Book Review-The Weil Conjecture: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown By Karen Olsson

This book piqued my interest because it is advertised as a biography of a mathematician and his philosopher sister. Mathematics and philosophy have been hobbies for many years, and I have been very interested specifically in the people who work in these milieus. I had heard and read about his book from many different book reviews, and I figured it would be a good read.

I didn’t expect this, which is high praise.

This is the story about the Weil family and their two very precocious children. It is about how the children developed and grew to be Andre and Simone Weil, as seen through the eyes of the author. It is about the conflicts between brothers and sisters made complicated by the upheavals of the mid-20^th century, and how the disruptions wreaked havoc with their lives. It is about how the siblings’ reactions to the upheavals formed their lives at that moment and shaped their future lives.

It is also about the author’s inner story. About her lifelong curiosity about mathematics, and most importantly, about her obsession with how these mathematicians do what they do and the seemingly opaque mental processes that they use to see the insights that had been denied to her and to many others.  

The instant I read the author’s words about her own background, I felt both a sense of alarm and empathy. Alarm because it is a foreshadowing that the book could just be a self-indulgent exercise in psychological offloading and purging. Fortunately, it was not what I had feared at all. The book was instead, a personal history that intertwined tightly with the Weil sibling’s story. Once I realized the possibilities of this unique kind of narrative, I started to empathize with the author because our interests and history are somewhat parallel in nature.

I am a passionate lover of mathematics, but I was too impatient to learn the tools of theoretical mathematics because the need for finding answers in my nature was too strong. In the end I became an applied mathematician by becoming an engineer. I was, however, obsessed with the idea of theoretical mathematics. I obsessively tried to read theoretical mathematics and tried to understand the kind of insights and results that came from that kind of magic. I continued to do so even though I was only partially successful in understanding each step and being able to put the logical sequence together in a coherent thought process. I will keep trying to this day.

Here is the frustration: Most of us look. The genius sees. the author and I, cannot see.

In my frustration at not seeing, turned my attention to the people who can see, reading about their upbringing, and pondering how they were able to see what I was not able to see. I became a mathematical history bluff to compensate for my inability to see.

Karen Olsson’s writing, especially regarding the transcendence of pure mathematics, became a major reason for reading this book. She has a knack to convey the beauty of mathematics without having to explain mathematics, that is a rare ability. One way to demonstrate the beauty of mathematics is to just dig into the mathematics, but if the reader is not a mathematician, the long and drawn out explications of the mathematics is lost on the reader. The second way is to describe the how and the why mathematics is considered to be beautiful and elegant without diving into the technical granularities of the mathematics. This second way is rarely successful, because mere words cannot fully convey the emotional responses of the people who understand mathematics, yet Karen Olsson is able to pull out the aesthetics of mathematics, to give the readers the reason why mathematics is considered beautiful and to elicit the kind of responses from an amateur practitioner that is often reserved for the expert practitioner. It is, however, understood that we amateurs only have a partial perspective.

In the book, Simone Weil’s story spoke for the readers and the author, as her frustrations with her lack of mathematical accomplishments that paralleled those of her brother reflected the frustrations of the author and this particular reader. The narratives in the book that are based on her correspondences between Andre and Simone describe the internal struggles of anyone who is thwarted from reaching a higher level in anything, from seeing. The irony is that her work in philosophy had propelled her to greater notoriety in present-day intellectual society, so much so that in many ways her writings superseded her brother’s accomplishment in mathematics, which is rather astounding.

The narrative became ever more riveting as my reading took me to the end of the story. Karen Olsson deftly drew the picture for us about the agonizing mental process of being professional mathematicians and the strain it exacts on the mathematicians and the people closest to them over time. Her description of the end of Simone Weil’s life was heartbreaking, but Andre’s life, though lasting far longer than his sister’s life, was also sad, given that his successes had mostly been during his youth and the love of his life, mathematics, had deserted him decades before his own demise.

At the end of the book, I felt that I had taken a step, albeit a small step, towards understanding how mathematicians thought and worked. It was a clarifying book and a riveting read.

 

 

 

Book Review-Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China By Fuchsia Dunlop

I bought this book right around the time of its publication in 2008. I then schlepped it around in moving boxes as I moved over the years. This became one of the happy moments in my bibliophilic life when I rediscovered this book in one of those boxes in my basement and complimented myself on just how good my taste in potential reading material was sixteen years ago.

What had possessed me to first, buy this book; and second, to not read it for such a long time? The answer to the first question is that it was rare for Chinese cuisine, let alone Sichuan cuisine, to be the focus of an English language book. As I delved into reading the book, I realized that the book had multiple layers, which made my decision to buy it all the more fortuitous. The book interleaves a travelogue of China during the initial broader opening of the country to western visitors, a cultural exploration of China at that time coming from the point of view of a young English woman’s perspective, and a heart felt memoir of her own adventures in life in addition to the food lore, recipes, and recipes. The second question is harder to answer as I had come across the book amongst my boxes many times in the intervening years. I believe there is a certain hubris involved in my thought process to avoid diving wholeheartedly into the book. Hubris stemming from my pride in my Chinese cultural heritage intertwined with  my chauvinist feelings against learning about China and its food from a big-nose, or a foreign devil. There was a certain shame in that because even though I was culturally Chinese, I also spent most of my life being acculturated to the west, I had always felt inadequate about the depth and breadth of my understanding of my culture, particularly since I fancied myself a foodie. I had started reading about the Chinese diaspora throughout the world and their contributions in spreading and evolving the Chinese cuisine a few years ago, mainly Cheouk Kwan’s Have You Eaten Yet? (Kwan, 2023) (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/07/book-review-have-you-eaten-yet-by-cheuk.html).   I decided to jump in with both feet after reading Kwan’s book as his book showed the influence of Chinese cuisine on wherever the cuisine to have landed, as well as how those lands had influenced Chinese cuisine.

So here is my apology to Fuchsia Dunlop, for not having read this enjoyable and thoroughly captivating memoir, Chinese cuisine resource, travelogue, and personal exploration until now. I allowed my own prejudices to get in the way.

Even though the book’s layout is relatively simple, each chapter has multiple layers of nuances. First and foremost is the cultural accounting of Chinese cuisine, how it came to be the way it is, the folklore surrounding each region’s cuisine, and the reasons for each regions’ cuisine to be unique and differentiated from the other regions. As with all good anthropologists, Dunlop dove bravely into the China of the 1990’s, an exciting and turbulent time to be in China. Her being a woman and foreigner where foreign women were a rare sight made her travels around the country that much more impressive. Her forays into the countryside and places where she is often the first foreigner to visit in many years were not only bold but also be termed personally courageous.

The core of the book is her description of the food, but not only the description but how the food is prepared and how her experience in overcoming the language difference, the unfamiliar cooking techniques, utensils, and the massive mismatch of food traditions between her cultural background and China’s helped her telling the story. She tells a nuanced story of how she set her mind to overcome the differences and accomplish the feat of making the Chinese cuisine that she is documenting  approachable for the western reader.

As I followed her narrative, my previous hubris gave way to happy acceptance that she knew much more than I did and more importantly, that her knowledge of being Chinese is in many cases, far deeper than my own knowledge. Even though my cultural pride took a beating from this acceptance, I was happily learning about my cultural heritage and the food traditions that I had taken for granted as a part of my cultural identity.

As with any sensitive and sharp-eyed writer, she also observed the cultural changes that was happening at that time, as China began to open herself up to welcome the west, she identified the potential fractures within the well-preserved façade of China as a communist society versus what she knew was to come. Her observations of her Chinese friends in China also opened a window into what those friends were experiencing and feeling.

