This Week at the Library (7/10)

Books this Update

• Tilting the Balance, Harry Turtledove
• Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer

I continued in the Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove, which sees an alien invasion of Earth in 1942 -- thus interrupting the second world war and creating an alternative history and science fiction scenario. Last week I read the first in the series and enjoyed it, so I’m continuing. Humanity continues exhibiting a distressing ability to innovate, much to the alien invaders’ -- the Race’s -- distress. The Race is slow to adapt to change, which is fortunate for humanity. The human governments realize that the only way they can win this war is to continue destroying the Race’s finite supply of equipment and by gaining atomic weapons. To do this they must cooperate with one another, which is difficult for the Nazis and Soviets, being ideological enemies.

We see growing technological progress: both the Nazis and Brits employ jet aircraft. Jet technology was known in the ‘real’ war, but didn’t see any real consequential use. People continue to innovate new ways to fight the lizards, although it is difficult to see at this point a light at the end of the tunnel. As I read I couldn’t help but wonder how elections were going to be handled in the United States: Germany and Russia are both being lead by dictatorships, and Britain’s system doesn’t mandate scheduled elections. In the United States, however, presidential elections happen every four years -- period. How, I wondered, is that political system going to work when much of the country is controlled by the Race and the parts of it that are still free have been disconnected from transportation and utility networks? Will the elections go on as scheduled -- somehow -- or will FDR simply suspend the Constitution and maintain the incumbent administration? Also, I wonder if the stress is going to lead to FDR’s early demise. It’s a safe bet that April 1944 -- when FDR dies -- will not see the Allies or humanity on the precipice of victory in this timeline. If in the (likely, to my thinking) event that elections are done away with, and FDR dies, what kind of president will the third-term vice president Henry Wallace become? Yet another issue is the question of how much of a boot technology will receive from this war -- from both necessity being the mother of invention and efforts at reverse-engineering Race technology.

After Tilting the Balance, I read Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Prelude is written as a -- well, prelude -- to the Foundation series, but in the afterword of Foundation’s Edge, Asimov says that it’s a good idea to read Prelude and the books that chronologically precede it after reading Edge and Foundation and Earth. The Foundation series begins with the realization by a psychohistorian named Hari Seldon that the Galactic Empire is decaying. Psychohistory is a fictional science that involves using computers and complex mathematical formulas to predict what large groups of human beings will do. Using this psychohistory, Seldon seeks to instigate a series of events that will bring galactic peace and harmony -- and he begins by establishing two Foundations.

Prelude to Foundation takes us “back” in history to when Hari Seldon was a young man who had just started creating psychohistory. While sight-seeing in the imperial capital of Trantor (the inspiration for George Lucas’ Coruscant), Seldon presents a paper on the theory of psychohistory, and catches the eye of various political individuals who want to use his predictive power to further their own success. Seldon maintains that his theory has no practical applications, but is forced on the run anyway. Prelude to Foundation concerns itself with what happens to Seldon during his fugitive period, and hints at the events that unfold in Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth.

I continue to utterly enjoy Asimov’s series. The story moves quickly, is very interesting, and provides a background for the rest of the series. The book won’t displace Foundation or Foundation’s Edge as being my favorites in the series, but it is quite good.

Lastly I finished reading Parasite Rex. From the book’s rear cover:

Imagine a world where parasites control the minds of their hosts, sending them to their destruction.

Imagine a world where parasites are masters of chemical warfare and camouflage, able to cloak themselves with their hosts' own molecules.

Imagine a world where parasites steer the course of evolution, where the majority of species are parasites.

Welcome to earth.

This book is a recommendation from a fellow student of science, and as you can probably deduce, it’s about the wild weird world of parasites. The parasites in the book do not include bacteria and viruses, but are limited to larger organisms -- ranging from microscopic worms that swim in blood to wasps to animals that chew away fish tongues and take their place. I’ve been asked, “Why on Earth are you reading about that?”. The book’s front cover does attract stares, and the question was generally asked of me while eating in my university’s dining hall, as I will read there if I can’t find anyone to eat with. Considering the setting, I can almost understand their disgust.

Parasite Rex would be interesting if it were only about the life cycles of various parasites. This is a subject I find interesting for whatever reason -- I have a strong interest in science and even if I didn’t, the world of parasites is so bizarre that it would capture my attention. It did back when I was in high school, a fundamentalist Pentecostal, and as incurious as enthusiastic Bill’O’heads. I went to a youth service where the designated screamer roared about parasites -- and he had slides. One of the parasites he spoke about was one that gets into ants, then gets them to crawl up blades of grass -- where the sun fries them and where they are eaten by cows, who then serve as a dandy new host for the parasite. The book mentions these, and it also mentions that if ants spot warning signs in an infected ant, they will haul it far away from their colony’s territory. Ants are such fascinating creatures.

Zimmer also writes about the importance of parasites to ecosystems and writes about the ways their evolution has driven the evolution of other life -- including human beings. He concludes with ways we might coexist with parasites for mutual benefit. I don’t say much about the book -- although I enjoyed it -- because frankly, if you don’t like thinking about parasites you aren’t going to want to read the book. But for those who are like me morbidly interested in the bizarre and horrifying world of parasites -- give it a go.

