Author: thepassionatereader

The well-known CNN medical reporter and Atlanta nerosurgeon turned novelist, creates a fictional Monday morning closed Morbiity and Mortality conference in which doctors review their mistakes. They are merciless and cruel, with extremely unrealistic characters, and sometimes career -destroying revelations. I have attended many Morbidity and Mortality Rounds and usually the audience is very sympathetic to the doctor who goofed up, thinking that it could have been him or her. I know of no hospital with 60 academic surgeons on staff, nor have I ever heard of someone bleeding to death while undergoing a craniotomy. No hospital would allow someone except in the direst circumstances to go to the O.R. without a history and preoperative laboratory tests, especially not an asymptomatic youth. And all of this takes place in the first 40 pages. It is even more bizarre that the story is said to take place in Chelsea Michigan, a town I have visited, with a population of under 6000, but with a world famous hospital covering six blocks. Some poetic licence!

A surgery resident is able to diagnose pulmonary embolism that had mystified internists, not with a lung scan but with a spiral CT. In Chapter 25, the author’s lies about internists become explicit when he belittles them by claiming that they, unlike surgeons, “Rarely did they cure anyone.” A star neurosurgeon after brain trauma becomes “50 percent of what she once was” but apparently is able to function as a family doctor, including delivering babies.

In Chapter 18, it becomes clear that neither the emergency room doctors at Chelsea General nor the author have any idea what is involved in organ donation, a surprising deficit for a practising neurosurgeon. A heavily tattooed killer is considered for organ donation whereas his elderly victim is not, but is sent right to the morgue. (No one is too old to be a liver donor.)

This is not the only book trumpeting the mythical unique skills of neurosurgeons at the expense of other specialists, witness Gray Matters by Theodore Schwartz, and Sam Kean’s The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons. Then there is the Netflix film series based on this book that I have not and will not watch.

Lest I be perceived as just a jealous internist envious of the praise and awe neurosurgeons get from the public from such writing, I should acknowledge that the author has an engaging writing style and a very vivid imagination.

My advice to Dr. Gupta: “Stick to neurosurgery, give up unrealistically overdramatizing it and stop belittling internal medicine specialists and praising surgeons.”

2/5.

Thanks, Carol

The American journalist and researcher gives a exhaustive account of the dozens of private military forces operative in Eastern Europe and Africa in the early part of this century. I would challenge any non-historian Canadian to recall even a small portion of the names of the hundreds of people and places discussed in the introduction and first chapter (70 pages) with their shifting loyalties and murderous ways.

The main focus of the book is on the Wagner group of paramilitary forces under the direction of Yevgeny Prigozhin which operated in at least a dozen African countries as well as Ukraine before falling foul of the Russian oligarchy. They were and are businessmen as well as private armies that operate at arms length from official armies, often allowing governments, including the U.S. to deny responsibility for their often atrocious actions. Vast sums of money and the international arms trade are at stake, particularly as they exploit Africa’s natural resources.

This is a deeply researched book, involving considerable peril to the author as he travels through war zones and interviews combatants with variable allegiances. It is also discouraging as it documents the tremendous influence of private armies and money quite separate and often at odds with official governmental agencies.

I cannot recommend this erudite book except to those involved in the military, paramilitary or security industries.

3/5

Thanks, The Economist.

The late New York professor of neurology clearly had a knack for the short story. His wide-ranging curiosity for hidden talent in what appeared to be hopeless cases of a wide variety of neurological impairments and his deep humanity shine through in all of his writing. From phantom limbs to autistic artistry he saw the potential benefit in every ailment.

Most of the stories relate to the people he encountered in long term care facilities. The investigations were limited by today,s standards without CT scans or MRI. I was intrigued that he mentions meeting and discussing prosopagnosia with Dr. Andrew Kertez, a professor at Western with whom I researched and co-wrote my first academic paper. I was intrigued by the complexity of temporal lobe seizures that may have contributed to Dostoyevski’s writing talent and Shostakovich’s music. It has been suggested elsewhere that temporal lobe epilepsy caused St. Paul’s sudden conversion.

The most astounding pages relate to the profoundly “retarded” twins with a totally unexplained ability to tell the day of the week for every date for hundreds of years in the past, among other numerical phenomena.

The comparison and contrast of Tourettes’s Syndrome and Korsakoff’s, was confusing to me, but the Korsakoff patients he discusses seemed much more complex than any I ever met.

