Category Archives: Books

Books, Science

The Calculus Wars by Jason Socrates Bardi

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People outside of science often have the impression that the practice of science is a sort of altruistic pursuit of knowledge with all scientists working towards the same goal: increasing our understanding of the universe.  And, in a very rough sense, this is true, if one looks at the development of science itself and ignores the personalities that are involved.  However, if you look at the details, egos and the realities of limited funding often get in the way and produce dramas that are every bit as melodramatic as any other human endeavor.

There is no better example of this than that described in The Calculus Wars by Jason Socrates Bardi.  The Calculus Wars describe the development of calculus, today accepted to be independently discovered by Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz.  In fact, while Newton tends to get more credit (he technically did discover it first, though Leibniz published first), our modern notation is due to Leibniz.  When Leibniz first published his version, there was no big outcry.  But, over the years, as Newton want to assert his primacy over the discovery, the fight between Newton and his people and Leibniz and his became downright nasty, culminating in assertions of plagiarism.  In the end, Newton essentially won, as we tend to attribute calculus to him.  But, to paraphrase Bardi, while the discovery of calculus illustrates the great heights the human mind can achieve, the war that develop between these two demonstrates the corresponding depths we can sink to.

To me, the most fascinating part of the story is the life of Leibniz.  Here is a true genius, a man with no formal training in math (he was a lawyer) who taught himself what he needed to know to eventually develop calculus.  He was a renaissance man befitting the word, with activities in mining, math, science, politics, law, and philosophy.  He was in some sense the first geologist.  He established the first scientific society in Germany.  For all of his accomplishments and his genius, he languished in his later years researching a history of the genealogy of his sponsoring noble, an effort that both distracted from pursuits more befitting such a great mind and kept him in the backwaters of the scientific world.  If Leibniz had the intellectual freedom that Newton did, one wonders what he might have achieved.

Overall, this was a highly entertaining account of two great intellectuals and their personal battle.  It certainly makes me want to learn more about Leibniz.  I highly recommend it to anyone who has even a casual interest in the history of math and science.  While it does highlight the lows of scientific endeavor, showing the all too human face, I still believe that the scientific method is the most powerful way of looking at the universe that humanity has devised.

Books

Draw by James Reasoner

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draw-reasonerThe Wild West is one of those times and places that pulls strongly on our imagination, with images of danger, adventures, and freedom. Daring bank robberies, shoot outs, posses chasing outlaws through the wilderness, saloons and gambling. Men such as Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday. These are the icons of the Wild West. Typically, however, we have next to no real inkling of the real Wild West, with most of our knowledge informed more by Hollywood than history. In his book Draw, James Reasoner explores the truth behind the stories of these men and their exploits, truths that are often as exciting and interesting as anything Hollywood could ever invent.

Reasoner focuses on gun fights, the violence that characterized the lives of these men. Some of these men were out-right sociopaths, killing with no emotion nor remorse, over things as trivial as snoring too loudly (ok, that was an accident, but there was still no remorse). Often motivated by the desire for wealth, many of these men started off on gangs that robbed stage coaches, trains, and banks, but soon events got beyond their control, with posses in chase and life on the run. Some were able to escape justice for a while, settling in another territory or moving back east, but often, the bullet eventually found its target.

Draw looks at some of the lesser known gun battles of the Old West, sometimes skipping the more well known ones almost altogether. For example, the shootout at the O. K. Corral is only briefly touched on as part of the context of the death of the one Earp brother who wasn’t there. Not much is made of the two most notorious outlaws, Billy the Kid and Jessie James, except in how their deaths were part of the narrative of other men. Maybe that’s because these more famous events and men have so much more written about them that Reasoner figured there wasn’t a need for even more, focusing instead on the lesser known battles. In any case, the events and men he has chosen are compelling.

There are a couple of things I found very interesting. Reasoner tries to emphasize is that the Old West image of two men facing each other on Main Street in a showdown, an image that some historians have said is pure Hollywood fiction, did occur at least a few times. He gives a couple examples of exactly this kind of shootout. Also very interesting is how much New Mexico plays in the history of the Wild West. When we hear of the exploits of Billy the Kid and so on, we don’t have much context for the where of it, just a generic western setting. However, many of these men lived and worked and robbed in New Mexico, as well as Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and California. It makes me want to find some of these places in New Mexico and see what there might be to see. Finally, Reasoner describes some truly remarkable men — on both sides of the law — who, facing a barrage of bullets, kept their cool to gun down their enemies. They let the others wildly shoot away while they steadied their aim and let loose a deadly shot. Fast wasn’t always the most important factor in who won the day.

