Menu:
Behrooz Parhami's Blog & Books Page
This page was created in March 2009 as an outgrowth of the section entitled "Books Read or Heard" in Professor Parhami's personal page. The rapid expansion of the list of books warranted devoting a separate page to it. Because the book entries constituted a form of personal blog, it was decided to title this page "Blog & Books," to also allow discussion of interesting topics unrelated to books. Entries appear in reverse chronological order.
Blog Entries for 2009, Beginning in April
2009/11/18 (Wed.): Rivoli, Pietra, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade, unabridged audiobook read by Eliza Foss, Recorded Books, 2007. At a student demonstration on the campus of Georgetown University in 1999, the author heard a young woman ask the people around her a simple question, "Who made your T-shirt?"—using the question to point out the dreadful conditions of the working poor in a number of Asian factories that are part of the production chain for large multinational companies. The author, a business professor, was intrigued by the question and decided to pursue it, thus creating this highly entertaining and enlightening book. Her quest to discover where her T-shirt came from led her to Florida, where the T-shirt was printed, to China, where it was manufactured, a cotton farm in west Texas, where the fibers were grown with subsidies from the US Government, and, eventually, to a secondhand market in Africa, where the T-shirt began its second life.
2009/11/15 (Sun.): Collins, Billy, Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space, Books on Tape, 2005. A former US Poet Laureate, who, according to comedian Bill Murray's witty introduction, was not reelected to the position, Billy Collins reads 24 of his humorous poems, interspersing them with irreverent comments about the poems, his childhood memories, and other topics. His deadpan delivery makes listening to this short audiobook a real joy.
2009/11/01 (Sun.): Afkhami, Gholam Reza, The Life and Times of the Shah, University of California Press, 2009. One can hardly expect an unbiased account of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's life and times from someone who was an insider in MRP's regime, had unprecedented access to the royal family members and their closest friends during his research for the book, and is now affiliated with the Foundation for Iranian Studies, a research institute established and funded by MRP's twin sister. Even though a few token opposition groups are listed among the sources, the latter are too few and too inconsequential to sway the imbalance. These facts, along with the book's daunting 713 pages, made me leaf through the chapters before deciding whether or not to read it from cover to cover. My suspicions were confirmed after reading a number of passages from the book. On page xi, the prerevolutionary Iran is characterized as "a development showcase," rather than a country on the verge of economic collapse. On page 167, restoration of MRP's rule by the CIA is described thus: "The miracle that had occurred resulted from Iranians' patriotism, the friendship shown by the West, and God's benevolence." On page 400, the widely known and aptly documented torture techniques employed by the regime's secret police, SAVAK, is dismissed (by MRP, in an interview with David Frost) as the work of a prototypical interrogator who "gets so mad at the behavior of the fellow he has arrested that he loses his head, and he just punches that fellow or breaks a chair on his head." Even though many of these passages express MRP's viewpoints, as told to friends and subordinates, the author never entertains the possibility that the Shah actually knew about acts of torture; in other words, the improbability of the Shah having been in the dark, despite his admitted twice-weekly meetings with SAVAK's chiefs, is not addressed. As a final example, on page 552, the mild criticism of MRP for not trying to save his former prime minister from execution, and not even issuing a statement after the fact, is preceded by statements of how the governments of Morocco and Bahamas had forbidden him to engage in politics.
2009/10/23 (Fri.): Swarup, Vikas, Slumdog Millionaire, unabridged audiobook, read by Christopher Simpson, BBC Audiobooks America, 2009. Here is what I wrote about this book, when I listened to an abridged version in 2006, under its original title Q & A (having seen the Oscar-winning movie based on the book, the second listening was even more enjoyable, especially given Simpson's admirable job with Indian and other accents): A poor Indian orphan boy, working as a waiter, is arrested for fraud at the urging of producers of the TV quiz show "Who Will Win a Billion," who have no intention of paying him after he wins the grand prize by correctly answering a series of 12 questions. In conversations with his attorney, the boy reveals how he luckily came to know the correct answer to each question through his life experiences with a few friends, masters, and other acquaintances.
2009/10/20 (Tue.): Last month, the British government finally apologized for its horrendous treatment of one of the most influential computer scientist the world has known: the genius for whom Association for Computing Machinery's prestigious A. M. Turing Award, the "Nobel" prize of computing, is named. Unfortunately, the apology did not come until tens of thousands of people signed a petition demanding the action. A Daily Telegraph article, dated 2009/09/10, contains info about the apology and some of the indecent things that were done to Turing under the guise of promoting "decency"; actions that led to his suicide in 1954, at the age of 41. It is mind-boggling to think how much more Turing could have contributed to the advancement of science and technology had he been allowed to live his life in peace. The centenary of Turing's birth will be celebrated in 2012, designated as the Alan Turing Year.
2009/10/15 (Thu.): Kolbert, Elizabeth, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, unabridged audiobook read by Hope Davis, Simon & Schuster, 2006. This sobering book is based on a series of articles by the author in The New Yorker magazine. The author traveled around the globe and talked to climate experts and nonexperts to produce her "field notes." Many of the points made by Kolbert are not new and have been presented in many forms before. However, she has packaged the material into a readily comprehensible form to draw our attention to the urgency of the problem. An interesting fact one learns from this book is Pacala and Socolow's notion of a "wedge" in efforts to stabilize or reduce carbon emissions. The Earth's atmosphere currently contains some 800 billion tons of carbon in the form of CO2, with half of the 7 billion tons of annual production accumulating in the atmosphere (the other half is absorbed by natural sources). The rate of carbon production is projected to double in the next 50 years. The notion of wedge allows us to think about the options, and the scale of the problem, more clearly. A wedge represents a concrete step for reducing the annual carbon emissions by a billion pounds. Hence, just to maintain the current rate of carbon accumulation over the next 50 years, we need seven wedges (i.e., to prevent the doubling); to stabilize the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at acceptable levels, we need 15 wedges. Let me just cite two examples for a wedge. Doubling vehicle fuel efficiency (say, from 30 mpg to 60 mpg) constitutes one wedge. Installing 20,000 km2 worth of solar cells is another wedge. These two examples drive home the enormity of the task of garnering 7-15 wedges over the next half-century. A very nice summary of this book is available online, courtesy of Helen Amos of the University of Washington.
2009/10/10 (Sat.): On Tuesday 2009/09/22, I wrote about my impressions of the book Persian Letters, by Montesquieu. Here are a few more notable quotations from the book.
Letter 78: ". . . the degree of severity of a punishment does not make people observe the law any better. In countries where punishments are moderate, these are feared exactly as they are in countries where penalties are tyrannical and horrifying."
Letter 83: ". . . history is full of wars of religion; but . . . it is not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, but the spirit of intolerance animating the religion believed itself to be dominant."
Letter 105: "[The author stretches] out his material . . . mercilessly, never heeding the suffering of his poor reader, who exhausts himself condensing what the author has taken so much trouble to expand."
Letter 106: "It seems . . . that the brains of the greatest men contract when they are gathered together, and that where there are more wise men, there you will also find less wisdom."
Supplementary letter 8: "A man who lacks a certain talent will compensate himself by despising it; he eliminates the obstacle which blocks his path to excellence, and, as a consequence, sees himself as the equal of the rival whose work he fears."
2009/10/08 (Thu.): The Web page http://ubu.com/film/lelouch_iran.html contains an interesting 20-minute documentary on Iran by the famed French director Claude LeLouch (1937-). When you visit the Web page containing the video, the commentary there leads you to another 70-minute documentary by the French director Albert Lamorisse (1922-1970), entitled "Baadeh Sabah" (The Lovers' Wind / Vent Des Amoureux). This latter documentary was filmed in 1970 and completed and released in 1978, years after his death in a helicopter crash while filming the Karaj dam near Tehran. It has a soundtrack of beautiful traditional Persian music and a few regional folk songs. Both documentaries were commissioned by the Shah as propaganda films, although he apparently did not like Lamorisse's version, which does not depict him looking cool in white clothes riding a horse!
