Author: thepassionatereader

I recently found this book on our shelf and wondered where it came from. I am now feeling a bit embarrassed as I read one hundred pages before it started to sound familiar. So I looked it up on ThePassionateReader.blog and discovered that it was a Father’s Day gift in 2021 and that I had not only read it but had given it a thorough review. Does nothing to reassure me about my memory.

This is a book that Vera found in our Williams Court lending library, where she volunteers. I knew by the fact that John Bolton worked for Donald Trump that I would disagree with many of his assertions, but it is occasionally worthwhile to read such views anyway in an effort to understand them. I am not sure how much she knew about the Yale Law graduate and former National Security Council Advisor from April 2018 to September, 1019.

Never doubting his self-importance, he claims to have frequently “explained” Israel, North Korea, Iran, and Libya, to Donald Trump, and trashed everything Obama had accomplished, all in the first thirty pages or so, while waiting for over a year for any formal appointment to the new administration in 2017, feeling that anything starting with Deputy was beneath him. One really needs to read or at lest scan though this book to appreciate the enormity of his arrogance and pomposity. One example of his importance (in his eyes): “Since my days in George W. Bush’s administration, I had wanted to extricate the United States from the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces)Treaty. This may seem like a tall order, but I had been there before. I knew what to do.”

When he finally is appointed National Security Advisor, which does not require senate confirmation, much of his work with world leaders, and advice to Trump, seems as though it should have been done by the State Department, lead by Jeff Sessions, which is conspicuously absent, or by the Department of Homeland Security, which is barely mentioned. State does figure prominently once Mike Pompeo took over in late 2018. The author never mentions that he had failed to get senate confirmation as Delegate to the United Nations after prolonged debate in the Senate and has never been elected or confirmed in any position. By about page 150, when Trump has ignored his advice on multiple occasions, it is clear that the relationship is cooling, but lasts much longer.

Neither Trump nor the author address the issue of how the nations of NATO spend their defence budgets, while both insist on spending more as a per cent of the GDP. Perhaps that helps to explain the pervasive waste that is rampant in defence, e.g. leaving billions of dollars of equipment behind for The Taliban.

Critical of Steve Mnunchin, Treasury Secretary, and less so of Mike Pompeo, chair of the CIA, and then Secretary of State, at least initially, he became very critical of both China and Trump in dealing with the early days of the Covid pandemic, while naturally praising the NSC’s response, although it was longer under his direct control. The crisis of a direct attack on Iran which the author backed, missed only by hours, appalled him.

After reading this book, it is tempting to become very cynical about all political treaties, alliances, deals and agreements as fleeting working papers, to be discarded whenever one party no longer finds them useful.

Trump’s erratic behavior, often contradicting himself, his short attention span and his obsession with his media image is increasingly on display as this book progresses. But his alley cat sexual behaviour, which should have disqualified him from any public office is never mentioned.

I have to admit that I learned a lot about the complexity of U.S. foreign relations, and the author makes many compelling arguments for extremely conservative policies. One needs to carefully consider alternative arguments but they are there if you look for them.

Climatic warming is, to my way of thinking, the single most urgent threat to the longterm continuing existence of Homo sapiens on earth, but there is no mention of it at all, except to trash the Paris Climate Agreement as meaningless in a single short paragraph, because Obama approved it.

Trump’s erratic behavior, often contradicting himself, his short attention span and his obsession with his media image is increasingly on display as this book progresses. But his alley cat sexual behaviour, which should have disqualified him from any public office is never mentioned.

Like a novel with too many characters to keep track of, there are hundreds of people discussed in this book, each with their own, often secret agendas, and many with egos the size of Alberta, including he author.

1.5/10

You probably will not enjoy this book, by the New York author unless you are prepared to be throughly confused, at least until more than half way through it. It is unclear who is black, or white, or somewhere in between, who is a Confederate soldier and who is Union, who is severely wounded or dead, who has fathered whom and who is orphaned or adopted. The time shifts between early in 1833 and 1874 after the Civil War had ended do nothing to clarify the confusion and many characters are unnamed while others have several fake names, one wounded soldier cannot even remember his own name, and there are duplicate names for more than one character. The gruesome details of the Civil War and its aftermath on the lives of many are detailed.

