Author: thepassionatereader

The well-known American author of thirteen books, mostly about the history of science, divides this one into six chapters entitled Glass, Cold, Sound, Clean, Time, and Light. His wide-ranging knowledge and unique insights always provide interesting perspectives and background on diverse subjects and inventions that we take for granted without questioning their origins. I have read his 2006 The Ghost Map, and his 2021 A Short History Of Living Longer and enjoyed them both.

All the chapters here document important and unexpected historical trends from simple inventions. In that respect the book could be entitled Unintended Consequences of Important Innovations, or perhaps The Butterfly Effect of Important Innovations, after the chaos theory aphorism, referenced several times, of a minute localized change (like a butterfly flapping its wings in California) in a complex interconnected system, having huge effects elsewhere (like causing a hurricane in the Atlantic). The invention of glass lead to the development of spectacles, telescopes, microscopes, and mirrors. The harnessing of cold for storage of foodstuff in ice lead to air conditioners and huge changes in demographic distributions around the world. The invention of sound recording via the phonoautograph and Edison’s phonograph lead to Bell’s telephone, microphones, military use of sonar, medical use of ultrasound, and digitization of music and communication. The Clean chapter lacks a single simple innovation but the need for clean water lead to the development of sanitary sewer systems, and chlorination of drinking water. Contamination of water lead to the germ theory of infectious diseases, first espoused by John Snow, and a huge change in personal hygiene attitudes, and stoked the popularity of public swimming pools. But I think Johnson stretches the connection a bit to argue that this drove radical changes in women’s clothing fashions.

The Time chapter documents the utter confusion of every city and community having their own clocks set to the correct time based on astronomy, before the relatively recent adoption of time zones and the acceptance of extremely accurate clocks based on the very consistent rhythmic oscillations of electrons orbiting around caesium nuclei. In the Light chapter the claim is made that before the development of artificial light, humans generally had two distinct sleep periods in darkness with a significant awake period in between. I doubt that our complex circadian rhythms have changed that drastically in less than 200 years and this claim was not mentioned in Matthew Walker’s 2017 comprehensive Why We Sleep. The discovery of neon and the development of laser are well described, but optimistic use of highly focused light to produce unlimited energy by nuclear fusion has not (yet) borne fruit.

Throughout, Johnson emphasizes that all the innovations discussed were not the result of solitary geniuses having an ah-ah or light bulb moment but the result of slow evolution of ideas in brainy people with a wide knowledge base, i.e. people like himself.

The choice of the six innovations seems arbitrary, and I am sure some readers will think of others that should or could have been included. My nomination for that is the plow. Perhaps Johnson will write a “Six More Inventions That Changed The World” and include it. He is far to young to retire.

A good educational read loaded with little-known historical facts.

Thanks,

Andra via Cratejoy.

Margaret Verble grew up close to the real Glendale Park and Zoo, outside of Nashville,Tennessee, which was built on the site of a desecrated and looted Native cemetery. She now lives in Lexington, Ky.

Two Feathers, from Oklahoma, is a young single Cherokee woman who works as a horse diver in the amusement park in 1926. This was during the Scopes monkey trial being conducted locally, and at the height of the quack evangelist Amie Semple McPherson’s popularity. Both feature obliquely in the story, the former more than the latter.

I was not previously aware of horse diving, i.e. driving trained horses off a high platform into a pool, as a spectator sport, but apparently it was quite popular and dangerous in the south of that era. When things go wrong, the horse is killed and the injured Two Feathers falls into an underground cave; the consequences strain the fragile race relationships. Taboo romances develop between Indians, blacks and the dominating, rich, white folk. A soldier experiences vivid hallucinatory flashbacks and visits from his compatriot killed beside him in the trenches. In modern DSM-4 parlance, this would be labelled as PTSD, but here it is just treated as a normal response to the memory of war horrors.

As the story progresses, reality is totally abandoned for magical fantasies as a ghost visits multiple characters and apparently kills and scalps a rogue white man. Two Feathers discusses developments with a hippo, a bear, a turtle and a buffalo, and seeks their advice. I admire Native Americans’ close connection to, and reverence for, nature and other species of flora and fauna-closer than that of most white folk- at least as depicted in this and much other fiction writing. Here communication and understanding between animals and humans pervades the whole story. And I can kinda, sorta enjoy some ghost and spirit world stories. But Little Elk’s spirit from beyond the grave describing a baseball victory to the enclosed buffalo herd in the park is mysticism and spiritualism that stretches my imagination beyond the breaking point. And the far-reaching consequences of the mysterious premature death of the park’s hippo and a bear cub are hard to reconcile with reality.

This novel has been selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. There is perhaps no better illustration of the discrepancy between what the literati of prize selection committees enjoy in novels and what I enjoy. Although there is some interesting local colour and perhaps a hidden message about the importance of connecting with nature, I simply cannot recommend it.

Thanks,

Book Browse.

