Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
OK, it is not the whole title. The title is – Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed – a bit too long for a reasonable headline.
Much to my surprise, I liked this book quite a bit. But I’m getting ahead of the story so let me begin where this book ended up on my Kindle. Continue reading “Without Their Permission by Alexis Ohanian”
There is a series of dystopian novels called The Hunger Games. There are quite a few examples of dystopian fiction. Some are better than others. But we seem to have our own real-life version in Black Friday and other shopping frenzies. The term Shopping Games came to mind …
The full title and subtitle is actually The Secret Gospel of Ireland:The Untold Story of How Science and Democracy Descended from a Remarkable Form of Christianity That Developed in Ancient Ireland. But that is quite long and would not do as a title of this review.
The Behan brothers begin with the early history of the Catholic church. The Romans never made it to Ireland but did rule most of the known world in those days. The Catholic church or at least that a large part of it was centered in Rome and became the official state religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD.
The really interesting thing is that this is not just a straightforward history of the Church with perhaps a regretful statement about the light of learning going out in Europe but surviving in Ireland and then being revived in Europe by some travelling Irish monks.
No, this is much more. Consider the issues discussed, Why did the Pope send a mission to Ireland? Why was Patrick much more successful than the bishop sent by the Pope. How and why did Irish Christianity differ from the Roman Catholicism of the time. What were the philosophical and theological ideas of each? What were some of the other ideas considered? And how did they develop and influence each other?
The Behans cover a lot of ground in about 200 pages. And do so in an interesting fashion and weave an important explanation of events, relating some Irish influence on Catholicism to our ideas of science and democracy.
A very interesting book. And as a bonus, they added a short chapter at the end with references and suggestions on further reading.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit so this is really a very favorable review but I do have one minor gripe.
The title can be a bit misleading. That is, The Secret Gospel of Ireland might lead you to believe that this is about some long-lost secret scrolls found in Ireland. And that is not what this book is about at all. But that is a bit of a quibble and definitely not as important as the content of this wonderful book.
The subtitle is a much better indicator of what this book is about but it is too long to be a good title. So we have a shorter and less accurate title. Certainly not a major flaw but something I thought I should mention in case any prospective readers are mislead.
But the title does have the sense of the book and a short pithy title does make it easier to refer to the book, to say nothing of looking nice on the cover (very nice cover, by the way). So we have a good book with a title that might be more accurate but I have no suggestions there.
This book is definitely a keeper. I enjoyed it very much and learned a lot in the process. The nice part about having this book on my bookshelf is that when I am feeling a bit philosophical, I can reread parts or turn to that last bonus section to find more reading.
I highly recommend this book to those with an interest philosophy, theology, or the intellectual history of Europe.
A Little History of Science by William Bynum is hard book to review. But that is mostly because it is exactly what the title promises.
Science is a very big area. It would be impossible to cover it all in a very large set of books and certainly very hard to summarize in a large book but William Bynum attempts it in small book (about 270 pages). And succeeds!
I found myself fascinated by some parts and merely interested in others. But I think this is to be expected as the subject matter varies so greatly.
So I guess the reader is doomed to find parts that are of great interest which a reader would wish were covered in more detail. But that is the nature of short histories. This work gives us an overview of many areas of science. And if the reader is interested in any or several, he or she can explore those in more detail in other books.
I liked the book but am a bit unsure about a target audience. I am a retired scientist (human genetics) so I was already familiar with large parts of what was covered but this book did fill in some significant gaps. So I would say it is suitable for the adult reader who wants a quick view of areas of science they are not familiar with. This would range from someone with science knowledge (since there are not many who know it all) to someone who knows nothing of science but is curious. I think it would also be suitable for a teen interested in a quick overview of science.
Last year I read a good book, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear by Seth Mnookin.
But for some reason I did not review it on my book review site. But here is a review of this and some related books from New Scientist. I don’t recall why I didn’t write a review but Mnookin’s book came back to mind when I saw Parade magazine this weekend.
Seth Mnookin wrote an article “Why So Many Parents Are Delaying or Skipping Vaccines” which covered some of the ground he covered so well in his book but the emphasis was clearly on the problems parents cause for both their children and other children when they do not vaccinate their children as recommended. [Update: The link went bad. Looks like Parade reorganized the site. The new link is given.]
Study after study has show vaccination to be safe, yet many are hesitant. How can people ignore the evidence and do a dumb thing ? I am not calling people dumb. Even smart people can do dumb things.
We are all different. Modern medicine gives us many choices and many are based on probabilities of desired or undesired outcomes. And there is often an abundance of information and/or conflicting information. So, the question is “how do we decide?”
Drs. Groopman and Hartzband take on this question in “Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What Is Right for You” in a very interesting and informative manner. They interview a wide variety of patients dealing with various medical issues ranging from high cholesterol to cancer to end of life. They discuss various biases and how statistics and various narratives (stories of other patients) can either be used to mislead or educate.
