Nonfiction Book Reviews

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This is part of my Fun Fridays series. If you’re interested, be sure to check out my other children’s book reviews.

My brother-in-law and his partner live in Norway, so when I saw How to Draw Norway’s Sights and Symbols by Melody S. Mis, I immediately decided to check it out. I wanted to learn more about this beautiful country.

How to Draw Norway’s Sights and Symbols, despite the title of the book, did focus on quite a bit more than just how to draw a particular item. It started out by outlining the history of Norway from 10,000 BC to present day. The first “how to draw” section did not appear until page 15. Far from being disappointed by this, I thought this added a lot to the book. What is the point of learning how to draw something that you don’t know anything about?

As for the drawing portion of the book, I have to say that I am conflicted about it. When I think of a kid’s book on drawing, I think in terms of more simplistic items being drawn. Some of the items to be drawn were simple (like the national flag of Norway) but some of the items to be drawn would have absolutely killed me off, and I’m an adult. Granted, not an especially talented adult when it comes to artistic abilities, but I have considerably more hand-eye coordination than your typical 7 year old. At least I hope so.

On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure I can fault the author, Melody Mis, for this, considering the fact that she was not in charge of creating the coastline for Norway (click on the thumbnail to your left for a larger version so you can see exactly how difficult the Norway coastline is.)  Some of the other challenging items that you are shown how to draw: The purple heather flower, the Borgund Stavkirke, and more.

I enjoyed the book and certainly learned a lot from it.  The ages it is appropriate for is 9 - 12 years old, and I would suggest sticking with that unless your children are especially talented readers and artists.

This is part of a large series that includes other countries like Italy, Thailand, Japan, Pakistan, and more.  More than countries, however, the series has also branched off to include a book on each state in the United States, so you can find a book on Ohio, New York, Michigan, Idaho, and of course the rest of the states.  Pretty cool, eh?

When looking through those books, it looks as if part of the series is geared at 4 - 8 year olds, and part of the series is geared at 9 - 12 year olds.  That seemed rather strange to me, but I wasn’t able to personally look at those books to verify this.

Overall, I give How to Draw Norway’s Sights and Symbols 4.5 stars.  The illustrations to show the kids how to draw various items are a little small, and again some of the items are overly complicated, but other than that, I thought the book was well-done, full of interesting information, and a nice take on the “normal” series that you see about different countries around the world.

Hava

PS If you’re into children’s books, there is another terrific site here at Today you should check out.  Laura writes children’s book reviews exclusively, and has a fun site going.  Happy readings!

Okay, all of you germophobes, you can’t leave yet!! Why Dirt is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends by Mary Ruebush is especially important reading for the Clorox Sanitizing Wipes/Purell gel sanitizer type people, which germophobes usually are.  Yeah, you know who you are.

Why Dirt is Good was written by a doctor who is a microbiology and immunology instructor at Kaplan Medical and has taught about immunology, infectious disease, and pathology in medical schools for 30+ years.  So she isn’t some quack who is spouting of her own ideas of what she thinks we ought to do - she has years and years of experience backing her (and her admittedly insane ideas).

So here’s the book in a nutshell:

Our immune system is like anything else - it gets better and stronger the more it is used.  An immune system has to learn how to fight off bugs, and it has to do it regularly to stay in good shape (just like an Olympic gold medalist couldn’t take off an entire year from training and then still compete in an event.)  When a child is not exposed to dirt and germs at a young age, then the immune system doesn’t learn how to fight the viruses and bacteria, and the child will actually be more prone to illnesses when they get older than a child who was exposed to a lot of dirt n’ germs.

In other words, those parents who are clean freaks who sterilize everything that goes into their child’s mouth in order to “keep them from getting sick” is setting that child up for a lifetime of sickness.  Ironic, is it not?

But having said that, this doesn’t mean that the author was advocating that you have your child never wash their hands or send your child outside with specific instructions to eat a cup of dirt every day, but she was saying that you as the parent should not freak out when your child does the things that children do (eat mud pies, eat food dropped on the floor, share their food with others, etc).  Don’t sterilize the binky/pacifier every time it drops on the ground.  Wipe it off on your pants and plug it back in!  Your child will thank you later.

Ruebush also spent a lot of time talking about the anti-bacterial and anti-microbial hand sanitizers that you see all over the place.  She said something that probably won’t be trumpeted in the next Purell ad you see on TV: These sanitizers work really well in the laboratory but have shown virtually zero effect in real life.

From page 111:

The primary ingredient in the hundreds of liquid antibacterial soaps on the market today is triclosan.  In much higher concentrations, triclosan is used in hospital settings - by surgeons scrubbing before an operation, for example.  At those concentrations and in that setting, triclosan kills bacteria across the board.  At the much lower concentrations in soap made for the consumer use (usually 0.15 percent), the amount of triclosan is just right for creating resistance to it.

What the story there is: Bacteria and viruses are some of the best organisms at evolving out of anything residing on this planet.  They can literally evolve within a couple of hours.  You cannot possibly keep ahead of them by producing a new anti-bacterial in the lab every time something evolves.

And the bacteria do it by adapting to the agents trying to kill them.  There is the phrase, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” right?  Well, that phrase is absolutely applicable to bacteria.  When you use a low level anti-bacteria on bacteria, it kills off the weak strains of bacteria and leaves the more advanced and potentially deadlier bacteria alive, and now resistant to whatever it was that you used to try to kill it.  The more you use anti-bacterial soap, the more deadly the bacteria gets, and the less effective that soap is.

