David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell

   2013; 295 pages.  Full Title: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Applied Psychology; Sociology; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    David and Goliath.  Everyone has heard the tale.  It has inspired generations upon generations of readers.  Big, bad Goliath trots out and challenges the Israelites to a one-on-one battle with any champion they choose.  He’s fully armored and is carrying a huge sword.  Out steps puny little David with only a slingshot and five smooth stones.

 

    David plunks Goliath with his first shot, hitting him right in the forehead and stunning him.  David then goes over to the giant, picks up his sword and chops off the giant’s head.  From this we learn to trust in the higher powers, never get discouraged, and bravely do battle against all odds.  Malcolm Gladwell has studied the details of the David and Goliath tale, and admits that there are important lessons to be learned.

 

    But he feels the ones we’ve been taught for generations upon generations are completely wrong.

 

What’s To Like...

    Malcolm Gladwell divides David and Goliath into three parts, each containing three chapters, namely:

    Part 1 : The Advantages of Disadvantages (Chapters 1-3)

    Topics: Girls High School basketball; Classroom size; Choosing a college.

    Part 2 : The Theory of Desirable Difficulty (Chapters 4-6)

    Topics: Dyslexia; the London Blitz; the Civil Right Movement.

    Part 3 : The Limits of Power (Chapters 7-9)

    Topics: Northern Ireland; California’s ‘Three Strike Law’; Vichy France.

 

        Each chapter’s title is that of a person, none of whom I had heard of, whose life embodies the themes of that section.  Gladwell then takes their “lessons learned” and applies them to other, usually more famous, persons and historical events.  Some of those tangential topics will surprise you.  For instance, in Chapter 5, the theme of the London Blitz segues into the fight against Leukemia.

 

    There is also an Introduction, in which Gladwell meticulously examines the David/Goliath affair tale, even suggesting that the latter was afflicted with something called “Acromegaly” (say what?!), which leveled the playing field.  The book closes with an Afterword, which focuses on America’s Vietnam debacle.

 

    I was impressed by the author’s writing skills.  Let’s face it, a story centering on Girls’ High School Basketball sounds like a yawner, ditto for detailing the search for a cure to Leukemia.  But Gladwell somehow turns them into fascinating subjects.  Other interesting sidelights include Lawrence of Arabia, a cameo appearance by Julius Erving, the neuroscience of dyslexia, and the statistical importance of “inverted U-curves”.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 14,018 ratings and 3,706 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.97*/5, based on 188,881 ratings and 11,990 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Suppose you were to total up all the wars over the past two hundred years that occurred between very large and very small countries.  Let’s say that one side has to be at least ten times larger in population and armed might than the other.  How often do you think the bigger side wins?  Most of us would put that number at close to 100 percent.  A tenfold difference in a lot.  But the actual answer may surprise you.  When the political scientist Ivan Arreguin did the calculation a few years ago, what he came up with was 71.5 percent.  Just under a third of the time, the weaker country wins.  (pg. 21)

 

    Birmingham was the most racially divided city in America.  It was known as “Johannesburg of the South.”  When a busload of civil rights activists were on their way to Birmingham, the local police stood by while Klansmen forced their bus to the side of the road and set it afire.  Black people who tried to move into white neighborhoods had their homes dynamited by the city’s local Ku Klux Klansmen so often that Birmingham’s other nickname was Bombingham.  (pg. 168)

 

The smarter your peers, the dumber you feel; the dumber you feel, the more likely you are to drop out of science.  (pg. 85)

    There’s a sprinkling of profanity—I noted 21 instances in the entire of book—in David and Goliath, including four f-bombs and a half-dozen cases of the "n-word" racial epithet.  Most of those occurred in direct quotes of various newsmakers.

 

    Wikipedia mentions that the critical response to David and Goliath was mostly negative.  The criticisms generally accuse Gladwell of skewing the data to fit his arguments. However, that Wikipedia segment closes with a positive review, and also notes that David and Goliath was a bestseller, reaching #4 on a NY Times chart (“Hardcover Non-Fiction”) and #5 on a USA Today chart (“Best-Selling Books”).

