Review: The Zookeeper's Wife

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Running a zoo through WW II just outside of Warsaw. Well, there is all the cruelties enacted on the animal inhabitants from being shifted to Germany (unknown environment, cagemates and language) to being shot at in their cages for sport. (Very sad; the freed eagle won't leave its home and is also shot). A pig turned pet taken from young lad Rys for a Nazi stewpot... Then, the plucky husband and wife leaders immerse themselves in the underground and home army squirrelling away Jews in the pheasant house and more and joining in the final uprising between Hitler's and Stalin's invasions. This is really an in-depth history of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, the specific uprising there in reaction to Himmler's attempt to liquidate the city as a birthday gift for Hitler and the Home Army's underground operations and eventual general uprising.

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Review: Confessions of an Old Man: How Millennials are Being Robbed

Confessions of an Old Man: How Millennials are Being Robbed by Munir Moon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I like the idea of student loan forgiveness or reduction as well as other ideas here like term limits and appreciate the attacks on modern America purloining the future of today's youth for short sighted policies. However, the felt like drudgery to get through and nothing particularly entertaining and exciting, let alone enlightening. Are the "MI" (Millennials + Generation Xers) going to be give short shrift, or as demographics change are they going to just vote their way to a brighter future once they are the dominant bloc? This is left as an exercise for the reader (to live through)

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Review: Fear: Trump in the White House

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

About what I expected: Woodward takes us into the room, Trump brings the crazy. Personally, I had as little respect for "W" as I do for Trump, but it seems like things, more-or-less, are still reasonably OK. If anything, it feels like a vindication of the resilience of our democracy that the Chief Executive can be in megalomaniacal "crazytown" and surrounded by sycophants and Good Samaritan interlopers and things can not go completely to shit.

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Review: The Colossus and Other Poems

The Colossus and Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh Sylvia... So much pain, and darkness! Poems about a wave-rocked corpse (suicide, of course) and an ode to a streetwalker. Still, maybe I am old-fashioned or some unevolved poetry reader, but I yearn for rhythm and rhyme. Also, Plath's twenty-five cent words for me take more away from the poem than add (and I feel I have a large vocabulary) such as in the tile piece: "acanthine hair" and "Oresteia". Unclear verbiage in a poem interrupts like a footnote.

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Review: Sex, Money, and Murder in Daytona Beach

Sex, Money, and Murder in Daytona Beach by L. Butcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a fascinating read about the seedy demimonde in the alleys and outskirts of late '80s Daytona Beach. A dumb, bungling thug hires a woman of ill-repute to arrange a killing of his wife... The subtitle is "Death and Decadence Among the Florida Rich" Hardly. That is marketing. How and why Lisa Fotopoulos, a successful Florida business woman, hooked up with and married disreputable and violent Kosta Fotopoulos is the real mystery. After that, it all happens in Kosta's world of mingling with transients and petty crooks. Still engaging and rather current as notorious Daytona Beach killer Kosta Fotopoulos remains on death row. However, Deidre Hunt his fickle lover and would-be protege in a fantasy "Hunter-Killer Club" of assassins, "Won't Return To Death Row
At Trial, She Got A Life Sentence".

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Review: The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Actually winning "Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" doesn't happen until there is about a score of pages left out of nearly a 400-page book. While the history starts with author meeting Joe Ranz -- one of "The Boys in the Boat" -- this is not a where-are-they-know, or a story of how this significant victory played out. Such matters are briskly covered in a few pages of epilogue. Instead, we are taken back to when rowing crew was followed with the passion of today's major sports like football or baseball. (At one point, some 80,000 attended a regional race in the Pacific Northwest) At this time there was an east-west rivalry in America between the costs and a Washington-California state rivalry beside the quadrennial Olympics push. So, what arises in an era of Depression woes and impending WW II devastation, plucky, resourceful and hard-working Washington boys forge themselves into a world-class team under capable coaching and with the sage-like wisdom of master boat builder, the renowned artisan George Pocock whose aphorisms serve as chapter headings.

