drneutron's 2011 nonfiction

This will be to some extent a cross-posting from my 75 book challenge thread, but I'm hoping I'll get into deeper discussion here...

Excellent! Mr. 75 himself. Welcome.

Here's the list of nonfiction so far for 2011:

Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean by Simon Winchester (3.5 stars)
Winchester's book is an interesting look at teh Atlantic Ocean and humanity's interaction with it. The early chapters are quite good, but the later one lag a bit.

An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland by H. P. Jeffers (3 stars)
Nice biography of one of our lesser known Presidents. Nothing special, but a good introduction to the man.

Michael Jackson's Beer Companion by Michael Jackson (2.5 stars)
Read for a brush-up on the differences between ales and lagers. This was once the beer bible. Turns out it's pretty dated - original publication is before the craft beer/microbrewery upswing in the US.

Touched with Fire: Five Presidents and the Civil War Battles That Made Them by James M. Perry (3 stars)
Five US Presidents served in the Civil War at various ranks. This was the best information on Benjamin Harrison I could find at the library. As a bio it was pretty skimpy; as history, not bad at all.

The Summer of Shadows: a Murder, a Pennant Race, and the Twilight of the Best Location in the Nation by Jonathan Knight (4 stars)
I won this one as an ER book - the story of the 1954 Cleveland Indians' winning season leading to a spectacular loss in the World Series in parallel with the Sam Shepard murder trial. In many ways, the book is really about the changes in Cleveland as it moved from The Best Location in the Nation to The Mistake by the Lake. Highly recommended, even for those who aren't baseball fans.

William McKinley by Kevin Phillips (3 stars)
One of the American Presidents series, read for the US Presidents Challenge. McKinley didn't leave many personal papers behind, so Phillips (and other historians) doesn't have a lot to work with. As such, there's more speculation in the book than I'd like. Still, not too bad an introduction of a relatively unknown President.

The Baseball Codes by Jason Turbow (3 stars)
Turbow's book gives a nice discussion of the unwritten rules of baseball, along with stories of some great feuds through the years. Baseball fans will enjoy it. Non-fans, probably not so much.

Running the Books by Avi Steinberg (4 stars)
After graduation from Harvard, Steinberg stumbled onto a job running the library at a maximum security prison in Boston. His book isn't just a clever telling of his experiences with the prisoners and guards. It's also a fascinating look at how the experience changed him. Highly recommended.

American Zombie Gothic by Kyle William Bishop (2.5 stars)
Another ER book - this time a discussion of zombie movies and why we love 'em so. The chapters discussing George Romero's work were pretty good. Other chapters were a bit repetitive. Meh.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (4.5 stars)

One of the best books of the year for me - so much so that I decided to suspend the Presidents Challenge to read the other two volumes in Morris' trilogy on TR. This one covers his life up to the moment he became President following McKinley's assassination.

Good to see you over here too, Jim.

Thanks to both you and qebo! I'm looking forward to concentrating on nonfiction here.

I'm lurking....

Yay! Maggie's here!!

*bows*

Catching up on reading finished while on my latest business trip:

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

A very good history of the events leading up to and through the first month of World War I, August 1914. It's a tragic story where an immense human cost was paid because of national pride, hubris and naive military strategic thinking. Tuchman's got a great sense of phrase-turning; some of her pithy descriptions are delights. But ultimately, I wound up shaking my head over and over at the sheer stupidity of the leaders involved. Recommended, but the need to refer to military movements and Roman-numeralled unit identifiers may turn off some readers.

Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity by Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor

From at least the days of the ancient Greek philosophers, mathematical and philosophical inquiry has gone hand in hand, especially where the infinite is involved. And infinities have always involved paradox. For instance, Zeno gave us the example of a fast runner trying to catch a tortoise. First the runner gets halfway to the tortoise, then gets halfway from that point to the tortoise, and so on. The runner can never catch the tortoise because he must make an infinite number of these "half-steps" to get to the tortoise. And yet in real life, runners catch tortoises quite easily. Trying to understand the nature of reality is a major effort in mathematical research - and set theory was developed in part to try to answer these questions. Georg Cantor developed an approach to explore the nature of mathematical infinities that was extended by the French mathematical community, but the reality-based nature of the French approach to mathematics prevented them from getting to what we would consider modern set theory. The French approach to philosophical thinking in the late 19th and early 20th century also struggled with the nature of the infinite in consistent ways; is infinity an ideal or can an infinity be made actual?

