A Modest Construct

¶ To Your Scattered Bodies Go

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer: Publisher: Collins; Year: 1971/1974; Pages: 208

Philip José Farmer’s To Your Scattered Bodies Go is yet another in a long list of influential science fiction that I keep meaning to read. It won a Hugo in 1972, and represents the first in a series of books known as Riverworld. As with all good science fiction (I don’t know how many times I’ve said this), it’s not even particularly science-fictional except in narrative skeleton, but instead spends most of its time exploring sociological issues.

§7190 · August 23, 2011 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, fiction, reviews, science fiction

¶ 1776

1776 by David McCullough: Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Year: 2006; Pages: 400

I read McCullough’s biography of John Adams three years ago and found it every bit as amazing as the Pulitzer committee did. In the course of describing John Adams’ life, especially his role in the Continental Congress, involved no small number of words about the Revolutionary War; however, Adams being a congressman and not a military man, the martial details of that time period were largely absent from the book.

1776 was, apparently, written as a sort of companion piece to that biography. It’s both trademark McCullough and also somehow disappointing.

§7207 · August 18, 2011 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, history, nonfiction, reviews

¶ Everything Is Obvious

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer by Duncan J. Watts: Publisher: Crown; Year: 2011; Pages: 352

There must be something about Dan Gardner that coerces me to read his topics in pairs. When I read Gardner’s last book, The Science of Fear, I immediately read Physics for Future Presidents as well, which had a fair amount in common.

Now Gardner’s latest book, Future Babble, is largely a sociological study, and what should I read immediately afterward but another sociology book, with no small amount of overlap. In fairness, Watts’ book ends up being the superior of the two.

§7186 · August 13, 2011 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, reviews, science, sociology

¶ Future Babble

Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Are Next to Worthless, and You Can Do Better by Dan Gardner: Publisher: Dutton; Year: 2011; Pages: 320

Several years go, I read Dan Gardner’s The Science of Fear, which belongs to a genre of nonfiction I internally think of as “iconoclastic popular science”, or the “Everything you know is wrong” genre. Written for lay persons, such books purport to de[con]struct popular misconceptions about how things work, or to explain to the reader how they are being mislead, either on purpose or accidentally, by people who know better.

Other popular entrants in this genre are anything by Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakonomics books by Levitt and Dubner. By itself, the inclusion of a book in this genre doesn’t say anything about its quality or merit; what does seem to be the case is that, either because of the subject matter or because of the various empty suits in charge of the book’s publication, the marketing and even the content of the books tend to be afflicted with a snobby snideness at best and a conspiratorial air at worst.

§7178 · August 5, 2011 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, reviews