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| 837
| 1775
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One journey, two accounts... In 1774, well-known Scotophobe Samuel Johnson undertook a journey to the Hebridean Islands off the west coast of Scotland One journey, two accounts... In 1774, well-known Scotophobe Samuel Johnson undertook a journey to the Hebridean Islands off the west coast of Scotland with his younger, Scottish friend, James Boswell. The result was two books – the first by Johnson, a kind of travelogue, commenting on the post-Union, post-Jacobite Rebellion Scotland; the second by James Boswell, a hagiographic account of his older friend’s conversations with a myriad of people as they travelled. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland by Samuel Johnson Their journey begins in Edinburgh and heads quickly up to Aberdeen via Arbroath, St Andrews, Dundee, etc., about all of which Johnson tells us almost nothing. Here’s his in-depth, insightful commentary on Dundee… We stopped a while at Dundee, where I remember nothing remarkable, and mounting our chaise again, came about the close of the day to Aberbrothick (now Arbroath). They then head across country to the west, where we get such descriptions as: Of Fort George I shall not attempt to give any account. I cannot delineate it scientifically, and a loose and popular description is of use only when the imagination is to be amused. Well. My imagination was certainly not amused at this point. While Johnson has largely refrained from the rudeness towards Scotland for which he is famed, it’s pretty clear he’s unimpressed. The thing that seems to depress him most is the absence of trees. The man is truly obsessed by trees. And rocks. Fortunately, we have lots of rocks. Happily once we get to the Highlands, he becomes more interesting, if no more flattering. He finds the country bare and ‘sterile’. He informs us that the Scots have no national trait towards innovation, and all modernities are learned from the English. *chokes* He is surprised by the contrast between the intellectual life – admirable – and the living conditions – miserable. (Note: he’s talking about the rich people here – wait till he starts describing the savages!) He discusses how natural terrain affects the growth or otherwise of civilisation, this to explain why the mountain-dwellers of the Highlands are still rudely uncivilised, and have kept their original language (as opposed to learning English, like civilised people do). I can’t help my sarcasm, but actually he is quite interesting on this topic, and throughout on language generally, which is probably not surprising from a man best remembered for compiling a dictionary. He also discusses the clan system, now in its death throes following the ‘pacification’ of the Highlands after Culloden (Battle of, 1746). These were the early days of what we now call the Highland Clearances, and Johnson shows that people were keen to emigrate, mostly to what are now the US and Canada, to escape the grinding poverty of their lives. He doesn’t mention sheep in this context, which usually get the blame for the Clearances in popular legend, and suggests that often the minor lairds left with their tenants to set up new communities in colonies filled with sunshine and free land. (I’m guessing nobody told them about the crocodiles and tornadoes.) At last we sail over the sea to Sky (now Skye), and on to many of the large and small islands that make up the Hebrides. Most of the time they are hosted by lairds or academics – Boswell, as an Edinburgh advocate and a member of a high-ranked Scottish family, was clearly well-known in Scottish society, and Johnson’s fame was such that he was lionised wherever he travelled – so both men led me to believe anyway. To do him justice, however, Johnson seems quite willing to rough it when necessary and is an adventurous traveller, especially since he would have been in his sixties at this time – elderly, in that era. And although he happily accepts the relative luxury he is offered in the way of accommodation and fare, he is far from blind to the very different living conditions of the poor. He discusses depopulation at length, both causes and effects – a problem with which modern Scotland is still grappling. Apart from the effects on Scotland, he perceptively suggests that sending thousands of disaffected men to the colonies, especially America, doesn’t bode well for future relations between the colonies and the mother-country (England, he means). He is not an enthusiast for the oral tradition and feels that the lack of a written language is another reason for the savagery of the Highlanders and Islanders. Each generation, he points out, has to memorise what previous generations knew, and therefore much knowledge is lost along the way. This means learning never advances beyond what people can retain and transmit orally, and he suggests that language remains under-developed until it is written, when it begins to be polished, expanded and standardised. (A selling point for a dictionary?) Also it means that history is forgotten or distorted, and is so mixed with myth and legend that the truth is hard to discover. Overall, I wouldn’t call this a scintillating read, but his ideas are interesting and occasionally thought-provoking and he’s not quite as rude about my country as I anticipated. For this book, I’d stretch to a generous three-and-a-half stars, and am glad to have read it even if it was a struggle in parts. The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by James Boswell Oh, dear! Imagine I wrote you a letter about a dinner party I held, the guest list including Michael Gove, Professor Whitty, Clive Myrie and Ian Hislop. (American version: Josh Hawley, Anderson Cooper, Dr. Fauci and Stephen Colbert.) You might be quite impressed! (Or horrified.) Now imagine your descendants finding that letter two hundred and fifty years from now – do you think they’d know who any of these people are? I fear that’s Boswell’s book in a nutshell. He is an over-enthusiastic name-dropper, and if one recognised the names I’m sure one would be impressed at the quality, celebrity and variety of people he could attract to his dinner-table, or who would invite him into their homes. But time is cruel and the vast majority of these once-famous people are long forgotten, and so his lists of notables are now as dull as ditchwater. I give you one extract (so you know what I suffered to bring this review to you): We returned to my house, where there met him, at dinner, the Duchess of Douglas, Sir Adolphus Oughton, Lord Chief Baron, Sir William Forbes, Principal Robertson, Mr Cullen, advocate . . . At supper we had Dr Cullen, his son the advocate, Dr Adam Fergusson, and Mr Crosby, advocate. This kind of thing, combined with Boswell’s nauseating sycophancy towards Johnson, persuaded me that I’d rather poke a stick in my eye than read on. Not having a stick handy, I abandoned the book and had cake instead. Only one star, I fear, for poor Boswell and his forgotten friends. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 17, 2024
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Feb 08, 2024
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Jan 12, 2024
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1849545669
| 9781849545662
| 1849545669
| 3.81
| 270
| May 06, 2013
| May 06, 2013
|
it was amazing
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The day Nick Clegg got the Single Transferable Vote… Labour peer Andrew Adonis gives us his account of the negotiations that followed the UK General The day Nick Clegg got the Single Transferable Vote… Labour peer Andrew Adonis gives us his account of the negotiations that followed the UK General election of 2010, when no party won enough seats to form a Government alone. Although not published till now, Adonis explains that the book was written near-contemporaneously and that shows through in the anger and frustration that seeps from the pages. (For non-UK based people, coalition government is highly unusual in Britain and not much liked. The Lib-Dems, who held the balance of power, stunned many, not least their own members, by being willing to deal with the Conservatives and back an austerity plan that they had consistently campaigned against in the run up to the election. The Labour party was divided – they had comprehensively lost the election, but should they hand over to the Conservatives, their traditional class enemies, who planned major cuts in public services, or should they try to form a coalition of the ‘losers’ to keep the Brown/Darling recovery plan on track? It’s hard to explain to anyone who isn’t a UK political junkie how those 5 days played out and how they changed some of the political certainties in Britain, perhaps for ever.) The book is short and the main part concentrates entirely on the negotiations – Adonis assumes that readers understand the background and the main political and economic questions of the time. We get a vivid, sympathetic view of the Labour team and of the much-maligned Gordon Brown. The Conservatives are only in the background (since Labour obviously wasn’t negotiating with them) and the Lib-Dems don’t come out of the whole sorry episode well – Adonis (once a Lib-Dem himself) can’t stop some of his bitterness showing through at their turn to the right. It’s a very readable account, not bogged down with some of the self-aggrandising that can be a feature of political memoirs, and the reader gets a real feel for the stress and exhaustion in the Labour camp. In the last 40 pages, Adonis looks back at his account with the benefit of distance and is endearingly honest about his own bias in the first, contemporaneous section. ‘5 days in May was written in the heat of battle. Re-reading it after nearly three years, it reminds me of a general’s despatch after one of Britain’s all too common defeats in the Napoleonic wars, dictated while the smoke was still swirling and the dead and maimed being taken off the field. It is vivid, partisan, and angry about the perfidy of Albion’s supposed allies, in this case Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems.’ Adonis assesses why the Lib-Dems acted as they did, concluding that both Clegg and David Laws (their chief negotiator) were always more right-wing than they seemed or than the rest of their party. He also discusses the benefits or otherwise of coalition and concludes that Labour must keep the door open to a future coalition with the Lib Dems, however bitter that pill would be to swallow, but must first and foremost try to win outright. I found this an excellent read, biased yes (but then I’m on the same side as Adonis so that didn’t bother me too much) but revealing and blessedly short and to the point. Is it still a democracy when one man (in this case Nick Clegg) gets to decide who will govern for five years regardless of pre-election promises? A question that will become more and more relevant in Britain as the old two-party system fades further into the distance with each passing year. Highly recommended for left-leaning UK political nerds – not sure how interesting it will be to other people though! PS I had to laugh at the subliminal advertising on the book jacket – Brown faded into the background, then Clegg, then Cameron; and finally, right at the front, Ed Miliband! A triumph of hope over experience, perhaps? www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com Merged review: The day Nick Clegg got the Single Transferable Vote… Labour peer Andrew Adonis gives us his account of the negotiations that followed the UK General election of 2010, when no party won enough seats to form a Government alone. Although not published till now, Adonis explains that the book was written near-contemporaneously and that shows through in the anger and frustration that seeps from the pages. (For non-UK based people, coalition government is highly unusual in Britain and not much liked. The Lib-Dems, who held the balance of power, stunned many, not least their own members, by being willing to deal with the Conservatives and back an austerity plan that they had consistently campaigned against in the run up to the election. The Labour party was divided – they had comprehensively lost the election, but should they hand over to the Conservatives, their traditional class enemies, who planned major cuts in public services, or should they try to form a coalition of the ‘losers’ to keep the Brown/Darling recovery plan on track? It’s hard to explain to anyone who isn’t a UK political junkie how those 5 days played out and how they changed some of the political certainties in Britain, perhaps for ever.) The book is short and the main part concentrates entirely on the negotiations – Adonis assumes that readers understand the background and the main political and economic questions of the time. We get a vivid, sympathetic view of the Labour team and of the much-maligned Gordon Brown. The Conservatives are only in the background (since Labour obviously wasn’t negotiating with them) and the Lib-Dems don’t come out of the whole sorry episode well – Adonis (once a Lib-Dem himself) can’t stop some of his bitterness showing through at their turn to the right. It’s a very readable account, not bogged down with some of the self-aggrandising that can be a feature of political memoirs, and the reader gets a real feel for the stress and exhaustion in the Labour camp. In the last 40 pages, Adonis looks back at his account with the benefit of distance and is endearingly honest about his own bias in the first, contemporaneous section. ‘5 days in May was written in the heat of battle. Re-reading it after nearly three years, it reminds me of a general’s despatch after one of Britain’s all too common defeats in the Napoleonic wars, dictated while the smoke was still swirling and the dead and maimed being taken off the field. It is vivid, partisan, and angry about the perfidy of Albion’s supposed allies, in this case Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems.’ Adonis assesses why the Lib-Dems acted as they did, concluding that both Clegg and David Laws (their chief negotiator) were always more right-wing than they seemed or than the rest of their party. He also discusses the benefits or otherwise of coalition and concludes that Labour must keep the door open to a future coalition with the Lib Dems, however bitter that pill would be to swallow, but must first and foremost try to win outright. I found this an excellent read, biased yes (but then I’m on the same side as Adonis so that didn’t bother me too much) but revealing and blessedly short and to the point. Is it still a democracy when one man (in this case Nick Clegg) gets to decide who will govern for five years regardless of pre-election promises? A question that will become more and more relevant in Britain as the old two-party system fades further into the distance with each passing year. Highly recommended for left-leaning UK political nerds – not sure how interesting it will be to other people though! PS I had to laugh at the subliminal advertising on the book jacket – Brown faded into the background, then Clegg, then Cameron; and finally, right at the front, Ed Miliband! A triumph of hope over experience, perhaps? www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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May 13, 2013
