"The Body" by Bill Bryson (2019)

"Epilepsy likewise is a perpetual mystery, but with the additional burden that sufferers have been shunned and demonized throughout history.  Well into the twentieth century, it was commonly believed by medical authorities that seizures and infections -- that just watching someone have a seizure could provoke a seizure in others."

Bill Bryson has written many, many books on many, many topics.  I swear I've read other books by the same author, but the only one reviewed here is One Summer: America 1927.  Which of his other books have I read?  For the life of me I can't remember.

Bryson is, by the way, an American author.  If he sounds British it's because he's lived there most of his life.  I didn't find his writing style in One Summer: America 1927 to be particularly British, but while reading The Body I often wondered which side of the Atlantic he was writing from.

In The Body, a book I found slightly less engaging than One Summer, Bryson takes us on a tour of the human body.  Along the way he discusses various breakthroughs in medicine, surgery and our understanding of how our bodies function, all of which he summarizes in two separate discussions of birth and death at the end of the book.

Very few of the physiological details introduced in this book were new to me, though I did find the anecdotes regarding forgotten doctors, barbaric medical treatments and other oddities very interesting.  Who knew that the medieval cure for gallstones was so horrific?  Who knew that so many doctors and scientists could be so petty when it came to credit for certain discoveries?  It's these little bits of trivia that make The Body worth reading, even if some of the descriptions of bodily processes are only there to pad out the book.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give The Body a solid 7.  It's not as absorbing as I thought it'd be, but I never found it dull.  Compared to the other book by Bryson that I can actually remember reading, it's definitely an inferior effort, but in Bryson's case an inferior effort is still a very readable book.  He shows a characteristic command of his subject throughout, he's obviously done his research, and if a better book on the same subject is out there we'll just have to hope we stumble across it.

Related Entries:

"Pathogenesis" by Jonathan Kennedy (2023)

"To Rule the Waves" by Bruce D. Jones (2021)

"The Third Pillar" by Raghuram Rajan (2019)

"How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley (2020)

"The Third Pillar" by Raghuram Rajan (2019)

"The pillars are seriously unbalanced today. Communities have been especially impacted. In the United States, minority and immigrant communities were hit first by joblessness, which led to their social breakdown in the 1970s and 1980s. In the last two decades, communities in small towns and semirural areas, typically white, have been experiencing a similar decline as large local manufacturers close down..."

Raghuram Rajan is a Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago. He's also served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. The Third Pillar is his fourth book.

And what, you ask, is this "third pillar?"  The "third pillar" is the community or communities we live in, which collectively make up the social landscape in which we live our lives.  The other two pillars are government and the market.  In the author's thinking many of the world's problems are reducible to an imbalance between the three pillars, with the government or the market often overwhelming the community's role in the individual's life.

For this reason the author sees strengthening the community as central to improving circumstances in a variety of national and international contexts.  Democracy, in other words, in its most participatory form.  Related to this idea is his concept of inclusive localism, in which communities interact and effect change within both the government and the market, resulting in better outcomes for those involved.

But.. how to get there from here?  Few would argue against the author's conceptions of the three pillars and inclusive localism, but it is the application of these ideas that poses the real problem.  The Third Pillar ranges from India, to the United States, to China, and along the way the author arrives at some arresting conclusions, many of which make one feel that we could be on the brink of change, but when you think downward to real places and real communities you can't help but wonder at the mechanics of bringing those communities to the forefront of daily existence, and how the various dysfunctions present in these communities can be separated from what, if anything, makes them work.

I would encourage anyone looking for a pair of fresh eyes on national and international relations to read The Third Pillar, but don't expect a clear roadmap to the future.  This book could be called a beginning, but we're far from a practical start with respect to fixing what's wrong with our societies, our governments and our economies.

Related Entries:

"How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley (2020)

The Best American Science and Nature Writing: 2021," edited by Ed Yong (2022)

"It's Elemental: The Hidden Chemistry In Everything" by Kate Biberdorf (2021)

Zero Fail by Carol Leonnig (2021)

"How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley (2020)

"In China, too, the periods of explosive innovation coincided with decentralized government, otherwise known as 'warring states'.  The strong empires, most notable the Ming, effectively put a stop to innovation as well as trade and enterprise more generally.  David Hume, writing in the eighteenth century, already realized this truth, that China had stalled as source of novelty because it was unified, while Europe took off because it was divided.

"America may appear an exception, but in fact it proves this rule.  Its federal structure has always allowed experiment.  Far from being a monolithic imperium, the states were for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a laboratory of different rules, taxes, policies and habits, with entrepreneurs moving freely to whichever state most suited their project.  Recently the federal government has grown stronger, and at the same time many Americans are wondering why the country is not as fleet of foot at innovation as it once was."

Matt Ridley is a journalist, businessman and (somewhat apologetic) Libertarian.  He's written for both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, He's held various posts in private and public institutions within the United Kingdom, he was a staunch Brexit advocate, and has expressed some opposition to climate science.  His best known book is probably 2010's The Rational Optimist.

