Just A Small Town Girl

Fair disclosure: I'm something of a Lisa Jardine fan, in as far as history authors/professors have fans. I've previously read her books Going Dutch and The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, and The Awful End of Prince William the Silent is on my to-read. (Amazingly, despite her being at QM- I used to pass by the CELL building daily- I did not discover her until after I'd left London. Go figure.) So I may be a wee bit biased, but I found her approach to the Renaissance- through consumer goods, mostly of the upper classes- interesting. There are plenty of illustrations, so chances are if she mentions an artwork in any detail, there's a picture of it so the reader can actually see what she's talking about, which is a pleasant change from those authors who assume that their readers are all art historians. I enjoyed the book, though my enjoyment was a bit rushed, as I didn't get to it until the day before I had to give it back to the library (interlibrary loan!) I ended up plowing through a book I would certainly otherwise have taken more time over.

Draw The Lightning Down was simply excellent. Another book I like well enough to want my own copy. (Even buying only books I really like, at some point I will need to build a library.) A caveat, though: it is detailed and exhaustive, so if you are not truly interested in the subject (which is exactly as promised in the title- the history of electricity, the scientists studying it, and the marvelous devices they came up with) you are better advised to skip the book. Even though I recognized many of the names in the book, and knew the general outline of it from what one learns in physics and chemistry, there were still plenty of interesting new tidbits and anecdotes, and the illustrations were lovely. I can only apologize that this is a belated writeup, done long after I had to relinquish the book to the library, and thus I can't page through and quote any of the new (to me) information.

Soccernomics certainly sounds interesting enough, but I wasn't terribly impressed. The authors raise some good points, and puncture some long standing common wisdom type myths about sports in general and soccer in particular. But there were quite a few times where I, as a mathematically literate, highly educated soccer fan who has some feel for the more recent history of game sat up and said 'well yes, but you're ignoring...'

As an illustrative example, in one section, the authors are considering attendance numbers for different European leagues. They point out the relatively high numbers for certain leagues, then point to low numbers in Italy in the period they're considering- pointing out that in 2007-2008, average Serie A attendance was only 23,180. Even Juve's average attendance was only 20,930! Well, yes, that sounds dire- until you recall that Juve were playing in Turin's Stadio Olimpico while building their new stadium, and the Olimpico at that time only had a capacity of 25,500. Moreover, look at the capacity of the stadiums of 2007-2008 Serie A¹- average capacity was 41,200. But even this average is skewed upward by the Olimpico in Rome (Lazio and Roma), the San Siro in Milan (AC Milan and Inter)², and the San Paolo in Napoli³, all of which are significantly larger than other Serie A stadiums⁴. Three teams played in stadiums with capacity below the average Serie A attendance, while another two had capacity roughly equal to the average Serie A attendance- so for a quarter of the teams in Serie A that season, achieving the average attendance would have meant a capacity or overcapacity crowd. Finally, the statistics fail to account for any events that might affect attendance, such as disciplinary stadium bans (and there were several) or the Sandri death. Clearly simple average attendance numbers do not present a meaningful comparison.

In other words, while the data the authors present is technically accurate, their interpretation and presentation is not. A more accurate comparison of attendance numbers across leagues would compare an average of attendance vs. capacity- and using that metric, half the league averaged two thirds of its official capacity or better. Juve, the supposed example of poor Italian attendance, led the table with an average attendance of 81% of its official capacity!

It would be one thing if this were the only such instance, but as I said, there were several. (I wish I had kept a list.) It has been said that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, and no one knows how to produce misleading statistics and present them convincingly quite like economists. The charitable interpretation is that the authors do not mean to mislead, but have simply committed the error of not examining the context of their data. The book is certainly food for thought (something the game could do with a little more of) but reader, beware- if something the authors say sounds a bit odd, you should probably do your own research.

1. Juventus is incorrectly listed as still playing at the Stadio delle Alpi.

2. Given that most people understand 'average' to mean the mid-point, it may be more practical to take the median capacity (32295) rather than the average to account for the skewing effect of the San Siro and Olimpico appearing twice in the data set. In fact, only seven teams- the 5 names above plus Fiorentina and Udinese- played in stadiums that had a capacity equal or greater than the Serie A average.

3. I can't speak for the San Siro or Olimpico, but I know that the San Paolo does not routinely open all sections for league games- there are sections opened only for the highest intensity Serie A ties, or European/international matches, so actual ticket capacity for most league matches is lower than the official stadium capacity. Again, this skews the disparity between capacity and attendance numbers.

4. Note the link is for all football stadiums in Italy, not just the ones that were Serie A in 2007-2008.

God's Jury is about the Inquisition. (No, not just the Spanish Inquisition. Yes, I expected it.) While we tend to think of the Inquisition as something medeival, it was in fact a modernising force- it used handbooks, set methods, and bureaucracy. Moreover, it can be linked to more recent analogs such as 'extraordinary rendition' and the American policy of torture under any other name. It doesn't necessarily make for pleasant reading, but it does make you think. The author is not trying for a comprehensive scholarly work- this is history for a broader audience. It is nevertheless well-sourced and clearly a product of thought and research.

