Category: Review (Page 96 of 132)

The Ascent of Gravity: The Quest to Understand the Force that Explains Everything by Marcus Chown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the story goes, in 1666 Isaac Newton watched an apple fall from a tree, and it was this simple action that gave him the inspiration to develop the theory and the mathematics that was first published in 1687 in Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) where he laid out the foundations of classical mechanics. These new laws meant that for the first time people could track the progress of the planets across the night sky, and Halley used the laws laid down by Newton to predict the elliptical path of the celestial object to predict the return of Comet, an event that he was never to see, but it carries his name to this day. They were used to predict the presence of a new planet, Neptune, the first to be discovered using these principles.

Variations in the path of Mercury, lead astronomers to search in vain for another planet amongst the inner planets, a subject covered very well in The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson, but this was to show the limitations of Newton’s laws.
These limitations were not addressed until a chap called Einstein who was unhappy with the anomalies that the current theory threw up. It took eight years for him to demonstrate that the concept of gravity as everyone understood it was better described mathematically as the curvature of space-time. The ten equations in his general theory of relativity can be distilled down into this elegant equation:

From this, all sorts of things can be deduced and predicted and it is only recently that one of those predictions was finally detected; gravitational waves. This final part of the books ventures into the strange, surreal and occasionally baffling world of string theory. The physicists working on this are trying to reconcile special relativity and quantum theory to one theory of everything and the current consensus is that the present theories, along with years of understanding will have to be totally re-written.

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off ― Terry Pratchett

Chown has given us a well written and thankfully, given that this is a physics book, a comprehensible text on the history and the most recent developments in research into gravity.
He goes some way to answering the big questions; what is space? What is time? How did it start, but I can’t help but have the feeling that the next breakthrough in this field will make Einstein’s theory as irrelevant as he made Newton’s work at the turn of the 20th Century.

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Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast at 22.30 on a Wednesday evening in 1978 where the BBC almost hoped that no one would hear it. Radio programmes in those days almost never got reviews either, so there was a collective dropping of jaws when it turned out that there were two in the papers that weekend praising the show. Word of mouth recommendations meant that this obscure comedy sci-fi series grew to have a cult following very soon and it was to permeate the national culture in ways that Douglas Adams could never have conceived when he had the idea in a field in Innsbruck in 1971.

Don’t Panic…

So began a much-loved trilogy that just happened to spread itself across five books. But Douglas Adams created far more things than just this. Born in Cambridge in 1952 he moved to London a little while later and after his parents divorced ended up in Essex. He stood out at school, mostly because he was very tall, 6 foot at the age of 12 and finally reached 6′ 5″, but was also known for his stories that were published in the school paper. University beckoned and he ended up at Cambridge where he tried and failed to join Footlights. He had written material that Footlights wanted to use, but they still didn’t want him in it! Post university, the desire to get into TV or radio as a writer. He was fortunate to have his Revue shown on the BBC and this lead to a brief sketch writing with Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame. Then nothing, so a series of odd jobs ensued; was his brief writing career over before it started? Thankfully no, he kept plugging away and suddenly the thing that he had desired the most was happening. The rest is history; or is it the future.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

Neil Gaiman in this fondly written biography of Adams, has written a fitting tribute to the man, who was taken from us far too early. whose work has seeped into the British psyche; even my children knew the answer to everything is 42, but they didn’t know where it had originated from. This has been corrected now and a second-hand set of the books was acquired and pointed out to them on the shelf and they were strongly advised to read them. The book is crammed full of facts and details such as the asteroid named in his honour was 2001 DA42. It is enough to warm the transistors in the heart of a depressed robot. A touching tribute to an author with an amazing imagination and has one of the most amusing dedications written that I have read in a while. Great stuff.

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The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite by Laura Freeman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At the young age of fourteen, Laura Freeman was diagnosed with anorexia. Where everyone saw a really thin girl with almost transparent skin, she saw something utterly different in the reflection in the mirror. It was the culmination of months of avoiding certain foods, before almost stopping eating completely until she reached the point where she was starving to death. While she let very little pass her lips in the form of nourishment, she still devoured books, and it was literature that was to hold the key to her recovery.

