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Joel, this is your thread for 2017. I have included the link to the required format thread and an example. If you had a 2016 thread - it is archived - but you can still add books to it for the last few days of December.

Please follow the standard required format below - I hope you enjoy your reading in 2017. Here is also a link for assistance with the required guidelines:

Link: /topic/show/...

Our Required Format:

JANUARY

1. by Winston S. Churchill
Finish date: January 2017
Genre: (whatever genre the book happens to be)
Rating: A
Review: You can add text from a review you have written but no links to any review elsewhere even goodreads. And that is about it. Just make sure to number consecutively and just add the months.

IMPORTANT - THE REVIEW SHOULD BE SHORT AND SWEET - THERE ARE NO LINKS OF ANY KIND IN THE BODY OF THE REVIEW ALLOWED. NONE. DO NOT REFER TO ANY OTHER BOOK IN YOUR BRIEF REVIEW. THE ONLY BOOK CITED IN YOUR REVIEW IS THE ONE YOU ARE REVIEWING - NO OTHERS. ALL LINKS TO OTHER THREADS OR REVIEWS ARE DELETED IMMEDIATELY - THERE WILL BE NO WARNING. WE CONSIDER THIS SELF PROMOTION AND IT IS NOT ALLOWED AND IS IN VIOLATION OF OUR RULES AND GUIDELINES.

JANUARY

1. by Israel Meir Lau
Finish date: January 28, 2017
Genre: Memoir
Rating: A-
Review: Very honest and moving. Really captures the feeling of what it must have felt like for a little boy to be separated from his parents and sent to a Nazi concentration camp. The part where he describes building a new life in Israel is also fascinating. The last few chapters were not as good - it's just him listing all the famous people he met and the conversations he had with them, but there were some interesting tidbits.

FEBRUARY

2. by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Finish date: February 15, 2017
Genre: Non-Fiction
Rating: C-
Review: This one is tough to review. The book weaves together music, art, and mathematics to show how ideas like self reference could explain how the mind works.

There's a lot of interesting ideas in here, and it really gives you food for thought, but I feel like I could have learned just as much in the over two months it took me to finish this by reading some well chosen books about computer science and biology/psychology.

He spends a bit too much time exhausting every line of reasoning, and I feel like his analogies were a bit all-over-the-place. I get what he was trying to do, but his attempt at artistic beauty was a bit clumsy and undisciplined much of the time.

Joel wrote: "FEBRUARY

2. by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Finish date: February 15, 2017
Gen..."

This is in my to-read list for ages. Eventually I will read it, one day or another :D

Petit Chevalier wrote:

This is in my to-read list for ages. Eventually I will read it, one day or another :D


Awesome! It took me two months and that was without allowing me to slow me down when I didn't fully understand what he was talking about. He covers many topics.

It's interesting to hear about the mathematical patterns in Bach's music.

As far as the mathematics, there are many other sources that do a better job of teaching Godel's theorem, Turin's Halting Problem, and similar topics. I feel like I might have been better served reading
by Charles Petzold
and
by Ernest Nagel.

There was an interesting section about how DNA works, but again, I probably would have been better served reading
by Sam Kean
and
by James D. Watson.

He talks at length about artificial intelligence, but the material seemed to be a little outdated. About how the mind works, I would be interested to read
by Steven Pinker.

In the two months it took me to read this book, I could probably have read all of those books I mentioned, and I would have gotten a lot more out of them.

3. by Alfred Lansing (no photo)
Finish date: February 26, 2017
Genre: Adventure
Rating: B-
Review: I originally had this on my 'history shelf' - I like reading to learn about life in the olden days, but this book is nothing more than an adventure story. It isolates you in the South Atlantic while the rest of the world is off fighting in the trenches. No Maginot Line in this book, but oh so masterfully written. It's an exhausting read, so I recommend you read it quickly, but it really does a good job putting you in the setting, if not much else.

Joel wrote: "FEBRUARY

2. by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Finish date: February 15, 2017
Genr..."