Finally, she bravely exposed her own vulnerabilities by examining her own feeling about being a brave eater in China and what that meant and how her intrepidness conflicted with her personal value systems and how she was able to deal with the juxtaposition of conflicting values.

Each chapter ends with a recipe culled from her notes that were collected during her travels and research. Even though I was quite familiar with most of these dishes, I still learned from them: about how to prepare the ingredients and how to actually make the dishes.

The overlaying of the different parts of Dunlop’s tales made the reading experience multifaceted and variegated, as the narrative kept me deeply interested.  My mind was kept busy while absorbing all the different layers and threads.

After having thoroughly enjoyed my trek into my own food culture through the eyes and voice of Fuchsia Dunlop, I can truthfully state that I have been happily educated by this English woman.

As a show of how much I enjoyed the book, I just started Fuchsia Dunlop latest book Invitation to a Banquet, which came out in 2023. I won’t be waiting 16 years to finish this book

Book Review-A History of Reading By Alberto Manguel

I was encouraged to jump into this book on the history of reading after having read Alberto Manguel’s short book Packing My Library (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/03/book-review-packing-my-library-by.html), on his elegy to his library in France, it was the library that he had wanted for all of his life but one that he had to give it up for unspecified reason. This book on the history of reading had also been cited by Maryanne Wolf in her book Proust and the Squid (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/10/book-review-proust-and-squid-by.html) as a source of her research on reading. It was a serendipitous discovery for me as I would not have consciously sought out a history of reading.

The book comprises of 22 essays, with ten essays collected under the section titled Acts of Reading, and ten essays collected under the section titled Powers of the Reader. A leading section and essay titled The Last Page  led off the book and an ending section and essay titled  Endpaper Pages. What happened between The Last Page and Endpaper Pages was sheer reading pleasure about reading.

Manguel is erudite and a thorough researcher, more importantly, he is an excellent storyteller, never straying too far into pedantisms yet also digging into the granularities deep enough to satisfy the reader’s curiosity. The subject of the book may seem to be a topic that could be a snoozer; I must admit that I am one of the select many who find the subject more than a little interesting, but I am the kind of geek that this book was written for. \

Where else does one find out that it was the norm in the time of St. Augustine for readers read loudly and in public, whereas our habits are that such that reading is done silently. Or having the history of language, writing, and reading explained in an erudite and clear fashion. Or having the neurological theories of how humans developed the ability to create and  decipher written language and develop the ability to suss out the different meaning that are imbued in the words, albeit his explanations are not at the levels of neuroscientific depth as a textbook but it is clear and delivered in a concise manner.

Far be it for me to recite the content of the book in a book review, because the surprise to the reader comes from the unexpectedness of the topic and the histories in the form of the stories woven into the essays are not only informational but completely entertaining.

Manguel writes with the rigorousness and discipline of a literary scholar that he is. He has also selected the subject of each essay with foresight and structure that gives the reader sufficient guidance to accumulate the facts through the stories and references that he cited. The book is an interesting conglomeration of genres: as a serious history book and as an informative tome to be read for pleasure.

It is my habit to set aside time at the end of the day for relaxing reading. The books that I read are usually some mindless fictions, mostly mysteries, so that my mind can be relaxed in order to prepare for sleep; or a book of essays that are short enough to be consumed pre-slumber while also interesting enough to give my mind a gentle workout, to exhaust it enough to make it welcome the advancing sandman. This book fits the bill on many occasions. I did not read it with a set of expectations, I read it as a source of pleasure and  knowledge. The essays consistently drew in my interest, and I gained knowledge with every essay.

I would suggest reading this book with the same easy and unhurried approach. The beauty of this subject is that I plan on returning to the book as a reference on the history of language in general as well as a handy book of essays, to be re-read and enjoyed.

I so enjoyed this book that I had sought our other books written by Alberto Manguel before I had finished this one so that I can have the books in my possession so that I can reach for them when the mood strikes.

 

Book Review-Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope By Sarah Bakewell

Sarah Bakewell amply demonstrated her scholarship in historical research and her storytelling skills in her previous two books: How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer and At the Existentialist Café. Those two books made her one of my must-read authors, no matter the subject. Which is how I came to procure a copy of Humanly Possible. I would have gladly added this book to my To-Be-Read pile even without having experienced her writing, as I have been curious about the Humanists, or Freethinkers throughout my spiritual life. The topic had been covered previously in  Susan Jacoby’s Freethinker’s: A History of American Secularism. Bakewell’s tome is broader in scope as she delves into 700 years of humanist thoughts and philosophy starting from the earliest western thought rather than just covering the American version of Humanism.

Bakewell structured her book chronologically, carefully tracking the evolution of Humanist thoughts from the first stirrings of the human centered belief as a reaction against reliance on the supernatural. She lays out a step-by-step evolutionary history of Humanism, tracing the many threads of Humanist thought throughout western human history. Her exceptional story telling prowess is the glue that holds the narrative together, as the development and evolution of the Humanist oeuvre is not only heterogeneous, broad in scope, but also complicated. This approach could have resulted in overwhelming pedantry, putting the reader into a rut of repetitious time keeping and list making; but Bakewell’s way with a narrative saved the book.

Her ease with the convoluted philosophical developments of Humanism throughout history and most importantly, her analysis of the developments within their specific context and in a broader historical sense told a clear story and her expository rigor made the ideas become as alive as the narrative.

She started her story with Petrarch and Boccacio and ended with her statement of her own thoughts regarding the future of Humanism. The last chapter is where she most clearly expressed her own Humanist beliefs and her struggles with the realities of Humanism.

In between the first and last chapters, Bakewell laid out the salient histories and personalities of the historical figures which kept the ideas of Humanism alive. She also adds a nice touch in giving the readers a short list and description of all the historical figures that she will be introducing at the beginning of each chapter, which gives us a hint of what to expect.

The stories get more fully fleshed out as the chronology gets closer to the present time, as expected, but Bakewell clearly lays out the reasons why the historical figures are considered important to the story, and why they believed in what they believed in, giving the readers an understanding of  the motivation for each historical figure.

Such historically significant figures as Erasmus, Montaigne, Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, Paine, Bentham, Wilde, Frederick Douglas, E. F. Forster, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert G Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, and Thomas Mann were all mentioned, their contributions to Humanism analyzed and expounded upon to give depth and breadth to the Humanist story.

Bakewell employed a chronological structure to tell the story, which initially felt constraining and as if the narrative of the early history of Humanism was rushed; to be fair, there are scant historical records for Bakewell to dig into. It wasn’t until later in the chronology of the history that the pace of the book settled into a steady and more attractive pace.

The chapters on Wilhelm Von Humboldt, John Stuart Mills, and Forster were the most riveting for me. Although the chapters that dealt with the roles that Erasmus, Montaigne, Hume, Wilde and Bentham played earlier in the narrative also readily captured the reader’s attention. The introduction of Darwin and Huxley historically shook up Humanism much as it did literarily to  this book, giving a welcomed dose of scientific inquiries into what had been a purely philosophical analysis. Robert Ingersoll was a figure that I had known about but had not read much about, I was glad that Bakewell gave me a dip into his thoughts.

Bertrand Russell, as always, played the intellectual elephant in the room as his long-lasting intellectual legacy dominated the latter conversations about Humanism, as his long and productive life coupled with his robust intellectual expositions dominated the conversations about Humanism during the 20^th century, as with many other philosophical discussions.

It was a bravura work of historical investigation about a complicated and convoluted subject. My own dips into the Humanism beliefs filled me with hope for humankind but also left me struggling with contradictions, as any worthy system of belief should. Bakewell stated that she is dedicated to the Humanist combination of Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope as her guiding principles, and I feel the same way; after all, who in their right minds can argue with those three principles.

