Rubicon

Posted on March 30, 2009 by smellincoffee

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
© 2003 Tom Holland
407 pages, including index

As a student of history, Rome holds a particularly strong fascination for me. Having been brought up in western civilization, Roman history is my history. I can see echoes of it in my everyday life, from the words I use to the ways in which I think. Despite its importance, it has been quite some time since I refreshed myself in its history, and so this week I read Rubicon: the Last Years of the Roman Republic. The author begins by stating that narrative history is starting to come back into vogue now, and that is the style in which he intends to write. For my part, I prefer narrative history to any other kind I know about.

More than two millennia after the Republic’s collapse, the “extraordinary character” of the men — and women — who starred in its drama still astonishes. But so too — less well known perhaps than a Caesar, or a Cicero, or a Cleopatra, but more remarkably than any of them — does the Roman Republic itself. If there is much about it we can never know, then still there is much that can be brought back to life, its citizens half emerging from antique marble, their faces illumined by a background of gold and fire, the glare of an alien yet sometimes eerily familiar world.


– from the preface

Holland begins with “The Paradoxical Republic”, where he examines the character of the Republic itself, telling the reader of its many contradictions: that it urged its citizens to care for glory above all, but that it also also tried to corral that zeal for glory into purposes that would increase the stature of the state: that its citizens were both free and tyrannized, and that despite all of its problems there existed “an almost religious sense of community”. Here he introduces about the growing influence of populist politics versus patrician politics — a theme is woven throughout the book. In “The Sibyl’s Curse”, Holland addresses a kind of morbid fear that Roman citizens had about the splendor of their Republic, that one day its own citizens would destroy it. I was unaware of the “prophecies of Sibyl”, but according to Holland three books of prophetic sayings were hidden in one of the temples and consulted during moments of great crisis.

Beginning with the third chapter, the book becomes less background and more narrative. Like all narratives, this is one driven by characters, and the first is the character of Sulla. Holland puts to pen Sulla’s rising fortune and influence and his conflict with Marius, leading to the civil wars, the existence of which surprised me the first time I heard about them so many years ago. Sulla, Crassus, and Marius all dominate the first part of the book. Sulla is perhaps the most difficult to put one’s finger on, Crassus perhaps the easiest. Given that Sulla and Crassus were both characters in the Roman fiction I’ve been reading, my interest in them was particularly heightened. In “Fame is the Spur”, Holland introduces the young character of Caesar, who will return — obviously, given the book’s title.

Caesar emerges as Sulla and Marius are passing way into death and as the Republic is now driven by the likes of Pompey and Crassus. Holland is not just interested in political power, however. He also visits men like Cato and Cicero, who will be voices questioning the way the Republic is crumbling until the end of the book. (Holland mentions two trials of Cicero’s: one was in Imperium, and the other was in Roman Blood. Holland’s description holds firm with both Harris’ and Saylor’s, increasing my appreciation for both. They seemed to have been able to render a story while keeping it true to the facts at hand, assuming all three of them are not engaging in an authorial conspiracy. The latter third of the book begins with the First Triumvirate, and the beginning of the end for the Republic. We can see the Republic’s old ideals fading even as they are championed.

The book does not end with the Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. Holland continues, describing the war between Marc Antony and young Octavian. Holland titles this “World War”, and this is typical. The narrative is somewhat informal, and Holland has a tendency to impose 20th century terminology on the history of the past. He refers to Marius’ putsch, calls Pompey the “Generalissimo”, and describes Caesar’s war in Gaul as consisting of a “blitzkieg“. The latter is somewhat amusing given the location (Gaul being France), but I didn’t enjoy the “imposition”. This is a matter of taste, of course, but it seemed to detract from the purity of the text for me. Overall, though, I found the book to be quite enjoyable. It raised a lot of issues for me, personally.