In How Innovation Works Ridley describes various innovations throughout human history, explaining (or at least attempting to explain) how these innovations were less the product of individual genius than the result of ideas and technologies accumulating to the point where they would have surfaced regardless of the individuals involved.

So far so good I suppose, but I notice he carefully avoids certain disciplines.  Painting, for instance, or fiction.  And saying something like "Someone would have thought up the Theory of Relativity whether or not Einstein was born," requires a lot of explanation, and this author carefully avoids such discussions.  Surely the individual counts for something, though in many cases (such as the invention of the light bulb), the role of the individual inventor has been overstated.

After his tour of human innovation the author tries to distill his preceding chapters into a "theory of innovation," or at least highlight characteristics of cultures that are innovative as opposed to cultures that aren't.  This, for me, was where the wheels came off the bus, primarily because for almost every example given I could think of a counter-example.  Generalizing over the "innovativeness" of societies is also a little too easy to do.  Can we state, categorically, that any society is more innovative than any other?  And if we could, wouldn't that lead to a kind of cultural chauvinism?

Whatever the case, I don't think Matt Ridley's arguments are that convincing.  A lot of it only sounds like common sense until you think it over.  There are certainly places where innovation is more welcome than in others, but I don't think the author has really defined what those places are and what makes them conducive to innovation.

Related Entries:

The Best American Science and Nature Writing: 2021," edited by Ed Yong (2022)

"It's Elemental: The Hidden Chemistry In Everything" by Kate Biberdorf (2021)

Zero Fail by Carol Leonnig (2021)

"The Light Ages" by Seb Falk (2020)

"It's Elemental: The Hidden Chemistry In Everything" by Kate Biberdorf (2021)

"Chemically speaking, a protein is a polypeptide -- a large molecule built from two or more amino acids.  There are over five hundred known amino acids, twenty of which are in our genetic code.  However, only nine of them are considered to be essential.  An essential amino acid cannot be synthesized by our bodies, therefore we must incorporate it into our diet."

Kate Biberdorf is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin.  She has also appeared on several news and variety TV programs where she explains scientific concepts to the general public.

In It's Elemental she explores the role of chemical processes in our daily lives, progressing through topics such as fitness, clothing, the manufacture of spirits and sex.  While doing so she uses anecdotes from her own life and cross-references various aspects of pop culture.

Judging this book by its stated purpose it's a success.  It communicates the usual array of Chemistry topics in a breezy yet satisfying manner, never losing sight of the fact that its for a general audience largely unacquainted with Chemistry.  If I have a complaint it's that there are many similar books on bookshelves now, and what It's Elemental does isn't anything we haven't seen before.

Related Entries:

Zero Fail by Carol Leonnig (2021)

"The Light Ages" by Seb Falk (2020)

"IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black (2001)

"Move: The Forces Uprooting Us" by Parag Khanna (2021)

"Nomadland" by Jessica Bruder (2017)

"For purposes of stealth - to avoid getting harassed by passerby or, worse, rousted and maybe ticketed by police - readers were advised to hide their solar panels between the bars of a luggage carrier or ladder rack."

Jessica Bruder is a journalist who writes about (American) subcultures.  She also teaches narrative writing at Columbia University.  She started out reporting for The New York Times, and her only other book is Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man.

Nomadland was a smashing success for the author, and inspired an Academy Award-winning movie starring Frances McDormand.  I haven't seen the movie yet, though my wife tells me it's great.  If you've been following the movie entries in this blog, you'll know that I'm presently watching films from 2009, so it's going to take me a while to work my way up to Nomandland, which was released in 2020.

It may surprise some people to know that Nomadland (the book) is a work of non-fiction.  In it the author follows several "nomads" around the United States, detailing the various ways in which they make their vehicles livable, how they make money, and where they gather in the winter months.  The city of Quartzsite Arizona looms large within the book, as does Amazon, the company which hires many of these nomads during the Christmas season.  

In terms of people, Linda May's story is at the center of the narrative, with fellow nomads "Swankie Wheels" and Bob Wells organizing various nomadic communities from behind the scenes.  It's worth noting that all three of these people also appear in the film.  

Is the book worth reading?  I'd say yes, but I think the author was a bit too close to her subjects.  She often seems to be handling these people with kid gloves, and never really delves into their personal struggles on any meaningful level.  There's also the question of the larger economic context behind their lifestyle, which could have been explored in more depth.  As it is Nomadland is definitely light reading, and after finishing it I felt a bit disappointed.  I wanted to see the darker side of this lifestyle, and I wanted to know how some of the nomads dealt with troubles beyond the economy.

But yeah, it's good.  I have the feeling that reading it will also enhance your appreciation of the movie.  I can't see myself living in an RV anytime soon, but I respect the people in this book for their choices.  Between the online economy, the decline of unions, lack of governmental oversight and the export of manufacturing industries to China it's not an easy time to make a living.