As with all broad- and broad-minded beliefs, there are enough variations in beliefs and thought in addition to the copious amount of interpretations to dampen any hopes of unifying and standardizing the beliefs. As with all beliefs, even though Humanism has at this time distanced itself from the overtly supernatural frame of reference; yet humans have always desired a set of written and definitive principles around which any movement or system of belief can pivot, which is where the monotheistic religions are advantaged: it is easier to attribute all the belief to a single supernatural entity than unifying disparate principles.

Much as Christians had employed the group sourced King James Bible and the earlier Council of Nicea, there has been attempts at unifying Humanist principles, first to counter the blasphemy laws around the world; as having a set of human based ethics and scruples is seen as a challenge to the churches and religions as they exist today; and second to integrate all the beliefs that the Humanist claim to be central to defining Humanism. Bakewell included the Declaration of Modern Humanism as written by consensus in 2022 by the Humanists International in the appendix. In and of itself, the declaration is a fine document, it does indeed encompass much of what most believe Humanism holds to be important. Although the wordsmithing and qualifying compositions reflect the amount and characteristics of the compromising that went on behind the scenes when the declaration was written. While I understand that wordsmithing is necessary and even critical to the process of gaining acceptance from all the Humanists; it reflects the nature of the negotiations. Compromising negatively impacts the power of the system of belief, which then ameliorates the passions of the potential believers.

This is what I find to be frustrating with Humanism. A belief system that is as admirable in its intentions and motivation as Humanism deserves serious consideration as a belief system, yet the main reason that it so attractive: the humanity focused belief as opposed to the supernatural belief, handicaps the clarity and unity of the Humanist philosophy. Being able to focus on the supernatural and having a centralized power and bureaucratic structure based on the belief of a monolithic idol creates a unity that is very powerful, even though the truth of the existence of the idol is dubious.

What Bakewell accomplished with this book, which is what she excels at, is to give those curious about Humanist belief a perspective centering history of Humanism. She also traces the many disparate ideas which form Humanism to those who originated the thoughts. It is an intellectually pleasing read, an entertaining tale of how Humanism came to be Humanism.

Much to Bakewell’s credit, she refused to dictate to the readers, she presented the historical facts and organized the history cogently so that those who are curious can read the history of development and evolution of Humanism and then she allows the reader to decide for themselves. Which is what a great author should do.

 

 

 

 

Book Review-The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery By Adam Gopnik

I have been a longtime fan of Adam Gopnik’s writing and reporting for as long as I have been  a regular reader of the New Yorker magazine. His self-deprecating sense of humor and philosophical slant to his writing makes the stories not only enjoyable but also thought provoking. He has a style that is well thought out, erudite, and unforced.

I was drawn to his book as I have been interested in mastery for a long time, particularly the stories of people who have worked diligently towards achieving mastery; I am curious about their struggles with the process of achieving mastery, the lessons that they have learned about themselves, the nature of the process, and the demands working towards mastery places on their cognition, patience, and resilience.

The word mastery has been used and abused in the recent years because it has become the part of the lexicon for the quickie How-To business book industry, it has been metamorphosed into  a trite caricature by pretenders. Once the business book writing cabal find a hot popular topic such as mastery, the phrase is repeated ad infinitum by all the other members of the cabal. Every business book author ceaselessly repeats mastery as a mantra, but it is obvious that they are only interested in the shallow and superficial aspects of what it takes to achieve mastery. They tend to dig into the results of mastery rather than the hard intellectual and physical work necessary to achieve mastery. Since I am familiar with Gopnik’s previous work,  I knew that I could trust Gopnik to get beyond the superficial and trite to get deep into mastery.

The book occupies a much larger landscape than I expected. In fact, it is broader, was more introspective, and much more internal than what I had expected. I would say that the book both exceeded and expanded my expectations.  The coverage was more expansive while also was not fearful about being abstract.  

The book is, as expected,  full of philosophical digressions, which is why I love reading Gopnik. The subtitle of the book is the Mystery of Mastery. What is the mystery? Why is the idea of achieving mastery so mysterious?

The organization of the book interspersed the seven mysteries of mastery amongst the chapters devoted to the topics that Gopnik investigated and worked at to attain mastery. Obviously, he was not able to achieve mastery in all of the topics he investigated, but his willingness to jump into the process of learning and working towards mastery gave us a strong perspective on those things that he had to fight through to even get close to the edge of mastery.

The seven mysteries are:

·       Performance

·       Identity and Intention

·       Interiority

·       Meaning

·       Late Style

·       The Act Itself

·       And the Resolve.

Those chapters are illustrated through topics of investigation that Gopnik attempted:

·       Drawing

·       Magic

·       Driving

·       Baking

·       Boxing and Dancing

There is also an additional chapter that is devoted to a topic that is not about a skill or an action but a personal topic, which at first made me uneasy at first, but that was Gopnik’s intention. The personal topic is relieving. It took an act of courage for Gopnik to discuss this particular topic, and I appreciate his bravery and honesty. This chapter is a dive into gaining mastery over something that is personal and internal, it is a necessity for him rather than a choice that he made as a luxury.

Three topics drew my interest the most, although I learned something from each topic. Magic, Boxing, and Dancing were topics that I felt most comfortable with, for whatever reason. Magic stands out in this book because this seemed to be the center of why Gopnik dove in to investigate the topic of mastery. He delved into the history of magic and the mystique that had grown up through the years around performing magic. He also told stories about magicians, historical and present-day performers, digging into why they work so hard at their performances and what drew them into its grips. He investigates the motivations behind some of the biggest names in present day magic and tries to answer the question about their obsessions . The digressions into the history of magic was not really a digression per se, but a history lesson that gives context to the present-day magic scene and magicians.

Gopnik’s story telling ability pulled me into the details of the topics, no matter how mundane I felt the topics were, he has a way of looking at the different facets of the most normal and ordinary tasks and giving insight. The interspersing of the Mysteries of Mastery chapters perfectly complemented the stories and gave meaning to the stories and framed the mysteries through the context of each topic.

I have made a list of the mysteries in my Commonplace book to contemplate and to force myself to think in those terms. Perhaps I am making more out of Gopnik’s views of  mastery, yet I am willing to wager that I am not overthinking his mysteries. Regardless, I will be stimulated and entertained.

 

 

Book Review-Proust and the Squid By Maryanne Wolf

I read about this book some time ago. I didn't think it would be of interest to me at the time, but I bought the book anyways, as the topic piqued my curiosity enough so that I figured I might be interested later. True to form, I gained interest in the subject over time because of my interest in cognitive sciences. As I became more interested in how our brain learns, I came to appreciate the complexities of how human do what we do, which led to my interest in reading and this book, as reading is one of the most complicated skill to acquire.

Parenthetically, I was also reading Mortimer Adlers’ How to Read a Book (Adler, 1972) and Alberto Manguel’s  A History of Reading (Manguel, 1996) in parallel with reading Proust and the Squid. The three books covered the topic of reading from differing vantage points, so they complemented each other well in my mind, giving me great perspective.  I am now reading Marianne Wolf's second book Reader, Come Home (Wolf, 2018) to follow up on her work. The idea was to practice what Adler calls synoptic reading; this is to train myself to think deeply as Wolf talks about, because our mind is evolving as we  think deeply as we read broadly. Indeed, reading multiple books on the same topic has been not just enjoyable but also very good training.