 

    Personally, I think the Malcolm Gladwell does a great job of presenting alternate views on various strategies to use when you’re the underdog, the misfit, or the weaker force.  His conclusions are open to debate, but hey, that’s the purpose of this book.  The fact that Gladwell suggests that David beat Goliath because of the giant having an eyesight-affecting medical condition is of course speculative.  Then again, that whole Philistine/Israelite encounter itself is unprovable.

 

    9 Stars.  My favorite chapters were #6, #7, and the Afterword, all of which focus on real life struggles in American history, some of which I lived through.  Your favorites may vary.

Justinian's Empire - Nick Holmes

    2024; 367 pages.  Book 4 (out of 4, but eventually 6) in “The Fall of the Roman Empire” series.  Full Title: Justinian’s Empire – Triumph and Tragedy.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Ancient History; Rome; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    I learned the date in my World History class: The Roman Empire collapsed in 476 CE when the Goths sacked Rome.

 

    Except, at the risk of splitting hairs, that wasn’t its total end.  Yes, the Western Roman Empire was no more.  But the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital of Constantinople, was doing relatively well, at least as long as it was happy to simply maintain its present borders.

 

    True, those pesky Persians kept raiding along its eastern borders; buying-&-selling was throttled by the smallest currency one could use in a solid gold coin; and worst of all, the populace was bitterly divided over whether Jesus was both human-&-divine, or just plain old divine.  But those issues are nothing that a dynamic Emperor can’t fix.

 

    Unfortunately, the present one, Anastasius, is a bit underqualified.  I sure hope the next Emperor is better.

 

What’s To Like...

    Nick Holmes divides Justinian’s Empire into four parts, namely:

    Part 1. New Rome, New Romans:  pg. 26, 12 sections.

    Part 2. The Peasant and the Prostitute: pg. 86, 12 sections.

    Part 3. The Age of Conquest: pg. 147, 15 sections.

    Part 4. Apocalypse Now:  pg. 254, 20 sections.

Those 59 sections cover 367 pages of text, which averages out to about 6 pages per chapter, and means there's always a good place to stop reading for the night.

 

    The book covers the years from 468 CE, the year that Vandal-controlled Carthage destroyed a Roman armada trying to retake the city, to 565 CE, the year the (Eastern) Roman Emperor Justinian died.  The bulk of Justinian’s Empire is devoted to Justinian and his “can-do-anything” military leader, Belisarius.  They’re both introduced around page 100 (+/- 10 pages) and are the main focus throughout the rest of the book.

 

    I loved the degree of detail that author Nick Holmes imparts to this critical time in World History.  The “gold coin” dilemma was solved by the introduction of low-value copper coins called “follis” which were so important to the daily paying of workers’ wages.  I was surprised to learn of the “Late Antique Little Ice Age” in 536 CE, and the devastating Plague in 541 CE, both of which killed millions of people worldwide, with civilizations having no way to defend against their effect.  And I smirked when about the “Nika riots” which prove that athletic games provoking hooligans to urban violence is nothing new.

 

    Justinian is generally hailed as a hero by modern historians.  Nick Holmes assesses this over the last couple of chapters, giving reasons whether the Emperor's various military and economic campaigns were worth it in the end.  In any event, Justinian’s reign was arguably the high-water mark of the Eastern Roman Empire.  The next book reportedly focuses on the efforts of subsequent emperors to maintain that level of glory.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Slanging Match (n.) : a heated argument or quarrel where people insult each other.

