Angela Ambroz
Fine. Read it because I've had this Epic Rap Battle of History stuck in my head all weekend as an earworm.
Like Seneca, the astounding thing is how relevant this stuff feels - even for (a) a person who is not a general engaging in war and (b) a person living 1,500 years later. Sun Tzu's advice is more practical than philosophical; the TL;DR is know yourself, know your enemy, know the land/circumstances, and then be smart about probabilities. He makes several comments about the impediments of ego or how destructive (and easily manipulable) heightened emotions can be - some of these felt directly applicable to Trumpism and anti-Trumpism.
I especially enjoyed his tips on judging what's happening in the enemy camp (“know your enemy”) by the nature, speed and dispersement of their smoke - e.g. smoke rising fast in a column is charioteers approaching; smoke rising slow and wide is infantry; little spurts of random smoke is encampment, etc.
My reading speed asymptotically approached zero as this book progressed. Alas!
A history of science book, this covers the history of Bayesian statistics - from its origin in 18th century England via Thomas Bayes, to its second origin in 18th century France with Laplace, to its waxing and waning in popularity throughout the 20th century, and eventual redemption thanks to increased computational speed/processing power. A lot of the 20th century stuff seemed to be directly taken from interviews, so the book has an oral history quality to it. And it's certainly written in a lively, impassioned way.
But! It's also frustratingly vague of what “Bayesianism” actually IS (we do see Bayes' Rule once, early on in the Laplace chapter, and we have a lot of discussions of how people get upset about priors). But for a science book, I feel like it fails to convey the core insight of what makes Bayesian stats interesting. We talk a lot ABOUT Bayesian stats, but unlike e.g. Michio Kaku re: fancy physics (and maybe physicists will balk), or Emily Oster (or Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee) and economics, or Michael Lewis and economics/anything, this book doesn't really inform the reader on the core idea. And I get it! It's hard. And I can't even pinpoint specifically HOW McGrayne doesn't get it right... Like, she definitely does spend a lot of time discussing priors, uncertainty, beliefs/probabilities, and frequentist's contrasting ideas of multiple samples (and how who has time/money to do that?!). But it almost feels like she spends a lot of time discussing these topics without ever first defining them in great depth.
Similarly, another thing which started to really grate on me was the long, comma-separated lists of applications of Bayesian stats (lists and lists and lists), as well as McGrayne's tendency to introduce numerous people in the same way: Robert (“Bob”) Smith, who received a PhD from Ivy League University, blah blah. Do I need to know he went by Bob? Also, these appeals to authority (PhD from Ivy League!) definitely worked on me in the beginning (“wow, Bayes is so mathy, these people are so well-qualified”), but then I started to be like, “wait, why do I need to know Bob goes by Bob and went to Yale if I'm never going to hear from him again?”
I was also was a little miffed by the relatively cursory mention of Bayes's history in economics (“oh yeah, Tversky and Kahneman won the Nobel for showing people aren't super rational”), while we spent - relatively - soooooo much time with military applications. And I mean, I like the Navy! I like to read about naval things! But I also became enamored with Bayes, like a lot of people in my classes, when going through the econ journey of game theory, risk and uncertainty, decision making under risk and uncertainty, and finally behavioral economics. This is a wonderful journey! A very interesting realm of study! So yeah, I was miffed that in a big book about Bayes, we spent so much time at Harvard Business School and the Navy, and so little time with, indeed, Kahneman and Tversky.
