September Books

Not a bad month, but I had much higher hopes for several of these. Only the Grimes exceeded expectations, and it is a pretty frothy concoction.

Connections

by James Burke

In this bestselling book, James Burke examines the ideas, inventions, and coincidences that have culminated in the major technological advances of today. He untangles the pattern of interconnecting events, the accidents of time, circumstance, and place that gave rise to major inventions of the world. Says Burke, "My purpose is to acquaint the reader with some of the forces that have caused change in the past, looking in particular at eight innovations - the computer, the production line, telecommunications, the airplane, the atomic bomb, plastics, the guided rocket, and television - which may be most influential in structuring our own futures.... Each one of these is part of a family of similar devices, and is the result of a sequence of closely connected events extending from the ancient world until the present day. Each has enormous potential for humankind's benefit - or destruction."

Note:

Easy to read look at how discoveries and accidents have an incredible impact on progress. The adjacent possible is an incredibly powerful force for progress.

Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail

by William Grimes

The cocktail is as old as the nation that invented it, yet until this entertaining and authoritative account, its story had never been fully told. William Grimes traces the evolution of American drink from the anything-goes concoctions of the Colonial era to the frozen margarita, spiking his meticulously researched narrative with arresting details, odd facts, and colorful figures. 

The book includes about one hundred recipes--half of them new for this edition--for both classics and innovations.

Note:

Slim look at drinking in America and the evolution of the cocktail before and after Prohibition. A pleasure to read.

The Invention of the Modern World

by Alan Macfarlane

From the preface: 'This is a book which synthesizes a lifetime of reflection on the origins of the modern world. Through forty years of travel in Europe, Australia, India, Nepal, Japan and China I have observed the similarities and differences of cultures. I have read as widely as possible in both contemporary and classical works in history, anthropology and philosophy.'

Prof Macfarlane is also the author of The Culture of Capitalism, The Savage Wars of Peace, The Riddle of the Modern World and The Making of the Modern World, among many others.

Note:

Like listening to a brilliant Oxford professor go on at a dinner party. Enjoyable, but an editor might have helped.

Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of The Marx Brothers

by Simon Louvish

Strange but true: this is the first authentic account of the Marx Brothers, their origins and of the roots of their comedy.

First and foremost, this is the saga of a family whose theatrical roots stretch back to mid-19th century Germany. From Groucho Marx's first warblings with the singing Leroy Trio, this book brings to life the vanished world of America's wild and boisterous variety circuits, leading to the Marx Brothers' Broadway successes, and their alliance with New York's theatrical lions, George S. Kaufman and the 'Algonquin Round Table'.

Never-before-published scripts, well-minted Marxian dialogue, and much madness and mayhem feature in this tale of the Brothers' battles with Hollywood, their films, their loves and marriages, and the story of the forgotten brother Gummo.

Note:

Disappointing. Didn't learn much, except that they were Vaudeville veterans who gained success on the silver screen. Chico like to gamble. Not recommended

The Children Act

by Ian McEwan

Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts. But Fiona's professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. His departure leaves her adrift, wondering whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability; whether it was not contempt and ostracism she really fears. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy whose parents will not permit a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses. But Jack doesn't leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case—as well as her crumbling marriage—tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page. Note: Interesting take on aging, law and religion. Succinct, but I was expecting more.

Five Books

Cousin Meg calls me out on Facebook to respond to the "10 books that most influenced you" exercise that is all over Facebook. This is a challenge in many ways, partly because it carries the scent of self promotion, but mostly because it's hard to recommend titles about which your attitude has changed. I loved Franny and Zooey when I read it in 1986, but was not nearly as wild about it 25 years later. Same with the Chronicles of Narnia when I reread them with the OG in 2005. What does that mean? Has their influence on me lessened somehow? Am I embarrassed to recommend books that. in retrospect, don't seem to deserve the love I once gave them? It's hard to answer this question honestly.

The only books I can agree on are not really books at all: The Joy of Cooking, which I've blogged about before; and Four Quartets, which I also loved in 1986, used extensively in the vows for our wedding ceremony, and keep a First Edition of--a gift from three dear law school friends--on my desk at home. One line from East Coker--"For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." comes closer than anything (except possibly "Be excellent to each other.") at capturing how I feel about life, the universe and everything.

There is an epigram that a book is a picture of who you were when you read it. With that in mind (and inspired by the excellent 5 books site, which along with Farnam Street, are two sites I check frequently for recommendations), I thought I would list 5 books I've read in the last five years that have markedly increased my understanding of the world and the people in it. I'll get the total number of books mentioned to 10 by mentioning that the Road to Wigan Pier almost made the list, but didn't quite belong in the set:

1. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow;
2. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational;
3. Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness;
4. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel;
5. Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist.