Pick of the Week: Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov.
Next Week:

• Forward the Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
• The Story of the Titanic, as Told by its Survivors
• Trial By Error, Mark A. Garland

This Week at the Library (1/10)

Books this Update:

• In the Balance, Harry Turtledove
• Foundation and Earth, Isaac Asimov
  

I had an extraordinarily busy weekend when it came to schoolwork, but I was able to read In the Balance between writing sessions. In the Balance is an alternate-history and science fiction novel by Harry Turtle, the publisher- or self-proclaimed “Master of Alternative History”. I wouldn’t go that far, but considering how much I’ve read by him I obviously enjoy what he writes. In the Balance is set in the middle of the Second World War. A fleet of alien spacecraft from Tau Ceti 3 (this according to the Fount of All Knowledge) arrives in December 1941 with the intentions of conquering Earth -- to find to their horror that human beings have progressed much in the 800 years since their probes first examined our humble planet.

They had expected to find a globe occupied by rudely-armed peasants and knights errant, since their own technological progress had been slow. They found instead dense urbanization and countries in the middle of the second industrial revolution -- with planes, trains, and automobiles. While they arrived at Earth -- or as they call it, Tosev 3 -- with more weapons than they needed, they find that we Tosevites are not so easy to suppress. The aliens, who call themselves the Race, find that humans are imaginative and unpredictable. This presents a problem, because the Race is not very good at responding to changing situations. In the Balance covers the first year of the Earth-Race war.

One of Turtledove’s strengths is inserting minor details that make the story seem real. At the beginning of the book, before the Race begins its invasion, we learn that one of the principle characters is a science fiction aficionado. He races to the newsstand to buy the latest copy of Astounding Stories. Turtledove writes that “the latest serial from Robert Heinlein had just ended”, but that the character (Sam Yeager) was still excited to see what the new offerings would be from Heinlein, Asimov, and others. The forties and fifties have been described (by Asimov and others) as science-fiction’s heyday, and it was nice to see the cultural reference. The reference probably had to be made, of course, given that this is a science fiction novel and had it actually happened, people would think of magazines like Astounding Stories. Another example of this specificity is that Turtledove portrays the Race as having to figure out why humanity is the way it is -- examining human behavior by looking at biological and environmental factors. As a history/sociology student, I find the observations interesting.

Turtledove’s cast of characters is fairly varied. Some of the more memorable characters include a ball playing sci-fi fan turned soldier; an American nuclear physicist; two German panzer crewmen, a female Russian pilot, and a Jewish quasi-rabbi in Poland. There are also various historical personalities -- Foreign Minister Molotov of the USSR, Italian scientist Enrico Fermi, George S. Patton, and Adolf Hitler. These historical personalities are not viewpoint characters, however. An extended scene between Molotov and Hitler was interesting read: how do you put words into the mouth of a man who is used as the standard for pure evil? How do you write him? It’s the same question I would ask if I read Anne Rice’s Jesus books: how do you put words into the mouth of a man who is regarded as a god?

The members of the Race are reptilian in nature; the human characters in the book refer to them as the Lizards. Being a Star Trek fan, my initial mental image was that of the Gorn, from the original series’ “The Arena”. Turtledove adds that the Lizards are only waist-high compared to most humans, and consequently their name for us is “Big Uglies”.

Considering that these lizards have come across the stars to add Earth to their growing space empire, they’re not that technologically advanced. They came to Earth in sleeper ships, although the Fount of All Knowledge says that they have apparently achieved half the speed of light. That’s fairly quick -- it means you can get from the Sun to Earth in four minutes. Outside of that, though, the Lizards don’t seem that technologically advanced. They attack with helicopters, jet aircraft with heat-seeking misses, and land cruisers that don’t seem that far beyond 21st century Earth.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The plot works: it seems plausible. The fictional characters emerge as distinct people, three of them in particular. The story was interesting to me, and I say if science fiction relating to Earth or alternative history with science-fiction elements interests you, give the first book a try.

Next I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Earth. Chronologically, it is the last book in the Foundation series, at least according to the Fount of All Knowledge’s list of books in the series. The series is set in a galaxy occupied by human beings, far in the future. I have read five of the books in the series proper, I believe. Asimov intended that people be able to enjoy this book without having read any of the books preceding it, and I think he was successful. Reading Foundation's Edge, first, though, is recommended by me. The Foundation Triology isn’t necessary, although would make the reading of Foundation and Earth more rich, I think.

To describe the book without spoiling any plot points in the preceding books, Foundation and Earth is about the search by three people (Golan Trevize, Janov Pelorat, and “Bliss”) to find Earth. The galaxy of the series is set over twenty thousand years in the future, and the characters know that humanity have to have evolved on one planet and then settled the rest of the galaxy. They want to find this planet; Pelorat for historical reasons and Trevize for reasons that pertain to the plot of the book. They hope that finding Earth will answer questions that they’ve had since Foundation’s Edge. Since this book is last in the meta-series, it does as you might imagine answer questions and tie up some loose ends and everything it’s supposed to.

I’ve become something of an Asimov enthusiast in recent years, especially in the last year. That enthusiasm is supported by how much I continue to enjoy reading his fiction books. With the exception of Foundation and Empire -- the enjoyment of which I think was spoiled by having accidentally read its sequel before it -- I have enjoyed the books in this series thoroughly. I can find nothing ill to say about them except they keep ending on me. I am happy that I still have many books in the meta-series to read yet, but I understand that sadly one day I’ll have read the entire series -- because I intend to borrow or buy every book I can. I must confess that part of me wants to have a bookcase in my future home that is sagging under the weight of all of the books in it just so that I can sit there admiring my bookcase and say “Just look at all that Asimov!”