Maybe 3.5 stars, but Shakesman can take it - we can chip away at his stars!! 500 years later!! WHO CARES, AMIRITE?!Anyway, so this was my second SPQR hangover read/listen (the first being Oedipus Rex), and - despite it making me want to puke - I preferred Oedipus. I mean, this ALSO made me want to puke, but more from annoyance/cringe. This was like “Yoko Ono breaking up the Beatles”, mixed with heavy doses of groan-inducing Orientalism and dick jokes (so many dick jokes. : ) and weird tonal shifts that led me to - as Antony (played by Kenneth Branagh) semi-kills himself and then chokes out, “Not dead. Not dead!” - laaaaugh.So Wiki says this is sometimes considered a “problem play”. Reviews have historically been mixed. I can see why it's not often staged. I actually saw this years ago in London. I remember laughing when Antony was dying then as well. I put it down to the directorial choices in that specific production. But maybe this is what Shakespeare originally intended? Because there's a sort of... horrible, pitying, pitch-black slapstick quality to all of this, to the teenage-level raging hormones of Antony and Cleopatra, to the shrill vanity of Cleopatra and the lurching drunkenness of Antony, while nearly all other characters roll their eyes. It's just like: they're not sympathetic at all, until they VERY briefly are, and then you just feel awful for them (tragedie!). Things that start in media res are great, and this play starts very nicely AFTER much insanity has already occurred: Pompey the Great is dead (and his son, Pompey Jr., is fighting the Second Triumvirate), Julius Caesar is dead (and his adopted son, Octavius Caesar - who would become Augustus - is leading armies around), Brutus is dead (duh), Marc Antony has gone to seed, and there is a general feeling of “has-been-ness” and the younger generation (Pompey Jr and Octavius/Augustus, especially) starting to edge the older ones (Marc Antony, everyone else) out. It was a tectonic shift in Rome's history; politically surviving such an earthquake would have been miraculous.The Orientalist qualities of this play are also - goddamn just wow. This is pure Orientalism, in what Edward Said originally described: the stereotype of a effete, feminizing, debauched, besotted East. Nearly every scene in Egypt features Antony very clearly ensnared in booze and Cleopatra, while all the other Romans shake their heads. Both Antony and Cleopatra are also hot blooded stereotypes of rits of fealous jage, to the point that you (or I, at least) start to lose patience with them. ROME COULD BE YOURS, ANTONY, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.And that, I guess, was the point?P.S. Alex Kingston plays Cleopatra in the BBC version, and if you wanna talk romance and epickal tragedie, then this scene from Doctor Who is just my goddamn faaaaave. “Spoilers.” Yeah, you're welcome for the cathartic cry.
You too can be the Kwisatz Haderach if you give this story a whirl. People go so bananas over Tolkien and all his faux researchy vibe, but I really think Frank Herbert gives him a run for his money. For ALL HIS MONEY.
This vision is amazing - a far future civilization as remote to us as... the past? You know what they say: the past is a foreign country. And so is this (very weird) future. The appendix itself basically changed my life (well, my intellectual life) (really, though! no joke!).
Very wonderful, as usual. Gosh, I love this series. Also as usual: some essays were better than others. I reeeeally didn't care for the “my manly husband killed a bear” essay, which seemed very thin on both the science AND nature. Some of the best essays included a look at hospice care (Atul Gawande), a profile of a medical researcher exposing publication bias and data mining, and a profile of Sandor Katz and other alternative-food hippies (I find Katz endlessly fascinating and inspiring!). The physics essays - including one by Stephen Hawking - were suitably mind-bending.
A cheap way to finish my 2015 reading challenge; meh, it was blah. Will Eisner has achieved some pretty sublime heights, this wasn't one of them.
Really brilliant. Meta in the true sense of the word, this is a comic book about comic books. I thought it would be a bit more craft-focused (i.e. how do you do the paneling, the color, what are the big trends). Instead, it's a philosophical and critical analysis of “COMICS”. What do we mean by COMICS? To paraphrase The Mighty Boosh, comics is a thing... comics is a state of mind. And my mind was properly blown.
I also found the final chapter(s) strangely evocative: when McCloud was blazing through the genii of each step of artistic creation (Idea/Purpose, Form, Idiom, etc.), I almost wanted to cry. Why!? Who knows. And when he wraps everything up, highlighting different parts of the book. Well, gosh. It felt like the end of The Usual Suspects, when they zoom in on the coffee mug, the mug shot, Kevin Spacey's legs, Chazz Palmintieri's horrified eyebrows, the fax. And you're like, O... M... G!!!!
Same type of ending, same feeling of amazement and awe and grandeur. I'm sure I'll be coming back to this, again and again, to plumb its depths.
Wow. Just... wow. This graphic novel kind of blew my mind. It's crazy - crazy rich, crazy complex, and crazy visionary. Craig Thompson is also crazy talented. And also maybe just crazy. It blasted me with so much information and impressive curlicues of style and form, that I don't think I can even really judge it in any objective way. It was just kinda overwhelming, ya know!
