This short book was a nice companion to Moby-Dick or, the Whale by someone who is enthusiastic and steeped in the nautical sides of the book. Like MobThis short book was a nice companion to Moby-Dick or, the Whale by someone who is enthusiastic and steeped in the nautical sides of the book. Like Moby Dick it has lots of short chapters, many of them about half quotes from the book itself. I found the context interesting, including the fact that the first version was "The Whale" and was a more straightforward whaling story but then he struck up a friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and that helped transform the book into what we know today. I wish he had included more bio, context in the literature of the time, and reception all of which I found interesting but too short. Instead a lot of it was literary criticism which was fine but not as interesting to me....more
Short but wide ranging, Artificial Intelligence is a sober, balanced and deeply informed survey of Artificial Intelligence--both how it does it, what Short but wide ranging, Artificial Intelligence is a sober, balanced and deeply informed survey of Artificial Intelligence--both how it does it, what it does, and its implications for law, the economy, society, and the future. Jerry Kaplan believes it will be transformative but does not overhype it. And while he considers some of the broader philosophical questions around issues like consciousness, he also points out it is fortunate that we did not call airplanes something like "mechanical birds" because we would still be debating whether or not they truly could be like birds, something we would have avoided if we had used terms like "machine learning" or "symbolic processing" instead of "artificial intelligence."...more
Coco, Jessica, Mercedes, Serena, George, Cesar, Lourdes. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc does an amazing job bringing all of them--and dozens more--to life in tCoco, Jessica, Mercedes, Serena, George, Cesar, Lourdes. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc does an amazing job bringing all of them--and dozens more--to life in this nonfiction account of growing up in the Bronx in the 1980s and 1990s. Written in extraordinary detail, sometimes mind numbing but that is partly the point, it often seems like a more rich and detailed account of their lives than I could possibly remember of what I did last week or the week before. The book begins in media res and ends abruptly, presumably more dictated by the author's writing schedule than any natural ending to the story--and it being real life there is no natural end to the story because it is not a story.
I appreciated that the book was written with no editorial commentary, no attempts to draw larger lessons, almost no links to the broader debates and changes going on at the time--except to the degree they were directly perceived and affected the participants (e.g., the work requirements in welfare reform). All of that made everything much more credible than if the author had an offer perspective. And, in fact, some of it is more complicated than one might think.
Even absent editorial commentary, many of the injustices of the system are completely apparent and it would take a hard hearted reader not to react with anger. At times I was uncomfortable being a voyeur, unsure if everyone wanted to be depicted in this way, and found the absence of the author in some ways odd--she describes every detail of Coco's day and everyone in her apartment, for example, except presumably for the several hours she spent talking to the author. And was she trying to help or just observing? No great answers to these questions and I certainly will not be the one to judge from a huge distance. But I admit to wondering.
This is one of the must reads of the last quarter century, I had been told to read it repeatedly but only finally got around to it. It is long, but every page is gripping and if there were another 500 or 1,000 pages covering the next 19 years I would read that immediately as well....more
"[A]t the end of the twentieth century the [American] Creed was the principal source of national identity for most Americans. Two factors enhanced its"[A]t the end of the twentieth century the [American] Creed was the principal source of national identity for most Americans. Two factors enhanced its importance. First, as ethnicity and race lost salience and Anglo-Protestant culture came under serious attack, the Creed was left as the only unchallenged survivor of the four major historical components o American identity. Second, the Creed had acquired renewed status, comparable to what it had in the Revolution, as the defining characteristic distinguishing America from the ideologies of its German, Japanese, and Soviet enemies. Hence many Americans came to believe that America could be multiracial, mutiethnic, and lack any cultural core, and yet still be a coherent nation with its identity defined solely by the Creed. Is this, however, really the case? Can a nation be defined only by a political ideology? Several considerations suggest the answer is no. A creed alone does not a nation make."
Samuel Huntington has been provoking me since I first read (and met) him in college. It's been a long time since I've read anything by him but this 2004 books is as or more relevant--and provoking--as when he wrote it. Some of the references are a bit dated (the aftermath of 9/11 looms large in the book) but overall the struggle over what American identity is and ought to be is even stronger today than it was when Huntington wrote.
