Book Review: Why? What Makes Us Curious-Mario Mivio

Mario Livio is a very well-known polymath, an astrophysicist as well as an author known for writing books on different math and physics related topics. I had read about this particular book on the New York Times, the idea of exploring curiosity excited me immensely. A systematic look at why we are curious and what the sciences tell us about our curiosity was a very seductive topic indeed.

In the end, the final couple of chapters really redeemed the book, as for the rest of the book, I cannot really put a finger on why the material failed to engage my….curiosity, but it did not.

This is a thin book, not really an academic tome on the science and history of curiosity, yet it retains that flavor throughout. Dr. Livio is a good writer, and undertook a very logical and systematic approach to telling the story, I expected no less from and eminent astrophysicist.

The first chapter examines the very human trait of being curious. He very nicely and in the fine story telling fashion of these kind of books to lay out the ground work for examining what curiosity is and what curiosity means to him personally, as he is the primary investigator of this book.

Three chapters are about people, people who has exhibited the kind of intense curiosity that enticed Dr. Livio to examine the topic. Two chapters tells the story of two legendary polymaths from the past: Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. These were entertaining and knowledgeable chapters telling the stories of the intellectual prowess of two remarkable men. He makes the case that curiosity is what drove these men to the achievements that they have accomplished. While they are not complete biographies of these two giants of science and curiosity seekers, the two chapters fully drew my attention into the story. Much later, Dr. Livio interviewed living polymaths, people who exhibit the same kind of intense curiosity as Leonardo and Feynman. They are living in the modern world, and their stories are similarly engaging, although they are just a little less fascinating since they have yet to come to a complete picture of the result of their curiosity since their productive life is far from over.

A very scientifically satisfying and thorough examination of curiosity was undertaken through the usual process of reviewing and encapsulating the most recent research being done in the sciences. A substantial chapter was devoted to the anthropology of curiosity, two chapters were devoted to a competent review of what we know about curiosity from the psychological and neuroscience aspects of the topic. A chapter was devoted to the human love of curiosity, a historical look at our civilization and how curiosity drives us into achieving what we have achieved as a civilization. In the end two chapters were devoted to asking the question Why Curiosity and an epilogue which nicely summarizes the book.

I liked the organization, I liked the approach, and it should have been quite an easy sell to me, but it was challenging for me to completely engage in the stories and studies.  I would postulate that Dr. Livio made his case in a pretty clinical way. The psychological studies, as well as the neuroscience chapters were kind of a slog because I was not familiar with those areas and I was struggling with some of the conclusions and arguments. I am not sure if doing more with what he had or whether doing less with what he had would have helped. I think I still would have had a challenging time. Perhaps in skimming over the book after some time had passed would do the trick.

Indeed, I am very glad that this book was written and at least this was placed in the popular literature for the sake of posterity. I believe that it is a capable and informative book on the subject of curiosity, which made me curious and being curious, which after all is what the purpose of the book is supposed to be.

Book Review: How To Be Alone-By Sara Maitland

I had read a short piece by Maria Popova on her Brain Pickings web site and I was intrigued by the content that Maria had posted, so I decided to read the book itself. I had known of the School of Life books from my acquaintance with Alain de Botton’s work and I had very high expectations.

This title more than met my expectations but in different ways. I had expected the tome to be much heavier, more philosophical and questioning. It was all of that and more. Maitland researched her topic thoroughly. She split the topic into three sections: Being Alone in the Twentieth Century, Rebalancing Attitude to Solitude, and The Joys of Solitude. So she proposes a problem, goes into the history of our civilization’s take on solitude and all the social and cultural constraints that we have imposed on those that seek solitude. She talks about the alternative ways to think of solitude and being alone, ways that debunk the cultural taboos that was imposed by a culture that is dominated by extraverts. Finally, she talks about the joys and satisfaction that comes with spending time only with yourself.

This is a remarkable book, one that lays out a history of a social act which is both beloved and mistrusted by the mass culture.

Maitland writes in a leisurely rhythm, the pace of the information flow is fast enough to keep the reader’s attention yet exciting enough to be interesting. Her prose is lovely and loving, giving the readers a gentle introduction to the topic; she is rigorous as well, presenting her facts with convincing details. It was a lesson in the school of life; indeed, this is a very engrossing and also a very educational one, perfect for the introverted autodidact such as myself. 

Book Review: The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is very good at what he does. In this case, it takes much of his writer acumen and perspicacious observations to make this book better than good.

The topic is: why do people make the decisions that they do? A subject that he is quite acquainted with since his successful telling of the disturbing and head scratching tendencies of major league baseball decision makers to base their decisions on anything but measureable metrics in Moneyball. Actually, it was due to the fact that many people kept telling him to read Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work that he happened upon the two psychologists/economists.

While the subject matter piqued his interest, the story behind the two friends and their collaboration is what drives this story. It was pure and unadulterated love between two friends. It was the friendship of a lifetime, if we are lucky enough to find someone that we are so in tuned with in our working life.

To complicate things, Danny Kahneman had written a best seller titled Thinking: Fast and Slow. He had undertaken this book because he had received the Nobel prize in economics for the groundbreaking work that he and Tversky had done together over the years, but he got the Nobel and Tversky did not because he had passed away before the Nobel was awarded. Kahneman’s book is a dense but very readable- as readable as a research oriented book on human nature can be- tome on their collaborative partnership.

So Michael Lewis undertook a nearly impossible task, to combine a story of a friendship that is so complete while drilling down into the research in human behavior and doing the yeoman’s work of summarizing that work for the lay audience; AND do so without duplicating or infringing upon the book authored by one of his subjects,

By all accounts, he acquitted himself valiantly. This book is a clear eyed account of an admirable friendship and partnership. He was able to dig deep into their relationship, portray their collaboration honestly and also delve into what eventually led to the dissolution of that relationship. The pioneering work in psychology was also explained concisely but also precisely. No excessive words or digressions were employed in the recitation of the results; the experiments were explained cleanly and efficiently. The story of the research would seemingly be de-emphasized in view of the more audience pleasing aspect of the friendship, but Lewis managed to not have given short shrift to the academic results, a rather large component of the story.

In the end, the story worked in Lewis’ hands. He conveyed the emotions and pathos of the friendship while also regaled us with the significance and importance of the research. A very masterful accomplishment indeed.

Book Review:Draft #4 On the Writing Process by John McPhee

John McPhee is a master at his craft, which is what people call creative non-fiction. McPhee was creative about his non-fiction writing much before the phrase came into vogue.

McPhee’s body of work is respected as well as enjoyed, a pretty rare feat for non-fiction writers, as the nature of non-fiction is imbued with the ethos of “Just the facts”. What makes McPhee stand out is the depth of his exploration as well as the breadth of his curiosity on his topic at hand.

This book is a compendium of eight essays that he had written for The New Yorker magazine. They are all essays on writing, along with a good bit of storytelling, McPhee storytelling. They can be read as standalone essays or they can be read sequentially. I read it sequentially.

The structure of each essay is peculiarly McPhees, and as he explains how he comes to his structures I was suitably blown away by the amount of planning and the depth of preparation he does with his writing. It is akin to the plotting of a complex novel, each move is plotted and planned to give maximum effect to the reader. Of course, as he is describing the pains that he resorts to in order to create this structure and order, he gives us a glimpse into the his mind and how it is capable of such excellence.

This is not to say that this book is devoid of humor and fascination. McPhee has been at this for a long time and he tells his New Yorker stories with great relish. He talks about his interactions with gigantic New Yorker characters, like William Shawn, Robert Bingham, and Robert Gottlieb. He speaks of people he’d interviewed: Richard Burton, Elizabeth taylor, Jackie Gleason, and others. But those stories, while exciting and beguiling since they were about people we had known about, pales in comparison with his stories about McPhee’s people, geologists, ichthyologists, naturalists, people who are quietly good at what they do and they do so with a strong sense of purpose, people who are not ostentatious but are exceptional in their execution. The fact that he uses them as examples of how he writes speaks volumes about the people and subjects that are the most interesting to him, and in turn to us.

