The Disappearing Spoon
Author: Sam Kean 2010 375 pp
My rating: 3*
Started October 18 2010, Finished October 29 2010
The subtitle of this book, “And other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements” pretty much says it all. There is no overarching theme, just a series of interesting stories from the world of elemental chemistry. While I found it interesting and enjoyable, its disjointed nature left me without much of an impression. In two weeks, I probably won’t remember much of “The Disappearing Spoon” at all.
-----------------------------------------------------
Unlike modern pills, these hard antimony pills didn’t dissolve in the intestines, and the pills were considered so valuable that people rooted through fecal matter to retrieve and reuse them. Some lucky families even passed down laxatives from father to son. (22)
“But since this Japanese Vulcan died with his secret, it was lost for five hundred years -- proof that superior technology does not always spread and often goes extinct” (89)
This is faulty logic, something happening “once” is not “proof” that it “often” happens.
… scientists might soon be able to build “matter lasers” that shoot out ultra-focused beams of atoms thousands of times more powerful than light lasers, or construct “super solid” ice cubes that can flow each other without losing their solidity. (293-4)
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Theodore Rex
Theodore Rex
Author: Edmund Morris 2001 555 pp
My rating: 4*
Started September 14 2010, Finished October 2 2010
The second volume of Morris’ life of Theodore Roosevelt while highly enjoyable and informative did not impress me as much as the first. This book covers Roosevelt’s time as President and lacks the expansive feel of the first book which though it covers a much greater time span and contains about the same number of pages, felt more detailed. Theodore Rex does not quite give the reader the feeling that every noteworthy event of Roosevelt’s personal and professional life during the period covered was thoroughly explored. In particular this book seemed to stint on the personal life; I would have liked to know more about his family, in particular his daughter Alice. Nonetheless, Roosevelt still comes across as a sui generis physical and intellectual dynamo, making more recent presidents seem under-powered and ineffectual.
-----------------------------------------------------
After TR had Booker T Washington to dinner at the White House: “ … South Carolina Senator Benjamin J Tillman endorsed remedial genocide: ‘The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.’” (55)
What held them together was their collective dedication to politics as a profession. Conscience, not corruption, kept the average senator in office. He worked seven days a week, assisted by one secretary and one typist, for five thousand dollars a year … (75)
After more blacks were greeted at the White House: “James K. Vardaman, running for Governor of Mississippi, went to the limits of public invective. Theodore Roosevelt was nothing but a “little, mean coon-flavored miscegenation’s”, while the White House had become “so saturated with odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable.” (203)
Henry Adams description of a White House dinner were TR, at the height of his powers, held forth: “We were straws in Niagara. Never have I had an hour of worse social malaise. We were overwhelmed in a torrent of oratory, and at last I heard only the repetition of I-I-I -- attached to indiscretions greater than one another … it is mortifying beyond even drunkenness.” (307)
Author: Edmund Morris 2001 555 pp
My rating: 4*
Started September 14 2010, Finished October 2 2010
The second volume of Morris’ life of Theodore Roosevelt while highly enjoyable and informative did not impress me as much as the first. This book covers Roosevelt’s time as President and lacks the expansive feel of the first book which though it covers a much greater time span and contains about the same number of pages, felt more detailed. Theodore Rex does not quite give the reader the feeling that every noteworthy event of Roosevelt’s personal and professional life during the period covered was thoroughly explored. In particular this book seemed to stint on the personal life; I would have liked to know more about his family, in particular his daughter Alice. Nonetheless, Roosevelt still comes across as a sui generis physical and intellectual dynamo, making more recent presidents seem under-powered and ineffectual.