Others: Monophysites (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 88 ratings and 5 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.45/5 based on 31 ratings and 3 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Basilicus was a man who, over the last 1,500 years, has received not one kind word from any chronicler or historian.  He was universally detested in the sixth century and he still is.  Indeed, it was truly remarkable that he attained the position of emperor at all, and once he did, he did everything possible to lose it.  His first foolish action was to promote the lover of his beautiful wife, Zenonis.  Unknown to him, but known to everyone else, she was having a passionate affair with a senator called Armatus.  (pg. 44)

 

    Chosroes marched fast into the Roman interior.  None of our sources say whether Antioch was his aim right from the beginning.  But he was certainly going in the right direction to reach the empire’s second most important city.  He avoided the city of Callinicum, where Belisarius had suffered his only defeat, and stopped instead at the town of Sura.  Procopius says he chose Sura because as he passed it, his horse neighed and stamped the ground, which the magi (Persian priests) thought showed it would easily fall.  But the magi made a mistake.  The first Persian assault was beaten back with heavy losses.  (pg. 258)

 

Kindle Details…

   Justinian’s Empire presently sells for $5.99 at Amazon.  Book One in the series, The Roman Revolution is on sale for just $0.99 right now, and Books 2 and 3 cost  $5.99 apiece.  An earlier work of the author, The Byzantine World War is available for $2.99.

 

“The rich Goth wants to be Roman but only the poor Roman wants to be a Goth.”  (pg. 204)

    As was true in the previous book, there is zero profanity and/or adult situations in Justinian’s Empire.  One of the Empresses is mentioned as previously being a prostitute, but I count that as a historical fact.  Heck, similar situations exist in present-day politics, and for the most part elicit yawns.

 

    I only caught one typo.  On page 106, Theodora’s “premature death” is given as occurring in 448 CE, which is certainly premature since that was before she was born.  As the Timeline section in the back of the book notes, the correct year is 548 CE.

 

    The direct links to Footnotes work very smoothly, but when Maps and Illustrations are referenced in the text, they are not set up with active links.  That was also true in the previous book.

 

    Enough nitpicking.  I found Justinian’s Empire to be another great entry in Nick Holmes’ “The Fall of the Roman Empire” series.  It isn’t easy chronicling the events in a world that almost no one, including me, knows much about, and do it in a coherent manner.  Justinian’s Empire succeeds wonderfully in that regard.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  Finding any historical records of the events covered in Justinian’s Empire apparently is quite the challenge.  Nick Holmes’ favorite source is a Greek historian named Procopius, whose “official” account, titled History of the Wars, is filled with oodles of praise for Justinian, Belisarius, and their spouses, all of whom presumably loved this adulation.

    But Procopius wrote a second chronicle of the same events, titled it Secret History, which presented these four characters in a much less favorable light, and which was not made public until they had all died, presumably to avoid retaliation.

    Discretion truly is the better part of valor.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

   1969; 310 pages.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Biographies & Memoirs; Banned Books; Civil Rights Movement; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    When we think about the start of the Civil Rights movement in America, the 1950s will most likely come to mind.  Things like Martin Luther King Jr., Selma, bus boycotts, Rosa Parks, protest marches, and much more.

 

    But what was life like for Blacks in the years just before all that?  In the 1930s everyone struggled with the Great Depression, and in the 1940s, World War 2 saw over a million American soldiers either killed or wounded, including both blacks and whites. What was it like for black children growing up in those years?

 

    Also, were conditions different for blacks depending on what geographic area of the United States they were living in?  For instance, were things better in Missouri than in Mississippi?  Maybe being Black in California was better than both of those places.  If so, how much better?

 

    Maya Angelou, American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist, was born in 1928, so grew up in the 1930s/40s. and lived in all those areas along the way.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings recounts her turbulent experiences during those decades.

 

What’s To Like...

    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first book in the 7-volume autobiographical series.  It details her childhood experiences starting when she was three years old and, along with her four-year-old brother Bailey, moved in with her grandmother due to the divorce of her parents.  The book ends with a momentous life-changing event in her life when she was sixteen, and presumably the sequel, Gather Together in my Name, continues from there.

