This Week at the Library (8 Sept - 15 Sept)

This week at the library...

• Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir is the story of Lady Jane Grey, a young girl who was made queen in an effort to 
• Karl Marx: the Passionate Logician by Joel Carmichael is a brief biography of Marx that delved more into philosophy than I'd anticipated,  but one which helped me understand the Hegelian background of some of his ideas. The most is mostly critical of Marx, portraying him as a frustrated failure who could have been  political leader were it not for his renunciation of Prussian citizenship.
• I also tried reading ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool: a year in an american high school by Elisha Cooper,  which follows a dozen teens through a year of their education. It never hooked me, though.

This past week was poor for reading in general; only one book really caught my attention. Even the two Star Trek novels I tried reading didn't take. I'm excited about this next week, though.


Next Week's Potentials:

• I'll be reading from The Life of the Greeks by Will Durant.
• Casino by Nicholas Pileggi is a supposedly true story about the Mafia and Las Vegas which inspired Casino starring Joe Pesci and Robert de Niro. 
• I'll be reading from The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which I've looked forward to for a while.
• African Exodus will ease some of my hunger pangs for science reading, I hope.
• ...and The Mao Case by Quu Xiaolong is doubly interesting, first because it's set in China, and again because the protagonist is asked by Government Officials to handle a political scandal involving a mistress of Mao. I saw it while looking for Jules Verne.

Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia
© 1952 George Orwell
232 pages

On 17 July 1936, conservative and reactionary forces inside Spain opted to seize power by force, rather than allow the Popular Front government -- an increasingly liberal, democratic, and progressive entity that undermined Spain's vaunted traditions of feudalism  and religious tyranny -- to continue to set the nation's course. The result: civil war. The resulting war seemed to be two wars in once: a defense on the part of Spain's middle-class liberals to maintain their established rights, and a revolution on the part of the working class to assert their own rights. In Catalonia, for instance, workers seized control of various businesses and utilities, establishing communes which they intended to defend with local militias. Remarkably, Spain's liberals, socialists, anarchists, and other progressives did not fight alone: people from western Europe and the United States came to the defense of Spain's republic: entire brigades were formed of these volunteers.

Emma Goldman's account of these communes and of the international brigades enraptured me when I read of them for the first time, and fueled entirely my interest in the Spanish Civil War. As a humanist, nothing inspires me more than the idea of people putting aside their tribalism and breaking bread together in the common cause of civilization. Thus I eagerly anticipated George Orwell's account of his time in the International brigades, specifically in the Workers for Marxist Unification militia. There were many such militias, for each union and political party seemed to have its own.

Readers who pick up Homage expecting a war memoir will be disappointed, for Orwell experienced little in the way of action aside from nighttime patrols and one raid. The first third of the book details how poorly-equipped the Republic and unions were for a conflict: training for the Internationals was nonexistent, and weapons were badly dated. Some were scarcely worth more than clubs, and more dangerous to the user than the target. Orwell's own exit from the war came about when a malfunctioning weapon sent a bullet through his next.

After his one-time raid, Orwell's troops are sent to Barcelona where politics dominates. Through his eyes, we see the increasing marginalization of socialists and anarchists in favor of the Stalin-backed Communists, who gain influence in the government and consolidate power. During Orwell's time in Barcelona, government troops attack union-held sections of town, leading to intermittent street fighting. Orwell addresses the broader implications of the Communist party's role in Spain's future in the next chapter, seeing as little than the hired men of Stalin and Russia. Eventually the Communists achieve primacy, declaring unions and parties associated with the anarcho-socialist revolutionaries illegal. Orwell must subsequently beat a hasty escape from the land he came to fight for.

Homage to Catalonia was certainty worth my while, giving me a firmer handle on this period I'm increasingly interested in. I enjoyed Orwell's voice as a writer: frank, honest, passionate, but ever humane. In spite of the treatment he received at the hands of Government guards, the text bears them no ill will. There is no bitterness here, only a sigh of disappointment that the cherished ideal did not withstand. I recommend it, and plan on reading more in this area as I can.

Related:

• Emma Goldman's Red Emma Speaks. 