But in Moscow, a small group of young mathematicians discovered Cantor's work and came at it from an approach informed by their religious thinking. All were strongly aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church and a mystical approach known as "Name Worship" (sometimes even considered heretical by the church hierarchy). Name Worshipers recite prayers that recognize the names of God, and they consider that the prayers by naming God in some sense bring God into actuality. This difference in outlook from the French mathematical community led this group that became the Moscow School of Mathematics to develop descriptive set theory, an early version of modern set theory.

Naming Infinity is a nicely done history of this process of mathematical research. The set theory and Cantor's approach to infinities is well described at a level appropriate for a general audience. But the majority of the book isn't about the math. It's about the people doing the math. These are some fascinating people who lived through some difficult times, especially after the Soviet Union was established and through Stalin's reign. It's the story of competition between mathematical communities, between individuals within the Moscow School and the Soviet system, even between the Soviet government and the Russian Orthodox Church. It's a short book - about 200 pages of text - but there's a great history in it.

both of those sound really good from your description!

Ancient History: Evidence and Models by M. I. Finley

I'm not a historian - especially of ancient Greek or Roman eras - but I've got an amateur's interest in the subject. Finley's short book is a very nice discussion of the problems resulting from trying to present "the past as it really was", especially when most of our historical information comes from the surviving writings of ancient historians with a very different outlook on how do to history than modern historians. His discussion of the limitations of evidence, the inherent biases that creep into historical work no matter how hard we try not to let that happen, and the intersection between history and other disciplines led to a description of model-based research that I hadn't really thought about before. As an engineer, the idea of "testable" models, even if qualitative rather than quantitative, appeals to me. I'd like to see more of how this works.

Guardedly recommended. This is a technical work, and nonexperts may not follow everything that's said. Still, the ideas were interesting to think about.

I'm seeing so many intriguing history books mentioned on LT lately, but I am woefully ignorant and don't quite know where to begin. Seems the ideal would be a combination of sweeping overviews and compelling stories that bring an era to life -- infrastructure fleshed out with details. As another engineer, of sorts, I too am attracted to the "testable model" approach as an abstract concept, and to the process of research and reconstruction, even though my interest in Greek and Roman history is negligible. Thanks for this review. Added to the wishlist...

Speaking of engineering, I should be working right now... $#% LT for always staring at me on the computer screen.

After reading The War Lovers I added Morris' Roosevelt trilogy to the TBR pile, hopefully I'll at least get to the first one over the summer.

Jerusalem 1913 by Amy Dockser Marcus

Jerusalem is one of those few places on Earth that seems never to be able to be at peace. Of course, it's not true - there have been plenty of times when there wasn't. But the times of conflict fill the histories of continents and at least three religions. Over the last hundred years, the modern Arab-Israeli conflict has become the latest of these. Amy Dockser Marcus, profoundly affected by her experiences in Jerusalem, examines how we got to the current state of affairs in Palestine by showing vignettes of the city in 1898 through the beginning of World War I.

Jerusalem 1913 isn't so much an depth study of the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict as it is a series of studies of the people and decisions made during the period of interest. Of special note is Dockser Marcus' ability to present how opportunities for peace were missed and how that decision-making both mirrored and led to today's situation.

Highly recommended.

It sounds like an interesting book. The Ottoman Empire is crumbling and Zionism is beginning.

No two peoples in the world are more similar than the Arabs and the Jews in many ways. I think the only thing that keeps peace in the Middle East today is the Arab knowledge of Israeli nuclear weapons.

The similarity between the Arab leaders and the Zionists and the choices they made is one of the main points made in the book. I was really surprised to see how much both sides had to gain by joining forces to build a common society.