-----------------------------------------------------
After TR had Booker T Washington to dinner at the White House: “ … South Carolina Senator Benjamin J Tillman endorsed remedial genocide: ‘The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.’” (55)
What held them together was their collective dedication to politics as a profession. Conscience, not corruption, kept the average senator in office. He worked seven days a week, assisted by one secretary and one typist, for five thousand dollars a year … (75)
After more blacks were greeted at the White House: “James K. Vardaman, running for Governor of Mississippi, went to the limits of public invective. Theodore Roosevelt was nothing but a “little, mean coon-flavored miscegenation’s”, while the White House had become “so saturated with odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable.” (203)
Henry Adams description of a White House dinner were TR, at the height of his powers, held forth: “We were straws in Niagara. Never have I had an hour of worse social malaise. We were overwhelmed in a torrent of oratory, and at last I heard only the repetition of I-I-I -- attached to indiscretions greater than one another … it is mortifying beyond even drunkenness.” (307)
Friday, September 3, 2010
One Day
One Day
Author: David Nichols 2009 425 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started September 2 2010, Finished September 4 2010
This story follows the lives of two English friends, Emma and Dexter, for twenty years, starting from the day of their college graduation. While I occasionally found it humorous, generally I found its plot and insights unremarkable and predictable -- nothing new here -- and the characters, particularly Dexter, not explored deeply enough to be fully believable/relatable. However, much to my surprise, the book rallied at the end, achieving considerable emotional affect by the trick of bringing the story back to the very beginning, a sort of prolog as epilog. The author’s trick of taking us back to the beginning, when the reader knows what fate has is store for the characters, but they don’t, imbues all that has gone before with a powerful poignancy and deep saddness.
Author: David Nichols 2009 425 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started September 2 2010, Finished September 4 2010
This story follows the lives of two English friends, Emma and Dexter, for twenty years, starting from the day of their college graduation. While I occasionally found it humorous, generally I found its plot and insights unremarkable and predictable -- nothing new here -- and the characters, particularly Dexter, not explored deeply enough to be fully believable/relatable. However, much to my surprise, the book rallied at the end, achieving considerable emotional affect by the trick of bringing the story back to the very beginning, a sort of prolog as epilog. The author’s trick of taking us back to the beginning, when the reader knows what fate has is store for the characters, but they don’t, imbues all that has gone before with a powerful poignancy and deep saddness.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy
The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy
Author: Peter H. Wilson 2003 852 pp
My rating: 5/2.5*
Started February 2010, Finished August 3 2010
“Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” (751)
This book is not so much a matter of being unable to see the forest for the trees, but of being unable to see the trees for the leaves. While it would be fair to call Wilson’s work a definitive account of the titular war, exhaustive might be the fitting adjective as it is so overwhelmed with detail that reading it seems to take place in real time. The target audience would seem to be field specialist graduate students and above. The author’s mastery of the subject matter must be acknowledged but if his aim was to make it accessible to the lay reader, I fault him for failing to do so. A good 75% of the book is blow by blow accounts of nearly every negotiation, troop movement and skirmish that took place not only during the period from 1618 to 1648 when combat occurred, but also of the decades leading up to that period. I found it next to impossible to keep the virtually endless list of central European people and place names straight. (The book’s index covers 70 pages, 40% more than that for the similarly ambitious Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.) My difficulty with the places and overall geographic confusion was exacerbated by the absence of overview maps in my copy, the table of contents to the contrary. A list of dramatis personae with capsule descriptions of each would have helped quite a bit. For a representative example of the bewildering profusion of confusing names, see the excerpt from page 684 below.
“Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” (751)
My take away is that the Thirty Years War is a candidate for the worst war in history, the most pointless and destructive. The reasons for its beginning seem neither well defined nor justified and not long thereafter the combatants’ main reasons for continuing the struggle were either preservation of prestige or hope of gaining a slightly more favorable position at the negotiating table. Other recurrent characteristics include constantly shifting alliances, far more death from disease than battle, unpaid troops, troops living off the land and thus stripping it bare and that from the entire cast of military and political characters, not a single positive model of human conduct emerges; even the legendary Gustavus Adolphos of Sweden though an able general, comes across as a blood thirsty land grabber.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sweden’s newest and proudest ship of the line was overloaded with ordnance which “meant that the gun ports were too close to the waterline and it capsized and sank in a light breeze on its maiden voyage in August 1628.” (366)
Three issues stand out from the controversy surrounding restitution. First, the divisions among Catholics indicate the weakness of confessional solidarity and the primacy of politics over religion. (453)
Only 49 per cent of expenditure under Richelieu was submitted to the royal audit office, with the remainder only presented in total The government claimed exemption on ground of national security, but the real reason was to hide the exorbitant rates of interest paid to financiers. (558)
The Treaty of Goslar had recover Hildesheim and reduced his immediate enemies by neutralizing the Guelphs. The start of the Wesphalian congress extend neutrality ot Munster and Osnabruck, removing the latter as a Swedish base. The elector widened this by agreeing in December 1643 to pay 5,500 tlr a month to Sweden in return for their recognition of Hildesheim as neutral.