This is by no means a how to book for writing acolytes. This is a memoir of sorts, of a great writer as he speaks of his craft, and of his passion. He does lay out some well-worn paths that he had taken towards building his work habits but it is so uniquely his that it just serves as a point of discussion and inspiration for the rest of us. The most salient part is that he does so in his own inimitable style.

The bonus that came with this reading experience is the discovery of the meaning of the word sprezzatura. In many ways, McPhee showed thrown the book that even though it may seem like he undertakes his life’s work with great sprezzatura, the actual work is never done that way.

Book Review-Sleeping In The Ground-Inspector Banks

As a longtime fan of Peter Robinson’s Inspector Bank’s series, I must say that I have been slightly unenthusiastic about the series. There was a certain restlessness about the story line as it progressed through the last few books. It didn’t stop me from enjoying the story or the intricate plotting that Mr. Robinson is so famous for; his delicate and intricate descriptions of the Yorkshire country side are always evocative and imaginative; his choices of music are always educational and have caused me to spend more money than I care to remember on musical CDs inspired by his musical choices. Yet, the stories felt like the characters have stagnated slightly even though both Banks and Annie have not stayed static over the sequence of books, it just seemed like they aren’t going anywhere.

The prior installment of the Inspector Banks series, When the Music Is Over, gave us a wee dram of tastiness of what is to come however. Banks had been promoted to Detective Superintendent and he has finally found a boss that he felt comfortable with, and his orneriness and rebelliousness seems to have been tempered by old age. The lone term storyline with the characters was evolving, accounting for both Bank’s and Annie becoming older. The other characters are also beginning to blossom into their own skin; Winsome Jackson’s character was becoming a welcome addition, and Gerry Masterson started to stand out. Indeed the introduction of Linda Palmer the poet introduces the element of poetry to the narrative, a most welcomed respite from the reality that Mr. Robinson is so adept at describing. So I see that installment as the foreshadowing of this installment.

This book is a full blown coming out party in many ways. Even though Mr. Robinson kept his dual story plotline, he executed it in a different way, expertly giving us all a nice head fake while doing so. He has reintroduced the character of psychologist Jenny Fuller, teasing us as to her potential to be Bank’s latest love interest. Most importantly, he has also shown Banks growing into his role as the Detective Superintendent, gaining gravitas and acting as the mentor. This is a most welcome development, as we watch Banks mature, much as we watch a good and trusty friend mature along with us. It is a comfortable and emotional evolution for me as I become more identified with Bank’s thoughts and emotions.

All the while, in a reversal of roles, it is now Annie who is the rebel of sorts, and the designated ornery character, although Banks has not completely mellowed out by any stretch of the imagination. Gerry Masterson is the ingénue and the story actually moves along in a smooth new way.

In yet another new twist, Mr. Robinson has also introduced an element of nostalgia and regret in describing the death of Bank’s first love, his childhood sweetheart Emily. It is a bittersweet interlude which helps us delve further into Bank’s psyche and his most primal feelings. This storyline does not seem intrusive, even though in the wrong hands, it could have. It fits nicely into the narrative naturally.

In my personal history with this series, I would put this book up there with In A Dry Season, the first book in the series that I’d read and the one book that exemplifies much of what I love about the series and the reason why I loyally and unquestioningly follow Banks. In some ways this story is better because it is much more emotional and personally meaningful to me. 

Book Review- Bruno, Chief of Police-Martin walker

I am a fan of police procedurals set in Europe. I love Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks series, Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus, and Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series. All with the main protagonist being somewhat ornery, and the narrative dotted with references to music, culture, and with local cuisines and wines. I was well caught up with the other three series and none of the others that I’s investigated appealed to me. Then a review of Mr. Walker’s latest book caught my interest. As is usual with my previous readings, I started in chronological order starting with the first book in the series.

The book started in the customary way, introducing the characters and setting the scene. I suspect that the other books will slowly build the cultural background information that is so central to the story telling. But it still felt slow in building and it did not seem promising initially.

One thing that I enjoyed was the relaxed atmosphere that the author was able to convey, afterall he set the story in a sleepy town in Dordogne and the ethos and the rhythm of the culture carries through beautifully in his narrative. Another good sign is that the author is not afraid of setting foot into the present, in this case, the issue of racial hatred present in Europe regarding the interaction between the Muslim immigrants and the French natives. The interaction is somewhat cursory but central to the story.

As I settled into the story however, I slowly got into the rhythm of the tale and started to put myself into the culture as being described. In addition, the characters in town are all also growing with the slowly evolving story. Eventually I settled into the pace and I was fully sold on the series as an addition to my regular rotation of mystery books.

Book Review-Einstein's Dream by Alan Lightman

This is a fine little book; a famous little book; and a clever little book.

I came upon this book late, even though I had heard of the book before, but I didn’t pay enough heed to the hype to start reading earlier.

This book is a neat exercise in thought experimentation by a physicist. He is having a little fun as well as showing off his physics chops.

Even though I knew what Lightman is trying to do, I was surprised slightly when he jumped straight into the tales of relativity. The stories were, at first, seemingly unrelated to one another, it isn’t until a little further up the road that the theme of the stories established themselves. Thus begins a short but charming ride through the theory of relativity as illustrated through vignettes starring the citizenry of the good people of Bern. The story moves along with dates serving as names of the chapters and Lightman weaving the sequence of tales as he uses the stories to explain the physics.

The book is structured so that there is no structure. It is reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s books. The stories come at you in short quick bursts with seemingly no connection between them, but in the end there is an overriding theme to it all.

The beauty of the book is that you can enjoy the gentle tales and be charmed by the oddities built within the stories or you can add another dimension to the tales by actually understanding the specifics of the theory of relativity and drawing the parallels between the stories and the relativity. I had an inkling about the physics, having been exposed to it during my undergrad days but I am obviously not an expert in the dark arts of theoretical physics, yet I thoroughly enjoyed the book beyond just the charming stories.

Book Review-Between The World and Me -By Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is a famous book, a book that made the NYT best seller’s list. It is a book that I am supposed to like because reading it should show the world that I am racially sensitive and I am a good little liberal. Having read this book has become a badge of honor for all left leaning intellectuals in the United States.

When you have expectations like that, you tend to approach the book with a jaundiced eye. You feel a bit defensive about liking the book. You feel like you are obligated to read this book because it adds to your credentials.

Fact is, I loved this book. For many reasons and at different levels and the book touched me in different ways.

On a very basic level, I love the flow of the book; it is actually an extended essay, stretching over 152 pages. It is no wonder that the author is such a celebrated writer. The man can write. More importantly, he has a very blunt voice, one that is backed up with writing skills and an ability to think critically and an original thought process and a unique point of view. This serves to make his voice salient and outstanding.

The essay is a letter to his teenage son. It is at once a personal essay, an oral history of his own experience as a black young man in a white America. It is a warning and a detailed instruction book about how America expects its black young men to react and how these expectations will act on the mind of the black young men in America. But to call it as just a warning is also to de-mean its importance to our society.

This is the author’s extended conversation with all of us, his black compatriots; the white society which has shaped his life, intellect, and emotions; and not the least of which, his son. He goes into a long discourse on what it is to be a black man in America. He accomplishes his goal by putting his own experience out there for all to examine, he exposes his deepest feelings and thoughts to the readers, an act of true courage. He make his points, he defends his points, he weaves a story of the hard earned knowledge he learned at his father’s feet, as well as on the streets of Baltimore. He lays out the lessons he learned while growing up as a young black man, going from child to a grown man with a family and working as a journalist.