The Iron Heel

The Iron Heel
© 1907 Jack London
354 pages

(Mysteriously, my public library's 1907 copy of this book has survived a century of use, although its tattered pages testify that the years have been harsh on it. If it ever had a colorful dustcover of some kind, that has long vanished. My copy is a straight hardback, so this is lifted from Google Images.)

Jack London was the first serious author I ever read, my first novel being his The Call of the Wild. I've been meaning to read something else by him for years, and when I heard of The Iron Heel I knew I wanted to experience it.


The first thirty-three years of the 20th century witnessed the ultimate downfall of Europe's old aristocratic order and the rise of fascism, replacing the old monarchies with a terrifying new form of totalitarianism in light of liberal democracy's apparant failure to maintain prosperity. Cultural pessimism had become the order of the day, allowing sweeping new approaches that claimed to be rooted in older principles.

Imagine if aristocracy and classically liberal democracy fell to authoritarian states, but not to fascism. Imagine if the capitalist nations, rather than having their institutions infinitely maintained as liberal democracies aspired to do or being overthrown as socialists and fascists wanted, had simply been realized in full. Imagine that decades of the "hands-off" approach to economics, coupled with the tendecies of capitalism to magnify wealth expotentially and concentrate that wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer hands through competition, has resulted in the overwhelming majority of the United States' economy being owned by five large trusts who work together for mutual benefit. These trusts own the political machines that control the government, which might -- through "trust-busting" politicians and regulation -- by otherwise hinder their increasing power. These economic potentates control the resources of the land through the businesses and government, and as they grow they destroy the increasingly marginalized middle class and turn the general populace into industrial serfs, serving long hours for pitiful wages and utterly dependent on their masters for sustenance.

Penguin Classics cover.

This is the world of Jack London's Iron Heel, framed as a historical document complete with an introduction and running commentary from a historian centuries in the future. (Margaret Atwood may have borrowed this device for her The Handmaid's Tale.) The fictional author of the text is Avis Everhard, wife of Ernest Everhard: the man who predicts the coming of the Oligarchy and leads the revolution against it. At first he speaks only for members of the Socialist Party, but when his confrontations with the economic masters force them to abandon subtly in favor of outright tyranny -- using the state militias and private armies to oppress dissent and cause opponents to 'vanish' -- he becomes the leader of a nationwide proletarian revolution against the rule of the Iron Heel. He is martyred in the cause (as our historian informs us in the introduction), and the "Everhard manuscript" is Avis' tribute to him, written so that his role in routing the Oligarchy will not be forgotten. He is her idol, her "Eagle": a hero of humanity, full of passion and might. She writes with hope on the eve of a planned Second Revolt against the Oligarchy, although the framing device makes it clear to the reader that the Second Revolt is an even greater failure, resulting in the Oligarchy's global domination until its eventual downfall.

The Iron Heel is an interesting novel. It predates other dystopian works and introduces devices and themes used in the works* that followed, as is the case with the Atwood example. Like other dystopian novels, it functions as social criticism and as a warning to its reading audience of what may come if trends continue. London, writing in the Gilded Age -- the age of robber-barons and industrial slums -- warns against the possible total tyanny on the part of vast commercial interests.  London's flawless protagonist and the tone of the book's opening give it the feel of an author tract: the first 150 pages follow Everhard's rise as a socialist spokesperson, and through him London outlines his own grievances with the world of 1907 and why he believes in the socialist answer. Everhard addresses every class of society -- urging labor to defend itself, attempting to convince the waning small businessmen that they cannot turn back the clock of progress  Still, those pages caught my attention given my own political values and beliefs. Although this book is more than a century old, it grabbed my attention and did not let go, for I see London's concerns as still valid today. What would he make of the 'military-industrial complex', of media monoliths and their role in politics?

While the book is an interesting future/alternate history work in its own right and possibly the progenitor of a genre of fiction, it also serves to advocate for a vision of a better future, London's socialist vision in which conflicts of interests that lead to violence and hatred are removed completely. It's almost the Communist Manifesto for a mass audience, using the dialouge approach between Everhard and various audiences to explain Marxist criticism and socialist politics. It comments on London's world and ours in a decidely interesting way: definitely a book to  remember, revisit, and reccommend.


*The phrase "the iron heel" brings to mind George Orwell's 1984 quotation summarizing his dystopian world: "If you want a vision of the human future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever."