Seriously, it’s just frustrating isn’t it?

To find out lots more than you ever really wanted to know about bacteria and viruses, you need to read Why Dirt is Good.  It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I had thought I had known but now know is false.

Well, now for the negatives.  The margins are huge, and the book is short (roughly 170 pages without counting the glossary at the back) so there really isn’t much to it.  At times, it felt like an overblown magazine article, where the author just tried to take a topic and stretch it out as far as possible.  There were some things that were repeated too much in my ever so humble opinion.

If they had shrunk the margins down to normal size, resized the dimensions of the book itself into the “normal” (and bigger) size for a book, and had taken out all of the repeated stuff, this would have been a very short book indeed.

Does that mean that I don’t think it’s worth it to buy?  At retail ($19.95) probably not.  But if you can find it on discount, then I’d go for it.  There really is a lot packed into these pages, much more than what I’ve covered above.  Or just do like I did and check it out of the library.

I give Why Dirt is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends 4.25 out of 5 stars.  If you’re a germophobe who uses every sanitizing product under the sun, then run, don’t walk, to the bookstore and buy it.  Or order it online.  It will change your way of thinking, guaranteed.

Hava

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For my honors class in college, a speaker came in and talked to the class about something you don’t normally hear about much: Slavery right here and now, in the year 2009.

Unfortunately, I missed class that day, so I didn’t get to hear him speak. As make-up work for missing the class, I was assigned a video to watch on this global pandemic. I have posted the video below for all of you to watch.

WARNING: This video will make you sick to your stomach, not so much because of the graphic pictures in the video (although there is a little of that) but because of the realization that all of this has been happening, and you have done nothing to stop it.  At just over 5 minutes, it is well worth your time to watch.

After watching that video, I wanted to know what I could do. I also wanted to find more information on the subject, since this was literally the first time I had heard about this. Slavery? Here in America? C’mon, what are you talking about? Slavery was abolished! President Lincoln? Emancipation Proclamation? Doesn’t any of that ring a bell?

Yeah, that was me. I was shocked and disturbed to the tips of my toes that this was still happening today. I went to Amazon to see if I could find a book with more information on modern-day human slavery, and I found Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade - and How We Can Fight It by David Batstone.  I just finished reading it today.  Batstone is the head of a website, Not For Sale Campaign, and now does tours around the United States speaking about human trafficking.

The book Not for Sale was an eye-opening look at all the forms of human slavery, from women being forced to serve as sex slaves in a brothel, to whole families being locked inside of a rice factory for years, to children being forced to fight as soldiers in rebel armies in Africa.  There doesn’t seem to be a corner of the world that is not affected in some shape or form by this.

The book did have some ADD tendencies to it, however.  The author would start out a chapter talking about sex slavery in Asian countries, and throughout the chapter would jump from the story of someone who was forced into slavery, to a person who is fighting it as an abolitionist however they can (by providing aid to those who escape, by helping people escape, by providing legal representation to those who escaped, etc), and then on to the general landscape of the problem - why it is thriving, what has made it hard to fight, etc.

Each new section within the chapter meant a jump to a new point of view on the problem, and he regularly jumped back and forth between the different point of views until wrapping up the chapter (usually) with the escape and freedom of the slave.

When I first started reading, I thought, “Who is this?  What is he talking about?  What happened to the person whose story he just left?”  After I read through several chapters and got more used to this writing style, it didn’t bother me as much, but I still cannot say it’s my favorite writing style, and I wish he had done it differently.

Despite this minor flaw, the book was still excellent.  If you want a broad overview of the worldwide problem of human trafficking, then this is the book for you.  If you are outraged by the video above and you want more information and you especially want to know what you can do to make a difference, then you need to read this book.  This is an excellent introduction into the world of slavery, and will help you better understand the global dynamics of it.

At the end of the book, he has a listing of the various agencies fighting this problem along with their websites so you can find a group nearby that you can join to help fight this.  Don’t think this problem exists in your backyard?  Check out Slavery Map, where you can search the globe and see where the various incidents have happened.  I had two in my state alone.

There are books that make you laugh, there are books that teach you stuff.  There are books that broaden your horizons.  But Not For Sale will change your life.  Buy it today.  After you’re done reading, pass it on to a friend or neighbor, and encourage them to continue passing it on when they’re done.  The more we know about this problem, the better we can fight it.  Knowledge is everything.

If you don’t see it, then you aren’t looking for it.
~ modern slavery in a nutshell

Havs

PS My hometown is going to get a visit from David Batstone and his entourage very soon.  If any of you who are reading this are from my hometown and want more information, call me or send me an email and I’ll gladly give you the info.  I’d love to post it here but for privacy reasons will not.

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Note: The following is part of my intermittent Fun Friday series where I write reviews of children’s books.

I love children’s books because they take incredibly complicated subjects and distill them down into bite size pieces that you can understand and learn from without having to have a Masters degree in the subject.

Ox, House, Stick: The History of our Alphabet by Don Robb is just such a children’s book. It is about how our alphabet came into being, something I was discussing with someone just the other day. Why, I wondered, is our alphabet in the order it is in?  Why doesn’t our alphabet read as A, C, Y, W, F, Z…

You get the picture.

According to Ox, House, Stick page 19:

No one knows why the letters of the alphabet appear in the order they do.  They’ve kept pretty much the same order since Phoenician times.

Well, at least I’m not the only one who doesn’t know the answer to that question.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because it took a fairly complicated subject (the history of written language) and broke it down into understandable and interesting chunks.  I enjoyed looking at all of the colorful and well-drawn illustrations scattered throughout the book too.

