Review: The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley

The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley by Victor W. Hwang

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



It is an exceitement that telegraphs from these venture capitalists about their ideas to spur innovation. Yeah, you need resources, money and idea and all getting sticky together. Not actually earth-shattering. And the book is bulked out with a lot of half-page images so irrelevant to at times appear that they were selected at random. The whole thing could/should have been a lean, mean article in Forune or somewhere.



View all my reviews

Review: Counting with Wayne Thiebaud

Counting with Wayne Thiebaud by Susan Goldman Rubin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Wayne Thiebaud's beauetiful artwork has a vintage feel like old French cafe posters. Will little kids appreciate that? I don't know, but I do. And the tick pages of this browsable foamite should hold up to gumming and whatever damage little hands may wrought.

I don't know about the picture of the "sugar sticks", must be some candy type I am not aware of. It looks like rolls of sushi before they are cut.



View all my reviews

Review: Tao Te Ching

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This is a nice edition with a good introduction and the work is supported by explanatory footnotes, a glossary and a detailed essay into speculative areas of the provenance of the work and Lao Tzu himself.

Revisiting this work at various times in my life, like Aurelius' Meditations, I am always struck with the poetic and sage pronouncents that can make me muse and ponder over the antique wisdom for hours.

A theme that particularly struck me this time is the fundamental axiom that nothing yields something, as in:

"...Something and Nothing produce each other;
the difficult and easy complement each other..."

One thing it made me wonder is in Chinese or some Taoist-influenced culture is there less of a cultural need for an Intelligent Design movement, rabidly insecure Creationism, or similar Western movements that seem to spring up from Western civilization with the importance it sets on cause and effect, inventors and invention, founders and design.

So, do Taoist-tinged adults have an easier acceptance of The Big Bang than adults spilled out of Judae-Christian thought? I don't know, and it's not something I am going to find on a Wikipedia page or in some Google results and for that, I think Lao Tzu whether he existed, or not.

"...the man of large mind abides in the thick, not in the thing..."



View all my reviews

Review: The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This engaging history of the Supreme Court of the United States is a living-memory overview basically going from the Rehnquist era to current Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts. (In 1869, however, the Circuit Judges Act reset the number of judges to nine, so before that is basically irrelvant by the title of the work.) From Toobin I expected for some reason something much more dry, a work that only a legal analyst could enjoy. But, I do enjoy Toobin's commentary on cable news and I also enjoyed this work.

There is, of course, a common thread of poltics and legal issues, but Toobin does not lay these out for wonkish dissection, but rather skips along on the highlights of the interplay of decisions and political mechanations in a way that is telling of our government's working and perhaps weaknesses. Deeper dives into Roe v. Wade, Bush V. Gore, the Terry Schiavo case and the delicate issues of pulling the Ten Commandments away from a Texas courthouse make up the bulk of the legal issues analyzed.

The nicest surprise to me was "Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" part of after-work jogs, poker games, travel, and more by the very human members of this illustrious bench. Of these revelations I was most entertained by the throwback to pre-electrificaion New England in David Souter and the though of Clarence Thomas camping out in his RV at a Wal*Mart parking lot in search of NASCAR events.



View all my reviews

Review: On China

On China by Henry Kissinger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Kissinger artfully and deftly takes us from ancient China to that of today in a way that is enlightening and engaging. It is a timely read to understand this slowly emerging global power that plans for the millienia, not the news cycle and that envelopes while refusing encirclement as opposed to charging and re-forming.

Wilie it has been covered elsewhere, the secret meetings with China during the Vietnam War and the candid observations on aging China leaders like Mao and others make for interesting reading.

It is also reaussring, when so many seem to only see the China-U.S. interaction as one that must lead to international armed conflict that Kissinger assess the future of China as largely focuses on internal development and raising the standard of living of so many millions in poverty. Of course, to do that China is locking up resources in East Africa, Central Asia and even sometimes in the Western Hemisphere...



View all my reviews

Review: The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community by William Hardy McNeill

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



In The Outline of History, H. G. Wells observed, "The natural political map of the world insists upon itself. It heaves and frets beneath the artificial political map like some misfitted giant."

McNeill's panoramic view of history is cut from the same cloth: cultural in continuous clash with political and societal priorities often at odds with pressure building up like a tectonic fault. McNeill sees the interactions and tensions of intermixed peoples pouring out of the steppes for centuries and jostling anxiously against each in the inhabitable regions of Europe.

I love McNeill's uses of the word "ecumene" to describe the civilized mazz fretting beneath the political map. There are ample plates of pictures and ampler footnotes as McNeill consulted libraries of information and summarizes it all with an obvious love for history and the drama of the human story and he isn't afraid to say when there are things he doesn't understand and seem missing from the published expertise.



View all my reviews

Review: The Outline of History

The Outline of History by H.G. Wells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Having decided WWI was the "War to end all wars", Wells traverses human history from pre-history to the post-WWI era and still decides WWI was so bloody and atrocious that humanity would never again let itself come to global conflict.

Well, leaving off the hopelessly optimistic conclusion penned mere years before WWII, this is still one of my favorite world history works.

Among the wisdow Wells gets right in my opinion: "The natural political map of the world insists upon itself. It heaves and frets beneath the artificial political map like some misfitted giant."

That itself expains much of human history.