Pick of the Week: Foundation and Earth. Turtledove is interesting; Asimov is…amazing. Here's an interview with him.

Quotation of the Week:

“The enlightened people of the SSSR have cast the rule of the despots onto the ash-heap of history,” Molotov said.

Avtar laughed in his flat face. “The Race has flourished under its Emperors for a hundred thousand years. What do you know of history, when you were savages the last time we looked over your miserable pest-hole of a planet?” The Fleetlord heartily wished the Tosevites had remained savages, too.

“History may be slow, but it is certain,” said Molotov stubbornly. “One day the inevitable revolution will come to your people, too, when their economic conditions dictate its necessity. I think that day will be soon. You are imperialists, and imperialism is the last phase of capitalism, as Marx and Lenin have shown.”

The interpreter stumbled through the translation of that last sentence, and added, “I have trouble rendering the natives’ religious terms into our language, Exalted Fleetlord. Marx and Lenin are gods or prophets in the SSSR.” He spoke briefly with Molotov, then said, “Prophets.”

This particular scene struck me as funny. Molotov, the foreign minister of the USSR, has been hauled up into space to treat with the Lizards -- or rather, that’s what the Lizards hauled him up there for. Molotov is completely unbothered by the fact that he’s standing in an alien spaceship orbiting Earth and completely at their mercy. Confronted with a demand that the USSR surrender to the Emperor of the Race, he states that he was part of the revolution that killed his own emperor and then starts predicting that Communism is the future for the Race, too. Here’s another scene I found funny. For context, two German tankmen have survived an encounter with Lizard land cruisers in Russia. They take off into the countryside to look for a way back to Wehrmacht headquarters, finding their way to a Russian village. Their rifles attract the attention of a Russian pilot who lands; after coming to terms with the whole “ideological enemies” thing, they begin discussing the Lizards

So here is German arrogance first hand, Ludmila thought. Having admitted that the Lizards had smashed his unit to bits, all the panzer major cared to talk about was the foe’s shortcomings. Ludmila said, “Since our equipment is unfortunately not a match for theirs, how do we go about fighting them?”

“Das ist die Frage,” Sergeant Schultz said solemnly, for all the world like a Nazi Hamlet.

Next Week:

• Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• Tilting the Balance, Harry Turtledove
• Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, Carl Zimmer

This Week at the Library (24/9)

Books this Update:

• Rules of Civility, George Washington
• Foundation’s Edge, Isaac Asimov
• Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
• The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
• Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Al Franken

I began this week with George Washington’s Rules of Civility. I spotted it while looking for another book, and knew immediately that I had to examine it. When I went to check it out, I was informed that I looked as though I already knew how to be civil. I’m not sure what that means, but I have a suspicion that it means “I notice you’re not wearing a shirt with Bill O’ on it..” The book is a collection of rules Washington supposedly followed. Many of them are holdovers from a different era -- Washington elaborates on situations with your “betters” and your “inferiors”. Some of the rules are common rules you would expect -- don’t sneeze or cough in front of company except with your mouth covered (and your head turned, preferably); don’t clean your nails or relieve yourself of body lice at the table; don’t chew your nails in front of people, that sort of thing. Here are some of the ones I liked:

• Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any.
• Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
• Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for it is a sign of a tractable and commendable nature; and in all cases of passion admit reason to govern.
• Speak not injurious words, neither in jest or in earnest scoff at none though they give occasion.
• Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.

There are more here. Next I read Asimov’s Foundation’s Edge, the fourth book in the Foundation series. According to It’s Been a Good Life, a posthumous autobiography, Asimov was asked to pen another Foundation book a number of years after he had written the trilogy, and so had to read the trilogy again to recover his thoughts. This book mentions the robots that Asimov wrote so much about in other works. Before I read his biography, I wondered why there were no robots in his Foundation universe, seeing as it was set in the far future and robotics would have come a long way. I assumed that the rising suspicion regarding them (a theme throughout Asimov’s robot novels and stories) led to their demise. Asimov deals with that question in this book. Foundation’s Edge is a marvelously written book; it’s probably my second-favorite Foundation book, right behind the first. Excellent stuff.

Next I read David Sedaris’ Holiday on Ice, a short book themed around Christmas. Half of the book is typical Sedaris -- essays recalling memories from his life and relating them to the reader in a dry, amusing narrative. The other half of the book consists of stories written by Sedaris with a holiday theme. My favorite section of the book was “The SantaLand Diaries”, which you can listen to here. Sedaris reads the essay on “This American Life”. He starts about four minutes in.

Next I read The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The book is set in the mid-19th century -- the 1860s, precisely. During this time Italy was approaching unification, and the book is written to document the waning power of the aristocracy. The story itself is interesting: the book…wasn’t. I found it very difficult to read get through and the plot seemed to be jumpy. The most interesting chapter for me was the chapter where the Prince slowly approaches his death.

Don Fabrizio had always known that sensation. For a dozen years or so he had been feeling as if the vital fluid, the faculty of existing, life itself in fact and perhaps even the will to go on living, were ebbing out of him slowly but steadily, as grains of sand cluster and then line up one by one, unhurried, unceasing, before the narrow neck of an hourglass. In some moments of intense activity or concentration this sense of continual loss would vanish, to reappear impassively in brief instants of silence or introspection; just as a constant buzzing in the ears of the ticking of a pendulum superimposes itself when all else is silent, assuring us of always being there, watchful, even when we do not hear it.