Apologies for the terse review, but I actually handed the book back to the library yesterday (it was due and non-renewable) so I can't refer to more specific sections as I usually can.

If you don't know who Sergei Pavlovich Korlev was, you should. He was the mastermind behind the rockets of the Soviet space effort, the man responsible for Sputnik. It was his efforts that kept the Soviets ahead in the space race until his death in 1966. This would be remarkable enough on its own, but his story becomes still more remarkable when you realize that he survived being denounced and consigned to the Stalinist gulag, only to be rehabilitated and ultimately become integral to rocket and missile design efforts under Stalin. And he did all this in the utmost secrecy- his contributions to history were not publicly acknowledged until after his death.

Born into simple circumstances in what is now the Ukraine, Korolev's parents split up when he was only three. He would not learn that his father had not died at this time until late in his life. He was raised at his grandparents', and developed an early fascination with aeronautics. He studied aeronautics at university and became involved in aircraft design and then in rocket development in the early 1930s. But it looked like his career would be short- he was denounced to the NKVD by colleagues (under duress, it should be noted) during the Great Purge, tortured in Lubyanka (injuries he sustained at this time would affect him the rest of his life and contributed to his early death), and sentenced to 10 years' labor in the gulag, and shipped off to eastern Siberia.

Fortunately for both Korolev and history, when Beria took over the NKVD, he chose to retry Korolev on lesser charges, and Korolev was brought back to Moscow, where he was still in prison, but this time a 'sharashka'- a prison for scientists and engineers, where he and his fellow inmates were kept working on projects for the state. His imprisonment, along with that of engineers such as his mentor Tupolev and rival Glushko, and the execution of still more, set Soviet aerospace development back significantly, leaving them at a disadvantage compared to Nazi Germany, where rocket development was supported by the military and engineers such as Von Braun received a high degree of autonomy and protection from military officials.

Korolev was discharged from prison in 1944, though not officially rehabilitated until 1957. But at the close of the war, he was heavily involved in Soviet rocket efforts and played a role in bringing German rocket plan and engineers back to the Soviet Union after Germany's surrender. He spent the rest of his life working first on missiles, and then as the publicly unknown but enormously important Chief Designer in charge of Soviet space efforts. He was a driving taskmaster and something of a perfectionist, but he pushed his subordinates no harder than he pushed himself, keeping a grueling schedule that impacted his health. While he recieved medals and honors for his role in private, the paranoid Soviet leadership did not acknowledge him publicly until after his death at age 59 due to complications from surgery. Ultimately, his punishing schedule and injuries from his torture by the NKVD both contributed to his death (doctors were unable to intubate him for surgery due to jaw injuries he had sustained, and he had been warned for years that he had a weak heart and a kidney disorder caused by his time in detention.)

The book was an excellent look at Korolev, relying heavily on Soviet sources (not widely available at the time the book was written in the early 1990s), both official accounts as well as interviews with those who knew him. If it suffers from a flaw, it is that the author is perhaps too eager to quote these sources in full and at length. Also, at times it is tricky to remember if one is reading an account of the Soviet space program, or a biography of the man running it- it is almost as if the author got caught up with the former only to realize shortly before Korolev's death that he must return to the latter, as the man's time was cut short.

This is one of those books that caught my eye on a library shelf and got a tryout. Sadly, I wish I had checked the publication date before I started- it was written over 10 years ago, which means not insignificant chunks of the science referenced are already out of date. (It's a bit strange reading about projected NASA and JAXA missions that have already happened.)

The book is basically a collection of essays on different topics relating to dust (or to be more accurate, particulates, because I doubt most people think of what comes out of their car exhaust pipes as dust.) It goes from stardust to household dust and many points in between. While it might be interesting to a person who doesn't read much science, I'm guessing many will find it a bit dry; those who do keep up with the science will have seen most of it elsewhere already.

In short, the first of the 100 Things entries that I wasn't terribly enthused about.

Back in less equal times, when men were under the delusion that women were fragile, fluffy-headed little creatures who could not possibly be Real Journalists, there was a really big war. And some of the journalists who covered it happened to be women. This made a lot of male heads explode, and singed some male egos. (Yeah, Hemingway, I'm looking at you. Douche.)

Ok, in all seriousness... Women Who Wrote The War is the story of female journalists covering World War II. Despite numerous roadblocks thrown in their way to hobble them, those ballsy women still found a way to do their jobs, and do them well. These women used many creative ways to get around the ridiculous rules imposed on them by the brass- way above and beyond the restrictions on male reporters- finding their way to the real war to get the real stories, not just the fluff pieces. Some of them liked it so much they made it a career- some of the notable ones include photojournalist Dickey Chappelle, the first woman journalist on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, killed on assignment with the Marines in Vietnam; Martha Gellhorn, considered one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century (and managed to die an old woman despite it); and Marguerite Higgins, who also went on to cover Korea and Vietnam, but whose career was cut short when she contracted a fatal case of leishmaniasis.