The irascible Angus McLintock of the author’s earlier novels The Best Laid Plans and The High Road, is back, now as the newly minted Minister of State For International Relations in a current-era Liberal Canadian government. And so are Dan Addison his aide, who is the narrator of this tale, Muriel Parkinson, suffering from her eponymous disease in a Cumberland seniors home, and her granddaughter, Lindsay, Dan’s wife. There are several other characters from the earlier novels, and some new ones including a pair of Chechen nationalist immigrants plotting to assassinate Russia’s president during his visit to Ottawa, undercover members of Britain’s MI6, Canada’s CSIS, and Russia’s FSB, ambassadors, civil servants, and politicians, including the Prime Ministers of Canada and Great Britain, and President Pudovkin of Russia; even the Queen makes an appearance.

This is a wild and unruly story, with lots of improbable twists. It is more in the genre of the international spy thriller than the light humour of Fallis’s earlier novels, although the indomitable wittiness of the Honourable Member from Cumberland and Prescott shines through with great repartee and one liners. As Dan and Angus, handcuffed and stuffed together in the trunk of the Chechen killers’ speeding car consider their fate, Angus calmly states “Be glad I dinnae have those leftover cabbage rolls for breakfast.”

There are so many plot twists, not about whodunnit, but about how they were thwarted and caught, that it stretches the reader’s imagination to foresee how there could not be a lot of unexplained details at the end. But there are no loose ends and the seemingly fortuitous chance happenings all fall in place logically.

It is not strictly necessary to have read the two previous Fallis novels featuring Angus McLintock to enjoy and understand this one, but they do form a natural progression. The setting, largely in the downtown and eastern suburbs of Ottawa, adds accurate local colour and atmosphere, and the intrigue and backstabbing that is politics 101 is conveyed convincingly.

A throughly enjoyable read from one of my favourite novelists.

Thanks,

Janet.

Narrated largely by fictional 42 year old Jessie Dubois, unfaithful artist wife of a South Carolina psychiatrist, this novel is set mainly on a fictional island off the Atlantic coast of South Carolina in the 1980s. Sue Monk Kidd is a prolific South Carolina novelist, her most well-known work being The Secret Life of Bees, which if I recall correctly from reading it many years ago, had little to do with bees except as symbols of cooperation and communalism. I have not read any of the other 21 novels she has written. Symbolism is also a prominent feature of this story particularly that of mermaids, and the psychic meaning of dismembering and remembering.

It is difficult to discuss this work without giving away too much of the plot, which is not very complex but has some unpredictable peculiar twists. Jessie finds the intact tobacco pipe that was said to have caused her father’s death in a boat explosion at her mother’s house. This mystery remains unsolved until late in the story. There are not many characters, but they include Jessie’s mentally troubled mother, a tormented doubting lawyer cum monk at the monastery on the island, and a African American native woman who keeps the African slave traditions and folklore alive. From my medical perspective, Pick’s disease (frontotemporal dementia) with its devastating effects on one’s personality is accurately described.

Reading about the distinctive culture and folklore of the life on a small South Carolina coastal island is delightful, as it is loaded with symbolism and hidden meaning. Buried within the story is the deep emotional self-awareness of the various narrators, and a quest to find spiritual meaning and fulfillment in everyday encounters and events. There is abundant eroticism but it is treated delicately, entirely within the context of romantic love, not as a hormonally-driven midlife escape from a dull but conventional marriage.

The connection of the narrator to her inner self with constant self analysis, introspection and doubt seems to me to be a bit excessive, but it may just be that that trait seems (at least to me) to be more be prevalent in women than in men.

A quite enjoyable read, which I suspect women appreciate more than men do.

Thanks,

Leslie.

This autobiography by the exiled American whistleblower exposing the nefarious schemes of the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government to collect and store information about almost everyone on earth is a real eye opener. He comes across as a conscientious, intelligent, and principled IT guru who is not afraid to reveal his own flaws and limitations. I admire his courage, candour, and honesty. With that sentiment now floating in cyberspace, I wonder if the U.S. National Intelligence Service and the CIA may open a ‘permanent record’ on me, if they have not already do so. His revelations make it clear that they are capable of obtaining information on almost everything I have done, every country I have visited (China and Qatar might pique their interest), every purchase I have made using a credit card, any of my postings on social media, and any phone conversation I have been in on in the digital age. Perhaps I flatter myself to think they would be interested in my existence and my nonconformist amateurish thoughts, but there is no doubt that they could collect all of that information if they wanted to.

Snowden began his career in computer technology at a young age, disdaining traditional education and progressing through the ranks of intelligence services to become privy to the nation’s top security files. At least initially a patriot, he tried out for the army Special Services, only to fail when he broke both legs in training. With various companies with contracts to the CIA and the NAC, he was instrumental in developing some of the capabilities that those organizations later abused to unconstitutionally spy on innocent Americans and invade the privacy of anyone they chose to check out with or without any reason or warrant. But as his disillusion mounted, and his mental health deteriorated, he used his extensive computer expertise to copy top secret files and fled to Hong Kong without notifying his girlfriend or family. The tense eventual meeting with journalists there lead to headlines around the world about the illegal, alarming extensive spying on innocent people everywhere.

After an agonizing decision to self-identify as the source for the journalists, he sought political asylum, hoping to reach Quito, Equator via Moscow, Havana, and Caracas, but was detained in Moscow (his American passport was canceled while he was in the air) where he has remained as a political exile since 2013.