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Review: Plato's Forms, Mathematics and Astronomy

Plato's Forms, Mathematics and Astronomy by Theokritos Kouremenos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

...This material, especially the first third of the book, feels at times overwhelmed by its own footnotes. It is not unusual for pages to have more content in footnotes than above. In the case of quotes from the original Greek and suggestions for further reading, the footnote feels appropriate. Many amplifications of points could have added to the main content, rather than being shunted to the small-point footnotes. In this consideration of the Platonic worldview, there is only an onionskin of separation from considering a forms theory in the context of a contemporary philosophy. At times, the text returns instead to the Myth of Er and The Spindle of Necessity, where The Fates, the three daughters of the Goddess Necessity, keep the rims of the cosmos’ driving axle revolving. The hook, shaft, and whorl application can help convince us that probably Plato did truly recognize the retrograde motion of the Aristotelian planetary spheres. But, can we envision a dedication to mathematics as making more rewarding and profitable philosophical contemplation? Have any other propedeutics proven worthier? The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]



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Review: White Fang

White Fang by Jack London
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't know how many times I have enjoyed this classic, but I'd say this reading makes at least three. The last time what struck me for some reason was White Fang's battle with the bull dog; White Fang's accomplishment as a fighter. This time, being older and having just read Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, I am struck by how effectively (though I don't know if accurately), London has imagined the wolf's umwelt; it's point of view including deification of humans and a love for the hunt.

London I find so wondrously explores the ragged edge of where nature meets the human realm, and considers the drama arising from a citizen of one realm acting in the other. The scope of this tale is quite ambitious. The story begins before the wolf-dog hybrid White Fand is born, with two men and their sled dog team on a journey to deliver a coffin to a remote town and a large pack of starving wolves over the course of several days makes meal of this 'outllander' team. Then cub White Fang returns to where his wolfdog mother hailed and grows to become a savage, callous, morose, solitary, and deadly fighter, "the enemy of his kind" among mankind. The story ends with White Fang relaxing in the sun with the puppies he has fathered with a sheep-dog Collie making for a moving, tale across three canine generations.



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Review: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Written by one of those behind the famous "Not Fair" 'Grapes, Cucumbers and Monkey Morality' experiment, this is an enlightening overview of the author's career of encountering impressive congnition in apes, elephants, corvids and more. It confronts us by challenging the notion that we have a unique trait in our intelligence separating us from the animals. The book includes an extensive glossary, but I found the pages of outcome from ethological studies and experiments to be very plainly written for a popular audience.

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Review: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wil Wheaton does a great job as narrator here on the zany and imaginative questions gathered by Munroe - some of which are so outlandish as to get mocked and not answered. Munroe has fun discussing the mathematics (most answers have a math angle) on obalting the mood with bright lights to baseballs moving near the speed of light. Much of this is in the nerdy and edgy spirit of "Fermi Questions" that I enjoy.

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Review: Pro Mapping in BizTalk Server 2009

Pro Mapping in BizTalk Server 2009 by Jim Dawson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have been using this to read through and as a reference book for BizTalk Mapper. I hope that standalone tool seems more a life of its own outside of BizTalk solutions in Visual Studio. This helped me figure out how to use the tool in VS 2015 Community Edition. As I write, VS 2017 support is not present for Mapper and 2015 has changed enough to be out of sync w/some directions here, but only on minor interface points that proved no obstacle to usage. The book starts off very textbook-like with directed exercises, but for some reason unfortunately drifts away from a commitment to this approach. Much of the code, with some updates is on GitHub.

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Review: Brain Aerobics Mindteasers

Brain Aerobics Mindteasers by J.J. Mendoza Fernandez
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It took me several months to read this slim volume, which itself shows how much I disliked it. I feel these are more often "riddles" of the type that are often encountered with irritation from strangers at bars with some trick involving pennies or wordplay. A few - maybe a dozen of the nearly 300 - I did like much and noted as I could use them in the classroom with algebra students.

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Review: Days Between Stations

Days Between Stations by Steve Erickson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sepand of the duo Days Between Stations recommend this book and gifted me a copy in 2007. Here is from an email I sent including my thoughts on the book:

Hi Sepand

...

I agree with you about DBS coming in and out of focus. I prefer now to think of it as vignettes that can be taken in isolation, even though I know them to be related. That is, I am drinking my pleasure from each chapter as if it were an isolated dish, though the theme and presentation of the buffet may elude me on this reading. Some research shows me many songs, albums, etc. have referred to this work - so I really appreciate you turning me on to it!

