Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction, page 7

Reviewing THE VITAL QUESTION by Nick Lane

A remarkable book in its thorough questioning as Lane makes his case that we are all alike, except our friends and enemies the bacteria and archaea. Plants, animals, humans, fungi and protists all share similar cells--the eukaryotes--which were able to evolve into complex beings, unlike the bacteria and archaea, which got stuck in their successful niches, expanding but not changing much.

Lane explains in detail why the first living beings on Earth probably got going in the alkaline hydrothermal vents deep in the oceans. There is where energy could drive what was needed. Then came symbiosis to some simple living cells--they engulfed and shared genes and energy talents with mitochondria and (probably later) chloroplasts. As a result, they became more and more complex over the ages.

Lanes' exciting theories are well worth the effort, reading along with the bioenergy-thought processes he believes gave us this precious life. Full review at http://astronaut.com/whos-life-may-rare/

Review of "Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart"

: by James R. Doty MD, New York, Random House, 2016.

In her cover blurb for this book, Arianna Huffington, author of Thrive, provides us readers with a crystal clear summary: "Part memoir, part scientific exploration [this book shows] that we all have within us...a place of calm and beauty we can return to whenever we need it."

Jim Doty's early life was horrendous, as was his later success, then loss, then his self-chastisement and recovery from failure. His formula for survival and lasting peace—is presented to us in "Ruths' Tricks. The tricks require repeated 20-minute moments of calming relaxation and meditation, emptying the mind, then focusing on unconditional love given and received. Finally, "envisioning accomplishment" of goals clarifies intent in one's life.

To guide that intent, Doty recommends practicing the "Alphabet For the Heart: CDEFGHIJKL—Compassion, Dignity, Equanimity, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Humility, Integrity, Justice, Kindness, and Love. All these are to be "given freely" to achieve a goal like Huffington's "calm and beauty." The humaneness prescribed in this soul-sharing memoir is powerful medicine for these troubled times.

Review of "Getting Green Done" by Auden Schendler

Getting Green Done—Hard Truths From the Front Lines of the Sustainable Revolution by Auden Schendler, Philadelphia, Public Affairs Perseus Books Group, 2009.
Author Auden Schendler, an "outdoorsman" for 15 years, worked for the Rocky Mountain Institute, and is now Executive Director of Sustainability at the Aspen Skiing Company. He states up front that his book "...represents a departure from business as usual...and yet we need to do this on a global scale." The inside cover summarizes his thinking by saying, "...many...are still fiddling with the small stuff while the planet burns. Why? Because implementing sustainability is brutally difficult [,even though] "...business consultants say going green is easy and profitable."

Schendler applauds individual efforts because government needs examples of what to do. He goes on to note that "...only government action—on a global scale—can drive the level of change at the speed we require." "Climate change threatens every business on the planet, and business is the primary cause of it." Therefore, "...what is needed is government leadership and comprehensive economic policies."

Solutions mentioned include Green Energy and LEED, which doesn't emphasize energy enough, so should not be used as a guide. What is needed, he believes, is to raise local building codes so that homes can be remodeled to save 50% energy. An Environmental Service Corp makes sense, as does education in passive solar possibilities—insulate, face south and add thermal mass. It's not difficult.

Unfortunately, when the economy tanks, the environment is the first to get cut. The U,.S. should lead in putting efficiency to work at every level and "force markets to reflect the true price of power". The author goes into some detail about nuclear power and its problems, its cost, and its "insoluble waste problem."

In the end we need to face the question "How will we become—and then remain—inspired for the long slog ahead? This battle will take not just political will and corporate action—it will also require an unyielding commitment and dedication on the part of all humanity...Most of our grandparents lived in a sustainable world...what we need to do is that close, that real, that personal...that possible."

Reviewing "The Lessons of History" by Will & Ariel Durant

The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1968, 1996.

Another prescient, must-read from the past, the Durants' short book reminds us of cycles in history-- from democracy to inequality in wealth to revolution and chaos and hopefully back to democracy. Given the current uproar in politics, their analysis is chilling, especially since Congress is so dysfunctional. History meets critical situations by ..."legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty," they say.

This book was written by the Durants after they reread their ten volumes the Story of Civilization (to 1789). The example given by Plutarch in 594 B.C. is very revealing. He saved Athens from revolution by leveling the playing field—forgiving debt, devaluing money, applying a progressive tax and doing a G.I. Bill i.e. providing free education to former soldiers. Sounds like the laundry list in Robert Reich's Saving Capitalism, NY, Knopf, 2015.

Rome didn't do so well—just engaged in war and continued favoring the wealthy, a mistake easily made by the manipulation of democracy. "Men who can manage money manage all." As an example, farmers now must be employees of "...capitalists or the state." Thus history becomes a cycle of "concentrated wealth and compulsive circulation."