2009/10/06 (Tue.): Vanderbilt, Tom, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), audiobook read by David Slavin, Random House Audio, 2008. I have always been curious about the chaotic behavior of automobile traffic and how traffic engineers attack the seemingly insurmountable problems. So, I snatched this audiobook as soon as I saw it on the library shelf. Vanderbilt describes, in a clear and absorbing way, the highly complex web of physical, behavioral, and technical factors that influence traffic. Among the surprising facts one learns from this book is that most people actually don't mind a 20-minute daily commute that gives them a private space between home and work; a space where they can sing, cry, and, perhaps, pick their noses. Here's another example: When we forecast traffic conditions, and the forecast is to be made public, we have to account for drivers' reactions to the forecast in our forecast!
2009/09/28 (Mon.): Today, I came across a Web page (http://www.benfry.com/traces/) that is one of the most impressive I have seen in a long time. Computer Scientist Ben Fry has created a visual representation of how Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution evolved over time. When you visit this page, you see a visual map of the first edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published in 1859. Each line of text is represented by a tiny horizontal bar, with chapters spanning multiple columns of such bars. The visual map then starts to change, indicating in a different color how each subsequent edition, up to the 6th in 1872, was modified and expanded. By placing your cursor over different spots on the visual map, you can actually read the text and see the details of the changes and additions. You can pause the book's evolutionary process at will, to examine the changes between the 2nd and 3rd editions, say.
2009/09/22 (Tue.): Montesquieu, Persian Letters, translated by Margaret Mauldon, Oxford University Press, 2008. This new translation of a classic novel is based on the original 1721 edition, which was published anonymously, but includes in an appendix the text of 11 letters the author added to his revised 1754 volume. Ironically, a less authentic, posthumously published version (1758) is the one best known around the world. Through the vehicle of fictional letters exchanged between a pair of Persian noblemen traveling in Europe and their friends, acquaintances, servants, and wives, Montesquieu brilliantly criticizes both the Eastern and Western societies for their lack of understanding and tolerance toward each other and pokes fun at the rigid social and religious traditions of each group. In Letter 56, he has one of the Persian travelers write about the Parisian society: "An infinite number of Masters of Languages, Arts, and Science teach what they themselves do not know; this is quite a notable talent, for to teach what one knows requires but little wit, whereas an infinite quantity is needed to teach what one does not know." Later, in Letter 94, we read: "There are philosophers here who, it is true, have never attained the heights of oriental wisdom ... nor known the fearsome experience of a divine ecstasy; but on their own, deprived of any knowledge of holy marvels, they follow in silence the path of human reason."
2009/09/20 (Sun.): Verne, Jules, Around the World in 80 Days, unabridged audiobook read by Jim Dale, Random House Audio, 2004. Returning to this classic was both delightful and disappointing. I was taken with this tale as a schoolboy and later saw the star-studded movie, when it was released in 1956. The plot, however, does not fare well by 21st-Century standards. Apparently, neither the idea of a time-constrained trip around the world, nor the key plot twist of gaining an extra day when travelling eastward, was original to Verne. He simply put many suggestions in the literature of the mid-1800s about the former, and Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story "Three Sundays in a Week" hinting at the latter, to good use in his story. Wikipedia has a great deal of interesting information on the origins and context of Verne's book, including the fact that during a serialized publication of the story in 1872, some readers believed that the journey was actually happening and placed bets on its success or failure. Apparently, as the story unfolded in "real time," railway and ship liner companies lobbied Verne to make them part of the story. So, advertising via product placement is not that new!
2009/09/03 (Thu.): Perrucci, Robert, and Carolyn C. Perrucci, America at Risk: The Crisis of Hope, Trust, and Caring, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. The sparse annotation and the size of this slim 160-page book indicate that the Purdue University sociology professors wrote it for the general public, not for their peers. The authors are quite successful in pinpointing the roots of the current crises in the US. In short, the culprits are: (1) The shrinking middle class and the attendant growth in the earnings gap (over three decades, the share of income for the top quantile of Americans grew by about 18%, while those of the other four quantiles dropped by 3, 11, 19, and 26%, in order from top to bottom; also, in the span of just one decade, the CEO-to-average-worker earnings ratio rose from about 107 to 411); (2) The lack of confidence in leaders and institutions (less than a quarter of Americans trust the congress, big business, organized labor, the presidency, and the news media, with the congress being at the bottom of the pile, at 14%); (3) The inattention to the plight of the poor, homeless, and incarcerated, which disproportionately belong to various ethnic minorities. The picture painted above is simplistic and decidedly nonscholarly, as I have left out dates, sources, and methods of data collection. However, the findings do resonate with many ordinary Americans who are experiencing the erosion of hope, trust, and caring in their communities firsthand. In the last chapter, the authors provide some suggestions on how to confront the crises. Here, they are much less successful. Their solutions are limited (only restoring trust in congress, as an institution, is dealt with) or simple-minded (job creation through voluntary contributions by citizens at income tax filing time and by "reallocation" from DoD and NASA budgets).
2009/08/29 (Sat.): Wilson, Mike (ed.), Terrorism: Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, 2009. Contrasting views are presented with respect to four questions: (1) Is terrorism a serious threat? (2) How is society susceptible to terrorism? (3) What causes terrorism? (4) How should governments respond to terrorism? Some of the answers to question 1 are quite enlightening, as they reveal how the "security industry" exaggerates the terrorism threat and uses hype to quell more level-headed and logical assessments. Another interesting piece of information pertains to the stark difference between Al Qaeda's public face, as reflected in sources prepared for international consumption, and its true agenda, that is revealed only in its internal documents (recently translated from Arabic). Four to six essays are included in each part, typically paired to cover the two sides of an issue, such as the threat of cyberterrorism.
2009/08/22 (Sat.): Menzies, Gavin, 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, unabridged audiobook read by Simon Vance, Blackstone Audio, 2008. I began listening to this audiobook and went as far as the second CD, before deciding that the theories advanced, though intriguing, were too far-fetched. Checking on-line sources, including an extensive Wikipedia entry on the book, I found out that in fact the theories lacked credibility and have been dismissed by many historical scholars. The author, who had previously written 1421: The Year China Discovered America, claims that many European discoveries and advances were triggered by (or stolen from) Chinese visitors to the continent. Among his claims are those pertaining to Columbus and other European explorers carrying with them elaborate maps of the lands they supposedly discovered. Of course, this does not mean that the Chinese did not influence the West; only that there was no systematic stealing/copying and no attendant cover-up. Despite the verdict above, such challenges to the established order, and to Eurocenterism in particular, can serve a useful purpose. As Henry Adams, noted writer and historian put it, "History will die if not irritated."