These moves isolated Hessen-Kassel. Amalie Elisabeth had no interest in wider French objectives and recalled Eberstein’s troops from Guebriant’s army as it returned to the Upper Rhine in 1642. She had 4,000 men poised to attack her Darmstadt rival when news arrived of France’s defeat at Tuttlingen. Units then had to be redirected to East Frisia in 1644 … (684)
The Westphalian town of Werl finally cleared its debt from the Thirty Years War in 1897. (805)
Author: Peter H. Wilson 2003 852 pp
My rating: 5/2.5*
Started February 2010, Finished August 3 2010
“Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” (751)
This book is not so much a matter of being unable to see the forest for the trees, but of being unable to see the trees for the leaves. While it would be fair to call Wilson’s work a definitive account of the titular war, exhaustive might be the fitting adjective as it is so overwhelmed with detail that reading it seems to take place in real time. The target audience would seem to be field specialist graduate students and above. The author’s mastery of the subject matter must be acknowledged but if his aim was to make it accessible to the lay reader, I fault him for failing to do so. A good 75% of the book is blow by blow accounts of nearly every negotiation, troop movement and skirmish that took place not only during the period from 1618 to 1648 when combat occurred, but also of the decades leading up to that period. I found it next to impossible to keep the virtually endless list of central European people and place names straight. (The book’s index covers 70 pages, 40% more than that for the similarly ambitious Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.) My difficulty with the places and overall geographic confusion was exacerbated by the absence of overview maps in my copy, the table of contents to the contrary. A list of dramatis personae with capsule descriptions of each would have helped quite a bit. For a representative example of the bewildering profusion of confusing names, see the excerpt from page 684 below.
“Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” (751)
My take away is that the Thirty Years War is a candidate for the worst war in history, the most pointless and destructive. The reasons for its beginning seem neither well defined nor justified and not long thereafter the combatants’ main reasons for continuing the struggle were either preservation of prestige or hope of gaining a slightly more favorable position at the negotiating table. Other recurrent characteristics include constantly shifting alliances, far more death from disease than battle, unpaid troops, troops living off the land and thus stripping it bare and that from the entire cast of military and political characters, not a single positive model of human conduct emerges; even the legendary Gustavus Adolphos of Sweden though an able general, comes across as a blood thirsty land grabber.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sweden’s newest and proudest ship of the line was overloaded with ordnance which “meant that the gun ports were too close to the waterline and it capsized and sank in a light breeze on its maiden voyage in August 1628.” (366)
Three issues stand out from the controversy surrounding restitution. First, the divisions among Catholics indicate the weakness of confessional solidarity and the primacy of politics over religion. (453)
Only 49 per cent of expenditure under Richelieu was submitted to the royal audit office, with the remainder only presented in total The government claimed exemption on ground of national security, but the real reason was to hide the exorbitant rates of interest paid to financiers. (558)
The Treaty of Goslar had recover Hildesheim and reduced his immediate enemies by neutralizing the Guelphs. The start of the Wesphalian congress extend neutrality ot Munster and Osnabruck, removing the latter as a Swedish base. The elector widened this by agreeing in December 1643 to pay 5,500 tlr a month to Sweden in return for their recognition of Hildesheim as neutral.
These moves isolated Hessen-Kassel. Amalie Elisabeth had no interest in wider French objectives and recalled Eberstein’s troops from Guebriant’s army as it returned to the Upper Rhine in 1642. She had 4,000 men poised to attack her Darmstadt rival when news arrived of France’s defeat at Tuttlingen. Units then had to be redirected to East Frisia in 1644 … (684)
The Westphalian town of Werl finally cleared its debt from the Thirty Years War in 1897. (805)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Out Stealing Horses
Out Stealing Horses
Author: Per Petterson 2003 238 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started March 26 2010, Finished March 28 2010
This tale about a boy and his family in rural Norway during WWII generates much reader interest and suspense for most of its length buts ends somewhat abruptly, leaving some plot threads inadequately concluded -- a couple of its major characters receive “never heard from again“ treatment. In retrospect, it felt like a long short story or novella, or the first part of a greater work were never written.
