Books

Summary Army at Dawn documents the United States entry into the fight against Germany in North Africa. This picks up after the allies seized the critical port town of Tunis. This allied victory opened the possibility of attacking in the words of Churchill “the Axis’ underbelly” in Italy. Crossing from Tunis to Sicily (the island attached to the toe of the Italy’s boot) the allies began their slow march towards Rome. During and after the capture (or liberation if you prefer) of Tunisia there was a great deal of disagreement between the British and the US over what the next target of attack should be. The Americans favored a cross channel invasion jumping from England to France, but on the other hand, after the Dunkirk debacle the Brits were much keener on the idea of invading Italy. So in a compromise they decided to do both, but since the allied troops were already stationed near Italy it was decided that the cross-channel invasion would occur a year later to allow for planning and logistical difficulties to be sorted out. In the meantime, the allies would use their deployed units to invade Italy and try to take some pressure off of Russia. It sounds good on paper, but as the casualties mounted and progress crawled to a halt in the inhospitable Italian mountain winter, victory was far from certain. ...

Summary This book (as the title implies) is interested in the emergence of species, and now that we are talking about it, what are species to begin with? At the time, there were many very experienced naturalists who would disagree on whether a certain plant or animal belonged in species A as a variety or actually should be considered a distinct species. These disagreements arose due to the fact that no one had a clear theory as to how these differences arose and up to then we used internal and external structure to define species. If these structures diverged enough, we would separate them into species. They also used the concept of whether entity A could potentially breed with entity B. If not, then the two entities must not be in the same species. There were other methods used, but these two should suffice to show how difficulties in definition might arise. For example, the internal and external structure of sexed organisms may very greatly as in humans, but we obviously must be the same species, right?….. Actually, that might explain some things. As for mating, this brings its own difficulties (I’m on a roll), but strictly speaking, you can have two different species reproduce, like a grizzly bear and polar bear, and this happens quite often in the plant kingdom. On the other hand, you have many instances of creatures in the same species category that can’t reproduce inside their own species. Think Mastiff and Chihuahua. So these principles are by no means black and white. The prevalent view at the time was the belief that each species was created individually, with this view the categorization of species should be much more straight-forward than it is, but Darwin had other ideas. Using pigeons, due to their availability and the long history they have of human selection, he built an argument. He stated that if we had found the various varieties of pigeons in the wild, we would without a doubt classify them as different species. We only refrain from doing so because we happen to know in this case that all the varieties descended from rock pigeons. What if this same concept applied to the whole animal kingdom? What if instead of individually created species there was a single progenitor which has given rise to the magnificent variety we observe today? How far might these accumulated minute changes take us? ...

Summary Haidt argues that morality is an emergent property from the neurological equivalent of taste buds and that different types of people have different tastes. He also makes the case that our moral judgements are gut feelings justified by post hoc rationalizations. Haidt also takes a dualistic approach to mind, comparing it to an elephant with a rider. The elephant represents inarticulate passions while the rider represents the part of the brain that reasons. From here he uses the divide between liberal (using the American definition meaning those on the left side of politics) and conservative to highlight the different moral taste buds that each political party activates. ...

Summary A history of the United States entering WW2 in North Africa. This 700 page book is the first of a trilogy about WW2 in Europe. It covers a single year of the conflict starting with the US landing in Northern Africa and ending with the capture of Tunisia. Thoughts A fantastic history, reading this book really gives you the feeling of living through the events. Not in a first-person sense, but more as a near omniscient deity who is really interested in America’s military. What feels like every skirmish, battle, air raid, and flat tire has been listed. Every shell casing counted, and temperature noted. All this is done in a way that manages to stay compelling throughout. -The Allies I never realized just how tense the relationship was between the Brits and the Yankees. There was quite a bit of animosity and distrust between the old power and the new power that was coming of age in this war. British folks thought of the Americans as inexperienced bumbling idiots who would only be useful as a support role in WW2. The Americans had their own reservations, one of my favorite quotes that sums up this new relationship was from Harold Macmillan: ...