Probably the most interesting aspect of all of this is when these events occurred. These stories involve men who span the worlds of the Civil War to World War I. Many were either Confederate or Union soldiers who moved West to find their fortune. But the last few events described occurred around 1917, near the end of WWI. To me, this was a near epiphany as WWI, having occurred in the 1900s, feels like the modern era, while the Old West seems to be another time. But they overlap. And, indeed, there was less time between the Civil War and WWI than there is now between WWII and our own time. Thus, the backdrop of the Civil War was likely very important context for most of these men, regardless of what side they were on. That, while in Europe men were dug into trenches and airplanes were engaged in aerial combat, men in the US were still robbing banks by horseback is just a bit amazing to think about.

I only found one aspect of Reasoner’s writing a bit annoying. In setting up each story, he gives some context to the time and place and more than once uses a phrase such as “The bustling town grew up around the miners who dug their wealth from the ground and the saloon keepers and soiled doves who came to extract that wealth from the miners.” This type of phrase — though probably very accurate — got a bit repetitive, but maybe that shows how similar all of these western settlements were at the beginning.

Draw is a very entertaining read and has me looking for more about the Old West.

Books

John Adams by David McCullough

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7190999Of the founding fathers, the three that probably stand out are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams.  Of these, however, John Adams is probably the one we learn the least about, this in spite of the fact that, of all of the founding fathers, “we” probably know the most about him, a result of his prodigious letter writing and the diaries he kept.

It’s a shame, really, as Adams is both a very important and very interesting character.  While Washington certainly merits his place as the father of our country, he is also rather dull, comparatively, having not written his private thoughts.  Jefferson is a very interesting character in his own right, a man full of contradictions, embodying both the highs and lows of the human essence.

In contrast, it can be said that Adams is the picture of integrity, the one word that maybe defines his career over all others.  He was also loyal to an extreme.  Compare his behavior as Vice President to Washington with that of Jefferson’s as Vice President to Adams.  Even when Adams disagreed with Washington, his loyalty to the administration meant he wouldn’t undermine Washington’s efforts.  Jefferson so disagreed with what Adams tried to do, on the other hand, that he actively tried to derail Adams’ administration.

Adams’ long and distinguished service to his country — beginning as a delegate to the Continental Congress, through years as a diplomat in Paris and London trying to secure first the finances to support the Revolutionary War and then to secure the peace, and finally as first Vice President and then President — are admirably covered by David McCullough in his excellent biography of John Adams.  McCullough quotes extensively from letters to and from Adams, as well as letters written by his wife Abigail, Adams’ diaries, and newspapers of the time to really bring both the era and Adams to life.  In fact, there were times where he spent relatively lengthy sections on, for instance, Abigail’s opinions of French or London society, which felt at times tedious.  However, by the end of the book, when Adams’ family members start to pass away, these moments actually hit the reader as, by that time, you are so emotionally invested in these people.  The tediousness of those sections is more than made up for by the impact on the reader near the end.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the narrative is the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, which has been of much discussion.  Here it comes alive, from the respect they shared at the Continental Congress to their blossoming friendship in Europe to the disintegration of that friendship during their years in the Federal government, only to finally be renewed in their later years.  That such a strong bond of friendship could be nearly destroyed by politics is dismaying to watch, especially considering the role that Jefferson — a boyhood idol of mine — played.  That these two men could at least partially reconcile their differences should speak volumes to us today.

Another very interesting aspect of the era, related to the relationship between Adams and Jefferson and the politics of the time, is how nasty those politics were.  We are often dismayed at how politics is practiced in our day and age.  In terms of pure nastiness, however, it does not compare to the politics of the founding of our country.  That a great man like Jefferson could attack his one-time friend Adams so strongly and do so hiding behind others is borderline shocking.  And Jefferson’s behavior pales in comparison to men like Alexander Hamilton who actively subverted Adams’ own cabinet.  Maybe there is a lesson here, that, in spite of how bad things seem to be now, our country has survived worse times and will do so again.

Adams’ life is a fascinating subject and McCullough does a wonderful job of bringing it, well, to life.  After reading McCullough’s account of Adams’ life and career, I have a new-found and deep respect for Adams, both as a man and a politician.  I highly recommend this book.

Books

Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly

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cordingly-under the black flagEvery age seems to have it’s iconic figures, those who end up defining that age, symbolizing it, from the knights of the medieval period to the gunslingers of the wild west.  We romanticize these figures, overlooking their shortcomings and glorifying them to the point that they are barely recognizable from the real thing.