With a bit more than 100 pages left, the relationships of a few of the main characters starts to come into focus, and at least some start to make sense. But it takes huge leaps of imagination to figure out what is going on in many places. For example one character is suddenly shoved into a deep, underground root cellar that is then locked, but just a paragraph of unrelated information later is sitting at a feast eating sponge cake.

The author does not use quotation marks, blending direct quotes with narrative that frequently changes tense; at times the speaker is not identified. Dreams mix with reality.

The writing and depiction of the era in American history is interesting, but I remained confused to the end. There are a number of inappropriate verbs out of context (“ConaLee featured she had seen him snatch it up…) that made me wonder if the proofreaders or even the writer was relying on spellcheck or some form of AI. There is resolution of some of the disparate and conflicting information towards the end, particularly in the Epilogue, but I still had unanswered questions about some of the characters and events. Perhaps I simply have lost, or never had the ability to retain so many disparate complex characters clear in my mind. Maybe if I reread it, it would make more sense, but that is not about to happen.

This book reinforces my outlier status as to what kind of books I enjoy. It has received lavish praise from a number of critics, but I have begun to wonder if they are all truly independent or a carefully selected few. It is clear that I often rate books much lower than the critics, but also seldom enjoy a book that critics uniformly pan.

3.5/10

Thanks, Alana.

Described as semi-autographical, the first part of this debut novel by the Canadian author is set in the developing coal mining town of New Waterford, Cape Breton pre-WWI and extends to the Great Depression. The prominent role of the Catholic Church, the poverty, and the limited role of women is fully described. This must be based loosely on some family history. By page 110, the horrors of trench warfare are depicted in gruesome detail.

The plot, although based on the lives of two families of Scottish and Arabian origin, becomes impossibly complex by the third generation, as they reproduce like rabbits. Furthermore, the narrative jumps around in time and space with as many as nine times and sites mentioned in a few pages. The language is flowery and poetic, and there are some inventive poems. But it is difficult to distinguish between what children are imagining or dreaming and what is really happening.

By far the best part of this book, in my opinion, is the 81-page diary of one of the main characters, Kathleen who has moved to New York in 1918 to train as an opera singer and describes the vibrancy and dynamism of the war-obsessed city.

The language is flowery and poetic. “She sings like twelve saxophones and a freight train; she wears about a pound of gold. The band tries to keep up with her. She is no lady. Her songs are unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It is called the Blues.” Unfortunatately, it is also where Kathleen gets pregnant by a soldier departing for the war. The diary morphs into a monologue interspersed with the travels of Lily on foot from New Waterford to Manhattan. She and Kathleen experience the New York music scene, with Blacks singing the early Blues, racism, gays, lesbians, and the impoverished. There are many premature deaths. I was confused as Kathleen relates that she had her period, after having sex with the departing sailor, the only heterosexual encounter described by her but then gets pregnant after becoming a lesbian, and dies trying to deliver twins. This is not the only loose end that left me confused.

5.5/10

Thanks, Michelle.

I have read two of this Israeli’s previous books loaded with contrarian viewpoints-Sapiens and 21 Lessons For The 21st Century.” But somehow I had skipped this one. It is somewhat similar with a pile of insights of this futurist that almost seem like science fiction, but need to be taken seriously. He distinguishes between a soul, which he does not believe exists and a mind which he insists we share with many animals. In discussing the neuroscience of consciousness, he comes close to denying the existence of free will but does not use that term here. In a later Part 2, 21 page chapter, he emphatically denies its existence. After predicting elimination of war, (written before the Ukrainian and Gaza wars), famine and death, it seems he is predicting a fanciful utopia. But this is only Part I.