The picture below is actually the back cover for the book, and shows the first two letters of the alphabet (A and B) in a variety of languages: Hebrew, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian.  It’s interesting to see the similarities and differences between the alphabets.

Does it make me a real geek that I think lists like that are interesting?

Don’t answer that.

This would be a great book for a teacher in a classroom (geared for ages 8 - 12), a homeschooling mom, or just someone like me who loves to learn about a variety of subjects without having to invest months or years of my time to learning every nook and cranny.

I give Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet 4.75 out of 5 stars.

Havs

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I first heard about Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing “Hoax” by Philip Plait at the local planetarium when my husband and I went to watch a movie called (you guessed it!) “Bad Astronomy.” It was a movie made to show in a planetarium, so as you might imagine, it was not exactly on par with Hollywood blockbusters. But still, it was enjoyable, and I learned a lot from it. It also made me want to read the book.

The premise of Phil Plait’s book, movie, and website (Bad Astronomy at Discover Magazine,) is the fact that there are a lot of flat-out wrong ideas when it comes science, and more especially astronomy.  Plait is working hard to debunk the conspiracy theories that surround things like the moon landing, and to help people realize that there are common myths (like you can only balance an egg on the spring equinox) that are completely untrue.

In short, he’s a skeptic and a debunker of pseudo-science.

Since I enjoy that kind of thing, I really enjoyed the book and the movie.  There were certain things that he covered that I had honestly never thought about.  Take, for example, ships flying around in space.  Watch any famous movie or TV series (like Star Wars or Stargate) and you’ll see ships flying, then slowing down and stopping next to the mother ship (or whatever).  Notice when you watch those scenes that as far as you can see, there is nothing to slow the ship down!

In space, in order for a shuttle to slow down, it has to fire thrusters at the front of the ship in order to produce force that would send them backwards.  Or in the case of them already going forward, a backwards thrust would cause them to slow down and eventually stop.  But in all of the Hollywood movies, the ships simply stop, as if the pilot stepped on the breaks or something.

After Plait pointed this out to me, I have to admit that it’s been bugging me ever since.  If you like sci-fi movies or TV shows, do know that reading this book may take away some of that joy.  Just a head’s up in case this sort of thing would annoy you instead of provoking humor (ha-ha!  This movie is so stupid - it breaks every natural law in the book! kind of humor.)

Some of the other bad science that Plait tackles: UFO’s, naming stars after yourself, the supposed “fake” moon landing, and a whole lot more.  I will say that there was hard-core science in the book in some spots, and since I have a hard time following that sort of thing (science is interesting to me but science doesn’t always make sense to me) I will admit that I skipped some paragraphs.  Anyone who is more of a science geek than me won’t have any problems with it.  For the most part, it was written so that anyone could understand, even the non-science geeks of the world.

And, speaking of science, there are some great science blogs here in the Today.com network that you might want to check out - both Science Fun and Rocket Scientist are well-written and educational blogs in the science field.  Also, I have read and reviewed other astronomy related books here on Nonfiction Lover, like Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe and Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking that you might want to check out if science and astronomy are a passion of yours.

Overall, I give Bad Astronomy 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Whether you’re a science teacher, debunking fiend, or just enjoy astronomy, you’ll love Bad Astronomy.

Havs

I saw Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross one day while doing check-in.  Since I am a big fan of Google (I use Gmail for my email service - Gmail ROCKS! - and faithfully use only Google to search the internet) I thought it would be interesting to learn more about this company that has played such a large role in my online life.

Overall, Planet Google was interesting.  It didn’t quite progress the way I thought it would - I thought it would start at the beginning, with the history of the co-founders, and then progressing linearly through time up to the point of publication.

Instead, it had very little personal history about the co-founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) and instead of progressing forward through time, the book was organized around ideas that Google has experimented with, from Google Earth to Gmail to YouTube.  Each chapter focused on an idea, or focused on the competition Google has faced from Microsoft and Yahoo.

It made for a very quick read (I sat down after work tonight and finished the whole book in one sitting - about 2.5 hours or so) and I think that reading it so quickly made me realize something that would have otherwise been lost reading it over the course of a week or a month: Randal Stross repeated himself several times throughout the book, almost as if he had written each section separately, and then at the end combined it all into one book.

There were a couple of instances where he would explain a concept in-depth in one chapter, and then explain that same concept again a chapter or two later (in much less detail, but still, there was more explanation the second time around than was needed, for sure.)  If I had taken 6 weeks to read the book, I never would have noticed this.

Despite these shortcomings, I enjoyed it, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the fundamentals of Google than I did before I read it.  I use Facebook regularly, so I was really surprised to learn about the rivalry between Facebook and Google.  I had no clue before I read Planet Google.  Nor did I know that Microsoft has some monetary stake in Facebook, or that Microsoft and Google are rivals (I don’t pay much attention to rivalry between tech companies, what can I say?)

But while there were events or happenings that the author covered in great detail (like YouTube, and more specifically, making YouTube monetarily solvent) there were other Google-related items that the book did not touch on at all, or only mentioned once or twice in passing, like Blogspot and Google AdSense.  Those are both huge parts to the Google world, and yet they garnered zero attention by Stross.

I think that is one of the book’s biggest downfalls - it tended to be fairly superficial.  I feel like he skimmed through a lot, but then repeated other things (how is YouTube going to make money?) too much.

There were events that the author referred to as being a “huge deal” and I had no clue they had even happened, let alone was affected by it happening.  I think there has been more than one technology bubble - for someone wrapped up in the Google world, perhaps these things were a huge deal, but to the rest of us, it was negligible at best.