Summary A fictional account of the three (+1 wallflower sister) Mirabal sisters and their role in the revolution in attempting to overthrow the Trujillo dictatorship of the Dominican Republic. The sisters are eventually assassinated indirectly by Trujillo, this appears to have paved the way for his own assassination six months later. Thoughts While I appreciate the engaging narrative presented by Julia Alvarez, I feel conflicted in providing a comprehensive review of this book, as I initially believed it to be more historical than fictional. The unique format—each chapter narrated by one of the four sisters—may take some getting used to, with many passages resembling journal entries. In her afterword, Alvarez explains her decision to rely on the essence of the sisters’ lives rather than conducting in-depth interviews or research, drawing from her father’s involvement in the anti-Trujillo underground network as justification for this approach. ...

Summary Created near 400BC this book constitutes one of the earliest Christian autobiographies we have. Written as a protracted and one-sided conversation with God, Augustine attempts to lay out his soul to God and his many readers. Written as a collection of thirteen books, the first nine deal with his life up to the age of 33 which is the traditionally accepted age of Jesus when he was crucified. The main story is his conversion to Catholicism and the backdrop is his own personal struggles and failings. His central struggle was in the eradication of his sexuality, the journey to celibacy was a difficult one for Augustine, he had a few mistresses including one during his pending engagement which was broken off after his conversion. This struggle takes up most of the pages dedicated to character flaws, while his key psychological struggle was being converted from Manicheism. Another interesting topic that got discussed thoroughly was astrology, evidently Augustine used to be paid by others to read their future in the stars, he would have had all the girls in 2023. If there is one thing to know about Augustine, it is that he questions, he questions everything. This ultimately leads him to lose faith in Manicheism in favor of the more convincing ideas presented by Catholicism. One way of looking at this text is as a tract to any would be Catholics who were currently Manichaeans. The last four books shift into abstract questions about memory, time, creation, and interpretation of scriptures. ...

Summary Evgenni Onegin, pronounced as best as I can tell yev-gainy on-yay-gen is a Russian aristocrat, that seems to be the only stories from Russia I read. Onegin evidently falls into a literary category known as “superfluous men”, Onegin has drank the glass to the bottom and is bored. Bored of the fancy balls, the gossip, the incessant conversation, of everything. Inheriting his uncle’s estate he moves there with no real hopes or ambitions but is surprised to run into a young poet named Vladimir Lensky. This young poet is still full of life and hope much like Onegin’s younger self and helps to lift the boredom and bring color back into Onegin’s life. The poet falls in love with a pretty coquettish girl named Olga, but we ignore her in favor of her more interesting sister Tatyana. Olga had the looks and Tatyana the brains, unfortunately for her she falls in love, the way that only a sixteen-year-old can, with Onegin. She writes him a letter declaring her love and putting herself at his mercy. He replies in what is now known as “Onegin’s Sermon” the essence of which is that Onegin felt like the marriage would be a disaster because he would become bored with her, and eventually her with him. The tone of his reply was polite but also condescending. This of course completely devastates Tatyana who retires into the background of the novel for a time. Shortly thereafter the poet Lensky tricks Onegin into coming to a country ball. This upsets Onegin, who hates the society and finds nothing diverting there. He chooses quite unaccountably to start flirting with the poet’s fiancé Olga, they dance, and she appears to be attracted by Onegin’s studied advances. This causes the poet to callout Onegin and demand satisfaction by a duel. The once friends now face off, with Onegin surviving he is of course distraught by his friend’s death and decides to travel to take his mind off of it. The novel then jumps forward a couple years, Onegin back from his travels goes to a St. Petersburg ball and is surprised to find the innocent 16-year-old transformed into a lady of high society, and now married to a older general. Immediately smitten he does everything he can think of to rekindle their relationship but in an epic turnabout Tatyana gives him her own sermon. She essentially says that she is going to remain faithful to her husband and the novel ends with Onegin yet again in turmoil. ...

