Q2 2017 Reading Review

Another quarter is coming to a close and below is a new slug of reading to go with it. You might notice I went on a pretty big "how stuff works" run over the last 90 days. Maybe it's because things around me feel more unhinged than ever before and there was some subconscious need to ground myself in math and science. Maybe it was just a desire to read about things that are fact based, written by sane people. Maybe it was just a desire to feel like a student in class - enjoying learning again. Not sure - but here is what I've got for you.

Have a happy 4th of July and take care of yourself out there.

Stuff Matters: Mark Miodownik does a really wonderful job in this book breaking down ten materials and how they were made by man and how they work at a molecular level. They include 1) Steel 2) Paper 3) Concrete 4) Chocolate 5) Foam 6) Plastic 7) Glass 8) Graphite 9) Porcelain 10) Implants.

I think my favorite chapters were on the creation & perfection of steel, concrete and graphite. The author actually argues the mythology around "super strong swords" like Excalibur were likely true because the ability to make steel was so rare and unknown that making it 10x stronger than normal steel was physically possible if the carbon/iron ratios in the sword were perfected. That said, only a few people on earth knew the right ratios for super strong steel for hundreds of years - Samurai swords were stronger for this very reason. Cool right? He goes on to make similarly interesting points around all the materials including some really interesting insights on "self healing" concrete - helped by bacterium found in volcanic lakes. The possibilities of graphene also seem highly disruptive to the silicon based semi industry that powers our modern "civilization of computing". 

Near the end he leaves us with his general goal in writing the book -- The unifying theme is though materials may look and feel monolithic this is an illusion. Materials are in fact composed of many different entities that combine a larger whole. Structurally materials are like Russian nesting dolls made of many nested structures fitting inside each other and invisible to our eye. It's this hierarchy and architecture that gives materials their complex identities.

The Magic of Reality: Richard Dawkins came to prominence with his book entitled The Selfish Gene. The Magic of Reality finishes with these set line: The truth is more magical than myth. Science has its own magic - the magic of reality. 

Dawkins on the 257 proceeding pages takes the reader on a journey that sets up a great or classic myth that has persisted over time and then goes on to explain the science behind the mythology. 

He answers the following questions in chapter form: What is reality? Who was the first person? Why are there so many animals? What are things made of? Why do we have night and day, winter and summer? What is the sun? What is a rainbow? When and how did everything begin? Are we alone? What is an earthquake? Why do bad things happen? What is a miracle? 

I found the writing easy to process - light and fast. My favorite chapters were how he explains night and day and why the seasons exist and probably the most unique and fleeting of physical beauties - why and how rainbows are formed. 

The Magic of Reality is a fun read that helps explain the science behind the common things that we take for granted in our every day world. 

What if?: What if? written by Randall Munroe is a bit of a goofy light hearted look at absurd questions that people have emailed to his blog over the years. He attended school for physics and worked for NASA in their robotics division before eventually deciding to become a writer and illustrator. What makes the book interesting is Munroe takes the insane questions but uses real science to explain if they would be possible or not and what the implications would be if the "thing" or scenario came true. The book is also illustrated with some fairly amusing stick figure animation. After reading it I listed out some of my favorite questions below:

What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning but the atmosphere retained its velocity?

What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?

If every human somehow simply disappeared from the the face of the earth how long would it be before the last artificial light source would go out?

If you suddenly began rising steadily at 1 foot per second, exactly how would you die? Would you freeze or suffocate first? Or something else?

If my printer could literally print out money would it have that big an effect on the world?

How much computing power could we achieve if the entire worlds population started doing calculations? How would it compare to a modern day computer or smartphone?

If your DNA vanished what would happen?

Which US state is most flown over?

How many lego bricks would it take to build a bridge from NYC to London?

When will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people rather than ones that are alive?

Has the sun ever really set on the British Empire?

And so it goes. Again - lotsa fun and goofy questions with some really cool explanations at a technical/authentic level. 

Napoleons Buttons: The opening chapter that sets up the title of this book suggests that the chemical compound of tin, that comprised Napoleon's armies uniform buttons, possibly accelerated their demise as the marched into Russia in 1812. The tin essentially disintegrated into a fine powder unable to endure the consistent cold of the Russian winter. Thus, the soldiers used their hands to pull their coats closed in defense against the freezing air- and eventually were forced to drop valuable food stuffs, guns and water that would help keep them alive.

Napoleon's Buttons is a fascinating book that focuses on seventeen chemical compounds that forever changed the history of man. The chapters are assembled so that each chapter or compound has a connection with the next. The book opens discussing Pepper, Nutmeg and Clove. The chemical compound of Piperine is discussed at length and the value of pepper and nutmeg to preserve and also disguise the taste of rotting meats became a highly sought after commodity. The nutmeg tree was so rare that eventually the Dutch traded the island of Manhattan to the British for access to one of the last nutmeg tree islands they needed to monopolize trade. As nation states began to pursue rare spices on longer boat trips the book takes us into the second chapter -- on Ascorbic Acid. This critical chemical compound would help stop scurvy on boats. Scurvy was the number one killer of sailors on the high seas during this period of discovery and the captains and sailors that "discovered" the value of Vitamin C not only survived but thrived and discovered new and interesting places across the world - accelerating their countries fame and fortune along the way. The book continues down into Glucose, Cellulose, Nitro Compounds, Silk & Nylon and many others. An abridged version of the book is located here: https://napoleonsbuttons.blogspot.com/ but I highly recommend you buy the full version. Even if you want to push past the hard core chemistry - the history of our world told inside the context of these molecules is a fascinating take on human evolution. 

