Editor's Note: Stephen Gencarella, the author of 'Wicked, Weird & Wily Yankees' will be the guest speaker at the Lyme Public Library's Annual Meeting on Tuesday, June 26, at 7 p.m. What a pleasure: to read an engaging book by a close neighbor (Steve and his family live just down Tinker Lane from me) and to encourage other Lymies to do the same! Steve, a professor at the … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Wicked, Weird & Wily Yankees’ by Stephen Gencarella
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Moonglow’ by Michael Chabon
This is, at one and the same time, a work of fiction and the author’s actual family history, selectively combined and embellished. It is the story of Michael Chabon’s grandfather and grandmother, recreated as a totally engaging novel, covering more than five decades in Germany, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City, Florida and California. He “recreates” these two … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Moonglow’ by Michael Chabon
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Mountains of the Mind’ by Robert Macfarlane
Have you ever been mesmerized by a mountain? I have ... Mount Fuji, from the waters of Suruga Wan, Mounts Rainier and Baker from Puget Sound on a cloudless day, and even Mount Kearsarge in central New Hampshire when I actually climbed it with some of our family. What is it about mountains that seem to entrance our minds? Robert Macfarlane, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Mountains of the Mind’ by Robert Macfarlane
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed’ by Dean King
This is a confession of an addict. In early 1993, I was urged by a long-time sailing friend to begin reading a series of novels by Patrick O’Brian about an English skipper and his shipboard surgeon set in the Napoleonic Wars. I did. By now I’ve read – three times, no less –all 21 of the famous Jack Aubrey-Stephen Maturin novels, plus six of his other books, plus King’s 2000 … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed’ by Dean King
Reading Uncertainly? ‘The Undoing Project’ by Michael Lewis
No, this is not the story of a baseball team savant, who doubted conventional statistics and reused them with extraordinary success (Moneyball). It is not a personal disclosure of the seamy underbelly of financial markets (The Big Short; Flash Boys; Liar’s Poker). Rather, it is the story of learning how our minds work, of behavioral economics, and of the unusual and highly … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘The Undoing Project’ by Michael Lewis
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Lab Girl’ by Hope Jahren
This month, let’s try an intensely introspective autobiography of a botanical scientist, wrapped in a biography of trees, flowers, and plants. Hope Jahren, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, writes the clear, coherent, and engaging story of her upbringing in Minnesota, her education, travel and work in California, Georgia, Maryland, and Hawaii, … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Lab Girl’ by Hope Jahren
Reading Uncertainly: ‘Nutshell’ by Ian McEwan
Can you imagine an entire novel, spoken through the senses of a foetus, awaiting his entry into this world? McEwan’s opening sentence sets the stage: “Here I am, upside down in a woman.” From that point, this young man extols first the “condition of the modern foetus. Just think: nothing to do but be and grow, where growing is hardly a conscious act. The joy of pure … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly: ‘Nutshell’ by Ian McEwan
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Payoff’ by Dan Ariely
What is “motivation” and how does it affect our daily activity? Is motivation “central to our lives”? Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, explores the human feeling of identification with and empathy for others, suggesting these two feelings help stimulate motivation, while their absence destroys it. This brief book (103 pages) combine stories … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Payoff’ by Dan Ariely
Reading Uncertainly? ‘The Tide’ by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
A present from a New Hampshire daughter, The Tide is a delightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking mix of lucid, often poetic, language with numerous literary quotations plus detailed scientific explanations of the tides that embellish our lives on this earth. It is Aldersey-Williams’s thought-experiment. It is also his history of the oceanic tides, mixed with a bit of … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘The Tide’ by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Being Mortal’ by Atul Gawande
Here is a challenge and a question. The challenge: “Our decision-making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality.” The question: Can the medical profession change from its former “priestly doctor-knows-best” and its current “informative” models to a more … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Being Mortal’ by Atul Gawande
Reading Uncertainly: Chaos Monkeys: ‘Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, by Antonio Garcia Martinez
Let’s face it, we are all, every one of us, irrevocably married to this new and all-pervasive technology. We are computers and they are us. So isn’t it time that we learn something more about its source? Antonio Garcia Martinez takes us on a four-year, inside-tour of Silicon Valley and San Francisco, an autobiography of life in the Valley: long-winded, discursive, sarcastic, … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly: Chaos Monkeys: ‘Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, by Antonio Garcia Martinez
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Notes From Old Lyme: Life on the Marsh and Other Essays’ by Sydney M. Williams
Another neighbor turns to words, to look at where and how we live. Sydney Williams, formerly of Smith’s Neck in Old Lyme and now of Essex, gives us an engaging and thoughtful autobiography and personal peregrination, in fits and starts (brief essays), leading us from Madison, CT and Peterborough, NH, to Massachusetts, New Hampshire again, the U.S. Army, Greenwich, CT, New … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Notes From Old Lyme: Life on the Marsh and Other Essays’ by Sydney M. Williams
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Divergent Paths – The Academy and the Judiciary’ by Richard A. Posner
Judge and Professor Posner explores the apparent diverging paths of our judiciary, especially the Federal, from the academies that teach our would-be lawyers, some of them advancing to become judges. This is a sobering view. Forgive me for an extensive quote, but it summarizes in one page the 400 pages of his thesis: “ . . . at this writing the United States exhibits an … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Divergent Paths – The Academy and the Judiciary’ by Richard A. Posner
Reading Uncertainly? ‘Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics’ by Richard Thaler
This is the engaging story of the development and rise to practical significance of “behavioral economics,” the recognition that we “Humans” (as Professor Thaler calls us) are inevitably flawed in our dealing with finance and the market. It is also the personal biography of the author, along with many of the most important thinkers of the past 50 years. The idea that our … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics’ by Richard Thaler
Reading Uncertainly? ‘The Invention of Nature’ by Andrea Wulf
For those who attended this year's Florence Griswold Museum-sponsored Samuel Thorne Memorial Lecture, which took place on Nov. 12, this month's book review will ring significant bells. Not entirely by coincidence, we venture, our esteemed reviewer, Felix Kloman of Lyme, selected 'The Invention of Nature' as his book of choice this month and its author -- Andrea Wulf -- was the … [Read more...] about Reading Uncertainly? ‘The Invention of Nature’ by Andrea Wulf