Marx in Soho

Marx in Soho

© 1999 Howard Zinn

88 pages

"Oh, ja -- 'capitalism has triumphed!' -- but over whom?" - Marx, Marx in Soho

Although The Zinn Reader held a near-monopoly on my attention last week, there was a brief thirty-minute timeframe in which I visted my post box, discovered to my happy surprise that a book had come in early, and excitedly read through it. As you might guess from those comments, Marx in Soho is not a lengthy work: it is not even a book in the usual sense, but a play written by Howard Zinn. I came to Marx in Soho by the same means I came to The Zinn Reader:  You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train,  a documentary on Zinn's life.  Film from a production of Zinn's speculative play in which Karl Marx visits the present day from the "beyond" featured in the movies, and it intrigued me enough that I started looking for recordings on YouTube. Those were well-done enough to merit my looking for the book, which I did.

As said, the play's premise is one of speculative fiction. Karl Marx, annoyed that his name and life's work are being slandered in the modern world, is able to badger the Powers that Be into letting him visit the living world just for one hour -- although, due to a bureacratic mix-up, he finds himself in Soho, New York instead of Soho, England. The play is a monolouge, although we hear from other characters through Marx's reflectings on the past. Most of his attention is focused firmly on the present, as he admits that his predictions of class revolution and Communism were off, muses on why, and applies his criticisms of capitalism in the 19th century to capitalism in the 20th. Marx is portrayed not as a sage-like Gentleman Scholar in this play, but as an ordinary human who loved his wife and children, endured a bad cough,  turned his home into a salon for the dicussion of economic and political matters, and who is passionate about his work. Zinn's Marx has a sense of humor, sometimes making wry comments to the audience after his more spirited rants have attracted negative attention from "Heaven" -- lightening flashes whenever Marx becomes too animated.

Marx in Soho is a fun little read. It's almost a modern Communist Manifesto, communicating Marx's ideas to a lay audience. It's nowhere near as thorough as the Manifesto, but the 21st century's attention span may be too short to endure even the short work that is the Manifesto.  Marx in Soho is fairly well done -- it's readable, presents the Manifesto's basic tenents, entertains, and humanizes a figure who is more legend than man. My only raised eyebrow comes from Marx speaking in Zinn's voice toward the end.

The Zinn Reader

The Zinn Reader
© 1997 Howard Zinn
668 pages


When I pulled this book from the shelf, I did so with the intention of checking it out and reading it over the Thanksgiving holiday. I did not anticipate the book monopolizing my interest from the moment I peeked inside on my way downstairs to the circulation desk to check it out until the minute I finished it. That a book of nearly seven hundred pages, often about politics, never lost my interest is impressive indeed.

Last week I watched a biographical documentary about the life of author Howard Zinn, a historian whom I read in the early spring. His People’s History of America and People’s History of American Empire were historical narratives with political messages, wholly interesting to me.  The man who emerged from the documentary and from this book is fascinating: he grew up poor, in the slums of New York, back when the United States had its own labor and socialist movements. He was part of a B-17 crew during the Second World War, and afterwards became a historian and political activist, a combination of roles he sees only as natural. By chance he was sent to the South just as the Civil Rights movement began in earnest, and has written commentary on seemingly every major social and political event of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. This book contains a large sampling of articles, essays, newspaper columns, book introductions, and other literature he produced during the period, and it is a staggeringly communicative book.  Zinn is easily the most captivating political author I’ve ever read, communicating not just history, but the emotional effect of history. Zinn’s indignation, sadness, and anger are obvious, but never overwhelming.

The Zinn Reader is one man’s commentary on his and the United States’ history and development. Zinn is a character in a larger story, responding to the historical events that unfold around him. Zinn is very much involved with history: for him, the idea that the historian is and must be  neutral is wrong, fallacious even.  Historians, and scholars in general, have the right and duty as human beings to respond to what is happening in their world -- to champion the causes they see as righteous and to attack with fervency what injustice and lies they can. He doesn’t write simply on the major events of his life -- World War 2, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam -- but on the minor parts as well (Boston University’s “battleground” role during the rise of the student left) - -and on the whole scope of American history, from Columbus to the Gilded Age and beyond.