Um, okay... gathering my thoughts. So... um. It's set in an (unreal?) Islamic realm by a modern-looking city of Wanatolia. There's a very classical-looking and classical-behaving sultan, complete with 1,001 nights ultimatums (entertain me, or you die!), a huge harem, eunuchs, slaves, fountains, dates, and so forth. There's a village, which looks like a serious blast from the classical Arab past. There are caravans in the desert. There's a huge modern dam. Okay, it's confusing. The context is very difficult to pin down. 75% into the book, I went “ah HA! This is 19th century Istanbul!” Now I'm not so sure.
What is understandable is the central story (told, as it is, in a circuitous, rambling way with many rotations through time) of Dodola, a beautiful Persian (?) woman who is basically objectified, abused and prostituted constantly, and a young dark-skinned boy she rescues from the slave market, Zam. Dodola and Zam briefly live on a ship in the desert. Then they are split up - Dodola becoming the sultan's favorite courtesan, and Zam growing up, tortured by his sexuality and trying not to starve.
What is this book trying to say?! The narrative is constantly embellished with incredibly rich asides regarding stories from the Qur'an, Arabic calligraphy, geometry and science. At times, you think Dodola is supposed to be the archangel Gabriel. Then you think she's the Prophet. Then you think she's Noah. Then you think Zam's Noah. Then there's a long, touching substory about hijras - but wait! We're clearly not in the subcontinent (or are we? some characters sometimes wear salwar kameezes or saris). Is this an elaborate pun on hijra/Hijra?!
Anyway, ultimately, Habibi is an extensive, mystical Sufi meditation: love God/Allah, but love love first. Islam (and religion) is treated with wide-eyed reverence - though I don't think Thompson is Muslim? But the ultimate message is - I think - about how we tell stories to ourselves to make sense of the world, but ultimately we don't need those stories. And we should throw them away if they hurt us. And the guiding principle of everything is this one. And, okay, I cried.
Heartbreaking. This stayed with me for a long time after reading. I'd find myself suddenly in a funk, and then I'd realize it'd be because someone reminded me of this book, or I had just read something about Iran in the news. Poor Mehdi.
Briefly, this is a fictionalized account of one family's search for their university-age son, Mehdi, after he goes missing following the protests after the 2009 Iranian elections. His brother recounts the terrible journey, as they descend into Dante's inferno, visiting prisons, morgues and always despairing at their senselessly “disappeared” loved one.
The style is a mix of Baroque/golden age of Islam, with gorgeous calligraphic/geometric curlicues decorating the pages. Hat tip to one mind-blowing, gorgeous spread which shows the “inner workings” of the notorious Evin Prison/post-Revolution Iran. Amazing.
The style reminds you a lot of Craig Thompson's Habibi, except it makes Habibi look like an Orientalist fantasy. Yo, this shit is real, and it's awful. This was published anonymously, and - despite being fictional - there are so many references to real events (such as the death of Neda Agha-Soltan), that you can't help but feel like the issues in this are very, very real, and very urgent.
Beautiful in its art, powerful in its content. Definitely recommended.
Tries to be a lot of things at once: an adventure travel diary, a history of Peru, a stand-up comedy routine. Sort of succeeds. Sometimes it felt scattered, and I was annoyed at the shifts in tone. Sometimes I LOLed. Overall, it was OK.
I picked this up after a month-long communion with Nature which SHOOK MY VERY FOUNDATIONS; this did not scratch that itch. I presume The Snow Leopard will? Onto the Himalayas!
Honestly spent the whole book pumping my fist and going, YES. YYYEEEEEESSSSSS.
I think I also highlighted more than half of it.
Some highlights of the highlights:
- Structual adjustment programs, the World Bank, the 1990s, and how they killed growth.
- Protectionism as a good thing.
- REALLY fun/interesting/provocative stuff about global labor competition - wages in rich countries being a function of immigration control. Really interesting stuff about the interaction effects between immigration control, wages, and class.
- The rise of shareholder capitalism, and its perverse incentives (e.g. businesses avoid making long-term investments, and instead focus on short-term cuts like layoffs and finance tools).
- Lots of really cool historical economics about the “Asian miracle” - e.g. the ENORMOUS and mind-boggling growth + development of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan. Very very cool.
Anyway, a lot of this stuff was also covered in Doughnut Economics. I wish I could take a class with Ha-Joon Chang. I got a lot of other books added to my want-to-read list thanks to this one. Woohooooo economics
I feel this may be a book that I end up thinking very fondly of; already I'm surprised that I gave it only three stars, and that was just a few days ago!