Yeah, the nuclear factor is probably the main factor in why we haven't had another major attack of Israel.

14: I've added the book to my wishlist, but I dunno. I'm afraid that if I get into the Arab-Israeli conflict, I may never get out...

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

There's not a whole lot I can add to the discussion on this one - it's got more than 150 reviews on LT alone - except to say that I loved it!

Henrietta Lacks developed a particularly fast-growing and invasive cervical cancer that killed her in 1951. Unbeknownst to her or her family, a sample of the tissue was taken by a researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital where she was treated, and that sample turned out to be a line of "immortal" cells that formed the basis of a vast body of medical and biological research even to the present. In fact, it wasn't until a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine some twenty years later tracked down the source of the famous HeLa cells that Henrietta's family knew anything about it. Skloot's book touches on the cells and the research, but in reality is mostly about Henrietta and the reaction of her family to finding out about what had been done.

For me, the bigger lesson of the book is that different people see scientific research like this in so many different ways. The original researcher thought nothing of taking a small sample from Henrietta and freely distributing resulting cells to other researchers. Some saw the work as an opportunity to start businesses and market the cells. Henrietta's family fundamentally didn't understand what was happening to the cells and until Skloot connected them with a particular individual at Hopkins had no sense of even what a cell is. From their perspective, the system had taken advantage of their mother and them for profit and had cheated them of the credit and money due them from the research. It's a bit of a wakeup call for me to remember as I work as an engineer that I need to work very hard to explain to folks why e do what we do and why it's important.

Just found your thread and have added Naming Infinity to my WL. I'm very good at buying maths books, less good at reading them, but this one sounds really good. I'll be a good test for how hard the math is - I've done 2nd year analysis but not much set theory at all.

19: I'm very good at buying maths books, less good at reading them

Heh. Me too. I decree them "reference".

Hi Dr N

I read the Henrietta Lacks book when it first came out as I work with Hela cells everyday. I'm one of those who learned in college (1970's) that HeLa stood for Helen Lawrence. I found the book very eyeopening. I'm not sure how well the author explained how the cells are used (personally I work in a no-profit NIH lab where all discoveries are public domain after publication). But I now see the humanity behind the cells as I work with them each day.

#19, 20 - No worries on the level of mathematical sophistication with Naming Infinity. It's at a non-technical, easily accessible level.

#21 - I'm glad to hear from someone that's in the field. I got the sense of the research, but it's clear that Skloot doesn't have much technical expertise with this type of research. It worked out well, though, since as you say, the story's more about the humanity than the research. One thing that really smacked me in the head reading this book was just how little Henrietta's family understood the science even at what we'd assume is a very basic level. The gulf between the scientists and family was so much wider than I imagined it would be.

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

Second in Morris' three-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt - easily the most interesting US President for me. Theodore Rex concentrates on TR's presidency (in 550 pages, no less) and is pretty detailed. That's fine since he's discussing some really important topics like the intrigue leading up to the Panama Canal Treaty, TR's trust-busting and capital/labor relations, and the buildup of the US Navy to counter German and British influence in the Western Hemisphere, among others. Morris doesn't just talk about issues and politics, though. Roosevelt the man is the focus: his family, friends, political allies and enemies, his reaching pretty much the pinnacle of power and influence in the US, his walking away from it in 1908. We see TR as less the uber-man and more the man as he ages and mellows a bit.

Morris' writing is top-notch. I'm highly recommending the trilogy - even though I haven't gotten to the third yet, it's hard for me to imagine it fails after the first two succeed so well!

Oh, and yeah, the teddy bear story shows up in this volume. :)

The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn

Jeff Guinn, in The Last Gunfight, cuts through the myth-making to tell the true story of the fight between the Earps and Clantons that became to be known as the Gunfight at the OK Corral. In October 1881, Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and friend Doc Holliday met Ike and Billy Clanton and two friends in one of the classic gunfights of the Old West. Modern myth - driven by spin-doctoring by survivors and the desire to sell an image of the Wild West - paints the conflict as upright lawmen against rustlers and outlaws. The reality is, of course, more complicated, and Guinn does a nice job of presenting it.

