I always thought I had an obligation to read this, a chore to honor the dead by reading what I expected to be a stuffy, prissy, cardboard saint sort oI always thought I had an obligation to read this, a chore to honor the dead by reading what I expected to be a stuffy, prissy, cardboard saint sort of a book. Boy was I dead wrong. What an amazing writer and observer. Balanced between observation, humor, biting wit, recording events, the backdrop of the war, evolving feelings, and more. Imagining life in a Secret Annex surrounded by fear with the occasional distant events of the Holocaust recounted would make it an obligatory record of a historical moment. And all of that is there. But it is much more interesting as a girl's evolving relationship with her parents, her sister, the boy that is living with her, and her wry and humorous observations about how all of them get together. And an amazing real-time record of the maturation of her writing and observation as it is written from when she was 13 through 15. Over the course of the book Anne talks about what she is reading and studying, her passion for mythology, and more, all of which shows in the way she constructs and understands her own story.
If you know a little scientific history you know that in 1919 Arthur Eddington found empirical confirmation for Albert Einstein's theory of general reIf you know a little scientific history you know that in 1919 Arthur Eddington found empirical confirmation for Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity by measuring the deflection of light from distant stars by the gravitational force of the sun as measured by the shifting apparent positions of stars in an eclipse. The magnitude of the effect matched Einstein's predictions and were the first out-of-sample test of his theory (explaining the perihelion of Mercury was also explained by the theory, but was not a proper out of sample test). The result catapulted Einstein from publicly unknown (his name had not appeared in the newspapers before) to global fame, with my favorite New York Times headline of all time: "Lights All Askew in the Heavens ; Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Eclipse Observations; Einstein Theory Triumphs; Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to be, but Nobody Need Worry."
If you know a medium amount of scientific history you know that Eddington was a biased partisan who was out to find for Einstein (possibly because he was a pacifist who opposed World War I and either liked his fellow pacifist Einstein or wanted to re-establish global ties by vindicating a German scientist over the most famous English one, Isaac Newton), that his instruments had huge error bands, that he dropped some of the data that disagreed with Einstein, that his work was not reproducible, and in sum his experimental "proof" was just cooked up to prove what he set out to prove.
If you read this impressive and meticulous scholarly work by someone who has studied this question for decades you learn that the "know a little" happy folktale version is actually much closer to the truth than the "know a medium amount" sophisticated and cycnical version. In particular, Daniel Kennefick makes many arguments, the two most important of which are:
--Eddington co-did the work with Frank Dyson (no relation to Freeman). In fact, Dyson largely organized and led the work and did the data analysis. Importantly, Dyson appears to have been skeptical of General Relativity (and a key researcher on the project was outright hostile to it).
--The biggest argument against Eddington was that one of the three sets of data was discarded (there were two sets of plates from observations from Brazil and one set of plates from observations in Principe). Kennefick shows that before any analysis was done the researchers thought something had gone wrong with the observations in that data so the decision to discard it does not seem to have been based on the results. Moreover, by their own measures, including those data would have resulted in an average result across all the data sets even closer to the Einstein prediction. Finally, modern re-analysis of the discarded data show that even by itself it agreed with general relativity if measured properly.
--Eddington's ex ante theoretical framing of the "Newton" prediction and the "Einstein prediction" made it easier to establish a pro-Newton result by generously interpreting his theory to predict some deflection of light (half the Einstein prediction) when it probably predicted none.
As I read it, I did sometimes worry that Kennefick was like the Eddington of the cynical myth--someone who was out to prove a thesis (vindicating Eddington's vindication of Einstein) and had access to vastly more data on the question than anyone so was able to sort it to make his argument. That said, it was a "sometimes worry" because the argument did seem compelling and much of the "medium knowledge" darker version does seem to have come from people who approached the issue much more superficially and casually.
This vindication of Eddington is only a part of the book. The book is also a meticulous history of Eddington, eclipse astronomy and its difficulties, rise and subsequent fall, and more that I had never read in a scientific history or popularization and was particularly fascinating.
Most interesting, however, was he extensive and thoughtful discussion of what all of this tells you about the scientific method, Popper's version of falsification, whether theory should guide evidence, how scientists pick the null hypotheses they test, when you should stop tinkering with an experiment, how scientific bias does and does not help. Some of these questions were fleshed out further in his discussion of the Michelson and Morley experiment that came up with the surprising results of overturning the ether and the successors to it that tried to prove the original experiment wrong and re-establish the ether.
