This is a massive book and I’ve been pushing it off despite seeming both interesting and relevant.
With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the seeminglyThis is a massive book and I’ve been pushing it off despite seeming both interesting and relevant.
With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the seemingly widespread support of it inside Russia, it seems important to understand the Russian psyche and history. This book covers an important part of Russian history. The Soviet concentration camps where so many people lived and died.
Gulag is a book about Gulag, the Russian camp network, and it’s not a book about other things, though tying the camp story into the surrounding history inevitable describes more than just the concentration camps.
The idea of camps storing undesirables and doing hard work did not start with Gulag. It's a story as old as civilization and instances can be found among the Greeks and Romans. What makes it special is that the practice, in Russia, survived past the mid 20th century.
The book is very comprehensive, though with tens of millions passing through the Soviet camps, there will be so many stories that are never told.
One chapter at a time, every important aspect gets its time in the spotlight. There is a chapter about the arrest process, about prison before camps, about trials, about the deadly transports across Russia, about children in the camps, about guards, about work or techniques to avoid work, about women, about prisoner groups, about the Russian criminal gangs (mafia?), about escapes, revolt and protests. And about the dead and many other things.
The focus is on the years from the late 1920s to the mid 1950s when the concentration camps were most active, but it also mentions time before and after, and how the Soviet Union kept imprisoning people with unwanted opinions in various ways all until 1987, and maybe longer.
Stalin was all through his reign the driving force behind the concentration camps. His belief was that through forced labour, the Soviet Union would rise. If his perceived enemies disappeared or died in the process, that was a bonus.
Cold blooded analysis of the concentration camps shows that they were never profitable. Due to the cost of guards and the lack of productivity, they were never a good deal for the country.
Instead the camps became a struggle between the prisoners’ attempt to survive the cold, the starvation, the dangerous work, the dangerous guards, the other prisoners, and the camp managers attempt to fulfil assigned work orders that were most often not at all realistic.
Since contradicting Stalin was a lethal pastime, the camps survived until his death, but as soon as he was dead, the dismantling started.
It also notices how Russia has carefully avoided learning from its mistakes. The deep seated Russian insecurity demands never admitting any past mistakes, which means that nobody learns from those mistakes.
I can recommend this book to anyone interested in how Russia ended up where it is now, and in how close we are in time and space to the worst humanity has done. It also acts a reminder of what the "west" has been fighting for and against....more
Bill Browder is the man whose fight against Russian corruption has caused more damage to Russia than any war. At least any war before the current one.Bill Browder is the man whose fight against Russian corruption has caused more damage to Russia than any war. At least any war before the current one.
Browder is the man behind the Magnitsky act which gives the US, the EU and many other countries the power to confiscate money coming from corruption, and especially Russian corruption. This is the story about his life, about his lawyer/investigator Sergei Magnitsky, about corruption in Russia and all the ways Russians try to keep the corruption going.
The book is written somewhat as a thriller which makes it very accessible, with people dying randomly all along the story. There are also double agents, treachery, greed (a lot of greed) and unexpected friends and enemies. All that makes a thriller good, but this time for real. At least according to Browder and I have no reason to suspect him of lying.
The picture we get is a picture of state supported corruption. Of Russia as a state where rule of law sometimes works, but when it comes to corruption, often not. Also a country where some people are off-limit and where everyone gets a share of the thievery. At least everyone in power.
There are speculation that Putin has amassed 2 trillion dollar by skimming from all the lower rungs of corruption. This books make that that very plausible.
A final conclusion is that Browder, as a very rich fund manager, has access to people that normal people do not. It was lucky that someone with his riches and connections and drive for justice ended up here. So many other companies and individuals have only walked away, accepting the losses as the price for doing business in Russia....more
This is a fantastic book. I understand that it's a classic book and that everyone else read it forty years ago, but I just got to it.
So Hazel and FiveThis is a fantastic book. I understand that it's a classic book and that everyone else read it forty years ago, but I just got to it.
So Hazel and Fiver are two rabbits in a warren somewhere, but they are not your everyday rabbits. At least not Fiver who has visions and premonitions and right now they tell him it would great if the whole warren was somewhere else, very very soon. Hazel, his brave friend, accompanies him to the Chief Rabbit, who does not agree. Instead of letting it go, Hazel and Fiver sets out to find a new home for themselves. Along the way they meet friends and enemies, they hear and tell stories, and they encounter obstacles.
