- Huntington, Samuel P. Who Are We? New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0-684-87053-3.
- The author, whose 1996 The Clash of Civilisations
anticipated the conflicts of the early 21st century, here turns his
attention inward toward the national identity of his own society.
Huntington (who is, justifiably, accorded such respect by his
colleagues that you might think his full name is “Eminent Scholar
Samuel P. Huntington”) has written a book few others could have gotten
away with without being villified in academia. His scholarship,
lack of partisan agenda, thoroughness, and meticulous documentation
make his argument here, that the United States were founded as what
he calls an “Anglo-Protestant” culture by their overwhelmingly
English Protestant settlers, difficult to refute. In his view,
the U.S. were not a “melting pot” of immigrants, but rather a nation
where successive waves of immigrants accepted and were assimilated into
the pre-existing Anglo-Protestant culture, regardless of, and without
renouncing, their ethnic origin and religion. The essentials of this
culture—individualism, the work ethic, the English language, English
common law, high moral standards, and individual responsibility—are
not universals but were what immigrants had to buy into in order to
“make it in America”. In fact, as Huntington points out, in the
great waves of immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries,
many of those who came to America were self-selected for those
qualities before they boarded the boat. All of this has changed, he
argues, with the mass immigration which began in the 1960s. For the
first time, a large percentage of immigrants share a common language
(Spanish) and hail from a common culture (Mexico), with which it is
easy to retain contact. At the same time, U.S. national identity
has been eroded among the elite (but not the population as a whole)
in favour of transnational (U.N., multinational corporation, NGO) and
subnational (race, gender) identities. So wise is Huntington that I
found myself exclaiming every few pages at some throw-away insight
I'd never otherwise have had, such as that most of the examples
offered up of successful multi-cultural societies (Belgium, Canada,
Switzerland) owe their stability to fear of powerful neighbours
(p. 159). This book is long on analysis but almost devoid of
policy prescriptions. Fair enough: the list of viable options with
any probability of being implemented may well be the null set, but
even so, it's worthwhile knowing what's coming. While the focus of
this book is almost entirely on the U.S., Europeans whose countries
are admitting large numbers of difficult to assimilate immigrants
will find much to ponder here. One stylistic point—Huntington
is as fond of enumerations as even the most fanatic of the French
encyclopédistes: on page 27 he indulges in
one with forty-eight items and two levels of hierarchy!
The enumerations form kind of a basso continuo
to the main text.
- Holt, John. How Children
Fail. rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, [1964]
1982. ISBN 0-201-48402-1.
- This revised edition of Holt's classic includes the entire
text of the 1964 first edition with extensive additional interspersed
comments added after almost twenty years of additional experience
and reflection. It is difficult to find a book with as much wisdom
and as many insights per page as this one. You will be flabbergasted
by Holt's forensic investigation of how many fifth graders (in an
elite private school for high IQ children) actually think
about arithmetic, and how many teachers and parents delude themselves
into believing that parroting correct answers has anything to do with
understanding or genuine learning. What is so refreshing about Holt
is his scientific approach—he eschews theory and dogma in favour of
observing what actually goes on in classrooms and inside the heads
of students. Some of his insights about how those cunning little
rascals game the system to get the right answer without enduring
the submission to authority and endless boredom of what passes for
education summoned some of the rare fond memories I have of that odious
period in my own life. As a person who's spent a lot of time recently
thinking about intelligence, problem solving, and learning, I found
Holt's insights absolutely fascinating. This book has sold more than
a million copies, but I'd have probably never picked it up had it not
been recommended by a kind reader using the
recommendation form—thank you!
- Chesterton, Gilbert K. Heretics. London: John Lane,
[1905] 1914. ISBN 0-7661-7476-X.
- In this collection of essays, the ever-quotable Chesterton
takes issue with prominent contemporaries (including Kipling,
G.B. Shaw, and H.G. Wells) and dogma (the cults of progress, science,
simple living, among others less remembered almost a century later).
There is so much insight and brilliant writing here it's hard to
single out a few examples. My favourites include his dismantling
of cultural anthropology and folklore in chapter 11, the insight in
chapter 16 that elevating science above morality leads inevitably
to oligarchy and rule by experts, and the observation in chapter 17,
writing of Whistler, that what is called the “artistic temperament”
is a property of second-rate artists. The link above is to a 2003 Kessinger
Publishing facsimile reprint of the 1914 twelfth edition.
