Books
gregladen | August 7, 2017Tom Levenson is a professor, a teacher of journalism and science journalism, and an Einstein scholar. He also knows a thing or two about Isaac Newton.
One of my favorite non fiction books of all time is Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. One of the reasons this book is so good is because the author is an expert on the subject and a great writer. These are not necessary or sufficient conditions to make a book good, but probabilistically, if you've got both you'll probably be spending your book money well most of the time.
Anyway,…
gregladen | July 15, 20171776 by David McCullough is not a new book -- it was published in 2006 -- but I just got around to reading it, enjoyed it, and wanted to say a few words about it.
But first my David McCullough story.
You probably don't know Scotty MacNeish (aka Richard Stockton MacNeish), but you should. He ended his illustrious career in a car accident in the field (in Belize, if I recall correctly) about 15 years ago, but many years before that he started out his career by discovering the origin of Maize, identifying its site of domestication and the timing of that important moment in Native American…
gregladen | July 15, 2017First, a word about Arduino and why you should care. An Arduino is what is called a "prototyping micro-controller" aka "really fun electronic gizmo toy."
Micro-controllers are everywhere. When you "turn on" a machine in your house, chances are there was already a micro-controller sitting there, running on a minute bit of juice from a built in battery, waiting for you to push a button. Then, you turned a dial or selected an option on your dishwasher, or changed the setting on your thermostat, or picked some alternative mode on your coffee pot, or shifted into a different gear using a "gear…
gregladen | July 8, 2017At the moment, all these are anywhere from free to two bucks. The Darwin books are always cheap, the others are probably temporarily cheap.
If you've not read The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, you should. It is always avaialable for next to nothing on the kindle, currently this version is 99 cents.
Concerning his autobiography--written when Darwin was 59 and originally published as the first part of “The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin” (1887)--Darwin explained: “A German editor [wrote] to me for an account of the development of my mind and character with some sketch of my…
gregladen | July 2, 2017I'm avoiding books that are recent so you can get a deal on price, and to bring books from the past that you didn't read but should have back into focus. Each of these, I've either read (most of them) or have a recommendation from top notch sources. You should be able to finish then all by the end of summer, easily, and you can report back. Meanwhile, if you have other suggestions, let me know and I'll periodically add them to the main post unless I think they are bogus.
Happy reading!
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
EVERY DAY THE SAME
Rachel takes the same commuter train every…
gregladen | June 27, 2017These books are one or two books in kindle form right now, get 'em while they're still cheap:
Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World
Blind Ambition: The White House Years
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 6
gregladen | June 25, 2017Today is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Harry Potter phenomenon.Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published on this day in 1997, and Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) were produced with regularity afterwards, eventually in some degree of step with the movies.
Author J. K. Rowling was to produce a number of Harry Potter related things later, but…
gregladen | June 23, 2017I know some of you cheapskates will want to pick up these books ... well, not really pick them up, but rather, instantiate them on your eReader. These are all 2 bucks or less for the Kindle version, at the moment, price presumably subject to change at any moment.
How the mind might or might not work
This is a collection of writings by various experts on how the mind works. They are not all right, but they are all intertesting. Includes Pinker, Lakoff, etc. Personally, I think there is a bit of a bias in the listing of authors towards a certain school of thought that I don't personally…
gregladen | June 7, 2017I can't give this a meaningful review because I don't have the setup to test it out, Coding iPhone Apps for Kids: A playful introduction to Swift by Gloria Winquist and Matt McCarthy looks like it is up to the high standards of this publisher and these authors, and might be just the thing for your kid:
Apple’s Swift is a powerful, beginner-friendly programming language that anyone can use to make cool apps for the iPhone or iPad. In Coding iPhone Apps for Kids, you’ll learn how to use Swift to write programs, even if you’ve never programmed before.
You’ll work in the Xcode playground, an…
gregladen | June 5, 2017A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America is a field guider's field guide. It is the shape and size of a traditional field guide. The designers of this book said "we don't need no stinking margins" so there are no margins. Color bleeds on the page edges allow a quick index to major butterfly categories. There is a two page spread visual index. A no nonsense introduction give you the basics about how to use the book, how to be a butterflyer, and how to not be a jerk about butterflies (like, don't net them and kill them). The front covers even have those flaps that you can use as…
gregladen | June 3, 2017This just came across my desk. These are not amazing deals, but they are pretty good deals. I'll put the list price and asking price down so you can decide if you want to ignore this.
A Global Warming Primer: Answering Your Questions About The Science, The Consequences, and The Solutions was $15 is now $10.20. (See this post for more info on this and related books)
The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here? by Krauss, was $27, now $14.16.
Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour by Neil deGrasse Tyson and others, was $39.95, now 26.74.