Planet Google would obviously would not appeal to someone not interested in the tech world - this is not a book I could recommend to just anyone in off the street.  But for the right person, I think this would make for a fascinating read.  Since I fall into that group of people interested in both technology and the story behind the companies that shape our world today (I really need to read a book about Microsoft!) I give it 4.25 stars out of 5.

Havs

I first heard about Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan when I read Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales.  Gonzales referred to Callahan’s experience quite extensively in Deep Survival, and I thought it sounded like a fascinating story.

Turns out, it was.

Callahan was an avid lover of the sea.  He would spend weeks out in the ocean on his boat, go into port to get some supplies, and then after just a day or two, head back out into the ocean.  He lived on the sea like you and I live in our homes.  He was extremely knowledgeable about the plant and animal life that lived and thrived out in the vast space he called the wet desert (an apt description: There you are, surrounded by miles and miles of water, but there is nothing to drink).

He entered into a race but there was bad weather from the start.  Undeterred, he went ahead with it, a decision that almost cost him his life.  The race was an extensive one and included crossing several oceans, and he had the smallest ship in the race.  He was also all alone.

Six days into the race, the weather became stormy again and the seas were rough.  Callahan did all that he could, and then he went to bed.  He was awakened with a jolt - he later figured out that the most likely cause of the accident was a whale hitting up against the side of the boat.  Either way it happened, the end result was that his boat was sinking, and he needed to get off of it as soon as possible.

There are quite a few things that contributed to Callahan’s survival against odds that have killed every other person ever faced with them:

*He was extremely knowledgeable about the ocean and how to survive in its environment.
*He had bought a six-man raft instead of the standard four-man raft after trying to climb into a four-man raft with two other friends. Apparently, life boats are like tents: You never actually want to go by the count on the outside of the box. *He had not stocked the “normal” emergency kit and left it at that. Instead, he had bought the standard kit and then added a whole lot more, throwing the whole bundle into a sea bag that he was able to grab and go with when the ship started to sink. Because of this extra preparation, he had things like a spear to kill fish with and other items he would have died without.
*He kept his cool and did not panic when the boat started to sink, allowing him to retrieve extra supplies that were very useful.
*He kept his desires to drink fresh water contained - he knew he had a very limited supply of water and was only able to procure more fresh water at a slow rate, so he rationed the water even when every fiber of his being screamed out for more.
*He was creative and smart with his hands, finding fixes for problems that would have been the death of almost anyone else.

As I read the book, I kept thinking, “Okay, what would I have done in that situation? How would I have handled it?” I compared myself to Callahan throughout, and let me just tell you right now: It’s unlikely I would have lived through the night of the boat sinking. If I had been lucky enough to scrap by through that, I wouldn’t have lasted the week.  Depressing but true.

I don’t have the knowledge of the sea and the fish that he did (I know I would have ate a poisonous fish, not realizing what I was doing), I don’t have the ability to fix things easily with my hands (I am a thinker, not a doer, at least in that sense), and most of all, I don’t keep my calm in tense situations. I would have panicked straight out of the box and died.  Lovely, eh?

Other than the interest that the book provided by helping me understand myself better, I also enjoyed it because Callahan is an excellent writer. Just imagine, for a moment, that an entire book is centered inside of a very small area (perhaps the size of your couch) and that there is only one person in that whole book. No one else to talk to, no relationships to develop - nothing but this guy and the ocean.

In most author’s hands, that would have been a recipe for disaster. Talk about boring. But Callahan did a great job of keeping the story line interesting throughout, and making you feel as if you were really living everything that he was. I found myself a lot more thirsty than normal while reading Adrift, which, when I realized what was happening, made me laugh. But after reading so much about fresh water and high temperatures, you can’t help but hit the faucet often while reading.

I also enjoyed his writing style. He has an almost poetical style of writing, and was very enjoyable to read.  He did not focus on just mere survival for the duration; he also spent quite a bit of time contemplating his life, the grand scheme of things, and of course, the great circle of life.  Not boring or dry, but definitely thought-provoking.

My only (small) critique was that there were parts of the book that were confusing to me, since I have only been on a boat a couple of times, and I certainly have no nautical knowledge. It wasn’t enough to make me not want to read the book, but I do have to say that there were some paragraphs that I skipped over, because I just didn’t have any idea of what he was talking about. Luckily that didn’t happen too often, and quickly petered out after his boat sank and he was just on the raft.

I can’t say that’s really his fault - after all, I’m the one who is knows nothing about boats.  But I thought I ought to warn you in case you get very easily frustrated with that kind of thing.

Overall, I give this book a 4.75 out of 5 stars. If you are at all interested in survival stories, or you just want a good autobiography to read, be sure to check out Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for 36 weeks - I am positive you’ll love it.

Havs

Although I tend to focus on adult nonfiction books, I do occasionally review children’s nonfiction books too. This is one of those books - if you’re interested, you can find other reviews of children’s books here.

Before I started at the library, I had never heard of the “You Wouldn’t Want to…” series, but now I see the books pass through the library all the time.

You Wouldn’t Want to be an Aztec Sacrifice by Fiona MacDonald is just one of many in the series - other examples are You Wouldn’t Want to be a Viking Explorer or You Wouldn’t Want to Work on the Railroads.  They tend to focus on the more gory aspects of history; the things that a boy in elementary school would think is fascinating, but which the “normal” textbooks tend to pass over.