The Earps, especially Wyatt, used law enforcement as a way to get the respect he thought he deserved. He served time as Deputy Sheriff, with an eye on election in the top job. Virgil was Deputy Marshall and Tombstone police chief. But they weren't the upstanding citizens Wyatt wanted to be remembered as - gamblers and saloon keepers, even running a brothel at one point. The Clantons weren't the outlaws they've been portrayed either. Yes, they helped rustlers sell cattle stolen from ranchers in Mexico, and yes, Ike Clanton was a drunk and was looking to pick a fight. But mostly he was a poor farmer trying to get by, and the famous gunfight was really more an over-reaction by the Earps to a loud drunk who was on his way out of town. Oh, and the fight didn't even happen at the OK Corral - it was more an ambush in an alley behind the corral.

Guinn's book is pretty well written, and the story's fascinating. His concentration on the people involved really made the story come to life. Recommended!

To the End of the Earth by Tom Avery

In 1909, Robert Peary led an expedition to the Arctic with the goal of becoming the first to reach the North Pole. After developing a system of resupply that allowed him to get a fresh team and dogs to a base camp with 100 miles of the Pole, he and Matthew Henson, along with four Inuit, did it. Of course, as soon as Peary got back, questions about Peary's record-keeping popped up and over the years, the belief that Peary cheated became conventional wisdom - mainly based on the idea that Peary just couldn't have covered territory as fast as he reported. Roll forward to 2005. Tom Avery, after a successful trek on foot to the South Pole, got the idea to duplicate Peary's trip to show that travel as fast as he reported is, in fact, possible. To The End of the Earth is the story of their expedition.

Avery's trip was certainly eventful, and at times downright horrifying. Avery and his team of four other explorers, 16 dogs and two sleds managed to beat Peary's time to the pole by 4 hours, lending credence to the idea that Peary did indeed make the journey he said he did - though not without a bit of controversy himself. It's an exciting story, one I was eager to read. Unfortunately, Avery's a much better explorer than writer. It's not that the book was bad, it's just that the main thing I got out of it was a sense of the size of Avery's ego. I know that it takes a strong personality to do the things explorers do, but it got to be a bit much. Avery adds a bit about Peary and the history of polar exploration. With more of this and a bit of toning down, To the End of the Earth could have been outstanding instead of just average.

thumbs up!

25: Well, most of us are better writers than explorers. And most of us are not great writers. So, a forgivable flaw in the person, but maybe less forgivable of the publisher.

drneutron,

That is interesting, since the 1st book I read this year was North to the Pole by Will Steger, which was an 1986 expedition to duplicate Peary's feat. Part of their misson was the vindication of Peary as well. They did not use any electronic navigation devices, and would accept no outside help either, with the one exception of flights to pick up played out dogs and humans. (so neither would have to die) While the planes were on the ice, they religiously refused to even accept a cup of coco from the crew.

You might want to check that one out, as I will try and find a copy of the Avery book.

Bill Masom

Wow, what synchronicity! It sounds like to two teams took much the same approach. I'll see if I can find North to the Pole.

drneutron,

Here is what I found on the Web about the Steger expedition:

http://www.willsteger.com/en/expeditions/north-pole-86

"On March 7, 1986, the Steger International Polar Expedition, made up of seven men and one woman, set out by dogsled to reach the North Pole. In a deliberate throwback to the early explorers, the(y) sought to complete the journey without resupply. They would be entirely reliant on the three tons of supplies they brought with them; there would be no airlifts with rested dogs, new equipment, or extra food and fuel. In part they chose this approach to shed light on the historically intriguing and heavily debated question of whether Robert Peary reached the Pole in a similar manner in 1909.

Fifty-five days and a thousand zig-zag miles later, after enduring -70°F temperatures and crossing the Arctic Ocean as it began to break apart with the coming of spring, six team members completed the journey. It was a spectacular feat of unsurpassed daring, courage and commitment."