Written with simplicity and clarity about something that is neither simple nor clear (a young man's first relationship with a much older woman, who turns out to have been a concentration camp guard). I really enjoyed it - in a way, the “simple” prose masks and, paradoxically then, emphasizes the complexity: you end up unsure of what to feel, but there are certainly strong feelings. I couldn't bring myself to hate Hanna, even though I felt I should be hating her - I was certainly irritated and troubled by her. Was that the “numbness” that Schlink describes? The inability to really wrap your head around it all?
In a way, this book is all about the next generation of Germans following WWII - their guilt, their anger at their parents (and the way the personal becomes political and vice versa; i.e. every teen rebels/hates their parents, but now you have, well, a really good political/moral reason to if you can accuse them of Nazi collaboration!), their inability to really understand everything and - I guess - inability, thus, to come to terms with the Holocaust.
A riveting and touching memoir of an intelligent, successful woman living with schizophrenia. Saks writes remarkably well about a remarkable life (and a remarkable mind). Her life has been one of big successes (she breezes through academic stratospheres like Vanderbilt, Oxford's BPhil in philosophy - supposedly the hardest degree there! - and Yale Law School; she's now a successful law school academic), constantly marred by psychotic episodes that get progressively more intense as Saks refuses to acknowledge what becomes increasingly evident: she has schizophrenia, and will need to live the rest of her life on antipsychotic medication. It's a hard pill to swallow (no pun intended), and you - as the reader - get increasingly fed up with her impossible hopes to live a med-free life. At the same time, you're with her on that journey: this is a compassionate, humane book.
This is at once a memoir of mental illness, as well as a critique of the institutions surrounding mental illness in America from the 70s until today. Suffice to say, things aren't great when your mind can waylay you with florid psychosis; but they're made worse when the institutions meant to help you are brutal or inhumane or just plain stupid (e.g. Saks being tied to a bed for 30+ hours, and not being let go until hospital staff are convinced she is “calm” - who would be calm after 30+ hours chained to a bed?!). Saks highlights the more humane treatment options she faced in Oxford in the 70s; she also, with hope, illuminates how the treatment of psychotic illnesses has improved over the years (better meds!). And, in the end, her life story is one with a happy ending - she surmounts big odds, learning to not only live, but live WELL, with her illness. Inspiring.
A huge, useful tome of post-war Italian history. Because it's basically a history book, it can be a bit dry and hard to stay focused-on - but kudos to Ginsborg for trying to cram all that info into my tiny brain. I wish I could take this book as a lecture series/course by him. Anyway, just for my own memory, here are my takeaways: well, first there was the war and the occupation by the evil Nazis. That sucked. Partisans were cool. Americans saved everyone (and planted their seeds of control). Then the major Italian parties formed - the DC (Christian Democrats), PCI (Communists) and PSI (Socialists) (Ginsborg doesn't mention the crazy right-wing guys like Lega Nord and Alleanza Nazionale) - but America kinda hated the Communists during the Cold War, so they were doomed to be opposition forever. At least until the late 70s/Berlinguer; though, even in government, they didn't work out. In fact, every government since the war didn't work out so well. Reform never came. The bureaucracy was horrible. The mafia thrived. People protested, ‘68 idealism working itself up into a frenzy of 1970s terrorism (Aldo Moro; the Bologna train station bombing; radicals and anarchists). And then the 1980s happened, when everyone wore big horrible glasses and rolled around in money. (I imagine “Working Girl”, only with Beppe Severgnini and his big glasses making appearances.) I'm sure I missed a lot. But nonetheless, Ginsborg did an amazing job, and now I have this trusty tome as a reference. Seriously, it's huge. He has a sequel (which I think he should have titled, “Berlusconi!”, but instead is called “Italy and Its Discontents”). Indeed, the story is discontenting to the max. Machiavellian backstabbing and corruption is fun (and funny) at the remove of 500 years, in the romance of Renaissance princely states. But 20th century corruption and decay is just sad. Oh, Italy. What to do with you!
Absolutely wonderful. This is my first Frank book, first Jim Woodring comix, but it won't be my last. This is a silent, feverish, surreal and wildly imaginative dreamscape of gorgeous, meticulous art, body horror, and humor. I always give extra points to anything that I find “weird”, since that's exciting! Interesting! I like strange comix. And this was just so much fun. Can't wait to read more.