not set
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May 16, 2013
not set
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Feb 20, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0140063927
| 9780140063929
| 0140063927
| 3.77
| 6,446
| 1900
| 1984
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liked it
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The Bummel? Our companions from Three Men in a Boat set out on a new journey, to cycle through the Black Forest, one on a bicycle and the other two sha The Bummel? Our companions from Three Men in a Boat set out on a new journey, to cycle through the Black Forest, one on a bicycle and the other two sharing a tandem. It’s about twelve years since we met them last, and they’re older and to some degree wiser. George is still a bachelor, but J. and Harris are both married men with children, so their first task is to persuade their wives that a little break will inevitably lead to greater connubial bliss on their return. To their surprise, the wives seem quite happy at the notion of surviving without their husbands for a few weeks, informing the men that they will take the children off for a little holiday of their own at the seaside. While this is a perfectly pleasant travel memoir, it doesn’t compare in any way to its hilarious prequel. It often feels as if Jerome is trying to recapture the joyous tone of the earlier book, but failing, leaving it feeling contrived and a little false, especially in the dialogue between the men. However, there are enough mildly amusing adventures and mishaps to keep it entertaining. It’s interesting to read Jerome’s impressions of Germany and the Germans in 1900, before the two wars that would change the kind of cousinly friendship between the two nations into bitter enmity for a large part of the twentieth century. I actually found it quite a strange experience reading from the other end of that century as Jerome described pretty towns and handsome cities that then had no war-time resonances for him but did for me – Dresden, Berlin, Potsdam, etc. It gives his account a kind of innocence and a pathos, reading it now, that obviously it wouldn’t have had for contemporary readers. He stereotypes the Germans (or does he? Was he perhaps the originator of the stereotypes? I don’t know…) as tidy, hard-working, stolid and rather unimaginative burghers. He does the usual Brit abroad thing of suggesting British superiority to all “foreigners”, but he knows he’s doing it and mocks himself for it too, which takes the sting out of it. He also mocks the Brit abroad, suggesting that the stereotypes Europeans use about us may not be undeserved! Occasionally, again looking back with hindsight, I found some of his observations on the German character and culture rather chillingly prescient, though I suspect he didn’t see it that way himself and was being reasonably light-hearted about it. For the direction of German character into these channels, the schools, of course, are chiefly responsible. Their everlasting teaching is duty. It is a fine ideal for any people; but before buckling to it, one would wish to have a clear understanding as to what this "duty" is. The German idea of it would appear to be: "blind obedience to everything in buttons." It is the antithesis of the Anglo-Saxon scheme; but as both the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton are prospering, there must be good in both methods. Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be exceptionally well governed; if this continue, it will go well with him. When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes wrong with the governing machine. But maybe his method has the advantage of producing a continuous supply of good governors; it would certainly seem so. In fact, the bike ride through the Black Forest is only a minor part of the book. Mostly the men spend their time visiting towns and cities, travelling by train, and since their visits to each are short there’s not a great deal of depth to the descriptions of them. Jerome himself says he sees no point in replicating what can be found in guide books, but this left me wondering what he was trying to do instead. In Three Men in a Boat, the humour covers up for any lack of hard information, but with less humour in this one, it all feels a little superficial. Perhaps it’s because of the too-high expectations set up by the previous book, but overall I found this one somewhat disappointing. Still, it filled a few hours pleasantly enough. "A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started. Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over." www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 28, 2022
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Sep 02, 2022
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Aug 28, 2022
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Paperback
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| 3.22
| 4,483
| Oct 01, 2020
| Oct 01, 2020
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liked it
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Flying teacups… It’s 1938, a peak time for fake spiritualists and psychical research. When poltergeist activity starts happening in her house, Alma Fie Flying teacups… It’s 1938, a peak time for fake spiritualists and psychical research. When poltergeist activity starts happening in her house, Alma Fielding contacts the Sunday Pictorial newspaper. Nandor Fodor is a Jewish refugee from Hungary, a psychical researcher who has worked with the paper in the past, so he gets in on the case from the beginning. The book tells the story of Alma’s “haunting” and of Fodor’s attempts to prove her story either true or false. I have enjoyed some of Summerscale’s previous books, but I fear this one is the exception. It’s rambly and repetitive, with far too many descriptions of various frauds perpetrated on gullible “experts” like Fodor by Alma and other mediums. I also felt that Summerscale’s research wasn’t as sound as usual – her casual mention that Alma was taking antibiotics (in 1938) set up warning flags at an early point. She also lists the many breakages of glasses and cups flying through the air at Alma’s home – I found the concept of poltergeist activity marginally less unbelievable than the idea that a working class household in the 1930s would have possessed twenty-four wine glasses and thirty-six tumblers. Not impossible, but unlikely, and I was surprised that Summerscale seemed to accept these figures without question, or even comment. In her usual style, Summerscale ranges beyond the mere facts of Alma’s case to look more widely at the society in which they happened. She discusses the anxiety the country was experiencing as they waited for the now inevitable war to begin; the rise of spiritualism at a time when traditional religion was on the wane; poltergeist activity as a means for women to be transgressive in a restrictive society, consciously or unconsciously. Fodor, she tells us, was intrigued by Freud’s ideas, and thought that such hauntings as Alma’s may be physical manifestations of psychological frustrations. To bolster this, Summerscale suggests that the earlier death of one of her children may have been at the root of Alma’s “manifestations”. The problem with this theory is that Alma was so clearly not having manifestations, nor could her actions have been subconscious since she was deliberately making elaborate physical preparations in advance of meetings with the researchers in order to fool them. Alma was not a deluded woman, however much her loss may have affected her mental state – she was a deliberate fraud, making money out of her deception. I felt that if Summerscale wanted to make the not unreasonable case that some “hauntings” may be the result of psychological stresses, then she picked the wrong subject. Where it is rather more interesting is in the description of the lengths gone to by the researchers to prove that manifestations were indeed true. While they would probably have argued that they were unbiased, in fact Summerscale makes it clear that they were strongly incentivised to find “real” cases – continuing publicity and contributions to funding, and hence, in Fodor’s case, his income, depended on ensuring the public remained gullible and enthusiastic about such stories, and a constant stream of proof that it was all nonsense wouldn’t have helped with this. Therefore, the researchers themselves were motivated, whether they realised it or not, to make allowances for subjects even when they caught them out in deliberate cheating. I felt the physical lengths to which the researchers went, strip-searching subjects, investigating their intimate orifices for hidden objects, pinioning their arms during sessions and so on, had a direct kinship with the old ways of testing women to see if they were witches; and I found myself angry that Fodor could believe that Alma’s case was caused by mental trauma and yet treat her so inhumanely. The fact that Alma was so clearly a fraud still didn’t justify the circus that they allowed to develop around her. In the end, I didn’t feel there had been enough of interest in it to justify the time taken to read through the repetitive descriptions of manifestations and research methods. It might have made an interesting essay, but it needed far more substance and less waffle to make a worthwhile book. A disappointment, I’m afraid. 2½ stars for me, so rounded up. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 13, 2020
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Sep 27, 2020
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Sep 04, 2020
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0008275009
| 9780008275006
| B084DHVWJB
| 3.82
| 1,204
| Jan 11, 2000
| Jun 25, 2020
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it was amazing
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Sex, lies and audiotape… Every detail you ever wanted to know about the whole Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and several that you didn’t. This is more than Sex, lies and audiotape… Every detail you ever wanted to know about the whole Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and several that you didn’t. This is more than a salacious recounting of the affair that nearly brought down a President, however. Jeffrey Toobin argues convincingly that politicians on both sides of the aisle had gradually been using the courts more and more to decide political questions, and that the Clinton scandal was a clear indication that the balance of power had shifted, and that the legal system was from now on to be the arbiter of all political questions in the US. He also suggests that it was the beginning of the sordid game beloved by politicians and the media (but not so much by the public, he implies) of dragging political opponents down, not by dissecting their poor performance as politicians, but by pretended moral outrage over their private behaviour. The book was originally published in 2000, so long before the MeToo movement but at a time when questions of sexual abuse in the workplace were being raised by feminist groups. In his introduction, Toobin admits that he may have treated Lewinsky differently had he been writing now, when terms like “power imbalance” are part of the everyday lexicon. To be honest, I’m glad he wrote it when he did then, for two reasons. Firstly, my opinion then (when I was a youngish, ambitious, working woman) and now is that a 22-year-old woman is a grown adult, perfectly capable of making her own decisions, and therefore morally responsible for her own behaviour. There was never a suggestion that Clinton forced himself on Lewinsky – quite the reverse – so while I think he’s a disgusting and rather pathetically inadequate adulterous pig, I’m not willing to see her as his victim. (Her treatment later, by her tape-recording “friend” and the lawyers investigating Clinton, seems to me far more abusive than anything Clinton did to her.) Secondly, because Toobin wrote it in the heat of the moment, more or less, it gives a much clearer picture, I think, of the attitudes prevalent at that time than any later history, trying hard to tell the story through the filter of a 2020 lens, could ever do. Although Toobin is pretty tough on Lewinsky, he also shows no mercy to Clinton, so this is in no way an apologia. Toobin spares us none of the intimate detail, and I fear I learned far more than I wanted or needed to about Clinton’s anatomy and sexual preferences, not to mention Lewinsky’s underwear and performative techniques. (It made me realise that, back in the day, although