In a much darker Part 2, he relates many cautions and experiments that largely destroy this vision. “The sacred word ‘freedom’ turns out to be, just like the word ‘soul’ an empty term that lacks any discernible meaning. Free will exists only in the imaginary stories we have invented.” Then there is the problem of what we will do when sophisticated algorithms replace, doctors, lawyers, landlords and musicians. (For musicians, algorithms, already produce music indistinguishable from the classics.)

So many great quotes:

“ For the average American or European, Coca-Cola is a far more dangerous threat than Al Qaeda.”

“ …the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.”

“The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes the sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then enjoys watching the antics of ostriches, kangaroos, and panda bears.”

“ We always prepare for the previous enemy, even when we face an entirely new menace.”

“ During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more.”

“ The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance.”

One of the densest books about a wide range of topics from the nature of consciousness and the mind to the threats of AI to the biological sciences, this is nevertheless less an enjoyable read. The author challenges almost everything including the philosophy of Daniel Dennett, the humanist creed, and Sam Harris’ beliefs. It needs to be read with some skepticism and a grain of salt.

8/10.

Thanks, Book Bub.

In 22 chapters, these well-known authors give a generally laudatory account of the Sin City, and its many attractions. I guess it appeals to a certain personality with a lot of ambition, drive, and a love of the extravagant and spectacular. They do briefly relate the seamier side including the flourishing sex trade, even though prostitution is illegal there. The Whales who gamble millions of dollars and fly private or corporate jets and the chefs who boast about the best dining experiences in the world are seen as exemplary and the text is rife with celebratory names, and superlatives.

There is absolutely no mention of the hordes of people who become addicted to gambling and require treatment or commit suicide, and little acknowledgment of the pervasive and continuing influence of organized crime. I have some difficulty accepting that the helicopter yoga guru Dray was cured if a cyst in his lower spinal column with yoga or that it also caused seizures. And if he truly has seizures why is he flying a helicopter out to a deserted desert to teach yoga?

My own experience in Las Vegas is limited to two brief oconference trips there. In one, with an evening off, I was determined to lose $40 on the slot machines and was amazed at how long it took to do so. In the second in 1993 or so, my wife and I spent a very enjoyable evening at the Cirque de Soleil performance of Mystère. But my appetite for such spectacular performances is limited, unlike the culture of Las Vegas which thrives on superlatives and excesses.

6/10

Thanks, Ross.

The only other book by this Chinese American novelist that I have read is The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane which I quite enjoyed. This latest historical novel is set in China in the 15th century, a cultural immersion that is completely foreign to me. With foot bindings by girls, cultural status determined by closeness to the emperor, arranged marriages set by age 15, several concubines, sometimes bought by wives, and the status of women always inferior to the men, even when they are doctors practicing a form of medicine based almost entirely on folklore, there is little that I can relate to. The constant reminder of the yin and yang and the qi are just confusing and the foreign names become complex. The obsession with menstruation, pregnancy and who is allowed to attend a birthing doesn’t help. The numerous ranks and rigid hierarchy limit what anyone can do, and the bizarre treatments are usually based on folklore although the is just a hint of some science as in the variolation to prevent smallpox used by the travelling smallpox master.

Told in the first person singular, the narrator is the insecure girl whose mother dies of a foot binding infection, but then marries into a wealthy family, becomes a doctor, and has a difficult delivery of an infant girl. Her postpartum problems are treated with a wide variety of medicines, including drinking wine mixed with a boy’s urine. This is just the start of endless concoctions of ancient Chinese medicine.

A typical description of diagnosing and and treating of a patient without the bother of seeing or examining her in 15 th centuaryChina is shown best with this quote: “Widow Bao, I believe that your daughter is suffering from a type of qi deficiency we call damage from weeping. You tell me your daughter was once quick tempered. This is caused by qi constraint that leads to Heat in the Liver, which in turn fires up Blood, which must be expelled by coughing. I don’t have a full pharmacy here but let me write some prescriptions for you to take back to Nanjing. The first remedy is Beautiful Jade Syrup in which one of the ingredients- Honey- is strained through raw silk. The second remedy is more complex, combining the Décoction of Six Gentlemen and the Décoction of Four Gentlemen. And the third I write a order for Calm The Spirit Pills to cool the Blood and help her sleep.”