Since we both are interested in Polar exploration, I am eagerly watching your threads for new reads, and your comments.

Bill Masom

Hmmm, they took an interesting approach, and their success lends credence to Peary's claim of making it to the pole. But the Peary Method did do resupply. He divided his overall group into teams. The first drove to his first resupply point with a cache of supplies and established a camp, the second followed, pushed to the second resupply location and set up another camp. He did this one more time, then followed the last resupply team and only had to push hard for the last 130 or so miles from the last camp to the pole. By the time he got to the last camp, there was a pretty well established route and only had to break trail in the final push, so his team and dogs were fresh.

Avery's team simulated the base camp approach with air resupply limited to the volume and weight of material Peary used. Plus no new dogs or people were allowed. But they still had to break the entire trail themselves and were pretty exhausted for the majority of the trip. They were able to match some of Peary's mileage, though, which is pretty astonishing to me given their relatively worse physical condition. Avery's team never planned to make the return trip, though, and were airlifted out at the pole. So I suppose they could use up reserves Peary would have needed to account for the trip back.

Steger's approach sounds more like Peary's early approach where he did use bigger sleds and smaller teams without the base camp approach. Now I've *really* got to find the Steger book! :)

A Man of Numbers by Keith Devlin

Back in the 70s and early 80s, computers were these mysterious machines tended by a select few specialists. Then along came engineers who invented a much more efficient way to use computers through keyboards and mice and graphical user interfaces. But until people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs came along to introduce this better way of computing to the masses, all these great improvements didn't make much difference.

So what does this have to do with Leonardo of Pisa, a mathematician also known as Fibonacci who lived at the beginning of the 13th century? Well, at the time, pretty much everybody in Europe used Roman numerals, crude techniques for calculation, and counting tables for business, engineering, navigation, and everyday life. The Arabs used an adaptation of an Indian system using ten numerals and arithmetic essentially that of modern day. It was a much more efficient system, but only those European scholars who knew Arabic or had access to a Latin translation of Arabic works knew anything about it. Leonardo, though, spent time in his youth with his father as representatives of the Pisano business community in north Africa, and while there learned about the Arabic system. He was quite a talented mathematician, and wrote a text codifying and explaining this new system that became a widely regarded work and led to the eventual growth of mathematical education in Europe.

A Man of Numbers is a small book, but one packed nicely with the delightful story of Leonardo and his time. Devlin spends time discussing the fascinating ramifications of the adoption of the Arabic system on commerce and education, nearly every aspect of life. He also takes on the question of Leonardo's influence on later writers of arithmetical and algebraic works. Of course, Devlin discusses the Fibonacci sequence as well, the one thing Leonardo is remembered for today, in spite of his wide ranging influence in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Highly recommended, even for non-mathematical people. There's a bit of math here, but it's all very well explained!

32: I finally plopped my reviews into the proper container because of this book, with an eye toward claiming credentials, but as of today the status is "20 review copies available, 1012 members requesting", and ER books of interest don't come along often enough for me to take the next step and sign up. So I'm content to add it to the wishlist and wait awhile.

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh

I've been interested in learning more about the whole Julian Assange/WikiLeaks affair for a bit, was at the library the other day and saw this one on the shelves. There are several books out now on the subject - this one's by editors at the Guardian who worked with Assange on the three big releases of the last couple of years: event logs from Iraq, from Afghanistan, and the diplomatic cables release.

Autobiography is always something I approach with a measure of caution. I've seen some pretty blatant examples of attempts at image control by authors, when I'm interested in a more objective view of the person and the story. WikiLeaks is the Guardian's attempt at image control autobiography. There's good stuff here; the account of events is generally reliable, I think. But I did get a bit tired of hearing how honest and upright the Guardian and it's staff are, how earth-shaking the releases were, and how it's all due to the author who managed to work with a very difficult person. I have to admit that I almost gave up on it when they, in a sly way, tried to take credit for causing the Tunisian revolution earlier this year. Really? That situation had been brewing for a while and the diplomatic cables may have been of interest to some in the rebellion. But the situation is a whole lot more complicated than that. At some point, a historian will write an account of events that will hopefully be more objective.