the case was reported on at extremely boring length over here too, our dear BBC must have decided to leave out the most salacious details, for which I belatedly thank them.) However, in terms of the book I do think it was necessary to include them, because part of Toobin’s argument is exactly that public interest arguments shouldn’t justify this level of intrusion into the minutiae of sex between consenting adults. This case opened the door to the constant diet of sleaze that is now common currency in what we laughably call political debate. Does the public have the right to know their President paid a porn star for her silence about their affair? Probably – it goes to questions of character and vulnerability to blackmail. But do we really need a detailed account of the act complete with anatomical measurements? I think not. The bulk of the book, however, is about the Starr investigation, and how incestuous the whole relationship between the legal and political systems of the US has become, with partisan lawyers and judges acting to down political opponents and circumvent the laws of the land, rather than behaving as impartial administrators of justice. This provides a lot of insight for outsiders, and I expect for many Americans too, on why the most important agenda item for many politicians seems to be to pack the courts with their own appointees. One only has to see the reaction of the left to the appointment of Kavanaugh (who plays a bit part in the Clinton story), or the desperation with which the Democrats are praying that Ginsberg will be able to remain in her role until next January, or the disgust of Republicans that Chief Justice Roberts has “betrayed” the right in a couple of recent judgements to know that this politicisation of the legal system is corrupting even the Supreme Court. Toobin shows us the origins of this, and the collusion of all sides in allowing it to happen. There were several chapters where, had the names been omitted, the book could as easily have been about Trump, Mueller, and the biased and polarised media of today’s America. So despite all the sleazy details, I found this a fascinating and illuminating scrutiny of the modern American political system. It also surprised me that so many of the political players back then are still influential now – Kavanaugh, George Conway, Ann Coulter were all linked to the Starr investigation, while many of the Senators and members of Congress on both sides, mostly not young or junior even back then, were trotting out opposite arguments during the Trump impeachment two decades later. It made me wonder why the US seems to have stuck – these same people have been running it, badly, for decades. Maybe it’s time for a generational shift, though since the major question in this year’s election seems to be which of the candidates is less senile I’m not expecting it to happen soon. Recommended to Americans who want to understand how and why their system fails them, and to Brits and others as a stark warning not to follow them down the road of giving lawyers and judges more power than our elected politicians. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, William Collins. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 11, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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Jul 03, 2020
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250042666
| 9781250042668
| 1250042666
| 3.76
| 1,576
| Jan 29, 2013
| Jan 28, 2014
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it was amazing
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The President and the detective... Abraham Lincoln has won the Presidential election and now, in early 1861, is about to undertake the journey fro The President and the detective... Abraham Lincoln has won the Presidential election and now, in early 1861, is about to undertake the journey from his home in Springfield, Illinois, to Washington for his inauguration. But these are troubled times, and the journey is complicated because of all of the different railroad companies that own parts of the route. One of the company owners hears of a plot to destroy his railroad to prevent Lincoln making it to Washington, and so he calls in the already famous private detective, Allan Pinkerton. But when Pinkerton starts to investigate, he becomes convinced that there is a deeper plot in the planning – to assassinate Lincoln before he is inaugurated. This book tells the story of Lincoln’s journey, the plot against him, and Pinkerton’s attempt to ensure his safe arrival in Washington. It’s written very much in the style of a true crime book, although it has aspects that fall as much into the category of history. Stashower focuses on three main aspects: a biographical look at Pinkerton and the development of his detective agency; the rising tensions in the still-new nation that would soon break out into full scale civil war; and Lincoln’s journey, and the plot against him. The first section is mostly about Pinkerton, a man who started out as a political activist in his native Glasgow in Scotland until, perhaps to escape the authorities there, he emigrated to America with his young wife. I grew up knowing tales of the great American detective Pinkerton and his agents, but hadn’t realised he was born and lived only three or so miles away from where I spent my childhood years, so that was an added point of interest for me; plus the authenticity shown in the little time that the book spends on Scotland and the political situation there (about which I know a fair amount) convinced me of the author’s historical reliability. Once the story moves to America, Stashower shows us how this journeyman cooper gradually became a detective for hire, and then grew a business of many agents able to work undercover in all levels of society. Stashower discusses Pinkerton’s methods, his policy that “the ends justify the means”, and the clients who called on him to prevent crimes if he could, or else bring the criminals to justice after the event. Pinkerton was also ahead of his time in recognising the value of women detectives, though it was actually a woman, Kate Warne, who convinced him of this when she persuaded him to hire her. She went on to become one of his most trusted agents, and played a major role in the events covered by the book, all of which Stashower recounts most interestingly. If any biographers are out there looking for a subject, I’d love to read a full bio of her life! The focus then switches between Lincoln and Pinkerton, the one preparing for his journey, the other setting up his agents to infiltrate the pro-Secessionists in Baltimore, where the threat to Lincoln seemed to be greatest. The political background is woven into these two stories, with Stashower assuming some prior knowledge of the events leading up to the civil war on the part of his readers, but ensuring that he gives enough so that people, like me, whose understanding of that period is superficial and even sketchy don’t get left behind. Stashower tells us of the various people surrounding Lincoln, and their differing opinions on how he should meet the threat. Given that he had won the election on a minority of the vote, it was felt to be important that he should let people see and hear him, trying to win them over before he took office. This meant that the train journey became serpentine, looping and doubling back so that he could visit as many places as possible. To make matters worse from a security point of view, his advisors and he thought it was necessary to put out an itinerary in advance, so that the people, and unfortunately therefore the plotters, would know when and where they could get close to him. To get to Washington, he would have to go through Baltimore – a state then known as Mobtown and one that was considered likely to go over to the Confederacy side in the event of war. Despite the fact that we all know that Lincoln survived for a few more years, Stashower manages to build a real atmosphere of tension – we may know the outcome, but I certainly didn’t know how or even if he would make it through Baltimore safely. Meantime, Pinkerton and his agents take us undercover deep into the conspiracy to stop Lincoln, showing how for many of those involved it was really a talking game, but for a few fanatics, it was a real plot. Pinkerton’s task was a double one – to trap the plotters while also managing Lincoln’s safe transit through this dangerous city. I’ll say no more, so that I won’t spoil the tension for anyone who, like me, doesn’t know this story. But towards the end I found it as tense as a thriller and raced through the last chapters with a need to know how it all worked out. Finally, Stashower gives a short summary of what happened afterwards to the various people involved – the people who travelled with Lincoln, Pinkerton and his agents, and some of the plotters. He also shows how conflicting versions of the story make getting at the facts difficult – Pinkerton and some of Lincoln’s people didn’t see eye to eye either at the time or afterwards, and each side perhaps embellished the facts to suit their own purposes. Nothing really changes, eh? Except maybe it’s a bit easier to travel from Illinois to Washington now. A thoroughly enjoyable book – well written, interesting and informative, giving a lot of insight into this troubled period just before the Civil War. Highly recommended! www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 16, 2019
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Sep 02, 2019
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Jul 29, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0198844417
| 9780198844419
| 0198844417
| 3.96
| 47
| Jul 04, 2019
| Aug 01, 2019
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it was amazing
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Twenty-eight... Since the 16th century, with the development of the first telescopes, scientists have been naming craters on the moon after other scien Twenty-eight... Since the 16th century, with the development of the first telescopes, scientists have been naming craters on the moon after other scientists and philosophers. When this book was first published in 2014, there were 1586 named craters, of which 28 were named for women. Twenty-eight. Over five centuries. In this book, the authors (both scientists and, ironically, both men) tell us who these women were and what they did to achieve such an honour (did I mention there are only 28 of them?), and through their stories show how hard it has been over the centuries for women to break into a field for which most men (and, yes, many women too) felt they were unsuited, intellectually and emotionally. They also show that happily things have improved, in some parts of the world at least, though the battle for access to and recognition in the field of science is by no means won. When I looked at the index of names, I was appalled that even out of this tiny number of women, I had only heard of a handful of them. (Mind you, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have heard of most of the 1558 men either. It occurred to me that, since this book runs to 290 pages, if a similar book was to be written about The Men of the Moon, it would come in at approximately 16,000 pages. Whew! I’m glad I wasn’t reading that one!) The entries are in chronological order, starting with the mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria in the 4th century and ending with Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go into space, and the only one who’s still alive. Hypatia is an outlier – most of the women are from what we think of as the modern era, from the eighteenth century on. The cumulative effect is to give a broad outline of the history of women in science and education generally, from the days when they weren’t allowed into universities and couldn’t get paid positions even after they had self-educated themselves, through to now, when at last women are being actively encouraged to enter scientific careers. As well as gender, there is also a major geographical disparity in the namings. While I’m proud that three of the women were Scots, by birth at least, and there are other Europeans and Russians, the majority are either American or carried out much of their work in America. There are obvious reasons for this in the past, both in that, hard though it was for women to participate in science in those regions, it was still easier than in much of the world, and, of course, Americans and Europeans controlled the naming conventions for most of the period. Hopefully, now that the science community values international co-operation more and as more of the world allows women to participate fully in science, this will be reflected in future namings. The authors give each woman an individual chapter, and these vary in length depending on the extent of the woman’s scientific contribution and/or on how much is known of her personal circumstances. They write extremely well, explaining the science parts with enough simplicity and clarity for a non-scientist to grasp at least the relevance and importance of it, and recounting the life stories of these remarkable women with warmth and admiration, not just for their work but for the obstacles they had to overcome to be taken seriously in this male dominated field. Not all of them were practical scientists, indeed; some were communicators, who took academic science papers and turned them into books and lectures that could be understood by and inspire the layperson (think Neil deGrasse Tyson or Brian Cox – tragically I can’t think of a modern woman who’s at the forefront in that role...?), while others “bought” their craters by providing much-needed funding for scientific projects or institutions. Several of the women worked with their husbands or in partnership with male scientists, and the authors point out that, in many cases, the men would win prestigious prizes while the women barely got a mention even when the woman was clearly the more brilliant of the two. But they also tell of some of the men who did recognise the worth of women in the scientific world, though often in the tedious jobs men didn’t want to do, or because women could be paid considerably less, if at all. Nonetheless, intentionally or otherwise, these men provided a narrow gateway that some women were able to push wide open by their own efforts. The convention is that craters are only named for people after their deaths (Tereshkova is an exception). This has the effect that amongst the most recent women are those astronauts who died in the Challenger and Columbia disasters. These chapters are sensitively handled, never veering into the sensationalist or the mawkish. Of course, I knew these stories already in their broad outlines, but I found learning about the individual women – their enthusiasm, their courage, their dreams – a moving and fitting way to bring the book to its conclusion. An excellent book that I heartily recommend to all, but think would be especially great to give as a gift to a teenage girl who’s interested in a career in science – she’ll find it inspirational, I’m certain. Alternatively, the next time you meet someone who says science isn’t really a suitable career for a woman, you could use it to bash him over the head with... ah! Now I wish I had that 16,000-page men’s book after all. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford University Press. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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Jun 18, 2019