In You Wouldn’t Want to be an Aztec Sacrifice: Gruesome Things You’d Rather Not Know, the author takes you from the beginning: Who the Aztecs are and who “you” are (yes, everything happens in the present tense, and it all happens to you - the author tells you “Now you are doing this.  Now you are feeling that.”  Etc.  Except not in a boring way, promise.)  Eventually, you get captured in battle and eventually end up as a human sacrifice to the gods (and in case you were wondering, no, no last minute save happens - you really do die as a sacrifice.  I had kinda thought that a “But wait!” moment would happen, and you’d be saved.  Nope - you die.)

The illustrations are bright, colorful, and eye-catching.  I found a two-page spread online that I could download, so here’s two pages in the middle of the book:

I found that the book was both gruesome and humorous. That’s not normally a combination I find in reading materials, but I think the book will strike just the right chord for its intended audience - 4th to 6th grade boys. It is historically accurate (okay, not so much the pictures per say, but the facts and history in the book) and for kids who normally find history “bor-ring!” and “Can’t we do something else?” this might be just the ticket to spike their interest.

MacDonald’s right - I don’t want to be an Aztec sacrifice, but I did enjoy this book, and I would want to read more in the same series.  With an eye towards my eventual job as a teacher, I have to say that I’m excited about this series - I think this is a great way to connect with kids who might not otherwise care.  I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

Hava

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales is, as far as I know, the only book I’ve read and reviewed for this site because I’ve had to.  Well, I had to read it for my honors class at college - I guess I didn’t have to review it also, but what would be the fun in that?

Anyway, Deep Survival is probably not a book I’d normally just pick up and read, mostly because I haven’t ever focused on survival books before.  But after reading this one, I’ve decided that I’ve been missing out - it seems like there are some extremely interesting stories in the survival genre, and I’ll probably start picking up some books on the subject, starting with Adrift (a book that Gonzales talks about some in Deep Survival.)  So it was good for me to read something outside of my “normal” comfort zone!

Deep Survival is not what you’d think - it isn’t a book about how to survive out in the wilderness, and it isn’t simply a retelling of the stories of people who have lived through extreme conditions (although there is a lot of that in there).  Instead, it approaches survival from a psychological perspective - why is it that a well-trained Ranger would drown in a river while a five-year-old girl who is lost out in the wilderness would live for days?  Or why would a scuba diver pull off his mask while deep in the ocean, when the air tank was more than half full?

It all comes down to the mind, and things like “emotional bookmarks” and “cortisol in the hippocampus.” It was quite fascinating to find out that there was a rational reason for people behaving irrationally.

The style of writing is very poetic - he is almost lyrical at points.  It isn’t a writing style I normally encounter, so I found myself slowing down in order to understand what he was trying to say, instead of tearing through the book at break-neck speed like I normally do.

Here’s a good example of the writing style:

There goes another one now - ka-chunk-whoosh! - in a sleet storm of metal particles and this amazing hissing scream like someone’s tearing a hole in hell.  Then two angry afterburner eyes seem to hang motionless in the darkness, as the bat shape shinnies up a pigtail of smoke and is gone.
Deep Survival, page 23

I’ll admit it - I like being able to read stuff at break-neck speed.  It means I sure get through books a lot faster. So the writing style took some getting used to, but by the end, I was enjoying it.  It was probably a good thing I slowed down - there is so much in Deep Survival to digest that I suggest that you read it in small chunks if you end up picking it up.  This is definitely not what I would term a “fast read” nor a “read it and forget it” type of book.

Deep Survival made me rethink things I had done in the past, and realize why I did what I did. Case in point: A couple of summers ago, I was tubing down a river with my siblings when I got caught on a submerged log and was flipped out of my innertube.

All rational thought fled my brain, and I screamed my lungs out. I couldn’t get a grip on the river floor because the current was too fast, and I was sure I was going to get sucked into a whirlpool and die. For whatever reason, my brain took this as a good reason to scream. Maniacally. If I had spent half as much energy trying to get back into the innertube as I did screaming, I probably would have been fine. But no, I was completely and utterly panicked, and I could think of nothing but bellowing, as loud and as long as I could.

My brother eventually got over to me and helped me back into my innertube, but it wasn’t until hours later that I calmed down.  I was in a literal state of shock all that time.  Well, when I read the book, I realized something sobering: If I am ever caught in a really bad situation, I am not likely to live. The people who live are able to keep calm, cool, and collected, and are able to think rationally under extreme pressure. I am none of the above, and cannot think at all under extreme pressure, let alone rationally. Go me.

If you enjoy survival stories, if you like a poetic style of writing, and/or if you like discovering what makes the human mind tick, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this book. I give Deep Survival 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Hava

Earth: The Biography by Iain Stewart and John Lynch was intellectually stimulating.  I know that sounds boring, but just stick with me here.

I had it sitting on my bookshelf for forever (I won’t tell you how long because my boss at work reads this blog sometimes, but believe me, it was a while) and I decided that I was going to clear off all of the books on that shelf that have been there too long.  A clean start with the New Years, and all that.

Boy am I glad I did.  I love it when I read a book, and walk away having a better understanding of how the universe as a whole works.  I knew, in a fuzzy sort of way, that nature is intricately intertwined, and that the world is one giant balancing act, but I don’t think I truly understood it until I read this book.

I think the best part of this book is how it makes the connections between various sciences.  It isn’t just about space, or the beginning of life, or the ocean, or volcanoes, or hurricanes, it’s about all of this and more.  It’s like the joke we’ve all heard a million times, about the blind men who were each trying to describe an elephant, but were only describing the part that they themselves could feel.  Although each blind man was technically getting it right, it’s only when you combine the trunk with the tail, ears, legs, and body that you actually know what an elephant looks like.