I'm not going to call anyone out on this, but I do enjoy seeing the lists. I used to claim that the best way to assess a person was by looking at their music collection. That doesn't work so well in the age of Pandora, Spotify and Itunes, so I'll have to look for other heuristics, and this seems like a viable candidate

August Books

Thought I'd get more done this month, with three weeks of holidays and two transatlantic trips, but I spent too much time riding this and then endlessly reliving the "best day ever" with the BG. No regrets.

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever

by Will Hermes 

Punk rock and hip-hop. Disco and salsa. The loft jazz scene and the downtown composers known as Minimalists. In the mid-1970s, New York City was a laboratory where all the major styles of modern music were reinvented—all at once, from one block to the next, by musicians who knew, admired, and borrowed from one another. Crime was everywhere, the government was broke, and the city’s infrastructure was collapsing. But rent was cheap, and the possibilities for musical exploration were limitless.

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire is the first book to tell the full story of the era’s music scenes and the phenomenal and surprising ways they intersected. From New Year’s Day 1973 to New Year’s Eve 1977, the book moves panoramically from post-Dylan Greenwich Village, to the arson-scarred South Bronx barrios where salsa and hip-hop were created, to the Lower Manhattan lofts where jazz and classical music were reimagined, to ramshackle clubs like CBGBs and The Gallery, where rock and dance music were hot-wired for a new generation. As they remade the music, the musicians at the center of the book invented themselves: Willie Colón and the Fania All-Stars renting Yankee Stadium to take salsa to the masses, New Jersey locals Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith claiming the jungleland of Manhattan as their own, Grandmaster Flash transforming the turntable into a musical instrument, David Byrne and Talking Heads proving that rock music “ain’t no foolin’ around.” Will Hermes was there—venturing from his native Queens to the small dark rooms where the revolution was taking place—and in Love Goes to Buildings on Fire he captures the creativity, drive, and full-out lust for life of the great New York musicians of those years, who knew that the music they were making would change the world.  

The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804-1999

by Misha Glenny 

This unique and lively history of Balkan geopolitics since the early nineteenth century gives readers the essential historical background to recent events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region, or offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Misha Glenny presents a lucid and fair-minded account of each national group in the Balkans and its struggle for statehood. The narrative is studded with sharply observed portraits of kings, guerrillas, bandits, generals, and politicians. Glenny also explores the often-catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the Great Powers, raising some disturbing questions about Western intervention.

Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America

by Peter Andreas

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband capitalism, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism. Providing a sweeping narrative history from colonial times to the present, Smuggler Nation is the first book to retell the story of America--and of its engagement with its neighbors and the rest of the world--as a series of highly contentious battles over clandestine commerce. As Peter Andreas demonstrates in this provocative and fascinating account, smuggling has played a pivotal and too often overlooked role in America's birth, westward expansion, and economic development, while anti-smuggling campaigns have dramatically enhanced the federal government's policing powers. The great irony, Andreas tells us, is that a country that was born and grew up through smuggling is today the world's leading anti-smuggling crusader.
In tracing America's long and often tortuous relationship with the murky underworld of smuggling, Andreas provides a much-needed antidote to today's hyperbolic depictions of out-of-control borders and growing global crime threats. Urgent calls by politicians and pundits to regain control of the nation's borders suffer from a severe case of historical amnesia, nostalgically implying that they were ever actually under control. This is pure mythology, says Andreas. For better and for worse, America's borders have always been highly porous.
Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old American tradition. As Andreas shows, it goes back not just decades but centuries. And its impact has been decidedly double-edged, not only subverting U.S. laws but also helping to fuel America's evolution from a remote British colony to the world's pre-eminent superpower.

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders

by Jamie Whyte

Uncover the truth under all the BS

In the daily battle for our hearts and minds--not to mention our hard-earned cash--the truth is usually the first casualty. It's time we learned how to see through the rhetoric, faulty reasoning, and misinformation that we're subjected to from morning to night by talk-radio hosts, op-ed columnists, advertisers, self-help gurus, business "thinkers," and, of course, politicians. And no one is better equipped to show us how than award-winning philosopher Jamie Whyte.

In "Crimes Against Logic" Whyte take us on a fast-paced, ruthlessly funny romp through the mulligan stew of can, folderol, and bogus logic served up in the media, at the office, and even in your own home. Applying his laserlike wit to dozens of timely examples, Whyte cuts through the haze of facts, figures, and double-talk and gets at the real truth behind what they're telling us.