2009/08/14 (Fri.): Coughlin, Con, Khomeini's Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam, Harper Collins, 2009. Con Coughlin is a highly controversial journalist/author with a record of outrageous claims. Despite this fact, his books have received critical acclaim and are useful if read with skepticism and due diligence. This new book consists of two parts, dealing with Khomeini's origins (up to the Islamic revolution, in five chapters) and legacy (establishment of the Islamic Republic to the present, in six chapters). In the first part, which is more even-handed and less burdened with sensationalism, one reads that the conflict between Khomeini and the Shah intensified with the latter's reform program, dubbed "the White Revolution," including its provisions of voting rights for women and non-Muslims. This so-called revolution was initiated after JFK took office in the US and almost immediately threatened Third-World leaders thus: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable"; to which the Shah reportedly reacted, "I can start a revolution for you, but you won't like the end result." Khomeini is said to have dismissed the voting-rights provisions as a plot by the Zionists to weaken Islam and "to corrupt our chaste women" and was successful, after a meeting with the then prime minister Asadollah Alam, in having the offending clauses removed. Among the interesting passages in the second part are an account of Khomeini's interview with Oriana Fallaci (p. 168; you can Google it). Later in the second part, we encounter the claim that in a formal letter written in his final year of life, Khomeini ordered the acquisition of biological and nuclear weapons within five years (p. 242). This is one of the suspicious pieces, in that the claimed letter also spells out in detail the number of fighter planes, helicopters, and tanks to be acquired, a level of detail that was not his style. Khomeini rarely cited numbers or statistics in his speeches and mostly stuck to generalities. Those who have witnessed the Iranian revolution first-hand will find many inaccuracies in this account, including sloppy misspellings of names. The book is worthwhile reading, nonetheless, because it is bound to fill in some details that were censured in the Iranian media, both before and after the revolution.
2009/08/12 (Wed.): Gill, Michael Gates, How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else, Unabridged audiobook read by Dylan Baker, Penguin Audio, 2007. A sixty-something executive, downsized years ago after nearly three decades of loyal service to one company, is at his wit's end because his consulting business is struggling. He surprises even himself when he accepts a half-joking job offer from a young Starbucks manager and finds contentment in reaching across age, class, and race boundaries.
2009/08/09 (Sun.): Stewart, Ian, Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, Basic Books, 2009. On his personal Web page, Professor Ian Nicholas Stewart describes himself as "mathematician, science writer, science fiction writer." He has published widely on many topics and is particularly well known for his efforts in promoting and popularizing mathematics, and science in general. This book may be classified as recreational mathematics, but it is much more than that. Alongside games, magic tricks, and a few mathematical jokes, the reader finds accurate, albeit simplified, discussions of Fermat's last theorem, Fibonacci numbers, distribution of different digits in numbers, chaos theory, the Poincare conjecture, Mersenne primes, fractals, and the Riemann hypothesis. Books such as this cannot be read in a single sitting, but this one is awfully hard to put down once you get started. I will refer to it from time to time for fun and inspiration.
2009/08/01 (Sat.): Troost, J. Maarten, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific, unabridged audiobook read by Simon Vance, Blackstone Audio, 2007. A fascinating and humorous account of life on a Pacific atoll, where shortage of drinking water, paucity of food options, and abundance of bacteria and heat create quite a culture shock for a couple of young Westerners in search of the proverbial paradise at the end of the earth. The book's title, which has nothing to do with its contents, except that the early settlers of the islands in the region were cannibals (almost by necessity, it seems), is indicative of the author's style of weaving humor into his narrative of the sad aftermaths of colonialism and exploitation.
2009/07/23 (Thu.): Majd, Hooman, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, Doubleday, 2008. Fascinating account of the social and political realities in Iran, as the ancient traditions of a proud nation clash with the religiopolitical musings of the clerical leadership and their followers. Readers of Iranian origins would enjoy this book immensely, as they find the customs and contradictions pointed out by the author entirely familiar, but the book is also quite accessible to others. Reading the book after the recent presidential elections in Iran makes it seem rather out of date, however, particularly where the author refers to the Supreme Leader as a moderating influence, because "[he] listens to his constituents, the Iranian people, he listens to all sides of the political spectrum, he considers public and world opinion ..." (p. 210). The uncertainties and contradictions in modern Iran leave a lot of room for disagreement on the current ailments and their cures. A persecuted religious minority's views will certainly be different from those of an ayatollah's descendant (the author), even after the latter has been thoroughly Westernized.
2009/07/19 (Sun.): After four months of work, migration to a new Web site, including revised structure and page formats, is complete. To the extent possible, former page names have been maintained, so that existing bookmarks remain valid in a great majority of cases. In the process, I learned some HTML to allow me to design pages that would look precisely the same when viewed with different browsers. My previous Web pages not only did not look the same to different viewers, but they had a lot of formatting and typeface problems even with the same browser on different computers. My hope is that the new structure is general and flexible enough to last for a decade.
2009/07/12 (Sun.): Ram, Haggai, Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession, Stanford Univ. Press, 2009. It is a common malady among authors, academics in particular, to churn out hundreds of pages to convey what could be said in a dozen or so pages. I just finished reading this 220-page book, more than 1/3 of which consists of endnotes and bibliography. The author manages to convey the following simple message in 135 pages: Iran and Israel are more similar than either side would like to admit. Both peoples are Easterners in their outlook and traditions, although the Israelis (the Zionists in particular) tend to view themselves as guardians of Western values in the Middle East. This is more than a bit ironic, given how the Jews were dismissed as inferior "Easterners" throughout Europe before they settled in southwestern Asia. One indication of this similarity is the use of Tel Aviv streets to shoot the Tehran scenes in a 1991 Hollywood movie (p. 132). And the governments of the two countries need each other desperately: Israeli politicians to justify their immense security apparatus by an exaggerated "Iran threat," and the Iranian ruling class to divert the attention of the masses from dire socioeconomic problems and the attendant widespread corruption.
2009/06/30 (Tue.): Here are two interesting books about comedy.
— Maslon, Laurence, Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, Twelve, 2008. This is an eclectic collection, dealing with the context and key players of comedy in the United States over the past century. Right before reading this book, I had watched Michael Kantor's six-part PBS documentary on which the book is based. The documentary film was excellent, but the book offers so much more. All major film and television comedy stars are covered, as are ensemble programs such as Laugh-In and Saturday Night Live. With its 384 large pages and heavy paper, one can't read this book, except while sitting at a desk. But the myriad of photos and quotes from both comics and producers make it well worth the effort.
— Davis, Tom, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There, unabridged audiobook read by the author, Tantor Media, 2009. Speaking of the history of comedy in the US, these memoirs, by one-half of the comedy team "Franken & Davis" (the former now a US senator from Minnesota) traces the history of this drug-laden duo through their high-school and college years, and their subsequent success after they were hired in 1975 to fill a single apprentice-writer position on SNL, sharing a salary of $350 per week.
2009/05/04 (Mon.): Stewart, Ian, Nature's Numbers: The Unreal Reality of Mathematics, Basic Books, 1995. An insightful and accessible collection of essays on how mathematics helps explain many natural phenomena. From Chapter 1 (entitled "The Natural Order"): "Numerology is the easiest—and consequently the most dangerous—method for finding patterns. It is easy because anybody can do it, and dangerous for the same reason. ... The big problem with numerological pattern-seeking is that it generates millions of accidentals for each universal. Nor is it always obvious which is which."
2009/04/25 (Sat.): Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies, 14 recorded lectures in "The Modern Scholar" series, delivered by Prof. Harold Bloom of Yale University, Recorded Books, 2005. Romeo and Juliet (1 lecture), Julius Caesar (1), Hamlet (3), Othello (2), King Lear (3), Macbeth (2), Antony and Cleopatra (2).
2009/04/15 (Wed.): There is something utterly fascinating about aerial photographs. You get a glimpse of monuments and city skylines as you approach population centers in a passenger plane, but high-resolution aerial photographs offer so much more than what you can see from a small, gritty airplane window. Only an aerial view can provide a sense of scale and accurate positional relationships, not to mention a display of features that are not visible from anywhere else (e.g., rooftops). I have often admired collections of aerial photographs in books with the generic title "X from the air" or "X from above," where X stands for some interesting locale such as Greece, Italy, or New York. Today, I discovered a collection of aerial photographs depicting Iran. The photos, taken by Georg Gerster shortly before the 1979 Iranian revolution, are featured in a current exhibit entitled "Paradise Lost: Persia from Above" in New York City.