There are a host of medical terms that most people will not be familiar with, and some hair-splitting differences in terminology that can be confusing, at least to me

4/5

Thanks, Andra.

The professor of Theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary, provides the most modern and deeply researched treatise into the life of Jesus that I have ever read, even exceeding Richard Rubenstein’s When Jesus Became God. Drawing on many texts that were arbitrarily excluded by the powers who determined what gospels to include in the Bible 200 years after Jesus’s death, she shows

the many contradictions between the ones that were included in third hand accounts from writers, none of whom knew Jesus personally, and wrote many years later. Much of the gospels were written based in part on oral tradition and what had to happen to fulfill Old Testament prophecies.

What emerges is the picture of of a charismatic megalomaniac Jewish rabbi, who speaks in parables, may have been delusional, and is himself conflicted about his role in a troubled world.

There is a lot of debate about who actually condemned Jesus to death in the setting of Roman occupation of Israel, and the details of his crucification.

The resurrection is discussed in detail and the later adoption of the dogma that this was a physical event is seemingly accepted as a real possibility by the author.

The author also clearly believes some of the more etherial and vague stories about Jesus and his vast and continuing impact on the lives of 1/3 of the world’s population, but minimizes the misery and cruelty that has resulted with many wars and cruel Crusades, preferring to emphasize the message of love, help and self-sacrifice. I was therefore not surprised when I recently read about her praise of a variety of clergy who were using various hallucinogens as part of a study to enhance their “spiritual experience”.

I accept that there is a lot more to life than what can be proven by science alone. But I cannot accept dogma that seems to me to me to be clearly impossible scientifically, such as the virgin birth, the resurrection of the physical body, and the transubstantiation of bread and wine into actual body and blood-Jesus must have been completely devoured hundreds of times if that were true. Which body of mine will be resurrected- that of my 20 year old or my current 80 year old? If a cannibal eats me, which body will be resurrected?

An interesting but dry well written very educational read.

4/5

Thanks, The New Yorker.

Whereabouts? indeed. And when? There are no answers to these questions in this novel written by the American author of Indian origin. In short chapters of 1-4 pages, she muses about the life she leads as a single young modern woman, with observations of the people around her and the city she lives in most of the time, obviously somewhere in Italy.

The writing is very engaging and her observations and speculation about other people, the city, the weather and everything around her are insightful. There is almost no plot, but it is an easy light read.

4.0/5

Thanks, Andra.

The late American novelist, satirist, and playwright imagines the outcome of the 1936 Presidential election, one year after the book was published. In this cautionary political farce, Berzelius Windrip, a lying, bigoted, openly anti-Semitic, misogynist, racist, ant-immigrant self-serving demagogue Senator wins and proceeds to destroy everything that America once stood for.

In later chapters, Doremus Jessop, a Vermont newspaper man tries to a analyze various forms of government from Russian communism to fascism to socialism and democracy, and seems to come to the conclusion that none of them work. There is a distinct undercurrent of anti-capitalism. Then he does the same thing with various religions.

A police state with forced labour camps develops, but the propaganda’s lies are so convincing that most people come to believe that everyone is better off. An illegal Underground Railroad takes thousands to Canada, and there are threats to invade Canada and Mexico.

The Minute Men volunteers for Windrip morphs into a vicious Gestapo-like Corpo police force to silence any dissent, and they arrest Jessop for writing an anti-Windrip editorial. The universities are consolidated and curriculums are revised to eliminate any philosophy, arts, or true intellectualism.

In the second half of the book, it seems to become less realistic as thousands are summarily executed, two coup-d’état take place and even by 1939, there is no resolution with the country divided by what amounts to a civil war. It is difficult to determine who is a communist, a fascist, or a liberal socialist, as those pejorative terms were then not as rigidly defined as they are today.

This book is prescient with many of the actions then considered impossible and relatable only as fiction now having been enacted by the current, personality cult administration. It remains to be seen how accurate it is.

A great but scary cautionary tale.

4.5/5

Thanks, Andra

This story of pioneer life in Carlton County in the mid 1800s to 1983 is full of nostalgia and reminiscences. But it is true to the hard lives of the brave Irish Methodists who escaped the Irish potato famine to start a new life in the Ottawa valley and in that sense can be considered as historical fiction. The local scenes with farms around Fitzroy Harbour, Diamond Church, and city life in the Glebe are easy to relate to for any locals. The innovation of using italics to convey the long musings and innermost thoughts of the characters and their conversations is a bit unusual.