The highest praise I can give to any book is that it added depth to my life in making me think: Zinn addresses questions of mine in regards to civil disobedience (when is it “right”, namely), and makes me examine old ideas and new ones alike. The book swept me away, and I imagine it will be holding sway over my mind for a good long while, in the manner of Neil Postman. I don’t know if I’ll read anything more memorable this year -- I doubt I could. I recommend this to you utterly.

A People's History of the United States

A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present
© 2003 Howard Zinn
729 pages

I attracted a fair number of dirty looks and endured numerous assaults on my non-existent patriotism for reading this book, making it especially fun to read in public. Zinn begins the book with the story of Columbus discovering the United States, and from a more cynical viewpoint than one is apt to hear anyone else. After writing on the horrors that Columbus and his compatriots visited upon natives, Zinn talks to the reader directly on historical narratives. He accepts the idea that any historical account is loaded with bias: his aim is to tell the story of the United States from the perspective of the "losers" of history: the natives, the poor, women, blacks, homosexuals, immigrants, labor, Cuban rebels, South American revolutionaries, and more. The book is written "to be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest".

He then takes the reader through the downtrodden's history of the United States, eviscerating even the sacred cow of the American Revolution. I worked through it a little by little, day by date, taking breaks to read from other books to give myself a break from the sad story that American history apparently is. I can't really criticize Zinn's approach: history is a narrative. People who take it seriously, like myself, can try as best we can to be objective, but the facts we choose to use and the manner in which we connect them is still subject to bias. This book is not the story of inevitable progress, of people working together to create civilization out of wilderness and fight evil -- it is a story often repeated, one of the powerful subduing the weak -- but one also of the weak standing up for themselves and forcing changes. At book's end, Zinn writes that he wants to end narratives that depend on the Great Men of history stepping in to guide the people -- Abraham Lincoln through the Civil war, FDR through the Depression, Carter through the post-Watergate era. Few if any of America's political leaders escape Zinn's criticism.

The book was interesting for me, because much of the great America narrative had already fallen apart for me before reading in. During my freshmen year of college, my western civilization professor would often comment on how the authors of our textbook treated various subjects. "I think they do a fair job on this subject," he might say, or "They passed this over". During my first semester with him, I was very uncomfortable: what was he doing criticizing the authors of the textbook? The idea impressed upon me in the three semesters I took classes with him -- accidentally, I might add -- was that authors bear responsibility for what they write, that indeed history is written by people. Textbooks are no more objective than popular history books, and getting used to that took some doing. As I read more and grew in both knowledge and age, I realized there were problems with the History of the United States as I knew it. My skepticism began with the Mexican and American Civil War, but soon touched almost every aspect of US history except for World War 2. When I began looking at the Revolutionary War differently, I realized something in me had changed. That certainly has something to do with my coming a student of philosophy and thinking about the way and why people believe what they do.

This book will appeal to some and appall others, and so all I can say this is (tongue-in-cheekly): he who hath an ear, let him hear.

A People's History of American Empire

A People's History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaption
© 2008 Howard Zinn
273 pages

Earlier in the week, I read A People's History of American Empire, composed by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle. The book is a graphic novel, and framed through a lecture given by Howard Zinn -- featuring Zinn as a character, introducing his lecture on American imperialism in the introduction before beginning it in chapter one. The story of American imperialism is expanded in twelve chapters, beginning with the end of the "Indian Wars" and ending with the invasion of Iraq. Most of the text is Zinn speaking, with the pictures providing illustrations. There are numerous "stories" set in the text, in which Zinn-as-narrator almost disappears. Given the nature of the book -- or the graphic novel, as it were -- its narrative reads very well.

This is very much a book about individuals who have resisted American and corporate imperialism as well as government and corporate indifference to the misery they cause. There are two general themes: one, the developing nature of imperialism, and two, the reactions of the 'people'. The reader thus will be engaged in a critical history of the United States which gives the labor, civil rights, and peace movements their due. Both stories are developed pretty well, I think, and the illustrations were good as well. (I'm not exactly sure how to comment on a graphic novel other than to say I enjoyed the pictures.) I did find fault with one panel, in which the Lusitania is shown carrying tanks. The Lusitania was sunk before the development of tanks, and one of the tanks appears to be a model from the Second World War.* As for its historical credibility: I knew much of this before, having accidentally learned it for the most part. If he took liberties with the facts, they weren't obvious to someone who is -- in my and other's estimations -- a fairly well-read history student. Some interpretations are more questionable than others: no one can deny the self-serving motives of the Spanish-American War or the Indian Wars, but it's also fairly difficult to cast World War 2 in such a cynical light.