I feel like I’ve been learning about each individual part of this world, without being able to “see the big picture.”  Earth: The Biography has shown me the big picture.

This book becomes a grand slam when you add in the beautiful pictures and great writing style.  I was never bored nor lost even once while reading, which you have to admit is quite the feat, considering I am not a geologist (nor do I play one on TV).

Here’s a quotation I loved:

In his book Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle, the esteemed American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould offered perhaps the most resonant of metaphors, compressing 4.5 billion years of planetary history into a 24-hour day.  Our planet’s birth takes place on the stroke after midnight, and the “Cambrian explosion” - in which complex animals first start crawling about - doesn’t happen until 10 p.m. 

Dinosaurs don’t show up until after 11 p.m. and are snuffed out 20 minutes before midnight, while modern humans arrive on the scene in the last two seconds of the day.  Human civilization - some 6,000 years of empire, art, religion, and politics - is squeezed into the last tenth of a second.

Talk about mind-boggling.

Earth almost makes me wish we could really go hog wild and actually get cable television, so I could watch the National Geographic channel.  I think I’d really like it.  Unfortunately, I can just see me spending lots of time watching junk instead, so we’d better not.  I am a reader, through and through, so perhaps I wouldn’t get as much out of the National Geographic channel as I do the books anyway.

Earth: The Biography wins the rare 5 out of 5 stars rating from me.

Hava

I picked up Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand while doing check-in.  When I saw the book, I thought, “I’ve always wanted to read that book.  I wonder if I should take it home with me.”  Within seconds, I was pulling another copy of the book out of the book drop.

“Hmm…” I thought.  “Kinda weird two people would return the same book on the same day.”  And then I pulled out another copy.  And another.  All together, I pulled out seven copies of that book - I’m guessing that some local group got together and read it as a book of the month or something. ??? But I took it as a sign that I ought to get my rear in gear and read this book that was apparently so good, they just had to make it into a movie.

Now that I’ve read Seabiscuit, I understand why it became a Hollywood blockbuster.  This book is absolutely fantastic.  The writing is superb, the pictures are terrific (I read the “Special Illustrated Collector’s Edition” which I highly recommend - the pictures definitely added something special to the book) and the pacing impeccable.

By the end of the book, I felt like I knew Seabiscuit as well as an old friend.  And when he died (sorry if I ruined the ending there, but this story did take place in the ’30s) I cried.  I know that’s rather ridiculous (what was I expecting to have happen?) but it’s just that this horse had so much spirit, it was heart-breaking to finally say goodbye to him.

One thing that made this book so fantastic is that it wasn’t just about Seabiscuit.  It was also about the Great Depression, about horseracing, about what it takes to be a jockey, and especially about the people around Seabiscuit, who saw his true potential.  Seabiscuit was doomed to a life of obscurity, until these men saw something in him that no one else did.  I felt like I got to know the men who loved Seabiscuit, and came to love them too.

A couple of things to keep in mind: I don’t particularly count myself as a huge horse lover.  My grandfather had horses that I rode as a child, and they were quite simply some of the orneriest things you’d ever come across.  I got stepped on and thrown off more times than I care to count.  So yes, you can love this book even if you don’t love horses.

Secondly, I have never watched Seabiscuit the movie, so I did not pick up the book with preconceived notions.  Since I have never paid attention to the world of horse racing before, I knew almost nothing about Seabiscuit.

So if even someone like me (with little knowledge or understanding of horses, horse racing, or Seabiscuit in particular) could absolutely love and adore this book, it seems like pretty much anyone could.

Now I just need to watch the movie.  While I’m watching Seabiscuit, I also need to watch Marley and Me, another book that I’ve read and reviewed that’s been turned into a movie.   I really loved Marley the book, so I’m hoping I’ll love the movie just as much.

As for Seabiscuit: An American Legend I give it an easy 5 out of 5 stars.  Heck, I should probably give it a couple of extra stars just ’cause.  If you haven’t read Seabiscuit yet, you need to.  It is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the past year.

Hava

Okay, first off, I just wanted to say I have never read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.  I have heard that A Brief History of Time is supposed to be the more technical book out of the two, whereas the The Universe in a Nutshell is geared towards people who are not first and foremost scientists.

It is for that reason that I don’t envision myself ever reading A Brief History of Time, since I hardly understood The Universe in a Nutshell.  Here is an example of a mind-bending point that Hawking makes in Universe:

Yang-Mills theory is an extension of Maxwell theory that describes interactions in two other forces called the weak and strong nuclear forces.  However, ground state fluctuations have a much more serious effect in a quantum theory of gravity.  Again, each wavelength would have a ground state energy.  Since there is no limit to how short the wavelengths of the Maxwell field can be, there are an infinite number of different wavelengths in any region of spacetime and an infinite amount of ground state energy.  Because energy density is, like matter, a source of gravity, this infinite energy density ought to mean there is enough gravitational attraction in the universe to curl spacetime into a single point, which obviously hasn’t happened.
~The Universe in a Nutshell, page 46.

Obviously.

I should confess: My last science class was in the 10th grade, where I took biology.  I’m not exactly a science expert.  But if I understand right, I’m just the type of person Hawking was trying to target with this book - someone interested in science and wanting to learn more about the deeper principles and ideas being explored, but who doesn’t have a PhD in anything, let alone theoretical physics.  (I didn’t realize until I started adding links to that sentence, how many book reviews I’ve written on here about books on science, as compared to books about art [Art books reviewed: 0.]  You can tell what I am really interested in.)