There are lot of trite aphorisms As the plot progresses there is a disputed paternity in a rigid hierarchy and intrigue that becomes quite complex.

This book would be quite alarming with nonsense medical treatments if it were not that it is based, at least loosely, on careful research by the author of many antique documents. Lady Tan was a real person with a real influence on traditional Chinese medicine.

6/10

Thanks, Caroline.

This American marine biologist provides startling revelations about the life of fishes (and many other species along the way) on almost every page of this documentary. Many of the species are unknown to me but the activities are related in a way that makes it easy to understand.

The chapter on the cleaner fishes and their clients is simply amazing with complex signalling, imposters, cheaters and some sense of justice and rule enforcement. Likewise, the chapter on fishes’ sex, with 32 different mechanisms, many deceptions, and oral sex in which a female swallows a mouthful of sperm for a rapid transit though her gastrointestinal tract while releasing eggs en route, producing a unique form of (transient) internal fertilization. Many, mostly male fishes raise their young in their mouths while coming close to starvation.

The problematic rise of fish farms is very depressing to read about, with many infections, a dependency on other fish for food and the artificiality of the environment.

His plea to cease recreational fishing seems to me to be the least compelling, perhaps because I enjoy it immensely. I only fly fish and almost always catch and release. I like to think that any pain a fish may experience on being caught is a lesson well learned and is compensated for by the relief of being set free.

“When fishes outperform primates on a mental task, it is another reminder of how brain size, body size, presence of fur or scales, and evolutionary proximity are wobbly criteria for gauging intelligence. They also illustrate the plurality and contextuality of intelligence, the fact that it is not one general property but rather a suite of of abilities that may be expressed along different axes.”

This book should be of interest, not only to fishermen, but to anyone who appreciates the extreme complexity of living nature.

9.5/10

Thanks, Bill.

This is the debut autobiography of a Columbia Presbyterian heart surgeon. Unlike many surgeon/writers this is full of humility, self-doubt and self-deprecation. But I have known surgeons who were perfect considerate humble gentlemen outside the operating room, but tyrants hurling invective at everyone in the OR.

Much of the narrative like the description of working in a coal processing plant and as a linesman for a telephone company before entering medical school has nothing to do with medicine or science. The description of the storied Balto diptheria delivery to Nome has little to do with the author’s life although I presume it is meant to be some kind of analogy.

The author became bored with doing heart and heart-lung transplants and delegated that to others, to pursue other innovations. The description of weekly Morbidity and Mortality rounds is easy to relate to as others seized the opportunity to point out my errors or my oversight.

The discussion of the effects of hospital mergers and remuneration schemes for doctors will be of interest mostly to doctors and health economists. His musing about the drastic effects of Covid-19, the many false claims of benefits and the anti-vaccination scene are spot on. He dose not hesitate to praise the other health care workers who endured hardship throughout it.

The writing is generally easy to follow although the details of working in a coal processing plant and as a linesman for a telephone company were a bit challenging.

The discussion is centred on the flawed U.S. health care system, with little acknowledgement of it’s shortcomings.

8/10

Thanks, Book Browse.

A British naturalist /outdoorsman/adventurer, takes the reader on an adventure to identify, get directions from, and learn about the intricacies of trees in this enjoyable book. There are endless bits of information that will ensure that you will never look at a tree the same way that you did in the past. The author personalizes trees as though they are sentient reasoning beings.

There is less hard science here than in Susanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree, but the devastating effect of human activities on trees is similar to that documented by Henry Gabor in Paved Paradise. The author’s love of the outdoors is infectious. A few notable quotes will illustrate this.

“Large leaves that look shiny and feel waxy are wearing sunscreen and a raincoat at the same time.”

“Nature does not brim with gratitude.”