I thought it was one of the best books I've ever read

Joel, you have read quite a variety of books so far that look very interesting. As part of my admin training I am going to provide some assistance with a few of your posts. For starters, you may want to first look at the example in Message #1 as suggested by Bentley.

In Messages #2 and #3, it will be very easy to format them correctly by just eliminating the space between your books and the remainder of the review. Here is an example:

1. by Israel Meir Lau
Finish date: January 28, 2017
Genre: Memoir
Rating: A-
Review:

In Message #6, eliminate the extra space between the book/author and the body of your review as in Messages #2 and #3. Additionally, there is the issue of the long passage that needs to be blocked in italics and in quotation marks. In order to place the passage in italics and block quotes, go up to (some html is ok) to make the change and edit your post. Here is an example:

3. by Alfred Lansing (no photo)
Finish date: February 26, 2017
Genre: Adventure
Rating: B-
Review: I originally had this on my 'history shelf' - I like reading to learn about life in the olden days, but this book is nothing more than an adventure story . . . . . . . .I'll let the following paragraph speak for itself:

"The sight that the Caird presented was on of the most unimaginable. . . . . . . almost as if they were on an outing of some sort."

It's an exhausting read . . . . if not much else.

Thank you so much for making these changes. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like additional guidance.

Lorna (T) - Civil Rights - Supreme Court

Joel everything is fine now (thank you). Just remember the helpful hints on the format.

I don't get it. Lorna's message was posted after I made the edit. Did she see the old version and not the new one?

Joel, thank you for making those changes. I am sorry that I didn't see that you had made the corrections at the time of my post. It looks great.

Lorna (T) - Civil Rights - Supreme Court

Great! Thanks for the help Lorna.

MARCH

4. by Tom Holland
Finish date: March 8, 2017
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: I certainly learned a lot from this book. In just over three hundred pages, the author covers a period of about sixty years - the events leading up to the collapse of the Roman Republic - in quite a bit of depth, as well as a quick run through the history of Rome up until the First Century BC. Though he does seem to gloss over some important details occasionally, no other book or collection of books on the subject cover as much breadth and depth as concisely, and in as readable form.

However, I cannot say I especially enjoyed Holland's style. Especially for a subject with as many characters as this, he really needs to write a little more directly, and avoid adjectives more. Sometimes he'll go an entire paragraph before it's clear who he's talking about.

And then there's his excessively sesquipedalian self-indulgence. He speaks of "the very idea of paid work inspiring paroxysms of snobbery", and "Anthony presenting a model of uxoriousness", and about the Metelli being "fabulously fecund". He clearly amuses himself, but I found it added confusion and made the book more difficult to read than necessary.

Good job Joel

5. by John McPhee
Finish date: March 14, 2017
Genre: Creative non-fiction
Rating: B+
Review: I have long been fascinated by oranges (ever since spending a few hours one afternoon wiki-surfing articles about citrus fruits), so when I came across this little book, it went immediately onto my to-read list.

What I didn't know is that John McPhee is a pioneer of the 'creative non-fiction' genre. Reading him is like eating a well-crafted meal or listening to a well-crafted piece of music.

Crafted is a good word to describe his style. You can tell that he cut and carved and roughed and rearranged until the words came out just right.

It makes for an enjoyable read, and I learned a lot about oranges while I was at it.

6. by Richard M. Weaver
Finish date: March 27, 2017
Genre: Politics
Rating: C+
Review: This is a difficult book! I was expecting a political diatribe, but this book is book is not just a curmudgeonly rant, but a deep philosophical discourse on the problems with modern society.

True, I often disagreed with his premise, namely that modern man is a 'moral idiot' compared to mediaeval man because of his faith in empirical science and historical progress. I believe that materialistic ambitions have made modern society more civilized and less violent than in the past - an assertion Weaver would vigorously oppose.

However, I couldn't help but marvel at how prophetic some of Weaver's pronouncements about modern society are, especially about the state of education and media which is even more true today than in 1948.

