Tagged: Nonfiction
Historians’ Fallacies
Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought by David Hackett Fischer, 5/5
Fallacies everywhere! Browsing through eleven categories of faulty reasoning, all illustrated by examples from published works of historical scholarship, made me feel like a kid in a candy shop. My initial reservation–that it isn’t very respectable to do nothing but pick apart the works of one’s colleagues–was satisfactorily addressed in Fischer’s deliciously cogent introduction to the book. Here, the author acknowledges the dual impossibility and necessity of defining a logical approach to the study of history and justifies his negative method with the respectable goal “to extract from these mistakes [in other historians’ reasoning] a few rough rules of procedure” (xviii).
Though some may find his approach off-puttingly critical, the author is no intellectual slouch–many of the fallacies he addresses are so subtle that I am impressed he could identify them at all, much less find relevant examples in the wild. Though the topic is very specific, the application is broad–historians aren’t the only ones who are susceptible to fallacies of question-framing, factual verification, factual significance, generalization, narration, causation, motivation, composition, analogy, semantical distortion and substantive distraction.
Why I read it: The title caught my eye as I was browsing through Easton’s Books. The owner was so surprised that someone was actually interested in the book (he’d almost thrown it out, thinking no one would ever buy it) that he gave me a discount and said I’d made his day.
A picture quote I made:
The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances
The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances by Matthew Inman (aka The Oatmeal), 5/5
Inman’s reasons for running may be much more terrible and wonderful than my own (just as his conception of “long distances” is much longer), but a lot of this hilarious book resonated with me. On a side note: I’ve never read a collection of comics containing more illustrations of Nutella.
[Why I read it: I enjoy Inman’s webcomic, The Oatmeal, and this book came up in conversation with one of Dad’s coworkers. I’d actually almost bought it in a store just a few days previous before remembering that 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth was collecting dust on my shelf after being read just once. I hit the library up instead, which I guess makes me a bad fan.]
Grand Illusions
Grand Illusions by Richard Lawton, with a text by Hugo Leckey, 5/5
This collection of Hollywood portraits from the 1920s through 40s is full of mesmerisingly beautiful black and white images. Famous actors and actresses, exquisite lighting, glamorous settings–this book is literally a feast for the eyes.
[Why I read it: it caught my eye in the thrift store.]
Verbal Judo
Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion by George J. Thompson, Ph.D., and Jerry B. Jenkins, 4/5
This book contains some helpful, commonsense advice about communicating that I think would be especially useful for parents and other people in leadership roles. Of course, the author is a bit full of it and there are endless acronyms and 5-steps to this and 9-stages of that, but the big emphasis is on the concept of empathy and its related technique–paraphrasing. There is also a helpful list of “Eleven Things Never to Say to Anyone (And How to Respond If Some Idiot Says Them to You),” which includes my personal favourites: “Come here!” (usually shouted threateningly) and “Calm down!” (“BUT I AM CALM!!!”).
[Why I read it: Came across it while sorting through some of my Dad’s books.]
Fermat’s Last Theorem
Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem by Amir D. Aczel, 2/5
In around 1637, Fermat hinted that he had “discovered a truly marvelous proof” that an + bn = cn cannot be true for n>2. Proving this deceptively simple theory required the contributions of dozens of mathematicians over a span of some 350 years. Unfortunately, while biographical aspects of the story are competently told, the author is unable or unwilling to explain important mathematical concepts in layman’s terms. If the following paragraph makes sense to you, then you probably fit the target audience of this little book:
Here, a periodic function could be conceived as having a periodicity both along the real axis and along the imaginary axis. Poincaré went even further and posited the existence of functions with a wider array of symmetries. These were functions that remained unchanged when the complex variable z was changed according to f(z)——>f(az+b/cz+d). Here the elements a, b, c, d, arranged as a matrix, formed an algebraic group. This means that there are infinitely many possible variations. They all commute with each other and the function f is invariant under this group of transformations. Poincaré called such weird functions automorphic forms (82).
