Recently in Books and Reading Category

• Arm of the Law: A new robotic deputy brings law and order to a backwoods town on a backwoods world.
• Navy Day: What happens when the army develops a new technology they claim makes the navy obsolete?
• The K-Factor: What can you do with a operable model of social movements?
• The Missplaced Battleship: A very early appearance of stainless steel rat single-handedly stalking a rogue warship.
• The Repairman: A universe fairing repair man has to fix a device the planets natives have adopted into their religion.
• The Velvet Glove: A waterproof robot, trying to make his way in a bigoted world, finds himself in over his head.

This is the book which led to the first Science Fiction film of the same name written by Harbou and directed by Fritz Lang. While the film is defiantly a classic, the medium was still in its infancy and some of the techniques of clear and consistent story telling in moving pictures were yet to be developed. In short, I have seen the film several times and while I got the gist of it the story never became fully clear until I read the book.

The book is melodramatic and the theme is a bit difficult to square with Ms. Harbou's eventual association with the National Socialists, but for anyone who wants a richer understanding of the file I would recommend the book.

A classic tail made all the more entertaining by the fact that the version I read was a small book I typeset, printed and bound myself.

Most Americans who know the name Frankenstein have a poor conception of the actual story. They are surprised to find out that the monster of the original book is not the lumbering monosyllabic hulk that served as the template for Herman Munster but rather a loquacious and dexterous giant.

Few Americans are familiar with the history of the Napoleonic wars. In fact, as I mentioned previously we don't even seem to remember much about our own war in 1812. This book would be a good start for someone with little knowledge about the time but a desire to learn more.

The book, written from the British historical perspective, Is a very good introduction to the military campaigns, especially those that came after Arthur Wellesly took to the field. There is enough historical perspective to give you some understanding of both Lord Wellington's and Bonaparte's personal histories but the reader wont come away from this book with a profound understanding of early 19th century Europe.

Thornton speaks the way Seurat painted; a point here, a point there and voilà an image emerges; and that image is invariably insightful. To try to bang his stream (nay torrent!)-of-consciousness into an unbroken paragraph seems a task worthy of Hercules, let alone trying to weave it together into a book.

First, let me say this is a successful book. Second, let me ask "who the heck edited it?" Its replete with examples like: "known [by it's acronym] FOQA for Flight Quality and Operations Assurance" which are forgivable when they fall from the pen of an author, but which smack of negligent editing when they make it to print.

Though burdened both by the task of bottling Thornton's hurricane and by woeful editing, the book is an effective clarion call to "business" to get off of its collective empirical keister and really analyze the data that surrounds it. The book is short on falsifiability and long on anecdote; but then its not the bugler's job to justify Reveille, he just awakens the army.

I was at the Half Priced Books on lane avenue looking for something by Seneca when a helpful man suggested that I have a look at this book. He pointed out that "much of it was drawn from seneca and his stoic philosophy." It was only $4 so I obliged. I'm glad that I did.

This book traces an arc through philosophy: Socrates -> Epicures -> Seneca -> Montaigne -> Schopenhauer -> Neitzche. It was my first exposure to Montaigne and Schopenhauer and taught me that I knew very little about Socrates, Epicures, and Neitzche. The language of the book made what is typically a very difficult subject very approachable.

Highly recommended for anyone who wondered why the heck we should give a crap about the famous thinkers of history.

--Prejudice of education, he would say, is the devil,--and the multitudes of them which we suck in with our mother's milk--are the devil and all.--We are haunted with them, brother Toby, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon him,--what would his book be? Nothing,--he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,--nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) throughout the kingdom.

I just finished reading Atul Gawande's "Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance." The publicity I had heard surrounding it led me to believe that, while this book was specifically about surgery and the way surgeons improve, it might be a worthy treatise on the art of improvement in general. While I didn't find its insights quite that universal there are a few points worthy of reflection. I hasten to point out that, though it wasn't quite what I was expecting, its a good read in its own right, both for the case studies of people in the medical profession who have made strides in improving the outcome of patients to the insiders view of a number of the financial and ethical issues facing modern western medicine. Well worth a weekends effort.

Bob Hanmer asked me to read an early draft of his upcoming book "Patterns of Fault Tolerant Software". Intrigued by a reference in the manuscript to "The Timeless Way of Building" by Christopher Alexander I decided to read it myself. Here is the book which, if I understand matters, inspired the software patterns movement. I'm not sure I came away from the book any better a programmer but the almost spiritual trip through the soul of architecture left me both intellectually richer, and far less satisfied with the highly efficient and dehumanizing cookie cutter existence we have been led to accept.

Just finished "How we Know What Isn't So" by Thomas Gilovich. A nice "Pop Psychology" book on the sorts of errors in reasoning that people are prone to and the forces that lead up to spurious beliefs. Give a copy to the next person who suggests that your acute social anxiety might be treated by taping a crystal to the back of your hip or screams at you that that Gay Marriage undermines the American family.