the value of the unexpected in military operations. Finally, Leebaert concludes with a dry, understated, but nevertheless scathing attack on the self-professed experts and armchair generals of the futile Iraq invasion. Leebaert uses his dozens of examples to assert that a few men with imagination, self-sufficiency, a knowledge of psyops, guile, a lay of the land, stealth, speed, unpredictability, imagination, a willingness to divert from the rule book, and clever use of the fear factor can change the history of the world (one prominent example is the assassination of Pearl Harbor raid architect Isoroku Yamamoto). However, he has some impressive (and depressing) things to say about the track record of special ops when intelligence agencies are not properly aligned, when control is disputed, when patience and language training and planning are tossed out in favor of flooding the market with commandos. While it’s clear from the book that special ops are no panacea, the lessons it preaches on the subject – that cowboy diplomacy, brutal tactics, and imperial arrogance are counter-effective and antithetical to the special ops philosophy – are worth hearing. (less)
In a series of trenchant, witty, cutting, and brief essays, Mamet lays out what is fairly obvious but probably bears repetition: producers and studios...moreIn a series of trenchant, witty, cutting, and brief essays, Mamet lays out what is fairly obvious but probably bears repetition: producers and studios are capitalist swine, the nature of whose jobs force them to denigrate drama and art, while ceaselessly striving for the quickest way to recreate yesterday’s hit. Scripts and writers are valued less even than the belittled work crews, so needless rewrites are brought in until the prediction comes true: the script is, now, terrible. Lack of civility and maturity in Hollywood executives lead to juvenile movies being greenlit, in which thrills (torture, explosions, cheap laughs) become the reason for the film rather than things that happen to further a plot.
Mamet gives us, in short, a writer’s view of the seamy side of show business, and while he doesn’t exactly name the villains of the piece, he has no qualms about calling a movie like Titanic “unwatchable.” It’s catty but fun; actually, he’s at his best when doling out Hemingway-terse advice on drama writing (everything that happens should further the plot, which is denying the hero’s gratification – period). (less)
The author, a “BusinessWeek” journalist, explores the ramifications of the existent and emerging age of information, in which number crunchers tabulat...moreThe author, a “BusinessWeek” journalist, explores the ramifications of the existent and emerging age of information, in which number crunchers tabulate everyone’s data, from the kind of shampoo they buy to their phone calls to how long they hover their mouse over an ad. Baker shows how data’s super-availability can be used for both intrusion (privacy issues at work, in government, misuse by authority) and for improving our lives (up to the minute medical biometrics, much more savvy shoppers getting customized deals, better cyber-dating). It’s a fair look at how algorithms can change our lives, very readable, and refreshingly free of Chicken Little panic – though perhaps as a journalist, Baker is a bit too disinterested to thoroughly envision the possible extreme outcomes of the data age. (less)
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