And so it is with pirates, those symbols of the Age of Discovery and Exploration, when the West was newly “discovered” by Europeans.  Pirates operated all over the world, from the Indian Ocean to China.  But, it is those that sailed the Caribbean and the American coast that really capture our modern-day imagination.  And they are the focus of David Cordingly’s Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates.  Cordingly describes the pirate life as it really was: nasty, brutal and usually short, even for the most successful pirates.  These were ruthless men who attacked merchant vessels, fishing boats, and even coastal towns in search of plunder.  They tortured crew members in order to find out where treasure was stashed, often in some very graphic ways.  They spent their money on drink, gambling, and women, often within weeks or months of winning it.  The authorities that hunted them down were equally vicious, making examples of captured pirates by executing them and displaying their bodies in chains.

Cordingly does a wonderful job of both describing the life of the pirates, their motivation, their modus operandi, and the effort to eradicate them.  His goal is two-fold: to give us a realistic picture of the real pirates as well as determine how we’ve come to romanticize such a vile group of men.  He discusses the pirate in literature and film and how those media led to our modern day romantic pirate. Most of what we now associate with pirates — walking the plank, buried treasure, the educated man turned pirate — are more fiction than reality.

He also goes into a number of smaller details, such as the existence of women pirates and the size of a typical pirate haul.  All of these details give a very nice overview of what pirates really were, who they really were, and what they really did.

There are a couple of things I wish he had included.  He discusses the different types of ships that both pirates and the authorities used and for someone like me who knows nothing about ships, it would have been nice to have some illustrations showing the size and shape of these ships.  Also, while he does touch on a number of the most notorious pirates, including Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Calico Jack, these are scattered throughout the book and no really coherent picture emerges of most of these men.  A chapter devoted to brief bios of the major pirates would have been an appreciated addition.

Overall, however, this is a very entertaining book that gives a lot of real information about a very interesting subject.  Highly recommended to anyone interested in the reality behind the fictions of the pirates.

Books, Science

Simplexity by Jeffrey Kluger

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kluger-simplexityA lot is made of complexity and complex systems. A prime example is the formation of materials from atoms. Atoms are, for the most part, relatively simple things. However, put them together, and very complex behavior emerges, from basic defects such as vacancies and dislocations to properties such as superconductivity and fast ion conduction. Another example is the complex behavior of even the simplest of ecosystems created by ants.

Understanding how complex systems arise from simple components — in essence simplifying them in a way that can be used to make predictions and design useful systems — has become a science in itself. In his book Simplexity, Jeffrey Kluger gives an overview of this new science. His approach is to describe many different examples of how complexity is hidden around us, how complexity emerges from simplicity, and how complex things can be understood via some simple rules. This connection, between complexity and simplicity, leads to the term simplexity. The framing thread is the work done at the Santa Fe Institute, founded to study exactly these kinds of issues.

The examples Kluger describes are definitely very interesting. They include the spread of disease (how such seemingly complex and random things such as the spread of disease can be traced to simple origins), the complexity of different types of jobs (driving a truck is more complex than being a middle level manager), and how hard it is for people to judge risk to themselves (illustrated by the behavior of people in the Towers on 9/11).

The examples do a good job of describing various aspects of complexity science, of showing how things we think are simple are really very complex and vice versa. And I did learn a number of things. For example, in evacuation routes in buildings, they purposely put false columns in the rooms to break the flow of people to emergency exits as that adds some “turbulance” that makes the overall flow of people smoother and less likely to jam at the doors. Also, in describing how our technology has become overly complex, so much so that most of us can’t really figure out our devices, at least not fully, he tells about research going on at the Media Lab at MIT on the “bar of soap“.  This sounds like an awesome device, something that would be awesome to see and the implications for technology in general and how we interact with it are really intriguing. And these are just a few of the things that I learned.

However, I was overall disappointed, because I don’t feel like I learned anything about the science of complexity. I learned about how things are complex, and how they can be simplified in some ways. And some of the specific examples were really interesting. But, I really didn’t learn about the science behind it, how complex systems are studied, how they are classified, or how they are characterized. What makes a complex system amenable to study? To simplification? What makes a collection of simple things complex? The book is a bit of a tour de force of examples from complexity science, but there isn’t any deeper probing behind any of it, nothing that gives any deeper insight.

Thus, as an introduction, of a teaser of the science, the book succeeds. However, as any real introduction to the science itself, it felt flat to me.