His long time girlfriend, a photographic artist, must be a saint. She stuck with him throughout his career, never knowing what he did for a living, tolerating his frequent mysterious absences on unexplained missions. Excerpts from her diary, included in the book, highlight the torment she underwent with the extensive tracking of her every move for months and many hours of psychologically damaging interrogation by the F.B.I. after he was identified as the whistleblower. Somehow she got to Moscow and married Snowden four years ago. A true love story.

There have been positive developments attributable almost entirely to Snowden’s revelations. In 2015, the United States passed the USA Freedom Act to rein in some of the worst abuses allowed by the earlier Patriot Act and in 2016 the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation that has had a ripple effect around the world.

Snowden is presently President of the Board of Directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation but ironically is still provided no personal freedom and is regarded as a criminal traitor by the U.S. government and security apparatus.

In places the story reads like a modern spy mystery novel. It proceeds logically, and is generally easy to follow although some of the details of computer science was lost on me.

A couple of good quotes:

“Technology doesn’t have a Hippocratic oath.”

“Nothing is harder than living with a secret that can’t be shared.”

If you value your freedom and privacy, and don’t want to leave their protection to others, this should be on your list of must-reads.

Thanks,

Book Bub

This old peculiar horror story was chosen for the Halloween meeting of our book club, but I missed the meeting because of a curling commitment. It is supposedly a classic of the genre. If so, I will refrain from the genre entirely in the future. It has never been my favourite genre. The American author’s writing, according to an included 22 page analysis stuffed with background information and a 17 page Introduction by Laura Miller was mainly powered by prodigious amounts of alcohol and amphetamines. The background information reads like a classic Freudian analysis of both the eccentric author and the characters in the novel.

There are no hints of the geographic setting nor even the decade in which the events take place, except that there are cars, but seemingly no telephones. A professor studying occult events assembles a group of three enthusiasts to visit and investigate strange events in the old house with a reputation for scary ghosts and a history of strange deaths and conflicts in the family that own it. This includes a member of that family, a poor single self-doubting woman who is left basically homeless after her invalid mother dies, and one other woman who has some mysterious interest in the occult.

During their short stay in the Hill House, there are abundant unexplained phenomenon that lead to bizarre explanations and interpretations, hints of a budding romance that never progresses or becomes overt, and conflicts.

There are few characters, all of them eccentric and interesting, if the reader excludes the grass, wildflowers, trees and the house itself as characters, but anthropomorphism encompasses everything. This makes for a few interesting literary twists in the writing.

“She found a spot where the grass was soft and dry and lay down…. Around her the trees and wild flowers, with that oddly courteous air of natural things, suddenly interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying, turned toward her with attention, as though, dull and imperceptive as she was, it was still necessary for them to be gentle to a creation so unfortunate as not to be rooted in the ground, forced to go from one place to another, heartbreakingly mobile.”

There may be some deep hidden message here, but, if so, it completely escaped me, with my lack of imagination and concrete ways of thinking. Perhaps lovers of horror stories would like this one, but I cannot recommend it.

Thanks,

Carolyn.

The British-American author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand returns to the Sussex,England of her youth for this novel set largely in 1914. Much of the early part of the story vividly depicts the rigidly stratified class distinctions, restrictive boring routines, and petty jealousies of the British upper classes of the era. Endless elliptical conversations filled with innuendo never come with straightforward statements, as characters vie for privilege, and no one can seem to say what they mean in blunt language. This consistent feature made it difficult for this reader to be sure about what exactly lead to the condemnation and disgrace of at least two characters. I can’t say more about this without giving away too much of the complex plot, but I could not be sure who impregnated the unwed gypsy teen. (There is absolutely no description of sex, with all gender relationships of the young cast in the language of romance, not biology.) The long list of characters with relationships and loyalties that are often obscure and changing, who are also often working at cross purposes, left me confused in places.

The characterizations are memorable and the condescending treatment of women by men who seem to view them as universally weak and unable to look after themselves is probably an accurate reflection of attitudes of the era, as is the distain for the local Romani itinerants. Several of the characters are jealous would-be writers yearning for recognition and acclaim, spouting Latin and French phrases. (One advantage of the ebook- it is an easy two clicks for translations.)

Part Four belies the title, occurring in the trenches of France in February, 1915, and in the town of Rye, England in March, 1915. The touching vivid description of the dead and dying victims of trench warfare in this section, especially as the dying talk to their comrades, is enough to make grown men weep and become pacifists, and is the best treatment of the subject that I have encountered. By far the best sectioning in my opinion.

The writing is smoothly straightforward with colourful descriptions of characters and many memorable quotes.

“To apply a logical explanation to an irrational act is madness itself.”

“With a heave he popped upright swaying a little as the bulk of his torso sought equilibrium above two short legs and a pair of dainty feet. He considered Beatrice from hooded eyes under a broad forehead that continued up and over the back of a balding head. She thought at once of a large owl.”

A good read, to be discussed at our next book club meeting. I await enlightenment on some details that I found confusing.

A Washington, D.C. journalist, writer, and globetrotter, reviews in great detail the needs of Homo sapiens to connect with the natural world for our individual and collective mental and physical health. She takes trips with urban planners, social scientists, and neuroscientists with fancy tracking equipment conducting an abundance of studies documenting the beneficial effects of time spent outdoors, alone or with friends and reviews their findings, rather uncritically at times. Many of the researchers seem to have forgone conclusions and design studies that will confirm their biases, although most of the conclusions seem logical and commonsensical.

