Summary We are all familiar with the scientific method: observe, theorize, experiment, and repeat. This algorithm is humanity’s most effective tool for understanding the universe. However, Bill Hammack introduces readers to what he calls the “engineering method.” While it’s commonly believed that scientists create knowledge and engineers apply it, Hammack argues that this perspective greatly underestimates the engineer’s role in discovery. He asserts that engineers must be the ultimate pragmatists, unable to wait for perfect knowledge. Instead, they often operate by “rules of thumb” that push the boundaries of what is known. Hammack illustrates this through various examples, from the thickness of cathedral supports to the invention of the O-ring. Unlike scientists, engineers are constrained by cultural contexts, limited resources, and, most critically, the need to deliver solutions within time constraints. A compelling example is the ‘100-year wind’ concept, where engineers must design structures, such as skyscrapers, to withstand rare but severe events predicted to occur within the next century. The challenge is that we often lack a century’s worth of wind data for an area, forcing engineers to rely on modern “rules of thumb,” involving complex, yet pragmatic, statistical predictions based on limited or incomplete data. The crux of Hammack’s argument is that while a mathematician might balk at the imprecision of these methods, engineers must proceed not in a world of perfect knowledge, but in one driven by experiential understanding. Often, the only way to answer a question is to build the answer. ...

Summary McCullough gives a fairly detailed account of the first year of the American Revolution against the British. Focusing largely on George Washington, this book is more interested in the military maneuvers of both sides without getting too bogged down in the political philosophy of the moment. The first year of America’s Revolution was a dark one, but by its end several close calls set the stage for surprise attack by Washington which reinvigorated a fledgling nation’s resistance and would be forever memorialized by the famous “Crossing the Delaware” painting. ...

Summary Adam Smith lays out one of the first exhaustive accounts of how a complex, developed economy functions. Published in 1776 during some “difficulties” in the relationship between Britain and one of its colonies, Smith makes the case for fundamental economic concepts like free markets and the division of labor. The first book, by far my favorite, presents the fundamentals of Smith’s concepts of value, wages, and labor. One of his key observations concerns the transport of goods. He argues that without the capacity of water to transport heavy items easily, civilization itself would have been greatly hampered. This insight helps explain why civilizations emerged near bodies of water that were easily navigable, most notably in the Mediterranean. It is always fascinating to observe how the limitations imposed by an environment affect the systems that find ways to thrive within those given constraints. ...

Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest emperors Rome ever produced, wrote a series of notes to himself. It is believed that these notes were never meant to be published but were part of his personal practice of self-improvement and philosophical reflection. Scattered with exhortations to not bend beneath the pressures of life, the reader is presented with a picture of life as something to be endured: “Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds.” ...

I try to review every book I read or listen to, but I have a hard time with these types of books because they are summary style. How would you rate a Wikipedia article? You may be able to, but odds are the rating would have more to do with the facticity of the article versus its writing. I have no knowledge on the topic, so I cannot review that aspect. What I can say is that this did a decent job introducing the Ottomans to a Western reader, although you would do well to get a mental picture of Eastern Europe and Western Asia as there are so many places mentioned. Your eyes will probably glaze over unless you can picture their locations in your head. The reader for this audiobook was not fantastic. I will definitely want to dig more into the Ottomans, but probably after getting a better picture of early European history.

Summary A concise account of one of America’s most popular presidents and his infamous assassination. Thoughts The authors’ intent with this book was to write history in a way that was “fun.” They largely succeeded; Killing Kennedy reads similarly to a tabloid, filled with murders, conspiracies, villainous Russian leaders, and, of course, lots of sex. In defense of Bill O’Reilly, if ever there was a presidency that lent itself to this lens of analysis, it was JFK’s. Serving from 1961 to 1963, JFK was at once the most powerful man in the world and nearly the youngest president in US history. In those three short years, America navigated through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, and the inception of the Vietnam War. This book is a quick and easy way to get some context surrounding America’s 35th president, as long as the writing style doesn’t grate too strongly against your sensibilities. ...