Author: Per Petterson 2003 238 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started March 26 2010, Finished March 28 2010
This tale about a boy and his family in rural Norway during WWII generates much reader interest and suspense for most of its length buts ends somewhat abruptly, leaving some plot threads inadequately concluded -- a couple of its major characters receive “never heard from again“ treatment. In retrospect, it felt like a long short story or novella, or the first part of a greater work were never written.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Moby Dick
Moby Dick
Author: Herman Melville 1851 536 pp
My rating: 5*
Started October 2009, Finished February 2010.
A classic, which unlike some other novels so designated (see Charterhouse of Parma), lives up to that designation. Despite the fact that at least a third of the work is devoted to non-fiction, nothing-to-do-with-the-plot exegeses on whales and whaling, the basic story and in particular, the character of Ahab, are so powerful enough to compensate for the deadweight. The prose, while sometimes verging on incomprehensible gobbledygook, often reaches a deeply moving tone somewhere between biblical and poetic. The scenes at the beginning where Ishmael finds his way to the Pequod and in which he and Queequeg get to know each other are quite charming. And as far Ahab, he still rates among the commanding of villains in all of literature, with his almost every utterance being quote worthy.
And here shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. (62)
Queequeg was George Washington Cannibalistically developed. (65)
In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti. (398. Entire Chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand” is terrific)
Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Country Driving
Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory
Author: Peter Hessler 2010 424 pp
My rating: 4*
Started February 21 2010, Finished February 26 2010.
Essentially a few snapshots depicting how the transformation of Chinese society from rural and agriculturally based to urban and manufacturing based is affecting individual Chinese, Hessler yet again scores big with humor and emotional transparency; five stars for reader enjoyment and insight into another world, but docked a bit for ambition as the book is close to a travelogue. The book has three sections, loosely unified by the driving the author does in each: an account of two drives to the deserts of China's northwest, a description of the village near Beijing where Hessler rents a house and a detailing of the startup of a new factory by a couple of small timers in a new industrial city. Hessler particularly excels at conveying the absurd while both depicting situations from his subjects’ points of view and maintaining a deep sympathy and even affection for those people. Though some of the material is familiar to readers of The New Yorker, reading it in this context does not feel like a rehash since it has often been substantially reworked and because those stories are so seamlessly integrated into the broader narrative. Revelations which particularly struck me were the every man for himself nature of the expansion and the pyramid scheme of infrastructure development funding which is based on appropriating rural land and thus inherently unsustainable.
The book is set during the boom of the 2000s, ending shortly before the crash of ’08; one wonders how the crash affected the nascent society which seemed to be sustained almost entirely by economic growth. The book conveys a sense that the strongly rooted sanctity of family ties are primary factor keeping people grounded in the midst of changes which within a single generations are displacing ways of life that had been in place for centuries and even millennia; one wonders how the primacy of the family unit will endure after a generation or two of vast migration from the countryside to manufacturing centers.