 

    The 310 pages are divided up into 36 chapters, which averages out to 8+ pages/chapter.  There is heavy emphasis on Maya’s interactions with her family members, particularly her brother Bailey.  We also watch the child Maya struggle to come to grips with racism (be careful when going to “whitefolksville”), sexual assault (Maya was raped when she was eight years old), and self-reliance (she grew up in a world where circumstances were heavily stacked against her).

 

    Maya’s birth name was Marguerite Annie Johnson, and it was fascinating to learn how her first name morphed into Maya (Marguerite --> Margaret --> Mary --> Maya).  I presume the changing of her last name is due to marriage, but that doesn’t happen in this book. Religion plays a prominent part in Maya’s entire family, and along the way the reader accompanies her to a tent revival (I’ve been to a couple) and learn why the phrase “by the way” is considered blasphemous in some fundamentalist circles.  

 

    Maya’s teenage years were just as unsettled as her childhood, but the reader gets to watch Maya evolve from someone “ignorant of her ignorance” into someone “being aware of being aware”.  In a show of perseverance, Maya applies for, and is eventually hired as San Francisco’s first Negro streetcar conductor.  A short time later, she learns to drive a stick-shift car, with no advance training, at night, on a lonely stretch of road in Mexico, with her dad passed out in the back seat.  Which then leads to her getting stabbed by her dad’s girlfriend.

  

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 36,661 ratings and 4,245 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.30*/5, based on 555,423 ratings and 17,684 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Powhitetrash (n.) : someone so poor (and white) that they cannot afford the missing “o” and “r”.

Others: Siditty (adj.); Chifforobe (n.); Ordurous (adj).

 

Excerpts...

    San Franciscans would have sworn on the Golden Gate Bridge that racism was missing from the heart of their air-conditioned city.  But they would have been sadly mistaken.

    A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat.  Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well.  She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima.  The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve.  He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”  (loc. 2590)

 

    The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate, and Black lack of power.

    The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence.  It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.  (loc. 3284)

 

Kindle Details…

    The e-book version of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings sells for $7.99 at Amazon right now.  The other six books chronicling Maya Angelou’s life range in price from $5.99 to $13.99.  Maya Angelou was a prolific writer of poetry, plays, screenplays, memoirs, essays, children’s books, and cookbooks.  Most of her works are in the $3.99-$14.99 price range for the Kindle format.

 

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.  (loc. 3268)

    For such a tough start to her life, there is a surprisingly small amount of profanity in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  I noted just eight instances in the first 50% of the book, and most of those were the N-word racial epithet.  The sexual molestation is handled as tactfully as possible, and later on there is one roll-in-the-hay.  I caught only one typo in the whole e-book: staring/starring.

 

    The Wikipedia article mentions that some reviewers categorize I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as “autobiographical fiction” but it also cites other reviewers (in the “Style and Genre” section) as fully meeting the requirements to be called an “Autobiography”.

 

    I have always suspected that any autobiography will be inherently slanted to some degree in the author’s favor.  For that matter, I think this happens even in most biographies.  If you’re an biography writer, and you want to get paid for your work by your subject, you’re naturally going to present the life you’re writing about in a favorable light as much as possible.

 

    For me, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was a thoroughly captivating and heartfelt work.  I grew up in the Civil Rights era, but that was during the 1960s, not the 1940s/50s.  It was enlightening to read about the roots of the Civil Rights movement.  My only quibble is that I have to read six more books to learn the complete story of Maya Angelou’s life.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last thing.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been one of the most banned books in the US school system for many years.  Wikipedia’s article on the book devotes a whole section, titled “Censorship”, to the details and statistics of the bans.  It is worth your time.

Druids - Anne Ross

   1999; 211 pages.  Full Title: “Druids: Preachers of Immortality”.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Archaeology; European History; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    Druids.  What part of Europe did they spring up from?  What parts of Europe did they flourish in?  What roles did they play in ancient Celtic society?

 

    What did the Greeks and Romans have to say about them, and how accurately were their views?  How did the upstart Christian church respond to them, and how successful was that endeavor?