Lastly, I read Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. The book, written in 1996, purports to be satire of the growing lack of civility in American politics. Franken focuses his ire on a few personalities in particular: Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson. There are others, of course, ranging from Oliver North to Arlen Specter. I don’t have much to say about the book: parts of it were amusing; other parts not so much.

Quotation of the Week: “…and in all cases of passion, admit reason to govern.” - George Washington

Pick of the Week: Foundation’s Edge, Isaac Asimov

Next Week:

• Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, Carl Zimmer
• Foundation and Earth, Isaac Asimov
• Worldwar: in the Balance, Harry Turtledove
• Puzzles of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov

This Week at the Library (17/9)

Books this Update:

• The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’, Bill Zehme
• Banquets of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov
• Sinatra: the Artist and the Man, John Lahr
• Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani

I began this week with a book I’ve not read since early 2005. Were I to commit such blasphemy as to name a favorite singer, I would name Frank Sinatra. I started listening to Sinatra in 2004 (beginning with “The Very Good Years” from Reprise) and quickly become an enthusiast, and not long after I began reading Sinatra biographies. One of them was The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’. Anyone familiar with Sinatra knows that he was a man of singular style, who lived life passionately and in his own way. The Way You Wear Your Hat is not a biography. The author explores the way Sinatra lived -- with chapters dedicated to style, women, and his drinking preferences. There are a lot of quotations from Sinatra and a lot about him. I easily recommend the book to anyone who is interested in Frank Sinatra, even vaguely so. It remains a favorite.

Next I read Isaac Asimov’s Banquets of the Black Widowers, the fourth book in his Black Widowers mystery series. The Black Widower books are all collections of Black Widower tales. Each tale is a short story -- a mystery. They are all set in the same place: every month, a group of friends who call themselves the Black Widowers meet at a restaurant. Each month, the host brings a guest -- and each month, without fail, a problem arises that has to be sorted out by the Widowers. The mystery is typically presented by the guest, but not always. I found this book to be altogether interesting. One story was a bit weak, but only the one. As is typical, Asimov provides chatty commentary at the end of each tale.

After this I went to another Sinatra biography, Sinatra: the Artist and the Man. There’s really not much to say: it’s a biography that presented its information in an organized way and told the story of his life. Half of the book is biography: the other half is page-sized pictures. The pictures are from his entire life and are of rather good quality.

Lastly I read The Blood of Flowers. I won this book during the summer in a contest hosted by a history blog I read frequently. The book is set in 17th century Persia. The author is an Iranian-American who wrote the book after she began wondering about the lives of the people who made the exquisite Persian rugs that she was familiar with: this book is an attempt to explore the lives of those people. The story is told in first-person through the eyes of an un-named narrator. You would think that it would be difficult for an entire novel to go by without a single named reference to the narrator, but Amirrezvani does it and does it well. I never realized that I never knew the name of the main character until I reached the author’s afterword. The young woman’s father dies, leaving her and her mother poor. They go to the then-capital city of Isfahan to seek out a male relative who will take them in. The narrator’s chief joy comes in knotting rugs, and her uncle happens to work in the royal rug-making workhouse. While he cannot formally teach her the craft at his workhouse, he does teach her at home. Most of the book is about the young woman’s life in Isfahan -- the ups and downs. Folk stories are interwoven throughout. I rather enjoyed the book, and found it hard to put down at times. I especially enjoyed learning about 17th century Iran, or at least this author’s presentation of it. I recommend the book. Much to my amusement, Amirrezvani often describes Europeans as “farengi”, which inspired whichever Star Trek writer who created the Ferengi -- a race obsessed with material wealth. This is not an association I made myself: I heard it years ago listening to an interview with one of Deep Space Nine’s producers, and he said that the race name came from this word. A selection from the book to pique your interest -- a selection that alludes to the author’s inspiration for writing the book.

I will never inscribe my name in a carpet like the masters in the royal rug workshop who are honored for their great skill. I will never learn to knot a man’s eye so precisely it looks real, nor design rugs with layers of patterns so intricate that they could confound the greatest of mathematicians. But I have devised designs of my own, which people will cherish for years to come. When they sit on one of my carpets, their hips touching the earth, their back elongated, and the crown of their head lifted toward the sky, they will be soothed, refreshed, transformed. My heart will touch theirs and we will be as one, even after I am dust, even though they will never know my name.

Pick of the Week: Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani (And Asimov’s streak is ended!)

Next Week:

• Washington’s Rules of Civility, George Washington
• Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Al Franken
• Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
• Foundation’s Edge, Isaac Asimov

This Week at the Library (10/9)

Books this Update:

• Me of Little Faith, Lewis Black
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
• Surviving Auschwitz, Primo Levi
• Carl Sagan: A Life, Keay Davidson

I began this week with Me of Little Faith, which is a book about comedian Lewis Black’s experiences with religions and the paranormal. Black is a comedian often featured on The Daily Show who hosts his own show on the Comedy Central channel called The Root of All Evil. It’s not anti-religious, which came as a surprise to me given his comedy routines. Black was raised Jewish and considers himself a Jew even though he doesn’t follow Judaism. This makes him a “cultural Jew”, which Black says sounds like a name for some sort of yogurt. Black begins by describing growing up in a family of “cultural Jews”, then moves on. The book is a book of comedy, so there’s no real organization to it. Black describes his experiences and knowledge of various religious entities (Jonestown, Oral Roberts, Mormons, the Amish, televangelists), reflects on religions’ various effects, and provides personal anecdotes to give the reader a feel for Black’s own religious beliefs. As far as I could figure, he believes in a god, believes in ghosts, believes some people are gifted with psychic abilities, and is easily impressed by astrological coincidences. He mentions experiences he’s had -- seeing things while visiting the Farm, seeing things while being touched by a guru, etc. A large part of one chapter comes from his “Red, White, and Screwed” show; a clip of which you can see here.