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Roman Blood

Posted on March 28, 2009 by smellincoffee

Roman Blood: A Novel of Ancient Rome
© 1991 Steven Saylor
401 pages

They had an awful lot of sex in ancient Rome. Not quite as much as the Cro–Magnons in Jean M. Auel’s Earth Children series, but a good part of this book is people trying to further people the Republic. The same friend who told me about Robert Harris’ Imperium and Pompeii also told me about the Roma Sub Rosa series by Steven Saylor, an apparent mystery series set in ancient Rome. That may seem like an unlikely setting, but it’s working so far. Roman Blood is the first in said series, and begins with Tiro — the loyal servant of Cicero who penned who told us the story of Imperium — arriving at the door of Gordianus the finder, the ancient Republic’s version of a private eye. Young Cicero — who is just beginning his career as an advocate — has been assigned a troublesome case, one involving patricide. Given Cicero’s limited experience and the short time in which he is to build a case, the soon-to-be master orator hires Gordianus to help him find evidence that Sextus Rosicus — the accused — is innocent.

What begins to unfold is a gritty detective novel that could be just as easily set in 1930s New York as in the Roman Republic. Gordianus quickly receives threats to his life as what began as a simple murder investigation takes on hints of political corruption. Together, Tiro and Gordianus will travel throughout Rome, visiting urine-soaked plebian alleys as well as luxurious palatine estates — with a brothel thrown in. As the story continues to unfold, though, it becomes more than just a detective novel, and the whole story does not become apparent until after the trial is over. I found Saylor’s prose to be enjoyable, and his descriptions sometimes waxed on poetic, especially when describing the city of Rome. The story is told through the first-person, although Gordianus seems to be aware of the reader following behind him: some of his comments seem to be made for our sakes. Because Cicero and Tiro are main characters of this novel and of Imperium, the urge to compare the two is almost irresistible. It seems somehow unjust to compare one author’s work to another as if one were authoritative, but I will say that Saylor’s depiction shows a different side of Tiro than Harris. We first see it in a brothel. The rate at which we see characters engaging in sexual intercourse seems to increase in intensity as the trial approaches, and then vanishing soon afterwards. In my experience reading fiction, I’ve found that depictions of sex are really hit and miss. Sometimes they work well and fold into the story, but more often than not it seems as if the author is writing on sex gratuitously. That became the case for me in the middle of the book, and is essentially my only negative comment.

Because my knowledge of Roman life is still fairly limited at this point, I cannot comment with any authority on its historicity. I did notice — and here I am comparing Saylor to Harris — that Saylor’s depiction of a trial was quite different from Harris’. In Harris’, the trial wore on for days while the candidates gave arguments and rebutted their opponents. In Saylor’s trial, the event takes place in one day and with only two arguments. This may be because the two proceedings took place in different courts. In the afterward, Saylor writes that the trial in the book was a real trial and that Cicero’s arguments were used in the book with some alterations to make them fit into a narrative. He makes further comments on his sources and how he used them, which I appreciate. Reading historical fiction set in such a world apart from ours can make it difficult to discern what liberties the author has taken with the truth. I found the novel to be enjoyable overall and may continue in the series.

Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Freakonomics

Posted on March 25, 2009 by smellincoffee

Freakonomics: Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Revised and Expanded Edition)
© 2005 Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
320 pages

I gave little thought to choosing to read this book this particular week. I’d heard of the book before, and decided to give it a go. I am generally not so casual with my reading — I’m actually very picky. Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Economics is not a favorite subject of mine beyond how it shapes society and influences history. I can remember various terms from my economics courses in my freshman year — “elasticity”, “oligopoly”, and “opportunity cost” among them — but mostly what I remember is that my professor had a knack for explaining various economic situations through his passion for pints of BlueBell ice cream.

It pleased me, then, to see that this is not a book about economics: it is more a book of applying economic principles, namely seeing situations in terms of incentives, to various questions. Beyond that, there is no unifying theme to the book. The authors acknowledge this and almost seem proud of it, stating in the “expanded” parts of the book that there’s no reason books should have to have a unifying theme. They see the book as a collection of essays applying the same means to answer varying questions, and since other collections (like short story collections) can only own a very general theme, the authors are not particularly worried. Steven Levitt is the “rogue economist”, while Dubner is the writer.