 

    What were the Druids’ key beliefs and how did they practice them?  What were their religious festivals?

 

    You can find answers to all those topics in Anne Ross’s book Druids.

 

What’s To Like...

    Druids is divided up into 12 sections, namely:

00a. Foreword

    The two branches of the Celtic language.

00b. Introduction

    Druids, Prophets, and Bards: the 3 groups of “Men of Learning”.

01. Druidic Origins

    Are Druids from Eastern Europe or Western Ireland?

02. The Classic Commentators

    Greek and Roman writers, Ogam writing.

03. Questionable Death and Unusual Burial

    Human Sacrifices, Bog Burials, and “Foundation Sacrifices”.

04. The Symbolic Head

    Decapitation and Drinking from a Skull.

05. The Vernacular Literatures

    St. Brigit, the Red Branch, and other ancient Irish texts.

06. Druids and Fenians

    Rival warrior castes, or allies?

07. Assemblies and Calendar Festivals

    Samain, Imbolc, Beltain, and Lughnasa

08. Unity and Diversity

    Druids and the Early Church; St. Patrick

09. Folklore and Festival

    Druidic Traditions, Rituals that survived to modern times.

Epilogue

    Druidism: where did it come from and where is it heading?

 

    The book is written in what I call “scholarly style”.  Anne Ross (b. 1925; d. 2012) was both an archaeologist and a scholar, and spoke fluent Gaelic, which I’m sure helped in her research for this tome.  This is a short book; the text is just barely over 200 pages and that includes lots of maps, drawings and photographs.  It is written in English, not American, although I didn't find that a distraction.

 

    As might be expected, the text is packed with fascinating details.  Lots of my heroes—Taliesin, Simon Magus, the Morrigan, the Tuatha De Danann—get mentioned, as well as an ancient Celtic board game called “fidchell”, which is said to resemble chess.   I learned the etymology of the word “Ireland”, and got some tips on how the read omens to tell whether it’s going to be an auspicious or inauspicious day.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 3.9*/5, based on 21 ratings and 5 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.55*/5, based on 60 ratings and 10 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Apotropaic (adj.) : supposedly having the power to avert evil influences or bad luck.

Others: Janiform (adj.); Outwith (conj.); Turves (n.)

 

Excerpts...

    The oral tradition amongst the Celts was deliberately fostered, as we learn from the classical commentators on the Celts.  This custom would seem to have arisen in order that the sacred learning and details of ritual practice should be kept away from the uninitiated.  Writing was used for business purposes in Gaul, and Caesar remarks that Greek letters were used for this purpose.  He also comments how, when some noble person was being cremated, people would throw letters onto the funeral pyre for him to give to dead relatives and friends in the Otherworld.  (pg. 87)

 

    The men of Ulster regularly held a great festival at Samain, Hallowe’en, 31 October, i.e. November Eve.  A huge feast was made by the king, Conchobor, in Emain Macha.  They kept the feast for three days before Samain, for three days after Samain, and on the day itself.  It was one of the most important calendar festivals of the whole year, and still survives in the folk memory down to the present time.  This period was devoted to sportive occupations: horse racing and other sports; drinking — which often caused quarrels — and the recitation by each man present of his victories over powerful opponents.  (pg. 152)

 

“They also invite strangers to their banquets, and only after the meal do they ask who they are and of what they stand in need.  (pg. 185)

    There is absolutely zero profanity in Druids, which is a rarity, even when reading non-fiction.  The book was a slow read for me, but that was mostly because I was fixated by the archaeological details and Gaelic lore.

 

        The inherent problem with any discussion of Druidism is that there just isn’t a lot of reference material to work with.  As the first excerpt mentions, Druid religious and historical records were done via oral tradition, and Greek, Roman, and Christian commentators have questionable reliability.  Julius Caesar is a particularly dubious source, although I was impressed with Anne Ross’s objectivity about his commentary.