Next I read David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Sedaris is a comedian, one I became familiar with thanks to NPR. He often appears on the show “This American Life”, and when he read from Me Talk Pretty One Day, I was so amused that I had to go find the book. I ended up reading all of his humor books, and I looked forward to this new one with great anticipation. It was not disappointing. Sedaris’ particular style of humor is as ever delightful. If you want to listen to Sedaris reading from one of his books -- and thus get an idea for what is included -- click here for one of my favorite readings. That’s a short version: you can watch the longer version here.

Also this week I read Surviving Auschwitz, which is the story of an Italian man named Primo Levi who was captured by fascists while hiding in the countryside of Italy. Owing to his Jewish ancestry, he was sent to Auschwitz. Because he was captured in 1944, he was only forced to spend a year in the work-camp. While the SS had suspended mass killings by this point -- wanting to maintain as much of a work force as possible to help with the war effort -- death was still common. Levi describes the work details, the infirmary, the rituals of life in the camp. It’s an interesting read.

To finish the week’s reading off, I read Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson. The book is a large biography of Sagan, host of Cosmos and an astronomer associated with the Mariner and Voyager projects. He’s one of my favorite people to learn from, and as such I enjoyed this biography very much. The book does not shy away from Sagan’s failings, which I appreciate. Reading the book is a bit like reading about science, skepticism, and psuedo-science from the 1950s to the 1960s. Here are a few Sagan-related links:

1. Celebrating Sagan
2. "Pale Blue Dot"; Sagan reading from Pale Blue Dot. Beautiful video.
3. "Wonder and Skepticism", parts 1 and 2. His last lecture.
4. Ted Turner interviews Carl Sagan, part 1. You can find the rest from there.
   

Pick of the Week: When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris

Next Week:

• The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampusa. This book is another book for school.
• Banquets of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov. Given how much I enjoyed the first two books in the Widowers series, I’m sure I’ll enjoy this one.
• The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’, Bill Zehme. I read this book in early 2005 and am anticipating a good re-read.
• Sinatra: the Artist and the Man, John Lahr

This Week at the Library (3/9)

Books this Update:

• Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Ascent of Science, Brian Silver
• Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov
• It’s Been a Good Life, Isaac Asimov
• For the Love of Life, Erich Fromm

I began this week by reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Jailbird, which I had not planned to read at first. I’ve read a little bit of Vonnegut before, although his fictional style is a unlike anything I’m used to. I picked up Jailbird and began to read through it: it seemed interesting, so I checked it out. The book is about a man named Walter F. Starbuck, a well-intentioned and little-appreciated bureaucrat in the Nixon White House, having earned a meaningless post by accidentally advancing Nixon’s career. Starbuck’s life is quite interesting, and the story of that life unfolds throughout the book as he or an author telling the story of his life recollects them -- think of the approach taken with Forrest Gump. In a very limited way, Gump and Starbuck’s stories are similar in that they are frequently and accidentally involved in the stories of history. The plot is much easier to understand than Slaughterhouse-5, although the latter is far more popular given that it’s a criticism of the Dresden firebombing. The story is quite interesting, as is the book. Oddly enough, even though it is a fiction book, it has an index. The book is described by Vonnegut through the voice of one of his characters as being about economics. Many of the characters’ lives are influenced by both the industrialists/capitalists and the socialist movement then present in the United States.

Last week I began reading Brian Silver’s The Ascent of Science, but didn’t finish it as it is rather lengthy and I was reading other books at the same time. Silver’s book is essentially a history of western science, but it is presented more as a history of scientific ideas -- the controversies they generated and the influence they had. The book, written for lay audiences, explains scientific concepts fairly well while maintaining an informal spirit. The author includes himself in the book, offering opinions and making comments. The book is written well, and Silver takes care to explain how scientific ideas influenced political and social history. Despite this, I would only recommend it over Ray Spangenburg and Kit Moser’s two series if you’re an adult who doesn’t want to be bothered with an entire series to start getting a handle on the wide world of science.

Last week I read Isaac Asimov’s Second Foundation and commented that it was set far enough apart from Foundation that there was probably a novel in between. There is -- Foundation and Empire. In Foundation and Empire, we see that the Foundation has grown into a large trading empire, and its elected “Mayors” have become autocrats -- which is resented by a sizeable group on the planet, who maintain a “democratic underground”. I wonder if that’s where that’s where the website of the same name gets it from. What’s left of the Galactic Empire vanishes in this book, but before the Foundation can capitalize on the opportunity, they are toppled by the Mule, a mutant who can his mind to inflict or induce strong emotions in people -- “hypercharismatic” is the way I described him last week. The book was an interesting read, although I think it’s the weakest of the trilogy.

Quotation of the Week:

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Go Wond’rous creature, mount where Science guides.”

- Alexander Pope, "Esssay on Man", quoted in The Ascent of Science.

