history Archives - Page 2 of 2

Yzabel / November 17, 2016

Review: Homo Deus

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.

Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.

What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.

Review:

[I got a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

Interesting for the possibilities it presents, even if I’m not 100% convinced about some of the scientific explanations. On the other end, not being a specialist, I’m not discarding them either.

The writing style was very easy to follow and engaging, making it a pleasant read that I kept going back to. Some themes that could’ve been fairly dry, like recapping humanity’s history and evolution, were done so in a way that explained the essential parts without making them unpalatable.

A lot of theories in this book hinge on organisms being driven by algorithms, like machines are. Biological algorithms, that is: stimuli triggering responses that follow a set of instructions (see threat – produce adrenaline – react, that kind of instructions). Well, why not! I do enjoy my little world of believing that, because I’m a human being, I am exceptional, but if I think about it, I’m still an organic machine, with needs for fuel, and a limited self-repair ability. And so, as algorithms-based beings, there’s a fine line to thread between creating always more powerful computers, and maybe one day being driven by them, with their ability to process so much more data, and so much faster. AIs composing music or haiku, after being programmed with complex sets of algorithms to reproduce what would touch human ears and trigger emotions: something that is both fascinating (how far we’ve gone) and frightening (we’re not so unique anymore).

Following this, the book explores potential outcomes: if we end up building machines that can perform better and faster (like the Google automated car that will apply the brakes in time vs. a tired human who won’t react fast enough) , won’t we become obsolete? What can we do then, what kinds of occupations for us, and if none—can a sustainable economy grow out of this, making it sustainable for everybody, or will humans just have to go down the road of extinction?

In general, though I felt this book wasn’t going far enough in presenting those possibilities both exciting and scary (improved humans vs. free will as being only the product of our desires/algorithms). Sometimes I had the feeling I had already read something similar in a previous chapter. Somehow it seems to be better inspiration for a sci-fi novel than for actual theories about what may happen in the future?

Still, it’s food for thought. Also, from other reviews, it may be that a previous book (“Sapiens”) by this author would be more interesting, so I may be tempted to read it later.

Yzabel / October 29, 2016

Review: The Radium Girls

The Radium Girls: They paid with their lives. Their final fight was for justice. by Kate Moore

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Ordinary women in 1920s America.

All they wanted was the chance to shine.

Be careful what you wish for.

‘The first thing we asked was, “Does this stuff hurt you?” And they said, “No.” The company said that it wasn’t dangerous, that we didn’t need to be afraid.’

1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous – the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls.
As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive – their work – was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. And so, in the face of unimaginable suffering – in the face of death – these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly, and instead became determined to fight for justice.

Drawing on previously unpublished sources – including diaries, letters and court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women’s relatives – The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring Twenties, who themselves learned how to roar.

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley.]

This book was fairly difficult for me to read. Fascinating, but difficult, because of its theme (and I must say immediately, this is entirely personal): on the one hand, it was really interesting; on the other hand, having teeth/jaw problems myself, reading some of the symptoms the girls manifested triggered my own fears (even though, obviously, my own problems are totally minor compared to theirs!). And that was before the book got to the cancer parts. It made up for very strange reading sessions, where I’d pick up my Kindle, read a couple of pages, leave it, go back to it 2 minutes later because I still wanted to know what would follow, rinse and repeat. Very weird—but, as I mentioned, and to be fair, entirely personal.

One may wonder why I picked this book, knowing my fears about part of its themes—obviously I should’ve expected the latter. This said, having previously read a couple of articles about the Radium Girls, I simply wanted to know more: about when exactly it happened, over how many years, how they finally got justice, more details about the hurdles, and so on. And in that regard, the book definitely doesn’t disappoint. Or perhaps it will an actual historian of that period and of that specific theme, but let’s be honest, I doubt the audience for such works is entirely made up of professional researchers anyway. So there’s much to learn in these pages about the Radium Girls, and it provides much more than a mere introduction to the topic.