 

    One review criticized the author’s writing style, feeling that it was written “to the layman”, but I thought the book's tone was just right, neither too technical nor too prosaic.  My only beef was with the maps: there were quite a few of them, and they would only be useful if one lived close to the geographical areas cited.  I don’t.

 

    Overall, I found Druids: Preachers of Immortality both enlightening and entertaining.  It kept me turning the pages although in fairness, Druidism and Archaeology are two subjects I am always very interested in.  Amazon only offers one other book by Anne Ross, Folklore of Wales, which means I'll have to hit the used-book stores to read more books by her.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  On page 48, I ran into the verb “whelmed”.  I’m familiar with “overwhelmed” of course, and have occasionally seen “underwhelmed”, usually used in a tongue-in-cheek fashion.  But this is the first time I’ve encountered “whelmed” used in a serious context.  Awesome!

Fuzz - Mary Roach

   2021; 292 pages.  Full Title: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Animal Rights; Wildlife Science; Non-Fiction; Humorous Essays.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    He came with the house.  A cute little field mouse with reddish-brown fur and a white snout.  Actually, he was probably here first, back when the orange grove had not yet been cleared to make a housing subdivision.

 

    He was mostly a nuisance, scampering around from room to room.  The standard mousetraps we set up didn’t fool him at all.  So the exterminator suggested we buy some "glue traps" and set them around.

 

    One night, a week or so after we did that, there was a sorrowful squealing in the laundry room.  The little mouse had run into a glue trap, got stuck, but didn’t immediately die.  He started hyperventilating when I picked up the trap-plus-mouse and eyeballed him.

 

    What to do?  I could toss him into the trash can and let him starve, but that would be cruel. So I bopped him on his stuck head with a screwdriver and that did the trick.  He died instantly, executed for merely being in the way of human encroachment.  But I’ve always wondered…

 

    Was there a more humane way to handle the “mouse in the house”?

 

What’s To Like...

    Fuzz is Mary Roach’s latest book, and the fifth of hers that I’ve read.  In it, she examines the inevitable tensions that arise when humans overrun areas where other animals are already comfortably existing.  We humans will prevail, of course, but figuring out how to best handle those displaced species is quite the challenge.

 

    The diversity of animal groups examined is impressive.  Bears and wolves can get territorial when hikers and campers invade their domain; but they also take keen delight in raiding the dumpsters of any nearby cities.  In northern India, elephants and leopards are an obvious hazard, but deaths by macaque monkey attacks are also a problem.  California has its cougars, the Vatican has its gulls, farmers have their crows, and everyone everywhere (including me) may have to deal with rats and mice.  Even the plant kingdom gets involved.  Douglas firs engage in what the author calls “arboreal manslaughter”, and legumes such as rosary beans and castor beans are accomplices in murders.

 

    Mary Roach is a “hands-on” writer.  She takes an intensive 5-day WHART course (Wildlife-Human Attack Response Training) to learn what to do if you come face-to-face with a bear.  Hint: the answer is different for black bears vs. grizzly bears.  She travels to India to learn about controlling elephants and to Rome to learn whether it’s a sin to take the life of a rodent or bird.

 

    As always, the text is loaded with Mary Roach’s wit, humor, and trivia tidbits.  You’ll learn whether hibernating bears pee and poop during their long nap, the intricacies of “rabbit arithmetic” (2 x 3 = 9,000,000), and the German word for scarecrow (“Vogelverschrikker”).  But she discusses the serious issues of wildlife conservation as well.  You’ll learn why poisoning, relocating, importing predators for the pests, scarecrows/loud noises/lasers, glue traps and doing nothing are not permanent answers to the problem.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Bejesus (excl.) : an exclamation of surprise or emphasis.

 

Excerpts...

    On June 26, 1659, a representative from five towns in a province of northern Italy initiated legal proceedings against caterpillars.  The local specimens, went the complaint, were trespassing and pilfering from people’s gardens and orchards.  A summons was issued and five copies made and nailed to trees in forests adjacent to each town.  The caterpillars were ordered to appear in court on the twenty-eighth of June, at a specified hour, where they would be assigned legal representation.