“…the leaves of both young trees turn to the bark and say ‘ Mate, will you lend us a hand and photosynthesize a bit? Its only for a few seasons. Once we have grown a bit taller you can get back to your main job of protecting the trunk and branches.”

I am not sure how this self-taught tree guru would fare in an advanced botany course exam, but I somehow doubt that he would ace it.

7.5/10

Thanks, The Atlantic.

The reporter for The Daily Beast reports on the history and the frightening effect of the believers in a flat earth. It is not new but appears to be growing with one survey reporting that 3 % of Britons believe that the earth is flat, although many are closet Flat Earthers, to avoid ridicule. The most frightening aspects of this is that it is not confined to the uneducated but is espoused by some doctors and pharmacists, and the willingness to believe other conspiracies that it’s paranoia promotes.

The author, a nonreligious Jew, points out the natural skepticism of authority that are a part of some religious beliefs and the many other nonscientific beliefs that are integral to most religions. In this sense, perhaps a majority of us harbour irrational beliefs. This skepticism leads naturally to many other conspiracy theories, including the antisemitism that has multi-millenial history, the QAnon conspiracy theory, the 9/11 conspiracy theory, the many dangerous lies of Trump, the hoax of the moon landing and the various theories about the origin of Covid-19.

Rather than ridicule Flat Earthers, the author recommends a kind and understanding approach to try to get them to see the usual multiple cognitive dissonances in their beliefs- but we all probably have some.

There is nothing here about the reasons for increasing polarization of beliefs, nor anything about the neuroscience that underlies the phenomenon of such polarization, and willingness to believe silly conspiracies.

The author advocates stricter monitoring and control of social media postings, within the limits of free speech laws, while recognizing that their platforms depend on sensational postings.

8.5/10

Thanks, The New Yorker.

The author, a professional biographer, trailed Elon Musk for two years. Although he claims that Musk did not ask to, nor read the book prior to its publication, I still wonder if the author did not feel some obligation to portray him in what is generally an admiring and laudable light, perhaps out of fear of being sued for defamation.

The product of an abusive, conspiracy-toting estranged father and a Canadian beauty queen author, Musk enrolled in physics at Queens University but then transferred to U. Penn, graduating in physics and business. On the autism spectrum, he is obsessed with science fiction, particularly Douglas Adam’s’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. He has become obsessed with the fate of humankind, enthusiastically espousing space travel, colonization of Mars, the development of electric cars with driverless features, the risks of misinformation, and the need for more children. Disdaining regulation and government oversight, he made his first million at a Silicon Valley company writing code to digitize the Yellow Pages. Then the venture capitalists came knocking and he never looked back, becoming the boss of Tesla, a rocket launch company, a human-computer interlink, and then Twitter, and the richest man on earth.

Demanding and driven are gross understated adjectives when applied to Musk. He sets many unrealistic deadlines and to his credit often achieves them working incessantly, simplifying designs and ignoring government regulations. The overriding theme of all his efforts, at least as portrayed here, is an attempt to save humankind from extinction. He fires people frequently, goes on temper tantrums like a two year old, yet has met and helped many politicians, including Obama, Macron and Zelenskyy.

“Musk’s push to move faster, take more risks, break rules and question requirements allowed him to accomplish many feats such as sending humans into orbit, mass produce electric vehicles, and getting homeowners off the electric grid. It also meant that he did things- ignoring SEC requirements, ignoring California Covid restrictions that got him into trouble.”

“ A lot was hitting him that week. He was scheduled to give depositions in the Delaware court seeking to force him to close the Twitter deal, an [sic] SEC investigation, and a lawsuit challenging his Tesla compensation. He was also worried about controversies over the use of Starlink satellites in Ukraine, difficulties in reducing Tesla’s supply chain dependence on China, the launch of a Falcon 9 carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station, a West Coast launch the same day of a Falcon 9, carrying 52 satellites, and sundry personal issues regarding children, girlfriends and former wives.”

His conversations with the author and many other conversations are laced with unnecessary obscene words.

One obvious typo that I cannot now find is in relation to the in-vitro fertilization where an egg is referred to as male!