The road to recovery for an anorexic is long and fraught and it was no different for Laura, but where others just had the mental battle, she had the extra support from the books she was reading. In between the covers of Dickens, Sassoon, Woolf, Lee and Leigh Fermor, she would discover how they were able to consume vast plates full of roast beef, bowls of soup and exotic sounding breads without a care in the world. She reads of soldiers who treasure the moment of a scalding hot cup of tea after an intense battle in World War One. In fact, what she discovered was that these authors loved food; they reveled in the taste of what they were eating and sharing the moment with others. These passages in the books, slowly gave her the confidence to rediscover food for the pleasure of eating it rather than purely as a fuel.

Even though her mind had driven her to the point of abhorring food, one thing that she never lost was her love of reading. Most people do not realise just how debilitating anorexia is and there is some painful moments in here as she recalls the lowest points of her illness. But there are the moments too, where she is sustained by her mother’s love, an invitation from a friend that arrived at just the right moment. I have read a fair number of the books that Laura talks about in here and whilst the eating and celebration of life between friends and strangers is a key part of them, it is not something that particularly stood out for me, until now. Just reading the descriptions quoted in the book made me very hungry! However, it did for Laura and this list of childhood favourites and other classics has played a crucial role in her accepting that food is not something to avoid and can be enjoyed.

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The Gift of the Gab: How Eloquence Works by David Crystal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

We have all been in situations where someone has just stood up to speak and by the third sentence in, your eyes are drooping and after five minutes their droning noise is only just louder than your snoring… And yet there are others who can stand up and speak for 30 or 40 minutes and whose every word is captivating and interesting, leaving you wanting to hear more.

So how do these people do it?

The man best placed to answer this is the linguist David Crystal. Using the electrifying “Yes we can” speech of 2008 by Barack Obama he analyses the essential elements of public speaking, from the pitch to the pace and rhythm, when to make a joke and when to interject a dramatic pause, the best technologies to use and that fine line between eloquence and verbosity.

Whilst most people who pick this up are not going to be speaking to millions, there is something in here for anyone who has to do any form of public speaking, for those that have to speak to colleagues, peer groups and at family gatherings. The little interludes between the chapters are amusing, offering a little light relief in between the detailed breakdown of the best way to enhance your public speaking.

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Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Everyday People by Julia Boyd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

There are countless books on World War 2, from serious and weighty tomes, stories of daring do and detailed explanations of pivotal moments that changed the course of a continent. Whilst there has been lots of analysis about the failings of the post-World War 1 reparations and oppression by the victors led to the problems that Germany found itself in, there has been very little written about the way it was rapidly changing from the perceptive of holidaymakers and visitors to the country.

In Travellers in the Third Reich, Julia Boyd has documented the turmoil that Germany was in as seen through the eyes of the people that visited the country in the interwar period. Collecting together their stories and accounts we learn how the particular set of circumstances led to the political rise of an obscure Austrian, who had once been tried for treason. As Hitler gained in popularity, the twisted message that he was broadcasting became a cult movement. This fervent following he had at the huge rallies to hear his vitriolic speeches, scared some visitors and yet others from the British establishment were embracing this dystopia.

After gaining political power, it didn’t take long for him to seize total control and begin to roll out the nationalist policies across the country. The people that were drawn to Germany at this time came from all walks of life and saw the way that it was changing, but there were glimpses of the persecution that was starting to happen across the country as the vision of the Aryan ideal was implemented. The Olympics were the point where the Third Reich could showcase itself on the world stage and athletes and visitors where shown a sanitised country. Those that managed to peer behind the scenes though, were startled and horrified by what they saw.

This book has stories from a diverse range of people, schoolchildren, musicians, tourist and the political classes that were in and travelling through Germany in the 1930’s. At the time there was a certain amount of complacency as to what was happening there, but with hindsight it is easy to see the way things were going, the secret war preparations, buses that could be converted into armed troop carriers, arrests and the terrifying events that were unfolding if they had taken a few moments to look beyond the veneer. It is the human angle that makes this such a fascinating book, the family from Bournemouth on holiday who bump into Hitler whilst on a walk and take a snap, the couple who are moved to take the disabled child of a Jewish mother out of the country to give her a chance of life and two lads realising that they were cycling very close to the concentration camp of Dachau by accident. It is a fascinating book, full of detail on a country that stepped into the abyss and almost took the whole of Europe with it. There are echoes in here that have a resonance today and we would be wise to remember.