In Hawking’s defense, these ideas are extraordinarily complicated, and that’s not exactly his fault.  I can’t imagine a harder task than trying to explain quantum physics to your average Joe, and that’s what Hawking was attempting to do.

I do give him kudos for sprinkling humor throughout the book.  He talks about bets that he’s made with other scientists on obscure scientific theories, added lots of drawings with little green men in them, and then topped it all off with dry humor comments that added spice to the book.  Here’s an example:

It would be possible to detect the radiation from much smaller and hotter black holes, but there don’t seem to be many of them around.  That is a pity.  If one were discovered, I would get a Nobel Prize.
~The Universe in a Nutshell, page 120.

Oh shucks.  If only there were more black holes in our general vicinity.

I read on Amazon that some people were upset with how much Hawking “dumbed down” the science, and wrote scathing remarks that if you knew anything about science, you could just skip this book because nothing in it would be new.  Apparently, I know less than nothing about science (no surprise there).

In the end, I give The Universe in a Nutshell 4 stars out of 5.  If you’re really into this kind of thing, and have the patience to try to unravel some of the theories that Hawking presents, then by all means, enjoy.  There is a lot of information to digest here, if you have the grits and determination to do it.  I liked learning what I could from it, but I doubt I’ll pick it up again.

Hava

PS If you are a fan of all things science like I am, make sure to check out a blogger in the Today.com network who also happens to be a rocket scientist.  Her blog rocks, and is not only informative, but very funny. Hi Stephanie!

The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man’s Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Mystery by Bob Brier and Jean-Pierre Houdin was an incredibly interesting read.  I literally couldn’t put it down.  It all started when Jean-Pierre Houdin (who was not an expert on Egyptian anything but was a well-known and successful architect in France) watched a special on TV about how the Great Pyramid was built.

Except as he watched the show, he realized that the two explanations given (the two that were always given as being the only possible ways it could have happened) didn’t make any logical sense.  His builder’s mind went to work, and he realized that there had to be another way.

A normal person would have said, “Oh, that doesn’t make sense.  I wonder how it really happened?” and then went on with their lives.  Not Houdin.  He quit his job, sold his house, and spent years working on the problem.  The subtitle to the book said “one man’s obsession” but I think that’s putting it lightly.

Houdin put together incredibly detailed computer models and approached the problem from the point of view of an architect, not an Egyptologist.  He had no preconceived notions of what the Egyptians did, and therefore came to a completely new and novel explanation.  Along the way, he met Bob Brier who helped his ideas get into the scholarly world and helped him receive funding to pay for the work.

The great part was how the book was written.  I felt like I was reading a murder mystery novel; that I had to turn the page to find out what happens next!  It was fast-paced, and the ending was surprising.  I learned a ton about Egypt (and the pyramids in particular) in the process, without ever feeling like I was actually learning.  It was all just so interesting.  I found myself wanting to read every third page outloud to my husband because it had something new and exciting on it.

My only complaint was that the author reiterated the two old explanations for how the pyramids were built several times, along with why it was that they couldn’t be true.  He must have explained it three times, at least.  The first time, I said, “Wow, I didn’t know that!”  The second time, I thought, “Didn’t he already cover this?”  The third time I just started skipping paragraphs until I could find something new to read again.

I don’t know if the author forgot that he had explained that earlier in the book, and so had added it again and again, or if he just thought it was so darn important that he needed to explain it multiple times to make sure his audience truly understood, but either way, that was annoying to me.

But honestly, that was my only complaint.  If you have even the slightest interest in the pyramids of Egypt, or of architecture, or if you’d enjoy a clean murder mystery (no blood in sight!) you’d love this book.  Published in October of 2008, it’s the very newest theories on the pyramids, and I for one found it fascinating.  Even National Geographic’s gotten in on the act and has put together a special about it called Unlocking the Great Pyramid that goes on sale on January 20th.  Perhaps I’ll request that the library bring it in…

I give The Secret of the Great Pyramid 4.75 out of 5 stars.  Loved it.

Havs

PS For anyone interested on what exactly Houdin’s great theory was, please check out the comment section. And while you’re there, leave a comment.  I love to hear from my readers!

Note: I got most of the way through this post and realized that I had forgotten to give a definition for intelligent design, for those readers out there who are not into the latest fads of science.

Basically, Intelligent Design (ID) is the belief that there are complex systems in this world (they use the eye as an example) that could never have evolved on its own.  Ergo, there has to be an intelligent designer who has done all of the major changes in the life forms here on Earth - they believe that every time a new species either appeared or disappeared, it was done by the direct hand of a god (and they specifically say that it isn’t necessarily the Christian God - just a god.)  Intelligent design is in direct competition with evolution as a way of explaining the history of life on Earth.

Okay, now we can proceed with my book review…

******

This year in the honors program, we are studying evolution which has been fascinating for me.  Perhaps I slept through evolution in my science classes in high school, or maybe it’s part of the knowledge that I’ve since forgotten that I even learned, but either way, I know pretty much nothing about evolution.

So when I saw Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul by Kenneth R Miller while doing check-in, I thought that it’d be a great book to check out and read, so I could get a better grounding on the subject.

The main thrust of the book is this: Evolution is a scientific theory that has been proven over and over again in the labs and in different disciplines of science.  Intelligent design, on the other hand, has absolutely no scientific proof backing it up, despite the fact that its proponents claim that it is a scientific theory.  Miller goes through and explains the intelligent design point of view in-depth, and then he very neatly rips it to shreds.

