The overall goal of the Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs, and Steel is an ambitious one, essentially to provide a history of the human species that accounts for the present state of nations. Why were Europeans able to conquer Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians, instead of vice versa? To a large extent, the book is a reaction to the idea of biological superiority and inferiority of different peoples. The result is a thorough summary and analysis of the major relevant factors on each inhabited continent. Here’s the history of homo sapiens in 200 words:

Humans evolve in Africa and spread, as hunter/gatherers, to all inhabitable pieces of land. Large mammals on Africa and Eurasia evolve to coexist with humans, while elsewhere the appearance of humans coincides with eradication of large mammals. Food production arises in a few select areas of the world. Eurasia (especially the Fertile Crescent) receives a disproportionate number of domesticatable plants and animals, which spread rapidly across the east-west (especially west) oriented landmass. Societies based on food production are capable of sustaining non-food producing people members and allow for dense populations requiring formalized governments and increasing the probability for inventions (e.g. ships, guns). These larger populations spread into hunter/gatherer lands where natives assimilate or are replaced. Food producing people also evolve immunity to diseases carried by their animals, which are then passed to susceptible cultures on first interactions (e.g. Europeans in the Americas/Australia). Europe’s fragmented nature leads to competition which drives technological advance and race to colonization, while China’s unity leaves decisions to promote these developments in the hands of a small few who choose isolation and technological stagnation.

The conclusion is that, in a general sense, the course of history was set in 8000 BCE simply by geography and environment, one that seems plausible to me. While I tired of the analysis of the merits of plant and animal species for food production, the book is a remarkably quick read for a scientific discourse.

Curious Incident is written as if its autistic narrator is the author. Most of what I know about autism is from reading Blink, so I know next to nothing. In addition to shaping the actions and relationships among the characters, this premise affects the structure of the book significantly. For example, the chapters numbered by prime numbers, sentences are constructed in a subject-verb manner, there are no similes, only occasional metaphors. It actually feels like the way I would write the first draft of a book where I’d get my ideas down on paper. Later revisions would add more descriptors and vary the sentence structure.

Curious Incident is a fast read that provides insight into how an autistic person processes information. The plot is generally a good one, and there’s even a mathematical proof in the appendix, if you like that sort of thing.

For information on autism see: Autism Society of America

We must cultivate our garden.

A book dripping with satire? I think I’m going to like it. But only if it’s 100 pages and not 1000, which is why I read Candide and not Don Quixote. Voltaire seems like an interesting guy. He’s quite pragmatic, which I like, but his ideal government would be a benevolent monarch, which I don’t. It’s not so much the benevolent monarch I’m worried about as much as the subsequent malignant one.

Something that came to mind while reading Candide is that I don’t think authors criticize their adversaries so openly anymore. Maybe it’s that I just don’t read philosophy. It could also be that today nobody has writing ability required, or takes the time, to denounce their enemies in a novel. It’s easier to just call your book Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man or Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. Everything was thrown together like fishing tackle in the bottom of a rowboat, hooks and sinkers and line and lures and gaffs all snarled up.

This is Odie’s favorite book. He described it as 3A Keough Hall, our dorm section at Notre Dame. It’s tough for me to compare the marginalized cast of Cannery Row to the middle/upper class residents of Keough, but I see where he’s coming from. They’re a group of people thrown together essentially by chance. Each has a pretty distinct personality, but they coexist in harmony, for the most part. Furthermore, they’re looking out for each other, sometimes failing, but always with the best intentions. Hopefully Odie will comment to see how close I am to the mark.

One other line that I loved:

There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be.

Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

I set out to read Orwell’s classic to compare to Jennifer Government. This battle of negative utopias pitted all-powerful government versus all-powerful corporate structure. In the final analysis, they’re remarkably similar. Consider:

• Ability to eliminate individuality. In both societies, the power has effective control of the middle class. Interestingly, in 1984, the lower class (the proles) have the most individual freedoms. They have no power other than their numbers, and little inteligence, so the government spends little effort controlling their thoughts. In Jen Govt, freedom seems to stem from the ability to pay for it.
• Demonization of foreign ideas. In Jen Govt, people are taught that the strong governments of western Europe are evil because they tax the workers to give money to the lazy. The people in 1984 essentially don’t know anything about the other two superpowers of the world, but their homeland of Oceania is perpetually at war against them, so they must be evil.
• Get ’em while they’re young. Children are infused with the ideals of the prevailing power in school. The children of 1984 are brought up to be agents of Big Brother, spying on their parents for any incidents of thoughtcrime. The schools of Jen Govt are sponsored by Mattel, McDonald’s, and other companies and teach the virtues of capitalism/consumerism while advertising their wares.

I could find more, but you get the point. Extremism is bad. Of course, these are both works of fiction, and our world is a bit more in the middle, but it’s good to keep an eye out for the symptoms on both sides.

This is just a fun book to read. It’s smart, with a good blend of action and dialog, and a quick read. I read this book once before after picking it up from the Barnes & Noble staff recommendations section, and now I’m reading Orwell’s 1984 as a comparison to Jennifer Govt.‘s business-centric society. I’m not too far into it, but already there are strong parallels.

Ironically enough, a scene from Jennifer Government took place in real life recently. Early in the book, Nike intentionally limits the number of shoes produced in order to generate demand. The demand is high enough to drive the price skyward and people to mug owners to steal the footwear, further creating interest in the items. So when a local store is rumored to have a number of the shoes, a throng of rabid customers surrounds the Nike store, leading to mayhem. Just such a scene broke out in New York last week [Story from NY Post]. For more business satire, I suggest Max Barry’s other book Syrup also.

I read Gatsby a few years ago when there were all of those “Best 100 Books of the 20th Century” lists. At the time, I wasn’t impressed. But after hearing praise from a number of people, I decided to give it another chance. I have to say that I’m glad I did. First, the story is entertaining and a pretty quick read. But beyond that, I feel like there are layers and layers in there. I really found myself thinking about the fluctuating relationships between the characters, the influence of the 20’s, the way the story is revealed. I suppose that’s what every book sets out to do. Now I understand that Fitzgerald’s success is what put Gatsby at the top of all those lists.

As I read this book it didn’t seem like the author was really accomplishing what he set out to do, which was to understand how people make split second decisions, but now that I think about it, it was pretty successful. One of the conclusions is that having a expertise in what you’re deciding gives you an advantage of some type. It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to accept that. However, the book’s real strength is the compilation of experiments to support conclusion. For instance, most people can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a direct taste test. But if you’re given three unlabeled samples (two Cokes/one Pepsi or vice versa), you’ll have a difficult time determining which two are the same, let alone what brand they are. It turns out that the colas are so similar that, unless you are a food expert, when you sip sample three you won’t be able to remember what the first was like. It’s the series of these experiments that made Blink a good read.