Has my opinion of Musk changed after reading this wordy long book?

I will give him some credit for trying to do the right thing, but I lack the imagination to see how colonizing Mars could ever become feasible.

6/10

Thanks, Din and The New Yorker.

There is a new countervailing view about the damage done by smart phones for kids in the May issue of The Atlantic. In it, Candice L. Odgers directly refutes almost all the arguments made by Johnathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation. But she does not address the individual age specificity discussed by Haidt, nor the compelling evidence that there has been a dramatic increase in teen mental illness and suicides. Now I am a bit confused; perhaps there is some reason for optimism, but I think Haidt would win the argument if it were a debate topic.

This bio of Trump would be either very funny or sad depending on your viewpoint, if it were not that he wields tremendous power. The sports reporter and avid golfer documents how Trump sees almost everything from international relations to day-to-day life through the lens of golf and how it impacts his game that he excels at cheating in.

He sees no contradiction in calling climate change a hoax while building a tall 800 meter wall to protect his Irish golf course from rising sea levels to the devastation of local farmers.

The recurring theme in all of Trump’s boasts about his 18 golf courses is his use of superlatives to describe them, his cheating whether or not he is caught and his latent lies about his scores. The author traces this back to his childhood and the imperative of always being first. His financial dealings also come under fire as he blatantly lies about their exclusivity. Even his relationship with women is tied into the world of golf as he arranges to have only beautiful young women working at his resorts and clubhouses.

Stiffing almost every contractor he ever employed, it seems ironic that he may finally meet justice for actually paying for a service that was provided at his Florida course, that of Stormy Daniels.

“ ‘ Discrete’ and Trump go together like ‘gasoline’ and ‘soup’.”

The Trump on display is an egocentric, amoral, totally self-centred psychopath. It would be easy to ignore such individuals except that he also wields unprecedented power. It is hard for me to understand why millions of otherwise rational U.S. voters cannot understand that, to the peril of all of us.

7.5/10.

Thanks, Janet.

The University Of California, Davis, Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience, weaves personal stories of his trips to his homeland of India, and as a parent, an amateur surfer, and musician, into this attempt to explain why we remember. From my perspective it would be more appropriate to title it How We Remember, as there are intricate details of neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, and neurophysiology that are shown to be involved in our often faulty attempts to remember. At times he skates close to the deeper philosophical question of whether or not we have free will. He never addresses this question directly but certainly seems to take a mechanistic view of the problem of remembering (and forgetting), as though there is no mind or soul, separate from the brain.

The difference between episodic and semantic memory, the role of the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the cingulate gurus, H. M of damaged hippocampus fame, contextual setting, infantile amnesia, the reminiscence bump, event schemas, the Default Mode Network, reality monitoring, synesthesia, collaborative facilitation, and social contagion are all detailed. In some of these, a researcher making an observation in experiments on college undergraduates, often using functional magnetic resonance imaging, comes up with a new name for the phenomenon as though that is sufficient to explain it. In forensics, a note of caution is sounded with examples of the falsely convicted based on faulty memories. This is hardly news. There is an excellent discussion of the brain’s busy schedule in prioritizing memories as we sleep.

Although the day-to-day examples of problems with memory that we all can relate to are great, there is more neuroscience here than most readers need or could appreciate.

6.5/10

Thanks, Goodreads, and The New Yorker.

In this modern book, the New York University psychology professor makes a very convincing, but dry, very scholarly erudite case for limiting youngsters access to the internet while increasing their exposure to risks in nature and the outdoors. He calls the problem of excessive personal use of smart phones and the internet “the great Rewiring” and shows the deeply disturbing effects on the mental health of teenagers, particularly girls. An atheist, he nevertheless recommends the practice of meditation, developing a sense of awe at the wonders of nature, and then comes up with suggestions for how governments, schools, and parents can lessen the impact on vulnerable youths.

Replete with graphs and theoretical concepts, he provides a point form “In Sum” at the end of each of the detailed 13 chapters that is a good summary of points made in the chapter for those readers who do not want or don’t have the time to read the entire book.