Huntington's argument is that the United States as we know it was founded with Anglo-Protestant values that gave rise to a set of political beliefs. He does not sugarcoat America's history, writing about the pervasive racism and exclusion that helped created the country--for example pointing out that Irish, Italian, Slavic and Jewish immigrants all became "white" but by "accept[ing] the racial distinctions prevalent in America and embrace the exclusion of Asians and the subordination of blacks."
He chronicles the peak of those views as the period after World War II where the entire country came together but then their fragmentation when elites gave up on them and instead supported both a multiple-identity version of Americans divided by race and ethnicity at the same time that they embraced a transnational vision of either a cosmopolitan world where everyone shared the same values--either because America imported them or because it imperialistically exported them.
In the course of this Huntington discusses the rise of hispanic immigration, bilingualism, affirmative action, and many other hot button topics and how they changed rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s.
He also documents the increasing gap between elites who are unpatriotic, don't see America as special/different and the people who, according to the polls he cites, are more comfortable with basic patriotism and less comfortable with immigration, affirmative action, liberalism and cosmopolitanism. He argues that the decline in trust for government and other elites is because of this increasing disconnect.
He presciently warns about the rise of a Trump-like figure who tries to define America as literally about a particular ethnic group and argues that the antidote to this is to explicitly embrace more of the importance of religion in national life and the values of anglo-protestantism but not the group itself because he hopes "the WASPish descendants of the founders [will] become a small and uninfluential minority."
As someone who is not remotely religious but ethnically Jewish I find something off-putting about the notion that religion and culture should be the backbone of American life. I do not think Huntington himself intends to exclude anyone but it is hard to understand how his cultural vision could be implemented while retaining the subtlety that prevents that from happening. The America Huntington is worried about seems wonderful to me--cosmopolitan, diverse, welcoming of immigrants, and more.
But, I am also mindful of his warning that political ideologies are not enough to tie a people together. And that if people do not feel a sense of shared kinship and nationality they will lose any ability to work together, to support each other, to engage in redistribution and investment in opportunity and more. I am also mindful that I am more like one of the rootless cosmopolitan elites that Huntington is concerned about than the people as a whole.
I'm not sure of the solution. One part has to be a strong celebration of the American Creed, something that has been called more into question lately. This need not be triumphalism or naive acceptance, instead treating the creed as an incomplete, imperfect project that America is forced to live up to. Another part is a certain patriotism, like you feel in a baseball park when they sing the national anthem or do "hats off for heroes" celebrating a member of the military or honor nurses who were at the frontlines fighting COVID.
That may not be enough. I don't think Huntington's solution is viable but a lot of his data, evidence, history and challenges are definitely worth seriously reckoning with....more
The second part of That Arab of the Future is just as good as the first. A memoir told through the eyes of a half-Syrian, half-French boy brought to SThe second part of That Arab of the Future is just as good as the first. A memoir told through the eyes of a half-Syrian, half-French boy brought to Syria by his father as he observes his father's irrational love of Syria, Assad's dictatorship, his appalling school, and frankly not much of any sentimental value--not even his trips to France to see his grandparents. The drawings and the text work well together and you feel the character from the first part growing up into his own opinions, ever so slightly, leaving me hoping for more parts of this compelling memoir....more
“GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History” lives up to its name in every respect. Diane Coyle situates the story of the development of GDP in the history“GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History” lives up to its name in every respect. Diane Coyle situates the story of the development of GDP in the history of the actual economy and economic attitudes of the last 250 years. In particular, she emphasizes that GDP is not a natural concept but one that was constructed and the construction has evolved over time to include services (originally thought to be unproductive by Adam Smith and, as late as the 20th Century, the Soviet Union), the government (which became important in the 1930s), financial services, R&D and other intellectual property (in the United States) and illegal goods like drugs and prostitution (in Europe).
Coyle also evaluates the many criticisms of GDP, endorsing some tweaks (e.g., reducing the valuation of financial risk taking, reflecting natural resources depreciation, and doing a better job tracking home production) but rejecting wholesale replacement of the concept with something like happiness or other welfare measures. Because, as she argues, GDP is not a measure of welfare but of production—albeit with somewhat arbitrary boundaries for what constitutes production.