    Of course, no caterpillars appeared at the appointed time, but the case went forward anyway.  (loc. 61)

 

    There is, or there was, a hunter gull that hung around St. Peter’s Square, site of the aforementioned floral vandalism.  We know this because the bird was caught on camera in 2014.  You can watch it in slow-motion as it swoops in, beak first and irony ablaze, to nail the white “peace dove” that Pope Francis had just released.  Every January the pope appears on a balcony with children from a Catholic youth group to read a message of peace and release a dove.  The dove survived, but the tradition did not.  In later years, a helium-filled balloon in the shape of a dove was released.  (loc. 3089)

 

Kindle Details…

    The e-book format of Fuzz costs $8.98 at Amazon right now.  Mary Roach has seven more e-books for your Kindle, ranging in price from $8.98 or $11.99.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 3,122 ratings and 201 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.84/5 based on 26,239 ratings and 3,574 reviews.

 

“It’s hard to be tolerant when there’s a bear in your kitchen.”  (loc. 623)

    There’s a small amount of profanity in Fuzz.  I counted just 12 instances in the first 50% of the text, but that included a pair of f-bombs.  Later on, the slang term for male genitalia was utilized four times.

 

    I don’t really have anything else to quibble about.  Some of the negative reviewers at Amazon and Goodreads didn’t like Mary Roach’s sense of humor and/or thought the text was boring.  I respectfully disagree on both counts.

 

    The final chapter is a poignant personal note by Mary Roach.  She finds peace and coexistence with a roof rat in her home, solving the problem by discovering, and closing, the entryway the rat uses to get into her attic.  I wish I had done that when I dealt with my field mouse.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last thing.  One of the highlights in Chapter 9 was Australia’s Great Emu War, fought in the 1930s, and which has always made me chuckle.  It shares the spotlight with a conflict I was unaware of: the American military versus the gooney birds (albatrosses) on Midway Island.  The winner in both cases was . . . well, Mary Roach tells it better than I can, so read the book.

The Invention of Yesterday - Tamim Ansary

   2019; 407 pages.  Full Title: The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000 Year History of Human Culture, Connection.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Ancient History; World History;  Non-Fiction; Anthropology.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    Okay, I admit it.  I’m a history nerd.  I’ve been one ever since 7^th grade when Mrs. Stoudt taught “World History 1”, introducing us to ancient empires and closing with the fall of the Roman Empire.  She made a profound impact on me, but I have noticed, however, that there’s a subtle bias in history classes, even if it’s a college history course.

 

    For instance, in the “Greeks vs. Persians” chapters (Alexander the Great, Thermopylae, Socrates, etc.) the Greeks are always portrayed as the heroic defenders of democracy; the Persians are always the evil bullies.  The Crusaders are invariably cast as the defenders of the Faith, even though they were invading the Near East.  And in 476 CE, after Rome was sacked, we entered the Dark Ages where evidently nothing notable happened anywhere in the world for the next 400 years.

 

    But how did those Persians view their wars with Greece?  What went through the minds of Palestinian Muslims (besides swords and arrows) when the Crusaders fought into the streets of Jerusalem?  And surely the empires in China, India, and the Middle East were doing something while Europe was enduring four centuries of the Dark Ages, right?

 

    Tamim Ansary examines all those questions, and a whole lot more, in his book, The Invention of Yesterday.

 

What’s To Like...

    As the subtitle indicates, Tamim Ansary places the dawn of human civilization at 50,000 BCE (after a brief review of terrestrial life dating back to 15 million BCE), when homo sapiens separated themselves from the rest of animal world via three innovations: tools, environment adaptation, and most importantly, language.  He divides The Invention of Yesterday into 31 chapters, covering world history from way back then up until now, with the last three chapters even giving his musings about where we’re headed.