The narrative is raw, personal, and hard to hear. I have had to stop reading at certain points of the narrative because it is too emotionally draining and intellectually challenging. I have had to stop and think about what is said. When I mentioned this to a friend, she, a black woman, said:” I have internalized it.”, i.e. the emotional upheavals and feelings dredged up by the author are part and parcel the American experience for my friend. And that revelation is yet another point of pause for me.

As I approached the end of the narrative, I was both happy that the emotional roller coaster was coming to an end, but at the same time I was sad to have to cease reading the words of a craftsman and a thoughtful, deeply intelligent philosopher.

This book takes a lot of thought and reflection. This is a serious and important history of the American experience, it elicits ideas and reflections that aren’t usually on the surface, and that is a good thing.

I believe this book is as important as the mass media reports, It is in fact, much more important.

Book Review-Magpie Murders By Anthony Horowitz

A book review on the NYT Book Review page had me intrigued. Two stories told in an interwoven fashion could be looked upon as a writing gimmick, but I liked that device; especially if the author is someone who is very good at relating disparate details and pulling them together.

Anthony Horowitz is fantastic at this device. There are so many Easter eggs, puns, and intended word plays that I will admit to missing some of them early on in my reading.

Contrary to what I had envisioned, the authors decided to use two large chunks of the book to tell the two stories, I had expected a constant back and forth between the two stories and was a little annoyed that I had to wait for the second story to commence. As it turned out he had a very good reason for doing it this way, and much more sensible.

The first story is that of a murder mystery, a la Agatha Christie. Set in the lovely Somerset countryside and populated by the usual suspects that would feel at home in a Hercule Poirot novel. The main detective is Atticus Pünd, a crime solver who is cut from the same clothes as so many others in crime fiction. He is a loner, a man of deep and complex thought, a man who is quite nonlinear, a survivor of Auschwitz, and very keen. The story takes off when a housekeeper in service to landed gentry is killed in what is seemingly a simple household accident. This is where all the pertinent characters begin to appear in the story. In very traditional fashion, the back stories of each of the suspects are explained and told by the omniscient narrator. The author methodically advances the story as he builds the suspense. Soon a second murder occurs, and this time there is no doubt as to whether it is an accident or not.

So far so good. It is what we expect and we are giddy with anticipation of what will come next. The story crescendos and then, the author abruptly switch gear quite suddenly as the denouement for the first story is postponed indefinitely until the second story is started. For a time there I was quite annoyed with this change of events, and naturally angry with Mr. Horowitz.

As it turns out, and this is where the genius of Mr. Horowitz rears its head, the coupling and inter connectedness of the fiction within the fiction comes to the fore. The second story revolves around the editor of a publisher, Cloverleaf Books, the publisher of the Atticus Pünd series of murder mysteries. The author of the series, the cash cow of Cloverleaf Books, Alan Conway had just died, apparently of a suicide, right after he’d delivered his latest book in the series to the publisher, except he delivered it without an ending. The main protagonist of the modern day story, Susan Ryeland, is the editor for the publisher, it is through her eyes that we observe the complex interactions of crime solving once again, except now, instead of look at it through the familiar styles of the great British mystery writers, it is through the eyes of an editor, someone who is not omniscient and decidedly not a practiced crime solver.

As the second story unfold, we are treated to a second trip through the investigation and fact finding process of fictional crime solving. The brilliance of this book is that it is telling two stories in two different ways, two different styles, and in two different epochs. Even more impressively, the aforementioned Easter eggs, puns, and intended word plays really make their presence known as Susan Ryeland unravels the writing style and tricks that Alan Conway employs to tell his story. Just like in the first half of the book, Mr. Horowitz advances his plot patiently and builds up the suspense in a masterful manner. For the second time in the same book, he drew me into the swirl of intrigue methodically until I was completely trapped in Magpie Murders.

The beauty of the plotting of this book is that the denouement of the Susan Ryeland/Alan Conway part of the book is completely dependent on the denouement of the Atticus Pünd mystery. And Mr. Horowitz does not disappoint, all the pieces are brought together and there is a large amount of: “Why didn’t I see this!” as I wound down my reading experience, which is always a large part of the satisfaction of reading a good mystery.

In short, this was a brilliant book, by its complex plotting and development of the characters, it accomplished the main thing: it entertained me.

I must admit that I had no idea who Anthony Horowitz is prior to reading this particular book but now I will keep that name in the back of my head for future reading enjoyments.

Book Review-Ignorance How it Drives Science

This book came onto my radar when I was reading Warren Burger’s book A More Beautiful Question. Burger referenced this book. As I was curious and Burger’s book sparked an interest in this topic, I proceeded to procure this book.

It took a while for me to get back to this book as I became interested in other things. I’d started it but I continued to pick it up and putting it down over the months. It wasn’t because of the writing or of the subject matter. It was because the book brought out a certain amount of my own ignorance and caused me to ask some unanswerable questions.

Stuart Firestein is a neuroscientist, and how he got to this particular field is fascinating by itself. I will leave him to tell that story and not ruin the narrative. It is in the chapter titled Case Histories.

This is a short book, packed with excellent insights and interesting stories. The author approaches the task of convincing the reader of the importance of ignorance as the centerpiece of intellectual and scientific inquiry from a broad perspective. Even though he is countering the intellectual history of the MO of our societal approach to science and scientific inquiry, he makes his mutiny palatable and very rational.

The idea is that the mass media and the lay community looks upon science and the goals of science with the wrong attitude, even some scientists live in a world where the tail is wagging the dog. The purpose of scientific inquiry is not to create knowledge, the purpose is to create ignorance, but not just ignorance but quality ignorance; ignorance that will push our thoughts towards better understanding and towards action that will expand our ideas and ask better questions. These questions must necessarily expand and dig deeper into our knowledge. In other words, to give us more areas of known ignorance so that we can research and investigate these open areas.

The author uses the familiar technique of digging into scientific history to give us anecdotal history of specific stories. He has combed through the scientific histories for some extremely interesting stories, he’s included many different areas of science, including his own expertise of neurosciences, as well as physics, astronomy, mathematics, etc. Fortunately for us, he is a very good story teller.

I will say that I have become jaded to this process of illustrating specific points by the author spinning a yarn which supports exactly his thesis, but when the tactic is well executed, such as this book is, I will overlook my pet peeve.

The book is in eight chapters. The initial chapters are used to present the author’s main argument about ignorance. In those chapters he goes into great depths to convince us of his main argument: that the cultivation of ignorance is the primary function of scientific inquiry. I was already a convert so I would say that he was successful in that regard. Chapters four, five, and six are the author’s way of presenting the structure of the ignorance business, the foibles of making predictions regarding scientific progress prematurely and under dubious assumptions.

My favorite chapter is the Quality of Ignorance, because the author delineates the difference between cultivating just ignorance and ignorance with a purpose. The main differentiator is that the quality ignorance must create more and better questions and unknowns which will drive the scientific inquiries deeper.

The longest chapter is chapter seven: Case histories. This is where he uses the case history tool to illustrate his points on how ignorance helps drive the inquiry and the nonlinear way it creates pathways to more knowledge. I must say that this chapter was kind of a long slog, but worthy of the slogging. It definitely did its job.

Finally, the author drives home the point regarding the importance of using ignorance and the gravitas of having this kind of mindset as it advances not just science, but society forward.

This book was published in 2012, and by then, the anti-intellectualism and wanton lack of scientific knowledge of the general public is already well known. The last chapter is actually a pleas for sanity. As I read this chapter five years since its publication, I marvel at how far we have fallen. I would like to say that the author was prescient in his prognostication, but sadly, he wasn’t prescient enough, for we are at a much worse point in time than he had predicted.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I did have to put it down often to contemplate and reflect on what he is saying. I believe that was his purpose and he did very well in meeting his purpose.