This post is a little unusual because of my return to Montevallo. I read the aforementioned books two weeks ago. Last week I was unable to post about them because of computer problems, but now I am online again. This past week, I read Isaac Asimov’s posthumous autobiography, It’s Been a Good Life. The autobiography was published by his wife, Janet Asimov, from text he had written and from his letters to her. Despite of the fact that it is a loose compilation, the book is put together well. Asimov’s style is perfectly engaging and is quite conversational. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Lastly I read Erich Fromm’s For the Love of Life. Fromm was a German social critic, and I’m not quite sure how I found the book. The book is composed of essays by Fromm and interview transcripts, so the topic of the book drifts. The first part was about “Affluence and Ennui” and is essentially a critique of a society obsessed with consumerism. The book also contains a lot of psychoanalysis: Fromm maintains that various thought-systems -- the Judeo-Christian tradition, Zen Buddhism, Freudian psychology, and Marxism -- all inform his worldview. (Fromm is described as a humanistic philosopher, but I don’t think that refers to contemporary humanism: humanism means different things in different contexts, and the rational “life stance” of humanism would be a strange bedfellow to most of the systems he mentioned. I say most because I’m not that familiar with Zen Buddhism.)

My enjoyment of the book changed depending on which section I was reading. While I liked “Affluence and Ennui”, the bits on dream interpretation and the psychoanalysis of Adolf Hitler weren’t all that enjoyable. I’m very skeptical when it comes to dream interpretation and psychoanalysis. Given that our dreams are our thoughts, I’m sure they betray things about us. The level of analysis Fromm goes into is too much for me. One of the examples Fromm uses is one of Freud’s dreams. Freud dreamed about a white flower that was shriveled and behind a bell-jar. Freud wanted to give the flower to his wife, but he could not remove it from the bell-jar. This is supposed to mean that Freud had reduced sexuality -- the flower -- to a thing to be studied and so could not really enjoy it. I don’t follow the logic: is it supposed to be another instance of “unweaving the rainbow”? The analysis of Hitler was the same. Fromm’s conclusion was that Hitler was a necrophiliac and hated all living things, so he was possessed by this enormous urge to destroy.

Pick of the [Update]: It’s Been a Good Life, Isaac Asimov

Quotation of the Week: “To learn is to broaden, to experience more, to snatch new aspects of life for yourself. To refuse to learn or to be relieved at not having to learn is to commit a form of suicide; in the long run, a more meaningful type of suicide than the mere ending of physical life." - Isaac Asimov, It’s Been a Good Life.

Next Week:

• When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris. Sedaris is a comedian that I particularly enjoy. The title (for those of you whose curiosity has been piqued) comes from a translation error Sedaris observed while visiting Japan. I know this because he talked about it when promoting the book on The Late Show with David Letterman.
• Me of Little Faith, Lewis Black. I like Lewis Black’s comedy, having become a fan of him via YouTube.
• Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson. Carl Sagan is on my shortlist of “heroes”.
• Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi. Required reading for one of my classes, but I'm reading it early as it looks interesting.

This Week at the Library (15/8)

Books this Update:

• Firestarter, Stephen King
• Hard Call, John McCain
• Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman
• The Ascent of Science, Brian L. Silver
  

I began this week with Stephen King’s Firestarter, which was recommended to me by several friends. Firestarter is about a young girl named Charlie who can start fires with her mind. She picked up this ability courtesy of the fact that her parents were both involved in a Secret Government Experiment during the 1960s. The experiment entailed treating college students to a drug referred to as Lot Six to see if it generates psi-talent by doing ’something’ to the pituitary gland. Since the majority of people in the experiment self-destructed in one form or another, the Government takes special note of the fact that two of its experiment’s survivors married and reproduced. As it turns out, they had good reason to take note, since Charlie can set people on fire. Naturally, pops doesn’t want the Government trying to turn his daughter into their secret weapon, and the fact that they tortured and murdered his wife doesn’t make him think that they have Charlie’s best interests at heart. Such cynicism, and at his age.

The story was engaging and well-written, in my opinion. King never bores me, and the ending wasn’t cliché at all. My only complaint is the dubious claim that “psi” abilities exist and can be linked to the pituitary gland. However, getting upset about that would be like growing annoyed with the idea of a fairy godmother in Snow White or miracles in the Left Behind series. It’s book magic.

Next I read Arizona senator John McCain’s latest book, Hard Call. I found the book accidentally. I decided to finish the week’s selection of books by exploring the biography shelves, and while examining the biographical anthologies, I saw McCain staring at me. The book looked interesting, so I decided to give it a go. Senator McCain begins by writing about the process of making decisions, and says that he believes that “Awareness, foresight, timing, confidence, humility, and inspiration” are “the qualities typically represented in the best decisions and in the characters of those who make them.” He divides the book into six sections, one for each attribute. After introducing each one, he shares several historical accounts that he believes represent those attributes well. His definition of “humility” leads to me to think that he would have been better off using another title, like “Empathy”, “Compassion”, or “Altruism”.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. While I was familiar with many of the stories he used, there were quite a few others that I was completely unaware of, and I found them enjoyable. The weakest section was “Inspiration”, in my opinion. The last account he renders is of Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. According to McCain, the decision was the result of a bet President Lincoln made with God/Fate. (Seriously.) McCain only cites one source of this (cites it twice, actually), which I question on the basis that if it’s true, it’s ridiculous. Consider:

Option 1: Abraham Lincoln, being an astute politician, who had on previous occasions maintained that he had no desire to stamp out slavery, decided that issuing the Emancipation Proclamation would be a wise move to keep England and France out of the war, but realized that he could only issue it in the aftermath of a Union victory. When McClellan’s army successfully blocked Lee’s army at Sharpsburg/Antietam Creek, Lincoln seized on his opportunity and changed the Union’s war goals from being “preserve the Union” to “restore the Union and end slavery”.