What interested me most was reading how "big" the story was while looking back at what turned out to be mostly a flash in the pan. Sure, we had politicians all over the world spouting rhetoric about the releases, but in the end, not much came of it except some diplomats got reshuffled and some leaders got embarrassed. There's an air of "no, wait, this really *was* important" to the book that wasn't horribly convincing. Still, as I said, it did give a pretty good account of events, which was mostly what I wanted.

Guardedly recommended - take some of it with a grain of salt.

thanks for the interesting review drN! Ive been trying to figure out (rather passively I admit) what the whole curfuffle about WikiLeaks was really about aside from control and information -- and rather snippets of information at that. It seemed to me that at the very most it would be important for those who had 90% of the pieces of the puzzle already in place or in the know, but with few if any repercussions for those not already involved. Kinda like the hacking of the Uni East Anglia climate scientists - it sucked for those involved and adds fuel to the fire, but doesn't change facts or reality in any substantial way.

I kinda felt that reading At the Center of the Storm was like that - there was plenty in there that was factual, but even still it should be taken with a grain of salt because there was clearly an axe to grind and a point to make with certain sections.

Probably a good exercise in 'don't believe every word written down' in any case!

Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

I finished up the third in Edmund Morris' excellent trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt while on a mini-vacation/trip to get the son back to college. As with the other volumes, the story's great, Morris' work is high quality, and the book's highly readable.

This volume concentrates on the years following Roosevelt's terms as President. TR followed big changes with adventures - his safari after leaving office and explored an unknown Brazilian river after losing in 1912 as a third-party candidate. It's one of my favorite thing about Teddy, and these passages were some of the best. Other sections on Teddy's political dealings, both to preserve his progressive ideals and to get Wilson to enter WWI to aid Britain and France - were less interesting, but mainly because Teddy was so ineffective in his attempts at influence, even as he was mostly wildly popular with the public. In the end, this is a book about a man past his prime, both physically and politically, and so has a measure of sadness to it.

The whole trilogy is highly recommended!

J. R. R. Tolkien and J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, edited by Harold Bloom

Two small volumes part of Harold Bloom's Modern Critical Views and Modern Critical Interpretations series on authors and books. Both are collections of essays and excerpts from other books on Tolkien and LOTR.

This format isn't one I usually appreciate, but my library picked up copies and I thought I'd give Bloom a try. They were mixed bag, as is usual. Some of the works were quite good, others worth skipping.

I was curious to see that both volumes are from the 2009 timeframe, however the chapters selected were no later than 1984 or so. Surely there's been *some* worthy critical work done since the mid 80s. I wish Bloom had written at least some kind of description of why he chose the works he did.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

FIt's funny, quirky true crime with a boatload of odd characters. Where else will you find murder in a historic house as told by a con man lawyer, various high society snobs, a gender bending exotic dancer, etc, etc? It's deliciously full of gossip and behind-the-scenes looks at a small Southern city that doesn't seem to have changed much since Sherman's march to the sea. What's hard to imagine is that this book's nonfiction!

1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs by James Chace

James Chace had an opportunity to tell a great story with his accounting of the Presidential election of 1912. Four very interesting men ran during a time when the US political landscape was changing and some very modern ideas were coming into play - things we take for granted today like an 8 hour workday, minimum wage, food and drug safety protections, regulation of businesses. After all, we had Taft and Teddy Roosevelt splitting the party, Wilson battling the Democratic party bosses, and the peak of the Socialist Party influence with Eugene Debs.

Unfortunately, Chace's retelling is only adequate. He's concise and moves the story along, but never seems to make the people come alive. I can't really recommend the book except to those studying the politics and political maneuvering of the era.

That's a real shame about 1912 because it does sound like it has the potential for an excellent book. I really liked Chace's bio of Dean Acheson but will skip this one.

I'm adding your Leonardo of Pisa book to my wishlist - sounds really interesting.