Ruby Wizardry: An Introduction to…
gregladen | May 31, 2017The brand new just published (June 1) book Beren and Lúthien presents the story of the human (or should I say "Man"?) Beren Erchamion, or "The One-Handed" (AKA Beren Camlost, for "the Empty Handed") and the Elf-maiden Lúthien Tinúviel.
If you read The Lord of the Rings you may recall Aragorn telling their story to Frodo.
This Man and this Elf-Maiden lived over 6,000 years before the time of the Lord of the Rings, and their story is told in several places throughout the LOTR literature, in books that, frankly, most people don't read. Christopher Tolkien, heir of J.R.R. Tolkien, and…
gregladen | May 30, 2017Installment # 1 is here
Without delay, here are four five star choices and four four star choices:
The Emperor's New Clothes, the classic story by Hans Christian Anderson, illustrated for the modern retro child by Virginia Lee Burton.
You know the story, so I won't give you a summary, and the whole point is the illustrations so you should just click through to see. (The graphic at the top of the post is from within the book, illustrating the overall reading level and quality).
So Few of Me by Peter Reynolds.
Alternate title: Calming the helicopter parent.
Leo's list of things to do keeps…
aardvarchaeology | May 29, 2017
Ascension with its four days off is shaping up to be the geekiest time of the year. This time I had three big events to choose from: the LinCon gaming convention, the Kontur/SweCon scifi convention and the 45th anniversary of the Tolkien Society. Tolkienians do things in nines.
I decided to spend two days at LinCon on the Linköping University campus and one day at Kontur/SweCon in an Uppsala hotel, saving the Sunday for family pastimes.
Here are the games I played at LinCon. And I had lots of free Nepalese tea from the tea bar!
Through the Ages II (2015). This update of a 2006 civilisation…
gregladen | May 25, 2017It is hard to find a good book for kids between the ages of 5 and 9. These are kids who can read, but at varying (and rapidly changing) levels, and who are too fancy for the little kid books (thick, big pictures, few words, boring).
Amanda and Huxley spend a lot of time figuring out what the good books are. They forage at two different libraries, they take home huge piles of possible good books, then narrow that down even more to identify just the best, and then, those are often re-acquired and re-read multiple times. We purchase some of these knowing that we can pass them on to the…
gregladen | May 16, 2017Every single regular reader of this blog has read or intends to read Stephen Jay Gould's The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. I just noticed that the Kindle version of it is available for $1.99, and I assume this is temporary. I already had the book on dead-tree matter, but I picked this up because ebooks are searchable! You will want one two.
Every single regular reader of this blog SHOULD want to read, or should have already read, Mary Doria Russell's excellent binary set including The Sparrow: A Novel and Children of God. (The Sparrow is first, COG second.)
Right now…
gregladen | May 10, 2017Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual by Jeremy Brecher is a new and helpful book a the growing and essential literature.
Late in 2015, nearly two hundred countries signed the Paris Agreement acknowledging their individual and collective duty to protect the earth’s climate—and willfully refused to perform that duty. In response to this institutional failure and to growing climate destruction, we are witnessing the birth of a global nonviolent constitutional insurgency. Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual tells how to put strategy into action—and how it can succeed. It is a handbook…
gregladen | May 9, 2017Evil Speaks: Warriors and Watchers Saga by S. Woffington is a new scifi/fantasy novel with an interesting twist.
If there is a Bechdel Test for ableism, it would pass.
This is an interesting story written for youthful readers (see publisher's summary below) that is well written and mostly devoid of the usual plot holes we find in this genre, but where the characters represent a range of non normative persona.
Benny, fifteen, is solitary by circumstance more than choice: he counts each move to a new town as “a life.” He’s on Life Number Seven. His last! He plans to run away from his…
gregladen | May 8, 2017A Photographic Field Guide to the Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh is one of those next gen guides that uses photos but photos that are either enhanced or contextualized to serve the same role as drawings served in the old days, when drawings were better and photos were merely fun.
From the editors:
This is the only comprehensive photographic field guide to the birds of the entire Indian subcontinent. Every distinct species and subspecies--some 1,375 in all-
-is covered with photographs, text, and maps. The guide features more than 4,000 stunning photographs…
gregladen | May 8, 2017JFK: A Vision for America. As our political system slides off the seat and into the crapper, I am finding this book to be a worthy and informative distraction. From the publisher:
Published in commemoration of the centennial of President John F. Kennedy’s birth, here is the definitive compendium of JFK’s most important and brilliant speeches, accompanied by commentary and reflections by leading American and international figures—including Senator Elizabeth Warren, David McCullough, Kofi Annan, and the Dalai Lama—and edited by JFK’s nephew Stephen Kennedy Smith and renowned historian…