The bottom line of this discussion is that Kennefick shows the simple Popper version of science is wrong because you never really know whether you've falsified a theory or run a false experiment, that experimenters are better when they bring biases and hypotheses generated by theory to bear, that science has an important social and cultural aspect to it at least for prolonged periods of time, and that our knowledge advances by a combination of theory, evidence, and other types of evidence, not just simple crisp tests. Ultimately this is a much richer and more exciting and more realistic vision of science than either the simple ("Einstein proved right") or medium ("Einstein proof was fraudulent") versions of the story....more
An insightful, enjoyable tour of the written word from Gilgamesh through Harry Potter that shows how the intersection of the evolution of the technoloAn insightful, enjoyable tour of the written word from Gilgamesh through Harry Potter that shows how the intersection of the evolution of the technology of writing and "foundational" texts have shaped the course of history.
Martin Puchner does not aim to be exhaustive and as a result is book is pleasant and not at all exhausting. (It is also written in a jargon-free manner that aims to instruct and entertain but not intimidate with unnecessary literary theory.) Rather than stuffing everything in, he picks key texts, moments, places and times that are both important in their own right but also illustrate the range of points he wants to make. Much is missing that would fit into his general story (from the Koran to Charles Dickens), but he clearly made the right choice. (I'm less sure of the choice he made about inserting himself and his own travels to the places where various books were written and set into the book, it made it feel more like a certain type of journalism and travelogue and did not add much, except maybe for his search for the village of Dauphin which was the subject of a one act play by Derek Walcott.)
Puchner starts with The Iliad and the influence it had on Alexander the Great who, he argues, was motivated in part by re-enacting the Iliad's conception of heroism and warfare. He then goes back to Gilgamesh and from there proceeds chronologically taking in a great variety of times, places, and genres--not just fiction but also Martin Luther, the Communist Manifesto, and other documents that have drawn on literature and technology to have widespread influence.
In the course of the book Puchner explains how cuneiform writing started, how alphabets involved, the process of making different types of writing mediums, the development of printing, how samizdat were produced and distributed in the Soviet Union, and ends with the online complements to literature today.
In some cases he tells a familiar story albeit one that fits right in with the book's general argument, for example how Martin Luther was much more influential than previous critics of the Catholic Church because he was able to take advantage of the printing press to distribute his criticisms widely. In other cases it is less familiar, like his argument that Socrates, Buddha, Confucius and Jesus were all partly rebelling against what they viewed as the tyranny of foundational texts in their societies so did not commit their own words to writing, but then their followers and disciples wrote them down and established new foundational texts. Puchner is also interested in how Goethe coined the term "world literature" and how we now look back on it, including text that had disappeared for millennia but now have their place in world literature back--like Gilgamesh.
A young adult graphic novel about the first female astronauts is by the team that wrote the excellent Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, A young adult graphic novel about the first female astronauts is by the team that wrote the excellent Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas and the author of numerous other young adult graphic scientific biographies, most notably Feynman. Primates was a much more unique and interesting book, weaving primatology together with the lives and using it to better appreciate the psychology and behavior of the human subjects of the book. This was a little closer to standard fare, astronaut training, launches, and the like, only focusing on the first women--including the obstacles they overcame, the ways NASA did and did not understand them, and a vivid recounting of what it was like to be on the first set of Shuttle flights. Relatively quick reading and passes the test of being worth the time....more
"The anthropologist Sarah Hrdy noted that to pack hundreds of chimpanzees into close quarters on an airplane would be to invite violent chaos, whereas"The anthropologist Sarah Hrdy noted that to pack hundreds of chimpanzees into close quarters on an airplane would be to invite violent chaos, whereas most human passengers behave sedately even when they are crowded. As Dale Peterson observed, however, intense screening is needed to ensure that a secret enemy will not carry a bomb on board."
This captures the phenomenon (or "paradox") the book is trying to explain: humans have very low reactive aggression, that is uncontrollably attacking someone in the anger of the moment. We can walk down the street, see strangers, they can even bump into us, and we'll virtually never hit them and usually won't even send a dirty look their way. Virtually no other wild animal is like that. But humans also have extraordinary levels of proactive aggression, we can plot wars, genocides, and much more that kill millions of humans in the process--something that no other animal could come remotely close to doing.