Quite often there is no one best choice for everyone and no one best doctor for everyone. This very helpful guide to find the right choices for you . This book is full of good advice for both those facing a medical problem and thinking about their choices in doctors.
I liked this book a lot. I bought it to keep on my bookshelf as I am sure I will face some of the issues they discuss here over the coming years. I particularly liked the extensive notes and bibliography. I highly recommend this book.
I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
OK, I am not your typical reader. I am a scientist and have done quite a bit of cell culture. (I am retired now and read a lot.) I knew something about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells and thought the book would be only somewhat interesting and really not worth the time. But I was wrong. The reviews have all been so positive, I figured I should give this book a try. The story here is well-told and adds much detail that I thought I wouldn’t care about. (Did I mention that I was wrong?).
The doctors treating her cancer took her cells without informed consent. (But that was accepted practice until fairly recently.) This was the first immortal human cell line and was extremely important to medical science. There were medical advances and money was made. Yet the Lacks family got nothing. It was all legal but I doubt many would consider it moral.
There are several stories: Henrietta, her immediate family, the extended Lacks family, and the injustices done to them. And these are important stories. The book would be worthwhile if all it did was tell these stories. But it also puts these stories into the larger contexts of ethics, science, medical research, race, class, journalism, poverty, and education. So it is very complex and somehow Ms. Skloot manages to weave all of these facets into a fascinating and educational book in much less than 400 pages.
The reviews have been great and the book has become a best seller. And there is a simple reason for this. Rebecca Skloot has transformed an interesting story of an injustice into a fascinating book.
And unlike many of those who benefited from these cells and this family, Rebecca Skloot did something very strange. She actually tried to help this family. She has established The Henrietta Lacks Foundation to help Henrietta Lacks’ family. She is donating a potion of the book’s proceeds to the foundation and all visitors to the site may donate as well.
This story is really well-told. And different readers may enjoy one aspect more than another. But all aspects are well done and I think fairly covered.
I enjoyed the biography of Andrew Johnson (see previous post) so much I decide to read a short biography of the next president. Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero by Michael Korda is a good short biography. It is part of “The Eminent Lives” series.
It is worth reading because although we usually think of Grant as a great general and poor president, Korda’s biography shows the decency and gentleness that paired with military genius to make Grant the leader he was. He also makes a great case that Grant was a much better president than is usually thought.
Recently I’ve been reading some non-fiction and really enjoyed those books but large non-fiction books can be a bit slow and since I liked the crime fiction by Gabriel Cohen, I thought I would give myself a treat with a couple of his books that were on my “to read” list. These would be “The Graving Dock” and “Neptune Avenue”. And as expected, both were much faster and enjoyable in a different way.
In the past few months, I reviewed 2 books by Gabriel Cohen: “The Ninth Step” and “Red Hook”. I really liked both, the first and fourth in a series about Detective Jack Leightner. “The Graving Dock” and “Neptune Avenue” are and second and third.
Gabriel Cohen’s books are crime novels, they are so much more. Jack grew up near the docks in Red Hook, Brooklyn and is haunted by his childhood (his relationship with his father and the death of his brother mostly) and his failures as an adult (especially a failed marriage, an uneasy relationship with his son, and difficulties in relationships). All in this series have been excellent reads and now that I’ve read all 4 in the series to date, I guess I’ll just have to wait for the next.
Since the sense of place is so important in Gabriel Cohen’s novels, these books are wonderful for those who either know Brooklyn or want to know more about Brooklyn. By the way, a graving dock is a dry dock and is used to repair ships below the water line. And Neptune Avenue is in Brooklyn, the Coney Island, Brighton Beach area.
So I’ll finish up with a few links you might find useful or interesting:
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
Every time that I read Pat Conroy, I remember why I love his writing so much. This book doesn’t disappoint. My Reading Life can be read a chapter at a time or read all at once.
Anyone who has read his books will love this – the books and people that made him the writer he is today.
Link to Pat Conroy’s page at Amazon
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
Finished the first of this planned trilogy. I enjoy historical fiction and Mr. Follett does a wonderful job in this book describing the historical years before WWI.
But the problems I had with this book were the characters. I didn’t care for most of them nor did I want to read about their romantic interludes. The book ends with all his characters surviving. (Kind of hard to believe considering the horrific conditions the author describes.) But I’ll probably will read the next book to see how it continues.
I am currently reading How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. So far I find it very interesting and enjoyable. Montaigne believed the best way to discover how to live a good and satisfying life was in the examination of everyday things and events and writing about them in his Essays. In doing so he seems to have invented a new literary form. And over the centuries since he lived and wrote, many have discovered that Montaigne’s Essays are a valuable tool in understanding their own lives.