View all my reviews

Review: Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Temple continues to inspire and lead with her pioneering work in animal psychology and engineering. Mostly she seesm to educate on autism which is great. I lately heard she now "lectures about how her mind works and how the world needs all kinds of minds/thinking." That's an awesome message and bring me back to this part memoir book about discovering her ability to see through the animals eyes (sometimes quite literally) as key to simplifying adn amking more human animal slaughterhouses. This so dovetails nicely with the simple pronouncement made by Bourdain in "Medium Raw" that animals humanely slaughtered simply taste better and it is a fact as proven as that Temple is a excellent exmaple to us all.



View all my reviews

Review: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Read by the author himself, this is a careening ride through defining "food porn", self-evaluation memoir, "Kitchen Confidential" demysitification (medium-rare hamburgers are the new Monday night seafood special), Asian street epicure travelogue and more profanity than Gordon Ramsey having a meltdown.



View all my reviews

Review: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a very interesting, no holds barred, unflinching look at the history of the CIA from cowboy post WWII days of William J. Donovan and his protégé Allen Dulles through the bloody lapses of the Cold War on through intelligence failures of Bin Laden and Iraq. The book brings us appropriately to the newly sculpted CIA under Porter Goss as the first Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the last Director of Central Intelligence following the passage of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which abolished the DCI position.

Well researched and documented it is almost sad and it feels achingly unpatriotic to have the CIA's flagrant and recurring disasters and misuses from Nixon to Bush analyzed in detail. Afterward, I felt I was waxing philosophic. This isn't about American especialism (we must have the greatest spy organization) but about human nature, I think. Any nation as rich and powerful as ours would grow a clandestine origanization as elaborate (witness the classic KGB and the cyber-stealing Chinese), but will there ever be a society with the wisdom to use it as a potent shield and accurate spear without wasting the lives of citizens and would-be allies?



View all my reviews

Review: How to Solve Applied Mathematics Problems

How to Solve Applied Mathematics Problems by B. L. Moiseiwitsch

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This original Dover publication boasts a title suggesting that it is a blueprint for mathematical modeling. On cracking open the text I expected to find out what gamut of problems are approached and at what level the mathematics is. I was disappointed to find contents more like that REA's Problem Solvers series: bluntly stated problems immediately following by a complete solution. There is no discussion of notation, theory, or building up a model from a real world situation.

[See my entire review at MMA reviews: http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/]



View all my reviews

Review: How I Got This Way

How I Got This Way by Regis Philbin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Pretty light and fluffy memoir. I liked the earliest chapters about breaking into the nascent TV industry and especially Steve Allen and working with Joey Bishop, but after that is a stretch of coach hagiography (enough about Notre Dame!) and the chapter setup of concluding with pithy aphorisms gets old. Toward the end there are some bright points in chapters about Jerry Seinfeld, Jack Nicholson, and others. (Each chapter is about a famous icon or colleague.)



View all my reviews

Review: Bringing the Thunder: The Missions of a World War II B-29 Pilot in the Pacific

Bringing the Thunder: The Missions of a World War II B-29 Pilot in the Pacific by Gordon Bennett, Jr. Robertson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really warm and amazing story of a B-29 pilot's WW II experience in the Pacific theatre. The author's real love of flying comes through and his appreciate of his craft (vocation and aircraft!) and appreciation of the views and weather from his high vantage.

After training to be a fighter pilot and ending a bomber pilot the book sets into one bombing mission after another for 30 missions. This could be a recipe for repetition and boredom, but the author manages to make each mission unique and interesting from mysterious "fire balls" to freakish weather to near calamaties. Life in the military and on bases in Guam and Iwo Jima comes to live by this author whoe goes into some length in concluding chapters about the necessity of the bombing campaigns and the atomic weapons used on Japan.



View all my reviews

Review: Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel

Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel by Narain Gehani

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Narrated by Stow Lovejoy, this is a poor delivery of a weak story about what should be a thrilling telling one of the most potent R&D think tanks American industry has produced. Gehani brushes over personally creating the C programming language and working alongside mighty brains that pushed aside pigeono poo to discover cosmic background radiation left over from The Big Bang. Instead, Gehani feels compelled to talk about managerial details like the lack of power of the Bell Labs president and intricacies of an employee's expense report.

Finally, at the very end, with the story of birthing a business to provide in-car navigation aids (Magellan) does Gehani get it together for the tone of story he should have told, but buy then it is tool late...



View all my reviews

Review: I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a real interesting read about Google from a marketing lead employee involved from when even he had to take a turn arranging server cables until not long after Google went public. As one might imagine, this look under the covers finds things at Google were not always rosy and without rancor: Engineering vs. Non-Engineering, missteps, etc.

One thing I found interesting is how badly they let the early g-mail context sensitive ads go wrong. After all, spam filter are computers reading email and marking them as junk all the time, had they listened to their marketing people, they could have had another billion dollar idea. But, well, they had so many...



View all my reviews

Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This work of speculative, philosophical sci fi is set in a future, dystopian post-nuclear apocalypse waste inhabited by a new Dark Ages Catholic Church clinging to the curation of knowledge as militant barbarians nibble at the edges of a cripppled civilization. Basically three works set centuries apart, I most liked the first, Fiat Homo. I think part of the reason I liked it most was the milieu was so familiar as if an imitation of Eli's realm in the "Book of Eli" film: bandits on the road, book hoarders ("bookleggers") and a hope to recapture civilized living by building a library...

The rest lost me as most sci fi does: the immensely wide canvas, limited only by a visionary's imagination, becomes such an expansive setting as to in my mind find the puny humans and what interests me - their psychological motiviatgion - lost in the immensity...



View all my reviews