Summary Written in 1975, this book is considered one of the fundamental texts that started the animal rights movement, which is only gaining in momentum. Singer popularized the term speciesism, which plays a central role in his argument. He likens speciesism to all the other nasty “isms” sexism, racism etc. His main points to support this are that humans are animals as well, and there is no significant difference innate in humans that sets us apart from the natural world. An often-used metric of difference between animals and humans is intelligence. To this he would reply that there are plenty of babies, and mentally handicapped patients that show less signs of intelligence than some animals, yet no one would find it morally justifiable to eat them or conduct cruel tests on them. He challenges anyone to justify speciesism, and if not, then they must deal with the consequences. From there he does an overview of testing conducted on animals and factory farming, the two most egregious forms of mass animal cruelty. From there he feels the only justifiable choice is to remove meat from your meals. He provides arguments in support of this as well as providing practical information for those interested in making the switch from a meat-based diet. He ends the book with a brief discussion on western man’s relationship with animals. He breaks up the history into Jewish, Greek, Christian, and Enlightenment eras with his major claim being that any justification of speciesism is either metaphysical or untenable. He quotes Bentham “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” ...

Summary Matt Ridley sets out to explain why, despite how it may feel, we live in the brightest point in history and the future is likely to be even brighter. Homo Sapiens are an incredible species, which always raises the question of how we got to be this way. What set us on this path that allowed us to specialize in ways unique in our known universe. Ridley wants to argue that the distinguishing feature was trade. Trade allows for specialization, and we should think of specialization as skill storage. You learn how to make an axe, I’ll learn how to grow corn etc. etc. In this way the amount of knowledge available continues to grow the more trading connections we enter into. For a few ears of corn, I can make use of years of R&D that you’ve committed to making the axe. From a game theory point of view this is a win win. As you can make axes better than me, and I can grow corn better than you. The result is a net increase in material wealth. As the community grows and more nodes in the form of human brains join the network, the amount of specialized knowledge grows combinatorically because although the skills are siloed the results are not. For example, if you make a better axe, I can clear forests easier to make more corn than before and so on. This is a fundamental argument for free and global trade, as there seems to be no upper limit to idea storage in the universe. ...

Summary At 900pages in length the book not only covers the civil war but starts at a bird’s eye view of the birth of the United States zooming in closer and closer as we near the Civil War. Going fairly in depth on the US’ economic industry and its evolutions McPherson paints a picture of sprawling plantations and Yankee ingenuity. But in these developments cracks in the “United” States started to appear. The North and South started to develop in different directions. The North barreled forward (or downward? backward? depends on who you ask) into industrialized capitalism while the South who were largely agricultural stood firm in their conservative values and therefore abhorred the urbanization, automatization, that created crowded crime laden huge cities in the North. As an aside, you can get some of this sentiment playing Red Dead Redemption 2, ironically an explicitly anti-confederate game where the main characters act and view the world through a similar lens as the folks who created the Confederacy. Yet having this stance put you squarely against the march of “progress”, as such a widening gap between specialists in North and South started to appear. As such the South became more and more dependent on products from the North, whereas the North maintained only its dependence on the South’s cotton. The gap wasn’t just economic but also in ideas, most of the books, newspapers, inventors, and scientists came from the North. It was fairly common for rich Southerners to pay for their kids to go to school up north. This caused friction as the South began to feel inferiority or distrust towards the North. But even with these things, the central issue was slavery. There was a growing vocal movement of radical abolitionists, next to them was a less radical Free-Soil party who opposed the idea of expanding slavery into the new states of the west. This made southern slave owners uneasy, because for a quite some time slave owners were overrepresented in the government, but several new states with anti-slavery legislation had been added to the Union. This was starting to tip the scale of power away from the once dominant slave owners. This among other things, put these two competing ideologies on a collision course. McPherson then does a fantastic job of describing different factions and their mindsets. Just like any time in history, there was a lot going on and the stories we’re told often greatly oversimplify. He makes it very clear that you could be anti-slavery and racist at the same time. The North in general was anti-slavery but most did not view blacks as their equals. All this and the Civil War hasn’t even started. ...