Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "review"

I hesitate to review a prize-winning book, especially one well written and insightful. The introspection of the first person character carried me on, for I could identify with his youthful doubts and mediocrities. I could also identify with him as an older person looking back on a life well-lived but questionably significant. However, too much can begin to sound like whining.

My main criticism is that the story's suspense is built on failure to communicate--a device used way too often in soap operas. Too little motivation is given for both the actions taken and the dire consequences of reactions to those actions.

I kept reading. I love well-written English--but in the end, the book didn't tell me anything useful about human nature. It merely raised questions about the author's motivation. He seemed to be more interested in trying to shock the reader than carrying his exploration of human nature to a satisfying insight. What are we supposed to learn? That we are Not designed to carry on tragedies with resignation, at least with some understanding of fate or a touch of forgiveness? Is genius our undoing? Bitterness our destiny? Our mediocrity our salvation? Maybe that's it.

New York, Henry Holt &Co.,2014.
The solution is clear now--Elizabeth Warren points the way, along with other books I have referenced in my work: Dietz and O’Neill’s Enough Is Enough: Building A Sustainable Future in a World of Finite Resources and Tom Friedman’s Hot Flat and Crowded. We need to ‘fix what’s broke’ first—usury, dishonesty and subterfuge in business, law and politics—then, with the excess money saved, perhaps we will support (even subsidize!!) education, infrastructure renewal and honest research instead of overpaying CEO’s, rock stars and ball players.

As the steady state experts say, a small difference in income should be enough incentive to inspire creative work or compensate those doing less desirable jobs. Once the playing field is reasonably level, excess money from football tickets or other popular endeavors can be made available to create jobs repairing roads and bridges, supporting motivated students, and exploring new information and technologies.

Even the tougher problems could be tackled—like the relocation needed as the oceans rise and harsh weather forces us to move north. Maybe some excess money could be directed toward rebuilding efficient rail transport and sustainable energy systems, creating jobs while curing addiction to fossil fuels that now threaten our safe and healthy existence.

I suggest reading Elizabeth Warren’s A Fighting Chance first. Her story begins with her fight against the horrifying effort to tighten bankruptcy laws and ends with her equally horrifying battle to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. She makes her points clearly by sharing the details of her personal experiences, feelings and ideas as if she were talking to a close friend. There is no doubt that her axes to grind are hewn with deep concern, honest emotion and conviction.

Most of us care about our personal ethics. We don’t lie and cheat as a matter of policy. Neither should our politicians, bankers and businessmen, Warren insists. We are better than that. We deserve and should expect integrity.

Once we regain American integrity, we can embrace Tom Friedman’s “Code Green.” We can reverse the trend away from democracy that occurs in countries flooded with too much money. He makes a strong case that it has happened with too much oil money. We can also reverse our bad example and provide the world a good example in how to create a good life for all, without using up the world’s resources.

It will take a new paradigm that gives human well-being and a healthy Earth top priority above “money uber allus.” The guidelines are crystal clear in books like Enough Is Enough. We might even find solutions to social and religious dilemmas—like education and equal rights for women—that keep the human population growing at an alarming rate.

I have decided not to review The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (Columbia University Press, 2014). Though I agree with the authors’ worry about what they call “anti-intellectualism” in current Western thinking, I will neither read this book nor recommend it. Rather, if you are still curious, I suggest doing a close read of Michael Shermer’s August 2014 Scientific American Skeptic article.

Then concentrate on reading the many thorough nonfiction studies that suggest real solutions to our many concerns, including our health problems, malnutrition, population stress and limited resources. Many such books appear in the previous reviews in this blog.

Or read our series The Archives of Varok, where solutions to our dilemmas are portrayed as realistically as possible in a fun setting so you can see what might be required to secure a long-term future. Two more books in the series will be coming out in November. Let’s focus on solutions. We don’t need more poorly presented dystopias. We can do better than they portray. The guidelines to an equitable humane future are rational and clear, though not easy.

John Cleese So Anyway... by John Cleese, all of it, almost every word, New York, Random House, 2014.

I received John’s book (“John” because I feel I know him very well now) for my birthday last November, picked it up last April, and again in May or June (I forget). Then I read a few pages every night until now, when I couldn’t put it down.

The first time I picked it up (racked with guilt because I had delayed so long after receiving such a kind gift) I wondered why I was staying awake--reading all the details about Cleese’s classmates calling him “Chee-eese! etc.” Where was the humor I expected? Why did I care that his predicament was that he was a “very tall little boy.”

The next time I picked it up, I giggled a little and realized I had missed some wonderful dry humor the first time around. It was sometimes subtle, then not, then maybe I didn’t get it. In any case, I kept reading, every night, just a few pages, until I suddenly found myself learning about how comics (namely Cleese and his friends) go about writing humor.

I also learned about persistence and hard work--hours critiquing, rewriting, letting it settle into the pages, then rereading and re-writing, sometime resurrecting old themes or dumping scripts that didn’t work.

In the end of the book, including the index at page 391, after Cleese and cohorts celebrate the Python years, the author includes (for free, because my brother had already bought the book) some scripts (too few!) he found in someone’s dark closet somewhere. I laughed out loud. What wonderful silly fun! Most of their recorded shows had been lost, since the huge old tapes were reused in those days.

