Subtitle: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. Brian Fagan has written a few dozen books, and several of them have to do with past climatic changes. For example, he has written on the "Little Ice Age" between 1300 and 1850. This book is on a previous period, from roughly A.D. 800 to 1200, when Europe and much of the rest of the world was unusually warm.

Any book on a period of global warming, of course, is going to have as a perhaps silent, but never far forgotten backdrop, the current period of global warming, and what consequences it may have for us. Some may dislike this book's point of view because it asserts (mostly implicitly) that global warming of even a degree or two can have profound consequences, and even wreck some civilizations such as the Maya or Angkor. Others may dislike having it pointed out that, even in the absence of widespread burning of fossil fuels, the global temperature has varied over the centuries with large enough swings to change the weather. If you're trying to convince people that the 'delicate balance of nature' is being upended by the thoughtless greed of humanity, it may seem dangerously off-message to discuss, at great length, how climate change was already happening a thousand years ago.

Fortunately, Fagan seems to be fact-minded enough to ignore both objections.

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Subtitle: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species. Now that Richard Dawkins has gone from spokesman for biology to spokesman for atheists, we are left to look for who will take up the previous role played by Dawkins, and before him Stephen Jay Gould. Sean Carroll is the author of two (excellent) previous books on evolution; he is part of the new school called Evo Devo, which is less hip but more substantive than the name suggests. Here, he puts aside (but not far aside) the topic of evolution per se, to talk not so much about biology, as biologists. The 'Remarkable Creatures' of the title are the explorer researchers who had both the sense of adventure to go far afield to see life where it was happening, and also the aptitude for abstraction to formulate or extend theories to explain what they saw. It's the sort of book one reads (or writes) to get a good perspective on how the field has come this far, and what biases and assumptions tripped up your predecessors, the better to see your own, perhaps.

Also, of course, the sort of thing that would cast you as a natural spokesman for your field.

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Subtitle: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond. I was two-thirds of the way through this book before I realized that it was by one of the authors of "Conversations with Neil's Brain", a book I had read and enjoyed several years ago. No matter; much has been learned in the decade or more that has passed since that book was written, not least in the field of "how did our brains come to be this way?". Calvin starts about 7 million years ago, and then takes us right up to the present day, and a bit past that into some speculation about the future. This makes a ratio of evidence to speculation of about 10:1, if we look at the table of contents, and that's more or less about what I prefer.

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Subtitle: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Daniel Dennett is an intellectual's intellectual. He is the sort of thinker that gets mentioned in the writings of Douglas Hofstadter or Susan Blackmore, and they don't necessarily spend much time telling you who they're referring to. Like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Pinker, or Noam Chomsky, they can pretty much assume that if you're reading their kind of book, you already know who Daniel Dennett is. The reality is, that's usually true.

Dennett's background is not that of a linguist, biologist, physicist, or any of the other normal routes to pop-science prominence. He's a philosopher, and in this book he's trying to take on religion. "Take on" could mean "try to analyze" or "try to combat", and most readers (whether religious or not) will find the second meaning more apt.

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Subtitle: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means.
I read the abridged version, which is a mere 700+ pages long.
The original was 3500 pages, and seven volumes. At this point
you would be wondering if you read that correctly, unless you
knew that the original publisher was Dave Eggers, in which case
it all makes sense.

It turns out that reading 700 pages on the history of violence
is, however, enough.

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It is, in some sense, unfair to be reviewing this book now. Tim Harford is, primarily, an orthodox economist, and it is not a good time to be defending orthodox economics. He wrote the book in 2005, after Enron but before Lehman Brothers (both nouns which now represent events more than companies), and in it you will find little analysis of how either came to pass. Which is something like reading a book on the Internet that doesn't mention viruses, or a book on biology that never mentions death or disease.

It does, however, not shun entirely the unpleasant side of economics. There are, for example, highly readable and convincing analyses of Starbucks, tourist traps, and used cars.

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Subtitle: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra. This is, more or less, the story of how math got away from us. How it went from a way of counting clay casks of grain given as tribute in Mesopotamia, to a system for analyzing entities which have no physical existence, the nature of which cannot easily be explained, and the usefulness of which (while often, it is eventually discovered, quite substantial) is not apparent even to those who are working on it. It's basically the history of how math stopped being about the numbers.

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Subtitle: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock its Mysteries. Shannon Moffett is a med student, and she opens the book with a charming little scene of her and another student dissecting a cadaver. During the course of her studies, she heard from a number of different medical researchers who were looking into how the brain functions (or fails to, as the case may be). She decided that other people might be interested in hearing about it.

Which, as long as you have a brain yourself, is probably true. :)

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Popular science books in the field of biology, for me, fall into two classes:
1) potentially interesting
2) refutations of creationism or intelligent design. If it is aimed at convincing me of something I am already convinced of, and moreover has a vanishingly small chance of even being read by anybody who it might convince, what is the point?

There are some which, sadly, fall into neither camp, but I have not found any which fall into both. Until this book, that is.

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Subtitle: Copernicus and 'The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'. Part of the 'Great Discoveries' series.

Copernicus ranks up there with Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, and Galileo in the Hall of Fame of scientists who overturned the way we think about God, the world, and humanity's place in it. With the possible exception of Mendel, however, he is much less well known as a human being (rather than just an adjective: "Copernican"). This book aims to do what is possible to change this. It also explains simultaneously that:
a) Copernicus did in many ways less than he is given credit for, but
b) what he did was far more difficult than he is usually given credit for.

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1. Recession hits U.S. economy


2. U.S. consumer actually starts to pay down debt, and thus buys less plastic junk from China


3. China now has fewer American dollars in its hands


4. As a result, China informs U.S. that they won't be able to buy as many U.S. government bonds; the only way they've been buying them in such quantity up to now was because the American consumer was giving them them the $$ to do it with


5. But the government wants to take on a lot more debt


6. Therefore, the Federal Reserve today started buying U.S. government bonds instead. When the Federal Reserve buys bonds in this way, it is called "quantitative easing", because "printing money" sounds bad. Also, it's way easier to do it in large amounts fast than if they had to actually print it.


7. Because the Federal Reserve just printed a lot of new money (excuse me, they "quantitatively eased"), the value of the existing $$'s goes down. This is known as inflation.


8. The value of the U.S. $ drops about 4% against the Euro, in under an hour. We are all hoping that it doesn't continue at that rate.

I am so glad to have gotten my trip to Europe done before this started.

Subtitle: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Taleb likes to call powerful people idiots, or frauds. This book is where he started getting noticed for doing it in print. But is it any good?

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For fun, count how many of them show Juliet either sleeping, or playing with gravel and sticks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rossdavidh/sets/72157615189841127/

Last full day in Dresden, one more trip to Berlin, the Long Flight.

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Day Ten

Departing Prague, arriving Dresden.

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Day Eight

Last day in Amsterdam.

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Day Seven

Haarlem: it's like Amsterdam, without all that sex, drugs, and neon. If you've ever been to Amsterdam, you might wonder what's left.

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Day Five

Last Day in Berlin, then first day in Amsterdam. Featuring the alleged waterfall, a foosball team of Buddhas, the Puking Guy, and Magic Indonesian Food Woman.

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Day Four

Today was the day of being social. We met my pen pal, a Master Hair Stylist, and native Berliners from Australia and New Zealand who actually get along.

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Day Three

Wherein Ross wanders the city alone, Juliet got to see a wingnut who could sing, and Cassandra failed to find Jewish Vegetarian food.

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