2009/04/12 (Sun.): Lencioni, Patrick, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, unabridged audiobook read by Charles Stransky, Books on Tape, 2006. An old-school CEO comes out of retirement to take up the challenge of tranforming a group of self-centered executives into a smoothly functioning team, teaching the reader/listener a number of valuable lessons on effective collaboration in the process.
2009/04/01 (Wed.): This is as good a day as any to start my blog, although I do realize that readers may take what I say today with a grain of salt. So, I'll keep it short. One of the advantages of working at a university is the almost unlimited access to books and other information resources, via the on-site library and its interlibrary loan program. The UCSB campus library still maintains a "new books" shelf where one can browse the (hard-copy) books that have just arrived. Discovering new books on this shelf is one of my favorite activities. Many of the books listed in the next section, as well as others yet to be listed in this blog, are results of this discovery process. The browsing capability is still in its infancy within the digital world, although the virtual bookshelves at zoomii.com come close to emulating this discovery process.
Books Read or Heard Until March 2009
[2009 Mar.] Cahill, Thomas, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter, unabridged audiobook read by John Lee, Books on Tape, 2003.
[2009 Mar.] Lencioni, Patrick, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, unabridged audiobook read by Charles Stransky, Books on Tape, 2006.
[2009 Feb.] Behrends, Ehrhard, Five-Minute Mathematics, translated from German by David Kramer, American Mathematical Society, 2008.
Based on 100 weekly columns written for Die Welt during 2003-05.
[2009 Feb.] Gore, Albert, The Assault on Reason, unabridged audiobook read by Will Patton, Books on Tape, 2007.
Gore argues, quite effectively, that the public discourse in the United States has moved from reasoned exchange, advocated by the framers of our constitution, to dogma-driven force-feeding, enabled, in part, by the wide reach of 30-second television ads. He remains hopeful that modern communication channels, such as the Internet, will reverse this trend, which gathered steam during the administration of Bush Jr.
[2009 Feb.] Bielby, Denise D., and C. Lee Harrington, Global TV: Exporting Television and Culture in the World Market, New York Univ. Press, 2008.
A scholarly examination of cultural and economic factors that might explain the worldwide popularity of shows like "I Love Lucy" and the screening of utterly Western reality programs (e.g., "America's Next Top Model") in scores of countries, including Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. Particularly enlightening is the authors' narrative on the ways in which TV programs are described, in terms of genre and content, to potential buyers (see example quotes from advertising brochures on pp. 81-84).
[2009 Feb.] Mills, Brett, Television Sitcom, BFI Publishing, 2005.
Provides insight into how sitcoms work and why the genre is so successful. Because most of the examples cited are from the British TV, the points made are not as easy to grasp for American readers. An interesting fact one learns from this book is that, whereas American sitcoms are often run on British TV in their original forms, British sitcoms are usually remade, with different characters and casts, in the United States. For more on the culture-specific nature of situation comedies that necessitates this retelling of stories, see pp. 52-54 of Global TV by D. D. Bielby and C. L. Harrington (listed above).
[2009 Jan.] Becker, Gary, and Guity Neshat Becker, The Economics of Life, McGraw Hill, 1997.
This volume contains a collection of magazine columns by a Nobel-Prize winning economist and his historian wife. The authors praise the positive role of free markets in all aspects of personal and societal development. The arguments are, for the most part, well-presented and convincing. Nevertheless, there are several contradictions that weaken the authors' message. For example, financing the sharply rising cost of higher education through "loans with appropriate fixed interest rates and with paybacks contingent on the financial success of borrowers" is characterized as a worthwhile governmental undertaking (p. 81). However, such risk-free loans (to the borrower) essentially constitute extreme cases of income-based repayment rates, which the authors maintain should not coexist with the fixed-rate policy (p. 70). As a second example, the authors' view of the indispensability of economists, despite the admitted unreliability of their predictions (p. 311), is at odds with their ridicule of environmental scientists for the same shortcomings (p. 289). Some of the ideas, such as those dismissing the seriousness of environmental pollution and global warming, are clearly out of date and in need of revision.
[2009 Jan.] Juergensmeyer, Mark, Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al Qaeda, University of California Press, 2008.
Paints a broad picture of the multitude of religious threats to secular nationalism, a Western ideology that the author likens to a religion in its terminology and machinations. For most readers, the material on international terrorism is just a rehashing of widely known stories that have dominated our news since 9/11. However, the emphasis on the zeal of fanatics, from all religious traditions, comes across as new. Anyone who feels threatened by the Islamic fundamentalist brand of terrorism would do well to read a section entitled "The Militant Christian Right in the United States." This last quarter of Chapter 4 contains a description of fringe groups in the US, such as adherents of the Dominion Theology (and in its extreme, Reconstruction Theology) and Christian Identity (which includes Aryan Nations), who would not hesitate to use violence against all who disagree with them and their world views. Economis.com, 2008/05/01, notes: "Mr. Juergensmeyer distinguishes between the effects of secular nationalism and transnational religion, but he says little about religious nationalism, the opportunistic but effective combination of these two supposed opposites. As any thieving Balkan warlord knows, decent people often kill in the name of a half-forgotten national cause and for a religion in which they hardly believe. Using both tricks at once is especially effective."
[2009 Jan.] Goldsmith, Marshall (with Mark Reiter), What Got You Here Won't Get You There, unabridged audiobook read by Marc Cashman, Books on Tape, 2007.
[2009 Jan.] Livingston, Gordon, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now, unabridged audiobook read by James Jenner, Recorded Books, 2005.
[2009 Jan.] Harris, Sam, Letter to a Christian Nation, unabridged audiobook read by Jordan Bridges, Simon & Schuster, 2006.
[2008 Dec.] Noonan, Peggy, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now, Collins, 2008.
This little gem (192 small pages) is written in three parts, which could have been titled "In defense of the not-so-great Baby-Boom Generation," "Assaulting the dignity of middle-aged women," and "Why no one talks about what to do after the next big attack on America." The book is full of insights and earnest observations, such as the ones found in the following passages from the prologue: "America is on line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proven innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. . . . America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency about the latest polls. . . . No one in the crowded Gate 14 looks up to see what happened with the poll. No one. Wolf talks to the air. . . . But here is something they notice, we notice. Our leaders are now removed from all this, removed from life as we live it each day. There is . . . a fine and bitter sense that [President Bush] has never had to stand in his stockinged feet at the airport holding the bin, being harassed. He has never had to live in the world he helped make, the one where Grandma's hip replacement is setting off the beeper over here and the child is crying over there. And of course as a former president, with the entourage and the private jets, he never will." On the subject of government panels and their voluminous reports, we read on page 142: "What follows is not a government study featuring such sentences as ‘Critical infrastructure protection requires triple-tiered response initiatives including but not limited to the efforts of multiple private-sector entities operating with and in conformance to federal, state, and local quality-control efforts.' Believe me I've read these reports. You don't ever want to read them. They are marvelous collections of wordage—they are mass word-dumps—that seem actually designed to tell you: nothing." There are some less well thought-out points, which can be forgiven, given the fortitude of the author's overall message. For example, on page 165, Noonan dismisses the isolationist label attached to the United States: "The immigrants . . . spent half their time sending money back to the home country. You might say they were working to keep their old countries afloat. This wasn't very isolationist of them—of us." Even if each of one million immigrants from a particular country sent home $1000 annually, the resulting $1 billion per year would hardly be enough to keep that country afloat.
[2008 Dec.] Estrin, Judy, Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy, McGraw-Hill, 2009.
Drawing upon many years of experience as a technology leader and entrepreneur, one of the three scientist daughters of Gerald and Thelma Estrin (prominent UCLA emeriti professors, and pioneers in the design and use of computer and biomedical technologies), writes about the dire consequences of inattention to science and technology education, as well as to long-term investment in basic research.
