James T. Dunn, Jr.

Fascinating Story of Unseen Life All Around Us

Revisado: 07-03-23

A difficult topic -- dismissed by many as yucky germs -- made riveting by Ed Yong by telling it as the story of the researchers who built the discipline. Surmounting obstacles, overcoming skepticism, running down dead ends and opening new pathways, the stories Yong gives us elevate the unseen, ignored and feared into the catalysts of human drama and understanding. Read with a verve that communicates the excitement of the hunt.

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As clear and simple as the topic permits

Revisado: 05-20-23

Complaints that the writing is too difficult remind me of Euclid's reply to Pharaoh Ptolemy I, who wanted a shortcut to geometry "There is no royal road to geometry".

Pross breaks a perpetual puzzle into clearly outlined problems strung together as steps in a sequence that solves a knotty problem. Yes, the details of the reasoning that satisfies each necessary step requires attentive listening and they touch upon big concepts in chemistry and biology. But if you think clearly, you don't need a deep background in chemistry or biology (I have little of either).

We live in the Internet age of ready access to superficial knowledge amid an ocean of information/disinformation. This book follows the better path, and that requires effort on the reader's part.

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The Protectress & the God Who Must Kill

Revisado: 12-15-22

A strange, mythic story of an African woman captured and her long and loving struggle with a God who must kill, as any God ruling over mortal beings must. The story unfolds as a tale of two people of special powers, Anyanyu and Doro, a protectress and a an owner and breeder, working amid the intersecting lineages of a race of witches, seen as a misunderstood and persecuted people seeking their own destiny. It is almost an allegory of the incarnation of Christ, re-envisioned as a struggle between the Son of Man (the Daughter, rather) and the Angel of Death.

The gifted reader, Robin Miles, shifts gender and age, accent and culture, almost as readily as do Anyanyu and Doro.

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Rare mix of Intellectual Depth & Practicality

Revisado: 11-17-22

Engagingly written and engagingly read by the author himself (always a good sign), Adam Grant makes a strong case that the ability and willingness to rethink one's views is the capstone of adaptive intelligence, better suited to a world of accelerating change than codified "best practices" . Applicable to any field in which change, learning, and adaptation occur, from education to entrepreneurship. from politics to engineering, from creative arts to management, from thinking about thinking to science itself. Powerful and original thinking, backed by experiment and data, presented clearly, simply, and with humor.

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Networks v. Hierarchies: yin and yang of politics

Revisado: 10-29-22

Thoughtful, enlightening, original account of the cyclically interwoven interplay of vertical and horizontal power structures across political, social, scientific, industrial, and technological contexts. As always with Niall Ferguson, big, complex ideas are presented clearly through vividly depicted mini-narratives illustrating those ideas in relatable scenarios, events, and characters.

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Prescient 2008 essay

Revisado: 10-28-22

A 12-year old essay on geopolitics that looks prescient rather than dated. Nicely balanced between realism and pro-democracy idealism. What it suggests as probable or inevitable has been borne out; nothing has occurred by Autumn 2022 that it had ruled out.

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Well-crafted noir built on sci-fi premise

Revisado: 09-27-20

Brisk short story, stylish and witty noir treatment, narrated with verve and great vocal characterizations. Premise: having acquired a god-like power of resurrection, that power is institutionalized as a typical bureaucracy. Dispatcher and cop together investigate a missing persons case.

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Four compass points of 20th Century thought

Revisado: 09-24-20

Intriguing 4-POV biography of 4 distinctive & iconic reactions to the emergence of a new phase of modernity embodied in Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin & Ludwig Wittgenstein. The contextualized account of the development of these 4 perspectives, and of their overlaps and divergences, is fascinating, though ending somewhat abruptly. The performance is vivid, it's occasionally strange pronunciations underline the edgy intertwining of Germanic and Judaic cultures and personalities, all against the ominous backdrop of the decay of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Anti-Semitism. Well worth hearing.

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