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The Genius Within: Smart pills, brain hacks and adventures in intelligence by David Adam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Science has discovered almost uncountable things since the beginning of the 20th century. We have found elements and compounds that have almost magical properties, seen the vastness of the solar system and untangled the very strands of life. There are still things that we have yet to discover, secrets that the universe is yet to relinquish and one the most mysterious is what lies in the 6-inch gap between your ears.

Neuroscience is slowly revealing how the mind works and just what it is actually capable of, but what if you could supercharge your grey matter without having to go through the effort of hard work, revision and practice and just pop a pill? David Adam is up for a challenge, so to benchmark his own capability prior to trying out the latest science and technologies available for mind enhancement he decides to have a go at the Mensa examination. Scores achieved, it is time to begin his journey into the inner recesses of his own mind and to see what enhancements will help improve his score when he comes to take it again.

There have been many methods that people have tried to enhance the mind, and some of the discussed in the book include the spectres of eugenics and the way that intelligence tests have been used for all manner of nefarious ends. Adam selects two methods to try enhancements, the first is the drug modafinil to see the effects. As it is normally a prescription drug then he has to acquire his tablets, through other means, shall we say, before trying various before and after experiments. As electrical stimulation has been shown to have some effects a system with electrodes is acquired to run a similar set of experiments. It comes with instructions, but no details on where to place the electrodes as they might be liable for incorrect placements so the manual suggests just googling it…

His self-experiments make for amusing reading, but it is the questions that Adam poses that go some way to addressing the question of what is intelligence, how it affects us as an individual, and how societies treat those at the top and bottom of the scale, but his book can only provide answers to some of these questions. The more we find out about the capacity of our minds the more we realise just how little we know, we may all have untapped intelligence that is normally attributed to savants and whilst the IQ test can give a gauge of one factor of intelligence there are others that it doesn’t account for. If you want a well written popular science book on the possibilities and limits of intelligence, then you can’t go wrong reading this.

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The Shining Levels by John Wyatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

People are affected by the grand vistas of the Lake District in many ways, many return year after year to climb the same hills, to bask in the tranquillity of the lakes or to just enjoy the peace away from the hubris of modern life. John Wyatt’s first experience of this part of the country was when he visited in the cub scouts and it deeply affected him.

A few years later he was working for the Telegraph in Manchester, but the draw of the lakes still had him, so he applied for the job of forest worker at Cartmel Fell. He ended up in a simple hut that had a bed, a stove and very little else. The work was simple and hard, but he relished the task as he was living in the place that he loved the most. One day everything changed when two boys brought him a young fawn that they had found and thought was ill. He explained that it had probably been hidden by its mother who’d return later, but by then it was too late. Wyatt had gained a charge, that he came to call Buck.

If you are expecting wide panoramas of the beautiful landscapes of the lakes then this is probably not the book for you, there is a fair amount about the comradery of the people who he worked with and who he lived near but the majority of this book is about John caring for a young roe deer that was to become a great, semi-wild companion. The antics of Buck would regularly startle and surprise those who would not expect a wild animal to have such a close association with a human. Wyatt may not have had many possessions when he was a woodsman, but he had a life that had riches that no one else could buy.

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The Giddy Career of Mr Gadd by Marie Gameson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Winifred Rigby drifts through life in a world of her own. She works translating Chinese into English for clients and practices her own version of Zen at home. Her conversion came after a spiritual experience on a mountain in Taiwan and it was in the Far East that she felt happiest. Dragged back to the UK by her family for a spurious reason, she longs to return to Taiwan as she doesn’t feel at home here, her memories of her past and people are vague and she is regularly surprised by people who claim to know her from school or elsewhere. Her staunchly Catholic mother is appalled by her Buddhist religion and between her and Win’s sister they are frequently round her housekeeping an eye on her. To keep certain things secret and private she writes herself notes in Chinese for even the most mundane of tasks.