If, like me, you were completely nonplussed by that description, then the only thing of value you will likely get from this book is a deeper understanding of the fact that concise ≠ comprehensible.
[Why I read it: I came across it while sorting through some of my Dad’s books.]
American Shaolin
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China by Matthew Polly, 3/5
This memoir of an American college dropout who transforms from bullied to badass by studying kung fu with Shaolin monks in China is a fun read, if a little bit less interesting, less believable and dirtier than the author’s later book Tapped Out.
[Why I read it: I enjoyed the author’s other book a lot.]
Better Than Before
Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin, 3/5
They say that opposites attract, in which case I suspect that I may be very similar to the author, who I found to be thoroughly grating. Perhaps it’s her approach to the topic, which is somehow both overly analytical and overly anecdotal, or perhaps it’s because studying how to make habits seems pointless to me (surely the hard part is deciding what habits to have, not how to keep them up?). I knew I was in trouble when Rubin’s first attempt (of many) to organize her readers into overly-tidy categories failed to resonate with me–am I an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel? Does it even matter? At any rate, I felt so little interest in this book that I had a difficult time finishing it and remember practically nothing about it now. It has joined the growing ranks of faceless self-help books that have made the New York Times Best Seller list but not an impression on me.
[Why I read it: my friend Joy recommended it to me.]
Man’s Search for Meaning
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, 5/5
When a psychiatrist who endured the German concentration camps of WWII has something to say about happiness and the meaning of life, you can bet it’s something worth paying attention to. Frankl’s thoughts on the bigger questions in life are woven into the first part of this short book–an account of the author’s experiences and observations in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. An introduction to the foundations of logotherapy (the author’s approach to psychotherapy) comprise the second part of the book, in which Frankl’s ideas really come into focus.
Frankl’s refreshing premise is that “man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life” (121) and that “A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease” (125). The author’s theory of the meaning of life encompasses the complexities of human existence with startling simplicity:
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible (131).
I have seldom been moved as this book moved me, right from the preface, which contains this bit of wisdom that alone would make the book worth reading:
Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run–in the long run, I say!–success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it (17).
[Why I read it: it was mentioned in Your Money or Your Life and the title sounded interesting.]
Tapped Out
Tapped Out: Rear Naked Chokes, the Octagon, and the Last Emperor: An Odyssey in Mixed Martial Arts by Matthew Polly, 5/5
This entertaining account of a middle-aged writer’s transformation from overweight fixer-upper with a distant background in kung fu to competent mixed martial artist is impossible to put down–I started it at 2am last night, meaning to read just a little before falling asleep, and the next thing I knew it was 2.5 hours later and I was on the last page. Polly is a good writer with a great sense of humour and seems to know how to embellish a story without exaggerating it all out of proportion. Famous figures in MMA appear throughout and I’ll admit to a few fan-girl squeals along the way. Probably the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of kickboxing, grappling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu this year made the book even more enjoyable–a lot of Polly’s experiences as a beginner were hilariously relatable. I enjoyed the book so much that I’ve already ordered Polly’s American Shaolin from the library.
[Why I read it: I came across it while looking for BJJ books in the library database.]
Back Home
Back Home by Bill Mauldin, 2/5
Tedious political ramblings accompany this collection of aged cartoons by celebrated WWII cartoonist Bill Mauldin, who obviously had a rough transition back to a civilian career after the war. I’ve always been put off by political cartoons in general because they tend to over-simplify complicated issues, mindlessly ridicule opposing viewpoints and, crucially, are usually not even funny. The cartoons in this book are no exception and, I think, would appeal to few readers besides fans of Mauldin and those who are interested in an inside view of one person’s perspective of the political climate in post-WWII United States.
[Why I read it: I recognized Mauldin’s name and liked what I had previously seen of his army cartoons.]
OmniRambles 