Book Reviews!

Posted January 12, 2017 at 11:05 am

Wednesday Book Reviews!

(belated again, because I'm an idiot)

A Numerate Life (Paulos)

What a fun and strange little autobiography. Paulos is a mathematician and writer whose books I’ve enjoyed in the past. They’re word books, and they’re not for everyone. For instance, this book has a (quite clever!) section on transhumanist pickup lines.

You may ask what that’s doing in an autobiography. Well, this isn’t *really* an autobiography. It contains a few stories from Paulos’ life, but the bulk of the book is either digressions into topics that interest Paulos or discussions of why memoirs are probably mostly false, in that they rely on flawed memories and attempt to create cogent narratives of haphazard lives. In some ways it reads like a long chat with a beloved grandfather who’s quite quirky. All in all, the terrible puns notwithstanding, that’s a pretty good thing.

The Undoing Project (Lewis)

This book is a telling of the story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as they created prospect theory, and all that came with it. On the one hand, this ground has already been covered in other books (including one by Kahmeman himself!), but on the other hand… it’s Michael Lewis. I dunno. It’s weird. Like finding out there’s yet another book about Einstein, but it was written by Mary Roach.

In any case, it’s definitely a fine book, and it contains a lot of information I was not aware of, including in depth discussion of the intellectual love affair and later falling out between Kahneman and Tversky. I’d have to say I recommend it if you’re not familiar with the topic. Lewis always writes well, and the subject matter is interesting. But, if you’re in any way up to date on this stuff, a lot of the stories will be familiar to you.

We Have No Idea (Cham, Whiteson)

I’m trying to figure out how I should handle books by people I know, given that it means I’m not a reliable source. I think from now on, I need to just have a blanket caveat.

So, here goes: I know the author (one of them, anyway) so I am not a reliable source.

Bam. OK, so this is a sort of quick primer on all sorts of areas of particle physics and cosmology where we don’t have a good sense of what’s going on, such as with Dark Energy or the nature of time. It is peppered with jokes and comics to lighten things up a bit. So, if you’re a fan of Jorge Cham and want to learn some physics of the universe, I recommend it!

A Contract With God (Eisner)

I think this book must be read as a historical document, as it’s sometimes considered the first serious graphic novel. Given that pedigree, it’s interesting to point out that the book is in fact somewhat transitional between books and comics, containing large sections of (hand-drawn) text, with somewhat simple drawings. I didn’t find the stories themselves particularly amazing (sorry if that’s heretical to say!) but they aren’t bad, and they are well drawn. And, as a window into the history of comics, it’s quite good. Incidentally, if you are interested in the history of Jewish New York, there’s a lot here for you as well.