Returning to this book, Proust and the Squid is split into three parts. Part One describes how our civilization developed language; a critical point that Wolf makes clear is that human brains  were never designed to read. The ability to read evolved as our brain adapted to synthesize many different parts of our neuro structure to integrate invented written language into our cognition. We learned to use the parts that had other principal functions that are necessary for survival and recruiting the  disparate parts of the brain for the purpose of becoming better at reading and to gain better understanding of what we read and write. We were able to take the original functions of those parts of the brain and synthesize them into developing coherent systems of writing and reading.  This was an extremely clever and significant development in our evolution; different cultures developed these abilities independently, as the different cultures were isolated from one another, which was surprising and serves to give ample proof to the concept of neuroplasticity.  A sampling of different languages shows that some are pictographic in nature, others are based upon sounds, and other languages are based on assigning meaning to the writing rather than just be based on the sound or appearance, which demonstrates how powerful our brain is in adapting to differing cultural needs. This section naturally leads into Parts Two of the book.

Part Two is a tutorial on how the brain learned to read over time. This was the main reason for my interest in reading the book. Chapters Four through Six told the story of how reading developed throughout history and how the brain developed and evolved into the reading and thinking machine. The key point that Wolf drummed into the reader as she beautifully told the story of reading is the fact that as we read more, the better we can think; and the better we are able to think, the better we are able to read and the more we can understand through reading. A positive feedback loop between reading and thinking. abilities. Yet another important point within the Part 2 is that we are shaped by what we read and how we read; which also affects how well we can understand and analyze what we read, a symbiotic relationship.

Part 3, on dyslexia — what happens when the reading brain of some people does not work the same way for the rest of us — was the part of the book that I was the least enthusiastic about tackling. Dyslexia and reading problems were never on my radar, it never piqued my interest, yet I found this part of the book,  Chapters seven and eight, fascinating, it is almost my favorite part of this book.

I had never studied dyslexia, how the brain  deviated from its usual reading process when people are dyslexic. I had thought of it as being somewhat mysterious, being an electrical engineer,  I always thought in terms of a short circuit somewhere. Part 3 of this book not only delineated all of the results from the theories and studies about dyslexia, it also reflected back on Part 2 of the book: how we learned how to read. The referral to Part 2 made Part 3 understandable, and Part 3 reinforced the narrative that Part 2 told. The two parts created a cohesive picture. I could not help but be riveted.

Chapter 9 is the conclusion chapter, which is where the author explains herself: the reasons for writing the previous eight chapters. She lays out the specific issues that raised alarms for her as a researcher in psychology and cognition, as well as a public intellectual that is alarmed about where our  society and culture is heading as far as reading and writing are concerned.

The first eight chapters set the stage by telling the reader the story of how we came to be readers and writers.  The final chapter interlaces the major themes and details of the fist eight into a well-knit argument, which served to be a warning about where our reading evolution is headed and by implication, where our ability to think is headed.

This book changed my mind about many things;  I learned all that I could handle about how closely coupled thinking and reading are and the extrapolation of that coupling could lead us in the future if our reading skills continues undisturbed down this present path.

I am just a very interested amateur in the neurosciences, and this book allowed me to take a giant  leap forward in my knowledge and made me more conversant in the research results and the structures of how our brains deal with reading, at least well enough to become a very committed amateur to learning more. I now have a scaffolding to hang onto as I continue to explore this area of study. Which is why I decided to read Readers Come Home.

Go and read this book. It is very important and it is delightful reading.

1.     References

Adler, M. (1972). How to Read Science and Mathematics. In C. V. Mortimer Adler, How To Read A Book (pp. 255-269). New York: Touchstone, Simon and Schuster.

Manguel, A. (1996). A History of Reading. New York City: Penguin Putnam Inc.

Wolf, M. (2018). Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. NYC: Harper Collins Books.

 

 

 

Book Review-How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading By Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

I bought this book many years ago with the intention to carefully absorb the wisdom of Adler and Van Doren. I had made several attempts, mainly picking and choosing sections of the book as it suited my purpose at that point in time. Presently, having some time on my hands, I tackled this tome this Summer.

It is not a monstrously long book, about 350 pages long, not including the appendices and end notes. The intimidating aspect of the book has everything to do with the reputation of the authors, as they are what was once known as public intellectuals. Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren are renowned philosophers whose credentials are publicly celebrated. I knew the contents would be densely packed, but I also knew that as careful and excellent writers, they sought to communicate first, rather than to impress.

I was immediately taken into the scholarly environment that they had set out to convey at the beginning. Chapter one simply and clearly lays out their intent and sets the reader’s expectations at a high level. This opening chapter gives the readers an exact outline of what they seek to convey. Not a word was wasted, not a false impression created.

The book is well structured and lays out an excellent roadmap for the reader to navigate. Every argument is carefully enumerated and easily tracked. There are four parts to the book, split into twenty-one chapters. Part III of the book, chapters thirteen to nineteen, is devoted to specific topics: math and sciences, history, philosophy, social sciences, et. al. and how to read these chapters analytically. I am saving Part III for later. My strategy for reading Part III is  to find the keys and identify the propositions in the manner that the authors had laid put in Part II, thus using the lessons learned from the book itself.

The authors divided reading into four levels: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and finally synoptical. Most of us had gone through the elementary level as we learned to read. Inspectional reading is something that some of us have learned to do if our chosen field of study involved massive amounts of reading, or if we are bibliophiles and consume massive amounts of books. Inspectional reading is what we do when we are sifting through the reading material that is laid out in front of us, be they for enjoyment, personal acquisition of knowledge, or for our vocations. It gives us a chance to sort through the reading material, identify those material that are pertinent to our interests, and allows us to formulate a reading strategy for each book. Elementary and inspectional reading is covered in Part I of the book.

Part II is devoted to the topic of analytical reading. Analytical reading is the type of reading that some of us do regularly. It is how we should be reading so that the readers are able to identify the  topic that the author is proposing and identify the arguments that the authors are making.  It is also how the readers should be reading to best ascertain our own opinions and critical judgements about the author’s intent. Analytical reading is the key to determining whether the authors was successful in communicating their key points through their propositions, whether their arguments are cogent and rational, and whether they are successful in laying out a complete vision of their subject. The authors devoted a significant number of pages to teach the readers on how to judge the author’s viewpoints and the effectiveness of the arguments without resorting to emotional reactions or calling upon the one’s habit to react impulsively. This is a perspicacious, prescriptive, and anticipatory decision, as most average readers will reflexively react procedurally without exercising their critical thinking ability and calling upon their analytical abilities.

Part IV is devoted to synoptical reading, a kind of reading that some people do, but they rarely call it synoptical reading. It is the practice of reading numerous books on the same subject. The motivation for the reader is to gain understanding of the subject, which may encompass numerous different books and authors,  rather than assuming that the knowledge resides in just a single book. The focus is on the subject rather than on a designated book. The tools that are taught in Part II for analytical reading are expanded and generalize as befitting the broad scope of reading.

My first reaction after I started reading the book was that I wish that I had read this book earlier in my life, it would have prevented the meandering path that my attention and my curiosity had been taken during my research life. Fortunately, all is not lost because much of what was explicitly stated in the book, particularly in Part II, had somehow been integrated into my reading habits implicitly through my own reading and analysis experiences. There were numerous moments of recognition and proud realization as I read through this book, although there were also many forehead slapping moments of enlightenment. I also started to consciously implement the lessons that I had learned on the fly as I was reading. The result is that my reading acuity has improved discernably as I learned in real time.

This improvement was particularly significant as I was reading synoptically. The insights from the book helped me to avoid going into a death spiral of confusion as I tried to read synoptically on a topics by reading different books and authors. This is the trap that a reader will often fall into when reading synoptically as the focus needs to necessarily be on the topic rather then a book and author. My synoptic reading skill has improved markedly even though I was trying to change my reading habits in real time as I read the book.