Richard Wrangham advances a bold thesis for how this came about: evolutionary changes driven by hundreds of thousands of years of capital punishment that effectively "self domesticated" humans, much like the process that turned reactively aggressive wolves into tame dogs and many other examples of domestication. Basically, language (a bit of a deus ex machina in this account, and given that it doesn't fossilize it may always be in every account) enabled humans to coordinate to kill overly aggressive people using gossip, plotting, and the like. Over hundreds of thousands of years--or about 12,000 generations--this led to genetic changes that separated from earlier humans not to mention chimpanzees.
The evidence Wrangham puts forward for this hypothesis is draws on evolutionary biology, animal behavior, genetics, neuroscience, anthropology and more. A lot of it draws on studies of the way the domestication changes animals, many of them in the direction of paedomorphic changes in which animals retain more juvenile features as adults, including reduced differences between males and females, certain aspects like bone density, and interesting things that have simultaneously evolved multiple times like floppy ears and white tufts. Wrangham looks at the fossil record and modern humans and sees many of these features diverging from our ancestors--and also differing from very recent relatives like neanderthals.
Wrangham contrasts his hypothesis to other explanations. One explanation he debunks (following a long-standing tradition of arguing against it) is group selection, because this generally cannot explain why individuals will not benefit from defecting--something that fear of execution can explain. He also criticizes cultural explanations for human aggressive behavior because of the strong evidence about how deeply rooted it is, observable in babies, in children even when given contrary instructions, etc.
He also applies this idea to a variety of areas. For example, he explains several moral puzzles about people's behavior (e.g., trolley-problem like issues around people not wanting to touch or directly engage in certain behavior that they would do indirectly) as humans evolving to be risk averse, trying to avoid being (unfairly) blamed when they were trying to help. He also analyzes war which is an example of "coalitionary proactive aggression," contrasting the primitive version which relied on voluntary consensus without leaders leading to raids with a very high probability of success with the modern version which entails leaders getting their followers to do things that are highly non-adaptive from an evolutionary perspective--requiring intense drilling, rules, and created camaraderie to make it work.
The above does not do justice to what is a very rich, dense, but highly readable book that draws on a lot of cutting-edge, peer-reviewed research. Although I am not 100 percent convinced of the execution hypothesis there is a rich set of evidence for it, not just an ex post just so story. Also, even if you do not agree with the hypothesis there is a lot to get out of the book, including a better understanding of aggression, some history of science (and particularly, some appalling politicalization that led scientists to resist admitting things like chimpanzee infanticide or hunter-gatherer warfare because they were afraid it would legitimize it in humans), and much much more.
Ultimately Wrangham is at pains to distance himself from the naturalistic fallacy that just because something is natural or evolved it is legitimate. He points out the ways that culture has changed over time to reduce violence--and that even nature itself builds in responses to incentives (e.g., the frequency of chimpanzee infanticide depends on factors that change the evolutionary rewards for engaging in it). Ultimately he agreed with Katherine Hepburn's character from The African Queen that "Nature... is what we are put in this world to rise above."
Very, very highly recommended.
P.S. Another image, like the opening quote, I cannot get out of my head is how humans have never really been led by alpha males, whether in hunter gathers or sophisticated societies. Our leaders are not obeyed because they could win a wrestling match with any other challenger but because they can organize a coalition to engage in violence to enforce the law. This means that humans have obedience in way that no wild animal does....more
An excellent one volume history of the United States that at least briefly touches on all of the major events while providing a rich interpretative naAn excellent one volume history of the United States that at least briefly touches on all of the major events while providing a rich interpretative narrative that comes back to several themes: how technology changes politics, how Americans identities as Americans and their political identities evolve, what is understand to be a foundational truths about the country, how race and racism have helped define and subvert the nature of liberty, democracy and inclusion throughout American history, and how we understand and tell our history and what it means to us. All in a beautifully written occasionally almost poetic account.
I learned more about just about every period in American history up until the last twenty or thirty years when in the final pages the book felt more like journalism than history. I was actually surprised how much I learned about the decades after World War II and the ways in which issues like the Equal Rights Amendment and guns became polarized.