Book Review-When The Music's Over-Inspector Banks Mystery

I have been a fan of Peter Robinson's writing, and by inference, a fan of Inspector Alan Banks. The plotting is straight forward and the story telling excellent.

The main attractions are the locale, I spent a bit of time in Yorkshire so the people and the locale are quite familiar to me. Peter Robinson is quite adept at making the reader feel a part of  the characters lives as well as gently dropping us into the Yorkshire cities and countryside.

I have been following Banks and Annie Cabbot for so long that yes, I do feel like I know them very well.

This book, however, veers a bit from the familiar and the comfortable. it delves in the newer dark underside of the modern UK and it is the uncomfortable kind. In this book, Banks has been promoted and Annie had not, and it clearly rankles. Annie is starting to show some of the irreverence and maverick bravado that was  so much a part of Banks.

There are two crimes, as always. One is historical and one is present day. Robinson is excellent at this and he is once again telling the story with verve and aplomb.

The stories involve two very contemporary issues plaguing the western world: child molestation and racial unrest. In the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile scandal, it is no wonder that the author decided to use this motif as a centerpiece. He then adroitly mixed is with the second story involving child sex crimes  mixed in with the racial issues that is popping up in the UK. While the UK does not have the historical dysfunction that the US has suffered through for the entire history, their dealings with the problem serves as a reminder of just how emotionally explosive this issue can be, especially with the roles of the aggressor and victim reversed.

You can tell that the author is struggling with trying to tell the story well, as he does, without really getting mired down by the emotional baggage that always rears its head when it comes to dealing with both issues. They are both complex and emotional. I am not sure that the author was completely successful in treating the issues in a clear eyed way, but he did have a good go. I don't think that there is A good way to address the issues in a work of fiction that is not directly  a story that confronts the issue. I think that the author did well enough, given the parameters that he had set for himself .

Regardless of the amount of effort that he put into it, I was still left a bit disappointed by the ending of the story. It felt like there was another shoe that needed to drop, that the story was ended prematurely. This is why I only gave it a four star.

BUT, it was a jolly good read, the main characters were evolving as characters and the peripheral characters were also evolving nicely as well.

The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato

Upon hearing that I was mourning the death of Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a friend recommended this book: The Drunken  Spelunker’s Guide to Plato, as a means to read something similar and somehow re-igniting my memories of a philosophical work that changed my life. While this book is excellent in its own right, it isn’t ZAMM.

I must say that I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, mainly because Kathy Giuffre, while a very good writer, had a hard time setting the stage for herself. I struggled with the characters as they were introduced. I had a hard time staying interested since the characters did not grip me at the very beginning, and she introduced so many of them at once that I kept sneaking back to figure out which characters she was talking about. But. She more than made up for it as  she found her groove about half way through the book. The characters became real to me and as the narrative moved along, I started to empathize with the quirkiness of all the characters,

The structure of the book is ambitious. The author interweaves the story of Josie, the narrator, and her life as a bartender at The Cave, a dark and subterranean watering hole; a contemplation of Plato’s fable of prisoners in a cave; and finally a mixture of Greek mythological tales. At first the whole structure seemed to be a pseudo-intellectual exercise in pomposity. But the tapestry works, mainly because of the author’s sense of humor and her easiness with the language and her way with the story. She easily weaves in and out of the three threads and is able to make the story illustrate the mythology and the philosophical ponderings. I found myself being drawn in to the book as the story became more interesting until I was completely captivated and charmed.  In the wrong hands, the easy parallel drawn between Plato’s cave and the bar named the Cave could have been a disaster.  A lazy writer would have gone for the facile laughs and false profundity; this author never went for the cheap laugh or the fake gravitas. She worked pretty hard, in her research on philosophy and mythology to give us, the reader, a very happy and satisfying read.

The best compliment I can pay a work of fiction is that I was sad and forlorn when I reached the end of a book because I wanted the story to continue and I wanted to be led by the author through her thoughts.

I was sad and forlorn when I reached the end of this book.

The Captain Class- By Sam Walker

The Captain Class is many different genres trying to fit into one book. On the one hand it is a serious and sober examination of sports dynasties and how they come to be. This is of course an impossible task undertake, but Sam Walker takes a very logical and serious look at the topic. It is also a primer for what makes something like a sports dynasty come alive and breathe and succeed. It is also a book on leadership and what makes a leader in the sports context.

Truth be told, I feel like he succeeded in all of his missions but the important part is that he did not go down some well-trod paths. For that I am eternally grateful.

Part I of the book describes the process by which he takes all the successful sports teams, from many time periods, from almost all sports, and he applies various sieves to disqualify candidates so that he has a manageable number of candidates to analyze. This alone is a large job, and a contentious one that would involve just about every denizen of every sports bar and pub the world over. I won’t get into his process, needless to say it will be the start of many a conversation, and his reasoning and explanation should be read and thought over by the reader.

The author comes up with sixteen teams. Sixteen iconic teams that the author labeled as his Tier One teams; by the way, he helpfully lists the Tier One teams and the Tier two teams in the appendix of the book, i.e. those teams that barely missed being tier one. This appendix will be well thumbed in the future by this reader.

The next daunting task is to examine at all the teams and to come to a conclusion as what made these teams Tier one, what drove them to being so salient amongst the many, which factor defined the success of that team. This is yet another impossible task, one that will also be debated ad infinitum. Once again, the author does an admirable and thoughtful job of considering a large number of factors and then writing an erudite defense of his analysis. Again, this is argument fodder amongst the denizens of the bars and pubs as well as the denizens of board rooms, think tanks, B schools, and consulting firms.

His conclusion is that what drives the bus for these teams, are the captains of these teams, a throwback position in our entitlement society, a society that disdains hierarchy and a position that serves the greater good of the team. He explains why he moved past the mythical and iconoclastic belief in the coach, or the idolatry of the superstar athlete and settled on the water carrying captain. Again, I won’t repeat his arguments from the book because he does a much better job than I ever will, since he carried the water for the book and I think his argument, the way he phrased it, is important for the reader to absorb and consider.

Part II of the book lists seven qualities that the author feel are unique and defining for a Tier one captain. He describes in depth, using anecdotes and extensive interviews with those captains, the unique and critical qualities that make these men and women so very successful and so very unique. Each chapter is a cogent explanation of each quality that the author feels is crucial for the success of each of these captains.

Part III is the counterexample. The story of the Tier 2 captains, who had all the necessary qualities, except for that one critical quality which doomed them to Tier 2 rather than Tier 1, a cautionary tale.

The well-trod path that the author did not go down is the path of the ubiquitous and trite path of the vast majority of business books. This book could very easily have become a mish mash retelling of the same points and sold as a formulaic recipe for success. The bane of the modern day business world is this formulaic grinding out of uninteresting and useless tomes detailing simplistic recitations of some Powerpoint bullets.

Sam Walker has too much respect for the subject; more importantly, he appreciates the complexity and coupled nature of the successful captaincy. He has lain out what he feels is super salient about these captains and he is smart enough to not lead the reader to believe that the results of the great captain can be duplicated simplistically. He leaves it to us  to try to put the facts together, to think about the ramifications of what we can do to develop those seven qualities, either for ourselves or as a coach or teacher for a student.

As I finished the book, I was actually hoping for some pithy summation for my convenience, but in the end, I was grateful that he avoided the clichéd business school content. Now I can think deeply and critically on his arguments.

To be fair, the author does reiterate the major points that he wanted to make at the end of each chapter, but it is a re-statement of the argument and not a how-to guide.

Whether you are a sports fan, a coach, a consultant, or anyone having to do with developing people into leaders, this is an excellent and challenging addition to your library.

Memorial Day 2017.

Something new this year on social media is the admonition that Memorial Day is to honor the war dead, Veterans Day is to show appreciation for the living veterans and Armed Forces Day is to honor the service members presently serving; in addition, the memes tell us to try to keep it separate so that each of the groups have their well-deserved days of commemoration.