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Jul 06, 2019
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Jun 13, 2019
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Hardcover
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| B07D5NPZTF
| 4.22
| 18,613
| May 02, 2019
| May 02, 2019
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did not like it
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Unfortunately, the author's style isn't working for me, so I'm abandoning the book at 30%. I find it shallow (ironically), full of poorly evidenced ob
Unfortunately, the author's style isn't working for me, so I'm abandoning the book at 30%. I find it shallow (ironically), full of poorly evidenced observations on the human relationship to underground spaces which don't stand up to much thought. I chose it because I'd been told his writing is gorgeous, but I'm afraid I'm not seeing that. The descriptions on the whole are pedestrian, and I am so tired of being told about him shimmying through almost impossible tunnels - it would appear one narrow underground tunnel is much like another. A mismatch here between author and reader, and I'm sure - in fact, I know from looking at other reviews - that it will work much better for other readers. This makes my one-star rating harsh, but it's a subjective rating of my lack of enjoyment rather than an objective judgement of the quality of the book. ...more |
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0
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not set
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not set
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Mar 14, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.14
| 383,538
| Apr 18, 2017
| Apr 20, 2017
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really liked it
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The underground reservation... Driven from their ancestral lands, the buffalo they live on destroyed, their children forcibly removed to schools that i The underground reservation... Driven from their ancestral lands, the buffalo they live on destroyed, their children forcibly removed to schools that indoctrinated them in white culture, the numbers of the Osage tribe had collapsed to just three thousand. But when the government insisted on a policy of allotments in their reservation, a forward-thinking chief and a half-Osage lawyer managed to ensure that the Osage retained mineral rights to the land – an “underground reservation”. So when they then leased their land to oil prospectors, the Osage became enormously wealthy. And then they started to die. This is the story of what happened to the Osage – what was proved, what was suspected at the time, and Grann’s own speculations about the truth with the benefit of distance from the events. This was a mixed bag for me. It’s an astonishing and horrifying story as it relates to the treatment of the Osage, and a fascinating one as it relates to the development of law enforcement and the newly formed FBI. Unfortunately the telling of the story is patchy – some chapters are well written and informative, others are messy, repetitive and badly structured. Grann, presumably in an attempt to make it read entertainingly, jumps from tense to tense, and while it’s clearly exhaustively researched, the end result is an untidy combination of too much information without enough focus. As I feel I say too often, where was the editor? Name after name after name appears, then disappears either for chapters or for ever. I found that I was constantly trying to remember the relevance of some name thrown at me without reminder a hundred pages from the last mention. The actual events, though, deserve to be widely known and remembered so I struggled on through. As the wealth of the Osage grew, so did resentment from the dominant white people. It’s hard to condemn people for being individually racist at a time when the nation was institutionally – constitutionally – racist. The government felt that these childlike neolithic savages (in their view) couldn’t be given responsibility for managing their own affairs, so appointed guardians, most of whom exploited their position to line their own pockets. Some men took guardianships over several members of the tribe, giving them considerable power. But for one man, or perhaps for a conspiracy of many, this wasn’t enough – they wanted not just to skim the wealth of the tribe, but to own it outright. To do this, they had to go to extreme lengths, including multiple murders. At the same time, law enforcement was still in its infancy, with a populace who were highly suspicious of any form of government interference, as they saw it. Local lawmen and private detectives hired by various interested parties seemed to be dying too frequently too, so that eventually the locals appealed to the federal government for help. Enter the Bureau of Investigation, under the new rule of J Edgar Hoover who would introduce a more professional, scientific form of detection as he transformed the Bureau into the FBI. This part of the story is interesting, but I felt it could have been more fully developed. The agent who led the investigation, Tom White, had previously been a Texas Ranger, and Grann tells his story very well, using him to show how law was administered in those still relatively wild pioneering days, now made even wilder by the gangster culture created by Prohibition and the lure of the Osage’s wealth bringing all kinds of disreputable folk to the area. Grann takes us through White’s investigation, which unfortunately covers all the same ground as was in the early chapters. However, it picks up again when the criminals come to trial, and we learn about the rampant corruption in the justice system that made the job of the lawmen even harder. Grann then takes us on to read about what happened after the trial, to White, to the accused and to the tribe. In the final section, Grann gives his own speculation that there may have been even more murders than were identified at the time, using death statistics to make his case. He further suggests that more people may have been involved in the murders than were ever bought to trial. He talks rather movingly of how the murders continue to haunt the descendants of the victims, especially because of the suggestion that in some cases the murders were committed by white spouses of the tribe members, meaning that some people are descended from both murderer and victim. So a fascinating and important story which, despite my irritation at the messy structure, I’m glad to have read and happy to recommend. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 28, 2019
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Mar 16, 2019
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Feb 23, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 1846149371
| 9781846149375
| 1846149371
| 4.05
| 760
| Oct 2018
| Oct 04, 2018
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it was amazing
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A lyrical voyage of discovery... If there’s one thing I love more than most things, it’s being told all about a subject I know nothing about by someone A lyrical voyage of discovery... If there’s one thing I love more than most things, it’s being told all about a subject I know nothing about by someone with an enthusiastic passion for it and the ability to write in a way that brings it to life. I knew nothing about the various rock lighthouses that stand as warnings to shipping around Britain’s shore, and I couldn’t have asked for a better guide to them than Tom Nancollas. He starts with a brief introduction of himself – he is a building conservationist who chose to study rock lighthouses for his dissertation, giving him a lasting interest in the subject. Having regularly visited as a boy both the Wirral coastline and Cornwall, where his family originated, he tells us he grew up feeling an affinity for the sea and a fascination for all its many moods. For this book, he set out to visit seven of the major rock lighthouses, sometimes getting permission to land and see the interiors, other times examining them from the outside. Along the way, he tells us tales of their construction and history, of the men who built, lived in and maintained them over the years, and of the many shipwrecks they have doubtless averted and of some they didn’t. His style is non-academic, sometimes lyrical, always enthusiastic, and I found myself coming to share his fascination for these incredible feats of engineering and his admiration for those who built and worked on them. He begins with Eddystone, off Plymouth, as a way of showing how what became the standard design for rock lighthouses developed. Eddystone has had four lighthouses over the centuries – the first rather whimsical structure unable to withstand its first storm, the second, a part timber building destroyed by fire. The third, built of interlocking stone blocks which provided the strength and stability required to stand up to the sea’s constant pounding, became the model for future lighthouses, and lasted for many years until it too eventually began to shake. It wasn’t the lighthouse at fault though – the rock it was built on had eroded. And so the Victorians built a fourth, the one which still stands, still warning ships to steer clear. The chapter is a great mix of explaining the building techniques in language easily understandable by the complete layperson, together with vignettes about the architects and builders which humanise the subject. Nancollas also fills in the historical background, lightly but with enough depth to give a feel for what was going on in Britain and the western world at each point. He talks of Britain’s growing status as a maritime trading nation and tells tales of the shipwrecks and disasters that gave an urgency to finding some reliable way of guiding ships safely through the rocky hazards around the coast. Each subsequent chapter takes a similar form, gradually leading us round the coasts: to Cornwall’s rocky shores to visit Wolf Rock lighthouse; over to the Scillies to Bishop Rock; up to Scotland to the Bell Rock off Arbroath, built by the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson; to the now disused and decaying Perch Rock in the Wirral; over to Ireland to Fastnet off Cork; and to Haulbowline on Carlingford Lough, in a kind of no-man’s-sea between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Each has its own story and its own history, and Nancollas extends out to tell us something of the places near which they’re situated. For example, while discussing Bishop Rock, he talks about the Scillies, once one landmass and perhaps even attached to Cornwall, now divided into somewhat isolated islands by rising sea levels. He doesn’t specifically mention climate change, but talks of how the Scillies will eventually be completely submerged and, as the highest point, the Bishop Rock lighthouse will be the last thing in that seascape to be seen above the water. It’s beautifully written, and I found it both moving and frightening. Or another example – Haulbowline. The troubled history of the divided island of Ireland means that all records of its building have been lost, if they ever existed. The lighthouse is now unmanned, but Nancollas visits it and tries to visualise it as it once was, with the help of stories from the men with him – the ferry pilot, the lighthouse mechanic, and the grandson of a previous keeper. He tells of how during the Troubles, the British Navy patrolled the lough, stopping and searching suspect ships for contraband, smuggled weapons, etc. He describes the lighthouse as liminal, belonging to neither one side nor the other but standing as a kind of symbol of humanity amidst this disputed and often violent zone. I have one criticism of the book, which is the lack of adequate illustrations. There are some black and white on page photos, but the book is crying out for glossy sections of full colour pictures: of the lighthouses themselves first and foremost, but also of some of the many men we learn so much about along the way. (I nearly deducted half a star for the lack, but in the end couldn’t bring myself to do it.) That aside, I loved Nancollas’ writing, when he is explaining technical stuff simply, or when he is musing more philosophically about things past and future, or when he talks lyrically of the power of the sea. I had time, from the elevated perspective of the tower balcony and lantern, to study the sea, really look at it, and watch it behaving in a way you don’t really see from the shore. It breaks around the reef in repeating patterns that reflect the submerged geology around the rock’s waist. There is a point to the south-west, in the path of the Atlantic, where the sea gathers itself up and splinters over a submerged reef on a long, horizontal plume that looks like the scaly neck of a giant beast. On a smaller piece of rock nearby it breaks into a perfectly contained white cloud, always the same size and shape. Engulfing the Little Fastnet, the sea falls back and dribbles in thousands of streams down crevices that will deepen over the centuries. Here, you get something of the sea’s eternity – rising, falling, calming, dousing and rinsing and thrusting against the rocks in myriad ways, a lazy, beast-like play of motion that will never end. A fascinating subject, brought wonderfully to life, I highly recommend this one. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Particular Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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1
