Category Archives: Reviews

Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics

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This book by Ruth Lewin Sime is a wonderful introduction to a fascinating person and a powerful example of the inequalities created by rigorous suppression of women in (hopefully) years past. The author says at six years old she must have seen a picture of Lise (pronounced Lee-seh) “in Life or The New York Times, or perhaps Aufbau, The German refugee’s newspaper…Lise Meitner was a celebrity:  the tiny woman who barely escaped the Nazis, the physicist responsible for nuclear fission, ‘the Jewish mother of the atomic bomb’—although she was a Jew by birth, not affiliation, and she had refused to work on the bomb…To me she was a hero…” Einstein referred to her as “our Marie Curie” for her physics research in Berlin.

The author was a chemistry teacher at a community college and was known as “…the woman the all-male chemistry department did not want to hire.” The author describes herself as a feminist; although it is doubtful she faced anything similar to the discrimination Lise experienced as a youngster wanting to gain an education and as a scientist. One of my favorite descriptions is about a research director (male, of course) who didn’t allow women in the laboratories because he was afraid they would set their hair on fire. Continue reading →

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

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bkcvr-conflict-of-visionsI was loaned Thomas Sowell’s book by a friend who warned me that it is brilliant but very complex.  Many books are “page turners.”  This book was also a page turner, but I was turning back to the previous page in an attempt to reconnect and comprehend.  I would recommend anyone interested in what drives social and economic policies based on divergent political philosophies should read this book regardless of “political leaning.”   I’ve found I can review a complicated book by giving a brief overview of the my  impressions followed by some snippets I found interesting, and that’s the formula I’ll use for this book.

My interpretation is that the “Constrained Vision” is constrained by practical reality, and is driven by the policies found in property rights, free enterprise, and strict adherence to the Constitution.    The “Unconstrained Vision” is that “Social Justice” can be achieved based on what is “fair, right, and good,” and urges activism by judges and “social responsibility” by businessmen.  The constrained vision is that judges should never create the confusion that results when the rules are changed and that the moral duty of the businessman is to the stockholders who have invested their savings in his business.   Adam Smith, the patron saint of laissez-faire capitalism (people should not be directed how to invest their capital), believed that moral and socially beneficial behavior can only be achieved by incentives that promote self interest.   William Godwin, advocating for the unconstrained vision, believed that the willingness to selflessly create social benefit for others is the essence of virtue.  Continue reading →

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

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present-at-creationThis autobiography by Dean Acheson, who was President Harry S. Truman’s trusted Secretary of State, is filled with information that would be interesting to anyone wanting to know more about the people and policies of the Truman administration. It is a very long book (over 700 pages excluding notes, references, and the index), and it is in small font. The title is derived from a quote from King of Spain Alphonso X, the Learned, 1252-1284, “Had I been present at the creation I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.” I certainly had the impression that Mr. Acheson had no lack of confidence in his ability to make wise decisions about solutions to problems or making accurate judgments about people. There were a few cases where he writes that decisions proved to be a mistake, but those were the exception. He either writes with admiration and often affection for people or with open contempt. I don’t recall anyone being described other than in the two extremes. I also don’t recall a single circumstance where he describes Harry S. Truman with anything other than admiration. I have read in other sources that the respect was mutual; Harry considered Acheson his “second in command.” The office of the Vice President was vacant until Truman and his running mate, Alben Barkley took office in 1949 after winning the election in 1948. I don’t recall Barkley being prominently mentioned.

The book follows Acheson’s State Department career chronologically from being an Assistant Secretary of State 1941-1945, Under Secretary of State 1945-1947, to his tumultuous years of Secretary of State 1947-1953.  My primary interest in reading the book was the decisions of the Truman administration in containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and whether Acheson and others in the State Department were, as described by critics, “in the pocket of the Soviets.” To the contrary, Acheson describes relations with the Soviets in a non-flattering manner beginning early in the book. He says the Soviet diplomats “…cultivated boorishness as a method of showing their contempt for the capitalist world, with which they wanted minimum contact…” He mentions one Soviet diplomat named Oumansky who was killed in “…a plane crash of suspicious cause…” and that “…we felt no sense of loss.” Acheson would eventually come under constant attack and suspicion during the “red scare era,” but I never found an instance in the book where he displayed anything but distrust of Stalin and the Soviets. Continue reading →

The Smartest Kids in the World

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smartest kidsAmanda Ripley has investigated the education mystery: why do some kids learn so much while others so little? From country to country? From school to school within America? The Smartest Kids in the World is really two books. One is an analysis of data, “education [is] suddenly awash in data.” The other presents the stories of three American exchange students who go abroad for a high school year in one of the world’s best school systems: Finland, South Korea, and Poland. (Poland? You may ask, but read on.)