The reprint is on letter-size pages, much larger than the original,
with each page blown up to fit; consequently, the type is almost
annoyingly large. A free electronic edition is
available.
- Gamow, George. One, Two,
Three…Infinity. Mineola, NY:
Dover, [1947] 1961. rev. ed. ISBN 0-486-25664-2.
- This book, which first I read at around age twelve,
rekindled my native interest in mathematics and science which had,
by then, been almost entirely extinguished by six years of that
intellectual torture called “classroom instruction”. Gamow was an
eminent physicist: among other things, he advocated the big bang
theory decades before it became fashionable, originated the concept
of big bang nucleosynthesis, predicted the cosmic microwave background
radiation 16 years before it was discovered, proposed the liquid drop
model of the atomic nucleus, worked extensively in the astrophysics
of energy production in stars, and even designed a nuclear bomb
(“Greenhouse George”),
which initiated the first deuterium-tritium fusion reaction here
on Earth. But he was also one of most talented popularisers
of science in the twentieth century, with a total of 18 popular
science books published between 1939 and 1967, including the Mr Tompkins series, timeless
classics which inspired many of the science visualisation projects
at this site, in particular C-ship. A talented
cartoonist as well, 128 of his delightful pen and ink drawings grace
this volume. For a work published in 1947 with relatively minor
revisions in the 1961 edition, this book has withstood the test of time
remarkably well—Gamow was both wise and lucky in his choice of topics.
Certainly, nobody should consider this book a survey of present-day
science, but for folks well-grounded in contemporary orthodoxy, it's
a delightful period piece providing a glimpse of the scientific world
view of almost a half-century ago as explained by a master of the art.
This Dover paperback is an unabridged reprint of the 1961 revised
edition.
- Cowan, Rick and Douglas Century. Takedown. New York: Berkley,
2002. ISBN 0-425-19299-7.
- This is the true story of a New York Police Department
detective who almost accidentally found himself in a position
to infiltrate the highest levels of the New York City garbage
cartel, one of the Mafia's fattest and most fiercely guarded
cash cows for more than half a century. Cowan's investigation,
dubbed “Operation Wasteland”, resulted in the largest organised
crime bust in New York history, eliminating the “mob tax” paid
by New York businesses which tripled their waste disposal charges
compared to other cities. This book was recommended as a real world
antidote to the dramatic liberties taken by the writers of
The Sopranos. Curiously,
I found it confirmed several aspects of The
Sopranos I'd dismissed as far-fetched, such as the ability
of mobsters to murder and dispose of the bodies of those who
cross them with impunity, and the “mad dog” behaviour (think Ralph Cifaretto) of high ranked
top-earner wiseguys.
- Stack, Jack with Bo Burlingham. The Great Game of Business. New
York: Doubleday, [1992] 1994. ISBN 0-385-47525-X.
- When you take a company public in the United States,
there's inevitably a session where senior management sits down with
the lawyers for the lecture on how, notwithstanding much vaunted
constitutional guarantees of free speech, loose lips may land them
in Club Fed for “insider trading”. This is where you learn of such
things as the “quiet period”, and realise that by trying to cash out
investors who risked their life savings on you before any sane person
would, you're holding your arms out to be cuffed and do the perp
walk should things end badly. When I first encountered this absurd
mind-set, my immediate reaction was, “Well, if ‘insider trading’
is forbidden disclosure of secrets, then why not eliminate all
secrets entirely? When you're a public company, you essentially
publish your general ledger every quarter anyway—why not make it
open to everybody in the company and outside on a daily (or whatever
your reporting cycle is) basis?” As with most of my ideas, this
was greeted with gales of laughter and dismissed as ridiculous. N'importe…right around when
I and the other perpetrators were launching Autodesk, Jack Stack
and his management team bought out a refurbishment business shed by
International Harvester in its death agonies and turned it around into
a people-oriented money machine, Springfield Remanufacturing
Corporation. My Three Laws of business have always been: “1)
Build the best product. 2) No bullshit. 3) Reward the people who do
the work.” Reading this book opened my eyes to how I had fallen short
in the third item. Stack's “Open Book” management begins by inserting
what I'd call item “2a) Inform the people who do the work”.