I found the interpretation interesting, provocative and often compelling. The flip side is that it came with what often seemed like a decent amount of editorializing that at some points became grating, especially in the recent period. Jill Lepore is no fan of social science, repeatedly coming back to making claims about its complicit or even central role in various bad socioeconomic and political developments from eugenics to political polarization. She seems mostly skeptical about economic progress at any stage in American history—and completely skeptical that the progress has anything to do with innovation or entrepreneurship. I also thought she (like many other thinkers) never quite resolved the tension between support for democracy and her implicit/explicit belief that the people are easily tricked by pollsters, the media, social scientists, political parties, and the like. When I disagreed on recent events I often worried she was oversimplifying and overly ideological. I never felt this way about her more historical accounts, not sure if that means these issues didn’t affect her history or I am just less knowledgeable/biased when you go further back in time.
All that said, is quite an accomplishment, I learned a lot, the narrative is great, and while I have not read many (any?) one volume histories of the United States from 1942 to the present, I would be surprised if there was another one I would have rather read....more
Two excellent political scientists take on the topic of How Democracies Die--and specifically the question of whether the U.S. democracy will die. TheTwo excellent political scientists take on the topic of How Democracies Die--and specifically the question of whether the U.S. democracy will die. They argue we should be worried for three principals reasons:
(1) Democracies do not just die in violent coups, they also fade away into authoritarianism, often in a manner that is fully "legal" at every step as institutions get coopted and subverted, in many cases in the name of democracy itself.
(2) A constitution is not enough you need norms of mutual tolerance and restraint. The United States has always had demagogues. But previously these norms, enforced by the political parties, acted as a gatekeeper, including smoke filled rooms to keep the most dangerous demagogues from rising to the Presidency. That is no longer true.
(3) Extreme polarization preceded Donald Trump and won't end with him as the two parties are no longer big tents but much more homogenous not just in beliefs but also in culture.
All of this is punctuated with discussion and analysis of the experience of other usually non-violent ends to democracy, like the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of authoritarians in Latin America and more recent examples like Venezuela, Hungary and Turkey.
I do wish the book had a more political science and less recounting of the now familiar arguments about Trump and recent polarization, including better understanding what the broader lessons are about causes of Democratic decline. Some of it reads a bit too current and a bit too reactive to Trump in a way that will end up seeming dated (I hope). Relatedly, I think the idea of the U.S. democracy "dying" is deeply overwrought, although by the conclusion the "dying" scenario is defined down to mean something more like an unpleasant extension of the extreme polarization we have now.
But it is a relatively fast read on an important topic so would recommend it, just expect to have gaps in your knowledge filled in rather than an entirely new perspective on the issue....more
A fantastic biography that tells the tragically short life of Pushkin in short chapters that go chronologically from birth to death with an epilogue aA fantastic biography that tells the tragically short life of Pushkin in short chapters that go chronologically from birth to death with an epilogue about the evolving interpretation of Pushkin over time. The chapters cover both the life and the works, explaining the composition of each of his major works and many of his minor ones along with some interpretative commentary and contextualization.
What makes this biography by Robert Chandler (a translator and also editor of the great collection Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida) so good is that he rescues Pushkin from the layers and layers of meaning that have been thrust on him. He does not have him stand for Russia, representing the aristocracy or the people or anything else. Instead he is an immensely talented author, one whose path was plowed by a few lesser know Russian poets and foreign examples (Byron and Shakespeare, among others). He was never immersed in the major historical events around him because he was so focused on his own reading of history, his writing, his affairs, and more. This restores Pushkin as a writer and also as someone that everyone can have a personal connection to.
A particularly interesting aspect of Pushkin’s story, like so many Russian/Soviet artists (e.g., Bulgakov and Shostakovich) is his fascinating relationship with the Tsar, going from exile to personal poet, with the Tsar (pretending) to act as his personal censor, patron, but also humiliating him and perhaps contributing to his death.
Often the ~150 page biographies tend towards speculative interpretation or superficial recounting of events, this one suffers from neither problem and instead presents a fast moving, enjoyable and sophisticated story that is interesting in its own right and will help you better understand Pushkin’s works....more
The mere existence of Ezra Klein’s outstanding and compulsively readable account of the rise and consequences of polarization is a paradox. Klein creaThe mere existence of Ezra Klein’s outstanding and compulsively readable account of the rise and consequences of polarization is a paradox. Klein creatively synthesizes a wide range of social science literature, mostly from political science and social psychology, combing it with his own extensive first hand observation of American politics in a book that is sympathetic to a wide range of perspectives without suffering from the traps of naked partisanship on the one hand or false equivalences on the other.