While I appreciate that “narratives without statistics are blind, [and] statistics without narratives are empty,” personally I could have done with less detail on the three exchange students. I was anxious to learn how America can improve education and less interested in how a student raised money for her trip. For me, the book could be a third shorter, but at only 165 pages in the body, that’s not a significant problem.

Ripley uses an international testing system called PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) to compare schools. She explains its genesis and how it works to assess students’ ability to solve problems (not just memorize) in math, reading, and science. She makes a good case that PISA tests students’ “preparedness for life”, not just “for more schooling.”  To reinforce her point, Ripley interviews the CEO of Bama Companies (they make apple pies for McDonalds among other products). Bama opened a new factory in Poland because they “had trouble finding enough maintenance techs in Oklahoma… even filling their lowest-skilled line jobs, because even those workers had to be able to think and communicate… [they] couldn’t trust a high school diploma [in America]; graduates from different high schools… knew wildly different things.”  Continue reading →

The World Set Free; A Story of Mankind

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world-set-freeWe usually don’t review fiction books, but this one deserves an exception. H. G. Wells wrote the book in 1913 and published it in 1914, and his visions of the future are quite amazing. A central part of the story is the discovery and application of nuclear energy for “aeroplanes” and other transportation vehicles. An “atomic riveting gun” is even mentioned. Wells uses the terms “radio-activity” and “atomic bombs” frequently. The bombs are a key part of the story. The major population centers are destroyed by atomic bombs, and mankind has little choice but to rebuild a more peaceful world. Wells was obviously keeping up with research of the atom by renowned physicists of the day to get material for the book.  He dedicates the book to Frederick Soddy, who had written a paper about radium.

The Prelude begins with man at “…the onset of his terrestrial career…” and we find him struggling to survive by making crude weapons and using fire and beasts of burden. Reading it made me wonder if the author of “Space Odyssey 2001” had read this book. Early man “…fled the cave bear over the rocks full of iron ore and the promise of a sword and spear; he froze to death over a ledge of coal…” Of course a few of the strongest and smartest survived and began to thrive. The author attributes this accomplishment to what is explained in the sentence, “Man began to think.” Not all was perfect, because man and his tribes invested centuries of history in warring against others. Many inventions, such as gunpowder, were intended to gain an advantage in wars. Still, at the end of the nineteenth century, “The sober Englishman …could sit at his breakfast table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee from Brazil, devour an egg from France and some Danish ham, or eat a New Zealand chop, wind up his breakfast with a West Indian banana, (and) glance at the latest telegrams…”

A professor named Rufus was giving lectures on radium and radio-activity and described how radium was “…breaking up and flying to pieces.” Rufus mentions uranium and thorium and describes that “…the atom…is really a reservoir of immense energy.” He goes on to describe how in fourteen ounces of the element uranium “…slumbers a least as much energy as we could get by burning a hundred and sixty tons of coal.” He continues to explain that that a sudden release of the energy “…would blow us and everything around us to fragments; … (or) keep Edinburgh brightly lit for a week.” He then proposes driving giant battleships or liners and predicts that “man’s material destiny” will be changed forever. Continue reading →

On Writing – A Memoir Of The Craft

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On WritingBoth RF_alum and I have tried our hand at writing fiction, so perhaps you’ll allow me a self-indulgent review: Stephen King’s book On Writing.

He defines stories as “vividly imagined waking dreams,” a form of telepathy between writer and reader over time and space. He also notes that “most books about writing [fiction] are filled with bullshit… shorter the book, the less the bullshit.”

The first seventy pages (of a two-hundred page book) talk about his life, mostly childhood and early influences. He started submitting short stories to magazines in his teens, when a few hand-written words on a form-letter rejection were cause for celebration. King thinks this is still the way to get started, especially to get an agent: get your stories published by little outlets (that may only pay in copies of their magazine); that’s how you build your credentials. (I should point out that the book has a copyright of 2000, so King’s advice pre-dates the recent boom in self-publishing, especially of ebooks.)

It’s a nice introduction to King’s style, but I must admit that, anxious to get to his writing advice, I skimmed much of it.

I’m going to include a lot of King’s specific advice; because I’m sure you’re more interested in his opinions than in mine.  Continue reading →