The writing style was one of the things that made the book interesting to read, by humanising the accounts of what happened to the Radium Girls: I doubt a dry, clinical style would have worked here, all the more because there were quite a few pages dedicated to describing symptoms of radium poisoning and court sessions. You can feel that the author was genuinely passionate about her topic, also in a more literary way, and wanted to show the women involved as real people, with their lives, husbands, families, and (quashed) hopes for the future, and not just as examples of the consequences of radium poisoning. This is even more poignant because it happened in the Roaring Twenties, with the glamour and glitz I think they project in many people’s minds: the girls appeared at first as so young, in love with life and dancing and going out, and it was so easy to picture them as happy-go-lucky flappers who never deserved such a fate (not that anyone deserves it, mind you).

This gave a humane dimension to what could otherwise have been a bit boring to read, I suppose—and provided for reading sections, instead of huge info-dumps. On the downside, I found this style sometimes cheesy; it worked in some chapters/paragraphs, it didn’t in others, when it felt like the author was “laying it a bit too thick”, so to speak. But that’s a minor complain on my part.

Also, since I got the ebook version for review, I didn’t get to see the picture that are inserted in the printed book . Too bad for me.

Conclusion: 4 stars. If you’re like me, this may trigger a few fears, yet the book and the light it sheds on a not-so-well-known part of US history made it all worth it.

Yzabel / February 26, 2016

Review: The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded by Jim Ottaviani

My rating: [usr 4]

Blurb:

English mathematician and scientist Alan Turing (1912–1954) is credited with many of the foundational principles of contemporary computer science. The Imitation Game presents a historically accurate graphic novel biography of Turing’s life, including his groundbreaking work on the fundamentals of cryptography and artificial intelligence. His code breaking efforts led to the cracking of the German Enigma during World War II, work that saved countless lives and accelerated the Allied defeat of the Nazis. While Turing’s achievements remain relevant decades after his death, the story of his life in post-war Europe continues to fascinate audiences today.

Award-winning duo Jim Ottaviani (the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Feynman and Primates) and artist Leland Purvis (an Eisner and Ignatz Award nominee and occasional reviewer for the Comics Journal) present a factually detailed account of Turing’s life and groundbreaking research—as an unconventional genius who was arrested, tried, convicted, and punished for his openly gay lifestyle, and whose innovative work still fuels the computing and communication systems that define our modern world. Computer science buffs, comics fans, and history aficionados will be captivated by this riveting and tragic story of one of the 20th century’s most unsung heroes.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A good general biography of Alan Turing. Not going into many details, as this wouldn’t be really convenient in graphic novel form anyway, but comprehensive enough to encompass the most important aspects of his work.

Sometimes this comics reminded me of “Breaking the Code”—I guess that was because of the different narrators, and possibly also the interrogator’s questions hinting at Turing’s homosexuality, although the focus was less on that here than it was in the play. Interestingly, those “hints” were most often dismissed by the people telling about Turing’s life: his mother (apparently naively) understanding this was about girls, Clarke and others basically shrugging it off (“he wasn’t the only one, and we didn’t care anyway because we were in Bletchley Park to work, not to worry about such things”), a colleague wondering why the hell Alan even broached the subject yet being his friend and working with him pretty fine all the same, etc. This aspect of Turing’s life is always difficult to deal with, IMHO: it shouldn’t matter so much, what matters is hius work, but since it was illegal in the UK at the time, it’s just not something one could overlook, as it impacted his life nonetheless.

Noteworthy is also how his work in Bletchley Park had to be downplayed, and how it had been the same for all the cryptanalystes, scientists, “wrens” and other people involved. Since it was classified information, none were allowed to tell, even after World War II was over, what kind of work exactly they had done. Some were finally allowed to reveal it decades later, after the classified bit was lifted, while others died without never having opened their mouths about it. I felt this was important, as Turing may have been more respected by his peers if he had been able to list his achievements in that regard (and the trial seems to reflect that, with those against him looking at him in belittling ways, as if he had just done “some work” and not been part of something bigger, something much more important—as if all that defined him was that “gross misconduct with another man”, and the rest wasn’t worth being mentioned).