By opening the general ledger to all employees (and the analysts,
and your competitors: get used to it—they know almost every number
to within epsilon anyway if you're a serious player in the market),
you give your team—hourly and salaried—labour and management—union
and professional—the tools they need to know how they're doing,
and where the company stands and how secure their jobs are. This is
always what I wanted to do, but I was insufficiently bull-headed to
override the advice of “experts” that it would lead to disaster or
land me in the slammer. Jack Stack went ahead and did it, and the
results his company has achieved stand as an existence proof that
opening the books is the key to empowering and rewarding the people
who do the work. This guy is a hero of free enterprise: go and do
likewise; emulate and grow rich.
- Bin Ladin, Carmen. The Veiled Kingdom. London:
Virago Press, 2004. ISBN 1-84408-102-8.
- Carmen Bin Ladin, a Swiss national with a Swiss father
and Iranian mother, married Yeslam Bin Ladin in 1974 and lived in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from 1976 to 1985. Yeslam Bin Ladin is one of
the 54 sons and daughters sired by that randy old goat Sheikh Mohamed
Bin Laden on his twenty-two wives including, of course, murderous
nutball Osama. (There is no unique transliteration of Arabic into
English. Yeslam spells his name “Bin Ladin”, while other members
of the clan use “Bin Laden”, the most common spelling in the media.
This book uses “Bin Ladin” when referring to Yeslam, Carmen, and
their children, and “Bin Laden” when referring to the clan or other
members of it.) This autobiography provides a peek, through the
eyes of a totally Westernised woman, into the bizarre medieval life
of Saudi women and the arcane customs of that regrettable kingdom.
The author separated from her husband in 1988 and presently lives in
Geneva. The link above is to a U.K. paperback edition. I believe
the same book is available in the U.S. under the title Inside the Kingdom : My Life in
Saudi Arabia, but at the present time only in
hardcover.
- Rucker, Rudy.
The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul.
New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005.
ISBN 1-56025-722-9.
-
I read this book in manuscript form. An
online excerpt is available.
- Paulos, John Allen. A Mathematician Plays
The Stock Market. New York: Basic Books,
2003. ISBN 0-465-05481-1.
- Paulos, a mathematics professor and
author of several popular books including Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the
Newspaper, managed to lose a painfully large
pile of money (he never says how much) in Worldcom (WCOM)
stock in 2000–2002. Other than
broadly-based index funds, this was Paulos's first flier in the stock
market, and he committed just about every clueless market-newbie
blunder in the encyclopedia of Wall Street woe: he bought near the
top, on margin, met every margin call and “averaged down” all the way
from $47 to below $5 per share, bought out-of-the-money
call options on a stock in a multi-year downtrend, never placed stop
loss orders or hedged with put options or shorting against the box,
based his decisions selectively on positive comments in Internet chat
rooms, and utterly failed to diversify (liquidating index funds to
further concentrate in a single declining stock). This book came
highly recommended, but I found it unsatisfying. Paulos uses his
experience in the market as a leitmotif in a wide ranging
but rather shallow survey of the mathematics and psychology of
markets and investors. Along the way we encounter technical and
fundamental analysis, the efficient market hypothesis, compound
interest and exponential growth, algorithmic complexity, nonlinear
functions and fractals, modern portfolio theory, game theory and the
prisoner's dilemma, power laws, financial derivatives, and a variety
of card tricks, psychological games, puzzles, and social and economic
commentary. Now all of this adds up to only 202 pages, so nothing is
treated in much detail—while the explanation of compound interest is
almost tedious, many of the deeper mathematical concepts may not be
explained sufficiently for readers who don't already understand them.
The “leitmotif” becomes pretty heavy after the fiftieth time or so
the author whacks himself over the head for his foolishness, and
wastes a lot of space which would have been better used discussing
the market in greater depth. He dismisses technical analysis purely
on the basis of Elliott wave theory, without ever discussing the
psychological foundation of many chart patterns as explained in Edwards and Magee;
the chapter on fundamental analysis mentions Graham and Dodd only in passing. The
author's incessant rambling and short attention span leaves you
feeling like you do after a long conversation with Ted Nelson.
There is interesting material here, and few if any serious errors,
but the result is kind of like English cooking—there's nothing wrong
with the ingredients; it's what's done with them that's ultimately
bland and distasteful.