Some of the essays have whimsical titles, like “What Do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?”, while some are slightly more serious — “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” The essays — constituting the original book — take up about two-thirds of the book’s overall volume. The first chapter introduces the idea of incentives, and uses it to examine the behavior of schoolteachers regarding classroom performance on standardized tests and the ranking systems of sumo wrestlers. What schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common is a willingness to cheat, provided that they are accidentally given incentives to do so. In “How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents,” Levitt argues that “nothing is more powerful than information, especially when its power is abused”. Chapters three and four address the economics of drug trafficking and the decline of crime, while the last two chapters deal with parenting issues — from the naming of children to value of “good schools”.

While it is difficult to make generalizations on the contents’ book*, I can say that reading it was fun. I would not expect to be entertained by economic principles, but I was. The information was also thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing. For instance, in “Where Have All the Criminals Gone?”, Levitt critiques various explanations put forth for the decline of crime in the United States during the mid-late 1990s — a growing economic, capital punishment, gun-control laws — and puts forth a few ideas of his own, namely fluctuations in drug trafficking and the Roe v. Wade case. That last one may give you pause, as it did me. The idea is that abortions, happening disproportionally among low-income families in situations that promote contempt for the legal system and greater opportunities in criminal activities — lower crime in a passive way. Although I find the idea repulsive and sinister, the chain of events seems to work. Levitt acknowledges the same revulsion. If this is true, it only supports my idea that good can come from evil and evil from good: not that I view early-term abortion as evil, but I do view the need for it as a social problem. The last third of the book consists of various newspaper articles written by and about Levitt, as well as print forms of his blog entries. These, too, have no general theme outside of Levitt looking for economic principles at work behind social questions.

Although I chose the book rather randomly and its suggested topic does not appeal to me, I found the book to be an enjoyable read. If you can find it, I think it would be a solid and quick read.

* I noticed this mistake in proofreading, but it amused me so I kept it.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | Leave a comment

This Week at the Library 22/3

Posted on March 23, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell
  • An Open Heart, Tenzin Gyatso
  • Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup
  • Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
  • The Naked Sun, Isaac Asimov
  • Real-Life X-Files, Joe Nickell
  • Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History, Patrick Hunt
  • Frontiers II, Isaac and Janet Asimov
  • Ethics for the New Millennium, Tenzin Gyatso
  • Archangel, Robert Harris

The week of spring break was busy for me. Although I was able to spend time with my extended family and watch a host of movies, I also managed to read a little bit. I began with Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, a curious book that is hard to describe. Vowell’s subject is John Winthrop, leader-ruler of the Massachusetts Bay colony of Puritans. While telling us of the Puritans’ commitment to build a shining city on a hill, their struggles settling, Winthrop’s numerous personal conflicts with fellow Puritans, and the Pequot War, she comments on the contemporary United States. It’s not a history book, a biography, or a work of political commentary — but it is a little of each.

Next I read An Open Heart by Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. This book builds somewhat on his The Art of Happiness while explaining some tenets of Buddhism and providing some specific meditative techniques for cultivating compassion. The explanation of religious principles was somewhat informative, but I prefer a more natural approach to dealing with other people: rather than engaging in mental exercises where I “take on” someone else’s pain and give them mine. The book didn’t seem to have the life that The Art of Happiness did.

In a similar vein, I read Here If You Need Me, a book by Unitarian Universalist minister and chaplain Kate Braustrup. She entered that service after the accidental death of her husband, a Maine state trooper who had planned to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. Reverend Braustrup mixes stories of her current service with stories from her past. Some of the stories are happy and some tragic, but they all have a point to them — or Braeustrup has found meaning in them. She shares the meaning of those stories with the reader, all the while reflecting on ideas of life, compassion, and religion. I found the book to be very enjoyable as well as intensely moving. I definitely recommend it.