We learn about the rabbit mythology, because of course rabbits have a mythology, and we learn their words. At least I think I understood all the rabbit terminology at the end.
The book is both philosophical and political if you want it to be. In that way it reminds me of typical space science fiction, but this is earth, in the middle of the last century, and they are rabbits. It is also a great adventure story with happy parts and sad parts. I absolutely could see me rereading this some time in the future....more
This is a collection of fantastic stories that really go beyond my own imagination in a way that is fascinating. I read a lot and eventually you see pThis is a collection of fantastic stories that really go beyond my own imagination in a way that is fascinating. I read a lot and eventually you see patterns and become able to predict stories, but these stories are just so different. I love it.
In this short story collection there are slightly less than ten stories, of very varying length. I guess the longest is 50 pages and the shortest 1 page, just to show the span. Apparently everyone else learned of this book many years ago and gave it lots of awards even, but I had totally missed it. Luckily it is certainly timeless, addressing ideas that will probably be as valid in a century as they are now.
I don't often add a book my "recommended" shelf, but this will go there. It's a fantastic read for anyone interested in science fiction, and maybe for many others as well....more
This is a fascinating story that I would never have expected to be written. It is about the super secret Skunk Works department of Lockheed, the AmeriThis is a fascinating story that I would never have expected to be written. It is about the super secret Skunk Works department of Lockheed, the American weapon manufacturer.
Skunk Works is famous for several different reasons. It has created some of the most fascinating machines ever built, like the SR-71, U2 and F117. It has an excellent security record, where only politicians telling voters about the machines have revealed anything. And third but not least, they are famous for running a small group of experts with very little administrative oversight.
Ben R. Rich, the author, was Skunk Works second manager and worked there for 30-40 years, so he would know most of what happened. Much of the story is about Kelly Johnson though, an intuitive aeronautic genius, born to immigrants and entering the industry as WW2 created an immense demand for airplanes. Kelly Johnson is the creator of Skunk Works and it became a mirror of himself. Results and efficient mattered. Not status or politics. Towards the end of Kelly Johnson's reign, his complete disregard of politics, and common decency, made it shunned by large parts of the air force but nobody can argue the results.
This book follows three projects more in detail, F-117, U-2, SR-71 Blackbird. We get to hear about the technical difficulties, the political reasoning, the people that died and those that lived.
The book has a lot of snippets written by other people. Pilots, air force generals, politicians, CEOs. They add some kind of objectivity to the book, and they report about their own observations which is better than Rich reporting about it second hand.
I do wonder how much is lies though. Writing a book like this will have walked very close to revealing secrets and I am absolutely sure parts of it has had to be distorted. Also, parts will have to have had to have been omitted. I also wonder if there is anything right now like U-2, F-117 or SR-71. If there is, I bet it's a drone, not a manned aircraft.
I was very close to giving this book 5 stars but the last few chapters are long rants about how you need to give the engineers power and freedom to invent and it's neither informative nor interesting. He's right, but it's awful literature....more
This is an ambitious book and not quite what I expected. I thought it would be mostly about the evolution of our species until modern times, but it's This is an ambitious book and not quite what I expected. I thought it would be mostly about the evolution of our species until modern times, but it's much more than so. The book starts with the evolution of homo sapiens out of homo erectus, and mentions our interactions, and interbreeding with the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, but mostly it's about civilization.
How did humans go from roaming the steppes looking for fruit, nuts or carcasses, to sitting at a man-made chair in a man-made building, using a man-made machine to store thoughts about a "book" on a machine thousands of miles away?
There is too much in this book for me to go through all of it, and some of it is less interesting than others. The author doesn't stay away from being provocative either so the reader is more likely than not to feel unease at certain sections.
Some of the more striking conclusions include the idea that the agricultural revolution was a massive mistake at the time because it made life in almost all respects worse for everyone. It did allow for more humans though so it stuck. As the author says, once people realized it was a mistake it was too late to change because there was no longer room for the old life style.
The central theme is that humans are unique because only we can build and agree on imaginary concepts such as money, corporations, laws, the equality of everyone or the stratification of humans. Through history we have, as a society, decided to imagine something and then convinced everyone else to believe in that something and by doing so we have changed the world.