Although the book's story can be seen as somewhat grim, the number and conviction of people who have stood against the book's villains gives the reader cause for hope -- and indeed, Zinn deliberately concludes the lecture/book on a hopeful note. "There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumblings of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, [and] kindness. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many where people have behaved magnificently -- this gives us the energy to act. Hope is the energy for change. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live in defiance of the worst of everything around us is a marvelous victory."

I'm going to recommend this one.

* This may be excusable on the basis that lay readers will more easily equate "tank" with 'weapons" than unmarked boxes of ammunition.

This Week at the Library (31/7)

Books this Update:

• The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
• Nine Tales from Tomorrow, Isaac Asimov
• Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, Neil Postman
• Books that Changed the World, Robert B. Downs
• The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I wanted to start reading historically significant books. The Communist Manifesto strikes me as being one of the most influential books in human history, for better or for worse. Before this, I had the vague impression that Marx and Engels had somehow created the ideas of communism in this book. It turns out that Marx was asked to write the book to articulate the thoughts of communist and socialists, which would indicate that communism and socialism were both ideas that were already around and with a following -- unless Marx is a time-traveler. While the book is written to express the views of the “communist party”, this does not actually refer to any actual organized political party, but rather the body of people who shared communist ideas. This leads me to wonder how communist and socialist ideas were actually formed. It would be interesting research if I cared, but I don’t really. The Communist Manifesto is in essence a political tract, and it strikes me as being quite romantic. In the beginning, when Marx is writing about how capitalism has transformed the society, he writes that it turned the family into a mere economic unit and so on. I suppose if you’re advocating any kind of utopia, especially one run by working-class revolutionaries who wouldn’t know how to govern, you have to be a romantic. Of course, I have the utmost respect for the working class (being part of it when I’m not in school) -- but governing modern societies is quite difficult and quite frankly without more education and civil experience than the average working person has, a dictatorship of the working class is not going to end well.

Next I read Nine Tales from Tomorrow, a collection of short stories penned by Isaac Asimov that are all set in the future of Earth. Two of the stories were also in Asimov’s Mysteries. As usual, Asimov didn’t disappoint. There were two stories in particular I thought were really interesting. The first (“Profession”) was about a society where conventional education is no longer practiced. There is so much specialization of information and so much progress in neuroscience that people are “programmed” by machines to do things. Children are strapped into a machine and “programmed” to read at age eight. When they are approaching adulthood, they are taken to machines again; the machines scan their brains, determine what programming (Computer Technician, Chemist, etc) is most compatible with their brains, and then they’re programmed.

This begs the question of what the devil those kids and teenagers are doing until their “Reading” and “Education” days. I also wonder if the machines take into account what occupations are most needed when they are about to program people. For instance, suppose you have a large amount of people one year who happen to be receptive to being programmed as master electricians, but you only need a few electricians. What happens then? What happens if there are desperately-needed jobs like root-beer manufacturers, and too few people are best-suited for root-beer programming? It’s an interesting society to ponder. The story set in it is about one man who proves to be unsuitable for any kind of programming: he’s one of those curious sorts that seeks out knowledge for the sake of it and resists being told what to think.

The second story I found quite interesting was “The Feeling of Power“, set in a time where people have become so dependent on computers that no one knows how to do any kind of math anymore. This story is especially interesting because Asimov has his characters using pocket computers that are remarkably prescient of today’s PDAs Other stories are about characters who range from suicidal supercomputers to nurses taking care of Neanderthal children who have been ripped out of their own time by some kind of machine that is used to examine historic specimens. Sadly, Asimov does not use forewords and afterwords in this book.