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"The Chinese in America" by Iris Chang (2003)

"The History of the Jews" by Paul Johnson (1987)

"Wild" by Cheryl Strayed (2012)

"Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life" by William Finnegan (2015)

"The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers) (1988)

"MOYERS: In the Christian story the serpent is the seducer.

CAMPBELL: That amounts to a refusal to affirm life.  In the biblical tradition we have inherited, life is corrupt, and every natural impulse is sinful unless it has been circumcised or baptized.  The serpent was the one who brought sin into the world.  And the woman was the one who handed the apple to man.  This identification of the woman with sin, of the serpent with sin, and thus life with sin, is the twist that has been given to the whole story in the biblical myth and doctrine of the Fall.

MOYERS: Does the idea of woman as sinner appear in other mythologies?

CAMPBELL: No, I don't know of it elsewhere.  The closest thing to it would be perhaps Pandora with Pandora's box, but that's not sin, that's just trouble.  The idea in the biblical tradition of the Fall is that nature as we know it is corrupt, sex in itself is corrupt, and the female as the epitome of sex is a corrupter.  Why was the knowledge of good and evil forbidden to Adam and Eve?  Without that knowledge, we'd all be a bunch of babies still in Eden, without any participation in life.  Woman brings life into the world.  Eve is the mother of this temporal world.  Formerly you had a dreamtime paradise there in the Garden of Eden - no time, no birth, no death - no life.  The serpent, who dies and is resurrected, shedding its skin and renewing its life, is the lord of the central tree, where time and eternity come together.  He is the primary god, actually, in the Garden of Eden.  Yahweh, the one who walks there in the cool of the evening, is just a visitor."

Joseph Campbell was a professor of Comparative Mythology at Sarah Lawrence College.  He wrote numerous books on the subject of myth, the most famous being The Hero with a Thousand Faces and this book, The Power of Myth.  The conversations between journalist Bill Moyers and Campbell that form The Power of Myth were also adapted into a public television series of the same name.

In The Power of Myth, Moyers and Campbell discuss the ways in which myth informs daily life, and also how we might draw meaning in our own lives from ancient stories.  They discuss the origins and functions of romantic love, attitudes toward death, what heroism might mean, sexuality as it relates to divinity, and even how the Star Wars movies draw upon mythic themes.

It's fairly heavy going, but placing all of these subjects in the context of a conversation makes for easier reading, and the discussion is far from dry.  It is, in a sense, philosophy at its best.  It is philosophy as the Greeks intended it - philosophy applied to daily life and daily problems.

And if I have a reservation about this book, it is only that it's a bit backward-looking.  In many of the conversations, Campbell seems to want to turn the clock back to former times, and alongside this wish there is also the requisite idealization of those former times - the idea that they were better than our own.  Such a yearning is to be expected from a man who spent his life studying myths, but I wouldn't trade the "authenticity" of the mother goddess cult for modern medicine, or the romantic longings of the medieval troubadours for modern legal systems.  These things are of a piece, and one cannot revive elements of older, more tradition-bound societies without endangering many elements of our own.  I think it's good to look back and examine where we came from, but the only way is forward, not backward into idealized eras.

But this is a small complaint, and does not take too much away from the book as a whole.  Taken as a whole, The Power of Myth is a thought-provoking book that's also very readable, and such books are few and far between.  I highly recommend it.

Books I Read During Summer Vacation

Made it to both Taipei and Kaohsiung this summer, and as a result I've acquired a lot of books.

"The Pilgrim's Progress" by Tom Bunyan

A primer on Christianity, couched within an adventure story.  This story is divided into two parts, and the second part is virtually identical to the first.  Incredibly tedious, though I'm happy to know that people don't bother with nonsense like this anymore.

"Spillover" by David Quammen

"Spillover" refers to the passing of diseases between animals and humans, often resulting in epidemics.  Consistently pretentious, often condescending, yet it does offer some fascinating insights as to how epidemics such as Ebola and AIDS come to be.  Could have been much shorter.

"The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolano

I have also read Bolano's "2666," and was intrigued enough to seek out "The Savage Detectives," a much earlier (and more complete) novel.  Unfortunately this book bored me to tears.  It's extremely long-winded, full of pointless details, and designed for those suffering from a certain amount of intellectual vanity.  Novels like this might make people feel "smart," but they sure aren't entertaining.

"A Field Guide to Radiation" by Wayne Biddle

A nonfiction introduction to radiation, written by a non-scientist.  It's not a bad book, though the author tries too hard to be funny.  He also displays a definite bias against nuclear power.  I think a more balanced account would have served the subject better.

"N-W" by Zadie Smith

A novel centered around four Londoners.  I have also read Smith's White Teeth, and this novel reminded me of that novel.  White Teeth is much better, but N-W is not bad.

"The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin (with Richard Wagner) 

A plea for a renewed program of Mars exploration, with particular emphasis on the author's Mars Direct program.  Robert Zubrin is an aeronautical engineer, formerly in the employ of Martin Marietta.  The first few chapters are very boring, but the later chapters on colonization and terraforming were interesting.