While I don’t see the fault in expressing my thanks to a veteran on Memorial Day, it goes to the heart of what I see as the problem within our society. The sentiments that we express to the fallen dead, veterans, and service members, are jumbled into one big sentiment. We don’t separate them in our minds. Which is a sign of intellectual sloth and it casts a shadow on the spoken sentiments emanating from our mouths. It means that we do not put significant forethought to the sentiments, i.e. we are mouthing the clichés without keeping those thoughts foremost in our minds as we say it.

We are used to saying things without meaning it, we toss off clichés like: Have a good day or good morning to one another without meaning it, which doesn’t hurt the recipient of the sentiment a bit. In this case, it translates to an insult to those we are supposedly honoring and it translates into actions which will ultimately hurt those we honor because our lack of thought demonstrates just how shallow we hold their contributions and service.

It is the kind of artificiality that our society seems to be mired in today. Giving tribute to those who have served seems to be a de rigeur exercise in rote expressions; it is no different than doing your chores. It is most galling coming from elected officials because they do so with an agenda: to appear patriotic as they wrap the flag more tightly around themselves. 

I believe that sincerity matters; that you need to mean what you say and say what you mean. Paying lip service to the trite and true is the overriding ethos in our society.

But what is a little insincerity amongst friends? Sadly, in this instance it manifests itself in ways that will hurt those who had serve and are serving now. It gives us an excuse to absolve us of our promised responsibility to those we verbally honor. It gives people, politicians and citizens alike an excuse for not doing more, for not meeting our responsibilities, for not realizing the promises made to the living and the dead.

I point to the way the VA health system has failed our veterans, I point to the number of veterans who are homeless and suffering from PTSD and will continue to suffer because we as a nation are too self-involved to help them deal with their problems. I point to the astronomical suicide rates of our veterans. I point to the ease with which our political leadership can send living service members into harm’s way without regard to the gravitas of the decision.

It is as if we believed that saying: “Thanks for your service” is all that is necessary to meet our civic obligations to the dead and the living:  It doesn’t. No matter how many times you say it, no matter how many flag festooned meme’s you post on your Facebook page, no matter how you profess your patriotism, none of it matters.

What matters is if we did something to keep our promises. What matters is if we opened up our pockets to enable us to meet our obligations. What matters is us going out into our local communities and discovering those little community programs which serves the veterans living in your community.

The only thing that matters is if we put ourselves on the line for them, just as they did for us.

Talk is cheap.

Rather Be the Devil-Ian Rankin

Rebus started out as a curiosity, as I was just in Scotland when I first started reading these mysteries, but now he has become an old friend. I feel a need to check up on him and see how he is doing. He had become an old nosy retiree, forcibly retired from the force. He didn't go willingly either. It makes me worry about his mental state.

Evidently, so did Ranking, which is why his writing has become better, it gave him more to write about. I kind of got a feeling that he'd written himself into a corner. No fears, he found a way to get the old boy out and about.

Rebus now has a paramour that is more than his foil, and his cohorts from the old days: Clarke and Fox have become more visible characters, so it isn't just Rebus' brooding that is carrying the weight of the novel. And then there is the character of Bir Ger Rafferty, a soulmate/antagonist for Rebus, a worthy foe in a game of cat and mouse.

It almost didn't matter what the crime is, in this case a murder of a society wife who was murdered under mysterious circumstances years ago in a hotel where a rock band was staying, and an attempted attack on one of the villains that had put Rafferty out of business.

Indeed, the typical Rankin formula, and believe me when I say that it is a great formula, because Rankin had my attention every step of the way, even though I know his style.

As I said before, it isn't the mystery it self that matters, it is the characters, how they have grown, and how Rankin manages to weave the characters into each others story line that is of greater interest.

The man delivers, once again.

Zen in the Martial Arts-Joe Hyam

My friend Dan told me this was the book that changed his life, or something to that effect. So I bought it. It was an easy read, short, concise, to the point and full of deep nuggets of wisdom pertaining to the practice of the martial arts and to life itself. Joe Hyam practiced the martial arts under a number of renown Sifu, the most famous of which was Bruce Lee.

This connection brought back memories of the time in my own past where I was obsessed with the Little Dragon. Even though it has been a few years since I have delved into his writings, much of it came back to life in my mind.

Of course Joe Hyam had more to say that just a sequence of Bruce Lee vignettes.

Foremost amongst them are the ideas of being in the flow and practicing the art with great concentration and vigor but also with singular attention of not trying. He also speaks of the kind of decision making that Daniel Kahnemann explores in his Thinking: Fast and Slow and Michael Lewis' The Undoing Project. I am now thinking on these themes and trying to piece all of the ideas together. For this I felt the book was a great find for me personally.

I was pleasantly surprised by his mention of the concept of flow and trying not to try, these are things that I had just read about in the past few years, yet in his crude but very concise way, Hyam was able to explain these concepts in a tiny book. I was actually quite impressed.

The elegant part of the book is that Hyam was able to put what he had to say in short 2-3 page chapters, he does so with great clarity and follows them up with pertinent quotes. This is a great book to keep with me as a reminder of the lessons.

I was also disheartened to read that Joe Hyam had passed away in 2008, this was an older book.

The very worst team

As I sit at a court watching a bunch of really unskilled younger teams play, I started thinking about the hierarchy of our game.

Coaches often cite the fact that only one team can win their last match of the season or the tournament for each division as a consolation for their players. My contrarian mind then turns to the other end of the spectrum. There must be a team that never won during that season: the team that brings up the rear.

This team hasn’t won a set, let alone a match. They go through an entire season without ever having a glimpse of the promise land. I see them as being not very athletic, not very tall, and are beginners working really hard at doing something that they don’t know how to do very well. Yet I see them persevering, staring at adversity in the face and trying their best at something that they are not very good doing. And yet they persevere.

I see them huddling after every point, arms around each other, eyes locked on each other as I try to teach my players to do and they huddle tightly, almost desperately, like their lives depend on it. It must be very difficult and mentally draining. And yet they persevere.

I think of the quiet rides home from tournaments: kids locking their lips shut, choosing to not respond to well-meaning parents, fighting their own frustrations in their heads. I see them talking to their frustrated team mates in hushed tones and rack their brains for the solution. They manage to survive the post-match entreaties of their coaches, yet another loss, yet another talk about rainbows and unicorns or yet another talk about the doom and gloom of failure. And yet they persevere.

I think about what it must take to keep going practice after practice, doing the same things that never seem to click, doing the drills that seem to make your team worse than better, scrimmaging against the worst teams in your club because your coach is trying to give you a reason to keep fighting. And yet they persevere.

Time after time, I see them shanking passes, get called for unskilled touches on the ball, hit the ball way out or forcefully into the net. I see them lose points in bucketful and yet I also see them smile and laugh and pat each other on their backs, telling each other to work harder, to believe, to do every lesson their dispirited coach tries earnestly to teach them. I marvel at their hope, their faith, and their trust in this person who must have expressed his or her frustration multiple times in fits of exasperation and despair. And yet they persevere.

How do they do it? Why do they do it? What keeps them coming back? What kind of people would do this to themselves.

Being a thought experiment I imagine them fighting the good fight every step of the way, never giving up. Yet I know most people would have written off the season or talk about not playing again next season, such is the nature of our culture. Yet I think there must be someone who is willing to lay it out on the line, to persevere through the darkness. I also imagine that everything that we say about the benefits of having grit and the patience and discipline to persevere will win out over the darkness of realizing the reality, that what we preach as coaches will come true for those on the left end of the normal distribution.

I don’t know the answer. I have no empirical evidence to say definitively that this team comes out of the trials and tribulations of such a season triumphant in their spirit and stronger in their convictions. 