Long nebulous musings about the meaning of faith, grace, life and death, and self-doubt, emotional greetings with much hugging and kissing, nostalgia, tears, pubic displays of affection and inability to come to terms with death are very foreign to me, having been raised in a family where such emotionality was absolutely taboo. And the physiologic reactions to those emotions are exaggerated and unrealistic.

Loaned to me by a friend of the author, I cannot recommend this book.

2/5

This is a very enlightening but scary, extensively researched book by a Greek journalist. He travels around the world seeking to understand the movement of all kinds of trash from microplastics to monstrous cruise ships that have become outdated.

There seems to be some inconsistency in praising the industry of recycling steel because of its environmental credentials with 1/3 the carbon output of making new steel, while criticizing the huge ship dismantling industry, but the impact of the movement of parts of ships negates most of the benefits.

The hypocrisy of countries banning the importing of trash from rich countries while buying millions of tons of plastics allegedly for recycling is made abundantly clear, while equal hypocrisy is showered on the people by the fossil fuel industry folk always trying to increase sales of plastics.

The dark underworld of the movement of trash, with poor enforcement of laws and almost no inspection of cargo ships for illicit trash is detailed.

I diligently separate my discards into cleaned paper, plastics and metals, and compost, but after reading this gloomy tome I am left to wonder how much that benefits the environment- certainly not as much as the collectors and traders would have me believe. It seems to me that everything is overpackaged in plastic and we should be protesting that. I just ate a cupcake with a silly little gold coloured plastic flower on top of it that may well end up being burned with emission of toxic fumes in a tofu factory in Indonesia.

4.4/5

Thanks, The Economist.

I have greatly enjoyed most of the humorous books and plays by this rural Ontario genius. Many years ago, we searched for one of them, before heading to the Blyth Theatre to see the play of the same name with my parents. The assistant at Indigo insisted the it would be found in the Agriculture section but we eventually found it under Humour. Somehow, I had missed this one until now.

The author, as Walt Wingfield, a parttime farmer in fictitious Persephone Townshp has an unparalleled knack for the sudden hilarious nonsequiter while commenting on the local scene in letters to the local Larkspur paper.

But he also gets serious in dissing excessive government regulation, and the very dramatic and touching family feuds and misunderstandings. The effect is to create a vivid picture of the rural community spirit and willingness to help in spite of vast differences.

Some of many memorable quotes: «  I believe that those who forget history are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. Knowing our history gives us the opportunity to make entirely new mistakes. »

« you know what we call the fire department- the basement savers. »

« As a horse ages, the front teeth get longer and the back teeth are worn down to almost nothing. It is the opposite of how you tell the age of a hockey player. »

«They say that when Gus was down at Woodbine they never ran short of horseshoes. They’d just bend him over and pull one out of his…. »

Some of the humour is a bit silly, as when the only mosquito in the area is described as having out of province plates.

I devoured this book the same day that I borrowed it from the library and greatly enjoyed it, perhaps in part because I grew up on a farm not very far from the mythical site of Persephone Township, and Larkspur.

4.7/5

I occasionally pick up books that I sense I will not enjoy, just to see if I can figure out what others like about them. Such was the case with this book. This is the latest in a long list of novels, short stories and plays by the much acclaimed British writer and member of the House of Lords. I admit that I have vague memories of somewhat enjoying his 1977 Shall We Tell The President. This story is set around the year 2000, mostly in Britain, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., although there are no exact dates mentioned.

The plot is exceedingly complex with so many characters that I found it impossible to keep them straight, and almost none of them are honest law-abiding citizens. There are so many improbable occurrences that it became impossible to believe any of them. I accept that the world of crime and law enforcement is more complex than usually appreciated, but this exceeds all limits of believability.

Forged art and documents are bidded on at Christie’s auction by Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg, and it seems characters carry around millions of dollars in cash and lethal weapons and yet never have any troubles crossing borders.

There are a few memorable quotes. A high-end prostitute notes: …‘« like footballers and ballet dancers, we have our sell-by date. »

An unscrupulous lawyer: « …lawyers gain a reputation for being ambulance chasers, but not Mr Booth Watson QC. He was of a higher calling and fell into the category of a funeral attending QC. »

I cannot recommend this book, and do not comprehend why it and others like it are bestsellers. But that is just me.