Option 2: Lincoln, an astute politician who had on previous occasions maintained that he had no interest in ending slavery, made a bet with God//Fate: if the Union won a great victory, he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation and free the slaves. (Well, the ones in rebelling states that the US Army reached.)

I can’t take seriously the idea of an intelligent Abraham Lincoln putting his reputation and possibly the fate of the war on the line for an arbitrary bet with fate. Aside from that major gaffe, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t read one chapter (one on reconciling Christianity and the decision to go to war, which isn’t of interest to me), but it was only one small exception. Since Senator McCain is a political personality, I probably should comment on his obvious biases, if any. To be honest, I really didn’t see a lot of bias in the book, which impressed me. His chapter on Harry Truman’s support of the civil rights movement was particularly impartial. There are a couple of issues, though. Were I to believe his section on Reagan, I would come away thinking Reagan was Superman. McCain, or his ghostwriter, also treats The Media and The Wisemen as ever-wrong naysayers, who are always out to make his heroes’ lives more difficult. Everyone likes to malign the scientific “elite” for doubting innovative ideas that have yet to be proven, but they always seem to forget that the “elite” also have a knack for killing ignorance like spiritualism and homeopathy. Well, I support you, Intellectual Elite. You mitigate the effects of obnoxiously gullible people on my life.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the book and recommend it if you want to read some interesting accounts of some inspirational people. The book gets extra kudos for having a section on Gerald Ford, who I think doesn’t get enough credit.

Next I read Isaac Asimov’s Second Foundation and was thoroughly captivated by it despite the fact that it was set hundreds of years after the first book and that there is probably a novel separating them. Second Foundation continues Asimov’s political saga set in the stars. In Foundation, the story began with a Psychohistorian named Hari Seldon forseeing the future of the then-waning Galactic Empire and setting a plan into action to bring about a restoration of that empire within a thousand-year span. He does this by establishing two Foundations: one on Terminus, which the first book concentrated on, and the other “at the other end of the galaxy, at Stars’ End”.

At the beginning of this book we find that the first Foundation has fallen under the boot heel of something that Seldon’s Plan could not have anticipated: a mutant, a galactic conqueror who calls himself the Mule and the First Citizen of the Union of Worlds. The Mule is a mutant because he can transform the minds of people around him by exerting some kind of emotional control. He is in effect hyper-charismatic. As Seldon’s plan could not have foreseen the birth of such a mutant, his actions throw the Plan into chaos. The Mule becomes aware of the plan, and develops a sort of paranoia around it. He sees the Second Foundation as his enemy, and they are a particularly dangerous enemy because he doesn’t know where they are. There is no planet called “Stars’ End” -- and as the Galaxy is a three-dimension object in space that is lens-shaped, it doesn’t really have an end.

The book is divided into two general parts: the first part concerns the Union of Worlds that the Mule establishes and his efforts to locate the Second Foundation so that he can destroy it. The second part of the book concerns the ongoing galactic political situation: after the Mule’s death, his Union collapses (this isn’t a spoiler: a political entity built around the abilities of one man is doomed to certain failure as soon as that man dies.) and the Foundation is restored. On Kalgan, the capital world of what was the Union, its ruler seeks to destroy the Foundations so that he can establish his own galactic empire. Some on Terminus -- site of the first Foundation -- are also seeking out the Second Foundation so that they can destroy it.

The book offers interesting comparison to two ideas: first the idea is the idea of free will. Many people, even nonreligious people, spend a lot of time discussing free will. Why this is relevant has always baffled me, but people persist. The religious and naturalistic origins of the free will discussion in our own universe can be examined elsewhere: in Asimov’s Foundation universe, the argument is set against the Plan. It is now common knowledge throughout political worlds (Kalgan and Terminus) that centuries ago, Hari Seldon set into effect The Plan, and that it knows what everyone is going to do and that the Foundations are manipulating events, consciously or no, to further the Plan, to bring it into fruition. In one section of the book, a character tries to decide what to do on the basis of what the Plan would suggest. Since he dislikes living under the Plan, he wants to do the opposite of what he might be expected to do -- but he doesn’t know if the Plan expects him to do the unexpected.

I mentioned that this character dislikes living under the Plan. He is not alone. The ruling political powers dislike the idea that their actions are predictable and that they are living their lives and creating their empires just to fulfill a long-dead scientist’s Master Plan to restore the Empire in the future. They want the Empire restored now, by them, for their glory. This was not always so, though. In Foundation, the ruling party of the Foundation on Terminus was quite happy to abide by the Plan. It saved them in crises. They knew that whatever came up, the Plan would save them. But as they grew in power and influence, they wanted to take the initiative: they disliked living under the Plan. This is true only of the ruling party: the people of both Kalgan and Terminus believed fervently in the plan, had perfect trust in it.