The book is written before the current peak(?) of reactionary nationalism and populism so it's in a few section more optimistic about human cooperation than it had been if written today. It talks about how we can solve more and more problems by working together in larger and larger groups. We are now very aware that the idea of cooperating creates unease among some and that unease can take extreme forms.
I would still have wanted more information about the very early humans, but maybe we just don't know more. I do recommend the book though since its at the very least thought provoking....more
I am a huge fan of the Murderbot short stories and that love did not stop here when Martha Wells published the first full length novel about MurderbotI am a huge fan of the Murderbot short stories and that love did not stop here when Martha Wells published the first full length novel about Murderbot. Murderbot is an introvert security cyborg that has hacked its own control system to escape the corporation it works for. It is not a fan of itself, thus the name it has given itself, Murderbot. Now it just wants to watch soap operas, the less realistic the better.
The whole idea is a, for me, novel take on what makes someone sentient, or a living being, and it's also extremely funny, the whole concept of an introvert robot.
Last we saw Murderbot it was following its new human friends to Preservation and this book starts there when Murderbot follows one of the young humans on a trip that gets attacked by mystical grey humans/aliens. ...more
I did not expect to like this story as much as I did. It started a bit slow, but suddenly I found myself sucked into a different world.
The book revolvI did not expect to like this story as much as I did. It started a bit slow, but suddenly I found myself sucked into a different world.
The book revolves around Count Rostoff who, as a nobleman in revolutionary Russia, is an inch away from execution. Instead he's sent to infinite house arrest at his hotel. It's a lovely story with wonderful people. And people that make you rather mad.
If I were to mention one small thing, it's that the use of American units seemed a bit off, but maybe I had a special American edition of the book. Or maybe it's supposed to give the count a flair of being archaic and obsolete, but then it would have been better to use the old 19th century Russian units....more
It is amazing how much we humans can see what we would like to see.
Wouldn't it be absolutely amazing if someone promised a new medical device that wouIt is amazing how much we humans can see what we would like to see.
Wouldn't it be absolutely amazing if someone promised a new medical device that would revolutionize health care? And what if that was someone new and young instead of the usual middle aged people? And what if it was a women instead of one of the billions of men? So with that set, enter Elizabeth Holmes, a young entrepreneur with a vision and a single mindedness that forbids reality from getting in the way. Pretty amazing and so thought many at the time.
This book follows Holmes and Theranos from the 00s until the crash 1-2 years ago, as promises turns to lies turns to fraud. Or probably fraud. It's still going through the courts, though if what the book tells us is correct, it is fraud.
The fascinating part here is how otherwise cynic and skeptical people were seduced by Therason and Holmes' promises. She seem to have had an uncanny ability to make people believe in her vision.
This books author, John Carreyrou was the one that collected all the pieces and with a front page article in Wall Street Journal broke the spell. Before that, people that had tried to talk about what was going on were hunted mercilessly with threats and laywers.
Talking of lawyers, I just looked up David Boies, the man protecting Theranos and I see that he has a history of being on the bad guy's side: Blackwater, Weinstein, Sun/Oracle and finally Theranos.
Anyway, this is a book I strongly recommend. Maybe reading it can help you some time in the future look through someone's bold lies. Because that is another lesson here, lying boldly and repeatedly without ever backing down can bring you farther than what should be possible....more
This is such a feel-good book. It is written by a British veterinary who worked in Yorkshire from the 1930s to the 1970s and in short stories we get tThis is such a feel-good book. It is written by a British veterinary who worked in Yorkshire from the 1930s to the 1970s and in short stories we get to follow his alter ego, James Herriot, when visiting charismatic farmers in the area and as he interacts with his fellow veterinaries. Not every story ends with happiness, but such is life and even when things are sad, it is such an honest feeling.
It's now nearly 20 years on the day since I read the book that came after this, All Things Bright and Beautiful. I think that book might be even better but it's hard to make the comparison over such a long time....more
There are many books about the first world war but few with an exclusive focus on the naval part. That makes sense since almost all suffering happenedThere are many books about the first world war but few with an exclusive focus on the naval part. That makes sense since almost all suffering happened on land, but for anyone interested in the watery part this is a fantastic book.
