This is a provocative and ambitious (and lay) summary of an attempt to create a science of history by an evolutionary biologist. It is compelling and well-written. (Though my copy isn’t so well edited…) It is also flawed, which it basically must be given what he is trying to achieve. It’s absolutely worth your time, …
Tag: Books
Out of Gas (2004) by David Goodstein
Note: I read this book in 2020. It was published in 2004. It’s not that wise to read a book about energy reserves and climate change 16 years later, when the situation is continuously evolving. This is a book by a physicist about the energy crisis caused by “peak oil” with some discussion of climate …
Ficciones (1941, 1944, 1956) by Jorge Luis Borges
I read “The Aleph” possibly in university or, if not, then a few years later. I thought it was pretty crazy and incredible and resolved to read more Borges. And then I just didn’t for 15 years or so. (Not entirely true: I stumbled upon one other story – a late one – at some …
At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010) by Bill Bryson
Full disclosure: I am a big fan of Bryson’s writing style and eat-up everything I’ve read by him. So i’m predisposed to like this book. But I must say that this is one of his lesser books and it feels like it’s a book at which a concept was created to fit content that was …
John Dies at the End (2009) by David Wong
Full disclosure: I didn’t read this when it was on the web, before it was published. But I saw the film at Midnight Madness TIFF in 2012. I don’t really remember the movie much any more but my review suggested I enjoyed it except for two things: 1) the CGI (which I remember being awful) …
The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells
This is a landmark novel which manages to still be pretty entertaining but has dated in a few ways which make it kind of hard to appreciate how important it probably was when it came out.
How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So kids Will Talk (1980, 2012)
Full disclosure: I have no children, I am not a teacher and I spent virtually no time around children. So I am not the book’s audience. Why did I read it? Because my father recommended it me for as a good tool for communicating better.
The Loved One (1948) by Evelyn Waugh
This is a mildly amusing pitch black comedy about the American funeral industry and the British in Hollywood. (And American advice columnists.) It’s pretty slight and it feels like Waugh didn’t exactly know what kind of story he wanted to tell for this. (There are three or four main topics in a book that is …
The Great Canadian Bucket List (2013) by Robin Esrock
I’m of two minds about this book, which was a gift to me who knows when. (And, weirdly, many years after I drove across Canada.) On the one hand, it feels like a bit of a affiliate marketing gimmick, and some of the places and things on the list appear to be here to make …
Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace
Take that David Chang! SPOILERS: The end of this review contains a relatively massive spoiler.
Seven Seconds or Less (2006) by Jack McCallum
For many people this is the definitive basketball book since The Breaks of the Game. It has been written and talked about so much that it was unavoidable that I would have preconceived notions about it and that it would inevitably not live up to those notions. Shock of all shocks, it is different than I …
All Who Go Do Not Return (2015) by Shulem Deen
This is an excellent, heartbreaking and infuriating memoir of a man’s loss of faith and subsequent expulsion from an extremist religious sect. I stumbled upon this book due to a Reply All episode (which I would also recommend) and I’m so happy that happened. This is not a world I know anything about so I am happy …
The Enigma of Reason (2017) by Hugo Mercier, Dan Sperber
I liked it so much, I bought the book!
The Game (1983) by Ken Dryden
I grew up in a baseball family, my dad was concerned with teaching us how to play baseball, we watched baseball and we heard about old baseball players. I collected baseball cards, including those of players who had retired or died before I was born.
The Body: A Guide for Occupants (2019) by Bill Bryson
Please note: I am a big fan of Bill Bryson as a writer, I eat up basically anything he writes. So I’m perhaps a little to predisposed to like this. I had to take biology in high school because it was a mandatory part of the curriculum where I lived at the time. I hated …
Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (2002, Kathleen Dalton)
At long last, I have finished this mammoth, exhaustive one-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Given the depth of this one, I have to wonder about the detail of multi-volume biographies. Anyway, why would I read such a thing? Well, I read this because TR is my dad’s favourite president. I had mixed feelings about him …
Republic of Lies (2019, Anna Merlan)
This is a survey of contemporary American conspiracy theories and the extent to which some of them can be found in mouths of the powerful in America. It is well-written, engaging and sometimes quite funny. But if you’ve read anything about American conspiracy theories before, there isn’t much new here.
Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up (2019, Dave Meslin)
Full disclosure: I live in Toronto. I have met the author, Dave Meslin, at least once and possibly up to three times. Moreover, I used to volunteer for a group he founded (but no longer ran when I was a volunteer). So that both makes me likely biased in favour of his ideas and part …
On Trying to Publish My Fourth Book
I published my first book in 2011. I worked for five years on it and made a lot of stupid decisions, particularly with regard to the publisher. But in the next couple years I pumped out two other books, on some kind of crazy roll. All three were basically self-published, though my first book was …
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (2018, David Reich)
This is a fascinating, if overly academic, examination of the emerging study of “ancient DNA” that is transforming our knowledge of our past. The book covers how mapping the genome is allowing science to prove or disprove long held theories about human migrations and how old populations interacted.
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (2008) by Mark Harris
This is an excellent and enthralling survey of the five films nominated for Best Picture for the 40th Academy Awards, a symbolic moment in the history of Hollywood when both “new Hollywood” and “old Hollywood” films were up for Best Picture. The movies are Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle (seriously), The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat …
LikeWar (2018) by PW Singer and Emerson T. Brooking
This is a terrifying and depressing book about the weaponization of the internet, and social media in particular, by countries and other actors, in order to alter what the average person thinks is “true” or “factual”. The good news is that this isn’t necessarily the most rigorous analysis, meaning that some of their most dire …
Intelligence: All That Matters (2015, Stuart Ritchie)
I am of a generation where skepticism over IQ was widespread. I don’t know where it comes from exactly but I know that it is everywhere. Essentially I was raised with the idea that IQ had been “debunked”. The reason I read this book is because I got into an argument with someone and afterwards …
A Fine Mess: The Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer and More Efficient Tax System (2017, T.R. Reid)
Weaponized Lies (2017) by Daniel J. Levitin
This is a layman’s summary of how to understand probability and statistics and other critical thinking tools Levitin feels are necessary to have in the era of “Post-Truth”. It’s very much meant for the lay reader and it’s likely an expert in statistics or (especially) probability will be bored and possibly even annoyed. At this …
The Poorhouse Fair (1958) by John Updike
Updike is a great literary stylist. Even in this very early novel, he does an excellent job. His sentences are often beautiful. And even when they are not beautiful, they are so full of detail about the person and/or the scene that they leave a vivid picture in the mind. I am prone to imagining …
The Soul of Basketball (2018, Ian Thomsen)
This book is basically meant for me as the Mavericks’ championship was the greatest thing to happen in my adult sports fan life prior to the Raptors winning recently. So I should love this. But I don’t quite. I’m going to try to articulate why.
When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981, 2001) by Harold S. Kushner
I have been incredibly lucky in my life. I was born into privilege (middle class/upper middle class in one of the safest large cities in the world) and I have been very lucky in terms of personal tragedy: I have suffered few major injuries/illnesses, and my family has been pretty much free of them as …
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis (2019) by Jared Diamond
This is a fascinating, flawed examination of national crises which is really a plea for human beings to better handle climate change (and other major global crises Diamond perceives).
Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side (2019) by Julia Shaw
So I listened to the audio book, which I think made a pretty big impression on me. I think I might have enjoyed the book more had I read it instead. This is a wide-ranging examination of the nature of “evil” from the perspective of psychology and, occasionally, philosophy. (Nietzsche gets a lot of references.) …