While the nature of the writing in this book is dense with details and was as challenging as I had expected from the authors, they had made their structure transparent to the reader to help ease the reader’s way through the material. They created hooks in the text for the reader to hang on to so that the readers can follow the prescribed methodology as the reader develops their reading strategy. Even as I became lost, I was able to recover the train of the argument simply and expediently because of the clarity of the writing and book structure.

Indeed, this book was as I had expected, delivering even more than as promised. While I still have a touch of regret about my own procrastination before reading this book, I am glad I finally had a chance to settle in and immerse myself.

I am convinced that a reader must be ready for the book, any book. I am glad I proved to be  ready now, after many years of dawdling. I still wonder if my comprehension of what I had read in the interim would have helped, I imagine that I could have gleaned more from all my readings if I could have absorbed the lessons of this book earlier in my life. My regret is assuaged by the fact that I might not have had the maturity to handle the lessons in a previous time and place. Indeed, it is better late than never.

I recommend this to all serious readers who are in search of knowledge

Book Review-The Book of Joe By Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci

Sports memoirs fall into many general categories, this one however, tries to fit into too many categories at once. As I read the book, there are times when it feels like it is trying too much, and then there are times when it hits the right spot at the right time. I don’t know whether to ascribe the success of the book to holding my attention to Joe Maddon’s story or to Tom Verducci’s writing and organization. Regardless, I enjoyed the book.

Joe Maddon became famous first as the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, a miracle worker who stopped the downward spiral of the team’s fortunes using his own unique philosophy. He reached the pinnacle of a major league manager when he managed the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series, the first and only one in 108 years. But he was unceremoniously replaced a few years later because he would not submit to front office interference. He returned to his roots, the California Angels, as manager, but he lasted only a few more seasons as the landscape of baseball managing changed completely. It is a stunning lesson in how quickly the center of gravity in professional sports management shifts and renders the celebrated expendable.

The Book of Joe tries to be a memoir first, it provides reminiscences of the meaningful factors in Joe Maddon’s life; it is also organized in chapters that are titled with the Maddonisms, those familiar sayings that made Maddon famous, which are then structured into a business how-to book; finally, it tries to be a reportage of how the Moneyball mindset, which had pervaded major league sports, has gone so far in the other direction, thereby cheating us of the essential elements of the reasons why we love sports. The last point is the slow developing theme that becomes the focus showing us the reason why Joe Maddon is no longer managing in the MLB. The book makes it clear that this situation is the epitome of irony since Maddon was one of the very first rebels who used and relied on statistical analysis for his decision making. The accounts of why and where he tends to rely on statistics is interesting to me, as I have my own opinions about the usage of statistics. I am not a luddite to the ways of statistical data, but as an engineer who has had to use statistical process control and the six sigma methods, I know where the limitations are when applying statistics to endeavors which are intimately coupled with human decisions, such as sports.

The threefold intent of the book is something that is very difficult to pull off. While I felt that the stories of Joe Maddon’s upbringing and his experiences within baseball were interesting, I also felt that some of the stories seemed forced because the authors were trying to wedge the stories into the other two intentions: as lessons and as means of explaining why he acted and reacted to the quant dominated front office regimes. I will admit that I was most interested in getting into Maddon’s head and trying to determine the magic of his managing successes. The book showed a significant part of the behind the curtains aspects of his decision making. I also appreciated Maddon’s loyalty to those who had shaped his insights and his instincts as a manager. He delved into the personas who had influenced his growth as a manager; most importantly, he was clear in giving us the reason’s why they had such influence over his experiences and how he uses those lessons on a daily basis in his managerial life.

It is his statement of his philosophy through the chapter titles that captured my interest the most. His ideas, while not entirely original, have been presented in a cogent and matter of fact manner; indeed, I have been inspired to write some articles on Maddon’s themes.

Not all the chapters are gems, but they are interesting enough to  keep me interested as I learned new ideas as well as being reminded of what I had known previously; that was worth the price of the book.

The underlying theme throughout the book is an interesting discussion of the reality in sports. Ever since the publication of Michael Lewis Money Ball ;  coaches and managers, both professional and amateur, have been inspired to change the way they coach and manage, often  with an urgency to use statistics to improve their decisions; those old guard who based their decision making on intuitions and gut feel have been displaced by quants or stat heads, the resulting revolution has swung the pendulum completely to the other end of the spectrum, where humanity and experiences has been relegated to the scrap heap and all the decision makers are drinking the Moneyball kool-aid. Indeed, there is nothing more dogmatic and inflexible as someone who was at one time on the outside, someone who was an innovator and had original ideas. So it is that all humanity and experience have been denigrated to the point of extinction in coaching and managing.

Maddon and Verducci use Maddon’s story to illustrate that point. Whereas Maddon was an early adopter and innovator in using statistics, the expanded front office of today have decided to justify the expenses of their own existence. Coaching and managing has become a top-down exercise in ego for the general manager. The crux of the problem is that statistics do not capture human nature nor the uncertainties that are a large essential part of sports. The  reliance on just statistics to make decisions is as foolhardy and deceptive,  as much as just using gut feels and intuitions.

As Dr. Edward Deming, one of the foremost proponents of statistics in manufacturing stated in point 11 of his 14 points for Total Quality Management: Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management. (American Society of Quality-Deming's 14 Points 2023) Management needs to understand that players are not cattle, and each individual player responds differently from someone else. This is the artistry of coaching and managing, being able to understand the players and the games artfully. Maddon’s story of how the front office dictated his choices in using the pitchers and bullpen sound staggeringly and sadly like managing by quota that is practiced in the global industry. I gained quite a bit of insight from this book, as I am a coach, I read the book with the intention of juxtaposing my own coaching experiences with how Maddon managed the various baseball teams in his career, this practice made me think about the dynamics of decision making that is involved in coaching and the pitfalls of putting my thought process on auto pilot or disengaging my own ability to think critically and feeling comfortable in a rut. The best recommendation I can make about The Book of Joe is that I will continually be consulting with the lessons from the book for a long time. This is saying quite a bit about a former Cubs manager for someone who is a Cardinals fan.

References

American Society of Quality-Deming's 14 Points. 2023. https://asq.org/quality-resources/total-quality-management/deming-points (accessed August 10, 2023).

 

 

 

Book Review-Infinite Powers By Steven Strogatz

After having been trained in the dark arts of engineering, I considered myself, if not a full-blown expert, at least well versed in calculus: what it is, what the idea can be used for in my engineering specialty, and some of the history about calculus through my classes. I now happily admit to my unreasonable hubris. Steven Strogatz is the master of all that is calculus, what it was, how it came into being, where it is now, and possibly where it is going to be in the future.

My initial arrogance concerning my knowledge on the subject made the initial chapters of the book flow by quickly, I read the historical notes that Strogatz included as a sidelight to the main discussion — something to entertain the less informed of the general reader — I wondered why we would need to know the arcana of ancient mathematics, even I also fancied myself a nerd for history of mathematics? Little did I realize how important these historical notes will be: to drive later discussions as well as to form the foundations of the macro view of calculus.

Strogatz frames the story of calculus in ten chapters, creating the intricate scaffolds that allows the readers to follow the technical developments through history with added notes on the mathematicians that originated the ideas which drove calculus to where it is now. An eleventh chapter serves as his own peering-into-the-crystal-ball statement on what he believes will come in the future. He carefully builds up the structure of the development of calculus and seamlessly build the connections between subjects and shows the open questions that was left at the end of the previous chapters and how the topics covered in the new chapters serves to answers those open questions. It is this attention to the many loose ends and how they were resolved that held my interest.