Robert K. Massie has an earlier book which talk about how the British navy evolved in the decades and this is the natural followup.
Most of the war there was a standoff across the North Sea, where the German navy wanted to chip away at the British Grand Fleet and the British wanted to crush the German navy if possible. So most of the war there was posturing and attempts at setting traps but very few shots fired. When shots were fired, then suddenly a thousand men could you die in an instant, or nobody died.
This could easily be dry or dull but not in Massie's book. Every chapter has a topic, and they are more or less chronological, starting right before the war. We get to follow the people, Jelico, Beatty, Churchill, Asquit, Scheer, Hipper, Ludendorff and how they interacted or how they did not interact.
Some people come out of the book looking better than their contemporary reputations, some looking worse. One person that absolutely looks worse is David Beatty, the naval super hero of the time. The youngest admiral, the bravest admiral, always ready to charge the enemy. With more context we learn that he is better at public relations than running a fleet in battle. We also get to learn about all his failures in communications. This is in a time when radio (wireless) is just starting to be used and the range is not great and both jamming and direction finding its enemies. Most of the important signals therefore use signal flags and light signals, and sloppy handling of those can result in huge misunderstandings. And whenever such a huge misunderstanding happened, Beatty was responsible. The book specifically points out Betty's long time communications officer, who time and again fails to do his job without being replaced.
The book on the other hand paints a positive picture of John Jelico who at the time got a lot of flak from Beatty's PR machinery. Jelico was not the Patton, the Montgomery, the MacArtur, or the Beatty, who played the press to further their careers so when he got critizised he let the criticism stand and becoming "truth" even if it was not true. People that knew him, or knew the fleet, defended him, but not well enough to break through the Beatty propaganda ministary.
This is just a small story arc in the book though. The focus is on the action. The times when the battleships go to war. Be it at Dogger Bank, Galippo or Jutland.
Something that hit me is how Massie has investigated every decision, despite how wrong the decision was, and figured out why the person made it. Most of the time the reasoning is logical, even if the conclusions end up being the wrong one. The book starts with an action in the mediterreanen where a British captain follows orders and fails to pursue a fleeing enemy and tells the story about how strongly that captain was critizied. That background later explains how other captains fail in the other direction.
One area where I absolutely changed how I view the war is how the USA enters the Great War. We learn in school that the Germans torpedo Lusitania and the US joins the war on the allied side, but the story is much more complex and the sinking of Lusitania is just one factor, and a small one. In fact, there was even the chance of the US entering the war on the German side because the US was not happy with how the British stopped and seized American merchant ships.
I could write much more (submarines, the American entry into the war, blockades, convoys, the fleet actions in the Pacific Ocean and south Atlantic, ...) but if you have made it this far, this is clearly the book for you. Strongly recommended for anyone interested in military history, and I just wish I had not waited so long with reading it....more
This is an amazing autobiography by an amazing person. Yes, Feynman was not like other people, and that shows from page one. As this is his story, theThis is an amazing autobiography by an amazing person. Yes, Feynman was not like other people, and that shows from page one. As this is his story, there is no objective commentator telling us if these larger than life stories are accurate or even happened, but I actually believe his story, as seen from his eyes and memory.
So Richard Feynman was a curious person. The annoying kind of person that won't take "because" as an answer and always looked for new approaches. He is apparently also not the kind of person that have a lot of patience so I am sure that working with him could be incredibly frustrating and possibly full of conflict, something he doesn't really cover in the book but that I have come to associate with the traits he does describe.
The book is amusing, thought provoking, challenging and entertaining, and sadly his pessimistic observations about education and research didn't change the world and are as relevant now as when the book was published.
I'd recommend this book to anyone though be aware that Feynman's relationships with women get a lot of room but never in an emotional way - and he seems to deliberately have left out deep descriptions of anyone else, including his wives. It seems possible that his first wife was the one and only person he truly deeply loved and when she died, he cut off that part of himself.
If I get anything out of this it's how rewarding curiosity can be. Feynman, known as one of the 20th century's best and most famous physicians, spent a lot of time on biology, psychology, education, art, music, lock breaking, engineering, and whatever else awoke his interest. More people should be like that....more
This is one of those books whose shortcomings in the literary area is compensated by the weight of the story.
In 2006 something happened in Tibet, someThis is one of those books whose shortcomings in the literary area is compensated by the weight of the story.