I also agree with him that we suffer from moral relativism that stems from our inability to make intellectual distinctions.

I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would, but it certainly exposed me to new perspectives on politics.

APRIL

7. by David McCullough
Finish date: April 3, 2017
Genre: Science History/Biography
Rating: A
Review: This was the first book of David McCullough I read, and I am now a devoted fan. His writing is clear and direct, yet he respects his readers by not talking down or attempting to be amusing. He gives sufficient detail without getting boring.

I would have likes slightly more background information about the cultural context of the age and other characters, such as Lilienthal, Chanute, Flint, Curtiss, and a few others, but I appreciated that the book was not too lengthy. Richard Rhodes does this effectively in The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but that is a hard act to follow, and honestly, that book was too long.

I also liked that he is very transparent about his sources and makes it clear when he’s quoting letters, articles, and so on. The pictures were also nicely chosen.

Overall, this is historical non-fiction as it should be done, and I will definitely be reading his other books.

by Richard Rhodes

Very good Joel

8. by Sam Kean
Finish date: April 8, 2017
Genre: Science History
Rating: A-
Review: Reading Sam Kean is like eating popcorn. Tastes great, somewhat filling, and mildly nutritious, but somehow it leaves you feeling a bit empty.

I’ve now read two of Kean’s books � The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist’s Thumb, and I greatly enjoyed both. He covers lots of ground and makes it interesting and entertaining.

In this book, he covers the history of DNA and genetics from the early 1800s until today and hits all the major and even the minor players � Lamarck, Cuvier, Darwin, Mendel, Miescher, de Vries, Hunt Morgan, and of course Watson and Crick, as well as a few other notables, while throwing in some fun anecdotes and making the science clear and fun at the same time. But having read other popular science histories–Thomas Hager comes to mind–I feel like Kean’s treatment is slightly superficial. If you were to ask me in six months from now to recount some of the things I learned from this book, I’d likely come up empty (just like if you’d ask me now about what I remember from The Disappearing Spoon).

It also doesn’t help that he overdoes it on the clichés, references, and wordplay. The book just doesn’t seem “intelligent� enough. He does address some important philosophical questions, especially on the last chapter where he presents a very insightful discussion on genetics and racism, but overall, the tone of the book seems most appropriate for a bright high-schooler.

But who am I to complain? I really enjoyed myself reading it, and learned a great deal about a topic I didn’t know much about. It would be like complaining that they put too much butter in my popcorn. Yum!

by Thomas Hager
by Sam Kean

Good progress Joel. You already have 41 unique and different folks reading your reviews.

Bentley wrote: "Good progress Joel. You already have 41 unique and different folks reading your reviews."

That's awesome! I hope I gave them some good ideas for their next book.

9. by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Finish date: April 16, 2017
Genre: Economics
Rating: C
Review: This book came out a while ago, and it made quite a splash when it did � I remember people talking about the theory that legalization of abortion by the US Supreme Court in 1973 led to the drop in the crime rate in the nineties, about how Sumo wrestlers cheat by throwing critical matches, and about real-estate agents keeping their own houses on the market longer than those of their clients.

I thought I’d get quite a bit more out of the book by actually reading it, but I wasn’t blown away. Granted, it was a fun, fast read and I learned a few more details about those topics and more, but as someone who does quite a bit of reading and thinking about economics, the message of incentives was not earth-shattering to me.

I respect Levitt’s economic expertise, and the co-authors� narrative ability is not bad, but the economics wasn’t particularly deep, and the story-telling was nothing like Gladwell's.

by Malcolm Gladwell

Just one helpful tidbit - try to break up your reviews into shorter paragraphs - easier reading. But good job.

Thanks for the tip!

No worries (smile) - And you do not have a blank avatar - brilliant

ðŸ·ß

MAY

10. by Thomas S. Kuhn
Finish date: May 9, 2017
Genre: Philosophy
Rating: C+
Review: Anyone who’s taken a course in the History and Philosophy of Science will already know that this book totally transformed the direction that research in the subject took in the second half of the Twentieth Century since its publication. Whereas the philosophy of science before the publication of this book was focused on Karl Popper’s view of the scientific method � empirical falsification of scientific theories or hypotheses, this book changed the focus towards analyzing how scientific communities behave in reality.

Namely, Kuhn claims that scientists working in normal science mode do their research within a dominant paradigm, not with the goal of falsifying the theories that underline the paradigm, but to expand and articulate the theory. As results arise that don’t agree with the paradigm, they don’t throw out the paradigm, but dismiss their results as anomalies. Eventually, anomalies accumulate and scientists start to sense that there is something wrong with the prevailing paradigm, and science goes into crisis science mode. Sometimes, they will come up with new paradigms which are either rejected, or are successful in overthrowing the old paradigm � thus “scientific revolutions�. Scientists working in the new paradigm no longer see the world the same way. The proponents of either paradigm have no recourse to any higher authority, because the two paradigms are incommensurable with each other � the rules of the game have changed: the same data means something totally different in the new paradigm than in the old; the same terms have totally different meanings; it is as if scientists are living in a different world.

This is the structure of scientific revolutions that Kuhn describes in this book, but there are lots of other sources out there that can give you a summary of this revolutionary approach in a much simpler and more readable format. Kuhn’s style does get confusing much of the time, unnecessarily so, and I admit that only understood about seventy-five percent of this book. I also would have appreciated more examples from history of where the structure played out. Kuhn does supply many good examples, such as Dalton’s atomic theory, but I found that he repeats the major examples too often � Copernicus’s geocentric model, Lavoisier’s theory of combustion that he stars sounding like a broken record.

Then why read about the Structure from this book and not secondary sources which present it more clearly and give better examples? For one, it’s always best to read about revolutionary ideas from the original source in order to appreciate how those ideas were formulated when they were brand new, before they went through being refined by later scholars. But besides for that, Kuhn does such a good job drawing attention to some of the subtler parts of his theory. For example, there is a great passage where he explains why revolutionary theories often comes from younger scientists who are new to a field and are not yet indoctrinated into the old paradigm. There is also a passage at the end where he draws parallels between his approaches to Darwin’s evolution. I have yet to see other sources present these minor points as convincingly and as subtly as Kuhn.

Overall, this book really impacted the way I view science history, and Kuhn’s approach is very convincing. There were lots of really good points in this book, and the overall theory is very novel and seems to describe historical reality accurately. But I just wish his style would have been a little less confusing. That would have made it so much more enjoyable to read, and it would not have taken me so long.

11. by Daniel Hannan
Finish date: May 10, 2017
Genre: History
Rating: A
Review: In this book, Hannan tries to prove that the values of liberty, representative government, property rights, and common law shared almost uniquely by the Anglophone world -- which he calls the 'Alglosphere' -- have their roots in early English historical developments. He also argues that Both America and Britain, as well as Canada, Australia, and to a lesser extent, other former British Commonwealth countries share this common tradition. He is careful to point out that this heritage is not genetic, but cultural.

Hannan is a historian by training, and his thorough knowledge of British history is on full display in this book. He covers the full breadth of British history, from the Anglo-Saxon Witan, to the resistance of Norman aristocratic rule, Magna Carta, Simon de Montfort, the Lollards, the Levelers, the Puritans, the American Second Sons and Founding Fathers, and others, demonstrating how each contributed to the system of rights and freedoms we know today, and was most purely exemplified in the American Constitutional system.

Hannan is a member of the EU Parliament representing the conservative party for Southeast England. He is a Eurosceptic and a libertarian, and strongly supported Brexit, though this book came out before the referendum so he doesn't mention it. He has also spent much of his life in the Americas and Continental Europe, being born in Peru, working in Brussels, and having travelled extensively to India, Asia, and Australia, so he has a good understanding of not only British culture, but also American, Latin American, Continental, and Eastern perspectives.

He comes across as somewhat revisionist and agenda driven at times, but this book is more about the history than politics, at least until the last couple of chapters, and there's no denying that he makes a very persuasive case and I do agree with most of his points. Either way, I learnt a lot about parts of British history that I was unaware of until now, and it was worth reading just for that. I would highly recommend it to people on both sides of the political aisle if you want to get a new perspective on the origins of Western political values.

12. by Atul Gawande
Finish date: May 20, 2017
Genre: Business & Management
Rating: C-
Review: The central thesis of this book is that checklists are a cheap but effective means of reducing errors even in highly complex tasks performed by highly skilled professionals.

The problem with checklists seems to be that they are too one dimensional. Complex tasks seem to require quick decision making skills and the ability to react to contingencies. Checklists are just too linear to allow for broad judgement and discretion.

In addition, the items on a checklist can sometimes be disconnected and unrelated. The first item could be about building team functionality, and the next about a specific technical task that needs to be performed.

However, despite these apparent shortcomings, they are effective by allowing the expert to get the simple things out of the way and focus on the complexities of the task while under pressure. Checklists work best when they’re short and to the point. They shouldn’t cover every detail; only the main points where errors are likely to occur.

This is the second book of Atul Gawande that I read. The first was ‘On Mortality� which I thought was excellent. Compared to that one, I found this somewhat one-dimensional and linear. His treatment doesn’t seem deep or nuanced enough.

In addition, some of the topics seem somewhat disconnected and unrelated to checklists. For example, he spends a lot of time talking about teams and how having each member state their name triggers the “activation phenomenon� and makes members more likely to speak up. This is all great, but is that really related to checklists per se?

The author also tried to discuss the effectiveness of checklists in other fields, like finance, but if sounds like he included that on the urging of his publisher, and seems unenthusiastic except when discussing medicine.

However, despite these shortcomings, this book does an effective job convincing the reader of the virtues of checklists. The book is to the point. It doesn’t cover every detail and hits some of the major objections the critic might have.

See what I did there?

13. (no image) Economic Analysis in Talmudic Literature: Rabbinic Thought in the Light of Modern Economics by Roman A. Ohrenstein (no photo)
Finish date: May 20, 2017
Genre: Economics
Rating: D-
Review: This book should be subtitled ‘Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Post-Biblical Economics (see ‘Sokal affair� on Wikipedia).

OK, I’m exaggerating, but I did find this book overly rich in academic gibberish. I was hoping to get a good technical explanation of some in the economic concepts mentioned in the Talmud, such as inflation (Bava Kamma 97b, Taanit 19b) and price control (Bava Basra 89a) instead I got gratuitous references to Aristotle and Sophocles with no coherent train of thought or original ideas.

The chapter on time value of money doesn’t need to start with a peacock dance about Abraham Joshua Heschel’s conception that the “idea of holiness was gradually shifted from space to time, from the realm of nature to the realm of history…�, offered up with no explanation, but with a further quote from Thorleif Boman, “a Christian biblical scholar�: “The majority of Old Testament books are historical,� and “history is a movement toward a goal…� How exactly does that deepen our understanding of Talmudic economics?

The author almost redeemed himself in the last chapter when he starts discussing the contributions of Jewish scholars to medieval economic thought, until it turns into nothing more than a long list of historical names with no elaboration of what their individual contributions were. Then he ends the chapter with “The above examination of the various levels of the cultural interpenetration in Spain lead us to the following preliminary conclusions: A. A substantial element of Jewish thought had entered into the intellectual arena of Christian scholarship in Spain�.� Thanks! I hadn’t known about the various levels of cultural interpenetration in Spain.

Hi, Joel. Re: message 30, when a book doesn't have a picture of the cover, use the link instead and precede it with "(no image)" - like this:

(no image) Economic Analysis in Talmudic Literature: Rabbinic Thought in the Light of Modern Economics by Roman A. Ohrenstein (no photo)

Vicki wrote: "Hi, Joel. Re: message 30, when a book doesn't have a picture of the cover, use the link instead and precede it with "(no image)"..."

Got it. Thanks!

JUNE

14. by Paul R. Halmos
Finish date: June 3, 2017
Genre: Mathematics
Rating: A-
Review:
This book is brilliant. Simply brilliant. It is so much more than a math textbook. It is a glimpse of how mathematics, and mathematicians, work.

The operative word in the title is “Naïve�. As the author explains in the introduction, it means that he takes a somewhat informal approach to axioms and proofs, but as also stated in the introduction, the book is axiomatic in that he does state axioms and use them in subsequent proofs. The way it is unlike other formal axiomatic books is that axioms and proofs are not simply stated distilled down to their final concise and often incomprehensible form. Instead, Halmos lets you in on the motivation of why things proceed the way they do, even at the expense of formality.

For example, he spends the second last chapter giving you the rules of cardinal number arithmetic before even defining them in the last chapter � that comes in the last chapter, but not before he explains why we chose that definition among other alternatives.

These motivating passages are actually less frequent than I would have liked, but they do enough to motivate not only specific definitions, but to motivate what the axiomatic set theory approach is all about. What I got out of it is that set theorists aim to find definitions of intuitive, self-evident concepts using the bare minimum of new constructions. I’ll let the author explain on page 25:

“The concept of an ordered pair could have been introduced as an additional primitive, axiomatically endowed with just the right properties, no more and no less. In some theories this is done. The mathematician’s choice is between having to remember a few more axioms and having to forget a few accidental facts; the choice is pretty clearly a matter of taste. Similar choices occur frequently in mathematics…�

The reason this is done, as is hinted to later in the book in the chapter on the axiom of choice is that mathematicians want to know if the existing set of axioms force an obvious conclusion, or whether a fact that seems self-evident can be dropped and the remaining axioms remain consistent and permits a more general mathematical system.

This book is by no means easy, but the author’s tone is just relaxed enough to relieve some of the intimidation that comes with studying a formal mathematics textbook. He can even be quite humorous at times � I laughed out loud reading a passage on page 45:

“The slight feeling of discomfort that the reader may experience in connection with the definition of natural numbers is quite common and in most cases temporary."

How many math books are this much fun?

Joel wrote: " JUNE

14. by Paul R. Halmos
Finish date: June 3, 2017
Genre: Mathematics
Rating: A-
Review:
This book is br..."

Adding it to my list

Peter wrote: "Joel wrote: " JUNE

14. by Paul R. Halmos

Adding it to my list ."

Like.

15. by Mark Steyn
Finish date: June 3, 2017
Genre: Politics
Rating: C-
Review:
Within 10 minutes of finishing this book, my car radio tells me about yet another Muslim terrorist attack, this time in London, in which three radical Muslims killed seven innocent bystanders by stabbing and ramming a truck into them. This comes just weeks after twenty-two, many of them children, were murdered by a British Muslim terrorist at a concert in Manchester. This in addition to recent attacks in Stockholm, St. Petersburg, London, Istanbul, Berlin, Nice, Brussels, Paris, all within just over a year.

This book was released more than ten years ago, and the message is an uncomfortable one, but it’s hard not to admit that the author just may have been right. He isn’t always politically correct, but the truth he tells is undeniable. Steyn argues that the West, especially Europe, has lost the will to fight for its liberal values, and has even ceased to procreate. At the current rates, Europe is on the fast-track to becoming a majority Muslim continent.

While not every Muslim is mowing down children on London Bridge, the book shows that even many so-called moderate Muslims are complicit, and even supportive of the Jihadi struggle. He quotes many Muslim leaders, some of whom were honored by Western politicians for their community activism, saying things that would be considered deplorable by any liberal Western standard. The bottom line is that as Europe becomes more Islamic, and as the more radical elements are nurtured, attacks against Westerners will only increase, and the apologist strategies of the European and multinational leaders are only seen as signs of weakness and encourage more confidence among young extremists.

I did find the book somewhat repetitive and drawn out. The style is amusing and clever at times, but I found his self-indulgent sense of humor somewhat annoying. He repeats jokes (it was funny the first time, not so much the second), uses bland metaphors and then deprecates himself for doing so, which is just not funny. I’m not a regular reader of Steyn, but I think I could have gotten the same thing from a series of editorials.

Thank you for following the rules and guidelines

No problem. Once you learn them, it's not so difficult. I simply copy and past an old one and replace the fields.

It is remarkably easy - you are right once you get the knack of it.

The hardest part is remembering to update the number.

You just have to do a preview and that helps before you post

Bentley wrote: "You just have to do a preview and that helps before you post"

Oh, I do that to make sure the links are good. Still doesn't help me remember to update the number. It's one of those details one doesn't pay much attention to.

16. by Richard Feynman
Finish date: June 13, 2017
Genre: Memoir
Rating: A+
Review:
Once again, Feynman is touching, hilarious, frank, and insightful, all at once.

This book, like the one preceding it, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, is a transcription of recordings made by Feynman’s drumming partner, Ralph Leighton. I have spent quite a few late nights watching interviews of Feynman on YouTube, including the story about the brown throated thrush, and I could actually hear his voice in my head as I was reading it.

This book is not as linear as the first one, being more of a random collection of stories, drawings, letters, an account of his time on the Presidential commission investigating the Challenger disaster, and a talk he gave on the value of science. Nevertheless, it was just as entertaining, inspiring, and illuminating.

I found the story of Feynman’s run-in with an angry crowd of feminists particularly funny. His story about a Negro (his words, not mine) taxi driver in Trinidad left me shaking my head, while the section on NASA had me banging my fists against the table. It is inspiring to see that despite Feynman’s respect for the US government, his scientific integrity made him prepared to be honestly critical of how it operates.

I was afraid the book would end on a bad note with the somewhat vapid speech at the end, but there were some quite deep insights in there as well, and his closing remarks about not suppressing discussion and criticism was a perfect way to end it.

Overall, not as meaty as some other books of this genre, but it was a quick entertaining read, and left me with many lessons I will carry with me.

Added to my tbr list...thanks!

Oops. Fixed it.

About the length, I know it says that it should be short, but from the instructions thread, it sound like it's OK for it to be long too. Is that still the case?

I recommend short so that the reviews do not pile up and become onerous, tiresome or troublesome to get done. I think that works best for busy people but some folks really get into the reviews and enjoy writing them so I do allow that - always have.

JULY

17. by Eric Schmidt
Finish date: July 3, 2017
Genre: Business
Rating: C+
Review:
The title of this book is somewhat misleading. The purpose of the book is not to explain the technology behind Google's search algorithm, nor is it an in depth history of the company. What it is is Google's CEO and Senior VP pontificating on managing what is probably the world's most innovative technology company. The book has some really good pieces of advice - from how to identify, hire, and retain "smart creatives" to open communication, to giving employees room to innovate. The humor was a bit corny most of the time and the writing style could have been a bit more tucked in, but the book was full of honest anecdotes to back up the authors' management philosophy. I felt like they were giving me a glimpse into the company, but at the same time, I felt like I was missing a lot of the inside jokes.

18. by David Laskin
Finish date: July 15, 2017
Genre: History
Rating: B
Review:
This book follows three branches of the author’s extended family through Europe, America, and Israel during the first half of the Twentieth Century. The matriarch of the family lives in a small village in Belarus and has six children all born between 1862 and 1883. Several of the children move to America in the early 1900s, especially the eldest and his six children, whom the book follows most closely. Two of the children stay in Europe, and their children endure the terrors of the holocaust. Two of the grandchildren settle in British Mandate Palestine, get married, and survive as early Zionist pioneers.

I love this kind of historical nonfiction. It really puts you in the place and time and makes you feel what the world was like back then, while engaging you in the characters. The descriptions of 1920s Lower East Side, Jewish farming settlements in British Mandate Palestine, and Eastern European shtetl life are vivid and dramatic. None of the characters in this book are particularly likeable � Itel’s hypocritical political ideology, Doba’s constant whining, Sonia’s detached melancholy, and Shalom Tvi’s dawdling while his family suffers � but I think that was the point. We are made to feel their helplessness and sympathize with their shortcomings. It’s evident that the author is quite consciously trying to make you feel that in this book.

The author clearly did his research as well. The introduction, epilogue, acknowledgments, and footnotes, themselves tell a small story of the author’s journey to rediscover his family’s history. He really put in a lot of effort into tracking down what happened in the Vilna ghetto, and how exactly his cousins perished, as well as the history of the Kfar Vitkin, the Israeli settlement where two of the grandchildren settled. The book seems a bit too personal at times � that shouldn’t be a bad thing, but it sometimes felt like I was reading something he wrote for his relatives and not for the general public � perhaps altering the tone could have improved that. I found his style a little too flowery at times too. I also feel like he neglected certain branches of the family while focusing more on others, and I would have appreciated more historical background about what else was happening in the world at the time. He does expand a bit on the events in Russia and the battles in France and North Africa during the First and Second World Wars, but I feel like the world that book paints isn’t as fully developed as it could have been.

Overall, this is a great book that covers a broad range of locales and events are really does a good job putting you in the historical period. It feels like it’s missing something, but the author really does a great job in making that world come alive.

AUGUST

17. by Steven Pinker
Finish date: August 12, 2017
Genre: Linguistics/Psycology
Rating: C+
Review:
This book is very similar to many others in the genre, such as John McWhorter’s The Tower of Babel, Guy Deutcher’s The Unfolding of Language, and Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue, all of which I’ve rated very high. But Pinker gets more credit for being one of the earliest in the genre, and he goes into more depth about the neuroscience behind language. In fact, this book covers an exhaustive range of topics, from Chomskyan linguistics, language processing, artificial intelligence, neurobiology, psychology, evolution, and philosophy, politics, and prescriptive grammar. His expertise in all these topics is impressive, and he makes a very persuasive overall argument � that the human mind has built-in modules for specific language-related functions, rather than being born with general purpose hardware that is programmed by its environment.

However, this book just didn’t hook me the same way John McWhorter did. He covers so many topics so quickly that it’s hard to get into it. He does give entertaining examples, and style is swift and humorous, but he fell just short of satisfying me. I guess it’s like having a cup of coffee with one cube of sugar, after getting used to coffee with two cubes. It feels like a tease. Some of the topics he covers deserve a whole book, and in fact, he does have books about those topics � How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, Words and Rules, and others. I will definitely be reading them.

SEPTEMBER

18. by Yossi Klein Halevi (no photo)
Finish date: September 9, 2017
Genre: History
Rating: D+
Review:
This book tells the stories of seven paratroopers liberated of the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordanian forces during the Six Day War of 1967. The book really does a good job immersing the into the mindset of the various Israeli sub-communities of the Seventies and Eighties by following the intimate details of their diverse experiences over that period.

However, I thought that the author didn’t do that very efficiently. It is well over 500 pages, and the author will sometimes go several pages saying very little. How many times does he have to zoom back to Avital sitting in his greenhouse, or Meir bickering with his wife? The conversations are contrived � there’s no way Arik said ‘chevreh� that many times, and I don’t believe that the author really could have seen into the exact thoughts of the characters, despite the hours or interviews and research he conducted. It’s OK to dramatize non-fiction, but this approach diminishes from the believability of the story. For a fiction novel, this is OK, but this is a history book about a contentious topic, and this much embellishment diminishes from the thesis of the book.

Besides, the characters are just not very likeable. The details of their lives start to become trivial and boring about three hundred pages in. They start to grate on your nerves. Sure � I want to respect them for their bravery in the battle for Jerusalem, but by the end of the book, I’m left with little else to admire them for. Meir’s a loser, Avital is a loser, Yoel’s a bit better than a loser, and Arik is� well, a loser. Maybe I would have liked the book if it was two hundred pages shorter � which was totally possible, and I did learn something about Israeli history and culture out of it, but at the end, it just felt like I wasted my time.