Professor Joseph Ellis tells the story of the founding of the US through the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He details the political struggles and backstories of the events, explaining the turmoil and disagreements on many of the issues, including the issue of slavery.
This is a should-hear series of lectures for all adults in the US. It provides a good basis for understanding our constitution and the founding fathers.
This is a full novel, most Jeeves stories I’ve read were short stories. In this story, Bertie’s aunt is trying to get a donation from another gentleman. Bertie gets into his usual trouble, being accused of stealing from the same gentleman.
Bertie’s friend, Ginger is engaged to Bertie’s cousin Florence, who has encouraged him to run for the House of Commons. But Ginger later decides that he actually loves another, but he cannot walk out on a commitment.
Then Bertie is trying to help a young woman who has something in her eye. Her fiancé walks in and threatens Bertie, who in his usual fashion, doesn’t understand. The young girl falls for Bertie, who wants nothing to do with her.
In comes Jeeves and solve all problems in one single action full of unforeseeable consequences and humor. The book is funny, in the typical style of Wodehouse. A good and moderately fast read.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney discusses waves of many variety from a scientific perspective. Unlike most science books, this one is very readable. His prose is almost poetic at times, I found myself rereading a few sections for the imagery, not the science. And there wasn’t one metaphor – unless I just missed it.
The book is completely devoid of math. Still, it discusses details in a number of fields that help you to understand different phenomena. He starts and ends with ocean waves. He covers what drives them from their birth, what sustains them, and what give them their differing appearances and sizes. Different chapters discuss sound waves, supersonic flight, shock waves, light waves and more. In giving examples of different effects, he finds interesting trivia to fill the book.
One of the first things I noticed was that there is some italic text next to some paragraphs, partially indented into the text block. It seems to be fairly random at times, yet makes sense with respect to the paragraphs after having read it. My guess is that it would provide a memory assist when trying to either recall portions of the book or looking for a passage.
Overall, the book is very enjoyable and a moderately fast read. You don’t have to be a science nerd to enjoy it. If you are a science nerd, the lack of equations won’t be missed.
This book provides an introduction to quantum gravity aimed at the general public. It provides three different approaches to quantum gravity, doing a decent job of discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each. The author discusses black holes and multiple universes in the journey.
His approach to each subject is historical, tracing development of key idea and briefly mentioning the people involved.
Overall the book is interesting and a rather light read. Although it is aimed at the general public, it is probably a little light for the people who would be interested in reading it.
A rather dull, short story. It didn’t have time to develop anything of interest.
It’s the end of the world, and things aren’t quite going as planned. The antichrist has been born into the world, unfortunately there was this mixup at the hospital. He is raised as a middle-class human only becoming aware of his powers.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you know, War, Death, Famine, and Pollution. Their horses have become motorcycles, and they arrive with the intent of starting a nuclear war.
Now, Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon, aren’t happy with the end of the world. After 6000 years, they’ve grown accustom to it. So they team up to try and change the outcome.
Pratchett and Gaiman have teamed up to bring an excellent and unlikely story of the end of time. There are a lot of interesting character that help carry the book in various directions.
A fan of either author will enjoy this book. It is funny, light, and a fairly quick read.
This is a series of unrelated cartoons, mostly about science. Some basic understanding of science is helpful to understand some of them, but anyone can enjoy the book. It is a pretty fast read, worth a few giggles, but not much more. It is a different way of looking at science.
I did find it curious that a science-oriented book would neglect to include page numbers.
Dracula is well known, I found some of the differences between movies, common myth, and the book of interest. He isn’t quite as fearsome in this version. I think a lot of the issue is the dating of the book. A lot of what Bram Stoker does serves to reduce the horror. An example is the early introduction by watching him scale a castle. His behavior wasn’t consistent with his abilities.
Next is the structure of the book. It is told as a series of diary entries with the addition of a few letters. These come from several people, yet they are all told in the same voice with similar types of content and style. Each person has recorded dialog verbatim, even to the point of the awkward working and spelling of people of different cultures and backgrounds. It felt very unnatural.
Abraham Van Helsing seemed over the top. He has all the answers, he’s encountered vampires before, but his background isn’t adequately explained. He is overly secretive for a matter as grave as this, and parcels out information only sparingly.
The story, itself, could be brought up-to-date. For instance, instead of starting in Romania, I would have started in England with the arrival of the boat whose crew was dead. It could have started by taking the form of an investigation. There were some interesting events early in the book, intrigue around Harker’s apparent imprisonment, his interaction with the other vampires. This could be updated by introducing another victim, probably replacing Harker, and another plot thread in England.
Overall, the book fell short of my expectations. I felt no horror, and felt that Dracula didn’t present himself well. Coupled with the overburdened dialog of the stereotypical Victorian dialog made it slow at times and difficult to accept when belittling women or other minorities. The climax came a bit suddenly and was too abrupt. A rewrite could do wonders for the book, it is a good story.
The plot is the exploration of the relationship between a small human society and a new life form. The author seems to have envisioned a new idea for a new life form and used the book as a device to explore it. That said, the book is enjoyable.
Olmy is sent by the Hexamon to spy on the humans on Lamarckia, a planet with a unique life form that was to be left alone. As soon as he arrives, the focus turns to an exploration of the life, itself.
There is almost nothing that is really explored. Although Olmy sets out on a travel, which did not seem to fit with his mission, almost everything we learn about the life is provided by other characters. As the story progresses, the reader encounters characters more and more knowledgable.
Another plot line involves the relation of two factions on the planet. We open with outright warring, and eventually learn the underlying history behind the war, and the people leading it. We also learn a little about the cultures involved in this war. Personally, I found this more interesting than the life exploration.
Besides Lamarkia, referring to the planet and the Lamarkian-style evolution that seems to predominate its life forms, the author has thrown in references to mythologies. Other than just names dropped, there isn’t really a clue that there is a reference. I suspect I missed most of them, if there were more than a couple.
Early on, the book dragged. I really couldn’t identify with any of the characters in the book, the main character seemed to make some very odd decisions. The book really picked up in the second half. If the first half were just a little better, I would rate the book much better.
This is the second Gideon Oliver mystery by Aaron Elkins. The dark place is the Olympic National Park in Washington, here the dense canopy hides the sun from most of the forest floor. A few bones in a basket are found by a hiker, and a large footprint is found nearby.
John Lau asks Gideon to provide whatever information he can determine. These are the bones of several people and dead by a number of years, it could be an indian burial site, but there are no Indians in the park. Another sign points to big foot, so the crazies are about.
The story is well-told and a good mystery, throw in a love interest with a park ranger and you have an enjoyable story.
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