[2008 Dec.] McKenzie, Richard B., Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles, Copernicus Books, 2008.
The author (a business professor at UC Irvine) dismisses standard justifications given for the price of popcorn at the movies ("trapped customers") or cheap/free printers with very expensive ink cartridges ("naïve users") in favor of more rational explanations. Most movie-goers buy popcorn, so it is the total price of ticket and popcorn that determines their demand. Movie theater owners have to fork out 70-95% of the ticket sales to movie studios/distributors, whereas popcorn sales garner a 70-95% profit that they do not have to share with anyone. Guess which one is more likely to go up in price! Similarly, a cheap/free printer may be viewed as a loan to the user, with interest payments built into the price of ink cartridges. This is a high-risk loan, in the sense that the user may not buy any ink (s/he may discard the printer when the ink runs out) or may buy very few ink cartridges, so the cost of this risk is also built into the ink cartridge price. Far from being naïve, a cash-strapped small business owner may willingly minimize the initial investment by buying a cheap printer, hoping to make deferred payments in the form of more expensive ink. Similarly, a home user with poor credit, who faces a choice between not having a printer at all or buying it with a credit card that charges 20% interest, may decide that the credit offered to him in the form of a cheap/free printer is the lesser of two evils. Other interesting pricing puzzles include why all movies have the same ticket price, regardless of their quality, popularity, and production costs, and the real reasons behind widespread use of sales and discount coupons. In all cases, the explanations offered are thorough and enlightening.
[2008 Dec.] Ledeen, Michael A., The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction, Truman Talley Books, 2007.
[2008 Dec.] Martin, Steve, Pure Drivel, unabridged audiobook read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2007 (book published in 1999).
[2008 Nov.] Deutch, John, and James R. Schlesinger (Task Force Chairs), National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency, Report of an Independent Task Force of the Council on Foreign Relations, 2006.
[2008 Nov.] Hitchens, Christopher, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Twelve, 2007.
Publisher's summary: "A case against religion and a description of the ways in which religion is man-made."
[2008 Nov.] Albright, Madeleine, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs, unabridged audiobook read by the author, Harper Audio, 2006.
An insightful assessment of the role (both positive and negative) of religion in world affairs.
[2008 Oct.] Phillips, Kevin, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, Viking, 2008.
For many years, rational economists had been warning about the financial meltdown that occurred in late 2008, but no one was listening. From the preface: "Far more worrisome is the possibility that neither Washington nor Wall Street is willing to confront the deeper problem––the ascendancy of finance in national policymaking (as well as in the gross domestic product), and the complicity of politicians who really don't want to talk about it."
[2008 Oct.] McMurtry, Larry, Books: A Memoir, unabridged audiobook read by William Dufris, Tantor Audio, 2008.
A fascinating account (by the author of Lonesome Dove and the co-screenwriter of "Brokeback Mountain") of how book enthusiasts went about collecting and trading rare books before the age of audiobooks and e-books.
[2008 Sep.] Sharifian, Ruhangiz, The Day I Fell in Love a Thousand Times (Ruzi ke Hezar Baar Aashegh Shodam), collection of short stories in Persian, Morvarid Publications, 2005.
[2008 Aug.] Huffington, Arianna, Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America, Crown, 2003.
The corrupting influence of executive compensation that is disjointed from true performance, corporations' exclusive focus on the bottom line, use of "creative accounting" to inflate revenues and profits to raise stock prices, and the way in which lobbyists extract government subsidies and softer regulations are described via case studies and statistics. Some of the data are truly eye-opening. However, the book is poorly structured and its explanations are dumbed down via repetitions and excessive use of tongue-in-cheek "humor."
[2008 July] Loewen, James W., Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, unabridged audiobook read by Brian Keeler, Recorded Books, 1995.
[2008 July] Mack, Robert L. (ed.), Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Oxford University Press, 1998.
This 939-page paperback edition of the classic Thousand and One Nights is based on Antoine Galland's 12-volume Mille et une Nuit (1704-1717) and its rendering into English by the anonymous ‘Grub Street' translator (ca. 1706-1721). The main frame story concerns King Shahryar of Persia who, upon discovering his former wife's infidelity, has her executed and comes to believe that all women are unfaithful. He begins to marry a succession of virgins, only to have each one executed the next morning. Eventually his vizier cannot find any more virgins. Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, offers herself as the next bride, with a plan to save many innocent women. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade tells the king a tale, but does not end it. The king is thus forced to keep her alive in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins another. And so it goes for 1001 nights. The tales told by Scheherazade are of Persian, Indian, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian origins. These are mostly classical folk tales of morality, virtues, and good-versus-evil, that are found among many cultures. Some can be traced back to the Persian Hezar Afsaneh or the Arabic Alf Khurafa, and their subsequent adaptations and mixings with tales of other parts of the world. Over the years, the stories have inspired many artists: musicians, poets, authors, movie makers, and so on.
[2008 July] Tyson, Neil deGrasse, My Favorite Universe, twelve lectures, The Teaching Company, 2003.
[2008 June] Hawking, Stephen (with Leonard Mlodinow), A Briefer History of Time, unabridged audiobook read by Erik Davies, Random House Audio, 2005.
[2008 June] Burke, James, The Day the Universe Changed: Pivotal Moments in Time that Radically Altered the Course of Human History, abridged audiobook read by the author, Audio Renaissance, 1990.
[2008 June] Nahai, Gina Barkhordar, Caspian Rain: A Novel, MacAdam/Cage, 2007.
[2008 June] Larson, Edward J., The Theory of Evolution: A History of Controversy, twelve lectures, The Teaching Company, 2002.
[2008 May] Poitier, Sydney, The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, unabridged audiobook read by the author, Harper Collins, 2000.
Poitier describes the social context and circumstances of his youth and of his path-breaking career as a black actor, the first to win an Academy Award.
[2008 May] Feynman, Richard P., The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist, unabridged audiobook read by Raymond Todd, Blackstone Audio, 2007.
[2008 May] Obama, Barack, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Unabridged audiobook read by the author, Random House, 2006.
[2008 May] Shenon, Philip, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, Twelve, 2008.
[2008 Apr.] Ephron, Nora, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, Unabridged audiobook read by the author, Random House, 2006.
[2008 Mar.] Milton-Edwards, Beverley, and Peter Hinchcliffe, Conflicts in the Middle East since 1945, Routledge, 3rd ed., 2008.
[2008 Mar.] Rich, Frank, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, unabridged audiobook read by Grover Gardner, Penguin Audio, 2006.
[2008 Feb.] Siegfried, Tom, A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature, Joseph Henry Press, 2006.
Discusses how game theory is invading many branches of inquiry in both physical and social sciences.
[2008 Jan.] Wallace, David Foster, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, abridged audiobook read by the author, Time Warner Audio Books, 2005.
Four essays: "Consider the Lobster", "The View from Mrs. Thompson's", "Big Red Son", and "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart".
[2008 Jan.] Angier, Natalie, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, unabridged audiobook read by Nike Doukas, HighBridge Audio, 2007.
[2007 Nov.] Bryson, Bill, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir, unabridged audiobook read by the author, Random House, 2006.
[2007 Nov.] Isikoff, Michael, and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, unabridged audiobook read by Stefan Rudnicki, Blackstone Audio, 2006.
[2007 Oct.] Perkins, John, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, unabridged audiobook read by Brian Emerson, Blackstone Audiobooks, 2005.
EHMs earn a living by rendering strategically important Third-World countries dependent on, and thus under the influence of, the United States through convincing their leaders to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and making sure that the resulting lucrative projects were contracted to US corporations, such as Bechtel and Halliburton.