The Horse God Built: The book is subtitled - The Untold Story of Secretariat, The World's Greatest Racehorse. The author in the Epilogue states, "A groom's eye view of a championship horse; the Thoroughbred race track as seen from the lowest rung on the ladder - that's a short, fair description of the book in hand." But he goes on to say that was not the book he intended to write. In fact the book was focused on telling the story of Secretariat but only until Scanlan stepped inside the historical accounts of the horse did he discover the true story was not only about a great horse, but also a great man - Eddie Sweat.

Sweat who has long since passed, took no comfort to this day for his small claim to fame - He is the only groom in history to have handled Kentucky Derby winners in two successive years. Riva Ridge in 1972 and the famed triple crown winner Secretariat in 1973. But the story is much more than a short historical dictation of facts on triple crown winners and their handlers - it goes into the deep love the often forgotten "back stretch" workers had for the horses that ran for glory - and the deep and oddly supernatural bond the horses gave back to their closest of friends.

The Horse God Built goes on to tell this unknown and deeply personal story behind a horse of unparalleled talent and the quiet unassuming groom who becomes a secret charm tied to the champion for eternity. As someone who has grown to appreciate and love the sport of horse racing over the years - I can attest to the magic and the awe that these animals can inspire when you see them walk by, when they "breeze" in the early morning, when they compete for their very lives in the twilight of a summer afternoon. There is an old saying around the racetrack "it's not what the people to do the horses that is interesting, its what the horses do to the people." -- The Horse God Built does a wonderful job of showing you the often remarkable, many times tragic story of Eddie Sweat and the precious time he spent with one of the greatest animals and athletes of our lifetimes - the immortal Secretariat. 

But What If We're Wrong: I am sucker for a Chuck Klosterman book. Given how many he has sold - I presume - many people are as well. So I grabbed his latest in the SF airport in May and tried it out. But What if Were Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past - Klosterman sets out to test the space around perception, reality, and of course, how history records the present. By twisting the lens and focusing on "how will we be remembered?" during our generation - he does a nice job of challenging conventional ways of thinking on everything from sports to politics. Around page 58 he lays one of the main arguments of the book by quoting Napoleon, "History - a set of lies agreed upon". Things happen as they happen but we construct what we remember and what we forget and people will eventually do that to us through the prism of time. Klosterman is a deft writer and though he typically enjoys going down the proverbial sports or music rabbit hole the last 40-50 pages on politics in America are sharper than I would have thought. His analysis of the Constitution is particularly cogent given the our current state of affairs. He basically argues - The idea of a document (the Constitution) that was inflexible, seldom changed, clung to by the masses as perfect - unassailable for critique by any politician that ever was elected and had to be taken at verbatim was the key to the greatest democracy in human history -- it's not crazy to think retrospectively that it wasn't a surprise to see why it didn't work out. 

Overall, I always enjoy his writing but this particular book feels a bit darker, a bit more foreboding and a lot more sophisticated then some of the stuff that made him famous. Thumbs up. 

The Violinist's Thumb: Sam Kean takes us on a wild DNA driven ride in The Violinists Thumb and Other Lost Tales of Love, War and Genius as Written by Our Genetic Code. Stepping back into the pea studies of Mendel in the 1880's through the Human Genome Project of the 1990's - the book does a really interesting and compelling job of explaining the often hard/down right nearly impossible to explain world of genetic science. Kean takes the reader through both the actual science and discovery of DNA, RNA and chromosomes and does it while recounting the history of the countless scientists that contributed to the incredibly complex subject matter along the way. I found some of the later chapters on the impact of in-breeding in royal families as far back as the Egyptians (King Tut's mom and dad were brother and sister and likely a major part of why he died at 19 years of age) fascinating. I also found the chapters on non-coding DNA (junk DNA) likely being the key to cracking genetic links to cancer and heart disease very cool. All of that is layered into the explanation of epigenetically activated DNA (nurture over nature relating to genes turning on and off due to outside stimuli). Some of the studies done of mothers that bore children during 9-11 in NYC are pretty stunning with regard to this topic. The book does not leave us with any real future view of what further genetic advancements will tell us about ourselves but I did like a passage from the last page of the book - which I will leave you with. 

"DNA endowed us with imagination, and we can now imagine freeing ourselves from the hard and heartbreaking shackles it puts on life. We can imagine remaking our very chemical essence; we can imagine remaking life as we know it."

Thanks for making it through - hopefully one of these makes your summer reading list. Dzik