1.5/5

There was no difficulty for me to relate to this memoir. I spent three years in New Haven, where it is sited, with a Jewish instructor and a Jewish collègue, and have played bridge poorly for more than 35 years. And it covers in part the time that I was there. Many locations were familiar to me.

The bridge ladies are a longstanding group of entirely Jewish ladies who have been playing at various levels for 50 years or more. Their story is related by the admittedly bipolar daughter of one of them who belatedly took up the game in part to try to understand the complex psychology of the group, who are of diverse backgrounds, eschew any real expression of affection, and seemingly have little in common except their Jewishness and their love of the game.

This book reads like a novel but is based on real experiences of the author. In places, it becomes difficult to keep the characters straight, and it is a good introduction into the Jewish mindset. sobering to hear of the deaths of mostly domineering husbands, and the loss of independence of the bridge ladies as they face the prospect of moving to assisted living facilities. That prospect also scares me as I approach my 80th birthday.

I am not sure how easy it would be to understand this memoir for someone who has never played bridge, but the simple explanations of the rules, etiquette and complexity of the game should still make it enjoyable.

The love/hate conflicted relationship between the author and her mother is a recurring theme of this memoir.

The author’s anxiety and deep constant introspection detract from the book in my opinion.

T

4.2/5

Thanks, Rhynda and Vera.

This debut novel by a Toronto writer covers the four month period of late 1923 when a young Ernest Hemingway with a bride and a newborn was employed as a frusrated reporter by The Toronto Daily Star. That part of the story is not fiction. He is assigned to write about a daring breakout from the Kingston Penitentury which is also not fiction, but after other assignments, he keeps encountering the escaped convicts in a variety of highly unlikely places, including Windsor’s rum-running docks, and at a boxing match in New York. He becomes obsessed with and sympathetic to the convicts. Alternating short chapters detail the harrowing adventures of the escapees as they steal cars and rob banks and the frustrated writer who has yet to become famous.

The title bears a dubious if any connection to the plot other than Hemingway’s known love for bullfighting and cheering for the underdog.

The writing is superbly entertaining but the premise is exaggerated to the point of being unbelievable. But as an introduction to the young Hemingway, his way of looking at the world, and the Toronto of the 1920s it is unparalleled.

3.5/5

Thanks Mike.

Supposedly all about the 1925 Scopes trial, the teaching of evolution in Tennessee school, that trial is barely mentioned except for in the16 page preface until one gets to half way through the book. Instead, the New York author provides a detailed background of the culture, religions, wars, strikes bigotry, politics, philosophy and violence of early 20th century American life. This is in part from the starkly contrasting beliefs of the prosecuting and defence teams headed by Wm. Jennings Bryan, three-time pesidential candidate and Clarence Darrow, the renowned agnostic.

This book provides a vivid picture of the contrasting bigoted anti-science Fundamentalists who supported the Klu Klux Klan and Prohibition and the numerous talented and educated Northerners exemplified by Clarence Darrow, eloquent in defending John Scopes charged with violating a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in schools. Scopes was set up to test the law by ACLU lawyers. The first part of the book centers on discussion of the influence of Nietzsche, Huxley, Menchen and numerous others on American culture of the 1920s, the eugenics movement and Prohibition.

A small aside: there is brief mention of a boy named Sue. Is this the origin of Johnny Cash’s song of the same name, as he was also in eastern Tennessee?

The result of the trial, in spite of the rhetoric and best efforts of the defence team, a guilty verdict, was a forgone conclusion and a loss for freedom science, and democracy, given that the judge was himself a rabid Fundamentalist and the jury was excluded from hearing the testimony of all of the expert scientists. (The result was later overturned on a technicality by the Tennessee Supreme Court.)

Of numerous witty sayings by Clarence Darrow: « I have never murdered anyone, but on occasion I have read obituary notices with a certain degree of satisfaction. »

There is a very helpful list of persons dramatis at the end that should have been at the start of the book.

This is a very good educational read that is now more than ever relevant given the anti-science environment we still face.

4.0/5.

The New Yorker.

The Maine novelist has set this story in modern times mainly in the towns of Crosby and Shirley Falls, Maine. It seems that every adult is divorced at least once and most have had a traumatic childhood. There are none who could remotely be considered normal. There is endless self analysis and everyone seems keen to take offence at the slightest comment.

Endlessly philosophical talk, discussion and psychoanalysis between Lucy and Bob about loneliness and the impossibility of really getting to know anyone leads to no real conclusion. Bob Burgess, a criminal defence lawyer is so insecure that when he gets a bad haircut, he is embarrassed to the point of avoiding friends for weeks.

