I wanted to read this book by Buzz Aldrin with Leonard David because I find myself becoming disenchanted with the idea of colonizing Mars.  Exploring Mars sounds exciting, and robotic missions are producing great results, but I don’t think I want to move to Mars.  I haven’t found a reason why I would want to become a subsistence farmer on Mars constantly on the edge of starvation, suffocation, freezing, and radiation injury, all while living in a tiny box with practically no privacy.  Would there really be any time to explore?

Lots of people disagree with my dismal assessment, including Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon.  He writes that “humanity is destined to explore, settle, and expand outward into the universe.”  Aldrin’s book includes some autobiographical information as well as his vision for the future.  There are over eighty illustrations and an appendix that lays out the timeline of past US space policy.  Aldrin is conversational and sometimes repetitive.  He does not present a tightly constructed argument or a highly technical discussion.  This book will not tell you how microwaves transmitted from the moon to Earth will be transmogrified into electricity, or what a solar electric propulsion system actually is, although these technologies are mentioned. Continue reading →

This book is subtitled “How Women (And the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future.”  I read this book because I wondered how two male authors, John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, separated “thinking traits” into masculine and feminine.  They used a practical approach.  They created a list of 125 human traits and asked sixteen thousand people in thirteen countries to categorize them as masculine, feminine, or neutral.  Then they asked sixteen thousand different people to rate the traits’ importance to achieving a good life.  They also asked “big-picture” questions, which struck me as somewhat prosaic, about governments and the world economy.  Some pertinent information is left out.  The authors don’t discuss, for example, how they dealt with different languages.  The results of these surveys provide a frame for stories of people, both men and women, succeeding in business and government by applying winning “feminine” traits. Continue reading →

Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See

This is a fine book that puts the lead-up to America’s Civil War in human terms.  Bruce Chadwick presents seven stories of different figures who played roles in the politics of the time.  The stories are held together by their effects on James Buchanan’s presidency.  The stories alternate with chapters on Buchanan, and it is easy to skip around in the book, reading the chapters that most interest you.

Buchanan must have been the most tone deaf president in history.  He refused to believe that many Americans, North and South, saw every political action through the lenses of slavery.  He never understood the abolitionist passions behind the fight over Kansas becoming a state.  He “ended 1858 the way that he began it, completely blind to the slavery issue that threatened to destroy the United States.”  He told the nation that “the slavery crisis that had divided America for years appeared to be over.” Continue reading →