In 2006 something happened in Tibet, something that probably happens many times per year, but for once it was caught on film, film that was later spread outside China.
This book tells the story of those months, of those people, on all sides except the Chinese Army (which I guess were not interested in talking about what they had done) and it's a story that would make everyone sad, that would make almost everyone angry, would make most people disappointed.
The reason you should be angry is that this talks about how China treats Tibet and the Tibetan people. It's a very remote area of the world and little news leave or enter that area that isn't controlled by the Chinese government. That has sadly allowed them to treat the people living there in a terrible way without much proof.
China is a dictatorial one-party state. They torture and kill their own people. They lie, cheat and use subterfuge to prevent information from coming out. And the sad part, everyone in the western world knows this deep inside, but with the increasing power of the Chinese state, and increasing wealth, the greed overcomes the conscience and we ignore it. Sad. Very sad.
But this book is a reminder. A useful reminder. Not a great literary work but very useful to be reminded about these things....more
People have mentioned this book before, but I didn't expect such an entertaining, thought-provoking and inspirational text as this.
The author starts wPeople have mentioned this book before, but I didn't expect such an entertaining, thought-provoking and inspirational text as this.
The author starts with a question, why can he never run without pain and injuries, and starts a journey into the land of ultra distance runners, hidden Mexican tribes and on the way both meet death and huge revelations. On the way he finds answers and meets amazing people that can be described with any word except "ordinary".
The book has chapters that alternate between the chronological story centered around the author, and stories about shoes and individual people and that way Christopher McDougall manages to keep the story alive all through to the end.
To be fair, the book contains a few shady "cliffhangers" that were really not needed to make people keep reading to the end. Also, I do recognize that this is one story, and not everything suggested in the book may work for everyone. Still, very inspirational....more
In summary, this is an excellent book, and Jenny Sterlin does an excellent job narrating it, but I will not spend this review talking about how good iIn summary, this is an excellent book, and Jenny Sterlin does an excellent job narrating it, but I will not spend this review talking about how good it is. I'm sure other people are more skilled with the superlatives than I am anyway.
Is it strange to talk about anachronisms in a book about time travel? Well, I will do that. When I listened ("read") this book I was convinved it had been written in the 1960s or thereabout so seeing the 1992 publication date was somewhat of a surprise. Every time has its vision of the future and they are never completely right. In this case the future (2050?) reminds me of a 1960s world slightly evolved and it seems to miss out on things that happened in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The most obvious thing being the mobile phone. The lack of mobile phones do affect the story quite a bit, but I guess this is just a different universe where technology missed a few steps.
But excellent book. Excellent narration. And very long. More than 26 hours in total....more
I wish I could say "look what I've discovered!" but this book is already famous and I am sure there are many reviews that can describe it more eloquenI wish I could say "look what I've discovered!" but this book is already famous and I am sure there are many reviews that can describe it more eloquent than I can. Still, here I am and here is my review.
Thinking, Fast and Slow is about our mind, our brain, how it works and how it makes decisions and it is not nearly as good as we think it is. Daniel Kahneman, now in his eighties, has spent a life time of analyzing research and humans and it has given him a Nobel Prize in economy (the closest you come to a prize in psychology) but more importantly, an insight into the human mind.
In goodreads there are more than 400 quotes registered from this book and I think that by itself tells you how information packed and how surprising this book is. Some things I will try to remember from this book are:
* The less you know, the easier it is to make a decision. A complicated decision with partially conflicting data will make us uncomfortable. So if a hard decision seems easy, I probably don't know enough.
* We are blind to what we don't know and fill it from what we do know. If all you know about a person is that she has clean clothes, that will make you intuitively think everything about her is good and you will gladly hire that person to watch over your children or water your plants. And the worst part, we are not aware of this unless we really spend time and energy thinking about it.
* We are very reluctant to give away something once we think of it as "ours". If we bought something reluctantly for €100, we will be very unlikely to sell it for €110 once we have it in our hand. This explains some strange behaviours in economy.
* We are prepared to take large risks to avoid/reduce almost certain losses. We will take large risks to boost an almost certain win.
* We prepared to take large risks to win large (lotteries!). We will not take large risks if we risk to lose large amounts.