Education is required if we are to avoid the violent surge from "...changing political argument into blind hate." Hopefully that stage in the Trump campaign is now over. "If equality of education can be established, democracy will be real and justified." I understand that free college education is provided in Germany these days, and that some states are moving in that direction. Now, how about leveling the playing field, Hilary?

The Durant's lessons are divided into brief, beautifully crafted and readable chapters, summarizing history as seen by the Earth, in biology, by race and character, morals and religion, economics and socialism, government and war, during growth and decay.

We need to believe there is hope. Humans are inventive, stubborn but not stupid. As we face this difficult presidential election, I believe we can find Durants' "...approximate equity of legal justice and educational opportunity."

A Review of Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks, New York, Random House, 2007,2008.

Recently, we lost author Oliver Sacks, professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, but he left us with ten books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and a film based on his book Awakenings. In Musicophilia he relates the experiences of his patients who have enjoyed unusual musical talents or suffered with odd experiences centered in the "music" area of the brain.

The first section is devoted to the story of people "Haunted By Music." We are struck with amazement at what our neurons can do to us. In section II, Sacks reviews cases of amazing "musicality." Again we are amazed, this time at what our neurons can do. "Memory, Movement, and Music" includes stories that illustrate how our musical memory can serve us when other memory fails. It tells us about therapy, the role of rhythm in our lives. The stories continue to the end with music's role in "emotion and Identity."

Sacks' tells a good story, so it's like being friends with his patients as he relates their odd experiences, their joys, and their confusions.

Fields of Courage: Remembering César Chavéz.

Fields of Courage: Remembering César Chavéz...by Susan S. Drake, Santa Cruz Press, CA, 1999.

The author's dedication could be for those brave souls today who dare to work for lasting peace and human well-being. She wrote her dedication of this book "...to the people who plant, nurture and harvest, especially you brave ones who persist with nonviolence to make your place in the sun a healthy, safe and economically viable one."

"Planting, nurturing, and harvesting" could be metaphors for our current efforts to find solutions to today's frightening dilemmas. Are we limited to choosing between oligarchy (government by a small fraction of people), plutocracy (government in which the wealthy rule), socialism (collective or government ownership of means of production and distribution of goods), capitalism (in which production and distribution are owned privately or corporately and not regulated (the so-called free market), or democracy (in which common people are the source of political power that has principle of social quality and individual rights).

In the 1960's and 70's, Cesar Chavez fought hard to correct unjust working and living conditions for farm workers. Susan Drake's book is a memoir in poetry describing the man and his work organizing "minority races" as Community Service Organizers. They worked on one particular problem at a time: need for water, sewage, police protection and police brutality. He felt a need for some alternative to labor unions, but his efforts in organizing eventually became the United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO.

Today we are threatened by situations that drive us to irrational extremes., for we see no easy way out. We want instant answers, demand simple fixes, spout 140 character wisdom.

A self-educated man with both temper and "great compassion," his story of persistence and integrity "changed the face of California agriculture," at least in the way the farmers saw themselves. That same kind of persistence and integrity could also change the face of our future.

A Review of Saving Capitalism

Saving Capitalism For the Many Not the Few by Robert B. Reich, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

In the coming elections we face both confusing realities and difficult choices. However, there are clear options, illustrated in great detail in Robert Reich’s new book Saving Capitalism. Odd agreements between Tea Party members and liberal Democrats tell the tale. Both seem to understand the dangerous positive feedback loop between money and politics. They both oppose subsidizing Big Oil, Agriculture and Pharmaceutical businesses.

Reich emphasizes that our choices are not between Big government and a “free market.” There is no such thing as a free market. All markets are defined by laws of some kind. We need to re-organize our markets for “broadly based prosperity, [not] one designed to deliver almost all of its gains to a few at the top.”

I see in this coming election that our choice is not so much between Republicans and Democrats, not even between “establishment and anti-establishment, as Reich suggests, but between changing how we redefine and regulate our “free market.” Not voting in public elections is actually voting to let the wealthy continue to warp the defining laws and practices in their favor.

Reich goes into great detail describing what laws have been warped to favor the wealthy at the expense of the working middle glass, whose median wage has been dropping since 1970. Even young college graduates’ hourly wage has gone down since 2000.

Examples of laws that should be changed (I counted 27 in Reich’s book, aside from “reinventing the corporation.”) include reversing the Supreme Court’s decision “Citizens United” or amending the constitution so Congress can regulate campaign spending. Others: ban the gerrymandering of districts and voting restrictions, require disclosure of all outside sources of public domain testimony, revise patent and antitrust laws to undo power-grubbing tactics, resurrect Glass-Steagull to separate commercial and investment banking, ban forced arbitration and insider stock trading, restore bankruptcy law to give labor or students higher priority and most importantly require congress to fund the enforcement of such laws that benefit the working and middle classes. Other suggestions deal with international trade agreements and local school funding.