In Chapter Two, ethereal distinctions and oversimplification of functions of parts of our intricately interconnected brains by neuroscientists in Moab, Utah, become confusing, as though the human brain works as a group of isolated islands. Salivary levels of cortisol is extensively used as a surrogate marker for stress, the latter not well defined, and undoubtedly some of the studies unjustifiably equate association with causation and attach too much significance to minor differences that may not even be statistically significant.

Having stated my concerns about some of the science above, the subject is a neglected one and the writing is interesting. I even accept the conclusion that most of us modern urbanites get far too little exposure to raw nature, especially our young children with their developing brains. The solutions suggested are also sensible guides to more relaxed, happier lives.

Chapter Four (of 12) is a particularly thoughtful analysis of the devastation wrought by modern noise pollution. The discussion of the very outdoorsy city of Singapore made me long for a trip to it, although it is not, as stated, the world’s only city state. (What about Vatican City?) Learning that Jackson Pollock paintings and natural forests contain mathematical repeating patterns called fractals is fascinating, new to me, and difficult to understand. There is a reason that older prisons and mental institutions were surrounded by gardens and farmland that inmates worked on to their benefit. We have unfortunately largely substituted less effective pharmaceutical treatment for the ‘nature fix’.

As someone who became an urbanite after a childhood in which most of my waking hours were spent in school or outdoors (or in outdoor schooling), I probably inadvertently benefited from that exposure which is now sadly lacking for most children. It may be only my daily walks, often in forests, that now keeps me semi-sane. I recently discovered that my iPhone keeps track of my steps, distances, and speed, but as an old Luddite, I am no fan of constant technical tracking of all body functions, which seem to somehow detract from the pure joy of the activity. I don’t like the idea of some Apple tech geek guiding and recording my exercises. I only check the number of steps (13,377 today, a bit more than my average) after donning pyjamas, and sometimes leave my phone at home.

City planners and health advisors should take the message from this book seriously. For the rest of the public it is still a thoughtful pleasant read.

I borrowed this ebook from the OPL, after reading a glowing review of it on Stuck in a Book.

Twenty-four year old identical twins, Judith and Cassandra Edwards, arrive at their retired alcoholic philosopher father’s ranch home (shared with their maternal grandmother) in the Sierra Nevada foothills to attend Judith’s wedding. This is after being apart for nine months for the first time, Judith at Juilliard in New York, and Cassandra in Berkley California. They then discover that they have bought the same dress for the wedding. For reasons that will be understood only by modern western female readers, this apparently is an absolute disaster, leading to confusing feelings, endless introspective, disconnected musings, guilt, self-doubt, alienation, conflicts, and even violence.

There are few characters, no foul language or sex (but with subtle hints of lesbian longing), and abundant symbolism and allusions to classical literature, philosophy, and music. The overriding theme is one of the ever-present philosophical difficulties of balancing one’s individualism with communalism. The writing is lyrical, almost poetic, with one section narrated by the bride-to-be, bracketed by two sections narrated by her single identical twin, Cassandra. There are a few surprising twists in a rather simple plot that is easy to follow.

The confusing 12 page Afterword by Deborah Eisenberg dwells on what it means to be a complete individual vs part of a nuclear or human family, and the unique challenges of identical twins. But it also makes generalizations about the characters that were totally lost on me.

A quite enjoyable period piece. I am sure that women will enjoy it much more than most men.

Between the writing and publication of Doubt is Their Product, in 2008, and the publication of this similarly-themed book, the American epidemiologist and academic at George Washington University author worked for seven years as assistant secretary of Labor for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Association in the Obama administration

The tobacco and alcohol industries, DuPont and Dow Chemical’s “forever chemicals” used to produce Teflon among other dubious products, NFL deniers of chronic traumatic brain injuries in most players, diesel emissions assessment cheaters, opioids producers denying their addictive properties, the silica industry deniers of harm in the form of silicosis and asbestosis, Volkswagen’s cheating hierarchy, climate crisis deniers, and the sweets industry all come in for careful well-documented criticism. The product defence industry is huge but the same group of lobbyists, pseudo-scientists-for-hire, industrial organizations, lawyers, and front associations appear again and again to rework the findings of dedicated scientists and epidemiologists who assess consumer products for safety and usefulness. Post hoc data dredging to cast the products found to be harmful as safe or at least safer at the behest of their producers, often without revealing their source of funding, is a lucrative business for these unscrupulous organizations, often failing to disclose their conflicts of interest.

Michaels acknowledges that at least some of these individuals honestly believe the foregone conclusions they provide for their employers, being blinded by political ideology. To quote Sinclair Upton: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” But others are blatant liars available (for a hefty fee) to spout their lies. Media outlets without expertise, with their penchant for hearing both sides of an argument, help in spreading doubt and confusion.

The chapter on silica exposure in the construction industry is most instructive about the complicated, slow, and challenging process of getting any new standards through the maze of Washington bureaucracy.

I can relate to the difficult decisions about conflict of interest having participated in many clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies; I refused to participate in some if the publication of results was restricted a priori by the sponsors. But I have retrospectively concluded that the design of some studies was such that the conclusion the company wanted was all but assured.