As Strogatz observed, the teaching of calculus had been subdivided into many subtopics for the sake of convenience, but in so doing, the students had been sold a myth that these subtopics are standalone topic because it suited the purposes of teaching logistics rather than suiting the purposes of gaining a holistic view of what mathematicians throughout history had wrought, continuously.

Chapters 8, 9, and 10 were the chapters that had me holding my breath, for it is in these chapters that Strogatz pulled together all the work from the previous seven chapters, integrated them and brought the story to a denouement, for the moment. It brought together the differential and integral halves of calculus, showed the true powers of the calculus. True to the title of the book, he also forcefully made the point of just how the powerful idea of infinity allowed the method to flourish in the minds of mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and so many more specialties.

One cannot discuss calculus without discussions — many times heated ones — about the two men who are recognized as the progenitor of the largest leaps forward in the calculus: Newton and Leibnitz. Strogatz recognition of each, while nicely put their contributions into the historical context of calculus without delving into the bickering that happened between proponents of either men, which is as it should be, even though the human smallness in me wanted some juicy stories about the two.

Strogatz introduced us to the important women mathematicians which made contribution to the art and science of calculus, their contributions were most often ignored and if recognized, their works were slighted. He gave them credit where it was due, and the book is much better for the recognition.

As I was taking my time reading and enjoying the narrative, I thought about how this book should be made an integral part of the teaching of calculus, a required text taught in parallel with the technical aspects of calculus; a book that answers the “why” and “how did it get this way” questions in parallel with the technical training that answers the “how to do it” questions. I then realized that the reasons that I appreciated this book so much are not the same reasons that the young students in AP Calculus or in college level calculus would appreciate. It took me years of working with the calculus to ask those questions that Strogatz had sought to answer. It takes a certain level of maturity and appreciation for the context of the methods which built up the citadel that is the calculus. I still think that the material in this book has a critical role to play in motivating the understanding of the “how” while also building an appreciation for what our forebears had wrought. As Newton had said: We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants. This book would nicely illumnate that blind spot.

One note of interest. I was reading Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s book How To Read a Book (Adler 1972) when it was brought to my attention that until the end of the nineteenth century, scientific books were written for the layman, that the habit of having specialists writing only for specialists was necessitated by the increasing complexities that comes with the expansion of knowledge in each scientific topic, so that the necessary knowledge needed to understand scientific books became so broad as to be covered in a single tome. Which I thought was a shame, but I understand how daunting the task of writing science and mathematics books has become. Which makes this tome that much more impressive in that, whether Strogatz realizes it or not, he had accomplished a rare and difficult feat — to communicate this very specialized and complex topic to the general public — a general public that has varying levels of a priori knowledge to draw upon to aid in their comprehension. He has joined the pantheon of authors which serves the knowledge of everyone, if they chose to read the book. He has served the role of the public intellectual by writing this book.

This is a remarkable book from my perspective, it filled in the gaps of my knowledge, technical, historical, and conceptual, without losing my interest nor overwhelmed me.

References

Adler, Mortimer. "How to Read Science and Mathematics." In How To Read A Book, by Charles Van Doren Mortimer Adler, 255-269. New York: Touchstone, Simon and Schuster, 1972.

 

 

 

 

Book Review-Have You Eaten Yet? By Cheuk Kwan

I don’t remember how I became aware of this book, but once I saw what it was about, I knew I was going to read it, it was just a matter of when. The subject hit me right in the middle of my soul. Being one of the large number of people who make up the Chinese diaspora, I knew I would love the stories about how the overseas Chinese survived leaving their home, move thousands of miles away, endure discrimination, abuse in many cases, and yet thrive. Of course the author also added the Chinese food perspective into his book, which made it impossible to ignore.

Cheuk Kwan is a documentary maker who, like many of us of the Chinese diaspora, had lived in many countries outside of China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. I am enjoying watching the video stories that follow each chapter of the book on YouTube. I only became aware of the videos after I started reading the book. But this is more than just another travel show that features food. It speaks to my sentimental side, as the stories remind me of my own travels around the world. As with most Chinese people, we will eat at a local Chinese place at least once no matter where we are. It doesn’t matter if the food is authentic or not, it is a taste of home, it is a way to spend time with people who look like I do. It goes beyond finding a place of comfort and familiarity in a foreign land, it is something ethereal and sentimental.

I grew up in Taiwan, Honduras, and the United States, so my experience is not as broad ranging as Cheuk Kwan’s, but the feelings are there. I played with the children of the Chinese restaurant owners, and they were my friends because we sought each other out because we shared a heritage.

There are 15 disparate and unique places where Kwan and his crew visited, looking for the stories and story tellers within each nation and culture. In each of the chapters Kwan frames the narrative by introducing us to the main subjects that he had chosen for each location, using their stories to illustrate the hardships that they and their ancestors had endured to arrive at a particular geographical location. He deftly weaves the stories together, coupling the culture and society where he is visiting with the Chinese experience. The intermingling works most of the time, the key is that he was able to show the readers the uniqueness of each location through projecting the Chinese experience on the local culture. This is not an easy task; I would say that for the most part Mr. Kwan succeeded.

As he assumed the storyteller role, he led us through his own journey and revealed his own inner feelings about the people he was interviewing. His introduction of his crew in each chapter gave us a point of commonality which revealed a perspective that serves as a reference point.

The added bonus of talking about the kind of Chinese food that is served in each location also served to show perspective, about the ingenuity of the Chinese cooks as they learned to live in the US Marines motto: adapt, improvise, and overcome. His descriptions of the dishes gave me a true view of what “fusion” cuisine can really mean. It is only proper that he told the story of the Chinese diaspora through the lens of our food, as the book title indicates, the most common refrain when the Chinese get together is: “How You Eaten Yet?” If not, let us go eat, let us socialize, let us be good humans, and let us be even better Chinese people. Even if you have already eaten, if doesn’t stop us from eating some more, not because of the food itself, but because of who we are and what we mean to one another.

The combination of travelogue and food writing is not new. My first exposure was through the work of Anthony Bourdain, perhaps the originator of this style of storytelling. Another exemplary book that captured my imagination through the tales of travel and food is Chef Edward Lee’s Buttermilk Graffiti (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2019/05/book-review-buttermilk-graffiti-by.html)

I would put this book in that pantheon of travelogue and food writing because this one hits very close to home. Even though I had never been to most of the places Kwan had visited, the stories and experiences that he captured resonates deeply in my Chinese heart.

Kwan asks the same question of every person he interviews: How do you think of yourself, as a Chinese person or a local? He received many different replies, I would say that most of the people interviewed thought of themselves as Chinese, or at least a part of their identity is Chinese because our looks standout amongst all the countries. But I want to think that it is our Chinese identity that we always go up the strangers and ask: Have You Eaten Yet?

Book Review-The Myth of Experience By Emre Soyer and Robin M. Hogarth

This book is one of the most well-organized nonfiction books that I have read. The authors took great care in organizing all of their research results and anecdotal evidence into logical structures. It was a pleasure to read.

I was first made aware of this book through David Epstein's Range Widely Substack feed: How to Get Better At Learning From Experience (https://davidepstein.substack.com/p/how-to-get-better-at-learning-from-experience)  He had interviewed one of the authors: Emre Soyer, about the book’s idea regarding experiences and how experiences can mislead. This is an important topic as our decision-making mechanism is almost completely based on our memories of our experiences.  The good of that mechanism is that once we have had an experience, the memory stays with us, guides us, and helps us make critical decisions. The bad of the mechanism is that these experiences may be misleading.