I hope that they do.

Chinese Christians

Growing up Chinese has its own lessons. Every mother is a tiger mom. What you did in life was never going to be good enough; your best always fell just short of their expectations. Your every accomplishment was compared against the accomplishments of some unknown scion of one of her many friends who was the perfect son or daughter, who was a doctor/lawyer/billionaire/perfection.

In time, some of us were able to overcome this fiction and survive, but living with psychological scars that would mark us for life. You manage to ignore the criticism, but it is never easy.

Yesterday, my mom told me that one of our family friends had died this week. He was a religious man, someone who was obsequiously disapproving of my atheist belief; someone who is dismissive of my doctorate, saying that it is not quite as impressive as being a real doctor, a medical doctor. While I seethed and fumed, my mother would sing the praises of his two sons, who are both doctors and active member of their church. They went to Stanford, you only went to a state school, blah blah blah.

Over time, as we all got older, these sons got married and thrived in their practices. My mother would regale me with their salaries and the luxuries that their salaries were able to afford them. She didn’t see this as rubbing it in or being provocative or mean spirited, she saw it as a matter of course, the Chinese thing to do, to use other people’s kids to be an inspirational beacon to me, hoping that I can use their example to improve my own lot.

Then the stories started to change. These beloved sons slowly metamorphosed into uncaring and selfish sons. Their parents moved to where the older son lives, some place that was much more expensive than where they were living. Their retirement nest egg is not going as far as they envisioned, and their two sons, the ones with the upper six figure salaries refused to help their parents financially and practically. The oldest son, with his own child now spends his every waking moment with his boy, and rarely, if ever visited his parents. When the parents needed help going to doctors and needed medical advice, he left them to rot. It would have been easy for him to intervene on their behalf, to ease their difficulties in dealing with the medical establishment.

When ailment after ailment struck his parents, the sons seemingly abandoned them to their own devices. All of that fine Christian charity pounded into them having evaporated under the heat of selfish greed and hubris.

When the father died this week, the oldest son, who lived in the same town, refused to come to their house. The father’s body was taken away by the hospice ambulance, and the mother not being able to accompany the body as she had no way of coming back to her home. The body was cremated and no services will be held because the sons are uninterested in it. The second son is flying in next week, as he could not abandon his lucrative practice.

Fine Christian hypocrites.

The sad state of the modern Athletic directors

I suppose that this phenomenon has been going on for a while, but I had been too busy to notice. Unfortunately this happened to a couple of friends of mine and the fury is burning a hole in my brain.

Two young and coming coaches, good coaches, better humans have been fired from small struggling programs. Their sin? They did not compromise their principles by accommodating the squeaky wheel on their team.

At this point, you may be thinking that they must have been holy terrors, junior Bobby Knights. Nope, they were as reasonable as can be, they were on their way to be extraordinary coaches of volleyball.  Usually, when people talk about situations like this, they will either paint the player as victims of a power mad coach who cussed, intimidated, and physically abused the players, or they would paint the coaches as completely innocent bystanders who are victims of an entitled generation of weak and monstrous generation. The truth usually lie somewhere in the middle.  

In the world of sports teams and the relationship between coaches and players, there will be disagreements, differences in philosophy as to the strategy and tactics of the game and the efficacy of the training or even the means of communication between the teacher and the pupil. The foibles and quirks of both sides are often magnified by temper. Since we are talking about competitive people, this effect is magnified by the competitiveness of the parties involved. And the differences are usually resolved through the Solomon like wisdom of the school administration and their ability to persuade, cajole, and broker a compromise, a meeting of the minds. A critical examination of the facts and a firm understanding of the personalities involved will usually reveal the nature of the truth and the appeal of team success and the pursuit of a common goal will usually cause the egos to deflate enough to work together for a common goal.

This assumes of course that the school administration, mainly the AD, is interested in having the best interest of the player, the coach, and his athletic program in mind. Indeed, it takes a Solomon to steer through the Scylla and Charybdis of very competitive and very ego driven people. Many people, teams, and programs have been saved by the wisdom of the administrators. But the recent spate of firings have demonstrated to us that wisdom is now mostly divorced from the skill sets of the modern athletic administrator. They are now mostly glorified bean counters with a business degree who are completely alienated from people and far from willing to work with human beings.

These soulless zombies are more interested in running the sports program as businesses rather than human endeavors. When a difficult situation involving people comes to the fore, their first instinct is for survival , and in the interest of survival, they would rather devastate families and the careers of coaches because it is easier to go that route. It is better to write a small check than to risk the wrath of potential future alums and boosters. The mission of the modern AD is no longer to create a familial ethos under his or her leadership; instead they seek quick resolution rather than seeking the truth. Courage and loyalty are quaint remnants of a bygone era. School presidents have taken to look for their future ADs from under the invertebrates crawling out from beneath the slimiest of rocks.

It is, a sad state of affairs.

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

Eminent journalist Ted Koppel has ventured in what is seemingly a mundane and unexciting area: the electric power grid in his latest book: Lights Out. What he neglected to say is that the book is actually a smoke screen for what he really wants to talk about: the national security apparatus, our lack of infrastructure, planning, and a clue as to how to proceed from keeping all of our citizens safe and fed through an extended disaster. He used the scenario of a cyber-attack to take down the national power grid as a conversation starter.

The electric power grid is an intricate and complicated piece of human construct; it ranks as the most ingenious human invention ever, ahead of the automobile, ahead of even the internet. The scale of the enterprise as it grew over the years is staggering. Since its growth came about gradually, and in an unplanned manner, the shape and form of the grid does not resemble anything that was well planned, it is a hodge podge of usable bits strung together to work together. There is some logic and reasoning to is, engineers being engineers, the national grid was redrawn, rebuilt, and redesigned to accommodate  the latest state of the art technology. Unfortunately, the time lag for something that size is measured in decades.

Mr. Koppel’s selection of the national power grid is a prescient one. It is probably one of the most trusted and taken for granted piece of technology that we have in our life. No one gives a second thought to the reliability and resiliency of the entire grid. This is as intended by the electric utilities and the planners of the grid. It is, however, a misguided illusion, as Mr. Koppel pointed out in very prescient fashion in this book. He goes into detail in the first part of his book. He lays out in some detail, but not enough detail, about the vulnerabilities of the grid. He also failed to research deeper into the technological advances that have been advanced since the 2003 blackout: the work that the DOE and NIST had proposed. The idea is called the Smart Grid, and it encompasses a massive amount of forward looking thinking and technological to come to such a conclusion. The fact that this concept was completely ignored in the book seems to be a massive oversight at best and a failure of clear vision and rational judgement at worst. Because even though the idea of the Smart Grid may not be the solution that Mr. Koppel is seeking, it, and the myriad of ideas the Smart Grid encompasses, may reasonably alleviate some of the unknown threats that Mr. Koppel is addressing.

Mr. Koppel does do a very good job laying out the threat that he wants to talk about: the threat of cyber-attacks that may come stealthily, which can be launched by anyone rather than from a monolithic superpower, and may result in a crippled continent for months if not years. He does this brilliantly in Parts I and II of this book.

Unfortunately, this brings us to Part Iii of Lights Out. Mr. Koppel chose to deviate from the path and he began to delve into some examples of survivalists, preppers, and four chapters on the Mormons and their massive and sophisticated food, fuel, and consumer product distribution network. While all of these stories are interesting, I learned quite a bit from his forays into the prepper world, it certainly does not address the imminent danger that he so eloquently addressed in the previous two parts of the book.

The point being made by Mr. Koppel, is that the non-existent planning on the part of the federal, state, and local government, or the laughingly elementary plans are logistically impossible and unrealistic.

In the end, Mr. Koppel returns to the point that there is a dire need for the government and the private sector to overcome the comfortable and unrealistic view that something like an cyber-attack on the national grid is not imminent and would be far down in the list of imminent disasters that could befall us. In other words, he is preaching that Black Swans, as describe by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is quite real.