The writing is dry and humourless but factual and richly referenced with thirty pages of references and notes. Endless acronyms for government agencies, lobby groups, and industrial associations disguising their aims with ingenious names can be confusing. The focus is almost entirely American, but the problems it addresses are certainly universal, although maybe not to the same extent. I suspect that there is a lot of duplication of material contained in his earlier book (I have not read it), although the problem of fake science and anti-science and anti-intellectual sentiments has gotten far worse in the interval between the two books, largely thanks to the election of Donald Trump.

This work is enlightening and sobering, a call to carefully review the source of any purported work of science, but to not reject good science with solid factual conclusions. It is difficult to determine who would enjoy this book, but fewer will read it than could be usefully educated by doing so.

Thanks,

Al. (He actually discussed the author’s earlier book.)

Instead of a book review, today I offer some thoughts about the situation we face with respect to the climate crisis. This just reflects my limited reading and understanding of the problem, not an expert opinion.

The eve of the shambolic Glasgow climate summit seems like an appropriate time to weigh in with some musings. On billboards, on line, in print magazines and newspapers, and on TV, we are constantly bombarded with endless commercials by all the big automakers glamourizing the use of their fossil fuel-powered vehicles. I have never seen such an advertisement for an all-electric car, nor even for a plug-in hybrid.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the average passenger vehicle in that country produces about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year of use, not counting the amount produced by its factory production and the extraction, refining, and transport of the fuel. And this does not include the carcinogenic nitrous oxides spewed from diesel engines. Certainly some greenhouse gases are produced in the manufacturing of all products, but electric vehicles emit none on the roadways and even if the ultimate source of electricity is coal, gas, or oil, the efficiency of electric vehicles would still vastly reduce the net emissions, compared to fossil fuel vehicles.

While conflicted governments have been fiddling around the edges of the problem with regulations to decrease emissions by increasing the efficiency of burning fossil fuels, pretending to take the climate crisis seriously, they have provided support to the fossil fuel industry in various forms. According to a recent CBC report, in 2018-2020, Canadian governments and publicly owned entities provided almost $14 billion to this industry, leading the world on a per capita basis, while providing less than $1billion to support renewable energy sources, the least of any of the G7 countries.

Since 1971, Canadian government regulations have banned any advertising of tobacco products and forced producers to provide dire health warnings on all of their products. We are now in a similar situation with cars, the only difference being that the harm from fossil fuel car usage affects all of us, and will affect our children and grandchildren, not just the current users. Why do government regulators not ban advertising of new fossil fuel cars, as they belatedly did for tobacco products, or at the very least require that those commercials provide a warning similar to that required on tobacco products, something along the lines of “Use of this product is harmful to the environment and will contribute to global warming.”? And not just in small print. Then shame all countries with car manufacturing plants to do the same. A chance for Canada to lead the way. This will not resolve the climate crisis but is one small step that we owe to our descendants and a signal to the rest of the world that we are finally taking the problem seriously.

The setting for this very new epic tale is the Lincoln Highway stretching from Times Square in NYC to Lincoln Square in San Francisco, in 1957. Emmett Watson, Wolly Wollcott, and Duchess FitzWilliams escape from a juvenile detention facility in Salina, Kansas to Morgen, Nebraska. Along with them in their escapades as they travel the Lincoln Highway to NYC is Emmet’s orphaned precocious eight year old brother, Billy. More than a dozen other mostly shady secondary characters that they encounter along the way complete the cast.

The ten chapters are numbered in reverse order and divided into sections that are narrated by, or in the third person tense about, the few main characters. The plot is full of surprises but intricately interconnected with impossible-to-predict twists. Towles takes full advantage of the old literary device of ending sections of narration with a quirky surprise mystery to be solved only many pages later. He deftly intertwines connections to a great variety of characters and stories many readers will be familiar with, including Ulysses, Achilles, Jason, Ishmael, Sinbad, Karl Marx, Walt Whitman, Shakespeare, and Zeno’s paradox as well as that of Schrodinger’s Cat. The introduction of these at times seem like artificial means for Towles to present his own unique insights and universal truisms about human existence and interactions. The description of means of travel, including hobos hitching rides on freight trains is detailed and realistic with vivid descriptions of the towns and cities that they pass through. The plot twists can be confusing unless the reader pays close attention to seemingly irrelevant details. I had to reread a section to figure out why Duchess tracks down Townhouse to deliberately take a beating to even the score between them. We never are told exactly why Wolly is taking some potent medicine nor the name of it. The few women characters play generally minor but certainly not subservient roles.

Most of the story is within the realm of possibilities although Billy’s profound insights and knowledge seem a bit excessive for an eight year old. And it does not seem likely that corn on the cob would be available to anyone, no matter how wealthy, to celebrate the July 4th holiday in the Adirondacks, in 1957. The result of the black ex-soldier turned hobo, Ulysses’s ten year quest to find his wife and son, and Emmett and Billy’s quest to find their estranged mother in San Francisco could not be fitted into the short time frame of the story, but could well have been added as a useful two-years-latter postscript.