[2007 Oct.] Voltaire, Candide, unabridged audiobook read by Tom Whitworth, Tantor Media, 2002. Originally published in 1759.
[2007 Sep.] Vonnegut, Kurt, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Audiobook read by Scott Brick, Books on Tape, 2000.
This book of imaginary interviews with dead people began as a series of 90-second interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station.
[2007 Sep.] Maugham, W. Somerset, Ten by Maugham, audiobook read/performed by various artists, KCRW FM, 2000. Collection of short stories, on 10 CDs.
[2007 Sep.] Anderson, Fred, The War that Made America: A Short History of The French and Indian War, Audiobook read by Simon Vance, Tantor Media, 2005.
The Seven Years' War entailed expansion of the British colonies into French territory, in the context of the Native American struggle for survival. From the box cover: "... how America, as we know it today, emerged from a series of fractured colonies and warring tribes into a nation ripe for independence."
[2007 Aug.] Bacall, Lauren, By Myself and Then Some, abridged audiobook read by the author, Harper Audio, 2005.
Updated version of the author's memoirs on the silver anniversary of the original publication.
[2007 Aug.] Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe, Ideas that Shaped Mankind: A Concise History of Human Thought, The Modern Scholar Lecture Course Series, Recorded Books, 2004.
Fourteen lectures based on Professor Fernandez-Armesto's 2003 book, Ideas that Changed the World.
[2007 July] American Society of Magazine Editors, The Best American Magazine Writing 2006, Columbia University Press, 2006. Diverse selections from feature articles, reports, profiles, commentaries, columns, essays, reviews, and short stories.
[2007 July] Johnstone, Bob, Brilliant! Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology, Prometheus Books, 2007.
An account of the development high-brightness LED technology at a small Japanese company (Nichia), how that company foolishly chased away the goose that laid the golden egg, the legal intrigue as Nichia and Nakamura sued each other (the company claiming that Nakamura had leaked their trade secrets and Nakamura countering that his efforts in developing a billion-dollar business were inadequately rewarded), and the effects on world energy requirements when LED-based low-energy lighting replaces the current incandescent and fluorescent lightbulbs (e.g., saving an estimated 30% of the total energy used in the United States). The author has used numerous interviews with Nakamura and others, along with Nakamura's Japanese-language autobiography, Breakthrough with Anger. This is an amazing story that is marred by some inconsistencies. For example, we learn on p. 62 that, circa 1987, "Nakamura had come to the conclusion that he should no longer listen to what his boss said . . . he would do the opposite of what people told him." Then, on p. 214, more than a decade later, we read that "Like the loyal employee that he was, Shuji did as he was told." However, given that the sources of information are primarily people who were (and some still are) involved in the technical developments and suits/countersuits regarding intellectual property, self-serving statements and the attendant conflicts are to be expected.
[2007 July] Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the United States: Highlights from the Twentieth Century, audiobook read by Matt Damon and the author, Harper Audio, 2003.
This audiobook comprises the second half of a book by the same name, expanded to include the Clinton presidency and other recent events. Traditional history is told from the viewpoint of "heros" (kings, generals, influential politicians), leaving out the resistance and suffering of victims of conquests, who, in their desperation, sometime turn on other victims. From the introductory comments by the author: "My viewpoint in telling the history of the United States is . . . that we must not accept the ‘memory of states' [borrowing a phrase used by Henry Kissinger to define history] as our own . . . This book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest."
[2007 June] Nemat, Marina, Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir, Free Press, 2007.
The author, born in 1965, was 16 years old when arrested by the Iranian regime two years after the Islamic revolution. This autobiography covers the author's life up to age 18, although it also contains brief accounts of the later years and her eventual resettlement in Canada. It is mainly the story of her imprisonment (a little over two years in the notorious Evin Prison) and marriage to one of her prison guards, Ali, who used his family ties to have her execution sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The prison stories are interlaced with formative events in the author's family life and schooling. It is very difficult to criticize someone who has been through so much and who has gathered the courage to write about private matters that most Iranians would not dare disclose. Yet, there are inconsistencies in the account that tarnish an otherwise compelling work of nonfiction. Foremost among these is the explanation of why she agreed to convert to Islam and to marry Ali, a man who claimed to be in love with her and yet was willing to use the threat of having her parents and a friend executed in order to force her to marry him. [Note added on 2007/09/20: Apparently, this book's depiction of the Evin Prison has touched some raw nerves. See, for example, the Persian review by Monireh Baradaran: http://www.akhbar-rooz.com/article.jsp?essayId=10487]
[2007] Gurwitch, Annabelle, Fired, Audiobook Produced by L.A. Theater Works, 2005.
Comedic monologues about being fired from various, mostly trivial, jobs.
[2007] Green, Jane, To Have and to Hold, unabridged audiobook read by Kate Reading, Books on Tape, 2004.
[2007] Suskind, Ron, The One Percent Doctrine, unabridged audiobook read by George Guidall, Recorded Books, 2006.
". . . the most detailed, revealing account yet of American counterterrorism efforts and a hard-hitting critique of their direction." [Publishers Weekly]
[2007] Berntsen, Gary, and Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker -- The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander, Audiobook read by Robertson Dean, Books on Tape, 2006.
[2007] Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, abridged audiobook read by Grover Gardner, HighBridge Audio, 2001.
The author takes us on a journey that follows the development of human societies and uncovers several deciding factors that helped create the vastly differing levels of development on the various continents. According to The New Yorker, "The scope and explanatory power of this book are astounding."
[2007] Friedman, Thomas L., The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, abridged audiobook read by Oliver Wyman, Audio Renaissance, 2005.
[2007] Chomsky, Noam, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, Metropolitan Books, 2006.
[2007] Johnson, Steven, Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, unabridged audiobook read by Alan Sklar, Tantor Media, 2004.
Presents a lot of interesting facts, including how our brains have evolved to take care of certain routine tasks with little or no processing, and how a rough-and-quick processing center (the emigdula) manages to keep us out of danger when normal processing of sensory data would take too long for us to react in time.
[2007] Ricks, Thomas E., Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Abridged audiobook read by James Lurie, Penguin Audio, 2006.
[2007] Woodward, Bob, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, Abridged audiobook read by Boyd Gaines, Audioworks (Simon & Schuster), 2006.
[2007] Chomsky, Noam, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, Metropolitan Books, 2003.
[2007] Clark, Richard A., The Scorpion's Gate, unabridged audiobook read by Robertson Dean, Penguin Audio, 2005.
Fictional tale set in the Middle East, circa 2010, and involving two fundamentalist Islamic republics: Iran and Islamyah (former Saudi Arabia, in which the al-Saud family has been toppled).
[2007] Friedman, Thomas L., The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, audiobook read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2004.
[2006] Phillips, Kevin, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, Audiobook read by Scott Brick, Penguin Audio, 2006.
[2006] Young, Toby, The Sound of No Hands Clapping, unabridged audiobook read by Simon Vance, Tantor Audio, 2006.
[2006] Zoka', Yahya, Dar Peeramoon-e Tagh'eer-e Khatt-e Farsi (On Changing the Farsi Script), Naghsh-e Jahan, Tehran, Dey 1329 (Jan. 1951), in Persian.
This book provides an uneven history of attempts to improve the Farsi script in order to simplify its learning and reproduction. In some cases, the author names a proponent or opponent of the idea, without giving any details of his contributions to the debate; in other places, it quotes from letters and other writings at length. The writing style is also quite poor, with many sentences running half a page or longer.
[2006] Fonda, Jane, My Life So Far, Audiobook read by the author, Random House, 2005.
[2006] Ernest Hemingway: The Short Stories, Vol. 1, Audiobook read by Stacy Keach, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2002.