Coyle is affectionate but not uncritically in love as she worries about the increasing difficulties of valuing the explosion of varieties and customization and free goods as the economy becomes increasingly intangible oriented. This discussion was one of my few quibbles with the book because she was uncharacteristically uncritical in reporting the various measures of underestimated productivity without a fuller discussion of some offsetting factors (e.g., cannot just value the internet but also need to factor in reduced time on other mediums), the ways in which the measurement issues are not entirely new (e.g., radio and TV were a free goods too), and some of the evidence that mismeasurement may have declined recently. I also wished she had included some discussion of noise in GDP measurement and alternative measures of the size of the economy, like Gross Domestic Income (GDI).
Overall, I highly recommend the book. Economists and other already proficient with the concept of GDP may be able to skim some of the more elementary material but I, at least, learned a lot from this lovely little book....more
Everyone should read The Righteous Mind. It is among the best works of social science I have read in a long time and also among the most important. ItEveryone should read The Righteous Mind. It is among the best works of social science I have read in a long time and also among the most important. It is mostly firmly grounded in social psychology research (I say mostly, see caveats below) but also traverses in an erudite manner across a number of disciplines. It is also really well written, with each part organized around a metaphor that is used really well to explain and persuade about the material. But underlying these metaphors is a serious amount of research.
The first part is about the intuitionist model of moral psychology, based on research that our morality is something we feel intuitively and then come up with rationales to explain it. The intuitions are the elephant and the rationales are the rider, also called our inner press secretary or inner lawyer. Haidt's research in this section appears very sound but it is also positive not normative. I don't fully relate to Haidt's critique of reason as a source or morality, in fact he himself seems to come back to reason as a basis for social morality at the end of the book, but he does introduce a number of interesting ideas, including the difference between harm-aversion moralities and moralities more concerned with protecting the sacred.
The second part of the book develops the theory that we have six different moral tastes. Haidt argues that liberals experience fewer of these tastes, mostly care, while conservatives have a richer palate that also includes loyalty, authority and the sacred. In the first part of the book Haidt describes himself as a moral relativist but in this part he seems to prefer the conservative approach to morality. Or at least argue that it helps them win elections. A lot of counterexamples come to mind (many of which Haidt himself acknowledges) like liberals treating the environment as sacred and expecting loyalty in opposition to what they consider bad. And some of it reads like something I have experience a lot where one side things it has better policies but is losing because it does not communicate as well, particularly communicate with values. Haidt is stronger when he is doing social science and describing than when he thinks he has an idea that would help tip the balance for a Presidential campaign.
The third part of the book strays the furthest from Haidt's research and is a little more speculative. He rejects the rejection of group selection in evolutionary theory, argues we have evolved at the group level over the last several thousand years to be "groupish", or at least 10% groupish (bees) and 90% chimps. This sociality, Haidt argues, is what allowed humans to evolve into the most successful mammals. In contrast, he quotes someone pointing out that no one has ever seen two chimps carrying a log together.
At the end, Haidt has a plea for everyone to understand each other better. In many ways I think he does a good job and is sympathetic towards many of the ideas in liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism. At times he is more about policy specifics, but mostly it is grounded in the deeper moral motivations. He himself ends up arguing that we should use utilitarianism to evaluate public policies but not necessarily to motivate our own actions. And most importantly, he teaches us to understand that much of any rational conversation is not taking place on a rational level and how to understand and engage with the non-rational side....more
Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Among the best narrative nonfiction books I have ever read, perhaps the best. Common Ground is very long (I mostly listened bWow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Among the best narrative nonfiction books I have ever read, perhaps the best. Common Ground is very long (I mostly listened but partly read it over the course of two months), but I would not have parted with a page of it. Sometimes you get the point of a book quickly but it has lots of padding. The point of this book was how complex race relations in general, and busing in particular, were in the 1960s and 1970s in Boston. Establishing and understanding that point took inhabiting the minds of several different characters from several perspectives and watching them change over the course of a decade. Moreover, every time Anthony Lukas introduces anything new he goes back to its origins and full history, making the mini histories of Irish, Black Bostonians, the Great Migration, The Boston Globe, the Charlestown high school, Judge Garrity, The Boston Globe, etc. etc. etc. each incredibly interesting in its own right and an important part of the overall story.