Reich provides a readable litany of how big money has redefined capitalism, noting that in 1874 the Supreme Court in Trist vs Child that persons could not be hired to lobby Congress. In 1920 the Tillman Act banned corporations from making paid contributions, now allowed by the Citizens United decision.

He tells us that insider trading is still rampant, antitrust laws no longer keep monopolies from dominating markets. The stories continue. The 300:1 ratio of executive-to- worker pay is due only in small part to globalization, technology, lobbying, subsidies and loopholes.

He reminds us that things are different in Europe. That we could once again have a truly “free market” if we would take command of how Congress, agencies and judges write the laws that define what the market is. Bankruptcy laws favor corporations by giving low priority to paying off labor costs. Student loans, now 10% of the total, are not allowed bankruptcy protection. In Germany education through college is free to students.

We can recover who we were, a country where the middle class grew and thrived, and common sense, not money drove our ideals.

Reviewing The Copernicus Complex

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities by Caleb Scharf, New York, ScientificAmerican/Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014. Astrophysicist Caleb Scharf’s Science Book of the Year 2014 wins my award for a vibrant, readable and enjoyable history of astronomy and a comprehensive overview of the current finds that suggest answers to the “ultimate” question, “Are we alone in the universe?”

Schaft begins by reminding us of old-world answers to that question. Then he takes us beyond Copernicus and his problems with a heliocentric solar system to the Kepler telescope and its exoplanet zoo.

What delighted me were Scharf’s forays into all the difficult sciences that serve as tools for studying the universe. These include statistics, constants necessary for life, relativity, chaos, the complex nature of life, biochemistry and its requirements, as well as Rare Earth geoastronomy, requirements for Earth Equivalence, and remote clues that suggest life elsewhere.

Scharf does not dance around the facts. Space is enormous, as are energy and time requirements for traveling to other stars. He does suggest that Earth orbits in a rather special solar system, special because most of our fellow planets sail around in orbits within 10% of circular. At the same time, our Milky Way galaxy is richly endowed with other solar systems, some unexpected, some thought impossible or surprisingly different, but overall not too different from computer models of possible varieties.

The author charges ahead in covering all the possibilities for finding an answer to the big question. In the end, he stays true to his realism when suggesting two choices we will have to make, if we do find evidence of life elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. I heartily recommend this book if you have ever wondered who we are and where we seem to be.

Reviewing Gilding's The Great Disruption

by Paul Gilding, New York, Bloombury Press, 2011.

Gilding’s thesis is that the bottom line is clear. In 2011 he says that a “...global crisis is no longer avoidable.” To minimize the “...loss, suffering, and conflict...in the coming decades...” we will “bring out the best” in humanity and win the war to avoid catastrophe.

The Great Disruption “...is not just debt, or inequity, or a recession, or corporate influence, or ecological damage. It’s the whole package...beyond incremental reform...We are quite capable of building: an economy that feeds, clothes and houses all. ..fulfills lives [and] treats the planet like it’s the only one we’ve got.”

In reviewing the CO2 problem, Gilding notes that climate change is a symptom of the larger problem, which is our “addiction” to growth—both biologically and in the market place. He notes all the usual clichés and outlines in detail the disruption in our businesses as usual. But when we understand that we must accept our planetary boundaries and the careful regulation that can enhance business ventures, we will gradually transition—through considerable trauma—to a prolonged steady state that enhances our lives.

Gilding is good at reviewing all the objections to sharing and localization, the difficulties with capitalism, communism and complexity. His prediction of the refugee problem we now experience is chilling, as he points out horrific details of the Disruption. When denial is no longer possible, he lands squarely on the obligatory solution, no-growth economics. A Full-Earth Economy (steady state was introduced by Herman Daly in the 1970s and is still presented and developed by the Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economy (http://steadystate.org) as the prescription for a pleasant long-term future for Earth and humanity.

Reviewing: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other clinical tales

by Oliver Sacks, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1910...1985
Neurologist Oliver Sacks tells fascinating stories about patients who suffered extraordinary losses, excesses, transport of mind and cognizance, and underdeveloped mental capacity. They are tales that give us a hint at how complex the brain is. At the same time we are awestruck by the demonstrations of human resilience Sacks finds and the spiritual durability that his patients display.

In beautifully written English, Sacks shows us the puzzles and discovery of therapy that worked and trials that did not. In the end we are all the richer for reading this book. We have a rare chance to appreciate ourselves--who we are and who we are not, in light of the strange turns ones brain can take without us.