Sarah Bakewell. How
to Live or A Life of Montaigne.
©2010 Perhaps one should just
read Montaigne, but this books serves a useful purpose in that it organizes what is
known about his life, something he never did.
I guess this is a biography. I
certainly came away with an appreciation of his place in intellectual history
and a strong interest in reading his work.
December 2013
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Ann Gibbons. The
First Human. ©2005 If you have any doubts that academics can be
competitive and petty, read this book.
Perhaps all that competition was a good thing because following the
Leakey’s discoveries in Oldevai in Kenya and Donald Johanson’s discovery of
Lucy in Ethiopia in 1974, further exploration in Ethiopia and Chad seems to
have filled in the record of human development fairly well and pinpointed, if
you can call it that, our first ancestor at about 5 to 7 million years
ago. December 2013
.
Malcolm Gladwell. The
Tipping Point. ©2000 What
sets off an epidemic? When syphilis spiked
in Baltimore in the mid-1990s, three experts gave three different explanations: Crack cocaine which drew buyers to the
neighborhood where syphilis was endemic, a budgetary decision to reduce the number
of clinicians and doctors available to treat the 36,000 active cases, and the
razing of certain public housing projects which spread their inhabitants to
other parts of the city. Apparently all
three were factors, but what is demonstrated is that epidemics can be set off
in unexpected ways and quickly metastasize when a disease escapes its host
population. This is a demonstration of
the law of the few. Two other rules of
the tipping point are the Stickiness factor and the power of context. The ungrammatical slogan “Winston tastes good
like a cigarette should” demonstrates the stickiness factor. It carried the brand to number one. Context is demonstrated by the willingness
of bystanders to react and assist in dangerous situations – when many people
witness an accident, they are much less likely to render assistance than if
they are alone or there are only a few people in the area. Everyone assumes someone else will act. 38 people heard Kitty Genovese’s screams but
no one called the police. The book is
loaded with examples to bring out these points.
My favorite is the Hush Puppies mystery.
Some hip young people in the Village wanted to wear something different
and started buying Hush Puppies in second hand stores if they didn’t already
have a pair in the back of the closet.
The shoes had been out of style and production was almost nil. Suddenly there was demand in malls all over
the country and the company was ramping up production to 40 million pairs a
year. January 2014
.
Hammond Innes. The
Conquistadors. ©1969 This is a detailed account of the conquests
of Mexico and Peru. I had always wanted
to read William H. Prescott’s famous works on the Spanish conquest of the new
world, but now I suppose I never will.
Innes probably goes beyond Prescott in that he doesn’t limit himself to
political and military affairs. Still
what comes through most of all is the incredible energy and vision of Cortez
and Velasquez, both of whom conquered large and developed societies with only a
handful of Spanish soldiers. December
2013
Adam Johnson. The
Orphan Master’s Son. ©2012 Jun Do was a soldier trained to fight in the dark
in the tunnels under the DMZ. Eventually
he is sent to English language school and then to a fishing boat where his job
is to monitor foreign radio. That jobs
morphs into one that involves kidnapping Japanese for forced service in North Korean
language schools. Next he is sent to
Texas with a delegation empowered to bargain to release an American woman in
return for a Japanese nuclear monitoring device that Kim Jong-il thinks was
stolen from North Korea. The plane that
takes them is the one that goes all over the world buying goodies for Kim. The Koreans can only see things in terms of
their own society and misunderstand everything the Texans try to do for them. When Jun Do gets back, he is sent to a camp
from which there is no return. An old
woman there, a former university professor, teaches him how to survive -- you won’t believe what they do to feed
themselves – and eventually he escapes by killing the Minister of Prison Mines
in one of the tunnels and taking his uniform.
According to Johnson, in North Korea fiction making — state-sponsored
storytelling— reigns supreme. It doesn’t
matter what actually happened, only what makes a good story that glorifies the
country and dear leader. So Jun Do is
able to replace the Minister and move in as the head of his family. Everyone, even dear leader, pretends he is the
Minister. His wife is the most famous
actress in North Korea. She draws the
line at the bedroom door – for a while. Eventually
the exchange of the American woman for the device is arranged (there’s no way
the device will do what the Koreans think it will do) and Jun Do and his wife
and her two children plan to escape on the plane. What reigns supreme throughout the novel is
the horror of this Orwellian society where no one is safe, and the slightest mistake
or misstatement can result in death by torture or starvation in one of the
camps. January 2014
Franz Kafka. Metamorphosis. Translation ©2002 I had read about Metamorphosis, but I had never actually read it. I came away wondering how one would write
this story in the early 21st C.
December 2013
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