… it’s hard to imagine another place where people take such joy in driving badly. (29)
Over time my learning curve never really flattened out. China is the kind of country where you constantly discover something new, and revelations occur on a daily basis. (47)
I was amazed at the stuff Wei Jia learned -- the most incredible collection of unrelated facts and desystemized knowledge that had ever been crammed into a child … Fifth-graders [in a rural peasant community] had an entire textbook devoted to learning how to use Microsoft FrontPage XP. [219-20]
Parent and children occupied different worlds, and marriages were complicated -- rarely did I know a Chinese couple who seemed happy together. It was all but impossible for people to keep their bearings in a country that changed so fast. [264]
China may have come late to the world of high-speed transport -- the nation’s first expressway wasn’t completed until 1988 -- but by 2020 they intended to have more highway miles than the United States. [282]
If a city hopes to stay solvent, it must continually expand. [344]
When I met somebody like Little Long, his energy and determination reminded me of other places, other times. This was China's version of the Industrial Revolution: rural people were moving to cities, and they had a gift for self-invention that rivaled anything in Dickens. [355]
This was the kind of solution that’s propagated in Chinese self-help book like Square and Round -- if a like works, fine; otherwise just burn the bridges. [361-2]
The fundamental problem [with nurturing a new factory through its teething period] seemed to be a complete lack of system. The factory had no management board, no investment schedule; nobody cared about legal contracts or predefined protocol. The bosses had funded almost entirely with cases, which raised the stakes and created tensions within families. They had sketched the blueprints for their factory in one hour and four minutes. Their most critical machinery had been designed according to the memory of a former peasant with a middle school education. There wasn't the slightest hint of a formal business plan. The future customer base depended upon the hopeful distribution of Wuliangye Baijiu and Chunghwa cigarettes. [363]
Author: Peter Hessler 2010 424 pp
My rating: 4*
Started February 21 2010, Finished February 26 2010.
Essentially a few snapshots depicting how the transformation of Chinese society from rural and agriculturally based to urban and manufacturing based is affecting individual Chinese, Hessler yet again scores big with humor and emotional transparency; five stars for reader enjoyment and insight into another world, but docked a bit for ambition as the book is close to a travelogue. The book has three sections, loosely unified by the driving the author does in each: an account of two drives to the deserts of China's northwest, a description of the village near Beijing where Hessler rents a house and a detailing of the startup of a new factory by a couple of small timers in a new industrial city. Hessler particularly excels at conveying the absurd while both depicting situations from his subjects’ points of view and maintaining a deep sympathy and even affection for those people. Though some of the material is familiar to readers of The New Yorker, reading it in this context does not feel like a rehash since it has often been substantially reworked and because those stories are so seamlessly integrated into the broader narrative. Revelations which particularly struck me were the every man for himself nature of the expansion and the pyramid scheme of infrastructure development funding which is based on appropriating rural land and thus inherently unsustainable.
The book is set during the boom of the 2000s, ending shortly before the crash of ’08; one wonders how the crash affected the nascent society which seemed to be sustained almost entirely by economic growth. The book conveys a sense that the strongly rooted sanctity of family ties are primary factor keeping people grounded in the midst of changes which within a single generations are displacing ways of life that had been in place for centuries and even millennia; one wonders how the primacy of the family unit will endure after a generation or two of vast migration from the countryside to manufacturing centers.
… it’s hard to imagine another place where people take such joy in driving badly. (29)
Over time my learning curve never really flattened out. China is the kind of country where you constantly discover something new, and revelations occur on a daily basis. (47)
I was amazed at the stuff Wei Jia learned -- the most incredible collection of unrelated facts and desystemized knowledge that had ever been crammed into a child … Fifth-graders [in a rural peasant community] had an entire textbook devoted to learning how to use Microsoft FrontPage XP. [219-20]
Parent and children occupied different worlds, and marriages were complicated -- rarely did I know a Chinese couple who seemed happy together. It was all but impossible for people to keep their bearings in a country that changed so fast. [264]
China may have come late to the world of high-speed transport -- the nation’s first expressway wasn’t completed until 1988 -- but by 2020 they intended to have more highway miles than the United States. [282]
If a city hopes to stay solvent, it must continually expand. [344]
When I met somebody like Little Long, his energy and determination reminded me of other places, other times. This was China's version of the Industrial Revolution: rural people were moving to cities, and they had a gift for self-invention that rivaled anything in Dickens. [355]
This was the kind of solution that’s propagated in Chinese self-help book like Square and Round -- if a like works, fine; otherwise just burn the bridges. [361-2]
The fundamental problem [with nurturing a new factory through its teething period] seemed to be a complete lack of system. The factory had no management board, no investment schedule; nobody cared about legal contracts or predefined protocol. The bosses had funded almost entirely with cases, which raised the stakes and created tensions within families. They had sketched the blueprints for their factory in one hour and four minutes. Their most critical machinery had been designed according to the memory of a former peasant with a middle school education. There wasn't the slightest hint of a formal business plan. The future customer base depended upon the hopeful distribution of Wuliangye Baijiu and Chunghwa cigarettes. [363]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)