The comparison is to the idea of gods, or religion. For people without much power -- people who are poor, or who are in the political minority -- it is easy to seek solace in the idea that there are gods watching out for them, guiding them. Even some of those who are nonreligious are given to the idea that the human race is proceeding to a better day -- that we’re progressing. And we are, in a sense. While human nature is fundamentally unchanged, each generation (at least, in progressive societies) moulds its children’s brains along different lines. Six hundred years ago, boys would have been trained to follow their father’s line of work and girls would have been taught to be good domestic servants and loyal concubines -- for that is what medieval wives were, by our standards. But today, schoolchildren in the west are taught that they pursue any career or vocation that interests them, and our governments make the effort to see that they are equipped with the tools to pursue their interests. I would take society today at its worst over 15th century society at its best. But in the larger sense, the human race is still very much the same: we’re still irrational and limited animals, we’ve just manage to domesticate ourselves.

Anyway, so people take solace in the idea that there’s a Plan, or that things will get better eventually. An example of that is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s statement that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. But as people grow in power, as they become more able to take care of themselves, they no longer need to take comfort. Look at it this way: if you’re in a desert and find an unlimited oasis with company and all of the pleasures you would want to imbibe in, would you really keep tromping through the desert because you were told that there was a city that offered more? Modern people in the west no longer fear Zeus’ wrath when a thunderstorm moves in -- although some still pray for rain when there’s a drought.

(I say “in the west” because I can only speak for what I know. As I don’t live in Egypt or India and don’t have access to contemporary Egyptian or Indian literature that I could use to sort out what the average Egyptian or Indian might believe, I can’t speak for their mindsets.) Second Foundation is a highly enjoyable piece of science fiction and is made better by the fact that there’s more to it than story -- or at least that I read more into it than just the story.

Next I read Neil Postman’s Technopoly, which I attempted to find last week but failed to do. Technopoly, published in 1993, concerns what Postman had been observing since the rise of television: technology’s growing monopoly on how we live and understand our lives. He divides world cultures into three groups, based on their relation with technology: tool-using cultures, which use tools to solve immediate problems (watermills) or to contribute to political/religious symbolism (cathedrals); technocracies, where life is structured by technology (political systems depending on technology like the printing press, or the increasing role of technology in capitalism); and technopolies, where people and culture are dominated by the tools they’ve created -- but not in the World Robot Domination kind of way.

The book is short but explosive: it’s full of provocative ideas and I spent a lot of time mulling over the things the author was saying so well. It’s rather hard to sum this book up in a couple of paragraphs: frankly, a sociology student could write graduate papers in response to the book, in disagreeing with it or in using how far we’ve come since 1993 as a demonstration of how right he was. I don’t know where to begin, so I won’t try to do commenting on the ideas justice. I will say the book is exceptionally well-written. Postman explains why he believes as he does quite well, and his ideas are quite interesting. I really dislike leaving this commentary on Technopoly as it stands: the book deserves further comment, and I hope that future sociology classes will give me the opportunity to use the book.

I do have some comments, though. In the book he points out that for many people, science has become the new mythology. This is not to say that physicists and biologists are High Priests and that the universities are the new seminaries -- merely to say that just as people once believed the priests implicitly, now they believe science or anything that is science-y implicitly. As an example, he uses an experiment he performed on friends and acquaintances: he asked them if they had heard the results of a latest study by a prestigious university. He mixed up what the study “proved” depending on who he was dealing with, but all of his stories sounded ridiculous. What he found was that people believed him because the ridiculous conclusion was arrived at by a prestigious university, by “Scientists”.

He mentioned the same idea in Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: people today are as gullible and superstitious as ever. They know more, but they’re just about as intelligent. As a skeptic, I’m very much in agreement here. It’s important for people to know things, but it’s more important for people to be able to know things for themselves, to be able to sort truth from fiction. Otherwise they’re dependent on other people for truth. The strength of modern science is not what we know, but our approach to knowing. One quotation I never tire of is Carl Sagan’s “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 idea 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."

One of the problems that Postman has with technopoly is that it divorces us from a cohesive worldview, creating a gap that systems like the political “religion” of Communism can exploit to our detriment. He writes that as our ability to access information has increased, we have made efforts to manage this information by presenting it in rational ways: one of his examples of “information management” is public schooling. However, he maintains that there is so much information available today -- through television and the internet -- that parents and their attempts at information management are waning and that we are being overwhelmed by information and have no way of putting it to use. He proposes that education be presented as part of a theme focusing on the human story. One of his ideas, one which I like very much, is that every subject be presented partially as history -- because it is only within a historical context that we can really understand any subject. If you understand historical contexts, then you are better able to process new information or to examine the veracity of things you already ‘know’. There are a lot of ideas in this book. While I didn’t agree with everything, it was very thought provoking and I like that in the books I read. I recommend it.

Next I began reading Brian Silver’s The Ascent of Science, which is a largish book that attempts to present the history of science to the average person. The story is not told a recitation of facts, but is presented as a story of ever-evolving ideas about the universe -- which I like. I’m not quite finished yet, but I’m quite close and will comment more on it next week.

Pick of the Week: Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov and Technopoly by Neil Postman.

Quotation of the Week: “There have always been those who have held that life is property that cannot possibly arise out of inanimate matter, not because they can’t conceive of the chemical pathway but because it offends their view of the universe. This is the ‘Life-is-something-special” school of thought, for whom the uniqueness of life is threatened by mean little scientists in scruffy lab coats trying to prove that a proto-Bach originated in a mixture of gases that was struck by lightening.” - Brian Silver, The Ascent of Science, p. 339

Next Week:

• Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov
• Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut
• Iron Coffins: A Personal Account of the German U-Boat Battles of World War II, Herbert Werner
• American Origins to 1789, Dumas Malone and Basil Rauch
• The Ascent of Science, Brian L. Silver