Reviews

Summary Sapolsky is a biologist specializing in neurology. Ever since he was a child, he has been obsessed with primates, so shortly after graduating from Harvard, he travels to Kenya to begin his studies on a troop of baboons. His study focused on the effect that stress has on the development and overall well-being of a physical system and eventually spanned around 25 years, where he would spend four months in the field and the rest of the year analyzing his findings in the States. The book is separated into sections that align his own maturity with those of the baboons, such as adolescent, young adult, etc. With this handy narrative device, the reader is able to witness the maturation of the author simultaneously with his subjects. ...

Summary Bill Bryson was flying over an ocean one day when he realized just how little he knew about how everything worked. This propelled him into over three years of research, talking to experts in various fields, visiting important museums and visiting some of the most important places on Earth, including Ohio. Bryson was unimpressed with the science books of his youth, feeling that they hinted at the wonders of the world before drowning them in abstruse terms and he set out to change that. Covering everything from Biology to Astrophysics, Bryson flies through the various disciplines giving the reader a brief and exciting overview of how they started as well as where they are currently. ...

I’ll keep this one short. As the cover says, this book was written by the guy who also wrote kite runner, which was a very good book. This being my second book of his the appeal wasn’t there as much for me this time around. This story was also centered in Afghanistan (I started reading before the US troop pull-out and subsequent Taliban takeover in 2021, so it was synchronistic) and follows the life story of two women who end up living in the same house because one of them was forced to marry this dude as a child and the other was kind of forced due to the ongoing war. Similar to Kite Runner its cool to get a glimpse into the life of folks where you have no clue how they do what they do. This book was really entertaining and easy to read. The story itself was very dark. I enjoyed reading this book but wouldn’t label it as a “must read” especially if you get your hands on any of his other stuff first. Good stuff, prepare for despair.

Summary Victor Davis Hanson tells the story of the Peloponnesian war which is the war where Sparta and Athens fought for close to 30 years. This war starts shortly after Sparta and Athens had united to repel a Persian invasion, partially depicted in the movie 300. Ironically, this war was ultimately decided by Persia backing Sparta which broke the Athenians. For many, this war marks the end of the Greek Golden age. Taking place shortly before Alexander the Great’s campaigns, it included many Western superstars like Socrates, who participated in the early part of the war, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, and some of the eminent Greek tragedians like Sophocles and Euripides. Hanson recasts the Peloponnesian War as a Greek Civil War, because much like the American Civil War both sides shared language, culture, and many other inherited traditions, but they differed on governmental strategies. The Spartans are portrayed as being conservative oligarchs, while the Athenians were depicted as radical proponents of democracy. This difference in governing styles is often emphasized by Hanson, who uses it to explain the distinctive reactions of the two nation states to the challenges each in turn faced. ...

When it comes to politics I’ve never connected with the vision of a single group. When I do find myself leaning towards a party, it is typically only because I am leaning away from its opposite. Part of this is because as humans we are much better at knowing what we don’t want. Yet I would like to think that the other reason is that I try to value substance over partisanship. ...

There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool (Nature) has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artiface. So basically, it is this whole thing. Huysmans was a novelist in the 19th century whose early works were part of the naturalistic school which sought out beauty and truth in the mundane, but later in his life this changed. He began to feel cramped and redundant inside the confines of nature and wished to supersede it through artifice. Maybe this would give us a more visceral or concentrated glimpse of beauty? Enter what is known as the “Decadent” literature. This school found its poster child in Dorian Gray, and this is how I came to hear about it. On a reread of the Picture of Dorian Gray, there was this quote: ...

After reading biographies of Washington and Jefferson, I was quite excited to read more about Hamilton. I thought he would be a shoo-in for my favorite Founding Father, but the reality of his character proved more complex. Some of my favorite things about Hamilton: He was the first Secretary of the Treasury and the genius behind the creation of American banking and foreign credit. He was a prolific writer, producing the rough equivalent of 70 novels by the time he was 49. ...

Summary All the Pretty Horses follows the story of John Grady Cole and his best friend Lacey Rawlins. Cole, sixteen years old, was raised on a ranch his entire life. His grandfather has just died and he discovers the ranch is about to be sold. He convinces Rawlins to join him and they both take off to Mexico hoping to find cowboy work. Thoughts My initial summation of this book was going to be “Hemmingway meets Coen brother’s No Country for Old Men”, but then I found out that Cormac McCarthy wrote No Country for Old Men. So now I guess the summation should be “Hemmingway meets McCarthy”. Sidebar This impression is created by a writing style called Polysyndeton. Going down this rabbit hole a little, it turns out that this is the style that gives the King James Bible and Shakespeare their distinctive cadence. From what I can tell it is a fancy name for run on sentences that would get red lined on English exams. ...

Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end. Summary A recently released prisoner named Shadow is on a return flight home when there is a mix up and his seat gets upgraded to first class. Waiting for him is a mysterious stranger with a job offer. Thoughts Unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed this book. A book that almost lives up to the hype, but would have been slightly better to have stumbled on without knowing anything about it. Neil Gaiman draws out scenes and situations so vividly that they became almost scars in my memory. In the age of pictures, it is difficult to make people see with just words. That is not a problem in this book, you will see what is happening, even if sometimes you didn’t want to. ...

In this book David Stannard sets out to explain how the conquest of the Americas was the worst genocide in history. This book tells the story of pre-America in a much different light than how our history book explained it. Full of new information and insights overturning old, preconceived notions. For example, many thought that the population of both north and south America was around 20ish million pre-Columbus. New figures put that number at closer to 100 million. In addition, the common theory is that homo sapiens crossed into America via a now submerged land bridge that connects Asia and Alaska. Initially thinking was that this would put people in the Americas around 12,000BC, but newer evidence dates some artifacts in Mexico to 20,000 years prior to that. Which means there were already civilizations in place prior to the agricultural revolution. This and many more interesting facts are found in this overall depressing book. I will say the author is high atop his horse as he lays out all the atrocities committed by the conquistadors and early American settlers. Overall seeming to show a complete lack of understanding of human nature in a given context. This led to the writing style being unnecessarily preachy at times. The overall value and interest of the book made up for this though so I would still recommend it. It is easy to judge the past instead of learning from it. ...