Over this summer I sought to brush up on my history a bit, so this time around we will take a whirlwind tour of more than half a dozen books I’ve read over the summer break. We’ll look at the rise and fall of civilizations as well as the rise and fall of religious organizations – be prepared, it may be a bumpy ride.
The two things you should never talk about in polite company are religion and politics. Most people are familiar with some variation of this phrase, knowing that bringing up either tends to instantly ruin a conversation. If everyone in the room is of the same opinion (a rare situation indeed) then the conversation becomes extremely boring and everyone just makes each other feel better, or (more likely) one or more participants are not in total agreement, causing discord at the least and ruined friendships in many scenarios. But why is it that talking about religion and politics bothers us so much? Enter The God Delusion.
While at the Computer History Museum a while ago for the Big Data Workshop, I spent slightly too long in the gift shop nerding out and on impulse, picked up Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion. My reasons were two-fold and pretty straightforward: I like computers and I like chess, so why not actually learn about the computer that changed the world more than a decade ago? But my expectations going in were surprisingly far off, as it’s not so much a book about computers and chess as it is a book about people who happen to use computers and play chess (and use computers to play chess of course). Yet it is the first book that I read cover-to-cover in a single sitting and simply could not put down.
While growing up I quickly became familiar with Paley’s watchmaker analogy: namely that the complexity of life implies the existence of God. I’ve been hearing it especially more lately, so when I stumbled upon Richard Dawkins’ book, The Blind Watchmaker, I knew I had to pick it up and give it a read. It’s summarized perfectly by the book’s tag-line:
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design
I am, quite simply, a person who loves reading about America’s Founding Fathers, and love thinking about government and all that stuff. A few years ago I read Joseph Ellis’ Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, and found Ellis’ writing and analysis to be excellent and thought-provoking. With that in mind, it was an easy choice about who to pick for my more recent re-discovery of two of our Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Ellis paints a clear picture of what these men where: talented men who were often in the right place at the right time, but deeply conflicted men torn by the struggles they encountered in their lives. Ellis does a greater service by stressing repeatedly the often unspoken truth, that these men were men and not gods as we like to think they are.
Typically I’m not into fiction novels. Any science involved doesn’t really work (although movies and TV are more likely to do this), the characters often don’t feel real or deep, and it just doesn’t provide an interesting ride. But a clear exception to this is the work of H.P. Lovecraft, a clear master of horror. For those of you who are into fiction and haven’t heard of him, go read him now. Through the magic of the Internet, I can wait. He simply is that good. Or put another way,
H.P. Lovecraft built the stage on which most of the last century’s horror fiction was performed. As doomed as any of his protagonists, he put a worldview into words that has spread to infect the world. You need to read him – he’s where the darkness starts. – Neil Gaiman
I have heard very often that the critical event of the 20th century was World War I, and to find out the consequences of that, I read Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. And while that does an excellent job of describing the aftermath of World War I, I found myself wanting more with respect to how the Russian tsars fell. So when I saw Rasputin’s face staring me down at the local Borders, I knew I had to pick it up and see what was really going on and the role the enigmatic Rasputin played in it.
After reading the incredibly long books The Foundation and Atlas Shrugged, I figured that this time I’d go with something a bit shorter. So with that in mind, I picked up an old classic that I read back in school a long time ago: Fahrenheit 451. And while it’s not as deep or moving as the previous two books, it is still well worth the price of admission and has a lot of valuable things to say.
Ever since I saw Jennifer Burns’ interview on The Daily Show, I knew I had to read Ayn Rand’s books and see what all the rage was about. In a nutshell, she was on promoting her new book and how Republicans in the United States are embracing the works of Ayn Rand and the potential pitfalls involved. At a very superficial level, the idea is that Republicans tend to be elitist and traditionally want a small government, which is more or less what Ayn Rand is proposing. But at the end of the day, Ayn Rand is a Libertarian, and Republicans and Libertarians just don’t mix. There are, however, a slew of other reasons why Ayn Rand is not a good fit for the Republican party. But in order to talk about why Ayn Rand is not a good fit for Republicans, we must first talk about Ayn Rand.
So I just finished The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and had quite a bit to say about it, but here’s the thing. There’s really so much going on in it that I will definitely need a full blog post or two to really get it all out there, and since I’ll be reading Atlas Shrugged soon anyways, I figured I can combine the two into a super-long essay that you and Google will enjoy even more. That, and the fact that the interview that turned me onto these books in the first place pretty much said everything I feel like saying in this lazy state:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Jennifer Burns | ||||
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