There are some naive medical assertions. A comatose accident victim comes to and begins to talk to his father although a few paragraphs before he still had an endotracheal tube in place and later he is said to have a cast on his shoulder.

The list of characters is lengthy and their relationships can be hard to keep track of. A guide to the main characters and their vocations at the start as a reference would have been helpful.

I learned nothing from this less-than-memorable novel. I promise that I will learn from my next read.

2.5/5

Thanks, Jean.

This book by a New York author is all about the deployment and early use of the James Web Space telescope. Not only was it away over budget, but it didn’t launch until 2021, years after it was supposed to, succeeding the Kepler telescope, which was also long delayed and wildly over cost. This leads to the conclusion that the Habitable Worlds telescope planned for launch in 2040 will also likely be delayed and have billions of dollars added to its initial cost estimate.

I would be lying to claim that I understood more than a small fraction of the science detailed in spite of attending the first 3 lectures on astronomy put on by the WELU, (West End Learning Unlimited) organization, with 2 more to come shortly. There are literally hundreds of astronomers cited with remarkable discoveries of billions or trillions of planets, stars, asteroids, comets and exoplanets in an ever expanding universe, with even the universe as we know it being only one of seemingly many. The tentative discovery of dimethyl sulfite on the K-18 planet gained popular press coverage as a possible indication of life, but K-18 is 124 light-years away from earth, so even if real that says nothing about life elsewhere at present.

I did learn that astronomers assign colours to the photographs of the electromagnetic spectrum that they obtain and convert into visible light almost at random which goes some way to explaining why those photos seem so confusing and inconsistent to me.

It seems debatable to nonscientists whether or not expenditure of this magnitude is justifiable, given the seemingly unsolvable problems we have here on earth. However, the mysteries of the skies have preoccupied humans since before any even rudimentary understanding of them, and I am not one to decry expenditure on science of any kind. Even if nothing concrete comes from such endeavours, the enthusiasm and cooperation of astronomers from vastly different cultures is worthy of praise and a uniting force for humankind. I just wish I understood more of the physics and mathematics involved.

3/5

Thanks, Book Browse.

No one recommended this hook to me. I was simply browsing in the library when I noticed it and felt that my education must have been neglected as I had heard a lot about the late Farley Mowat but had never read any of his books. This is his autobiography for the years between 1937 and 1949 i.e before he became a full-time writer. This includes his service in the Army in Italy during WWII and his largely frustrated efforts to bring memorabilia to the Canadian War Museum.

Adventurer, scientist, explorer and writer, his love of the Other, whether herds of caribou, birds of all kinds or Inuit natives, is infectious. His adventures in the far north involved hardships and risks that few would even consider but that he embraced with enthusiasm. Once a rabid trapper and hunter, he gradually became an equally enthusiastic conservationist and a devoted advocate for the endangered, including the Inuit people. His most famous books include The People of the Deer, and Never Cry Wolf, that are probably based mostly on his exploits documented here.

His candid confessions and anxieties are accompanied by a clear sense of duty and concern about the future of all endangered species.

A citizen that Canada should be proud of. But I won’t be reading his other books as there must be a lot of duplication.

4.5/5

No one recommended this hook to me. I was simply browsing in the library when I noticed it and felt that my education must have been neglected as I had heard a lot about the late Farley Mowat but had never read any of his books. This is his autobiography for the years between 1937 and 1949 i.e before he became a full-time writer. This includes his service in the Army in Italy during WWII and his largely frustrated efforts to bring memorabilia back to the Canadian War Museum.

Adventurer, scientist, explorer and writer, his love of the Other, whether herds of caribou, birds of all kinds or Inuit natives, is infectious. His adventures in the far north involved hardships and risks that few would even consider but that he embraced with enthusiasm. Once a rabid trapper and hunter, he gradually became an equally enthusiastic conservationist and a devoted advocate for the endangered, including the Inuit people. His most famous books include The People of the Deer, and Never Cry Wolf, that are probably based mostly on his exploits documented here.

His candid confessions and anxieties are accompanied by a clear sense of duty and concern about the future of all endangered species.

A citizen that Canada should be proud of. But I won’t be reading his other books as there must be a lot of duplication.