39: Too bad. I recently read The River of Doubt (inspired by your positive review among others), so a book about the 1912 election would catch my eye.

I hate to say it because it's so big, but I suspect Edmund Morris' Roosevelt trilogy may be the best work that includes the 1912 election. They're about 600 pages apiece, if I remember right. Colonel Roosevelt would be the one on this part of TR's life.

Hmm, I'm interested but probably not _that_ interested. At least not until I've read several other hefty tomes that I already have on hand.

The Secret Life of Pronouns by James W. Pennebaker

James Pennebaker, Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, has spent a long time studying how people use words. He and his students have gathered an impressive collection of studies on the relationships between word use and gender, personality, emotions, etc. The Secret Life of Pronouns is his popularization of the work.

Generally, I thought his ideas were interesting, though hardly Earth-shaking in scope or technique. The main method is through computerized word counts and a bit deeper analysis combined with standard techniques to match statistical patterns of use to various psychological and sociological characteristics. I struggled through the book with two issues:

- Pennebaker uses small percentage differences between word use by, for example, males and females to draw distinctions. From this, he makes some pretty serious claims - like being able to tell whether a person is male or female from a relatively small sample. I agree that he can probably tell with some statistical uncertainty, and I believe he certainly understands that his conclusions about the source of a writing sample are statistically based. But in his text, he states very definitively on more than a few occasions that he absolutely can distinguish details of the writing sample source. This is disingenuous and takes away from the book.

- The book doesn't give much real information about the statistics behind what he's claiming, nor does he ever really address issues associated with misinterpretation such as variations in an author's texts that are intended.

All in all, it's worth a read, but because of these two issues, I can't give it more than 3 stars.

Woodrow Wilson by John Milton Cooper Jr.

Wilson came to the Presidency as a result of the most unusual election of 1912 - the three-way race between Taft, Wilson and Roosevelt with the added sidelight of Eugene Debs running at the peak of the Socialist Party. He beat Teddy Roosevelt at his own Progressive game, and turned the Democrats to reform by bringing about changes that continue today. He tried to keep the nation out of a European war, then when he had no real choice, quickly got the nation turned around to raise an army and support the war effort. He tried to bring the about a League of Nations to bring peace and prevent war from happening again - to make World War I the war to end all wars. Yet he was most certainly a passive racist who could barely speak out against lynching. He couldn't bring himself to compromise to complete the work of the League of Nations. His decisions related to the resolution of the war may have directly led to the Second World War. And in the end, his stroke left us with an incapacitated President whose administration was carried by his wife and the Cabinet.

Cooper's book was well researched and gave a balanced view of a much-discussed man. Its best feature is its completeness - everything's in there. Unfortunately, it's also a bit of a slog to get through, at least until the end when discussing the aftereffects of Wilson's stroke. Guardedly recommended for its balanced coverage of a very interesting man.

Thanks. A good review and might actually encourage me to leave the streets of fantasy and get back to some history. (-:

Grand Pursuit by Sylvia Nasar

Bleah. I really liked A Beautiful Mind, so was looking forward to Grand Pursuit, Nasar's history of economic theory beginning with Dickens. She purports to cover the big ideas, but doesn't really talk about economics much. Instead, the book's more a sketch biography of the big names in the field - not at all what I wanted. While these are relatively interesting sketches, there's not much meat here.

Sorry, can't recommend it. :(

47: Well that's a disappointment.

Yep. It was for me too. I almost bought a copy at the National Book Fest. Glad I didn't!

Cartel by Sylvia Longmire

Sylvia Longmire has taken her experience in fighting the drug war and turned it into a nicely done exposition on Mexico, drug cartels,and the US response. That last bit is probably the most interesting part of Cartel - why we should care about the situation in Mexico and along the border and what we should do about it. I found her discussion of conditions in Mexico pretty informative; like many in the US, I hadn't thought about it much. Her actions sound pragmatic, and I can see that some of these things need to be done. The best part, though, is that I found her book remarkably apolitical in what is usually a very politically charged arena. Cartel is a book I'll recommend to folks who want a rational perspective on the drug war, its consequences and possible paths forward.