The most specific recommendations include prohibiting social media accounts before age 16, banning use of phones completely in schools, and allowing and encouraging more face-to-face interactions and “free-range” group activities without adult supervision, including more risk-taking.

“…we are overprotecting our children in the real world while under-protecting them online.”

“The advertising-driven business model turns users into the product, to be hooked and reeled in.”

There is considerable overlap with the content of Leonard Sax’s Why Gender Matters, in discussion of how boys and girls at various ages differ remarkably in use of social media.

As I read this, I recalled my very ´free range’, childhood and felt very fortunate, although at times we took risks that were pure madness, such as during spring breakup, riding down the swollen South Saugeen River on an ice flow from one bridge to the next one although none of us could swim.

Abundant good advice for parents, schools and politicians, much of this is common sense, which seems to be quite uncommon. It is also unnecessarily wordy and repetitive.

8/10

Thanks, Andra.

In this, the second edition of this book (first published in 2005) this Maryland family doctor draws on 18 years of practice as well as visiting at more than 400 schools around the world and an extensive literature review to support the conclusions he comes to. This goes a long way to disprove the popular and growing assertion that gender is a social and cultural construct, without a scientific basis. He addresses such issues as why computer science is dominated by men whereas the arts and biological sciences are dominated by women.

In the second chapter alone he shows convincingly that women’s sense of smell is more acute than men’s and that it improves 1000- fold with repeat exposure whereas men’s do not, and explains the anatomical basis for this. (This may explain why my wife frequently orders me to take a shower.) Girls also see things differently using bright colours and soft objects when asked to draw anything, whereas boys typically draw moving objects and violent confrontations. This too seems to be hardwired. And girls have better hearing than boys over a broad range of frequencies, that also appears to be innate.

The chapter on sex is perceptive in teaching boys how to be sensitive and nonviolent in their relationships (and less violent and risk taking in general, although he recognizes the peer pressure to generally take more risks than girls do, and does not condemn that.) Much of this chapter’s observations, although not its recommendations, can be summed up by Billy Crystal’s astute observation that “Women need a reason for sex; men just need a place.”

In later chapters, Sax discusses exceptions to the general tendencies, including atypical male “sissies”, “tomboy” girls, gays, lesbians and transsexuals, all in a non-judgemental way, for example, by comparing gay men to being left-handed.

“The explosion in the proportion of people who believe that they are transgender may well represent a failure to understand that gender is two-dimensional, not one dimensional. If you are a man who has some (or many) feminine qualities, or a woman who has some (or many) masculine qualities, it doesn’t mean that you are transgender. It means that you are a human being.”

“Sex differences in childhood are more important than sex differences in adulthood.”

This great advice for parents came too late for me as my children are now mature adults, but fortunately they seem to have survived and thrived in spite of the many mistakes I made.

9/10.

Thanks, Alana

In the first section (70 pages) the native Cree, born in 1977, follows a common path into a life of violence, abuse, theft, prostitution, alcoholism, and debauchery as his single mother moves from the reserve in northern Manitoba, to Winnipeg, Brandon, Dawson Creek, Spirit River, and, Terrace B.C. By the time he turned 17, he had served time, and become a house guard for the Manitoba Warriors, a criminal gang that even intimidated the Hells Angels.

There is a lot of perhaps justified finger-pointing at the colonists who disrupted the lives of the Natives, confined them to Reservations, and separated families by forcing children to attend abusive residential schools and unashamedly practiced systemic racism. But there is no recognition that the much later programs to reeducate aboriginals in their former cultures, though often lead by aboriginals, were usually funded by federal white politicians, albeit belatedly and under pressure. Throughout the book, there is abundant very foul language, which, to me, usually indicates a paucity of linguistic skills.

The fight over the Alberta tar sands provides some devastating data about how destructive they are. They have replaced 170 square kilometres of arboreal forest with toxic liquid waste that leaches 11 million litres into the Athabasca River every year. The author and many other Native leaders are leading the legal battle to put a stop to this, claiming violation of hunting and fishing rights.