Staying in the general neighborhood of religion, I read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I’ve heard much of these book and began reading it with the anticipation that I would find much to grapple with. This was not the case. The first thirty pages did give me something to think about — here Lewis claims that human beings are aware of a Natural Law of Morality that they are supposed to be following, but don’t — but I realized in writing in my journal that I’ve dealt with that topic before in my own essays on philosophy. Past this, Lewis makes no arguments: he makes no case for Christianity, even though part of the book is labeled The Case for Christianity. He never explains why he believes that the originator of his supposed natural law is the god of the Hebrews — never tries to justify his faith in the divinity of Yeshua of Nazareth, a character around whom a legend has been cobbled based on second-hand information. If I put myself into the role of a Christian believer, I can see how Lewis’ explanations might give me some rational basis for bothering with the “mystery of the Trinity”. Lewis seems wholly credulous. If this book is the height of Christian apologetics…I don’t know what to say.

Getting away from religion, I enjoyed another novel by Isaac Asimov, this time The Naked Sun. It is second in his Robots series, and is again a detective novel starring Elijah Baley and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. Baley, who has never been exposed to the open sky of Earth, living in the enclosed domes and boxes of Earth’s “Cities”, leaves Earth to solve a mystery on one of the “Spacer” worlds. The Spacers are humans who settled fifty planets in systems ringing Earth many hundreds of years ago, who do their utmost to keep Earth from expanding any more into space. Their cultures are quite different from Earth’s, and have no history of crime. Thus, when a citizen of Solaria is murdered, they call Baley and Olivaw in to deal with the crime. The book is completely enjoyable.

Next I read Joe Nickell’s Real-Life X-Files, forty-seven accounts of his attempting to find reasonable explanations for supposedly supernatural phenomena like weeping statues and crop circles. I found Nickell through Point of Inquiry, a skeptical podcast I catch on a weekly basis, and enjoyed the book. Nickell writes well, explaining the problem, his approach, and the history and science behind matters.

Moving from skepticism to history, I read Patrick Hunt’s Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History. AHunt takes us on a tour of the world, visiting ten sites important to archeology and history — ten places that changed the ideas people had about the cultures or time to which they belonged. The ten are: the Rosetta Stone, Troy, Nivenah’s Assyrian Library, King Tut’s Tomb, Machu Picchu, Pompeii, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Thera, Olduvai Gorge, and the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors. After giving an account of how these various sites were discovered, Hunt then dives into their importance and the background of the subject they influenced. Such is his attention to detail that my appreciation for sites that I was familiar with — like Troy and Olduvai — was increased. This was a very enjoyable book.

I next read Frontiers II, a collection of science essays by Isaac and Janet Asimov, collected and published after his death. I’m sure Asimov would be amused to know his bookcount (over five hundred) continued to grow even after his passing, thanks to his wife Janet. There are a hundred and twenty-five essays in here covering a range of topics — from robots to atomic physics to dinosaurs. Regardless of specialized interest, a student of science will find something to enjoy reading in here. The essays are not long, are are written to the general public. Quite enjoyable.

I returned to philosophy with the Dalai Lama’s Ethics for the new Millennium, written and published in 1999. Gyatso believes the modern world to be in trouble, stricken by diseases born of our societies — stress, loneliness, self-hatred, and psychological misery. Despite this, he believes all human beings can achieve happiness, that it is ours for the having. All we need be is serious about cultivating it. He sees the cause of happiness as compassion, as wrapped up within that is tolerance, empathy, patience, forgiveness, reason, and other virtues. Some of the book treats the same material as The Art of Happiness, but here is focus is on the natural life of human beings — with no religious doctrines or practices present. It is authentically and purely human. It is difficult to compare this to The Art of Happiness, but I am almost tempted to say I enjoyed this one more. I would enjoy returning to both.