One of many good quotes. “Emmett was raised to hold no man in distain. To hold a man in distain, his father would say, presumed that you knew so much about his lot, so much about his intentions, about his action both public and private, that you could judge his character against your own without fear misjudgement.”

A very different story than Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, but equally entertaining, and far better in my opinion than his Rules of Civility.

Thanks

Din.

Narrated in the voice of astrobiologist Theo Byrne, this very new novel, set in very modern times, is global in scope and an intriguing delightful read. The widowed Theo is left alone to raise his troubled nine year old son, Robin, who has what modern psychiatric dogma would label as some combination of Asperger syndrome, ADHD, and obsessive compulsive disorder, labels that Theo rejects. Robin is troubled by memories of his late environmentalist, wildlife preservation advocate scientific mother. When a neuroscientist friend of Theo’s connects Robin with his mother’s emotional states as she had recorded them in a functional magnetically resonance imaging machine, his brain wiring is altered to mimic hers with great improvement in his mental state. The technique called DecNef, (for decoded Neurofeedback) is promoted as a treatment for all kinds of mental disorders, and Robin becomes a media celebrity.

Donald Trump is never mentioned by name but his anti-science, anti- democratic, and environmentally destructive policies and legal maneuvers are enacted by the unnamed President, and he cancels the funding for the promising astrological search for life on other planets and the neuroscience research. Greta Thunberg is never named either but is clearly presented in the form of her fictional autistic European doppelgänger, environmental activist Inga Alder.

Interspersed with the earthbound science which may seem farfetched to many nonscientific readers, but which seemed like semi-realistic possibilities to me, Theo and Robin visit imaginary life-sustaining planets and exoplanets, at least in their shared imaginations.

The first and last parts of the story are set in the author’s home area in the Smokey Mountains around Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and the bulk of it is set in Madison, Wisconsin. I have explored both of these cities and can attest to the accuracy of the depictions.

The book has no chapter breaks, but spaces between short sections of narrative prose give it realistic natural breaks; there should be no difficulty for readers to keep track of the few characters. ScFi aficionados will love the visits to other planets. Beautifully integrated, the story leaves readers with no loose ends except for some doubt about Robin’s true paternity. (His animal-preservationist mother is killed in a car accident as she swerves to avoid killing an opossum)

Some great quotes. “The difference between fear and excitement must be only a few neurones wide.” “Life assembles itself on accumulating mistakes”.

A great read, at least as good as the author’s earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory.

Thanks,

Vera and Book Browse.

Political, economic and cultural developments, particularly in the United States, since this book was published only six years ago make much of it already seem hopelessly outdated. The Vancouver author and social activist provides an encyclopedic and depressing review of where we were six years ago in global efforts to combat climate change. It is much more depressing now when we consider that very little of what she forcefully documents we absolutely need to do “by the end of the decade” i.e. by 2020, was actually done.

Of hundreds of environmental organizations supposedly working to limit global warming, many are funded in part at least by fossil fuel companies and some are extending drilling rights on nature preserves and appointing extractive industry moguls to their boards. Klein’s skepticism is pervasive and there are great example of duplicity and false claims by many in the extractive industries. I particularly appreciated the irony of Rex Tillerson, then CEO of Exon-Mobile, opposing fracking near his multimillion dollar mansion because it would lower the value of the real estate in the area.

For the first two sections of the book, it seems that Klein is anti-everything- capitalism, consumerism, free trade, entrepreneurship, individual wealth, and modern technology. Her analysis clearly documents that most so-called solutions advocated or legislated by politicians, technocrats or business leaders like Richard Branson are mainly for “green washing” and fail to meet any meaningful targets. Her most scathing rebuke is directed toward the tech geeks who claim to be able to interfere more with nature, not less, as in geoengineering a global sun block. The industry claims for natural gas as a bridge from oil to renewable energy sources is exposed as a sham, and even nuclear power generation is claimed to be unhelpful, not because of the minuscule risks of radiation, but because of the amount of fossil fuel energy used to mine uranium and to convert limestone into concrete.

But in the third part, after about page 348, she becomes more upbeat with copious documentation of the potential for radical positive change-if and only if the tipping point and actions come from the common people around the world, not from billionaire philanthropists, corporate leaders or politicians. And since this book (and the documentary film based on it) was produced, there has been some progress, witness the cancellation of the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines as a result of such public protests, and even public protests against new coal mines in autocratic China.

‘Socialism’ has become a derogatory almost meaningless word, particularity in the U.S., applied by Republicans to any form of government that they don’t like. But the experience of Nordic cultures that tackle income inequality and climate issues with wide social support systems and limitations on unfettered capitalism should give all of us reason to reconsider radical cultural and political changes as we face the prospect of an uninhabitable world.

The authors self-assurance that she has all the answers to the massive problems we face as a species can become grating, but her arguments and recommendations are compelling, logical, and difficult to refute.

A couple of great quotes: “For a couple hundred years we have been telling ourselves that we can dig the midnight black remains of other life forms out of the bowels of the earth and burn them in massive quantities, and that the airborne particles and gases released into the atmosphere….will have no effect whatsoever. Or if they do, we humans, brilliant as we are, will just invent our way out of any mess we have made.”

“Step one for getting out of a hole. Stop digging.” (Not very original, but very appropriate.)