In his summary, Mr. Koppel also indirectly appropriated Mr. Taleb’s idea of the state of anti-fragile, i.e. be in a state of preparedness in order to not only be resilient in the face of unknown events, but be able to benefit and profit from the event.

The tendency of modern bureaucracy to lean towards Just-In-Time planning and thinking is one of the themes that Mr. Koppel drew which resonated with me. His comparison of this probable situation with the Katrina disaster eloquently pointed out the tendency for us to only do what is necessary after the disaster has happened. Why be prepared for the unknown unless you knew what the unknown is, why stockpile supplies until you know the disaster is imminent. Mr. Koppel’s point is that you will never know what is coming until it gets here, and then it is too late.

In the end, Mr. Koppel is a talented and detailed story teller. He is also an inveterate name dropper. Of course, being Ted Koppel, you have quite an impressive list of name you can call upon to name drop. He does so with such frequency that what was once just impressive became a bit forced and awkward.

I feel like this was a missed opportunity. Mr. Koppel could have made a stronger, more informed case for the need to invest in infrastructure which is anti-fragile to the new threat on the national grid. He could have made it a goal to examine the ideas being driven within the electric utility industry to buttress the existing national grid and to create the Smart Grid, which is designed with the cyber-security function in mind. He could have foregone some of the interesting digressions in this book to lay out the fundamental problems that creates the threat that he wished to examine. Instead he wrote a fine book, an interesting book, but a very flawed book, from the standpoint of achieving the purpose that he sought to achieve.

American Philosophy-A Love Story

This is one of these books that I was desperate not to finish reading, it is so good. It is an unusual book to fall into that category as it is a unique mix of the story of American philosophy as it intermixes with continental philosophy with a dollop of personal history and the history of the people involved. It is the story of William Hocking, his wife Agnes, their love story, a love story of the mind and the love story of John Kaag and his wife Carol Hay.

But it isn’t just about that, rather it is a broad and expansive overview of the evolution of American philosophy, some would call is pragmatism, and recitations of that uniquely American product with its European forebears and contemporaries. The scholarship of Prof. Kaag is impressive, but more impressive is his ability to tell the story of the flesh and blood people who created this story and history. His ability to disseminate the essential meanings and lessons from the history to the lay mind is beyond impressive. I envy his students in that not only are they getting exposed to a top philosophical mind , but they are benefitting from learning from a world level story teller.

The basics are that Prof Kaag stumbled upon Hocking’s estate, West Wind and in so doing he came into a treasure trove of books that made up William Hocking’s library. He was able to step in to help Hocking’s granddaughters catalog and sort through their beloved grandfather’s library and papers and he was able to expose himself to the thoughts and histories of one of the great American philosophers, now long forgotten by the rest of the world.

Prof Kaag comes to this work with a pedigree and a burden: he is undergoing a crisis in his professional and personal life. The work, however, allows him to let the philosophy take him through his crisis and to guide him through life. One major theme of the book is the explanation of what philosophy once was: based on experiential knowledge and used to resolve real world problems; and what philosophy has evolved into: a specialized and technical trudge through indecipherable language and rigid, technical formalisms. By dissecting the writings of the American philosophical greats: James, Hocking, Peirce, Royce, and Jane Addams through the lens of the continental greats which inspired much of the discussions: Descarte, Hegel, Schilling, Plato, Socrates, Kant et. Al. Prof. Kaag was able to make the connection between the continental philosophers and the American philosophers, i.e. create the causal and rational path that links these sometime disparate seeming schools of philosophy.

The remarkable part is that he was able to accomplish this task easily and pleasurably through his narrative and his willingness to expose his own personal history through incorporating it into the narrative. 

Other reviewers have expressed disappointment in Prof. Kaag’s light handed touch on his own personal romance with his colleague and now wife. They wanted more romance, such is the desire of the book reviewers for titillation. They assumed wrongly, that the love story that Prof. Kaag hinted at in the book title referred to his own story. It may be, but of great meaning in this story is the parallel paths walked by the author and his wife along with Hocking and his wife Agnes. And finally between Hocking and Pearl Buck, after Agnes’s passing.

One personal note of intellectual pleasure is that Prof. Kaag has combined much of what I have been reading lately and included them into the context of this book. His reference to some modern writings and cultural references coincides with some of the other books and ideas I have been dealing with recently. It was as if he was prescient in foretelling my own life at this point in time.

This was an outstanding read and an intellectual roller coaster ride.  I loved the ride and I am now distraught that it is over.

The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahan Smith

I really wanted to love this book, but I can only muster up a like. I was hoping for a modern update to Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”, indeed, the author Emily Esfahan Smith, cites Frankl’s work. She even uses the book as a part of her examination of the power of meaning.

In reading this book, I gathered that this was meant to be one of the many books that came out which ape’s Malcom Gladwell’s mode of storytelling: examining a subject closely through econometric to tell a story. Many books have resulted from using Gladwell’s method and many successful books have resulted, even though the success of the storytelling has been uneven. Not everyone can be Malcolm Gladwell. This is yet another one that is disappointing.

Emily Esfahan Smith is a very talented writer; I have read her work in The Atlantic. She has a voice that captured my attention. So it is that I was greatly disappointed in her treatment of meaning here.

She first created four main pillars that underlie the idea of meaning, these pillars, according to her, makes the idea of meaning powerful: Belonging, Purpose, Storytelling, and Transcendence. Those comprise of chapters 2-5 of the book. Chapter 1: The Meaning Crisis, where she convinces us that the topic is important was well written and makes a very strong case. It made her case and drew me in. I was dubious about the value of Belonging and Storytelling as being central to her argument, but she made a good case for belonging, but not so much for storytelling, but I knew that would be a difficult one to justify because it was a weak pillar to start with.

I was very surprised and disappointed with the purpose chapter, I felt that would be a central theme to the entire book and I felt that the cases cited and the generally the tone and attack that she took with the chapter was tepid at best. In general, the chapters on purpose, storytelling, and transcendence felt rushed and not very well thought out.

The transcendence chapter, I felt, would be a very important chapter. I thought that her own personal background in the Sufi tradition would lead her to expanding and shedding light on transcendence throughout many non-Christian spiritual practices, yet, she chose to focus on Christian transcendence as cases and examples. I believe that in order for her to make her point about the universality of the power of meaning, she needed to create an ethos of universality and demonstrate that the subject of which she is expounding on is indeed, itself universal. I believe she succeeded in a very limited manner. I wouldn’t say she failed, just did not succeed in as large a manner as I would have expected.

I thought the cases she explored in support of her are not well written, they sounded kind of forced. Even though her emphasis is on storytelling, she failed at storytelling. The attraction of this kind of case study journalism is to give heft to the argument with legitimate scholarly econometrics but then also engage the reader by linking the cold sterile numbers with human passion and emotional response. She failed in that regard.

The next two chapters: Growth and the Culture of Meaning were disparate in terms of effectiveness. Growth chapter, while not as weak as the weaker chaters in the book was still unsettling in its lack of passion. She used the ideas from Frankl, the ideas on grit and resilience from Angela Duckworth, and the growth mindset from Carole Dweck to add intellectual depth to the growth chapter, but did not specifically talk about Duckworth and Dwecks idea, it seems that she assumed that everyone are already well versed in their works. I was and was able to glean a bit of what she was referring to in advance of her citation of both Duckworth and Dweck, but it is too bad that she did not give the readers a bit more information before making her final point.

Th last two chapters, the Culture of Meaning and the conclusion were the strongest chapters, outside of The Meaning Crisis chapter. The Culture of Meaning chapter was seemingly Smith at her most free and maximum engagement. She made her points in a very lucid manner, her storytelling was excellent, perhaps because the story about her brush with Story Corp was a better story and her own personal engagement in the process lit a fuse in her. That led naturally to her conclusion, which was stronger than the rest of the book.