I finished the week with a spot of fiction in Robert Harris’ Archangel, a mystery thriller set in Yeltsin-era Russia: a time of declining standards of living and growing levels of crime and misery. It is a nation in want of a leader, and some of the western historians visiting Moscow for a symposium on Soviet history fear that Russia’s plight may be an echo of the Weimar’s republic — with the same disastrous results if the leader Russia rallies behind is sufficiently intent on reviving his empire with no regard to anyone else. Our main character is “Fluke” Kelso, a British historian who arrives intending to give a speech on Stalin, but who quickly finds himself involved in a mystery involving the supposed last testament of Joseph Stalin — his private papers, written in his declining years and which vanished shortly after his death. Kelso’s curiosity and financial circumstances compel him to risk his life at the hands of old Soviets and devotees of the new Russia, both of whom do not want a westerner involved unveiling their secrets. Kelso’s hunt for the the journal quickly turns bloody and climaxes in the frozen and economically devastated city of Archangel, where Kelso faces a madman who is the answer to the riddle of what Stalin’s testament contains.

Quotation of the Week:

There is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter what or who they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practiced these in our daily lives, […] there is no doubt we will be happy.

– Tenzin Gyatso

Pick of the Week: Ethics for the New Millennium, Tenzin Gyatso

Next Week:

  • Transforming the Mind, Tenzin Gyatso
  • Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
  • Rubicon: the Last Years of the Roman Republic, Tom Holland
  • Roman Blood, Steven Saylor (I’ve an abundance of Steves this week!)

Having to plan my reading two weeks in advance meant that I had to make some random grabs. Roman Blood was reccommended to me, and I’ll probably enjoy Transforming the Mind, but I can never be too sure. In any case, I may not finish even those four as I have a sociology paper to plan for involving Weber, Simmel, and a few other theorists.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged | 2 Comments

Archangel

Posted on March 23, 2009 by smellincoffee

Archangel: A Novel
© 1998 Robert Harris
432 pages

No one can accuse Robert Harris of same-ness in his settings: after one alternate history mystery novel set in 1975 Nazi Germany, two novels set in ancient Rome, and another set in 1943 Great Britain, his Archangel is set in Yeltsin-era Russia. Western museums are vying for the purchase of Russia’s soviet archives, much to the disgruntlement of loyal Bolsheviks. British historian Fluke Kelso is one of the historians visiting Russia for a symposium, but immediately has more to deal with than simply delivering a lecture and listening to his colleagues’ own. An old Soviet employee approaches Kelso, hinting that he knows the location of the secret writings of Joseph Stalin — his “Testament”, which vanished shortly after his death. The book opens with the old Soviet telling his story in flashback form to Kelso, who is utterly intrigued after he verifies elements of the old man’s story. He begins an inquiry as to where Stalin’s papers might be found, attracting the attention of an old KGB man who is committed to restoring the Soviet Union and of Russia’s current security police. Blood is shed and the mystery sees Kelso racing to the miserable town of Archangel near Siberia with angry men with guns right behind him. While the book is a fairly enjoyable mystery thriller, it is also a partial commentary on Yeltsin-era Russia: a nation experiencing declining standards of living and rising crime. One of Kelso’s colleagues believes that Russia is a new Weimar Republic, needing only a charismatic strongman to lead it and the world to further ruin. The contents of Stalin’s “testament” may reveal such a man. Although it was hard to get into at first, the book developed into a fascinating read.

Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Ethics for a New Millennium

Posted on March 22, 2009 by smellincoffee

Ethics for a New Millennium
© 1999 Tenzin Gyatso (the XIV Dalai Lama)
237 pages

Every so often I encounter an author who I find to be delightful, and the Dalai Lama is one of them. I was somewhat dubious about reading this, as An Open Heart was something of a let-down — lacking the personality of The Art of Happiness — but Ethics for a New Millennium is just as enjoyable as The Art of Happiness, and perhaps more so. Ethics is a frank address to the reader: the “bookishness” of An Open Heart is nowhere to be found. Some of this book repeats The Art of Happiness. He begins by claiming that all human beings want to be happy, and that the cultivation of it amounts to spirituality. He sees the world at the turn of the millennium suffering from diseases of cultural environment: just as “third world” countries suffer from disease and immense poverty, “first world” countries suffer from loneliness and distress. The nature of our societies has removed us from the human contact that we depend on for happiness:

It is possible today to be far more independent of others than ever before. But with these developments, there has arisen a sense that my future is not dependent on my neighbor but rather on my job, or at most, my employer. This in turn encourages us to suppose that because others are not important for my happiness, their happiness is not important to me.