The book centers around three families: a Black family in Dorchester who have children that are bused to school in Charlestown, a working class Irish family in Charlestown that protests against busing but the daughter comes around to be more supportive of it, and a liberal lawyer/political aide/law professor that moves to the South End but gets increasingly concerned about crime, becomes a semi-vigilante, and eventually leaves for the suburbs. Lukas shows each of them, portrays them with sympathy, in stories that are heartbreaking, suspenseful, moving and painful (OK, I had a synonym for that already but it deserved to be said twice). Much of it seems like history at this point but too much of it is still too present as well.
I appreciated that Lukas had essentially no editorial interjections, no perspective that I could discern, just a narrative that the author was sharing to help readers make up their own minds--or unmake up their minds....more
A memoir in graphic novel form of a half French, half Syrian growing up in France, Libya and Syria in the late 1970s/early 1980s with a pan-Arabist faA memoir in graphic novel form of a half French, half Syrian growing up in France, Libya and Syria in the late 1970s/early 1980s with a pan-Arabist father and less-than-enthusiastic mother. It is funny, moving, the art is excellent, overall at the same level as the best graphic novel memoirs including Alison Bechdel and Gene Luen Lang (both of whom have blurbs on the back)....more
The opening line of this book sets out its ambition: "This book aims to change the way you think about globalization." And I would say it largely succThe opening line of this book sets out its ambition: "This book aims to change the way you think about globalization." And I would say it largely succeeds through a combination of economic history, trade theory, well deployed descriptive statistics, observation, and--in the conclusion--a certain amount of imagination....more
A powerful eyewitness account of the first year's of the civil war in Syria. Janine Di Giovanni does little if any exposition or current events, insteA powerful eyewitness account of the first year's of the civil war in Syria. Janine Di Giovanni does little if any exposition or current events, instead just jumping into journalistic accounts of aspects of the conflict from the perspective of a variety of different people--with a heavy emphasis on relatively graphic accounts of torture, rape, killing, and the like. As powerful and important as these stories were, however, they felt missing some broader context and (as horrible as this is to admit) there is a even a certain sameness to much of the account. I preferred A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS which covered similar territory (but across more of the Arab countries) for its combination of current events and narrative. And neither comes close to the beauty of The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between, a memoir centered around Libya....more
The Return was beautiful, moving, angering, informative, and fully absorbing from beginning to end. A memoir that is centered around Hisham Matar's reThe Return was beautiful, moving, angering, informative, and fully absorbing from beginning to end. A memoir that is centered around Hisham Matar's return to Libya in the wake of the revolution, a country he left as a boy, to find out what happened to his father, a dissident who had disappeared into the regimes prisons in 1990. In the course of the book he tells his own family history, his father's history, about his relatives, depicts the brutality of the Qaddafi regime, and the hope and tragedy of the uprising against it. The story moves back and forth in time and is told, in part, through the perspectives of the people he is learning from. It has a simple beginning--his return to Libya--but no obvious middle and certainly no simple ending. Much of the telling is refracted through Matar's own reading and writing of literature and his father's love of poetry, all of which add insight, depth and beauty to the telling.
I had very high expectations for this book but it did not live up to them. The book is a history of human interest in time travel and the modern interI had very high expectations for this book but it did not live up to them. The book is a history of human interest in time travel and the modern interest in time--from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine through a smidgeon of the modern physics debate on the topic. It combines history, cultural history, science, philosophy and literary criticism over a wide range but all pointed at a narrow--but elusive--topic. Some of the chapters work well, like the one about paradoxes in time travel. But others do not, like a few chapters that have substantial portions devoted to plot summary and light analysis of particular novels. And altogether it did not leave me with a strong or new view on the question.