This book dives down the same rabbit hole as Daniel Kahneman's: Thinking: Fast and Slow (Kahneman 2013), it questions the way we make decisions, what we use as reference for those decisions and whether those references are reliable. Many others have written books about the other parts of the decision-making process, but this book hits right at the heart of it.

As the authors make clear in the introductory chapter, we all have unmitigated faith in our experiences; partly because they are our experiences, partly because they are two separate things: a process which is a constant memory dump and a practice which is a product of our cumulative storage of memories. It is because our experience is personal that we feel so confident in making our experiences our fundamental source of information for our cogitations.

Soyer and Hogarth do yeoman’s  work, laying out all of the arguments against an unfiltered trust in the veracity of our experiences as a resource for our decision making. This book is laid out beautifully and it was a pleasure to read as the authors placed the two critical questions that were asked at the very beginning of the book at the end of every chapter to remind us of those traps and shortfalls that we inevitably fall into when we consider the information available to us. The two major questions are: What is missing and what is irrelevant?

What is  missing is usually other data: mitigating circumstances, contextual facts that affect the decision, the fact that the experiences we have are likely to be incomplete. Which is not all that surprising, but we as humans live in an egocentric world, thus we believe that everything that has ever happened to us is all that there is to reality. We regard the viewpoint that anything that we did not experience is either not true or never happened.

The question of what is irrelevant goes into our very human nature. We humans need to create a narrative, a story, from our accumulated experiences to make it all make sense, to make it all fit into a believable format. We blend all the experiences that we have in front of us into a digestible chunk, this is the magical wand that we deploy to make sense of our cumulative experiences. But that narrative, that story, may not be true because of context and circumstances. But mostly it's because maybe there isn't a narrative, a story to be believed. We never consider that maybe we are dealing with noises in the machine, we are good at creating fairy tales from nothing. The term “correlation is not causation” applies in our experiences as it does in statistics. We don't consider whether we have enough data which will show us whether there is enough correlation for a narrative. The exact opposite is true in the human mind, any kind of correlation is considered to be causal. We, as humans, prefer the overly simplistic, overly ostentatious, and overly convenient narratives and stories. They give us the impetus to believe the stories and narratives over facts staring us in the face.

In the seven chapters that make up the book, the authors dives into seven different traps which impacts the way our experiences deplys our decision-making abilities. Many of these traps are well-known, but we continually fall for the lures: we focus on the result rather than the process, we fall into the habit of relying on our experiences that are compromised by dodgy premises rather than believing accurate information, we fall for what the purveyor of information wants us to believe, we believe in what ever gives us the least pain or alleviates the most pain, and we discount our ability to put distance between us and painful memories as time moves forward.

The most interesting chapter involves our belief in the lessons brought to us by the success and failures of ourselves and of successful people. The authors analyze the reasons studying successes or failures without context limits the utility of the gathered lessons. I recently saw a video clip of Jack Ma of Alibaba ranting about people needing to learn from the failures of people who are successful, he only got it partly right. In Soyer and Hogarth’s reckoning, JUST learning from successes or failures can be very misleading because in just focusing on the success or failure, we are discounting context once again. Learning lessons from successes or failure also looks back upon what had already happened, the changes wrought over time and the evolving nature of the decision gets filtered out by time and incomplete information or memory. They emphasize that it is important to carefully scrutinize the “lessons” from others to take into account the missing context, the overabundance of easy and pithy truisms, as well as the missing stories that contradicts the reality.

This is not, however, a book of complaints. Soyer and Hogarth conclude the book, and with every chapter, with ways that we can ameliorate our blind spots when it comes to our experiences. They don’t give us a formulaic recitation of how-to-do check boxes, they do give us the list of what is missing and what is irrelevant so that we can apply those best practices to our own decision-making process.  The last chapter is particular good, it encapsulates and summarizes the book, and it gives the reader a good spot to perform a check the two questions as they apply to our experiences.

It would be easy to discount the book as being dismissive of the importance of our experiences as they apply to our decision-making lives, it is not dismissive. It is, however,  cogent and careful in helping this reader to becoming factually oriented, all the while learning to be aware of my own blind spots, all in service of making better decisions and keeping the truth the truth.

1.     References

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York City: Farrar, Strau, and Giroux, 2013.

 

Book Review-Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals By Oliver Burkeman

I happened onto this book after watching YouTube videos made by Vashik Armenikus (https://www.youtube.com/c/VashikArmenikus/videos). This book by Oliver Burkeman was one of the many books recommended in one of the videos.

The title refers to the duration of human life in weeks if we lived to the ripe old age of 80 years old. 4000 weeks is all we get. I am not unfamiliar with Mr. Burkeman's work. I thoroughly enjoyed his earlier book:  The Antidote (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2018/08/book-review-antidote-by-oliver-burkeman.html). It was a revelatory read on the subject of happiness: why we chase the elusive goal of being happy and why we have a hard time defining that very happiness that we are chasing. How we are fooled by our own biases and how society has sold us on how to become happy, which of course assumes that we are all unhappy to start, at least in the way that the happiness industry defines happiness. It was both entertaining and enlightening. I am naturally biased towards Mr. Burkeman’s writing, and I expected the same incisive observational scalpel taken to the topic of time management.

This book is about our obsession with managing our time.  The author points out that this culture wide obsession came as a result of the industrial revolution. When we were agrarians, we had all the time in the world. We did not need to manage our time because we had time to do what we wanted after we planted the crops. We sat and waited, did our work when needed, the timing was dependent on nature, and we were along for the ride. It wasn't until after we industrialized, and the factory owners needed workers to work together and at the same time. Which, interestingly, he also addresses in the book, the synchrony effect. This is when time becomes a commodity in everyone’s minds. The industrial revolution made most of the population surrender the choice of how we spend our time to the employers; and anything that was left over would be euphemistically called leisure time. The price we pay in exchange for higher wages and perhaps more economic security.  

Burkeman is a fantastic writer. He is droll in how he presents his case, and he has a writing style that is pleasing to read. I don't know if anyone else reads him as I do, but knowing that he's British, I read the book in my own pseudo-British accent and I try to emulate the dry sense of humor that I have come to associate with Monty Python. I am more than sure that Mr. Burkeman possesses that uniquely British sense of irony. It works well with this book as a matter of fact, with me at least.

The book is structured into two parts and fourteen chapters, each chapter has associated with it a mixture of questions and answers: Why we treat time the way we treat time; why we are so impatient with time; why our society is such a large part of why we are what we are when it comes to the way we view and treat time.

There is a lot to digest.

There is quite a bit of information that is presented, much of the material, as is the case with most of these kinds of books, comes with a significant amount of research, copious amount of anecdotal evidence, and cites numerous studies. The differentiator is Burkeman's particular take on all the information which draws the reader in and keeps us interested, the same perspective that kept me in his thrall when I read The Antidote..

Burkeman is blunt in his assessment of our foibles when it comes to the subject time and how we struggle to “control” time.  He points out the brutal truth that we flatter ourselves in believing that we can harness and use time as a commodity. He exposes our egocentric bias that we can own, control,  and manipulate time in service to our needs and requirements. In chapter after chapter, he bursts conceptual bubble after bubble.

The most brutal takedown is that our most human problems are that we are fear driven, ego dominated, control chasing, care more about how others feel about us than how we feel about ourselves, and we fear disappointing others. These traits all thwart us from seeing through our impossible relationship with time.

One critical factor that Burkeman points out is our steadfast belief that we can save time, to save and preserve time when we speak of time. This implicit belief pre-supposes that the continuous concatenation of preserved time can continue ad infinitum, that this time storage can last into infinite time. We are, assuming that infinitude, rather than admitting to the finitude of our existence; we are denying the reality of our existence.