I enjoyed the book, although I was looking for something a little more Zee Frank, with more interesting anecdotes. Apparently, the fact that wasps can recognize faces just isn’t cool enough for me. The book’s central push is to challenge the assumptions we make about intelligence. We often assume that intelligence has to look like “human intelligence.” This would have been quite controversial fifty years ago, but it seems to be almost common knowledge now. My biggest complaint about this book is that it picks an interesting subject—animal intelligence, or intelligence in general—yet fails to say much meaningful about it. There is a common trope throughout history where someone will say something like “play is what makes humans different from animals,” only for science to eventually realize that animals play too, and therefore “play” isn’t the thing that makes humans different from animals. [a: Frans de Waal|112082|Frans de Waal|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1222704792p2/112082.jpg] dismantles many more of these potential differences between humans and animals to drive home the point that humans aren’t different from animals—which seems both right and wrong to me. Of course, when looking at the evolutionary tree, there isn’t a special branch from which humans came. But this then makes the question around the success of humans even more interesting. If animals engage in all the behaviors that were thought to be exclusive to the human domain, why haven’t they dominated the environment in a way remotely similar to humans?

Summary Scottish philosopher David Hume explores various approaches to theism via dialogue, featuring three central figures: Demea Demea represents pre-Enlightenment theism, which emphasized the difference between man and God. The godhead is unintelligible and must be approached by faith alone. We must make our way through this veil of tears, holding on to the belief that everything will be put to rights in the next world. Cleanthes Cleanthes is a post-Enlightenment scientific Christian who highlights the similarities between the mind of God and human reason. To Cleanthes, man can access God, though imperfectly, through reason. When he looks at the universe, he sees a marvelous machine designed by a benevolent creator. It is the delight of man to learn more about their creator by discovering the mechanisms by which the universe operates. Philo Philo is a theistic skeptic, whose role in the dialogue is to tease out the problems in his friends’ positions. His view is closer to that of Demea but differs in conclusion, believing that it is incredibly unlikely that any human will land on a cosmology that is anywhere near the truth. Therefore, the wisest tactic would be to approach the topic with caution. ...

Summary Split into six separate meditations, Descartes seeks to discard everything uncertain and rebuild philosophy from first principles. His chief goal is to demonstrate that the existence of God can be made evident and irrefutable by philosophy alone. This, in turn, suggests that the mind is the only ingredient required to discover God. Thoughts As often happens in life, the thing we set out to do bears little resemblance to what is actually done. Intended as a work of apologetics, it is Descartes’ doubt that would forever be remembered. The prevailing school of thought at the time was one of certainty in the senses. Descartes’ success lay in his ability to cast doubt on the reliability of the senses because they can often be tricked. For example, we trust our senses while dreaming, yet discard their reality upon awakening. I personally have also had dreams where I wake up, and yet, in reality, am still dreaming. The film “The Matrix” plays with this idea of a curated reality designed explicitly to trick the experiencer into a “false” experience. Accepting this possibility, what then can we know? This question produces his famous statement, “I think, therefore I am.” If one imagines reality to be the most extreme version of untruth, where everything we experience is a trick, one thing remains true: it is the “I” that is being deceived. Descartes then takes this as his foundation for the rest of his arguments, which are, unfortunately, less convincing. Another valuable insight is his distinction between “clear” and “confused” ideas, or more clearly, ideas that can be confused and those that cannot. For example, consider a square. It is impossible to think of a square without the geometrical properties that designate it as a two-dimensional shape. On the other hand, if you imagine any “real” object like an electron, lamp, or airplane, there will be something lacking in your idea of the thing and the thing itself. One can approach the real, but in the end, the real cannot be entirely captured by the mind. I hear criticisms of Descartes more than of almost any other philosopher. In most professions, that would be considered a bad thing, but in philosophy, it means that you are difficult to discard. While the last few meditations can easily be disregarded, the first few will persist as long as writing does. They represent a clear illustration of the correct philosophical approach to ideas: a mind that interrogates, doubts, believes, and entertains. ...

“Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us…” When we think of Benjamin Franklin today, we picture a Santa Claus character with a touch of mania. We see him flying a kite in a thunderstorm, or perhaps we see him behind a desk penning some of Poor Richard’s famous one-liners like “a cat in gloves catches no mice”. Franklin was indeed often conducting unique experiments, and his witty sayings were legendary, but Isaacson wants to show us the Franklin that has been forgotten. He was the only founding father to have signed and helped create four of the major documents of the American Revolution. His ability to strike a balance between idealism and realism along with his aversion to extremism made him the exact character required to stitch together thirteen disparate colonies into a single country. ...