[2006] Remnick, David, and Henry Finder (eds.), Fierce Pajamas: Selections from an Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker, Audiobook read by various people, The New Yorker, 2001.
[2006] Rahnema, Ali (ed.), Pioneers of Islamic Revival (New updated edition), Zed Books, 2005.
Chapters from the 1994 first edition are titled Sayyid Jamal al-Din ‘al-Afghani'; Muhammad Abduh: Pioneer of Islamic Reform; Khomeini's Search for Perfection; Mawdudi and the Jama'at-i Islami; Hassan al-Banna; Sayyid Qutb: The Political Vision; Musa al-Sadr; Ali Shariati: Teacher, Preacher, Rebel; Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr. A new 75-page introduction "Contextualize[es] the Pioneers" in view of the significant events of the past decade and sketches a "Roadmap to Understanding." The following quotation (p. xv) is representative of the apologetic tone of much of the new introduction, because it conveniently ignores the facts that the one-man argument it postulates was supported by dozens of others who carried out, or provided logistical support for, the September 11 attacks and that the outcome of the attacks was celebrated by tens of thousands, while characterizing the reaction as being against Islam as a whole: "Essentially one man's argument that Islam commanded such a killing laid the foundations of a wrathful reaction against Islam." Near the end of the introduction, however, the editor strikes a different chord, noting that (p. lxxv) "Consumed by power, [pioneers of Islamic revival who entered the world of politics] lost patience and sacrificed the objects of the exercise, namely human beings who were to be properly guided" and (p. lxxvii) "a broad-based global re-examination and dialog is under way among Muslims of reflection as Muslims of desperation seemingly play out their last acts."
[2006] Harrington, C. Lee and Denise D. Bielby (eds.), Popular Culture: Production and Consumption, Blackwell, 2001.
A well-chosen and diverse collection of essays on various aspects of popular culture (e.g., television, magazines, music, sports, advertising) that reveals its exploitation for profit via tools such as celebrity and fandom.
[2006] Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, unabridged audiobook read by Cristine McMurdo-Wallis, Recorded Books, 2002.
The author gains first-hand knowledge of the lives and working conditions of those struggling with near-minimum-wage jobs by temporarily abandoning her upper-middle-class life as a writer and trying to make ends meet while holding a string of such jobs.
[2006] Alba, Ben, Inventing the Late Night: Steve Allen and the Original Tonight Show, Prometheus Books, 2005.
Describes how Steve Allen practically invented all the key elements of late night talk shows, now in common use, during his 1954-57 stint as the host of NBC's Tonight.
[2006] Swarup, Vikas, Q & A, abridged audiobook, read masterfully by Kerry Shale, Harper Collins, 2005.
A poor Indian orphan boy, working as a waiter, is arrested for fraud at the urging of producers of the TV quiz show "Who Will Win a Billion," who have no intention of paying him after he wins the grand prize by correctly answering a series of 12 questions. In conversations with his attorney, the boy reveals how he luckily came to know the correct answer to each question through his life experiences with a few friends, masters, and other acquaintances. The audiobook has won several awards, including an Audie for abridged fiction. [Note added on 2009/02/27: The movie "Slumdog Millionaire," which is based on this book, won the best-picture Oscar (and seven other awards) last night.]
[2006] Ehrenreich, Barbara, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, unabridged audiobook read by Anne Twomey, Audiobooks America, 2005.
From the cover blurb: ". . . highlights the people who've done everything right – gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes – yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster." Offers interesting insights into the "career coaching" industry.
[2006] Fishman, Charles, The Wal-Mart Effect, unabridged audiobook read by Alan Sklar, Tantor Media, 2006.
Discusses the hidden reach and transformative power of Wal-Mart via revealing its (mostly secret) operating principles and business practices.
[2006] Carroll, Jamuna (ed.), Television: Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, 2006.
Reprints of articles and other writings, arguing the two sides of controversial issues pertaining to the values that TV promotes, TV's societal impacts, effects of TV advertising, and methods of regulation.
[2006] Napoleoni, Loretta, Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation, Seven Stories Press, 2005.
The tale of how an insignificant dissident of modest means was artificially elevated to the status of a legendary terrorist to provide one of the two key justifications for the Iraq war. Though not explicated in the book, the events described suggest that the Iraq war might have been a preemptive strike not against Saddam Hussein, but against Islamic fundamentalism that was spreading in Iraq by Arab fighters, who did not have much to do in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the Soviet Union and were looking to northern Iraq as their next battleground.
[2006] Wiesel, Elie, Night, Recorded Books, read by George Guidall, 2006. New translation, copyright 2006, from the original French by Marion Wiesel, the author's wife.
This classic novel/autobiography depicting gruesome experiences of Jews in Nazi Germany's death camps was originally published in 1958. The author's preface to this translation describes why a new translation was deemed necessary and also supplies additional insights and background.
[2006] Feynman, Michelle (ed.), Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: Selected Letters of Richard P. Feynman, Recorded Books, narrated by Richard Poe and Johanna Parker, 2005.
This book reveals the human face of a key innovator of our time. The letters' contents range from discussion of minor issues (e.g., in encouraging notes in response to students and other ordinary people) to important philosophical observations exemplified by the following insightful statement: "What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth."
[2006] Friedman, George, America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America and Its Enemies, Blackstone Audiobooks, read by Brian Emerson, 2004.
[2006] Petroski, Henry, Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.
I found this book on the library shelf when looking for the next book on this list. It is a fascinating account of design tradeoffs and decisions in everyday items such as the plastic tripod (the "thingy" that prevents the top of a pizza box from sticking to the toppings), water glasses, paper cups, calculator and telephone keypads, doorknobs, and light switches.
[2006] Petroski, Henry, Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design, Princeton Univ. Press, 2006.
Having read Petroski's very well-known book, To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, many years ago, I was intrigued by the title of his new book and decided to acquire and read it. Like the aforementioned book, the theme here is the importance of learning from failures, as illustrated by the following quotation from p. 95: "When a complex system succeeds, that success masks its proximity to failure. . . . Thus, the failure of the Titanic contributed much more to the design of safe ocean liners than would have her success. That is the paradox of engineering and design."
[2006] Yaqub, Salim, The United States and the Middle East: 1914 to 9/11, The Teaching Company, 2003. An audiobook in the Great Courses series, composed of 24 lectures.
[2006] Ridgeway, James, The 5 Unanswered Questions About 9/11: What the 9/11 Commission Report Failed to Tell Us, Seven Stories Press, 2005.
The questions, which form chapter titles, are: Why couldn't we stop an attack from the skies? Why didn't the Government protect us? Why didn't we know what was coming? Did US "allies" help make the attacks possible? Why couldn't the 9/11 Commission get to the truth?
[2006] Bergreen, Laurence, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, Harper Audio, 2003; Audiobook, read by the author.
[2006] Griffin, David R., The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Olive Branch Press, 2005.