4.5/5

The former British MI6 operative and novelist who wrote this piece of trash was previously unknown to me. In the first part, Iranian spies, arms dealers and killers in Bosnia during the war and genocide of 1992-1995, play a prominent role. There is multilayered secrecy and intrigue, with lying to and threatening or killing friends and foe with equal abandon and numerous aliases. In the the first few pages at least eight people are shot to death in Central Park within a few minutes, at least one by his fellow spy, and no one is called to task for that.

The melodramatic unrealistic search for Will in the forest, is only one of many impossible parts of this story. Will Cochrane seems to be able to time-travel from one country to another, fully armed, see around corners, and never get caught. A man swims 100 meters in icy water underwater without taking a breath, carrying a backpack with a submachine gun that still works.

Megiddo, the mastermind Iranian spy ruthlessly plans to blow up the Metropolitan Opera House with 3000 children and the wives of all the world’s major statesmen. This plan too is foiled by the impossibly intuitive Will Cochrane.

So convoluted and impossible is this story that the only way I can explain the author’s intention is if he meant it as a parody mocking the whole abundant genre of spy novels. I cannot recommend it.

1.5/5

Thanks, Maurice.

This short novel is narrated in the present tense by a black poor teen girl who has two children fathered by her father by the time she is sixteen, in the late 80’s Harlem. The guttural slang and description of the most depraved and violent sexual encounters and perversions imaginable would make a drunken sailor blush.

Illiterate, obese, and unschooled, the protagonist finds some elementary reading and writing education in a special school, but much of what she relates in slang and lingo is still unintelligible. She has a very elementary understanding of Langston Hughes’s poetry which she quotes, and worships Louis Farrakhan. The seemingly endless rounds of social agencies seem to do little to help her except for one teacher at the special school.

The NewYork author is an aspiring poet with a MFA from Brooklyn College and incorporates what seems to me to be nonsensical poetry in this bleak story. There is no denouement to the life story- it just stops, followed by a sampling of the writing of the girls in the special school.

Readers should hope that none of this story is from personal experience of the author, but that seems unlikely as novelists usually write about what they have experienced in some way, even when disguised.

2.5/5

Thanks, Carrol A.

This historical fiction is set in Hollowell, Maine, on the Kenebec River, starting in 1789, and is narrated by the author in the voice of a local midwife and healer. The battered body of Joshua Burgess is hauled from the frigid river and she takes it upon herself to solve the mystery, among many other self-assured undertakings.

The wife of the dismissed parson is charged with fornication, and he is accused of murder, and then it gets even more complicated with time shifts, many accusations of malfeasance, and far more descriptions of delivery of babies than necessary.

This story is loosely based on the life of a real famous real famous midwife, and the dramatic intrinsic conflict with a medical doctor, which often features gender biases prominently to this day. I will admit to a bias in favour of obstetricians, even though midwives did a splendid job delivering two of my five grandchildren. Here, the local doctor is portrayed as not just incompetent, but also dishonest and greedy.

The story features a fierce trained falcon, a corrupt rapist judge and lumber proprietor among other alleged rapisists, charges of incest, an epileptic newborn, an outbreak of diphtheria, and many court hearings in which hearsay evidence is often admitted.

The voice of the author, too variable in volume, pitch and speed, makes the audiobook version of this story less than optimal. I suspect that a print version would be easier to follow and less disjointed.

3.5/5

Thanks, Michele.

The well -known Israeli thinker/historian, author of Sapiens and several other books, in this book delves into the nature of information networks and exchanges. But even after twelve pages of pedantic discussion, he seems to abandon any rigid definition of ‘information’ and any possible relationship to reality or truth, words which to him seem to have equally opaque meanings.

The text is supplemented with 163 pages of notes and a 37 page index.

The author dwells at length with self-correcting information systems. “… the scientific revolution was launched by the discovery of ignorance.”

“As an information technology, the self-correcting mechanism is the polar opposite of the holy book. The holy book is supposed to be infallible.”

“Allowing the government to search for the truth is like appointing a fox to supervise the chicken coup.”

He becomes very pessimistic about the existential threat of uncontrolled and non self-correcting AI and coins the term the Silicon Curtain to detail the emerging fight between the U.S. and China over its development.

For me, this dry humourless book contains superb insights in some areas such as when discussing the pope’s apologies for people but not for the church itself which still maintains infallibility, though made up of people. In other areas it became pedantic and speculative, particularly when addressing AI. Not as good as Sapiens, but still insightful.

3.5/5

Thanks, Alan.