...

Tom

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Review: Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an entertaining and enlightening overview of widespread medical catastrophes from antiquity to today. Delightfully narrated by Gabra Zackman, there is a tone here between Mary Roach and Oliver Sacks. Sacks is explicitly covered in the parts about the scarily recent usage of the drug L-Dopa administered to catatonic patients who survived the 1917–28 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica ("EL"). Also covered is the fascinating and mysterious dancing plague. Here Wright suggests the importance of compassion compared to the heartless treatment of bubonic plague victims, including home invasions from shovel-wielding gravediggers. In an overview of syphilis we read of the decline of the Inca and rise of the No Nose Club. We also meet the notorious Typhoid Mary and hear details of perhaps the most senseless plague on humanity: Freeman's lobotomies.

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Review: Single Variable Calculus: A First Step

Single Variable Calculus: A First Step by Yunzhi Zou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"This is an efficiently compressed entry-level calculus introduction. Effectively covered are the core concepts and applications of limits, continuity, derivatives, integration with a firm exposition on series, sequences, and approximations. From the preface we learn that inspiration was to offer “Chinese students a course in English” and thus have a “suitable textbook” because “Chinese students are going overseas.” While it may also be true as stated that this is “the first ever calculus textbook in China printed in color”, two things I expected from that preface are not found further in. I expected a Sino-centric delivery and possibly the awkward grammar found in many such translations. However, this reads as if developed for the native English speaker from the onset. Also, what color is present here is effective and subtly applied pastel coloring to graphs and figures..."

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]



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Review: The Red and the Black

The Red and the Black by Stendhal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I rarely read fiction, but over the years I have so much about this book and the antihero Julien Sorel that I felt compelled to read this work, apparently part of the Western European Great Books canon. The arrogant and emotional Sorel "fails up" to a near Bishopric and seduces, almost without trying, a wealthy woman many years his senior and the daughter of his marquis benefactor. All this would seem too implausible, but for the acute analysis of this characters' psychology. The realism of the novel reads to this true crime fan, like a look into the mind of a criminal (would-be killer, here) in a way found in no true crime work. Also, published in 1830, this is a period drama of sorts in post-Napoleonic France. This English edition has translations of all quotes, and plenty of footnotes to explain the relevance of every historical figure mentioned as well as a few fictitious ones. The only unfortunate thing is that this particular edition is so cramped with small type and very thin pages that it was a bit difficult to enjoy the nearly 500-page story. (Introduction by Lester Crocker.)

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Review: Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley

Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley by Lawrence Sutin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this is something like the third biography of "The Beast" I have read. Certainly complex, eccentric figure whose colorful life could be a basis for even contradictory opinions. This work is very detailed in research, including even conflicting accounts of key events, such as Crowley's final hours. How different is Crowley's imagined Thelema from "inspired" religions and texts of the remote past? Maybe there is a chance to study the origin and evolution of a religion, except that the taking up of Crowleys' New Aeon fared so poorly it hardly seems like a successful enough case for study. Also, his heroin addiction, ceremonialized of homosexuality, and flirtation with Hitler, etc. all make it easier to hand a sign of "decadent" than "divine" on this neck. If anything, for the lifelong scrapping by on the long con of getting money and resources from lovers and disciples makes for him as being, at least, the most successful charlatan of certainly recent times. So, maybe more than a religion founder, this may turn out more like a Faust and could possibly leave a similar impact on the future: more fantasy than fact.

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Review: Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 and 1965 Tours That Changed the World

Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 and 1965 Tours That Changed the World by Larry Kane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Larry Kane was a -- by comparison -- near prudish spectator to The Beatles' '64 - '65 U.S. tours. So, nothing really salacious here, but a sober look at "the boys" encountering hysterical fans and immense fame. Highlights include tales of creatively determined young girls wanting to meet the group; multiple times in purloined housekeeping uniforms. There is a shifting view of John Lennon from an impolitic young man of crude outbursts to a deeper, more nuanced appreciation of the effective leader of the group encroaching on Brian Epstein's managerial realm. Oh yeah, and Epstein makes a pass at Kane who was only on the first tour because of Epstein's misjudged understanding of his position in radio.

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