I find Bakewell’s book is a wonderful introduction to this writer. I am about 10% through this book and will have more to say about it when finished. Since the book is organized around 20 attempts to answer the “How to Live” question, it may be suited to taking breaks after reading each chapter but so far I have not felt the urge for a break. If I am still as excited about Montaigne’s Essays at the end, I may tackle those.
The opening line is “Don’t read The Book” but I’m glad I did. The book is The Book by M. Clifford.
I thought the idea behind the book was important but I wasn’t always fond of how the author told the story. A good editor may have improved matters. The idea is somewhat similar to other dystopian novels in that the government controls and modifies information.
This book adds an interesting twist in that they do so not by banning books or burning books but by becoming a sole publisher of books which are electronic and can be edited as the government wants and paper copies are no longer printed and old paper copies recycled. The great recycling is presented as an environmental plus and government edits of books are a secret and only suspected by a few.
This reminded me of 1984 with government control of information but the technology is now more believable.
Thus this is a cautionary tale which features eReaders as an instrument of government control. It was an unintentional irony that I read my copy on a Kindle. By the way, the paperback version is about what you would expect to pay for a paperback but the Kindle version is only $2.99 (at least that is what I paid and it was still that when I looked tonight.)
I am a big fan of Pete Hamill’s books. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, I’ll re-read Forever, or one of his other books and write a review here but for now I just have a question. I understand that he has a new book coming out on immigration and I would like to read it. I had read it is only going to be released as an e-book and I thought it was coming our this fall. Last I read said November 15 but I don’t see anywhere to get it. Does anyone know anything about this book< I did a search and can't find anything current. I also looked at his website and Facebook page but there is no information.
The second book from Stuart Neville Collusion continues the story of the violence in North Ireland during the “peace”. It is a bit different from the first (Ghosts of Belfast my review:
http://www.jackreidy.com/blog/2010/10/29/the-ghosts-of-belfast-by-stuart-neville/).
I liked both books. And although both were very violent, the violence hit me differently. I’m not sure why. I think it was because much of Ghosts was about a killer and the violence seems to fit naturally. But Collusion was perhaps less violent overall (I didn’t count the torture and death scenes) and more of a exploration of inner conflicts, right and wrong, and justice.
Much of this is done through the character of Jack Lennon. He was briefly mentioned in Ghosts (perhaps not by name) but here he is the center of attention. An Irish Catholic, he joined the Northern Irish Police because he thought it was the right thing to do and 15 years later is still struggling with the consequences of that decision (and with his Protestant superiors). The internal conflicts in Jack Lennon character are interesting and this book does an excellent job of presenting them. I hope to see him more in future books.
Other than one critical showdown near the end which I thought was overdone, it was a very good read. But the overdone business is just my taste. Another reviewer has a different take on this, see:
http://fionnchu.blogspot.com/2010/10/stuart-nevilles-collusion-book-review.html
If you have a kindle, you may want to consider the option of getting both books in kindle format.
I guess most folks have heard of these books by now. Of course I refer to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl who Played with Fire”, and “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”.
First of all, I think it is a great trilogy. And although you could read then as separate books, you would miss a lot. It is much better to read them in order. The first starts out slowly. At least it seems that way to me and I’ve heard that comment from others. I didn’t really get into the story until about 50 pages. I’ve heard other say it was more for them. But I really think you need those pages to build the background for the characters on which the rest of the series is based.
And once you get thought that initial so period of 50 or more pages, you have 3 page-turners on your hands. And we are talking about a good number of pages. I guess it was about 1500 pages or so for me but I guess that may vary a bit depending on your editions. And of course it you have a Kindle or such there are no pages to turn. And I don’t think anyone has come up with a page-turner phrase for eReaders yet.
So “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” introduces with main characters and tells part of their stories in the first few chapters. Then goes on to involve them in a mystery with several unexpected developments. The characters and situations, like the mystery, are a bit odd (especially Lisbeth of Dragon Tattoo fame) but entirely believable. I know there are plenty of reviews that will tell you something of the plot but that is not what I am doing here. Plenty of reviews like that on Amazon (see my link below). I would have been satisfied with this as a stand-alone book.
But of course I knew there was a second and a third and as I enjoyed the first so much I went on with hardly a break. The second starts out with Lisbeth in an entirely new setting but some the tie-in is obvious, the action moves back to Sweden, and many of the characters from the first book re-appear. We learn a good bit more about Lisbeth and why she is like she is. And some events from the first book make more sense and become more important. The third book follows directly from the second.
Steig Larsson was a journalist and it is probably no accident that a main character is a journalist. They say you should write about what you know. It is the fictional journalist (Mikael Blomkvist) who is convicted of libel and gets involved in the central mystery of book one and brings Lisbeth in to help because of her special talents. She is clearly the main character in all 3 books.
So if you are interest in trying these books (maybe even getting all three at once) or just want to know more about the books or author, please check out the
Steig Larsson Page at Amazon