Not all kept reporting after the war. Quite a few settled down to live quieter lives with their families. None of these women thought of themselves as feminists, and many seem to have assumed that the world wouldn't want to know the stories behind the stories. Dot Avery at age 91 instructed her housekeeper to burn all her war stories and notebooks as "no one would care about that anymore." But regardless of their post-war careers, these women were still trailblazers, and with all due respect to Ms. Avery, people do very much still care.

Michael Hiltzik has written the book that expands on what (most) of us learned in history class: FDR got elected with a promise to shake things up and get the country out of the Depression. His Brain Trust threw a whole bunch of things at the wall and went with whatever stuck. (Ok, that's what I learned at least. Also, I knew vaguely some of the names involved, mostly Ickes, Perkins, Brandeis, and Morganthau.) Hiltzik goes into detail, fleshing out those bare bones and giving a good impression of just how chaotic things were immediately before and just after Roosevelt took office. Anyone who had an idea (and could get past the gatekeepers) could pitch it to the President, and if he liked it, it just might turn into a national program. More to the point, Hiltzik also goes into the personalities and the politics that shaped the New Deal. (Full disclosure: a cheat sheet may be helpful. You may also want one for the slew of acronyms. Even for the wonkish it can get confusing.)

The author is also frank about the negatives and the failures- notably FDR's miscalculation on how to handle a truculent Supreme Court, and the dismal record at helping black citizens. I think it's in light of that last failure that the author inexplicably includes the Marion Anderson concert in a book that is otherwise more about administration policy than the wider social history. (Either that, or the author was already contemplating his next project...)

This review is a little on the short side, mostly because (through no fault of the book or its author) I was not really in the mood to read it. But I got it on interlibrary loan, which means a) I filled out the request anywhere from weeks to months ago and b) I only have it for a couple weeks and there's no guarantee I'd be in a mood to read it by the time I get it a second time.

I'm not entirely sure what to say about Simon Fairlie's Meat, other than it's not what I expected.

Full disclosure: I first saw it with this cover, and for all we all know about judging books by covers, I do. For some reason, that cover made me expect a foodie's approach to the subject. Then I got the book from the library, and it came with this cheerful, vaguely hippie-ish cover that looks like it ought to be on one of Joel Salatin's books. At which point, I wondered what I was actually getting into.

What the book actually is: a collection of essays written by a small-scale farmer. But these aren't just essays you read in the local paper (or even the Guardian). They're well-sourced, almost scholarly considerations of topics related to meat, meat production, and meat eating. It was far more comprehensive than I expected, and one of the main things I took away was the importance of critical thinking about the subject- particularly when it comes to numbers and statistics! As it turns out a good number of them are something someone pulled out of... somewhere at some point, and subsequently acquire an aura of Holy Writ as they are cited and re-cited by authors who have never bothered to dig into where they came from and how they were calculated.

Another important point was the applicability of many of those numbers and statistics. A number calculated for small-scale production of grass-fed beef may not apply at all to a large-scale CAFO produced animal (or vice-versa). Also, these numbers and whether or not they are applicable tend to get politicized by the various factions (of which there are many- meat-eaters, vegetarians, BigAgriculture, small organic farmers...)

The long and short of it: meat, if raised properly as part of balanced agriculture, is something we can work into our diet without destroying the planet. The large scale CAFO practices, probably not so much. But in the immortal words of LeVar Burton, don't take my word for it...

Bring Up The Bodies is the sequel to Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall, and the second in a planned trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell. While the first book covered Cromwell's rise, the second follows him through the tense, intrigue-laden run-up to the downfall of Anne Boleyn.

The trick in Bring Up The Bodies remains the same as in the previous book: despite knowing how it ends, Mantel still creates a sense of urgency and drama by telling the story we've heard many times before from Cromwell's perspective. And unlike previous portrayals of Cromwell- which tend to present him as a foil to the sainted Thomas More- Mantel makes us feel that Cromwell is a real person, not just an ambitious Machiavellian schemer. And this time, Cromwell is keenly aware throughout the drama that failure has a heavy price at the court of Henry VIII.

My one problem with this book is the same as with its predecessor- despite enjoying the story (I tore through it in one sitting) and the perspective it is told from, I find Mantel's style somewhat off-putting and less readable than I'd like. I love her dialogue, and I feel like she's got a particular knack for Tudor insults, but I really dislike having to read a paragraph more than once to work out which 'he' the author means this time- especially since she's prone to switching within the same paragraph.

Caveat to anyone who thinks they may want to read Bring Up The Bodies but hasn't read the previous book- I think it will still work for you if you haven't read Wolf Hall first, but you may feel like you're missing things or wondering who this or that person is.