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Nov 15, 2018
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Nov 25, 2018
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Oct 07, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0198826486
| 9780198826484
| 0198826486
| 3.80
| 197
| unknown
| Oct 11, 2018
|
it was amazing
|
Just when you thought it was safe... Since I started reading more classic horror and revisiting some classic science fiction, I’ve come across Darryl J Just when you thought it was safe... Since I started reading more classic horror and revisiting some classic science fiction, I’ve come across Darryl Jones many times, as the editor of various anthologies and as the writer of entertaining and informative introductions for some of the Oxford World’s Classics series. So when I discovered he had written a book on the history of horror, I felt there could be no better guide to a genre in which I’ve dabbled but still don’t know well. Jones is Professor of English Literature and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Trinity College Dublin. The book is deceptively small but it’s packed full of concentrated juicy goodness and, as I always find with Jones, written in an engaging and accessible style that avoids the tendency towards lit-crit jargonese so beloved of so many academic authors (and so hated by me). It begins with a great introductory chapter that discusses how horror has been around since at least the beginning of written records. Jones then gives manageable definitions for all the terms used in describing horror literature – horror, terror, Gothic, uncanny, weird, etc., (a true boon for the struggling amateur reviewer!). He talks about how horror in popular culture reflects the anxieties of its time: fear of invasion, nuclear armageddon, climate change, etc. Along the way he cites zillions of examples from both books and film, and what I really loved about it is that the ones he cites are the popular and familiar ones, rather than obscure ones known only to specialists and hardcore fans. This meant that I had the pleasure of knowing enough of them to enhance my understanding of what he was saying, while at the same time adding loads more to my must-read/watch list. He gives a clear idea of where they fall on the spectrum, so that I found it easy to decide which ones would be too gruesome or graphic for my moderate tastes. The following chapters are themed, again each packed full of examples. Starting with monsters, he discusses the origins of vampires and how they changed over time from aggrieved peasants into the aristocratic version of today, narcissistic, sexualised and romantic. Zombies originated as a response to plague fears, were later used as a commentary on slavery, and now, Jones suggests, as a response to extreme capitalism, especially after the crash. Next up, he discusses the supernatural – ghosts and the Devil. I found this chapter particularly interesting as he discusses the modern (i.e. 19th century and on) rise of the ghost story as a response to the shock to the Victorian psyche brought about by Darwin’s evolutionary theories – a theme I’ve become aware of in so much writing of that era. Likewise, the modern surge in stories starring the Devil and his worshippers, he suggests, may have risen out of Catholic attempts to redefine evil for a modern age and of Protestant beliefs in impending apocalypse. The next chapter looks at the use of the human body in horror, from werewolves and other forms of metamorphoses, through to pain, sadism and torture porn. Although this is the aspect of horror that appeals least to me – not at all, in fact – I still found the discussion interesting and was happy not to add too many new items to my to-be-read list. Horror and the mind is much more my kind of thing again, and Jones takes us into a world of madness and asylums, with Poe’s succession of insane narrators leading the way. He discusses perceptions of madness and how they have changed over time – is madness a symptom of evil, or is it a social and political construct? He mentions the prevalence of highly-qualified fictional madmen and muses as to whether madness is seen as a symptom of intelligence or over-education. He talks about the double – for example, Jekyll and Hyde – and how this has been used to portray a fracturing of the individual. And he leads us on to the serial killer, perhaps a response to the terrors of the anonymity of suburbia and of fractured communities, leaving people vulnerable to victimhood. No history of horror could be complete without the mad scientist. Jones takes us on a jaunt through the impact of Darwinism – Frankenstein, Dr Moreau, etc – and onto more modern iterations – the fear of nuclear holocaust, then evil machines, out-of-control androids and, most recently, the perils of artificial intelligence and the online age. In his afterword, Jones looks at how horror is faring in the new millennium. Though he is critical of the tendency towards remakes of old classics, he gives many examples in both book and film of original horror arising from today’s concerns – the economic crash, the environment, the continuing racial divide in America, etc. He discusses the rise in popularity in the West of horror from Asia, particularly Japan and Korea, and hints that this is perhaps an indication of the beginning of the decline of American cultural domination. He finishes with a brief look at horror moving online, into podcasts and memes and creepypasta*– a word I had never before heard but am now determined to use at every opportunity. (*Urbandictionary.com tells me that creepypasta are “essentially internet horror stories or a myth passed around other sites, to frighten readers and viewers”. Overall, an excellent read – short enough to be approachable but with plenty of breadth and depth in the discussions. And with five million (approximately) titles for me to follow up on... isn’t that a truly horrifying thought? NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford University Press. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 08, 2018
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Oct 14, 2018
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Sep 12, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0241349028
| 9780241349021
| 0241349028
| 4.23
| 10,321
| May 15, 2018
| May 15, 2018
|
really liked it
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Causes and effects... On 26 April 1986 the no.4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. In this book, Plokhy sets out Causes and effects... On 26 April 1986 the no.4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. In this book, Plokhy sets out to explain why and how this disaster occurred, and to look at the fallout, both actual and political, that followed. Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University. The book begins with him visiting the present-day Chernobyl site, now a kind of macabre tourist venue, with the destroyed reactor buried in its own specially designed sarcophagus. He then takes us back in time, to the Soviet Congress of 1986, when the newly elected Mikhail Gorbachev set out to change the direction of the USSR from military might through the long-standing arms race to becoming an economic powerhouse. This led to dramatic increases in targets for the building of nuclear power plants and for the amount of energy to be produced, all on ridiculously short time-frames. Plokhy goes even further back to show the early slipshod development of nuclear power plants in the USSR. While some people already had safety concerns, they were living under a regime that didn't welcome dissent, and so mostly these were not passed up the line or were ignored when they were. Having set the technical and political background, Plokhy then recounts in detail the events that led up to the disaster – a series of technical and management failures, mostly caused by the time pressures and targets forced on the plant. He gives a vivid account of the immediate aftermath, when it was unclear how devastating the accident had been, and when men were sent in to investigate without adequate equipment to protect themselves or even to accurately measure the radiation. Denial became a feature of the whole thing – both official denials by the government, trying to hide the scale of the accident from their own people and from international governments; and the more human denial, of people caught up in the disaster, unable or unwilling to believe that they couldn't somehow put the genie back in the bottle – that things had spiralled beyond their control. Plokhy shows clearly how the regime's culture of holding individuals culpable as scapegoats for systemic failures led to a lack of openness, which in turn delayed necessary actions like evacuation which would have saved at least some lives. Plokhy goes on to show the political aftermath, suggesting that the disaster played a major role in the break-up of the Soviet Union a few years later. And he finishes with a heartfelt plea to the international community to act to prevent such disasters in the future by monitoring and rigorously inspecting nuclear facilities, especially in countries with authoritarian governments where there is a culture of blame that prevents people expressing safety concerns. I found this an interesting and informative read, and felt Plokhy handled the technical side of the story well. He simplified it enough for my non-technical brain to grasp the main points, but there are plenty of facts and figures in there for those with a greater understanding of the science of nuclear power. In terms of style, he tries to get a balance between the politics, the technological aspects and the individual people caught up in the events, and to a large degree he manages this well. However, I did find the book occasionally got bogged down in giving too much biographical detail about some individuals – more than I felt was necessary for the purpose of the book. In contrast, I found as the book went on there was a tendency to deal in numbers rather than people, so that the book didn't have quite the emotional punch I was expecting. Regulars will know I'm not one for a lot of emoting in factual books, but I did feel with this one that I began to view the outcomes as statistical rather than as a tragedy with a human face. And I found the somewhat polemical chapters at the end rather simplistic, in truth. While I wouldn't at all argue with the need for monitoring, I'm not convinced that, firstly, authoritarian states would welcome international interference and, secondly, that we in the oh-so-superior democratic west have a much better record in either safety or encouraging openness. Seems to me we do a pretty good line in “blame culture” ourselves. However, I agree with Plokhy's basic argument – that this technology with such vast potential for disaster should be subject to international scrutiny, since radiation respects no borders. Overall then, despite a few criticisms, I found this a well-presented and worthwhile read that shows clearly the links between policy and technology and the dangers when the two are not working in synch. Recommended. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Allen Lane, via Amazon Vine UK. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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1
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Mar 25, 2018
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Apr 10, 2018
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Mar 25, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| B00PFBTM12
| 3.90
| 863
| May 07, 2015
| May 07, 2015
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really liked it