* If something can be formulated as a "win" certain mental rules apply, if it is formulated as a loss, other mental rules apply.
I talked with other people about this book and was told it took a long time to read and was repetitive. That was not at all my impression. Considering how full of information it is, I think 500 pages is short. Probably it feels longer than it is because you can't just skim things and you probably end up thinking (what is 17 times 24?) slowing you down. I consumed this as an audio book and I know I paused a few times to think.
This must be highly recommended. It might not be easy, but it is extremely valuable. It can change you....more
The Diamond Age is apparently a postcyberpunk novel. I don't know for sure what that means but I know a good book when I see one and Diamond Age is isThe Diamond Age is apparently a postcyberpunk novel. I don't know for sure what that means but I know a good book when I see one and Diamond Age is is a very good book.
The background is a number decades into the future, in a world dominated by nano technology. The nanobots are everywhere, in the air as well as in people. Most are good and police nanobots keep track of the bad so it's not something most people ponder. The national states have dissolved and the world is instead divided into people with different affiliations, grouping up to form more or less powerful groups. Examples are the neo-Victorians, the Celestial Kingdom, Cryptnet as well as other larger and smaller groups.
The main character is a young girl named Nell who lives through some very interesting times, but the book has a number of other interesting characters, some of which we only glimpse, some which we follow. The main object is the intelligent book ”A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer”, a book designed to teach people certain values and stimulate their intellect.
Here I'm torn about talking about all the interesting aspects of life the Diamond Age has, and my wish to keep this spoiler free.
Spoiler free wins. If you are interested in descriptions of possible futures, a fascinating tale of people growing up, of nano technology, of life in an era without scarcity, or just a good book, then read The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer...more
There are a lot of things we do mechanically. Do you remember locking the door this morning? Putting on your sock? Or did those things just happen whiThere are a lot of things we do mechanically. Do you remember locking the door this morning? Putting on your sock? Or did those things just happen while you were thinking of other things? It turns out that we have a part of the brain that can execute very complex actions without involving the normal reasoning and memory sections of the brain. The author calls those actions "habits".
Habits frees our brain and allows it to do a lot of planning instead of working on the problem how to move your leg to not fall down in the next step you take, but what is surprising is how high level a habit can be. It's also obvious that they are not easy to change as proven by all the unwanted bad habits there are.
Habits also form companies and organizations, though they are often called unwritten routines in those places. Such routines are often the lubrication that makes something happen, something work, but they can also be poisonous and require changes, as shown by examples in the book.
The book is full real world examples, individual persons, companies like Alcoa, Starbucks, organizations like the London Underground and churches that work as proof that there is something in the idea of habits.
By describing how habits work and how they can be changed the author gives a good base towards modifying habits, hard though it might be, both for yourself and others. Or maybe just to understand why people do what they do as an interested observer.
The book is excellent. It contains a section about how habits and routines helped the black freedom movement in the 60s that I think is slightly weak and far-fetched but it doesn't make the rest less awesome.
Read this book if you want to change a bad habit. Read it if you want to know how organizations can change. Read it if you can't understand why someone fails to quit smoking. Read it if you want to know more about the human brain.
(I hesitated between four or five stars but ended up with five considering how useful this might be for someone. No guarantees since everyone is different.)...more
I am very happy a friend recommended this book to me and I can see how it came to be a top seller despite being a book about science. Don't get me wroI am very happy a friend recommended this book to me and I can see how it came to be a top seller despite being a book about science. Don't get me wrong, I love science and technology but I am aware that too many people feel challenged, scared or alienated by it. That is sad since it is the curiosity, will to experiment and general want-to-know that has taken us out of caves, pain, hunger and 20-30 year lifespans into what we are today (mostly painless, mostly not in caves and mostly not hungry and mostly way past 25 years).
The book, in short, runs quickly through many areas of science, describing the history and the current state of affairs in an entertaining (and as far as I know, correct as of 2005) way. This included physics, geology, astronomy, chemistry, paleontology and some other disciplines I don't dare attempt to spell.
What strikes me is how much of our scientific advances has been luck, how many scientists that did not, and do not, receive the credit they deserve and in certain areas, how much we don't know. In the latter category we find such things as climate, the building stones of matter or energy, the exact origin of life or even of the modern human. It seems theories have changed over time up until recent days where many has stabilized somewhat. Either because research is slowing down (sad alternative) or because we don't yet have the benefit of hindsight (the alternative I hope for).
