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Raw, Haunting, and Wide-ranging

Revisado: 05-12-23

I’m glad I read this fascinating book, but it is a lot to digest.

The author recounts his own harrowing story, while also summarizing the sceintific research on suicide, surveying the best regarded literature and philosophy on the topic, and recounting the stories of famous deaths.

But this book is not only about suicide, and more specifically, chronic suicidal ideation, but also alcoholism, addiction, selfishness, AA, madness, and traumatic childhoods.

If Noonday Demon was a 70/30 ratio of research to memoir, this is probably the inverse of that.

The first two chapters were positively riveting. The book becomes a little slow and academic in the middle philosophical section and the last third is more redemptive and instructive. I think I will go by a hard copy in order to have the chapter on how to prevent suicide and the resources in the appendix.

An unforgettable book.

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A Story That Had to Be Told

Revisado: 07-07-17

This was the best book on Reconstruction and the Supreme Court's betrayal of the Civil Right's Amendments that I've read yet.
The story of the massacre is thrilling and full of heroes, villains and anti heroes. It would make a great movie. The legal chapters are no less exciting and provide a concise explanation of how Radical Republican efforts were thwarted by violence, votes, and legal wrangling of the Southern white supremacists.
I recommend this book highly, especially to people who want to know what happened after the Civil War but aren't ready to sit through an exhaustive history.

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Great Fun!

Revisado: 04-03-17

I actually let this one moulder in my queue for more than a year. I had planned on returning it after hearing the author downplay the significance of the Magna Carta in the introduction. However dry the actual document may be though, Dan Jones saves this book by ensconcing the details of the Great Charter in the larger story of the Plantagenet kings and their constant abuse of their barons. The book thrills with descriptions of castles, knights, siege engines, crossbows, and carnage, with great assistance from the enthusiastic narrator. Standout chapters are the vivid descriptions of 13th Century London and of the siege of Rochester.
I wish these books were around when I was a pre-teen obsessed with all things medieval but annoyed by wizards and dragons.
I will definitely check out his other books.

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A primer to Diamond's other works?

Revisado: 03-14-17

This broad ranging book reads to me like a an overview of Jared Diamond's other books, covering each of his pet topics: Our similarity to chimps, a circumstantial (rather than racist) explanation for the success of European conquerors, the breadcrumb trail that is Proto-Indo-European linguistics, Papua New Guinea anecdotes, bird taxonomy, man's long history of environmental degradation and species eradication.
Mr. Diamond seems less assured as a writer here, and there are some rather daft tangents, (warning, at one point, of the existential danger of searching for alien life.) but overall it is a fun and enlightening book and may be a helpful primer anyone not steeled for the epic slog through Guns, Germs, and Steel or Collapse.

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Where we're at, how we got here, where we're headed.

Revisado: 09-29-16

I'm a transmission lineman by trade, so I have a personal interest in this topic. That being said, this book fits well in to the category of general interest non-fiction.
Bakken has written a nimble and engaging account of the history of the grid, a concise and simple explanation of the challenges facing the utility industry and then surveys the proposed solutions.
In short, Bakken's thesis, as I understand it, is that the centralized grid, built in the last century by the regulated monopoly utilities, is not equipped to handle the vagaries of the renewable energy revolution. Her prediction seems to be that the grid will have to be decentralized, with innumerable small power producers feeding in to the common grid, the whole thing balanced by ubiquitous automation.

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Behavioral economics

Revisado: 07-22-15

A comprehensive, though fun and conversational telling of the development of 'behavioral economics' from one of its progenitors.

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