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Detecting the Detection Club... During the Golden Age of crime fiction in Britain – between the two world wars – some of the leading authors got togeth Detecting the Detection Club... During the Golden Age of crime fiction in Britain – between the two world wars – some of the leading authors got together to form the Detection Club, an organisation that's still going strong today. At the time of writing this book, Martin Edwards had been elected to membership and was the archivist of the club, although he has since become President, following in the prestigious footsteps of such luminaries as GK Chesterton, Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie and, more recently, HRF Keating and Simon Brett. Although the Club was largely social in nature, Edwards sets out to show how the interactions of its members helped to define the style and direction of detective fiction in these early years. He suggests that in fact the existence of the club may be part of the reason that the Golden Age style of detective fiction lasted longer in Britain than elsewhere. Membership was by election only, so that existing members decided which writers could get in, and, as a result, exerted considerable control over which types of book were highly regarded within the community. Over the years several of the original members had a go at defining the “rules” of detective fiction, usually half-jokingly, but clearly indicating their own opinion of what fell within the definition. The book is clearly very well researched – not an easy task since apparently many of the records of the Club were lost during the years of WW2. It's written in what I've come to see as Edwards' usual style for non-fiction – conversational, feeling as if one were having a discussion with a knowledgeable friend – and is therefore easy and enjoyable to read. It covers a lot of the same ground that he covers in his introductions to the various British Library Crime Classics and in his most recent The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Novels. By their nature, those other books force a structure on the way he gives information. In contrast, this one struck me as much looser in structure, often going off at tangents – one chapter, for example, starts with Agatha Christie meeting her second husband, then goes on to talk about séances in various writers’ work, then ends up with a discussion on the Depression and the formation of the National Government! Personally, I enjoyed the structured style of The Story of Classic Crime more, but I think this is very much down to reader preference. Where this book differs is by going much more deeply into the personal lives of the various authors who were members of the Club during the Golden Age – Sayers, Christie, Berkeley, the Coles, et al. I've said this before, but I'm not keen on knowing a lot about the authors whose books I enjoy since, if I end up not liking them on a personal basis, it can affect my enjoyment of their books. There were undoubtedly aspects of this that I found verged on the intrusive – tales of secret love affairs, unacknowledged illegitimate children, etc. But for the most part, Edwards is warm and affectionate towards his subjects, so there’s no feeling of a hatchet job being done on any of them. Edwards also shows how these hidden episodes of their lives may have influenced their writing, which I suppose is a justification for revealing things they tried hard to keep private while they were alive. (Do I sound somewhat disapprovingly judgemental there? I tried hard not to, but I think I failed…) To a degree, the book follows a linear timeline although with a lot of digressions. Edwards talks informatively about how detective fiction was influenced by current events, such as the Depression of the '30s, or the rise of the various dictatorships in the pre-WW2 years. He also discusses and rather dismisses the idea that Golden Age crime fiction was culturally snobbish – I disagree – but suggests that it was often intellectually snobbish – I agree. I do find that just occasionally Edwards comes over as somewhat dogmatic in his opinions – he has a tendency to dismiss anyone who holds a different point of view. He also clearly has favourites amongst the authors – Sayers is mentioned more often than everyone else put together, I suspect! But that all adds to the personal, conversational feel of the book. Overall, then, an enjoyable and informative read, maybe more geared towards people who enjoy personal biographies of their favourite authors, but with plenty of stuff about the history of the crime novel for the rest of us. And because there's quite a lot of crossover between this and The Story of Classic Crime, they could easily be read either as companion pieces, or the reader could select the style that would most suit – more biographical about the authors in this one, more concentration on the books in the other. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 2018
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Mar 25, 2018
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Mar 01, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| B00BVTDFLK
| 3.36
| 109
| Jan 01, 2013
| Jun 01, 2013
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did not like it
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Abandoned at 23%. This is so rambling that I still have no idea what point, if any, the author is trying to make. I've just spent what feels like an e
Abandoned at 23%. This is so rambling that I still have no idea what point, if any, the author is trying to make. I've just spent what feels like an eternity reading about 'flaneurs' - young dandies who wander about observing the cities. I'd much rather have been reading about the cities, which is what the blurb claims the book is about. Especially since, after all that, the author tells us he thinks the flaneur has been given too much importance (not by me, he hasn't) and should be left on the periphery (hear! hear!). The next chapter begins with the life history of a Frenchman who, we are then informed, is actually fictional. The author seems considerably more fascinated by writers than by cities, at one point giving a lengthy summary of an entire book of Zola's under the pretence of looking at types of home. Not for me. ...more |
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0
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not set
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not set
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Feb 01, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 9781849163958
| B005DKRSDO
| 4.36
| 453
| Apr 01, 2010
| Apr 02, 2010
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liked it
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Timor mortis conturbat me, part 2... At his last meeting with renowned Scottish poet Norman MacCaig, MacCaig laid a charge on Andrew Greig to make a jo Timor mortis conturbat me, part 2... At his last meeting with renowned Scottish poet Norman MacCaig, MacCaig laid a charge on Andrew Greig to make a journey after MacCaig's death to his beloved Assynt in the north west of Scotland, and there to fish in the Loch of the Green Corrie. This is the story of that trip, mixed with Greig's memories of and musings on MacCaig and his own life. I've said this before, but my rating system is not an indicator of quality but simply of my enjoyment or otherwise of a particular book. In terms of quality, this book deserves more and plenty of people have loved or will love it. So I've gone with 3 stars even though I didn't enjoy it at all. I often recycle the titles I use for reviews, and I knew what the title for this one would be before I was more than a few chapters in: Timor mortis conturbat me – the fear of death confounds me. I also knew I had used the title before, so checked to see when. Turns out it was when I reviewed the only other book of Greig's that I have read, In Another Light. Greig writes of MacCaig's declining years, of the loss of his mountaineering friend Malcolm Duff, of his own near miss when he suffered from a cyst in his brain, of his father's death. He tells us of his breakdown following a failed relationship, when he ended up in a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide. I found the whole thing deeply depressing. Most people of my age have lost people we loved and recognise that we're closer to death than birth, and we all deal with it differently. Greig writes it out of his system and does so very well. Many people read about it and find comfort and strength from the recognition of common experience. I know already how grief feels and that it passes or lessens in time, and find no benefit or comfort in reflecting endlessly on my own past losses or anyone else's. Timor mortis has never confounded me particularly – I'm more of an eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die type. So Greig and I are simply not a good match. And that's not a criticism of either of us. I abandoned this one at 30%, and won't be attempting to read any more of his books. But I'm still happy to recommend them to the many people who find some kind of comfort or insight in having the experience of mortality and loss reflected back to them. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 27, 2018
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Feb 2018
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Jan 27, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| B01NAS0KLH
| 3.56
| 140
| unknown
| Nov 07, 2017
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it was amazing
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So here's to you... The Graduate was released in 1967 and won an Oscar for its director, Mike Nichols. Beverly Gray was at the same stage of her life a So here's to you... The Graduate was released in 1967 and won an Oscar for its director, Mike Nichols. Beverly Gray was at the same stage of her life as the young hero of the movie, Benjamin Braddock – just leaving college and part of a generation that was seeking something different to the plans their parents had made for them. This book is partly about the making of the film, partly about the influence it has had on later culture, but mostly about the impact it had on Gray herself and her peers. Because of the type of book it is, it's of course full of spoilers for the movie, and so will be this review. I'm maybe a decade younger than Gray and The Graduate didn't have the same impact on me when I first saw it, on TV probably in the late 70s (and quite probably with some bits cut, I'd imagine – British TV was like that back then). I liked it well enough and loved the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, but it didn't speak to me about my life. I thought of it as an enjoyable rom-com – a bit racy, perhaps, but by the late '70s, frankly, what wasn't? So I was intrigued to see if Gray would deepen my appreciation for it. Gray starts by discussing her own reaction to the film on its release, and how those reactions have changed somewhat as she has swapped the optimism of youth for the realism (or cynicism or pessimism, depending on how you look at it) of experience. The ending in particular – seen at the time as a hopeful rejection of their parents' values – seems more ambiguous looking back. OK, so they'd run off – now what? She then goes back in time a little to discuss the origin of the film and its production, She introduces us to the writer of the original book, Charles Webb, and tells us about his own life on which he drew somewhat for the plot (though his affair with his parents' friend was purely wishful thinking). The book didn't take off at first – reviews I've read of it suggest it's not terribly well written. Gray says it was compared in style to The Catcher in the Rye and clearly was in the same vein of trying to capture that generational shift that happened in America during the '60s. Although the film came out in '67 at the height of Vietnam, the book places it closer to '62, which is why Benjamin is not living in fear of being drafted. Despite its relative lack of success, it attracted the attention of an aspiring movie producer, Larry Turman, who managed to get Mike Nichols interested, and also persuaded backer Joe E Levine to put up the money. Gray then takes us through the making of the film, though more from the perspective of the people than the technical side of it. We learn how the young Dustin Hoffman got the role, how Nichols got the performances out of his stars, whose leg it actually is in the rolling up the stocking scene. (Admit it – you're intrigued now, aren't you? Send me chocolate and I might tell you...) Then she takes us through the film scene by scene, pointing out some of the techniques and effects Nichols used. I found this was the perfect stage to re-watch the movie. This is an interesting section, done well, getting a nice balance between detail and overall impression. It's done from the perspective of the viewer rather than the film-makers, so she points out what has been done rather than how it was done. For example, she points out the use of mirrors, glass and reflections throughout the film, or tiny details like Ben being anti-smoking before his rebellion and then taking up smoking at round about the same time as he... ahem... takes up with Mrs Robinson. These are all the things I never notice, so I found this added a lot to my appreciation of how Nichols achieved his story-telling effects. The final section tells us how the film impacted on the later careers of its stars, not always positively, and how it has been referenced in popular culture in the decades since its release. Some of this made my eyes glaze over a bit, partly because a lot of the references related to specifically American things, like ads, and partly because, not being an avid movie watcher, I hadn't seen a lot of the films she mentioned. However it would work better for American cinema enthusiasts, I'm sure. Gray writes lightly and conversationally, with a good deal of fairly waspish humour sprinkled over the pages, and the book is enjoyable to read. It doesn't have the depth of a deeply researched production critique, but that's not its aim. The personal aspect of how it touched Gray and her generation adds interest, though occasionally she has a tendency to dismiss any interpretation of it that differs from her own. And of course it relates directly only to a small subset of that generation – well off, college educated, white – something Gray doesn't really acknowledge, at least not explicitly. I enjoyed the read and the re-watch it inspired, and I found, like Gray, that my advancing years had made that ending look a lot deeper than my young self had spotted. In fact, the final scene of Benjamin and Elaine on the bus feels much less victorious to me now. Gray explains how Nichols managed to catch the ambiguous expressions on the actors' faces, almost by accident, and yet it gives the film a depth and poignancy it might not otherwise have had. If like me you haven't watched it in years, treat yourself to a movie night – it has more than stood the test of time. And if you're a fan of the film, then I happily recommend the book. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Algonquin Books. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 11, 2018