His religion combines sweat lodges and Sundance lodges, ritual sacrifice, some vague belief in an after-life, at least occasional use of psychedelic drugs, and ancestor worship. He continued to drink, use cocaine and other drugs long after he was an ambassador change. These contradictions seem to combine with a strange form of Mormonism into which he was baptized, and is so puzzling to me as to become meaningless.

The Aboriginal culture is presented largely as a unity, while the reality is that there is frequent violent discord that continues, and infighting undermines their important message.

“Uncle Alex got two years in Stony Mountain for doing the right thing.”

“One of the mysteries of creation is how closely saving the world and saving yourself are linked.”

There is no doubt that his intentions are good. But the anger is all-consuming, and it seems at times that he protests for the sake of protest, without thinking through the consequences.

6/10

Thanks, Goodreads.

In the first half of this rant, the American/Canadian journalist documents in excruciating detail the massive wildfire that largely destroyed the city of Fort McMurray in 1917. Using the recollections of many people who experienced it, it was unprecedented at the time. He also details the background of the huge tar sands development extracting bitumen, covering many square miles from the green land, replacing it with a toxic wasteland. This had the enthusiastic support of the Bible-thumping Alberta premier, Ernest C. Manning, whose weekly radio broadcast Back to the Bible Hour I was subjected to for years as a child. Then he documents similar fires in Great Slave Lake and in Chisholm and similar fire in Australia. Tasmania and Greenland have experienced wildfires for the first time in the last few years.

There is a distinctly pessimistic and alarmist tone to this part, claiming for example, that the latter, at it’s peak, released more energy to the atmosphere and stratosphere per minute than did the Hiroshima bomb, and producing hurricanes. But perhaps we need to be alarmed to take appropriate action.

Then he steps back to reflect on mankind’s relationship to fire from its discovery and controlled use. What I found most interesting was that there were prescient warnings about the devastating effects of climate change as early as the 1950s, and those were acknowledged by such conservative politicians as Ronald Regan. But government support for the fossil fuel industry has continued apace. Our federal government spent $450 million to buy out the Kinder Morgan pipeline, while recognizing that the extraction from bitumen is the most inefficient and toxic means of obtaining crude oil. It ranks near the last of the OECD nations to divest from this industry, even while also recognizing that renewables, have been shown to be economically and environmentally cheaper and cleaner and providing some limited support. Many investment companies are now divesting themselves from the tar sands in particular and fossil fuels in general. But is it too little too late?

In many ways alarming, this is nevertheless an important work.

8.5/10.

Thanks, Jackie.

The writer in residence at New York University details an extremely vivid story of the lives of the mixed community of blacks, immigrants, and Jews in the fictitious Chicken Hill suburb of Pottstown, Pa., in the twenties and thirties.

The very complex plot with a host of characters with peculiar nicknames like Monkey Pants, Big Soap, and Fatty is unpredictable, but captures the life of the very diverse denizens of the small town very well.

With my limited ability to visualize described scenes, I had some difficulty visualizing the exact layout when the deaf child Dodo is watching, hidden from view, on the ladder to the cellar, as the dreaded Dr Roberts enters the store aiming to capture him and send him to the institution in Pennhurst, but other than that the narrative is reasonably straightforward and it is not too difficult to keep at least the main character straight.

A good quote among many will give you a sense of the abundant humour and the quirky characters: “ Nobody outside of Pottstown had ever heard of Antes, of course, in part because he wrote trumpet sonatas that nobody played, and in part because the John Antes Historical Society’s Cornet Marching Band, which was composed of forty-five souls -numbskulls, pig farmers, heavy smokers, bums, drunks, cheerleaders, tomboys, bored college students, and any other white American in Montgomery County who could purse their lips tight enough to blast a noise through a trumpet- sounded like a cross between a crank engine trying to start on a cold October morning and a dying African silverback gorilla howling out its last.”

9/10

Thanks, Vera