The format is a bit strange, in that, as mentioned above, the story follows Alan’s voice as well as that of another person (his mother, his friends…) and an interrogator. It is disconcerting at first, however the use of different colours (Alan’s voice in yellow, his mother’s in pink, for instance) allows to differenciate between them. Obviously enough, this format follows that of the Imitation Game itself, where a man A has to convince an interrogator that he’s not a man, while a woman B has to convince the same interrogator A is lying and she’s telling the truth. (I say obviously, because I just can’t see how such a narrative set of voices would’ve been chosen at random.)

The drawing style, unfortunatey, didn’t do much for me, and often detracted from what the book was showing, and from some of the ways it went about exploring what may have been Turing’s thoughts: wandering in his own mind, following a trail of paper leading to other great minds like Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, all the while with Turing’s colleagues and friends trying to follow him, follow the trail, but clearly never managing to really catch up… I found it to be an interesting representation of what may otherwise have been tedious. (There’s some science in there, too, and it can easily become confusing to someone who’s not overly familiat with concepts behind Turing’s works.)

Drawing style not withstanding, this was a pretty interesting book, and a good introduction to Turing’s life. There are plenty of references at the end for those who’d like to read more (including Hodges’s “Alan Turing: The Enigma”). 4/5 stars.

Yzabel / October 17, 2014

Review: Rebellion

Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution by Peter Ackroyd

My rating [rating=5]

Summary:

Peter Ackroyd has been praised as one of the greatest living chroniclers of Britain and its people. In Rebellion, he continues his dazzling account of the history of England, beginning the progress south of the Scottish king, James VI, who on the death of Elizabeth I became the first Stuart king of England, and ending with the deposition and flight into exile of his grandson, James II.

The Stuart monarchy brought together the two nations of England and Scotland into one realm, albeit a realm still marked by political divisions that echo to this day. More importantly, perhaps, the Stuart era was marked by the cruel depredations of civil war, and the killing of a king. Shrewd and opinionated, James I was eloquent on matters as diverse as theology, witchcraft, and the abuses of tobacco, but his attitude to the English parliament sowed the seeds of the division that would split the country during the reign of his hapless heir, Charles I. Ackroyd offers a brilliant, warts-and-all portrayal of Charles’s nemesis, Oliver Cromwell, Parliament’s great military leader and England’s only dictator, who began his career as a political liberator but ended it as much of a despot as “that man of blood,” the king he executed.

England’s turbulent seventeenth century is vividly laid out before us, but so too is the cultural and social life of the period, notable for its extraordinarily rich literature, including Shakespeare’s late masterpieces, Jacobean tragedy, the poetry of John Donne and Milton and Thomas Hobbes’s great philosophical treatise, Leviathan. In addition to its account of England’s royalty, Rebellion also gives us a very real sense of the lives of ordinary English men and women, lived out against a backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty.

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book courtesy of the publisher through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I like to say that you can’t really go wrong with Peter Ackroyd, and it seems to be once again the case. Even though what I read of him years ago feels pretty far by now, I still stand by this opinion. The man has a knack to present historical elements in such a way that one just can’t help but come back to his books no matter what—at least, I can’t. I stopped counting how many times I put my tablet in Sleep mode, thinking “I should do something else/read all the other books that I should have reviewed long before this one”, yet kept opening the file again after half an hour or so.

Of course, I’ll also confess to a complete lack of impartiality when a book deals with the Civil Wars, since it’s one of my favourite periods of British history (the other one being the Victorian era, but let’s not go there for now).

What you won’t find here, obviously, is a very detailed account of every little event of the 17th century: there’s just not enough room for that, and I’m well aware of it. Rebellion is the third volume of “The History of England”, and as such, it deals with the period as a whole. (If I wanted to know how exactly the battle of Naseby went, I… Actually, I would open another book I own, detailing precisely that, down to the bullets found years later on the battlefield.)

What you’ll get here, however, is a solid account that can be read even if you’re not a History major. In a compelling style, the author manages to convey causes and consequences with definite clarity, and even some humour. Because, let’s be honest, this is a gem:

“At the end of the discussion Cromwell, in one of those fits of boisterousness or hysteria that punctuated his career, threw a cushion at one of the protagonists, Edmund Ludlow, before running downstairs; Ludlow pursued him, and in turn pummelled him with a cushion.”