We are increasingly unable, he says, to express affection or communication with our fellows. This is further agitated by the “contemporary rhetoric of growth and ecnomic development which greatly reinforces people’s tendency toward competitiveness and envy.” He calls for a spiritual evolution. His spirituality is not one of ritual and doctrine, however: it is concerned with the qualities of the human spirit: love, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, responsibility, and harmony. He believes that all these are wrapped in compassion and that the practicing of them leads to happiness. I cannot disagree, as his spirituality is the very same I worked out for myself. It is the “grand religion” I have begun to suspect behind the words of people as varied as Epictetus, Robert Ingersoll, Anne Frank, Zelig Pliskin, and the Dalai Lama: the religion of human happiness.

He does not simply repeat what he said in The Art of Happiness, however. The Dalai Lama explores the practical aspects of this spirituality in our individual lives and as it relates to society. He comments on crime, education, economics, and religion. This commentary is somewhat lacking in that I do not have the book with me or my notes, so I cannot look at the table of contents and organize my thoughts to convey to you everything he says. What I can say is that I enjoyed this book immensely. This is pure human spirituality, completely bereft of forced belief and doctrine. It was an excellent read — quite edifying.

There is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter what or who they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practiced these in our daily lives, […] there is no doubt we will be happy.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Frontiers II

Posted on March 20, 2009 by smellincoffee

Frontiers II : More recent discoveries about life, Earth, space, and the universe
© 1993 Isaac and Janet Asimov
369 pages

Given Isaac Asimov’s deliberate attempt to be famous for sheer volume in terms of books, I think he would be amused beyond words to know that he wrote books even after his death. Frontiers II is a collection of science essays penned for newspapers by Isaac and Janet and published after his death. Most of the essays come from Isaac’s typewriter, but Janet’s articles were also quite enjoyable. The book is organized into four parts: “Life: Past, Present, and Future”; “Our Planet and Our Neighbors”; “Science and Technology”; and “The Universe from Quarks to the Cosmos.”

Because there are so many articles, there are many topics to choose from. The essays are not long — they were penned for a newspaper syndicate — so even if the reader has no interest in one topic, another is not far away. Although the articles on biochemistry were not as interesting to me as the articles on planetary science, I was able to get through them. They are neither technical nor simplistic: this is science for anyone who has achieved a high-school level of literacy and an interest in science. Some of the information is dated, given how long ago this was published, but much of it holds true. Very enjoyable — if you want to relax with a little science reading, I’d recommend this if you can find it.

Posted in Reviews, science | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History

Posted on March 19, 2009 by smellincoffee

Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History
© Patrick Hunt 2001
226 pages

I spotted this while ambling through the history section of the Selma library, and it turned out to be a splendid read. Archaeologist Patrick Hunt takes on a tour of the world, visiting ten sites important to archaeology and history — ten places that changed the ideas people had about the cultures or time to which they belonged. The ten are: the Rosetta Stone, Troy, Nivenah’s Assyrian Library, King Tut’s Tomb, Machu Picchu, Pompeii, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Thera, Olduvai Gorge, and the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors. I was familar with all but two (the Assyrian Library and Thera), but Hunt was able to increase my apppreciation for even those I was quite familar with, like Olduvai Gorge.

Hunt is a storyteller and a teacer. He begins each chapter by telling how each discovery was made, and he does this well enough so that we are with Henrich Schliemann as he stands on a hill in Turkey, reading Homer and and matching his descriptions to the landscape. We scale the mountains of Peru and see Machu Picchu appear through the mist as if by magic: we walk the dusty valley basin of Olduvai and see the same strange bone at the same time as the Leakeys do. Hunt takes us past this discovery to its reception, writing on the importance of it and showing how it completely changes to the perceptions we once had. He is an enjoyable writer, and even after finishing I enjoyed a nice history buzz — the type I get when reading really good stuff.