Klein is clear that our polarization problem does not stem from too little information or too little exposure to the perspective of the other side. In fact he cites a set of social psychology experiments that show that people are more rationalizes than reasoners, that smarter and more informed people turn their intelligence and information into more grist for their previous views, and that exposing people to opposing perspectives turns them off to them and strengthens their own views.
And that is why the mere existence of this book is a paradox. It reasons instead of rationalizing. It aims to persuade rather than mobilize. And Klein exposes himself and the reader to the other side of just about everything, including a relatively sympathetic account of everything form how whites feel their historic privileges threatened to Mitch McConnell’s decision to block Merrick Garland. It is almost like the very act of writing this book is a rejection of its thesis, or at least a loud protest against it—both explicitly and in form.
Many people will likely come to this book after reading the New York Times oped version. I liked the oped, but one thing I appreciated about the book is that, unlike the oped, it spent the first ~85% on the topic of polarization without talking much if at all about the different ways that it has affected Democrats and Republicans. I think this is intellectually honest and (perhaps a foolish hope) may bring along a wider set of readers. This presentational choice also makes the last part of the book that shows how the Republican Party has become more of an “insurgent outlier” that is captive to something more like one group and one set of highly partisan media, that much more compelling.
There wasn’t much in the book I disagreed with. My main complaint is that I wanted more. Klein calls for more democratization but does not discuss his view on whether that might conflict with protections for minorities and if so how it should be handled. He does not talk about the right way to balance democratic and technocratic control. And the relationship between polarization and the delegitimization of elites is largely missing from his account.
Finally, to expand something I said in the opening paragraph, I think Klein is a model for how to use social science. Too many political reporters ignore it entirely. Or if they like data analytics, think they can figure it out on their own. Ezra reads widely, books and articles. He talks to the authors. And he takes it seriously. But he also does something the social scientists cannot do: he has talked extensively to many of the leading political players over the last decade. Not everyone could pull it off as well as he does, but I certainly wish more people tried and even got half of the way there, it would be an improvement on a lot of the gut instincts of many of the people opining today....more
I am a huge fan of Gene Luen Yang, one of the best graphic novelists working today, especially Boxers & Saints, American Born Chinese, and The EternalI am a huge fan of Gene Luen Yang, one of the best graphic novelists working today, especially Boxers & Saints, American Born Chinese, and The Eternal Smile: Three Stories. I started out this book and after a few pages was disappointed wit, after he concept the sweeping sagas and magical forays of his previous books this one looked set to be a clichéd high school basketball novel. By the end I was crying.
It definitely is a high school basketball book. But it is a nonfiction account of a team he followed in real time, and Yang was committed to writing regardless of what happened in the season. So that made it suspenseful, the frames of the games, the timer going down, really conveyed the thrill of the game. But it was much more--it was an autofiction about how Yang decided to write the book, some of his struggles with what to include and how to write it, and how his career developed and changed over the course of writing it. And it was about the difficulty of penetrating the lives of the players on the court. And it was about the history of basketball, including several streams that come together--Catholic schools adoption of the sport, women's basketball, and basketball in China. Most profoundly, it is about racism, diversity, and what it means to be an American. Oh, and even the endnotes are good....more
One of the most amazing books I've read in recent years, The Secret of Our Success has a single thesis that sounds obvious but then it shows you how dOne of the most amazing books I've read in recent years, The Secret of Our Success has a single thesis that sounds obvious but then it shows you how different it is from what you might have thought before, how much it explains, and how we have learned all of this with a combination of genetics, social psychology, anthropological observation of different groups, studying primates, game theory, experimental economics, and many other disciplines all of which come together to form a richer, more complex understanding of what makes humans so unique.
Joseph Henrich's thesis is that humans are set apart because culture and genes have co-evolved. We’re not smarter, more social or more strategic than other animals but we’re much better at learning from each other. This cultural evolution is non-genetic and can make rapid progress, including adapting to different and changing environments. But it is not unrelated to genes, in fact genetic changes have made us better cultural learners--and made us worse at everything when we do not have that a cultural learning at our disposal. In a sense, humans domesticated themselves--just like they domesticated wolves into more docile and weaker dogs.
Henrich goes through reasons why some other explanations are wrong:
(1) Humans are not smarter than other animals. Infants score about the same as chimps on various cognitive tests, we're worse at getting to the Nash equilibrium of games like matching pennies than many chimps, we can be worse at numerical recall than chimps, etc. Where we excel is in our ability to learn from each other.
(2) Humans are not more successful because of our better evolved instincts. Take European explorers and drop them in the middle of an unfamiliar area like Australia, the Canadian north or even Florida and they will have no idea how to hunt for food, fashion weapons, make boats, make warm clothing, identify or prepare foods, etc. We don't have instincts, we have locally adapted cultural knowledge to survive in these contexts.
(3) Humans are not inherently more prosocial than other animals, it is learned not innate. For example, a variety of experimental games (like the "ultimatum" game) show more collaborative attitudes in larger scale societies than in smaller ones.
Instead his explanation is that culture is like a "collective brain" that enables ideas that are discovered by one person to be spread to others. He shows through a model that it less important to have geniuses than to have learners and collaborators. And that learning depends not just on population size but its interconnectedness. That is why larger populations come up with more complex inventions (e.g., the wheel was only invented in Eurasia) and more complex languages with more sounds and more words.
This ability to learn does depend on our brains but has also co-evolved with our brains. For example, we have smaller teeth and a weaker digestive system which forces us to pre-digest our food with tools, fire and many other treatments. We are capable long distance runners, which requires a system to sweat, which only works because we can carry water with us and rehydrate. Etc.
Cultural transmission has also made us respect and learn from people in our groups, those with greater age and more prestige.
Henrich has personally made important contributions to understanding in a number of these areas, but not everything in the book is completely original. And that is a strength of the book--it is conveying a cutting edge field but does not appear (to my admittedly layman views) to be idiosyncratic or pushing a thesis too far. Instead it is partly summarizing the state of the art.
In some cases the book is more speculative or has to extrapolate from lab experiments to complex dynamics that play out over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Henrich is generally honest about the limitations on our understanding and how they will be filled in over time. But does not let that detract from the bigger thesis.
Occasionally Henrich's arguments suffer a bit from the "just so" stories that rationalize any human behavior as an evolutionary adaptation. But his novel and creative use of just how hard it is to adapt to different environments (e.g., an extended discussion of what it takes to hunt/cook a seal in the arctic or prepare manioc in Africa without getting cyanide poisoning) make it clear that many of these adaptations really are that--adapative.
Henrich also takes a relatively conservative stance that places a lot of emphasis on hierarchy, prestige, age, and not thinking too much for oneself and instead accepting the culture we get because that culture is adaptive and adaptive in ways we don't fully comprehend so tampering with it can have serious downsides. In fact in the conclusion he is quite explicit about this: "Humans are bad at intentionally designing effective institutions and organizations, though I’m hoping that as we get deeper insights into human nature and cultural evolution this can improve. Until then, we should take a page from cultural evolution’s playbook and design 'variation and selection systems' that will allow alternative institutions or organizational forms to compete.”
There is nothing inherently wrong with being conservative in this sense, but it does have two risks: not explaining how we have innovated in part by challenging authority and asking questions (the enlightenment had that attitude and very rapid change) and a normative risk of lending too much credibility to existing institutions and practices.
These are small quibbles when set aside against contemplating one of the most impressive accomplishments of human cultural evolution, understanding ourselves would be high up on the list. And this book represents the accumulated ways we have better understood ourselves, many of which we have only learned in the last few decades. Imagine how much more we will learn in the coming years, decades, centuries and more....more
A detailed account of the planning leading up to Lincoln's assassination, the assassination itself and the twelve day manhunt that follows, Chasing Lincoln's Killer reads like a thriller with short chapters that moved back and forth between different scenes happening simultaneously. It is a bit sensationalistic, but then again its subject is genuinely sensational. It also does a certain amount to glamorize John Wilkes Booth, while eschewing such a glamorization, but it is hard to avoid notorious villains becoming famous and to some degree glamorous long after their time (unfortunately we all know the names of the most famous assassins).
The book does not do much to provide a broader historical meaning for its story, and in fact most of the book is about a manhunt that does not really have much of a broader historical meaning. But in a way that is liberating because it allows James Swanson to focus on what he seems to do best--tell an excellent, exciting, fast-paced story....more
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