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Jan 26, 2018
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Jan 11, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| B0018DNFY6
| 4.44
| 139,632
| 1959
| Apr 24, 2008
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it was amazing
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True heroism... This is a straightforward, factual telling of the story of Ernest Shackleton and his crew, and their failed 1914 bid to cross the Antar True heroism... This is a straightforward, factual telling of the story of Ernest Shackleton and his crew, and their failed 1914 bid to cross the Antarctic on foot from west to east. It's also one of the most stirring and emotionally turbulent books I've ever read. These were the days of the great explorers, making crazy expeditions in the name of scientific discovery, but just as much for national pride and for the sheer glory of being the first. Shackleton's expedition was at least in part to wipe out Britain's humiliation at being beaten to the South Pole by Norway's Roald Amundsen. If by any chance you don't know whether Shackleton and his men survived, I urge you not to look it up before reading this one. I was extremely vague on the whole thing and as a result found myself totally caught up, willing them on, crying over each new disaster, celebrating with them over any small triumph. Talk about emotional rollercoaster! As it got towards the end, my tension levels were going through the roof, just as they would have been had these men been personal friends – indeed, after the long journey I'd made in their company, I truly felt they were. Having set the scene for the expedition, Lansing introduces us to Shackleton the man – rather self-aggrandizing, hoping to enrich himself, but also a great leader, loyal to his men and capable of inspiring great loyalty from them – and from the reader. I didn't totally like him, but if I'm ever trapped in a life or death situation, I hope Shackleton is my leader. Gradually, Lansing then brings each of the men to life, using extracts from journals and other records to show us how they worked together as a team, and played together to keep their spirits up and fend off boredom even when in extreme situations. We are made privy to their jokes, their foibles, their little rivalries, and most of all to their truly heroic will to survive. When you read old adventure stories, like Rider Haggard or Conan Doyle, sometimes the heroes can seem too good to be true. But the men of the Endurance are real, and they are as great as any fictional heroes – the stronger looking out for the weaker, no disloyalty, no factions emerging, no blame being cast around when things go wrong. Working together, finding ways to overcome every hurdle, never giving up hope... oh no! I'm going to start sobbing again any minute now... Anyway! It all goes wrong early on, when the Endurance becomes trapped in the ice. There's nothing the crew can do except wait, and hope that the ice drifts in the direction they want to go, or breaks up enough to allow them to get back to open water. But the great pressure of the ice on the hull eventually proves too much for the brave ship, and the men find themselves out on the ice with only what they could salvage before she went to her doom. From there on, it's a battle between man and nature, with nature holding all the cards. Having said don't look it up, I won't spoil it by telling you what happens, but there are moments of drama, tragedy, hope, despair and even occasionally laughter. Lansing presents all this in a rather understated way. The book is full of facts – like the compass position of the men each time they are able to take a measurement, or exactly what food rations they were allowed each day. He doesn't give a running commentary on either people or events – he simply presents them to the reader, often using the crew members' own words as recorded contemporaneously in their journals. Lansing's language is wonderfully descriptive, but not full of overly poetic flourishes. This rather plain style, however, works beautifully – the events are so thrilling and the men are such heroes that they don't need any great fanfares or flowery flourishes to enhance their story. And he makes us hear each crack of the ice, each groan of the ship's timbers. We feel the bitter cold and the perpetually soaked clothing and bedding. And we are shown the men's hunger so vividly that we too begin to see each passing seal as food... I listened to the audio version narrated by Simon Prebble, and he does a fabulous job. The crew were a diverse group, with Irish, Scots, Australians, New Zealanders, etc., alongside the Englishmen who made up the majority, and Prebble gives each a distinctive voice and personality, complete with appropriate accent. This added to the feeling of getting to know them as real living individuals rather than simply as historical characters on the page. A wonderfully emotive journey that shows the human spirit at its very best – I can't recommend this one highly enough! I was a sobbing, traumatised wreck by the end – but was the ending tragedy or triumph? If you don't already know, you'll have to read it to find out... or better still, listen to the audiobook. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 27, 2017
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Jan 19, 2018
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Dec 27, 2017
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Audible Audio
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| 030022740X
| 9780300227406
| 030022740X
| 3.69
| 48
| Oct 31, 2017
| Oct 31, 2017
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it was amazing
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Books, books, glorious books! This beautifully produced and gorgeously, lavishly illustrated publication is far more than a coffee table book. It's a c Books, books, glorious books! This beautifully produced and gorgeously, lavishly illustrated publication is far more than a coffee table book. It's a comprehensive history of British bookishness from its beginning to the present day. The main thrust of it covers the 17th to 19th centuries – the period when the country house came into its own and wealthy people saw Libraries as an essential feature of their homes. Mark Purcell looks at both the books and the rooms they were stored in, and differentiates between them by calling the book collections 'libraries' with a small 'l' and the rooms 'Libraries' with a capital 'L', and I'm going to stick with that for this review. There's so much in the book that I'll only be able to give a flavour of it. Purcell has clearly had a ball prying into the bookshelves and book catalogues of centuries' worth of bibliophiles, and his enthusiasm is matched by deep knowledge, backed up with an immense amount of research. This results in a phenomenal amount of detail, which in the early chapters overwhelmed me a little and made the reading heavy going. Purcell doesn't simplify by explaining bookish vocabulary which may be unfamiliar to the general reader (like me!), so at first I found myself doing a bit of googling. But I found that I gradually became fascinated, especially when I realised that the bookshelves of the rich – who, of course, were also the powerful – cast an interesting sidelight on many famous historical personages and the societies in which they lived. Because Purcell tells us as much about the storage of books as the books themselves, it also becomes an architectural history, and a history of the lifestyles, interests and leisure pursuits of these people – an aspect often not covered in standard histories which tend to be concentrated on politics and power. Purcell follows a fairly linear timeline throughout. He starts with the speculation that the tradition of libraries in Britain began in Roman villas, with scrolls, and discusses in depth what kind of books would have been read. In the next few chapters, he covers the period up to and through medieval times, showing that there was a considerable level of scholarship amongst the nobility. He also discusses how books were stored before Libraries became a feature – in chests or flat on shelves in small studies or closets set aside purely for the purpose of reading and study. Not unnaturally, the main focus is on the English since they comprise by far the largest population, but happily he ranges out to Scotland, Ireland and Wales too throughout the book, which I found tended to bring together the histories of those nations, showing a common Britishness that often doesn't come through in histories or biographies of a particular subject. He then goes on to discuss the foundations (and fates) of the great libraries of the late 17th and 18th centuries, some of which would later form the basis of many of our great national and public collections today (and some of America's and even Australia's too). By now, some of the collectors were including lighter, more entertaining books amongst the great classics and heavy religious texts – novels, but also lots of informative books, like cookery books, books on animal husbandry, etc. English was by now more common than Latin and Greek, and books in modern languages were beginning to appear on the shelves of the well-travelled. Illustrated books of things like foreign flora and fauna made me feel that this illustrated book is part of a long tradition, and while wikipedia and Google are fabulous alternatives for those of us with modest homes, I lusted for the libraries of the 19th century in particular. I also lusted for their Libraries! From the illustrations, the earliest ones look rather bare and functional – huge half-empty rooms surrounded by shelving. But by the 19th century, Libraries had become living spaces where people spent part of their leisure time. Railways had allowed for the tradition of the weekend house party to begin, and Libraries were becoming part of the attractions of the country house, sometimes even including billiard tables, or being situated next door to the billiard room. Comfy seats appear – and footstools, card tables, open fires and reading lamps. The nouveau riche in particular went for comfort and novels, and I found myself longing to either be a nouveau riche 19th or early 20th century country house owner, or at the very least to be invited to one of their house parties. Another place to be added to my 'where to go when they invent a time machine' list. In the major houses, books regularly outgrew the space in the main Library, (don't we all recognise that problem!), so that other rooms would gradually be co-opted into use as secondary Libraries. Purcell shows that many of the householders provided books and even occasionally specific Libraries for their servants, and some of the libraries gradually began to operate almost like public lending libraries for people in the surrounding countryside. Purcell finishes by discussing the 20th century, when many of these libraries were sold off or donated, sometimes as a method of paying off swingeing inheritance taxes. He himself works with the National Trust, the body that has taken over responsibility for maintaining many of these great country houses on behalf of the nation, and he tells how they've gradually realised the bookish treasures they've acquired along with the houses. A sad and also happy end – the passing of a great tradition, but hopefully these books will be maintained and made available to scholars and the public for years to come, even if we're not allowed to actually read them. As you can hopefully tell, I loved this – it might have been heavy going in places, but I learned lots about a subject dear to my bookish heart. And those illustrations are to die for... NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Yale University Press. If you'd like to see some images of the illustrations, please feel welcome to visit my blog... https://fictionfanblog.wordpress.com/... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 17, 2017
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Jan 11, 2018
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Dec 17, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0691167672
| 9780691167671
| 0691167672
| 3.76
| 78
| May 30, 2017
| May 30, 2017
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liked it