In the debate today on evolution vs intelligent design, the lines have been set: If you believe there is a God, then you must be against evolution and for intelligent design.  And if you’re for evolution and against intelligent design, well then, you must be a soulless atheist.

Which is what makes this book stand out from the crowd: Kenneth Miller is a devout Christian.  He believes in God.  He also believes that a belief in God and a knowledge that evolution is a true scientific principle are not at odds with each other at all.

The really great part of the book is that this is not made a central point of the book.  Instead, he discusses both evolution and intelligent design from a scientist’s viewpoint, and leaves religion pretty much out of the equation.  About two-thirds of the way through the book, he does discuss his belief in God, and it runs about five pages.  For any atheists or agnostics reading the book, they would not be offended by this section, and could easily skip it without feeling like they’re missing large chunks of the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style of the book - Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University, and has obviously spent a lot of time breaking down difficult concepts, because I was never lost once while reading this book, which says a lot for his ability to teach.  I hate it when I read a book that is supposedly intended for a general audience, but it written so far above me, the only way to comprehend it is to read it with a dictionary in the other hand.  You don’t have to worry about that with this book.

I have to give two giant thumbs up for this book.  If you’ve heard about the debate, and you’re wanting to see what all the fuss is about, this is the book to read.  If a non-scientific mind like mine can read it and understand it and enjoy it, I think pretty much anyone out there could too.  And this is such an important debate in today’s world, you don’t want to go into it blind.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

Hava

I picked up Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches for Teach for America by Donna Foote on a whim.  I had heard about Teach for America in passing a long time ago, but I would have been hard pressed to say anything more than it was some sort of organization that took people who weren’t teachers but did have a bachelors degree and put them into classrooms.

Other than that, I didn’t know a thing.

One of my tests of whether a book is well-written or not is whether someone who has no knowledge on the background of a subject can still sit down and enjoy the book.  Relentless Pursuit passed with flying colors.

Donna Foote takes the reader through the first year of teaching as a Teach for America student, giving the perspective and insights from a handful of teachers.  She also showed the point of view of several of the administrators of the schools, along with the founder of the Teach for America company, Wendy Kopp.  Because it was able to cover the situation from such a wide variety of angles, by the end, I felt like I had a great grasp on how the company works, as opposed to if I had simply read an autobiography of one of the teachers in the program.

Unfortunately, it’s greatest strength (variety of viewpoints) was also its greatest weakness: I tended to get confused about who each person was.  If I was going to read this book again, I’d do it with a scratch piece of paper and take notes about each person and their personalities.  That way, I could keep up with the book better.  But I tend to be one of those people who gets names mixed up very easily, so this may be a Hava-only problem.

Since I live in boring Idaho, where everything is relatively safe and steady, I think the most eye-opening part of the book was the description of the school and area that the teachers were teaching in: Locke High School, in Los Angeles, California.  The idea behind Teach for America is to take educated adults (with bachelor degrees), give them a summer of training on how to be a teacher, and then put them into the worst schools in America, in an attempt to improve that school.

The teachers sign a contract saying they’ll teach for two years, and then they are actually encouraged to leave and get into business, etc, as normal.  Teach for America has figured out that if educated businessmen and women were out in the corporate field with an in-depth and personal insight on our failing schools, then they would be a better position to help those failing schools get better.

So Teach for America has a two-pronged approach: Send the teachers in to help the schools in the short-term, and then send those teachers out into the business world to help educate everyone else as to what needs to be done.

Rather ingenious, I have to say.

So when the teachers get sent to the “worst schools in America,” we’re talking some really scary places.  Locke High School is in the middle of the Crips and Blood gang territory, along with quite a few other gangs, meaning that just trying to walk to school can be extremely dangerous.  As Foote pointed out in one section, the kids are not stuffing their backpacks full of books to take to school, but rather clothing, so they can change clothes as they walk through different gang areas.  That keeps them from getting killed for wearing the wrong color of t-shirt.

If only that was an exaggeration…

As you can imagine, if you’re worried every day about whether you’re going to live or die, and trying to survive gang wars, actually learning anything in class would be at the bottom of your to-do list.  Staying alive is a lot more pressing.  So here you have a group of teachers who are idealistic, and wanting to teach the students so they can get out of Los Angeles and actually make something of themselves, but how do the teachers reach the students who have better things (like living) on their minds?

It definitely made for an incredibly interesting book.

It didn’t end with a happily-ever-after conclusion - some of the teachers quit part way through the year, incredibly disillusioned and simply ready to go home.  Some of them quit at the end of the year and went to other similar organizations like Green Dot, to see if they could make a difference there instead.  Locke High School got embroiled in a political battle, and the whole school basically ground to a halt for the next year as people were fighting over who was going to control the school.

No, it did not end happily ever after, but I think that’s the reality of dealing with real life, instead of Hollywood.  Life is messy, and Teach for America is not immune from that.

If you’re interested in the program, you must read this book.  If you want to have an inside look at one of the most troubled schools in America, Locke High School, then you don’t want to miss this book.  If you’re interested in school reform, or the state of education today, this book would be an excellent way to gain some basics on the ground.  And if you’re interested, even a little, in being a teacher, this book (despite its depressing nature) will make you say, “I can do this, and I need to do this!”  It manages to be inspiring even as it is depressing you.

Overall, I have to give Relentless Pursuit 4.5 out of 5 stars.  It made me want to be a teacher myself, although I think I would pass on Locke High School.

Hava