That one does look interesting!

50: Useful. I too know little. Alas, I know little about much, and have higher priorities.
(BTW, your touchstone got the wrong book.)

Fixed!

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

James Garfield is one of the least known US Presidents. He didn't want to be President, and was elected through a fluke of being caught between two powerful factions of the Republican Party as a compromise candidate. Before he ever really got started in his administration, a mentally ill Charles Guiteau, who thought God had told him to kill Garfield, shot him in the back.

But that's not what killed Garfield. The gunshot wound was bad, but others had survived worse. No major organs were hit, and the bleeding was brought under control pretty quickly. But US doctors, especially the one who forced his way in as Garfield's primary caregiver, didn't practice the antiseptic methods developed by Lister and widely practiced in Europe. The process of repeatedly trying to find the bullet introduced considerable contamination and eventual massive sepsis, the real cause of death after nearly three months of agony.

Millard wrote the excellent River of Doubt and now has turned her pen to Garfield's story, along with all the interesting people involved. Like Alexander Graham Bell, who was driven to invent a way to non-invasively find the bullet. And Lucretia Garfield, who spent her days caring for her husband while watching him waste away. plus, it was great to hear her speak

Wishlisting that book, I am!

I heard only the the end of her presentation, when Garfield's hair spilled out of an envelope. Wishlisted, when it gets to being a paperback.

Concepts of Particle Physics: Volume I by Kurt Gottfried and Victor Weisskopf

First volume in a two-volume set laying out the Standard Model of particle physics a la mid-Eighties understanding. This one's the basic ideas and phenomenology, while the second volume covers the mathematical theory. We're approaching 30 years down the road and much work has been done in the field since the book came out, but the first volume, at least, is still pretty good and pretty current. That might change if the news from CERN on the Higgs boson isn't what people expect!

Warren G. Harding by John W. Dean

Arthur Schlesinger chose John Dean, President Nixon's White House counsel during the Watergate scandal, to write the biography of Warren Harding for the American Presidents series. An account of one of the most infamous, scandal-ridden administrations by one of the group caught up in the more recent scandal-ridden administrations. Really? Surprisingly enough, though, this is a good book! Dean has done the research - he's gone beyond the gossip and the overblown histories that have been published to source material released early in this decade - to put together a more accurate picture of a man known more for his tarred reputation than for his actual self.

Warren Harding was a second tier politician in the Ohio machine who was known for not making enemies of anybody. He traded on his good looks, inoffensive spirit and connections through his newspaper into first an Ohio legislature seat, then into the US Senate. In the Senate, he didn't really do much, but had a great reputation with other Senators. Then after Woodrow Wilson realized that he wasn't going to be able to run for a third term in 1920, Harding managed to use the same tactics to jump into the Republican nomination as a deadlock breaker, then into the Presidency itself. Harding loved to "bloviate" - flowery speeches in formal sounding language were his specialty - and actually brought the term into general use in the English language. He also liked his poker and his liquor, but not nearly as much as the House on K Street stories would later lead folks to believe.

Harding didn't accomplish much in the way of legislative agenda while in office. But he did pick some very good Cabinet members - Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover, for instance. These were able to get the country back on track economically after the war, and attempted to lead the world in naval disarmament. Unfortunately, he also selected Albert Fall at Interior and Harry Daugherty for Attorney General, leading to the Teapot Dome oil reserve scandal, and others. Just as multiple scandals were starting to come out, Harding died of a heart attack while on a trip to Alaska and the West Coast. The timing was perfect to allow the consequences of the scandals and investigations to completely color later historical evaluation of Harding.

If we can believe Dean, Harding was neither the corrupt politician he's often portrayed nor the clueless puppet that loved poker and women in smoked-filled back rooms. Yes, he had a long-term affair in his younger days. Yes, he made dome bad choices of friends. But he's also not the poster child for political corruption he was later made out to be. Dean's account is very good and is worth a look for those who want a more true picture of the man Warren Harding.