Along with Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and the author’s brother, Seth Klein’s A Good War this tome provides a classic warning that we should all take seriously.

I started into this book because it is to be discussed at our book club, without realizing that I would miss that meeting because of another commitment.

A Calgary writer makes a valiant and quite compelling effort to restore the historical honour of the Orkney Scot, John Rae, as the Arctic explorer and adventurer who, in the 1840s and 50s, was the first to discover not only the Northwest Passage but to pinpoint the area of the Franklin expedition’s shipwreck and the fate of its members. That report of his, leaked to the British public, included evidence of cannibalism by the starving crews. The elite racist English noble classes encouraged by John Franklin’s widow refused to believe the evidence Rae provided from encounters with the native Inuits, and other adventurers and cartographers laid claim to the maps of the vast area that Rae had first detailed. The British Admiralty was in constant conflict with the more successful explorers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Rae’s employer. Even racist Charles Dickens got into the act, describing the Inuit natives that Rae relied on as unreliable savages who probably killed the crew members of the Franklin ships, the Erubus and the Terror, although he probably never met an Inuit.

This documentary screedwas written thirteen years before the wrecks of the two ships were discovered; those discoveries completely vindicated the conclusions made by Rae sixty years earlier.

There are endless hard-to-believe stories of incredible hardship and endurance, long treks on snowshoes, and near-disasters but also remarkable loyalties and friendships. Few readers unfamiliar with the vast north will be interested in the minutia of confusing details of the geography and endeavours and the five faint maps in unreadable small print are of little help. Only two of the maps are readily relatable to the accompanying text. The exact mileages covered by the explorers, stated as fact, particularly in the Epilogue, are hard to accept as accurate, given the crude instrumentation of the day; they seem more like estimates.

Part of the difficulty in accepting John Rae’s account was the ingrained biases of the British aristocracy; as frequently happens, the history written by the powerful politically-connected was blatantly distorted to protect their interests, the truth be damned. But part is also because “Rae wrote so awkwardly. He had mastered the rules of grammar, more or less, but lacked style and flair; he had no sense of composition, of narrative.” I am tempted to apply the same characterization to the author of this humourless and unnecessarily detailed historical account.

This book is undoubtedly of great interest to historians of the north, and is very educational, but is not one that most readers would enjoy, even in Covid lockdown.

Full disclosure. This new independently-published book’s author is a friend and classmate from Western’s Meds ‘70 class. He has travelled all over North America giving almost 1000 entertaining talks to various groups, including our class reunions, on the nature and importance of humour in our lives.

Divided into 31 short, logically-arranged chapters, the insights Ken provides range from hilarious anecdotes to very serious discussion about different kinds of humour and his recommendations about how we can increase our collective and individual happiness quotient should be taken seriously. Many of the jokes and anecdotes, largely from his long career as a family doctor, were familiar to me but there are enough new ones to give me chuckles. The quotes from various historical figures and scholars, including Rod Martin, another friend from my days as a member of the now defunct London and Area Humanist Association give readers a thoughtful background into the nature of humour and its importance in our lives.

I noted several typos and grammatical errors that escaped the notice of the proofreaders, but they are probably less frequent and less significant than those in my own books-there are at least two geographic errors in my novel, mere mortals.

One relevant anecdote for Ken to ponder. I recall an American College of Physicians Ontario branch meeting at which the late Malcolm Muggeridge, of Punch magazinefame, was the guest speaker talking about the nature of humour. He related that he didn’t object to so-called dirty jokes because most humour depends on sudden incongruity. Then, with a sly smirk, looking at his wife sitting at the end of the head table, he said that nothing in nature was more prone to sudden incongruity than the way the human reproductive system was designed and functioned.

A thoroughly enjoyable and thoughtful analysis full of sage advice from a true expert. It is available from http://www.heathyhumor.ca.

Unlike the offbeat, witty, dark, Netflix fantasy series with the same name except for the added prefix, Un to the word Fortunate, giving it the opposite meaning, this is nonfiction science for non-scientists at its best. The author is a science writer with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a humanist who convincingly rejects any suggestion of Design as the explanation for anything. From the impact of an asteroid on earth 66 million years ago that wiped out 75% of species then existing, to the serial genetic mutations necessary for the development of different cancers, chance events with astronomical odds against them happening explain how the world works.

The book is divided into three logical sections with touching personal anecdotes interspersed with the sometimes difficult science explanations.

The aptly named Kentucky Pentecostal pastor Jamie Coots died of a rattlesnake bite after mauling it while conducting a service, sure that God would protect him, and then refusing treatment. He should be a candidate for a posthumous Darwin Award, although it is apparently too late to award it to him- he has a son who took over doing the same stunts with rattlesnakes in the same church and continues the practice after almost dying from a bite. He should be considered for the stupidity prize.

From the evolution of species to the genetics of different diseases, the critical role of chance seems convincing. Carroll makes the brilliant analogy of the chances of one of millions of asteroids in the universe striking the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago to the chances of one of hundreds of millions of sperm cells impacting a particular ovum in a Fallopian tube to create a unique organism like me or him or a one-of-a-kind elephant.

Some of the explanations of the genetics of evolutionary change may be difficult for some readers, but are greatly enhanced by accompanying simple line diagrams.