Also:

“Cromwell now always carried a gun. In a riding accident, later in the year, the pistol fired in his pocket and the wound kept him in bed for three weeks.”

It gets to show that the historical figures we take for granted in terms of seriousness aren’t always so. But then, there’s no way now to forget about those assassination plots, right, since they pushed Cromwell to carry that gun?

The narrative (it reads like a narrative, not like something arid, for sure) is interspersed with such little anecdotes, as well as chapters about literature (Hobbes’ Leviathan, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress…), science (Isaac Newton…), and other daily life happenings, reflecting how people lived in the period.

In short, heartily recommended by yours truly.

Yzabel / August 29, 2014

Review: Return to London

Return to London by Terence Jenkins

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Full of entertaining bite-size chunks of London’s history, this book tells tales that will inspire you to explore a place you thought you knew.

In this historical handbook, author, journalist and London guide Terence Jenkins hopes that the tales of England’s capital city will inspire readers to explore this unique part of our country. It is a place rich in history and known for its extensive culture. Following the success of Another Man’s London, he gives us an idiosyncratic look in bite-sized chunks of London’s exciting history that are fascinating and easy to read.

Amongst other characters you will meet Bulbous Betty and the Black Prince who had a surprising effect on the course of London’s history. Discover why 100 shrouds were requested and what really happened to that polar bear in Piccadilly… Find out who was exiled in SE19, and what was all the fuss about a fig leaf?

The book was written to follow Jenkins’ trilogy of London books, Another Man’s London, London Lives and London Tales, and also as a return to the city following his explorative book Further Afield. Not just an entertaining read but also an educational pocket guide, Return to London covers some of the unique facts about London’s history that have largely remained unknown.

Review:

(I got an e-copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars. A fast and interesting read, with plenty of little details and usually unknown facts about quite a few places in London. As someone who’s visited this city a couple of times only, but likes learning about it, and is always looking for a “quirkier” kind of tourism than the basic monuments and museums, this is definitely going to be useful at some point. Another good thing here is the author’s tone, who clearly loves this city, as well, and it shows (in a positive way, that is).

The book might not hold as much appeal to a reader who’s never foot in London, though, because it rests on unspoken previous spoken knowledge of the various districts: some details can only be fully understood when you know a bit about this or that borough, how it came to be, and so on. I wouldn’t recommend it as a “London 101” introduction book.

Also, I would’ve liked a few more pictures. There’s usually one per chapter, while said chapters deal with so many more places than just a couple. (Granted, I read it on the Kindle app on my small-screen Smartphone; not the smartest move ever—no pun intended.)

Pick this one if you’re planning a trip to London, want to discover more about its history, and are interested in seeing less travelled places there.

Yzabel / August 3, 2013

Review: King Arthur

King Arthur by Daniel Mersey

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Despite his enduring popularity, King Arthur remains the most enigmatic of Britain’s legendary heroes. In this new book, author Dan Mersey retells the great stories of Arthur, while exploring the different facets of Arthurian myth, from the numerous, conflicting theories of his historical origin, through the tales of Welsh folklore and Medieval romance, and concluding with an examination of his various portrayals in the modern media. Presented with both classic and newly commissioned artwork, this book is an easy-to-read, yet highly detailed introduction to the complex body of myth and legend that surrounds Britain’s greatest hero.

Review:

(I received this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

One thing I can’t deny “King Arthur” is how well-presented and beautiful the book is. Even though I only had the PDF version, I could see that the paper version must be quite nice to have in one’s hands.

The book offers a summary of the traditional, literary Arthurian corpus, then focuses more on what mught have been actual historical sources. In itself, it’s pretty short, but said corpus is so wide anyway that I think we have to take this book as an introduction and an invitation to check out facts and fiction by ourselves.

If anything, though, I found the first part to be somewhat paradoxical: it would be a good introduction for newcomers to the Arthurian legends, yet at the same time, the author glosses over those a little too fast for a real newcomer to get everything in.