Burkeman examines the reason why we have the relationship that we have with time. Our impatience, our belief that time can be lengthened and shortened according to our whims. He dives into the idea that time is communal, and the idea of synchrony is critical to our satisfaction in life. This was one of the most exciting chapters in the book.

He proposes solutions in each of the chapters, dealing with each of the topics individually, quite unlike the time management solutions proffered in the business press pap that the typical time management experts spews forth. He poses solutions that are quite difficult to accept, it would take a complete change in outlook, beliefs, and preferences to understand the why, which would lead to the how. But once the perspective is turned around, it was a head slapping moment for me, as in: why didn’t I think of that?

The last chapter, the Afterward, is where  Burkeman pulls it all together. He does not try to tie it up into a nice pretty box tied with a pretty bow. What does is encapsulates the key points he made while addressing the foibles in our modern-day thinking, and here are the acts that we must take on  to overcome this crippling mental crutch that we all believe implicitly: that we must all be impatient with ourselves, that we can postpone the present to the future so that we can be better prepared to enjoy all that preserved time.  The last chapter is a gut check. It is difficult to aggregate into our minds because it is so contrary to the way our society has evolved and how we, as members of society, have created this particular ethos.

Burkeman has also helpfully added an appendix with ten hints that help us realize the finitude of our existence. Foremost amongst his advice is to realize that time is finite, to live in the moment, to stop putting faith on the impossible, to embrace life’s limits, to give up on overcoming the unknown, to realize that this life is not a dress rehearsal, and to just do.

Unfortunately, I don’t think most people hot on the trail of the next time management elixir would stop long enough to even consider the subtlety and nuance that populates Burkeman’s book, let alone accede to his proposed remedies. Even though the book is interesting to read, and the ideas are refreshing. People would rather chase after the snake oil salesmen who are paddling the miracle cure for all our time management problems. If only we had more sense of urgency, discipline, and an ability to multitask. People would rather let their biases and foibles guide them to the open arms of the time management charlatans, even though the emperor has no clothes.

 

 

Book Review-The Puzzler by AJ Jacobs

I started reading this book a while ago. I had heard about it from social media and thought it would be a fun thing to read. I know the name AJ Jacobs from his reputation as a writer who deeply embeds himself, as he had gained notoriety from his book: The Year of Living Biblically, where he tried to literally live as the bible dictates.

This book drew my interest because it involved puzzles, many different kinds of puzzles, puzzles that I did not know even existed. I didn’t know what to expect;  what I can say after reading it is that this will be a book that I will keep as a reference and re-read many times, as the stories that Jacobs writes about each of the different puzzles are all fascinating.

The book consists of eighteen chapters, each one dedicated to a type of puzzle. Of course, the most common and popular puzzle, the crossword puzzle, starts the book off. Jacobs foreshadows  the format of his later chapters by first giving us the history of the crossword; in this case,  how the crossword came into being. He narrowed his focus on The New York Times crossword puzzles.

Parenthetically, I owe Jacobs a great deal of  gratitude; because of him I am now a regular solver of the Spelling Bee puzzle in the New York Times. I got the Spelling Bee bug ever since I started reading the book, I even managed to achieve the Queen Bee status, getting all the words and all the points in that particular Spelling Bee puzzle. It was an extremely challenging experience, but I'm glad I did it just to say that I did it.

In the second chapter he delves into the puzzle of puzzles. Why are puzzles so addicting? Why are puzzles so appealing to people? Why do people put themselves through the trying efforts of  solving the puzzle? It gives us a good account of why we do what we do.

He covers the Rubik's Cube in the third chapter. The Rubik's Cube came out when I was in high school. I was able to resist the temptation to being immersed in that puzzle, but it's been around for a long time, the photo of the 33 by 33 by 33 cube was epic.

Jacobs then proceeds to give us the history and the attractions of all the puzzles that he covers:  anagrams, rebuses, jigsaw puzzles, math and logic puzzles, riddles, Sudokus, and many others.

I highly recommend that Jigsaw puzzle chapter. It is a puzzle that we are familiar with, but apparently there is a global competition celebrating the jigsaw puzzle. This is where Jacobs penchant for embedding himself into the subject comes alive. He managed to get his family into the world's championship of jigsaw puzzle, went to Spain to compete in this championship. How did he and his family get selected? It seems that no one else in the US was interested enough to qualify. I will wager that this situation has changed.

Jacobs also delves into the technicalities of creating these puzzles in each chapter as well as giving the readers samples of each kind of puzzle, to pique our interest in delving further. It works, I tried a few of the samples and then promised myself that I would return to do the others. I will too. I may not do it immediately, but I will return to things that interest me. 

I really enjoyed the broad spectrum of puzzles that Jacobs covered. Even though I am a math and science person, many assumes that the Sudokus and Kendoku chapter would be my sweet spot.  They aren’t.  I don't enjoy doing them because the puzzle does not integrate mathematical ideas in them, it is just playing with number order, but I do enjoy the story of its origination.

One chapter that I enjoyed was on riddles because he delved into the life of Lewis Carroll or Charles Dodgson, the Oxford Mathematics Don. Dodgson very much enjoyed creating stories and puzzles for his nieces, as he was also an amazing riddle master, he is the author of numerous riddles, I sought them out to challenge myself, all because of Jacob's chapter on riddles,

Probably the most fascinating chapter is about the Japanese puzzle boxes. They came out of the jewelry box tradition as the makers of the puzzle boxes  try to make the puzzle box difficult to solve to keep the jewelry safe. I imagine that there are more than a few owners who had forgotten how to open those puzzle boxes so that their jewelry is forever inside these boxes. The intricacies and workmanship that goes into these boxes and all other puzzle boxes are unbelievable. Reading and looking at the pictures in the book sparked my interest. I found myself looking at YouTube videos on how people create these boxes. One of the puzzle box makers, an American named Kagen Sound, look him up, once designed a desk with 22 different puzzles built into it for a film. All the puzzles are devilishly clever.

The chapter on math and logic puzzles satisfied my curiosity about those topics that I am supposed to be good at. I was not obsessed with it, but it made my mind wonder and wander.

A key chapter is Chapter 9, on ciphers and secret codes. A sculpture was placed in the front of the CIA headquarters in Virginia. The puzzle is called Kryptos, it is a piece of art that was commissioned by the CIA. Nobody knows the answer to the puzzle except for the artist who created and possibly the former director of CIA. It has been 30 years since the sculpture has been put in a courtyard in the CIA headquarters. The cryptologists of the CIA have had this piece of art sitting at their workplace, challenging them, daring them, and mocking them, and yet the sculpture stands unsolved. They have been able to crack the first three sections, but the main puzzle, the fourth section, they have not been able to solve. Perhaps sensing his own mortality, the artist has been giving hints for the last ten years, there are internet groups solely devoted to solving this part of this puzzle, so far to no avail. Think about the situation, the top cryptologists at the CIA, the best of the best and the brightest of the bright are still stumped, even after 30 years, that was fascinating to me.

Overall. I enjoyed the book. The added sample puzzles at the end of each chapter, meant to give us a taste of each of the topics, as well as the solutions to those samples certainly keeps the curiosity high.

To stimulate the curiosity and interest stirred up by the book on puzzles, Jacobs offers at the very end of the book two challenges. The first, The Puzzler contest, offers a $10K reward. The contest ends May 3, 2023. The clues are hidden in the web page associated with the book. The second one is a series of 19 puzzles which covers all the myriad types of puzzles covered in the book.