A thoroughly enjoyable and educational short read.

A Connecticut Yankee reporter and mother of four delves into the complex science of the influences of offspring on mothers and visa versa from conception to adulthood. Interviews and visits to numerous labs around the world and hundreds of scientific reports of studies on this relationship, not only in Homo sapiens but in many other mammals and even insects lead to startling conclusions, many of them counterintuitive and new to me. For example, an embryo sends cells into the mother’s circulation to permanently set up shop in various organs including her brain, altering her brain anatomy and chemistry in measurable ways, thus creating a form of chimerism. Reading about details of the changes in hormones in pregnancy and the roles played by the placenta was like an update to my med school embryology and endocrinology lectures in the 1960s, and the complex neuroanatomy and neurochemistry changes in pregnancy were almost entirely new to me.

Many of the social science studies cited can be criticized for bias by unblinded interpreters, questionable statistical analysis, equating correlation with causation, over-generalization from one species to another, and non-reproducibility. Nevertheless the many startling little-known indisputable facts will hold readers attention. Roe deer and brown bears “will not reproduce in the first place unless there is the right amount of food around. Their reproductive tracts feature a nifty safety-deposit-like structure called a ‘uterine crypt’ where they can stash their fertilized embryos indefinitely in a state of suspended animation, not progressing in pregnancy until the berries on the nearby bush ripens or the environment otherwise sweetens to meet their standards.”

Interspersed with the science are hilarious personal anecdotes relating to her own pregnancies and family life with some very serious topics such as postpartum depression discussed with great sensitivity.

Never directly discussed, the question of who is making decisions which seem to be often be made solely by a combination of genes, proteins and environmental influences raises the age-old question of free will, and the philosophical discussions of hard determinism vs compatabilism. Do any of us make decisions at all?

The latter chapters disappointed me a bit with less science and more discussion of her own stressful fourth pregnancy and rambling advice on child-rearing in various circumstances that is like an updated Dr. Spock.

The straightforward prose is sprinkled with quirky analogies and metaphors (she describes her husband as “a celebrated lunch box chef whose diaper-changing art borders on origami”), and should be easy for non-scientists to understand.

I learned a lot and enjoyed this book, always in awe of the wonders of nature. Mothers and mothers-to-be would probably appreciate it even more.

Thanks,

Bob McDonald (of CBCs Quirks and Quarks podcast.)

A young starving woman ekes out an existence on the shores of the Greek island of Thera, making a home in a cave and scavenging for food. Initially readers know virtually nothing about why she is there, her background, her past experiences, or even her age, nationality or race. Painfully slowly these bits of information are revealed with dozens of short interspersed flashbacks and introspective, nostalgic musings by the very insecure, lonely, and troubled protagonist. We only learn such details as her age 25 pages from the end. Her parents are constantly providing mental guidance and advice to her long after their violent deaths.

There is really only one character to keep track of, and she eschews any close relationships until the last chapter. The whole story could be seen as a commentary on the universal yearning for close connections versus the opposite common fears of self revelation and intimacy.

Divided into four unnamed parts, more untitled and unnumbered chapters and even more subsections within the chapters, the breaks seem to be placed capriciously, although the story does largely flow forward chronologically over the few months that it covers. No calendar dates are provided but, by the connection to the overthrow of Charles Taylor’s rule of Liberia, it seems to be set in 2003. There is no happy ending or resolution to the woman’s plight. The connection of such insertions as “Beauty or horror, my heart. Turning on a stone. Beauty or horror, it passes.” to the narrative was totally lost to me.

The endless insertion of such phrases with tenuous or no connections to the the accompanying proper sentences seems to be a feature shared by other fiction authors graduating from advanced creative writing schools, but I find this butchery of proper English to be just annoying, although it can be effective if used sparingly. I am slowly learning to avoid the dreamy, flowery fiction written by graduates of the Iowa Writers Workshop. If I remember correctly, I chose this one because of a rave review on the Goodreads website, but I did not enjoy it and cannot recommend it.

This debut novel is by a well-known British TV personality and the creator of America’s Survivor, and Deal or No Deal shows. In a large posh British retirement home, a group of quirky retirees including a nurse, a psychiatrist, an extensively-tattooed union agitator, and a detective, meet weekly to solve cold cases from the police files purloined by the ex-detective.

When two local people known to them are murdered in quick succession, their attention is diverted to solving those cases, with complex interactions with the inept and corrupt local police. Numerous suspects are ranked by the club members on a 1-10 scale as possible culprits. The main characters are all eccentric, bordering on caricatures, but are entertaining with a few great one-liners.

There is abundant humour in the first third of the story. “Father Mackie crosses himself by the plinth at Christ’s feet. No kneeling for him these days, though, arthritis and Catholicism being an uneasy mix.” However the humour largely disappears in the later chapters. In an apparent effort to introduce mystery and intrigue, the author makes the plot and the numerous peripheral characters become more complex and unrealistic, but this succeeded only to confuse me; even at the end, after many more deaths, I was left uncertain about who did in who and why.

I appreciate the vivid imagination of the author, and enjoyed parts of this story, but as it evolved it became unnecessarily complicated and confusing with impossible to follow false leads, loose ends, and unrealistic peripheral characters.

Thanks,

Vera.