After this I moved on to Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past can Improve the Future. The book is by Neil Postman, who the exalted Wikipedia says was a social critic who was especially concerned with how the ubiquitous nature of information today and its presentation as mere entertainment has cheapened its value. He makes the point that people today are in fact more gullible than the people of the middle ages: it’s just that the authorities they heed unthinkingly are television personalities who happen to know more than thirteenth-century priests by accident of birth. Al Gore writes about the mass media’s role in cheapening the value of information in his The Assault on Reason. Postman looks at how the century of the Enlightenment -- the century of Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and countless others -- can help us improve our lives today in the areas of progress, technology, language, information, narratives, children, democracy, and education. There were many parts of this book I agreed with, and there were parts I disagreed with. My favorite chapter was the one on education, where Postman presents five suggestions for improving the nature of our educational system:

• Teach children the art of asking questions.
• Logic and rhetoric should be given more importance given that they help students “defend themselves against both the seductions of eloquence and the appeal of nonsense.”
• Teach a scientific outlook -- get children to think about how we know scientific claims are truth rather than simply presenting them as facts to be memorized and recited. As Carl Sagan said, "Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; it is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with an eye for human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those of authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan -- political or religious -- who comes ambling along." Postman then says that we should teach creationism in the classroom. In his words, "Good science has nothing to fear from bad science." This is very true, but it doesn‘t apply to creationism -- it isn't science, bad or otherwise. It is in this chapter that Postman comments that modern humans are more gullible than their medieval predecessors: a farmer or a lowly cobbler may have believed the sun went around the Earth, but in his defense he did observe the sun apparently cycling the Earth. Until the advent of the space age, how many billions of humans believed that the Earth went around the sun without appreciating the subtleties of solar system patterns and the way that they can be worked out through mathematics? Those people believed in a heliocentric universe -- which is utterly counterintuitive -- and did so blindly. His point is almost lost now that we have a space station orbiting Earth and robot drones scattered around the solar system, but it’s still true in other instances.
• Teach children about the psychological, social, and political effects of new technologies.
• Teach comparative religion in the interests of furthering understanding of our culture -- literature, music, and so on. Postman warned that this was his most controversial opinion, but I see nothing wrong with it -- so long as teachers treat each religion according to the same standard and don’t push religion on kids.

The book was an interesting read. The Enlightenment is one of my favorite historical periods to study. While I didn’t agree with everything he said, I don’t mind being annoyed if I can be made to think about my own assumptions in the process. I think I’ll be reading a little more of him.

Next I read Books that Changed the World. The author comments on sixteen books that in his opinion have changed the world. They are, in order: The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli; Common Sense by Thomas Paine; Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith; Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus; Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau; Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Das Kapital, by Karl Max; The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, by Alfred T. Mahan; The Geographical Pivot of History, by Sir Halford J. Mackinder; Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler; De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the Heavily Spheres), by Nicolaus Copernicus; De Motu Cordis, by William Harvey; Principia Mathematic, by Sir Isaac Newton; The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin; The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud; and Relativity, the Special and General Theories, by Albert Einstein.

The author, Robert B. Downs, dedicates a chapter to each book, taking care to introduce the book within its historical context. The book was published in the 1950s, but its commentary on Das Kapital is surprisingly rational given that it was published during the second red scare. I thoroughly enjoyed each commentary. Only one of the books was completely unfamiliar to me (The Geographical Pivot of History) , but I’ve not read most of these. The book stirred my interest in some of them, though, and I will be looking around for them. I recommend the book if you can find it.

Lastly, I want to comment on The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. I didn’t finish all of it, nor do I see myself doing so before I return to university. It’s not a huge book, but the ideas are sizable and I have to re-read passages several times and think on them for a while before they finally click. The first part of the book is on general relativity, and that is the part I finished. The part I am currently on is on quantum theory, and more particularly on how matter can act both as waves and particles. While I don’t understand this, I do finally understand why time appears to slow down the nearer you approach the speed of light. I suggest finding the book if you have an interest in this. Incidentally, thanks to all of the reading I’ve been doing on this subject (mainly the Spangenburg/Moser book, Stephen Hawking’s book, and part of this book), I knew almost all of the answers in the “Fission” category in one of Jeopardy’s recent Tournament of Champions episodes. I say almost because the contestants had answered one before I walked into the room.

Pick of the Week: Nine Tales of Tomorrow, Isaac Asimov. I think maybe on weeks where I’m reading something by Asimov I should mention the runner-up, not the Asimov book, as by this point it’s fairly obvious that it’s not fair to ask other books to compete with Asimov.

Quotation of the Week: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” - Thomas Paine, The Crisis

Next Week:

• Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• State of Denial, Bob Woodward
• Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
• Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
• The Age of Synthesis, Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser