This Week at the Library (17/6)

Books this Update:

• The History of Science in the 18th Century, Ray Spangenburg & Diane Moser
• More Tales of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov
• god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

This week I continued my foray into the history of science by reading The History of Science In the 18th Century, second in this series (beginning with The History of Science From the Ancient Greeks to the Scientific Revolution). The authors, Ray Spangenburg and Diane Moser, continue to impress me. My local library carries a number of books by them, and I predict that I'm going to be reading them all. One of their books -- sadly not available at my local library -- is a Carl Sagan biography. Spangenburg and another of his co-authors, Kit Moser, have a website that you can view here.

The book begins with a prologue, briefly summarizing where "science" was at the beginning of the 1700s. The name of this series is "On the Shoulders of Giants", originating from Newton's statement that 'If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." This is fitting because Newton's various theories allow science to progress further and faster than it ever has before. His laws of motions and insights into optics make people realize that all of nature is governed by laws, and that these laws can be figured out by human beings if we are observant, clever, and imaginative enough. The idea of a "clockwork universe" emerges, and from it emerges Deism. Science in the latter half of the 18th century is influenced by political and technological revolutions -- namely, the French and American revolutions and the Industrial Revolution. This means, of course, that science and history are inescapably tied together -- which is a joy for me to realize in full given my interest in both.

The book is, if you will excuse the pun, enlightening. The connections to history have already been mentioned, but the authors put a lot of emphasis on Newton's importance. I knew he was considered important, but had not realized the full scope of his contributions' importance. I will certainly be continuing this series, and will as mentioned look for further books by these authors.

Next I read god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I said last week that I wasn't particularly interested in reading a book on atheism. As it turns out, though, this book isn't about atheism: it's about the damage that religion can cause. While the book's title resonated with me a year ago, I've softened a bit since then and I'm more concerned with actually communicating with people. I think the book's title will serve to alienate more people than its message will serve. This is not necessarily the fault of its author: the root cause is that people aren't as receptive to listening to ideas when they've just been insulted. It strikes me as vain for whatever reason, but then I'm one who will read something precisely because it's insulting.

Hitchens begins the book by describing his break from religion, which happened in childhood as a result of him observing four things, although I'm certain that Christopher Hitchens as a child articulated these things with fewer and simpler words:

"There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking."

That one sentence is more obnoxious in tone than the tone of the rest of the book: it's really not stuffy at all. Hitchens goes on to discuss various topics that elaborate on that original summation. The various topics Hitchens covers are too various to be comfortably summarized, so I'll simply provide you with a list of chapter subjects: : "Religion Kills", "A Short Digression on the Pig", "A Note on Health", "The Metaphysical claims of Religion are False", "Arguments from Design", the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament, the Koran, miracles, Hell, "Religion's Corrupt Beginnings", "How Religions End", "Does Religion Make People Behave Better", eastern religions, "The Last Ditch 'Case' Against Secularism", "A Finer Tradition: the Resistance of the Rational" and it concludes with "The Need for a New Enlightenment".

I think the listing of the chapter titles should tell you whether you want to read this book, regardless of your own personal beliefs. If you're religious and fair-minded, you should be interested. Despite the book's provocative title, I think its contents are fair. Its contents are also hilarious. Here's one passage I was particularly delighted with:

With a necessary part of its collective mind, religion looks forward to the destruction of the world. […] This has been a constant trope, ever since the first witch doctors and shamans learned to predict eclipses […] to the best-selling pulp-fiction Left Behind series, which, ostensibly "authored" by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, was apparently generated by the old expedient of letting two orangutans loose on a word processor."

You may not be able to appreciate the humor in that if you've not read the Left Behind books. I've read all sixteen and they're hilariously awful. On that note, I will promote once again Slacktivist's running commentary on the books. The Slacktivist blog is run by a Christian, by the way: that those books are bad is not just the contention of a religious cynic like myself.

Moving on to something less controversial, I next read Isaac Asimov's More Tales of the Black Widowers. This is a collection of short stories, although I had no idea what they were about until I began reading the book. Asimov introduces the book himself, and here is a portion of that:

"I don't think there's much more to say about the Black Widowers than I've already said in Tales of the Black Widowers. That was the first book in the series and the one you're now holding is the second.

In that first introduction, I explained that the Black Widowers was inspired by a real club, to which I belong, which is called the Trap Door Spiders. I won't tell you anymore about that here because if you've read Tales of the Black Widowers you'd just be bored by the repetition, and if you haven't read it I'd rather leave you in the agony of curiosity so that you will then be driven to buy the first book and repair the omission. […] That's all I have to say now, but lest you rejoice too quickly at being rid of me, I must warn you that I will appear again in a short afterward following each of the stories."

My favorite part of reading Asimov's short-story collections is his introductions and afterwords. They reflect so much of his humor and gentle charm that reading his personal comments is often more enjoyable than the stories themselves. As for the stories, they are puzzle stories; mysteries of a sort. Essentially, the Black Widowers always meet once a month for supper, and each month they are joined by a guest who invariably presents them with a puzzle to solve. Sometimes this is intentional, the guest having been invited just so he can enjoy the advice they offer. Sometimes the puzzle emerges accidentally, such as in "Nothing Like Murder". The guest is a Soviet scientist who expresses his amazement that in New York people openly plan murders. When he is asked what he means by this, the scientist responds that while he and a comrade were sitting on a bench near a university, he overheard two young men plotting a murder. The Widowers express their doubts that college students would plan a murder openly like that, and the story is about the Widowers trying to sort out what exactly transpired, using the Soviet's memory of what they said. Ultimately they figure it out, and it turns out to be harmless. The guests that join the Widowers range from Soviet scientists to puritanical Christians: they don't fit stereotypes. I found each story to engaging, and recommend the book. It's good stuff, especially if you like trying to figure things out. I actually managed to figure out one story's solution before the Widowers did, which was heartening.

Lastly I read Ricard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, published in 1976. This is the third time I have tried reading this book. Out of curiosity, I looked at the book's "Due Date" slip affixed to the back cover, which serve as an indicator of when the book has been checked out. This particular copy of The Selfish Gene has been checked out six times:
16 October 1996
13 December 2000
26 January 2002
15 August 2006
31 October 2006
24 June 2008

Now, naturally, the book wasn't checked out on those dates: in each instance, it was checked out two weeks prior. The last three due dates are my own. 2006 was a monumental year for me: it's the year everything changed. It was the year that I rediscovered a delight in simply learning things -- when the library opened up an immense world for me. This was the year I discovered authors like Carl Sagan. By late summer of 2006, I was growing more and more aggressive in my reading, trying to expand my knowledge. Around that time I heard of Richard Dawkins and checked out two of his books -- Unweaving the Rainbow and The Selfish Gene. I finished Unweaving the Rainbow, but only got half-way through The Selfish Gene. Evidently, I checked it out a couple of months later, hoping to finish it, but I don't remember making any progress in that second attempt. Since then, and until now, the book has remained in the back of my mind. Every time I see it on the library bookshelf, I am reminded that it and I have unfinished business.

I should say "had", as I finished the book. It was published in 1976 and introduced Richard Dawkins to the world of popular science. He has since then become a prolific science author, and I have read a number of his books -- The Ancestor's Tale, The River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, and so on. Dawkins is one of my favorite scientists, as I often hear him in interviews and see his lectures online. The Selfish Gene advocates a gene-centered view of evolution, which is why it took me so long to read it. My brain doesn't like genetics. To finish this book, I had to clear the major hurdle of the introductory chapters, where Dawkins explains how what genes and chromosomes are and how they work. Thanks in part to the biological knowledge I have accumulated through a lot of reading in the past two years and a lot of determination, I was able to clear that hurdle and the rest of the book was…easier. There were some chapters ("Aggression: Stability and the Selfish Machine", "Battle of the Sexes", "Memes: the New Replicators) that were easy for me to get, and there were some ("The Long Reach of the Gene", "Immortal Coils") that were harder.

The chapter on memes was particularly interesting. A meme is an idea that is transmitted from being to being -- from the songs of birds to the religions and philosophies of human beings. Dawkins says "When we die there are two things we can live behind us: genes and memes. We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. […] Our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes that is any one of us is bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king's genes. […] But if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G.C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus, and Marconi are still going strong." (p. 199, 9th edition.)

I like this passage because it supports my own view of heritage. I do not count my heritage as being genetic, and for good reasons. My genetic heritage doesn't matter a bit. The paternal ancestor whose last name I carry hailed from Germany. While many people are proud to be German -- and there's no reason not to be, because Germany has contributed much to western culture -- it would be rather silly of me to be proud of this. As Dawkins so eloquently points out, even if I was a direct descendant of Frederick II, it is likely that he and I have no genes in common. What links he and I is that we may hold some of the same ideas -- we both value learning and religious tolerance, for instance. This is the same thing that links myself and Robert Ingersoll, or myself and Marcus Aurelius. This is easier for me to realize, being American, because I share that distinction with people who don't look a thing like me: we are alike because of the ideas we live by, namely the ideas of the Constitution.

Pick of the Week: Undoubtedly, The History of Science in the 18th Century.
Quotation of the Week: "Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience." (god is not Great, Christopher Hitchens, p. 56)

That concludes this week's reading. What's next? Well, my library carries Tales of the Black Widowers, which I've never read in spite of reading its sequel. I will have to "remedy the omission", in Asimov's words. I'll be continuing the history of science series by Spangenburg. Jeff Shaara recently released The Steel Wave, which is a sequel to his The Rising Tide, which I read last year and commented on here*. I also have a couple of recommendations to look into: No Ordinary Time, which appears to a joint biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.




*Amusingly enough, in the same post that I commented on The Rising Tide, I said that I wouldn't read history of the Roosevelts. It appears that I'm about to.

This Week at the Library (28/2)

The History of the S.S. (G.S. Grabel)
Washington's Secret War (Thomas Fleming)
The Trial of Madame Caillaux (Edward Berenson)
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. (Christopher Hitchens)
How Few Remain (Harry Turtledove)
Naturalist (E. O. Wilson)
The Great War: American Front (Harry Turtledove)


The first book I read this week I found purely by accident. During a blackout a week or so ago, I walked to the university library, hoping that they had power. They did have emergency lights, so I walked upstairs and began to roam the shelves. I found myself in German history, and picked up a book entitled The History of the S.S., by G.S. Graber. The book is short -- 212 pages -- but thoroughly enjoyable, given the subject matter. Graber explores the S.S. -- its creation, the men who ran it, and its demise. The S.S. constituted Hitler's real power base. The "Schutzstaffel" grew from a protection detail (protection from the S.A, or stormtroopers) to a major organization in Nazi Germany. They oversaw the Holocaust (Rudolf Höß, the commandant of Auschwitz, held a high rank in the S.S) and some of the fighting on the eastern front, through the Waffen S.S., or "armed SS".


While I knew a lot of the general information presented in this book (courtesy of my German history course and a historical interest in both World War 2 and Germany), I was still surprised by much of the information within. Graber offers miniature biographies of men like Hendrich Himmler to illustrate the disturbing fact that the S.S. were not madmen twisted by wretched childhood -- they were ordinarily people who managed to twist their own minds. Graber's book covers the SS from its inception to its dominance over all other Nazi organizations (I've read elsewhere that Himmler intended for the S.S to be a state within a state, with sovereignty in the east) to its demise. Graber also mentions the fascination many people in the United States have with the S.S. (and posits that "It may mean nothing, of course, but perhaps it helps to illustrate how a previous generation could have been entranced by the paraphernalia of the SS, its mystic signs, its banners, and ultimately its special mission." (Page 212.) Were I to write a paper on the S.S., I think that The History of the S.S. would serve well as a key source.

The next book I read, Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge, is by Thomas Fleming. As I wrote this current paragraph on Presidents' Day, I turned on C-Span to find the author moderating a panel of historians as they discussed the relationship between General Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. Timely! While I knew that Washington was not popular with some politicians (like John Adams), I was unaware of the extent of his unpopularity. In fact, it's rather hard for me to grasp, still. Washington is one of those figures of American history who is treated with veneration, so much so that he becomes a legendary figure, disassociated with the faults of real people. Robert E. Lee is treated the same way in the American south. The result of this (in Washington's case) is that it is hard to contemplate the fact that he had to put up with the same kind of politics that our current politicians have to deal with. This fact was demonstrated as I continued reading the book, and amused me for some reason. It was also encouraging in a strange way, I suppose. The political game, it seems, hasn't degenerated. The feud between Senators Clinton and Obama is tame, in fact, compared to the feud between Presidents Adams and Jefferson -- and petty defamations of character have apparently been a staple of American elections since there have been elections. Washington's Secret War was a thoroughly informative read.

The third book I read was The Trial of Madame Caillaux, by Edward Berenson. The title trial happened in France, in 1914. The wife of a French politician grows weary of a newspaperman's continual campaign against her husband and opts to shoot him. The murderer (Madame Caillaux) is put on trial for the murder, and thus the book begins. The book is divided into five chapters, each examining the role of a particular person in the trial and at the same time a part of French society that that person's case exemplifies. For instance, the chapter on Gaston Calmette (the unfortunate newspaperman) focuses on the role of the French press played in shaping popular opinion while looking into Calmette's motives for attacking Mr. Caillaux in the first place. In my opinion this was a splendid approach, and very well done. The book offered a look at life was like for Frenchmen in 1914, and I would recommend it heartily.

A few weeks ago I watched The Four Horsemen on Google Video, which is a conversation between the "Four Horsemen" of rational thought today (R. Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, all of whom have written books on rationality v. religion recently). I thought it would be funny if I were to write a library post where I read a book from each of the "horsemen". I went to my university library's website and found books for three of them, the exception being Mr. Harris -- and that was no problem because I've already read both of his books. When I went to the library to fetch these tomes, my plans quickly changed. There is a reason I have never read one of Daniel Dennett's books, and that reason is that his books are intimidating. Perhaps one day if I find myself stranded on a desert isle I'll have the time it would take to read and comprehend one of his books, but not this week.

While looking for one of the Dennett books, though, I happened upon E.O. Wilson's Naturalist. E.O. Wilson is a name I know from one of my skeptic podcasts; Point of Inquiry, perhaps. After poking around in the book, I decided to give it a go. The library had one of Dr. Dawkins' books that I hadn't read, Climbing Mount Improbable. I have watched him give an excellent lecture on the same title, though, so I hoped I would have a head start on this book. As much as I like reading Dawkins, I don't have a head for biology and find it difficult to finish some of his works-- like The Selfish Gene, which I've tried twice with no success. Christopher Hitchens is considering one of the "Horsemen" because of his work God is Not Great: How Religion Ruins Everything, but he has written on other subjects. The book I chose to read by him -- and the first book I would read out of my "horsemen" selection -- was Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.




Hitchens' work focuses on President Jefferson's role in shaping American history, particularly his influence on the Declaration of Independence and the Louisiana Purchase. While the subject matter was generally interesting, Hitchens' tone is a bit stuffy. This is the first book I've read by him and I failed to read any reviews of the book before I read the book itself, so I don't know if this is a common aspect of Hitchens' work or if anyone else picked up it. My lack of historical enthusiasm for the Revolutionary War may also interfere with my enjoyment of the book -- but then, I did enjoy George Washington's Secret War. Read the book (if you are so inclined) and judge for yourself.

I then started on Naturalist but a friend of mine recommended I read Harry Turtledove's How Few Remain. Dr. Turtledove writes historical fiction -- alternative history, in fact. I have read a book by Turtledove before -- Guns of the South. In Guns of the South, Turtledove depicts the Confederacy winning the Civil War after they are assisting by time-traveling white supremacists who equip the rebels with AK-47s. In How Few Remain, he again proposes an alternate history where the Confederacy wins -- this time, by taking care of one of Lee's mistakes. Lee's orders for his 1862 invasion of Pennsylvania were intercepted by Federal troops, which allowed Gen. George McClellan to not lose the battle of Antietam. In How Few Remain, the intercepted orders are NOT intercepted, and Lee manages to deal the Army of the Potomac a fatal blow. England and France recognize the Confederacy as a legitimate nation, and the United States loses. This is a rather unfortunate turn of events for the slaves.

The above is actually the prelude to this book. The actual plot of this book concerns a second war between the states. The Confederacy, led by President James Longstreet, buys two of Mexico's northern provinces. The United States objects by declaring war, and that is what the book is about. This book is actually the prelude to a series of books that build off of the premises established. The viewpoint characters are historical figures -- Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and so on -- whose characters have been shaped by this interesting new history. Lincoln is not offed by a disgruntled ex-Confederate, and survives to become a Marxist, universally despised in the United States for losing the war and half the country. Teddy Roosevelt doesn't lead the Rough Riders up San Jan Hill -- he instead invades Canada. Despite my distaste for the idea of the Confederacy winning the Civil War, I enjoyed the book. It is as I said the prologue to Turtledove's alternative history series, and I've decided to read the series through.

After reading How Few Remained, I returned to my planned reading. Naturalist, by E.O. Wilson, is an autobiography of E. O. Wilson's life and career as a zoologist. I didn't realize that Dr. Wilson is from Alabama, but he grew up in the Mobile area during the depression. I haven't read any accounts of growing up in Alabama during that time, and so enjoyed that first part of the book the most. There are some parts of the book that weren't quite so interesting to a non-biologist like myself -- but in general it was an enjoyable read. Wilson is a good writer, and even when I wasn't sure what he was talking about I wanted to keep plowing through. Wilson has had a long and interesting life -- traveling the world over while doing his research and meeting people like James Watson.

Naturalist took me longer to read than it should have, because I was distracted by the next book in that alternate history series I began this week -- The Great War: American Front. The United States has managed to lose two separate wars against the Confederacy at this point, and has been abandoned by the two greatest powers of the world at that time -- Britain and France. One of How Few Remain's viewpoint characters was Alfred von Schlieffen, author of the German plan for fighting a two-front war. Turtledove is evidently a fan of Germany's General Staff (the elite core of officers that determined military policy in Germany until Hitler and his goons arrived), as he has von Schlieffen elaborate on how careful Germany is when planning for war -- as opposed to the United States' and Confederacy's prewar planning, which is negligible. The Great War: American Front picks up on a promise made by American (that is, northern) officers to go to Germany and learn their ways of conducting a war.

The book begins in 1914. The United States and Germany are bosom buddies, as the U.S. is a member of the Triple Alliance, along with Germany and Austria. The Confederacy is part of the British-French entente. Socialism is taking hold in the United States, and the two Americas despise one another. The Great War begins the same way in this book as it did in real life -- with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The United States and the Confederacy declare war on the other's alliance and thus begins the book. The viewpoint characters in this book are apparently going to be the staple core of characters used for the rest of the series, and they're all new. None of them are historical figures, not that I've seen anyway. There are historical figures in the books -- the U.S. President is Theodore Roosevelt, and the Confederate president is Woodrow Wilson -- but the story is never told from their point of view.

The evolution of warfare is the same in this version of the Great War as it is in real life -- US and German offensives lose steam and then settle into bloody trench warfare. Airplanes are used to gather intelligence, and then used as fighters -- which fits the pattern I've observed while studying the rise of air forces in various countries during the Great War. While the book (and the entire series, I think) is dominated by warfare, both books have been about more than war. They've been about how these societies develop, their economies, how their very cultures are fashioned by the differing chain of events. While I do have a number of quibbles, overall the series has been enjoyable and I find the connections he makes to be generally plausible. I am not convinced that Britain and France would have sided with the Confederacy in the first place, though.

That concludes this week's reading.

Pick of the Week: The History of the S.S. was extremely well-written and quite informative.

Next week, I will finish R. Dawkin's Climbing Mount. Improbable, and will continue my reading of the Turtledove series. I think my next history paper will be about France's role in forging the European Union, so I might read something along those lines.