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The clue is in the title... The book's subtitle summarises its contents: this is the tale of some of the unsolved ciphers that have baffled experts, so The clue is in the title... The book's subtitle summarises its contents: this is the tale of some of the unsolved ciphers that have baffled experts, sometimes for centuries, and the efforts that have been made to find solutions. I'm going to start by saying that my relatively low rating is a reflection of the fact that the author's chosen style drove me nuts, and is therefore entirely subjective. In fact, I think the book is very good – just not for me. Let me start by explaining why and then I can get onto the more positive aspects. I admit – the clue is in the title, so I should have known the book would annoy me. I really don't like unsolved mysteries and this book reminded me forcibly of that fact. Part of the ostensible reason for the book is to encourage a wider pool of people to try their hand at solving these ciphers, and I think that's a fun and interesting idea. However, while I can make a stab at something like the dancing men cipher in Sherlock Holmes – a simple letter substitution – I fear that when higher maths, massive computer power, or knowledge of ancient Greek is required, then it's well beyond my capacity and my interest flags. From the first chapters, I found I was reading the stories of the ciphers and then skipping most of the stuff about the methodologies of attempts to solve them. I suspect Bauer has explained all the mechanics of it very well for people who are interested and have enough mathematical aptitude to follow along, but sadly that's not me. Even with the simpler stuff at the beginning, Bauer frequently sets a challenge – say, to solve a group of anagrams – and then doesn't provide solutions. I found this intensely irritating. However, what annoyed me much more was Bauer's decision not to include all the information in the book, but instead to refer the reader frequently to websites. If I wanted to look up unsolved ciphers on the internet, then I would simply google – but if I'm reading a book on the subject, then all relevant information should be on the page. I'm not even an enthusiast for being referred to the notes at the back of books much less being sent off to fire up the laptop. One example was where he tells a story, tells us that the cipher in this case has been solved, doesn't give the solution but instead gives a web address a zillion characters long. Having carefully keyed it all in, I was taken to a website... in German! OK, so Google translate... nope, still no solution in the body of the post. Presumably it was hidden somewhere in the vast stream of comments on the post, but frankly I had lost the will to live by then. It felt like Bauer was playing games with his readers – fine if you like that sort of thing. I don't. On the plus side, a lot of the stories Bauer tells are interesting in their own right even when the ciphers remain unsolved. From ancient Greece to modern murders, ciphers have appeared in the oddest of circumstances – medieval manuscripts, tombstones, personal letters, even taped to the stomach of a murder victim. Sometimes there is doubt whether a piece of gibberish is actually a cipher or simply a piece of gibberish, and Bauer details how experts go about the task of trying to decide. Spy stories feature, of course, but there are other circumstances when ciphers have been used that I found just as interesting. There are a couple of hidden treasure stories, where the ciphers remain unsolved and the treasure unfound so you might want to grab a spade and start digging. Many people have used ciphers as a means to test whether it's possible to communicate from beyond the grave, by leaving behind a code that requires a keyword to solve, intending to see if they can then transmit this keyword from the great beyond (so far with no success). Bauer also tells of the way ciphers have been used to send messages out into space as a means of alerting passing aliens to the existence of intelligent life on earth. One has to hope the aliens are better at solving codes than I am... or perhaps we should hope they're worse since, as Bauer points out, they might have bigger guns and worse attitudes than we do. So there's plenty of good stuff in here, and I'm certain it would work very well for someone who is more interested in the maths side of it and less annoyed by being sent off to websites than I. But for me, there were too many aspects that irritated me to make it an altogether successful read despite finding some of the stories interesting. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Princeton University Press. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 13, 2017
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Nov 09, 2017
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Oct 13, 2017
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Hardcover
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| B01M74LZYP
| 3.27
| 106
| 2017
| Mar 07, 2017
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really liked it
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The knowledge of all sums... A few years ago, Keith Devlin published The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution, combining a biography of th The knowledge of all sums... A few years ago, Keith Devlin published The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution, combining a biography of the famous mathematician with an explanation of what his fame rests on. This book is the story of researching and writing that book, also telling the little that is known about Fibonacci's life and describing his arithmetical legacy. It's a strange little book. It reminded me of being left with bits of leftover wool after knitting an elaborate sweater and deciding to use them to make a matching scarf. It feels like an amalgam of all the things Devlin would have liked to have included in his first book, but didn't think quite fitted. Knowing nothing whatsoever about Fibonacci, I found it reasonably interesting since it gave me the basics about his achievements, but I'm not sure of how much interest it would hold for anyone who already knows about him, or indeed, who has read Devlin's earlier book. Devlin starts with an introduction in which he describes his own career as an “expositor” of math in print and on radio. He tell us he is known as the Math Guy in America (hence the misspelling of maths throughout ;) ). This is partly why he is so interested in Fibonacci, since he too was an early expositor of arithmetic. Real name, Leonardo of Pisa, (Fibonacci was a nickname given to him by a much later mathematician), his fame rests mainly on his major work, Liber Abbaci (The Book of Calculation), which explained the Hindu-Arabic number system (the use of numerals 1-9). Prior to this, arithmetic in the west had relied on an elaborate finger-counting system or the use of the abacus, both of which required a high level of skill. The system of using numerals was easier to learn and also provided a written record, hence an audit trail. Although Leonardo was not the first man to introduce this system to Europe, his book appeared just at a point where trade was about to take off exponentially in the region, so became hugely important and influential. Leonardo also wrote a follow-up book that included many worked practical examples, so that it could be used as a basis for learning how to use arithmetic even by people who weren't interested in understanding the underlying principles. This was hand-copied thousands of times and was translated into many different regional languages and with the examples converted into local currencies, making it the most important text for spreading the use of arithmetic throughout Europe and beyond. Devlin intersperses this information about Fibonacci with descriptions of how he, Devlin, went about researching his earlier book. This is sometimes interesting – Devlin writes well when, for example, he re-imagines the Pisa of Leonardo's time – a trading hub, with sea-transported goods being brought into the town via the river Arno. But there are also parts where my interest level fell away almost entirely – for example, when he gives immensely detailed accounts of visits to libraries to look at ancient manuscripts, and includes blow-by-blow accounts of conversations with librarians about opening times, etc. Leonardo's work was almost forgotten for centuries till a few researchers brought him back to prominence, and Devlin gives the story of them and their researches too. Again, these accounts varied in interest level, but overall I felt Devlin was trying too hard to make it seem more exciting than it either was or, indeed, needed to be. When it comes to the arithmetical stuff, Devlin explains things simply enough for my decidedly non-mathematical brain to cope with. He gives some of Leonardo's worked examples, which taught me two things: 1) I've forgotten what little algebra I ever knew and 2) thank goodness for Excel. However, I was pleased to see I can still usually get to the right answer eventually with my own elaborate finger-counting method (which also involves sticking out the tip of my tongue – a widely-recognised technique which oddly both Fibonacci and Devlin overlook ), so this will undoubtedly be a handy skill after the apocalypse... In the end, I suspect I might have been better reading Devlin's earlier book rather than this one – the meat of the story for me was Leonardo's achievements, and the rest felt a little extraneous. However, I certainly got enough out of it to make it a worthwhile and informative read overall, and the other aspects of it may appeal more to people who are intrigued to see how a biographer goes about his research process. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Princeton University Press. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jun 23, 2017
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Jul 02, 2017
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Jun 23, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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my rating |
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| 3.57
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liked it
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Feb 08, 2024
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Jan 12, 2024
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| 3.81
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it was amazing
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May 16, 2013
not set
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Feb 20, 2023
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| 3.77
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liked it
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Sep 02, 2022
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Aug 28, 2022
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| 3.22
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liked it
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Sep 27, 2020
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Sep 04, 2020
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| 3.82
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it was amazing
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Aug 10, 2020
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Jul 03, 2020
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| 3.76
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it was amazing
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Sep 02, 2019
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Jul 29, 2019
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| 3.96
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it was amazing
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Jul 06, 2019
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Jun 13, 2019
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| 4.22
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did not like it
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not set
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Mar 14, 2019
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| 4.14
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really liked it
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Mar 16, 2019
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Feb 23, 2019
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| 4.05
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it was amazing
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Nov 25, 2018
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Oct 07, 2018
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| 3.80
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it was amazing
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Oct 14, 2018
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Sep 12, 2018
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| 4.23
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really liked it
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Apr 10, 2018
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Mar 25, 2018
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| 3.90
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really liked it
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Mar 25, 2018
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Mar 01, 2018
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| 3.36
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did not like it
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not set
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Feb 01, 2018
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| 4.36
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liked it
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Feb 2018
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Jan 27, 2018
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| 3.56
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it was amazing
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Jan 26, 2018
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Jan 11, 2018
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| 4.44
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it was amazing
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Jan 19, 2018
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Dec 27, 2017
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| 3.69
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it was amazing
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Jan 11, 2018
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Dec 17, 2017
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| 3.76
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liked it
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Nov 09, 2017
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Oct 13, 2017
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| 3.27
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really liked it
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Jul 02, 2017
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Jun 23, 2017
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