I think this was a missed opportunity to make a point about meaning, purpose, transcendence, and what it all means to us in our society today, and how this all could help guide us through the miasma which is our cultural maze. If I were dismissive and cruel, I would call it a Cliff’s Notes updating  of Frankl with a lot of economic studies cited, that was my first reaction. But after much thought and re-reading, I felt that this was a good try at revisiting the same landscape, and a valiant effort at using all the modern day psychology and econometric studies to take an updated look at meaning, a rather ambitious undertaking. I think she fell short, which is not an altogether unexpected result, but a disappointing one nevertheless.

I think a better plan of attack and more motivated storytelling could have made the difference.

Messy By Tim Harford

Messy is yet another non-fiction books that falls in the genre created for writers, economist, and area experts etc. to expound on an amorphous topic by using examples from many different areas of life. They are usually written along the lines of a self-help/business/leadership book. They use the famous case study, combination of stories of the intrepid researchers, some rudimentary statistics to show that there is gravitas in what they say and it is all wrapped up in a nice tidy package and conclusions.

Even though I am cynical about the packaging and structure of the genre, I actually enjoyed Messy very much. A bit of confirmation bias maybe at play here since I am personally “messy” in the way I work, the way I organize myself, and the way I think abstractly.  So it is with great excitement that I ordered this book. Tim Harford had me at hello.

Fortunately for me, he delivered on what he had promised. I thoroughly enjoyed the read and he did get me thinking about the nature and beauty of disorder in the things that affects us.

Harford, a very well-known writer and economist is the author of a number of bestselling books, mostly found in the business best-seller list. I suspect this one will also be climbing the charts. Truth of the matter is that Harford is a very thorough researcher, an excellent writer and explainer, and never lets the details fog up the big picture for the reader.

The thesis of the book is captured in the sub title of the book itself: The Power of Disorder to Transform our lives. That is: disorder is good for us and we just get ourselves in trouble when we try to inject too much order and discipline into our daily lives. Harford divides his tome into none distinct words, each one is the lead in for a number of stories pertinent to the topic of messiness. They are: Creativity, Collaboration, Workplaces, Improvisation, Winning, Incentives, Automation, Resilience, and Life. He employs examples from music, politics, business, forestry, architecture, military strategy, education, engineering, mathematics, life sciences etc.  to illustrate his point, all the while entertaining us with his stories, and Harford is a very good story teller. Most importantly, he is also very good at weaving all these disparate stories into a cogent and logical thesis. I deliberately did not wish to give examples of his stories in this review because I did not want to deprive other readers the chance to read Harford’s prose and steal his thunder. It is best if you read the book.

Time and again, Harford persuasively tells us his stories and engages us into the depths of his thoughts regarding the main theme. He is thoroughly convincing in his arguments. He chides the people in the stories about being too ordered, too disciplined, and too devoted to linear thinking. Even though I was convinced early on in the reading process, I feel like his writing provided me with even more proof of what I already believed and made me think about other extensions of the messiness idea. I will be referring back to this book as I ponder his ideas.

I obviously recommend the book.

Resolutions. New Years or Otherwise.

Resolutions has always seemed artificial and forced to me, especially the New Year resolution. It seemed contrived because there is nothing in the human behavioral set of rules that says that you have to renew yourself and create these resolutions at the beginning of the calendar year.

First, because the calendar is a contrived mechanism created to make humans able to track time in an easier manner. The fact that we are following a solar calendar versus a lunar calendar makes the yearly resolution seem even more contrived.

The act of writing and proclaiming a resolution is contrived. Why is it that we feel the need to declare our intentions in a formal way and written in a formal list. I know people who are very formal about the idea, saying that this is a way to create a mechanism for our friends to hold us accountable to what we had pledged. Indeed, if this is the case, when does this not make our free will and discipline a joke? If we cannot have the discipline to hold fast to our will then won’t we have greater issues with ourselves than just a resolution?

Let us now look at the motivation for the resolution. Is it a means to declare to our friends and loved ones what our intention is or is it a way for us to call attention to what we are saying for selfish reasons? Is the resolution just a means for publicly touting our own virtues? Is this not just some form of bragging about our own purity of purpose? I don’t need to let the world know I plan on abstaining from alcohol, I declare it to receive the rewards of being so honest and forthright in the most public way possible.   

Indeed, doesn’t our promise to our self to do whatever it is that we wish to aspire to mean more to ourselves rather than to others? If that is indeed the case, then the public declaration of the resolution is just so much public show of our virtue and purity. Generally this is not a strong basis for discipline and resilience. Hence the failure rate in upholding these resolutions.

Make a resolution to yourself for yourself, let no one else know. Your conscience will be clearer and you are truer to yourself. Making the resolution public is pointless. Holding to your resolution to your own standards while no one is looking is what we need to aim for. 

On Reading self-help books

When I first started working, an older and wiser co-worker told me: “There are two ways to do things: one is the way they tell you how to do it, written or otherwise and then there is the way that things get done right.”

I have kept that in my mind and it has more of less rings true. There have been circumstances, miracles of all miracles, where the two ways coincide and we get a cosmic convergence of disparate minds, but that’s not often.

What brings this up is that I have been reading a number of books written to show the masses how to be creative, how does innovation occur, how to be gritty and resilient, how to be happy, how change our mindset, how to cope with the technology invading our world, and all of the other things that are complicating/enabling our lives. These books are generally written by journalists or economists, or university researchers. They are categorized as either leadership books, psychology books, business books, or self-help books.

They all share a structure though. The book and indeed, each chapter may start with a pithy quote which may or may not be pertinent to the chapter, but it is there. The quotes are usually coming from someone famous who has the gravitas to give purpose to the chapter with their really deep thoughts.

The book starts with a declaration that is supposed to be evocative if not mind expanding. The author would mark his territory; define his problem, the parameters, and the constraints. He would also throw in a bunch of stories which would seemingly give proof to his claims. The stories would be humorous but meaningful at the same time. Some authors would go for the anecdotal approach: great stories without much data. Some would go deep into their research and give you a lot of data, and if they are good scientists and researchers, they would also provide caveats and forewarnings about assumptions.

Support and argumentation would proceed in this way through a number of chapters laying down a recipe or formula: point, anecdote and/or data, another point, more anecdote and/or data, and so on. In the end there would be a summary and a unification of all the deep thoughts all boiled down into an easy to follow, no thinking required on the part of the reader. The promise is that whichever problem the book is supposed to resolve is so simple, so uncomplicated that a simple sequence of if-then scenarios could resolve all situations that may come. Just like the premise I started with: there is a documented solution.

In real life, we figure out what to do and how to do it. Sometimes we need to do this because the known wisdom is insufficient and confusing. Sometimes it is inadequate, but sometimes it is because human ingenuity just won’t take the status quo for granted and sometimes people come up with much better solutions by going away from the status quo.

For me that is the road less traveled, injection of human curiosity and critical thinking and solving things by the seat of the pants, an experiential approach is usually the most effective.

Indeed there is something to be said for having a reference book ready to list the best practices, but I would argue that most of these books are by and large not a list of best practices. They are a list of what people believe to be best practices and most are just people throwing stuff out. Even those who have a basis with data and documented successes, the authors don’t go into far enough depth in their explanation of their thinking to warn of the potholes along the way. Some of these omissions come from the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know and you can’t anticipate everything. Yet some omissions are more insidious: they don’t want their claims weakened or invalidated AND those careful caveats don’t sell books.

I still read those books, I am not cynical enough to ignore the possibilities available that comes from unorthodox thinking. But I do it with a very jaundiced eye. I bring to the task of reading these books with the eyes of a technical reviewer for engineering papers.