Noel C. Ice

Actioned Packed From One Who was There

Revisado: 07-27-24

The author, a reporter on the ground during the Kosovo/Serbia war, narrated the book, and his enthusiasm resonated in the telling.

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Excellent.

Revisado: 04-21-22

If you have studied the Battle of Midway, you probably know a lot about the American strategy a d tactics, but precious little about the politics behind the scene that played such a significant role in fashioning the Japanese aspect of the the battle. This book fills a much needed gap in the story by letting the reader see what was going on in the minds of the Japanese. This well researched book is a valuable addition to the corpus of knowledge that we have gained in examining the battle here 75 years later.

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One of the best books I have ever read in my life.

Revisado: 08-14-19

Did you think that life just popped up sui generis all over the place independently. Well, it didnt. There is but one last common universal ancestor LUCA that gave rise to bacteria and archaea, which in turn gave rise to all complex life in the form of the eukaryotes, i.e., plants, animals, trees, slime molds, yeasts and everything else. How that happened is a vital question, and Nick Lane gives us the best answers we have so far.

I have read dozens of books on this subject, and though they basically agree about the existence of a LUCA and, for the most part, the other major details of life's origins, none is as engagingly written with the same lucidity. I have read everything Nick Lane has written for the Kindle and heartedly recommend them all for those who have curious minds and are fascinated by the questions of who we are and how we got here.

One implication from the science of abiogenesis is that creating life from inanimate matter is not easy. It only took a half billion years or so for bacteria and archaea to evolve, but then nothing happened for four billion years until an archaea and a bacteria merged together, contributing to the former the mitochondria needed to provide the energy necessary for the evolution of complex life. Then natural selection got to work to create everything else we call life, fairly quickly.

Nagging questions remain such as how did LUCA evolve complex nano work engines such as ribosomes and RNA. Did RNA catalyze itself? If so, how? There is so much we still don't know, but we do know from recent advances in neurobiology that there is so much similarity between all forms of life, complex and otherwise, that convergent evolution cannot explain it all. For instance ribosomes, RNA and DNA, unlike, say, the eye, did not just pop up and evolve independently over and over again, emerging full-blown from the Jovian brow. How they emerged in the first place is a tough enough question, but having emerged, they were so successful that they persisted and natural selection did the rest.

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Paul Ham

Revisado: 07-28-14

What made the experience of listening to 1913 the most enjoyable?

Paul Ham's writing. He is an exceptionally gifted writer as well as a first rate historian. He knows how to turn a phrase, and I found myself constantly highlighting sentences that were especially well put. It was delightful to come across a prose style that even in a fiction writer would set him apart. Also, he is not afraid to make a judgment now and then, which, when appropriate, is welcome from a historian who does not overdo it. One such judgement is that the leaders of the various countries who fought during the great tragedy known as WW I is that they more or less accepted the inevitability of a war that was not inevitable. For example, none so much as proposed a conference to discuss the issues that preceded and led to the War. As long as a historian is not being overtly tendentious, there is nothing wrong with calling it as you see it, and this author is not afraid to do that when plainly called for.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

I am actively seeking out to read or listen to other works by Paul Ham, based on how impressed I was by (a) his writing skills, and (b) his willingness to state plainly what went wrong and why on issues that cry out for someone to do just that.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas