2013 Non-fiction challenge

[ladderandbucket]

So far this year I have read:

Why does the world exist by Jim Holt - enjoyable and lucid survey of contemporary cosmology and metaphysics. Slightly let down by the authors personal anecdotes which I suspect were included to make it more 'popular' but end up looking bizarrely out of place.

French revolution by Christopher Hibbert - straightforward narrative of events. Ideal for a newcomer to the subject like me.

Currently reading:

Europe by Norman Davies - epic history book, very accessible, will be sad to come to the end of it.

Blood and rage: a cultural history of terrorism by Michael Burleigh - history of terrorist acts from 19th century anarchists to present times. Well written and interesting but rather one-sided. I believe that terrorists are indefensible but Burleigh makes them all into caricatures, gives little space to their motivations and a lot of space to derogatory remarks about 'liberals' and 'leftists'.

Waiting to be read:

Great war for civilisation by Robert Fisk - 1400 pages!..will consume in small chunks.

Infinity and the mind by Rudy Rucker - amazon reviews looked promising but having looked through it I feel intimidated by all the maths. Will probably end up having to skip quite a bit of it

[kev67]

So far this year I have read:


Currently reading:

Europe by Norman Davies - epic history book, very accessible, will be sad to come to the end of it.

I started reading that but gave up. I found the text boxes rather annoying. I would have to break off where I was reading to read the inserts in the text boxes, then try and pick up the thread on the main text. I wondered whether I should have read the main text first and then go back to the start of the book and read all the text boxes.

[ladderandbucket]

I agree the text boxes are distracting and an unnecessary gimmick. I think they would have been better off as end notes or an appendix.

[krishna_lit]

I've started "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer .. when I watched the film i fell in love with the dialogue of the film and when i came to know it was based on a book i just couldn't resist...! Next lined up non-ficiton book is "Steve Jobs" biography by Wealter Isacson.

[wordeater]

Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics
Naomi Klein, No Logo

[TheFifthElement]

I'm doing terribly badly with my non-fiction reading challenge. So far I have read:
1. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

both excellent reads. I have, however, had to abandon Snowball Earth by Gabriella Walker which was just the most fluff filled dreadful groupieism and I am working my way slowly through Silent Spring by Rachel Carson which is brilliant but just so damned depressing (how stupid are we?). It's May. I should be up to 4 by now (mea culpa mea culpa...)

[hannah_arendt]

I started reading that but gave up. I found the text boxes rather annoying. I would have to break off where I was reading to read the inserts in the text boxes, then try and pick up the thread on the main text. I wondered whether I should have read the main text first and then go back to the start of the book and read all the text boxes.

I have always been impressed how many books he has written so far about polish history. I think that his texts are much better than those written by polish historians.

[TheFifthElement]

*Update*
1. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
3. Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
4. A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong

Silent Spring took me a long time to read but overall it's an excellent, if slightly depressing, read.

I'm catching up

[kev67]

*Update*
1. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
3. Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
4. A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong

Silent Spring took me a long time to read but overall it's an excellent, if slightly depressing, read.

I'm catching up

Silent Spring is a famous book and had a big impact but it is several decades old now. Is it still relevant? DDT is not used much as a pesticide any more. I have read several authors remark that it was not so much DDT that was the problem but its indiscriminate use as a crop dusting pesticide. If it had been used as it was intended it may have saved a lot of human life from malaria.

I have read one book by Karen Armstrong. I think it was called The History of God. However, I found it not very interesting and hard to follow.

[TheFifthElement]

Silent Spring is a famous book and had a big impact but it is several decades old now. Is it still relevant? DDT is not used much as a pesticide any more. I have read several authors remark that it was not so much DDT that was the problem but its indiscriminate use as a crop dusting pesticide. If it had been used as it was intended it may have saved a lot of human life from malaria.

I think it is still relevant in the sense that it seeded the environmental movement. I was reminded of Silent Spring in the recent campaigns to ban certain pesticides which appear to be decimating the bee population. So really its meaning has not gone away.

The 'several authors' are quite right on their point, but that is also actually Carson's point; if you read the book her focus is very much on the indiscriminate use of pesticides and their damaging impact on the environment. It does not just focus on DDT, in fact DDT probably gets much less of a mention than heptachlor or chlordane, and neither does it expressly criticise the use of these chemicals in the fight against transmissable diseases.The focus of the book is very much on the inappropriate and excessive use of these chemicals in the agricultural and forestry domain. The only real mention of use of DDT in disease control centres around evidence of resistance in the mosquito population again largely owing to it being dusted in excessive concentrations over vast areas of land. It does make you wonder, had the indiscriminate use of these pesticides continued, would we now have an entirely resistant mosquito? As it happens, DDT is still authorised for use in disease control, in the right dose and subject to determining that the local mosquito population is not resistant.

She also raises the point that these kinds of dangerous chemicals were not just in the hands of farmers who didn't know what to do with them, but in the hands of the general population. Where access to medicines was restricted, access to chemicals that could, and did, kill was not restricted at all. They were also dusting these chemicals on to people and environments, without really knowing or understanding what the effects were, or allowing people to prevent it. Significant damage occurred to populations of bird and fish, whereas the insect pests which it was intended to wipe out tended to recover very quickly and then thrive because their natural predators had been killed. Carson's point was that rather than us being 'masters' of our environment, the environment is a delicate balance which should be tinkered with carefully and sparingly. I think, over the years, that message is sinking in and in that respect I see the book as being as relevant today as it was at the time it was published.

The Karen Armstrong book was also fascinating. A very compact assessment of the history of myth and very easy to follow. If anything, I would have liked to have seen it expanded, as it did leave me wanting more.

[cafolini]

I think it is still relevant in the sense that it seeded the environmental movement. I was reminded of Silent Spring in the recent campaigns to ban certain pesticides which appear to be decimating the bee population. So really its meaning has not gone away.

The 'several authors' are quite right on their point, but that is also actually Carson's point; if you read the book her focus is very much on the indiscriminate use of pesticides and their damaging impact on the environment. It does not just focus on DDT, in fact DDT probably gets much less of a mention than heptachlor or chlordane, and neither does it expressly criticise the use of these chemicals in the fight against transmissable diseases.The focus of the book is very much on the inappropriate and excessive use of these chemicals in the agricultural and forestry domain. The only real mention of use of DDT in disease control centres around evidence of resistance in the mosquito population again largely owing to it being dusted in excessive concentrations over vast areas of land. It does make you wonder, had the indiscriminate use of these pesticides continued, would we now have an entirely resistant mosquito? As it happens, DDT is still authorised for use in disease control, in the right dose and subject to determining that the local mosquito population is not resistant.

She also raises the point that these kinds of dangerous chemicals were not just in the hands of farmers who didn't know what to do with them, but in the hands of the general population. Where access to medicines was restricted, access to chemicals that could, and did, kill was not restricted at all. They were also dusting these chemicals on to people and environments, without really knowing or understanding what the effects were, or allowing people to prevent it. Significant damage occurred to populations of bird and fish, whereas the insect pests which it was intended to wipe out tended to recover very quickly and then thrive because their natural predators had been killed. Carson's point was that rather than us being 'masters' of our environment, the environment is a delicate balance which should be tinkered with carefully and sparingly. I think, over the years, that message is sinking in and in that respect I see the book as being as relevant today as it was at the time it was published.

The Karen Armstrong book was also fascinating. A very compact assessment of the history of myth and very easy to follow. If anything, I would have liked to have seen it expanded, as it did leave me wanting more.

I would have to agree. Still very valid and longlastingly so. It's not over until it's over.