The little equilibrium that she has at home is rudely disturbed one morning as she opens her front door to a man who she hasn’t seen since school, Mr Fallowfield. He had taught her history at school and he thinks that the stories that she wrote as a teenager are the reason he is being haunted by his late father. After a lot of discussion, she agrees to undertake research about how the Chinese worship the dead and to see if she can find the links between Mr Gadd in the story she wrote and the spectres that burden him now. This means reacquainting herself with the echoes of her past life, friends now forgotten reappear and re-discovering who she once was. A chance meeting with a couple from school adds further complexity to her life but also focuses her mind as to what she wants to do.

The first couple of chapters felt almost dreamlike, as you peeked into the life of Win. It is a touching story of a very strange family written in an engaging way, but there is a greater depth to the story as Gameson addresses the issues that all parents face as children grow up and change into adults capable of independent thought and now aren’t the person that you remembered. There are a variety of threads that start tangled and are brought together in unexpected ways. So very different to a lot of fiction that is out there and well worth reading.

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Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The authorities in the Glitter Band are starting to worry; there one was death a couple of weeks ago that they have not be able to explain. Last week there were two more. This week there have been four. No one has been able to explain why, and the information that they have tried to elicit from the corpses themselves hasn’t given any leads. The implants that link each citizen to each other and the state in a fluid form of democracy where citizens are consulted and vote on matters small and large, have gone rogue and killed their hosts. Are these just random failings of the implants, which is unheard of, or is there someone out there causing them to fail? Panoply realises that they have a problem on their hands, one that seems to be growing exponentially and they have no idea who will be next to die.

The secrecy surrounding the deaths is high as they cannot risk society finding out that there is a killer on the loose. Inspector Dreyfus is brought urgently up to speed on the cases so far and those that are happening as the investigation tries to develop leads. To add to their woes, Devon Garlin, a member of the elite from Chasm City, is raising the political game by questioning the authority of the prefects and society with the aim of driving wedges between the habitats; somehow he seems to know about the mysterious deaths of the people too. What was a worrying situation is fast getting out of control…

Set in the Revelation Space universe this is a fast-paced sci-fi detective thriller is full of twists and turns and Dreyfus and his team try to work out who is doing the killing. The tech in the futuristic world is quite spectacular and Reynolds still manages to make it sound completely plausible. The secrets are revealed a little bit at a time as the story races to its fairly dramatic conclusion. However, it did feel like the ending unravelled a little too much rather than being neatly terminated, but that might be because there is more to come in a subsequent book; I hope so. Another stunning book from one of the masters of science fiction.

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21st-Century Yokel by Tom Cox
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The facets that make up our character are drawn from many sources; our DNA, our family, our culture, our history and as Tom Cox argues in this book, the places where you grow up that can define you as much as these other things. The way that Cox recommends that immerse yourself in the local landscape is to walk through the lanes and paths, climb the hills and the stiles, take in the views and soak up the natural world at walking pace.

The blurb on the cover says: It’s not quite a nature book, not quite a humour book, not quite a family memoir, not quite folklore, not quite social history, not quite a collection of essays, but a bit of all six. But there is a lot more in this book than that; crammed into the covers of the book. He is captivated by all sorts of things that he encounters on his strolls, from bees to beavers, scarecrows to owls and even his cats make an appearance a few times. Keeping his sanity by taking longs walks in the country around his Devon home gives him plenty of time to consider the world. All of the subjects he tackles begin with a narrow focus, before becoming wider ranging and for me, much more interesting.

He is fascinated equally by the ghosts of the past as he concerned by the future of the countryside, but what makes 21st Century such a really good book is that it defies categorisation. Part of this reason behind this is because Cox writes about what he wants to without following any set agenda, and partly this is because this reflects modern life and all its distractions where you start on one project, get distracted by something else, wander off to get an item and arrive back four hours later wondering why you were starting that in the first place. Because of this, the book feels fresh and interesting, it has its poignant moments, the chapter on scarecrows is really quite creepy and is a great example of modern folklore, His VERY LOUD DAD makes me laugh every time he appears in the narrative too. This rich and varied book is not quite many things, but one thing it is, is fantastic.

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