Another thing that strikes me is how much that has seemed to be individual breakthroughs were just about to happen. This can in some cases be seen in the fact that many people come with similar ideas across Europe (most of the research happened in Europe up until the last few decades) at about the same time. Many of Sir Isaac Newton's ideas for instance, were rediscovered by other scientists while Newton kept his writings secret for the world. That would indicate to me that as long as the scientific field is fertile, individuals might speed up research by leaps of mind, but most of the time not by as much as we think. For instance, I think most likely Einstein's theories would have appeared within a few decades even without Albert Einstein himself.
But back to the book. It is arranged in about 30 chapters that might well be read by themselves, or even in smaller parts, but where Bill Bryson excels is in connecting the dots. He takes a lot of fact and weaves an unbroken story from it so that you can easily find yourself in the same page-turner mode as in the best fiction.
I also liked that I could read some about our most notable Swedish scientists, knowing that many of them are overlooked internationally since their papers were either published too late, in the wrong language, or too far from the scientific centers of the age. A problem that existed, and probably still exist. If you are known and wrong, people listen to you. If you are unknown and right, being right is not always enough. Best case, someone later remembers you when the credits are distributed. Worst case, you die alone and bitter.
You can also find a tendency of very strong-minded scientists to disagree about details, totally missing the point that they mostly agree, or that one of them is way out of his area of expertise. Being smart and knowledgeable in one area doesn't make you good at everything else, as noticed in many examples throughout the book (which I personally connected to some people that still deny humanity's effect on the nature and our planet).
Anything I lack in the book? Maybe there could be a list of suggested books at the end for those that want to dive deeper into fields, though I think in the age of the Internet, that shouldn't be a big problem. Also, Pluto's state as a planet, something Bill Bryson discusses, ends up being wrong since the book is printed before Pluto's final demotion to "lumpy piece of ice in a belt full of lumpy pieces of ice", so there clearly need to be an updated edition!...more
This is the first book about money management I've read and it is interesting because of its confirmation of things I thought I knew already. Such as This is the first book about money management I've read and it is interesting because of its confirmation of things I thought I knew already. Such as "stock brokers" and investment advisors are crooks (or at least not very honest), and speculation/investment success is statistically proven just pure luck.
The main advise in the book is to go with lowest fee possible for biggest market spread possible (index funds). To expect some very bad years and be happy about them since that allows for higher future returns. To not expect more than the historical returns of investments (since the base value of a company is its earning and every growth beyond that is a temporary bubble that will eventually adjust itself). To divide the savings into multiple groups with set relative sizes of the portfolio and use re-balancing techniques to enforce buying of "unpopular" (thus cheap) investments and selling of "popular" (thus overpriced) investments.
At least the first 80% of the book I'd recommend to anyone though it's slightly US-centric so some flexibility will be needed to map to another environment. The last 20% is very US-centric and not very useful for us living elsewhere.
Just some more elaboration on the "stock brokers are crooks part". The main thing to remember is that they need to earn a living and where their main source of income is. Figuring out that and you will realize that their advise is intended to slowly funnel money from you to them until you are out of said money. Even if it's "only" 1-2% per year that will over time be enough to make you poor and them rich, especially as they are unlikely to find a better investment than a low-fee index fund anyway (which they will never recommend since that would mean no money to them). To make things more interesting they have this unhealthy relationship with the economy journalists, many who will only get published if they publish positive recommendations. It's a sick place and the less contact you have with it the better....more
This is a brilliant start to a fantastic fantasy tale. It is not immediately an easy read because there are many characters, and time lines, to puzzleThis is a brilliant start to a fantastic fantasy tale. It is not immediately an easy read because there are many characters, and time lines, to puzzle together for the reader. We have warriors, children, kings and assassins, learned and pupils.
I always find it hard to describe what really grips me in a book, but some books you just want to follow a little longer, just one more page or chapter as the sun sets, the neighbours turn out their lights and the sound of traffic fades. This book became such a book half way through.
The risk for spoilers really prevent me from writing more, but if you like Sanderson's other books, or Jordan's first books, or the start of A Song of Ice and Fire, I am pretty sure you will find much to like in this book....more
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