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Real-Life X-Files

Posted on March 18, 2009 by smellincoffee

Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal
© Joe Nickell 2001
326 pages

Joe Nickell is a frequent guest of Point of Inquiry, a podcast I listen to weekly. Past readings have come from Point of Inquiry, and this is another. Nickell examines paranormal claims. He does not set out to “debunk” them, only to examine the cause of the reports. He claims to be open to admitting to supernatural activity in the advent that no natural explanation can be found. This book contains forty-seven episodes in his experience as a paranormal investigator, each meriting its own chapter. Some of these paranormal events are familiar to almost everyone: Roswell, crop circles, the Shroud of Turin*, and the Oak Island “money pit”. Other chapters do not deal with particular episodes, but a type of phenomenon: snake oil, for instance, or haunted inns. According to the inside flap, Nickell was a “former private investigator and forensics writer”. Judging by his numerous interviews, he’s also quite civil with people he disagrees with. He cites numerous other books and provides pictures (many taken by him) when necessary. He does a good job (in my estimation) of explaining why he believes what may be the case, and I didn’t observe any leaps in logic. There is one of his explanations I can’t accept, though. In chapter 28, “Ghostly Photos”, Nickell states his believe that the “ghostly” images are simply caused by the camera’s “hand strap getting in front of the lens”. Their sheen, he says, “enables them to reflect brightly the flash from the camera’s self-contained flash unit”. He shows photographs of his own and observes that the photos look very similar. The problem with that explanation, at least regarding one of the “ghostly” photographs that he is trying to explain, is that I can see through the ghostly part. If it were a reflection of the band — the solid band — how can I see through it? I believe there may be another explanation behind that particular photo. You can see the “ghostly” photos here. The two in the book are figures 1 and 2, while some of Nickell’s work is below. What do you think?

The book is generally well-written and interesting. It’s always interesting for me to see how the human mind can play tricks on us, but in some cases people don’t care. In “Adventure of the Weeping Icon”, one woman said to Nickell “I don’t care if there’s a pipe and a hose behind that picture. I don’t care if the Virgin Mary jumps right out of the painting. You either believe in miracles or you don’t. I believe.” The ability to believe in a obvious lie is unfortunate. While that woman’s belief was relatively harmless, what of those who spend their money in schemes or trust obviously unfit politicians like Stalin?

*I didn’t comment on this at the time, but Thomas Cahill seems to place faith in the Shroud of Turin in his Desire of the Everlasting Hills. Cahill’s such an interesting author — skeptical one moment, credulous the next.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The Naked Sun

Posted on March 17, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Naked Sun
© Asimov 1957
187 pages

A note to readers: I have been avoiding reading science fiction because I don’t like it rivaling my history reading. Being in Selma gave me access to The Naked Sun, though, and so I seized the opportunity. The Naked Sun is the second in Asimov’s “Robot” series. In this novel’s preceding work, The Caves of the Steel, we readers were introduced to detective Elijah Baley and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. We were also introduced to the universe that Baley lives in. Fifty or so planets have been colonized by Earth, although these “Spacer” worlds have quickly surpassed Earth in technological prowess and have been engaged in a policy of keeping Earth down. The Spacer worlds are lightly populated by our standards or anyone else’s. The Spacers have cleaned themselves of Earth’s germs and want little to do with Earth people. When one of their number is murdered, however, they have no choice but to resort to Elijah Baley, who in The Caves of Steel helped solved the murder of a Spacer on Earth.

Baley and his partner Olivaw travel to Solaria, a very sparsely populated world where the inhabitants are very keen on their privacy. They have intimacy taboos and are never in the company of other humans in their adult life, save for the occasional visitation by a spouse. They do their visiting through what amount to holographic images. Given their intense taboo against being in the company of another, and given that robots in Asimov’s universe cannot kill a human being (given the Three Laws of Robotics), Baley has quite a problem. If the humans couldn’t do it, and the robots couldn’t do it,….whodunit?

The novel is excellently written. I was able to derive the solution by myself, but that’s probably thanks to the volume of Asimov I’ve read. As usual, very enjoyable.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 1 Comment