Review: Genius Mathematician: Integral Private Class

Genius Mathematician: Integral Private Class by Milad Hashemi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As a mathematics teacher, I find the typical student is not have trouble with newly introduced concepts and techniques as much as recalling previously learned, fundamental steps required to start solving or finish (simplifying) solving a problem. The author here has had the same observations and the subtitle “Integral Private Class” speaks to the style of the content as a one-no-one tutoring sessions with patient allusions to remedial topics like laws of exponents, handling fractions, using the form of one as an introduced rational factor, and more techniques from algebra and arithmetic. The focus here is on indefinite integrals, largely using change of variables and trigonometric substitutions. The bulk of the content here is worked examples not unlike what one may find in the relevant sections of Schaum's Outline of Calculus.

That being said, this is a nice first-draft that needs a new layout using LaTeX or another high-quality typesetting system, table of contents, clear chapter breaks, an index, and editing for grammar and clarity. Spacing and italics are inconsistent (x sin(x) can also be xsinx, etc.) and English is not apparently the first language of the author here. I hope the author corrects these content issues in a future edition with amplified examples of definite integrals.


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Review: Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There has been a decades long debate between anthropologists and economic theorists as to whether modern economies have their roots in ancient barter systems Who knew? Well, apparently Marcel Mauss did and, in a way, the author here wrote the book refuting the barter basis theory that Mauss never got around to. Another fascinating point made clear is that the archaeologically verifiable history of coinage only records a recurring wave of currency economies intermixed with waves of credit-based systems. Debt and credit, the author finds, devolved from temple actualizations of spiritual debt to become the engine of debt and conquest. The result was debtor prisons, keeping up with the joneses, hopeless struggles of organized labor and modern debt peonage of the working poor. As such, the conclusions are fairly radical, but it doe give a way to interpret the commonly visualized The Productivity–Pay Gap.

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Review: Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder That Rocked New Orleans

Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder That Rocked New Orleans by Ethan Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a true crime and Crescent City fan, there are two basics to what I like about the investigation here: named French Quarter streets and pre-Katrina locations that I can picture in my mind from being there as well as a crime that few rise above in horrendous-ness, maybe not even that chronicled in Beyond Bad. Books directly mentioned and relevant include The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and Disaster Capitalism because this is also about the Katrina, post-Katrina holdouts like the subject couple, and the post-Katrina murder wave. PTSD and the similarities to fallen Baghdad and post-Katrina New Orleans. The author strives for a balanced picture of the unhinged veteran and largely succeeds.

In this audiobook, narrator James Avery delivers a pitch-perfect performance in something between natural and hip that makes me feel the entire story is being related by an avid regular at The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street in Marigny.

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Review: Hermann Von Helmholtz

Hermann Von Helmholtz by Leo Koenigsberger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am amazed to find I knew so little of wide impact this German polymath had. Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science. In physiology and psychology, he is known for his mathematics and fundamental models of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone, perception of sound, and mechanics of the ear: the mysteries of the malleus, incus, and stapes. In physics, he is known for his theories on the conservation of energy, building on the work of others to consolidate the law of conservation of energy as we know it today. This biography covers his career and successes and family life, too troubled with close deaths, and much correspondence. There is letter from his to his son and from contemporaries like his doctoral student Heinrich Hertz to him.

Also, his travels and impressions of period life in Europe (Helmholtz lived August 31, 1821 – September 8, 1894) as a student, surgeon, researcher, and icon are fascinating. This includes a trip to Canada and the U.S. including correspondence by the septuagenarian Helmholtz reporting back his impressions of a noisy and egalitarian people.

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Review: Bayesians Versus Frequentists: A Philosophical Debate on Statistical Reasoning

Bayesians Versus Frequentists: A Philosophical Debate on Statistical Reasoning by Jordi Vallverdu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book argues for the superiority of bayesianism (the author goes minuscule here) over frequentism in nearly two dozen articles categorized into a few sections with an index of persons. Sections include the origins of numerical and statistical thinking, related philosophical questions, and a contrasting of bayesian and frequentist approaches. The initial, historical section takes a broad view encompassing the cognitive abilities of animals, numerosity (“the ability to appreciate and understand numbers”), and the formation of a foundation for statistics. The middle section presents a brisk overview of statistics from the invention of dice in India to Nineteenth Century formalizations by Peirce, Venn, de Morgan, etc. These two sections prepare the ground for a final culmination in the work of Bayes and the role his approach has had and, by the author, should have. These sections are good, standalone treatments in aspects of the history of mathematics...

[Look for my entire review up at MAA Reviews.]




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Review: Dirty Sexy Politics

Dirty Sexy Politics by Meghan McCain
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This audiobook is narrated by the author and she could have gotten someone better for that role. Here hurried, pressured speech patterns and stumbly over some pronunciation in her "own" writing ("admirable" with a long "i", etc.) makes me wonder if she is really a co-author.

That aside, this is a unique view into the failed McCain campaign and an authentic window into a 17-month road trip with the press where there is not enough privacy for a meltdown, which is an embarrassing issue for Meghan. This is really about the life on the campaign trail and the disruption to personal and family life such a role brings. As such, this a personal, not political memoir and thus probably has much in common with a rock band roadie memoir. Except, instead of salacious (she was basically abstinent during the period of "dirty, sexy politics") we get the petty flare-ups of close quarters living.

Two very interesting dimensions was the injection of the Palins and Meghan being underwhelmed if not distrustful of Sarah Palin and the insider's view of when during the 2000 Republican presidential primary, Senator John McCain was the target of a whisper campaign implying that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. (McCain's adopted daughter is a dark-skinned child from Bangladesh). Meghan talks about the pain and grief caused by the negative push poll and later encountering the Vanity Fair article “The Trashing of John McCain” by Richard Gooding which laid the blame on the Bush camp and the Christian Coalition.

This "daughter of" provides a witty and revealing look into the Straight Talk Express and the rise and fall of John McCain's run at the Oval Office.

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Review: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fascinating modern Heart of Darkness in Amazonia like The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey or The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. While Ford never went to see the ungainly rubber plantation with small town design elements he created in the jungle, like he did his towns in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the over ambitious concern limped into and thru WW II with its inventor's worldview. While this is obviously a story of the Ford enterprise in Brazil, it also adds depth to the popular picture of Henry Ford. After all, while he may have said "history is bunk!", he was also an obsessive antiquarian starting the Henry Ford Museum and puttering around in Greenfield Village while resisting technological innovation with an almost fetishistic yearning for the artifacts and modes of the past.

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