Near the end, while unable to put the book down, I ran into one serious comment that reflected a concern that has left me disturbed now for some years. Cleese noted that “...while attitude to swearing and vulgarity have shifted...another set of values seems to be threatening comedy...the life-denying force called political correctness...hijacked and taken ad absurdum...”
We need more comedy these days; it helps us stay real.

Now I know why I kept reading. It wasn’t just the interesting stories about his writing and comedy career, it was his charming take-it-or-leave-it-and squeeze-it-good-when-possible attitude toward life and the English language.

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities by Caleb Scharf, New York, ScientificAmerican/Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014. Astrophysicist Caleb Scharf’s Science Book of the Year 2014 wins my award for a vibrant, readable and enjoyable history of astronomy and a comprehensive overview of the current finds that suggest answers to the “ultimate” question, “Are we alone in the universe?”

Schaft begins by reminding us of old-world answers to that question. Then he takes us beyond Copernicus and his problems with a heliocentric solar system to the Kepler telescope and its exoplanet zoo.

What delighted me were Scharf’s forays into all the difficult sciences that serve as tools for studying the universe. These include statistics, constants necessary for life, relativity, chaos, the complex nature of life, biochemistry and its requirements, as well as Rare Earth geoastronomy, requirements for Earth Equivalence, and remote clues that suggest life elsewhere.

Scharf does not dance around the facts. Space is enormous, as are energy and time requirements for traveling to other stars. He does suggest that Earth orbits in a rather special solar system, special because most of our fellow planets sail around in orbits within 10% of circular. At the same time, our Milky Way galaxy is richly endowed with other solar systems, some unexpected, some thought impossible or surprisingly different, but overall not too different from computer models of possible varieties.

The author charges ahead in covering all the possibilities for finding an answer to the big question. In the end, he stays true to his realism when suggesting two choices we will have to make, if we do find evidence of life elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. I heartily recommend this book if you have ever wondered who we are and where we seem to be.

Coal Wars: the Future of Energy and the Fate of the Planet by Richard Martin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

With good story telling, Martin paints a picture of coal's history—its hearth-warming blessings of cheap energy, its future-bashing dangers, and its slow demise, leaving too many lives disrupted. Meanwhile, our future is seriously compromised by an overdose of coal's signature, carbon dioxide.

Martin shares his personal experiences while visiting the coal country in Appalachia, Wyoming, Colorado, Ohio, and four areas in China. The picture he paints helps us understand the importance coal has played in human energy-dependent history, how it has created mining cultures whose roots go deep in China, Europe and the United States, and now why its demise is raising difficult questions.

The author doesn't preach answers at us. He makes a strong case, however, for recognizing that "market forces are going to kill off coal..." (Other sources have reported that there are more jobs now in solar than in coal, which is being out-sold by cheap gas.)

Three principles, he says, could lead to a "set of solutions." 1) Coal burning must shut down before carbon dioxide does us in: "A sustainable energy strategy requires making choices." 2) "We can't abandon the workers." They need a "GI bill" to provide support while acquiring education and training for new jobs. It would cost only 1 dollar per ton of coal. 3) "the Solution must be global," and the "...only mechanism...a price on carbon... [i.e.] stiff penalties for greenhouse gas emissions."

It's a dilemma not easily faced, for coal gave us the energy to build our technological cultures, and there is still a lot of it available. Like our dependence of gasoline and cars, it's hard to imagine how we could get along without it. But, unlike transportation, the alternatives are not only obvious but urgent, if we are to rescue the future.

Astrobiology—a Very Short Introduction by David C. Catling, Oxford University Press, 2013
I hesitate to review this extraordinary book because it is so good. Somehow, David Catling, Professor in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Astrobiology Program at the University of Washington, Seattle, has written a beautifully written, clear summary of all the basic biology and astronomy you need to now to understand current findings in astrobiology—“…a branch of science concerned with the study of the origin and evolution of life on Earth and the possible variety of life elsewhere.” (his definition.)

After a short review of other definitions and the earliest history (Thales C.600 B.C.) questioning whether “…we’re alone in the universe,” Catling discusses attempts to define life, then leads us gently into what we know about planets, stars, biochemistry, genetics and energy required for life. In the end he brings us up to date on exoplanets and possibilities for life beyond Earth.

Here’s the spoiler: Europa is his choice as “…the best prospect for life” in our solar system. Why? Read this wonderful book to review or get acquainted with the science involved in the search for the nature of our existence. He has convinced us that “Astrobiology is here to stay.”

For readers of my blog “Who’s Out there on astronaut.com: In coming blogs, I will be updating and reviewing the various topics he covers.

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou, New York, Random House, 2008.
In giving this book to my granddaughter to read, I felt, like author Maya Angelou, that I am "...giving to a person who is naturally generous...[reminding] me of a preacher passionately preaching to the already committed choir."

Nevertheless, I want to share this book. It's written in short chapters that resonate with deep tones. It's sentences are also short, and they are direct. Unmistakable in both fact and meaning. No guessing is needed to relate to her experience. Perhaps some will trigger a memory or inspire a thought.

Angelou speaks of truth, and she means it. She talks about people who "...allow their tongues to wag with vulgarity..", which really expresses their self-humiliation, "...but we are brought low by sharing in the obscenity."

In sharing her life experience so profoundly and so honestly, she provides an example for all of us to follow, especially in these times when our public figures ignore the values that made this country great