This book presents an interesting mix of ideas in an effort to discredit the 9/11 Commission Report. The main theme is that the report covers up or distorts evidence of serious ineptitude on the part of the administration (military leaders, in particular) and goes so far as to suggest that the attacks were perhaps deliberately allowed to succeed because a new "Pearl Harbor" would be useful to the administration's plans for world domination. Interest in having an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea region to the Indian Ocean, via Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as greater control over the oil fields of the Persian Gulf region, are cited as reasons for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which needed the 9/11 attacks as a pretext. Conspiracy theories are usually full of holes, and this one is no exception. The problems start on the very first page of Chapter 1, where the author uses the fact that six of the alleged hijackers showed up alive after 9/11 to cast doubt on the identity of the 19 men who carried out the attacks. Of course, there is no hint of the explanation that the hijackers may have forged those identities or that there may be multiple people named X Y in the world. Later, on page 25, the fact that "fire had never before caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse" is cited as one of six problems in the official account. Again, the gaping holes in the towers are conveniently ignored and the focus is placed on fires, as if they were the sole causes of the twin towers' collapse. The hypothesis that a small plane or a missile, rather than a large airliner, hit the Pentagon (p. 38) similarly ignores the inconvenient fact that if this were true, Flight 77 must have crashed or been shot down somewhere else. The question then would be how the crash of such a large plane was not witnessed by anyone and how it was successfully hidden afterwards; or, if it did not crash, its passengers and crew must have been hidden or silenced. On page 42, President Bush is criticized for not leaving the school in Florida immediately after he learned of the WTC attacks, thereby "making all the students and teachers potential targets of a terrorist attack." However, it is not explained how his departure would have made the school less of a target in attacks that were planned days, if not months, in advance. Material in the latter half of the book, about distortions to hide inconsistencies and possible lies, as well as allegations of conflict of interest on the part of the 9/11 Commission members and staffers, are more believable. Thus, the book is still worth reading.
[2006] Friedman, Thomas L., Longitudes & Attitudes, Audio Renaissance, 2002, abridged audio book, read by the author (winner of 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary).
A collection of columns written mostly in the months following the events of September 11, 2001. The author believes that while technology has facilitated worldwide communication, it has not improved our understanding and tolerance. In fact, because technology (the Internet in particular) allows people to select news sources that are most in tune with their own beliefs, it has helped build walls that hinder true understanding.
[2006] Preston, Richard, The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story, Random House, 2002, Audio book, read by James Naughton.
The author paints a frightening picture of smallpox and anthrax as natural threats and as biological weapons. The tale of how selfless physicians and health workers eradicated smallpox as a natural disease is particularly impressive.
[2006] Menoret, Pascal, The Saudi Enigma: A History, Zed Books, 2005.
Reviews the history of Saudi Arabia via examining how the development of its current identity (that includes religious fundamentalism) and past and present political forces have affected its economy and society. Page 22 contains a revealing statement attributed to Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan: "the idea for the Taliban was British, the management American, the money Saudi and the groundwork Pakistani!"
[2005] Unger, Graig, House of Bush, House of Saud, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2004, read by James Naughton.
[2005] Greenberg, Karen J. (ed.), Al Qaeda Now: Understanding Today's Terrorists, Cambridge, 2005.
About 60% of this book is devoted to discussions by various experts and 40% to statements by OBL. The following quote, from page 5, aptly illustrates the attitude in the Arab world toward Al Qaeda and its leader: "In Saudi Arabia [the US has] a favorability rating of three percent, which is essentially zero. When polling is conducted in Saudi Arabia on bin Laden's political ideas, there is a fifty percent favorability rating. Interestingly, though, when we ask, 'Would you like bin Laden to be your leader?' the positive response is only five percent."
[2005] Berman, Ilan, Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
[2005] Grisham, John, The King of Torts, Doubleday, 2003. Audiobook version, Random House, 2003, read by Michael Beck.
[2005] Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis, and Persepolis 2, Pantheon, 2003 and 2004.
These "graphic novels" (which were followed in 2005 by Embroideries) depict the author's childhood and early adulthood in Iran and Europe. The books contain some worthy insights, but the few gems are far outnumbered by inaccuracies in characterizing sociopolitical events and gravely overshadowed by the author's tendency to blame individuals, events, and circumstances for her many failures. She paints unflattering portraits of several people, poking fun at their shortcomings, uptightness, or unattractive appearance, without acknowledging that those people too may have been victims of circumstances. In other words, while expecting everyone to be nonjudgmental toward her, the author does not cut these people any slack. On pp. 131-133 of Persepolis 2, she nonchalantly describes how, to avoid reprimand by the "decency police" for wearing makeup, she distracted them by accusing an innocent bystander of lewd conduct, knowing full well that the startled man would be in for a beating, at the very least. She never expresses remorse for putting an innocent man in grave danger (people have reportedly died from beatings during interrogations by the decency police); instead, she goes on to describe how moments later, her boyfriend laughingly praised her coolness and "instinct for survival."
[2005] Karolides, Nicholas J., Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova, 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature, Checkmark Books, 2005.
Divides the books into four 30-book sections depending on the primary reason for the bans: political (Doctor Zhivago, The Grapes of Wrath, 1984), religious (the three major holy books, Oliver Twist, On the Origin of Species), sexual (The Arabian Nights, Lolita, Ulysses), social (Anne Frank's Diary, The Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451). The bans have occurred in many different countries, including England and USA.
[2005] Levy, Habib, Comprehensive History of the Jews in Iran: The Outset of the Diaspora, Mazda Publishers, 1999. Abridged and edited from the 3-volume Persian version by Hooshang Ebrami, Translated into English by George W. Maschke.
[2005] Goldin, Farideh, Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman, Brandeis Univ. Press, 2003.
[2005] Martel, Yann, Life of Pi, audiobook version, HighBridge, 2003. An intriguing story, read masterfully by J. Woodman.
[2005] Afary, Janet, and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism, University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Foucault, a French philosopher, briefly acted as a journalist in Iran immediately before the Islamic Revolution. He wrote in glowing terms about the revolution for a short while, was harshly criticized for his views, and, apparently, later regretted his writings. Contains translated versions of Foucault's writings, responses by critics, an in-depth analysis, and an epilogue entitled "From the Iranian Revolution to September 11, 2001". Here is a noteworthy quote from an Iranian woman (Atoussa H.; p. 209 of the book), writing in response to Foucault: "After twenty-five years of silence and oppression, do the Iranian people have no other choice than that between the SAVAK and religious fanaticism?"
[2005] Conway, Flo, and Jim Siegelman, Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics, Basic Books, xvi + 423 pp., 2005.
I reviewed this book for Mathematical Reviews (published in Vol. 2005i:01008, Review #2105723).
[2005] Howard, Roger, Iran in Crisis? Nuclear Ambitions and the American Response, Zed Books, London, 2004.
[2005] Pelfrey, Patricia A. (reviser/expander), A Brief History of the University of California, UC Press, 2nd ed., 130 + x pp., 2004.
Traces UC's history from its conception at the constitutional convention in Monterey (1849), a year before California was admitted to the Union, through its official creation in 1868, to the present. Includes 1-2 pages on the specific history of each campus and complete lists of presidents and chancellors.
[2005] Mitnick, Kevin D. and William L. Simon, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security, Wiley, 2002.
Mitnick, a convicted former hacker (nonmalicious to begin with, and now a changed man, if one is to believe him), shows how vulnerable we all are to social engineering, i.e., the use of influence, persuasion, or manipulation to deceive people. The book is full of examples of methods used to infiltrate systems. For instance, collecting seemingly innocuous pieces of information from employees and then putting them together to create the illusion of an insider to get even more information.
[2005] Dumas, Firoozeh, Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, Villard, 2003; paperback edition by Random House.
This is a very funny book which focuses on a girl's experience of growing up in a foreign land while being constantly embarrassed by the behavior and poor English skills of her parents.
[2005] Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963), Ariel, Harper Prennial edition, 1999.
The poems in this book were written in the last months of Plath's life which ended by suicide in 1963, apparently in part due her husband's (poet Ted Hughes) philandering.
[2005] Hsu, F.-H., Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion, Princeton University Press, 2002.
Argues that the chess matches described should not be viewed as "human versus machine" but rather as "performing human versus tool-making human."
[2005] Nafisi, Azar, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Random House, 2003.
Recounts post-Islamic-Revolution Iran in four contexts related to her teaching of English literature: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen. Describes how she was fired from a teaching post, went back to teaching, and eventually left Iran in 1997.