And a minor point, in the beginning Gleick points out that Wells invented both the idea of a "time machine" and also of a "time traveller". He then provides various earlier references to people traveling in time but doesn't have a fully satisfactory way to distinguish them from Wells other than his terminology. I think the difference might be control--Scrooge is taken to see visions of the past and future against his will while the Time Traveller in Wells deliberately creates a machine and chooses the date. But I'm sure there are many exceptions to that rule too....more
Democracy for Realists is a timely book of empirically and theoretically rigorous political science. It's strong suit is criticism--Christopher Achen Democracy for Realists is a timely book of empirically and theoretically rigorous political science. It's strong suit is criticism--Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels painstakingly amass evidence and arguments against what they describe as the two leading theories of democracy. The first is the "folk theory" that Democracy allows the will of the people to be expressed, something they dismantle with evidence on voters' lack of knowledge in both choosing their representatives and, especially, in referendums. They also throw in some Arrow Impossibility Theorem arguments around the indeterminacy of the "will of the people" even if everyone was well informed but had views that differed along multiple dimensions. The second theory they dismantle is the agency theory or "throw the bums out", where they show that much of the voting based on performance is actually about luck (e.g., natural disasters or shark attacks) not performance. I would note, however, that they may overstate their case--disasters shift votes by a few percentage points, which can tilt an election but only because the two sides were within a few percentage points of each other to begin with which, itself, merits an explanation--like the median voter theorem.
The book attempts to develop an alternative theory based on people's group identities and social psychology. They have some fascinating analysis--for example, the shift of white Southerners from the Democratic to Republican Party in the Civil Rights era was concentrated less among people who had specific issue preferences on racial issues and more among people who identified as Southern. They also find that Democratic and Republican men have views of abortion that line up with their political leanings, but that it was their views on abortion that changed to match their parties not the other way around. As interesting as all of this is, Achen and Bartels essentially admit is just an early attempt at an alternative normative and positive theory of democracy. And the policy recommendations in the book are limited to the last few pages, are relatively thin (e.g., less economic inequality and money in politics), and do not necessarily follow uniquely from the analysis itself....more
A thoughtful set of pieces about science fiction by Margaret Atwood. It begins with a lecture series where she muses on genre fiction vs. literary ficA thoughtful set of pieces about science fiction by Margaret Atwood. It begins with a lecture series where she muses on genre fiction vs. literary fiction, how her own work has been interpreted, the history of utopias/dystopias, and the ways in which the classic superheroes are the heirs of Greek myths and fit into the science fiction tradition. The second set of pieces are reviews, forwards and the like of a range of books--including She by H. Rider Haggard, Ursula Le Guin stories, The Island of Doctor Moreau and some more obscure books. The last part was a series of her own miscellaneous short stories (plus one plucked from The Blind Assassin), all of which were very enjoyable examples of a variety of sub genres in science fiction....more
I don't regret being baited and switched into reading this book. And I have only myself to blame for being baited and switched. I expected the book t I don't regret being baited and switched into reading this book. And I have only myself to blame for being baited and switched. I expected the book to be more about Ramanujan but instead it was mostly a memoir of a mathematician named Ken Ono. But the fulcrum of the book is Ramanujan. Ono was brought up by Japanese immigrant "tiger parents" who pressured him into being a mathematician. He rebelled to the point of dropping out of high school. But then he found a letter that Ramanujan's widow sent to his father thanking her for a donation to build a statue of him and that set his mind off--with a lag--so that he found himself constantly coming back to Ramanujan, both his life and his specific, unproved ideas. The book includes a 50 page mini-biography of Ramanujan and an appendix that attempts to explain some of his specific ideas. What makes the memoir so interesting is that it is not about a top mathematician but instead about someone struggling to join the profession and contribute and about the struggles, semi-failures, and semi-successes that go with it. My disappointment was that, other than the appendix, it attempts to cover very little of the substance of Ono or Ramanujan.
And if you are looking for a biography of Ramanujan, The Man Who Knew Infinity is one of the best scientific biographies ever written about an amazing and glorious and tragic life and mind....more
An excellent conclusion to The March trilogy, a series of graphic novels that tell the story of John Lewis and the Civil Rights movement, this volume An excellent conclusion to The March trilogy, a series of graphic novels that tell the story of John Lewis and the Civil Rights movement, this volume focused on the story of Selma--with the same combination of brutality, perseverance, hope, and poignancy as the first two volumes. Worth reading as a memoir, a history, and a work of art....more
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