 

    Squeezing 50 millennia of history into 400 pages is amazing, but what impressed me even more was the breadth of the realms that Ansary focuses on.  Events in China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt get just as much attention as European happenings.  The Americas and Africa also get some ink, albeit not as lengthy due to a lack of annals in those areas.

 

    The main point of the book is that there inevitably were a lot more interactions between all the various empires (aka “social constellations”; more on that in a bit.), not only via wars, but also through trading, traveling, technological advancements, and even plagues.  The author even goes so far as to suggest that “the policies of China’s Qing government did contribute to the birth of the United States.  Thank you for asking.”

 

    There are lots of maps, all of them easily expandable.  There are lots of footnotes, a majority of which are the author’s asides, and worth your time reading.  The text is crammed full of fascinating historical tidbits, including Mithraism (I once knew a devotee of it!); the “People of the Sea” (one of the great historical mysteries); Daevas (who?!); and the etymology of the word “Lombards”.

 

    So if you’re looking for a comprehensive history book that’s both enlightening and interesting, which goes beyond just “Western Civilization” and is filled with lots of facts and trivia, The Invention of Yesterday might be a perfect fit.  You’ll even get to see those invading Persians, the Crusaders, and the Dark Ages in an entirely different light.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 307 ratings and 61 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.27*/5, based on 1,022 ratings and 151 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Concatenation (n.) : a series of interconnected things or events.

Others : Reifying (v.).

 

Excerpts...

    In many cases, the paintings in a given cave were made over the course of thousands of years; people were coming there to paint, generation after generation.  But the oldest of them were made about forty thousand years ago, and the odd thing is, those earliest paintings were already quite sophisticated.  What hasn’t turned up are transitional products.  It’s not like Stone Age painters spent a few hundred generations learning to doodle and then a few hundred making blotches vaguely suggestive of animal shapes and then finally figuring out how to make recognizable horses and hunters.  Instead, it seems that around thirty-five to forty-five millennia ago, people rather suddenly started making sophisticated art.  (pg. 13)

 

    The Americas had grasslands too, but the hunter-gatherers who lived there never developed into pastoral nomadic civilizations capable of taking on the big urban powers.  Instead, they continued to refine their hunting-and-gathering way of life.  The reason is simple: North America had no animals that could be domesticated.  It had no sheep, no goats, no cows, nothing that could be herded.  It’s true that millions of bison roamed the great plains, but for some reason, these ill-tempered animals can’t be tamed, and when you can’t domesticate a grouchy two-ton animal with horns, you’d better not try to milk it.  (pg. 170)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Invention of Yesterday sells for $17.99 right now at Amazon.  Tamim Ansary has eight other e-books for your Kindle, ranging in price from $2.99 to $17.99.

 

In 1290, after populist rumors arose that Jews were eating Christian babies for Passover, all Jews of England were expelled.  (pg. 220)

    As one would expect, there’s very little cussing in The Invention of Yesterday; just 4 instances in the entire book: two “damns”, one “hell”, plus one “for Christ’s sake”.  The typos were few and far between, but more than I expected.  Examples: Atilla/Attila; lamas/llamas; unleased/unleashed; Columbia/Colombia; identity/identify; honey bees/honeybees.

 

    The author likes to coin phrases such as social constellations, social organisms, trialectic (a modification of “dialectic”), progress narrative, belief systems, and my favorite: bleshing (a portmanteau of ‘blending’ and ‘meshing’, referring to what happens when cultures, religions, and/or nations collide).  These are quite innovative, but sometimes I struggled to remember exactly what they meant.

 

    That’s all I can gripe about.  For me, The Invention of Yesterday was a great read, giving me new insights into all sorts of historical interactions and an opportunity to learn about various ancient empires that existed in places outside of Europe.  I’m looking forward to reading more books by this author.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last thing.  There’s a small town here in Arizona called Bisbee.  It’s not well known, and mostly exists for artists and tourists who want to experience that “Old West” feeling.  Incredibly, it gets mentioned in The Invention of Yesterday (pg. 75).  Wowza.