Summer for the Gods (Edward J. Larson, 2000 (with 2020 Afterword)

Book club selection courtesy Zach.  Session held June 7, 2026 at Zach's place, our first in-person meeting since February 2020. Useful book. 

Focus is on the 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial. Good rundown of the trial, lead-in, follow-up. Kind of odd - the town seeks out the trial for publicity/civic growth.  Celebrities on both sides who tend to make it about themselves or their pet beliefs.

William Jennings Bryan is old; I associate him moreso with 19th century presidential runs and the "cross of gold" speech.

I think author could have condensed this! Parts felt repetitious. 

Interesting, timely (evergreen, really) things to think about. 

Things that struck me:

* What about creation itself? Assume evolution is basically correct (as I do) - that doesn’t take us back to the very beginning. So how did it all start?? Who set off the Big Bang (or whatever)? Is this purely scientific? If not, then what? Seems relevant to a book devoted to creationism, but not mentioned.

* Fundamentalists picked on for as long as I can remember; an easy target and certainly some odd beliefs. But beliefs of other groups can feel the same way - taken on faith or tribal loyalty, not science. Harder to see when it's your own tribe.  

    * 2020 quote from CDC honcho showing up on sixth anniversary of Floyd fiasco - “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”  

    * NPR tweet: “Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests. ‘White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,’ they wrote.”

Other recent/current beliefs. IQ and SAT are racist and not predictive. No differences in traits among groups. Everyone would perform the same if given the same opportunity. A man can be a woman if he says he really wants to be. Etc. 

* Who decides what is taught? Big topic in the book. For the mainstream government school, majoritarianism seems the right approach. But what if you are a progressive in a fundamentalist district and this leads to your child being taught creationism? Anti-vax? What if you don’t subscribe to progressive beliefs and your school is teaching that there is >2 genders, that a man can turn into a woman? What if the school is teaching that 1619 Project is actual history?  Apologizing for white privilege? Climate doomerism? 

    * There never can be a great answer - somebody has to decide curriculum and some others will be unhappy. 

    * Plato and the guardians. 

    * Best available protection seems to be that nobody should be trapped - vouchers. Yes there will be fraud and ridiculousness - but it cannot be worse in aggregate than what the government schools are delivering. Let the parents decide.

* In government schools - the teacher's words are not a freedom of speech issue. Somebody decides curriculum, and the teacher teaches.

This book mostly written from perspective that fundamentalists are the problem.  How to explain the persistence if not growth of fundamentalism? 

Try abortion (mentioned late in the book), is science enough to explain commencement of a person's life? 

Afterword told me this book was written years ago. Would be very much off track if written now. 

Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir, 2021)

Book club selection per Lon, session held March 22.

Entertaining yes.

I generally struggle to find much value in science fiction but liked this well enough.

Kind of fun to muse about what alien life might be like - common building block roots? Evolution dictated by planet’s environment? This book shows a version where the aliens are similar to humans (other than what the environment required). This part was interesting to me.

Otherwise so much like the Martian - which isn’t a terrible thing - sciency problems keep cropping up, sciency solutions are come up by our hero, no matter what.  Rocky as an ongoing “deus ex machina” - plot device to surmount the insurmountable.

The “save the planet” rhetoric got tiresome.  Not plausible that the various nations would work together like this.

I rather liked the ending.  Made sense that he would settle there, didn’t see a teaching job coming.

Kind of surprised at the overt Roman Catholicism with the “Hail Mary” name, I thought that was out of fashion.

Even better - perhaps my favorite touch - the archangel Gabriel’s full greeting is “Hail Mary full of grace” - think of the hero’s name.

Quick read, just fine. Movie coming out. 

Ghosts of Hiroshima (Charles Pellegrino, 2025)

Book club selection per POC, session held Feb 1, 2026.

Some interesting items about the two A-bombs dropped on Japan but I could never quite figure out what the author's point was.  Coincidences of a few folks who experienced the bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, OK.

Couldn't keep the names straight but that worked out.

Lots of details or suggestions about physics or nuclear stuff happening immediately at the bomb drop and then in the aftermath.  Sounded cool but I didn't really understand much here. 

I was interested in the discussion of coming up with a flight plan that enabled the plane to escape the bomb. Hadn't thought about how bombs normally proceed in the direction of the dropping bomber.

Japan anything but a victim.  What was up with Japan (going back to Mejii Restoration)? The "cherry blossom" weapon - more suicide bombing. Ask China.

The POWs becoming captors, instantly - compliance/obedience.

Talking about how terrible it all was but couldn't really pick up a POV as to who was doing the wrong thing here. Sure everyone agrees that having these weapons around is a bad thing but probably also agrees better for US than Russia, Germany, Japan.  Today: Iran, etc.

Japanese internment in the US - mostly taking the second-guessing approach "oh how awful". 

Hadn't known or thought about the discrimination in Japan against folks with exposure - either had or could get "disease X" - affected jobs, marriages, schooling.

Same with Japanese who had emigrated to US and then sought to return to Japan.

Lots of cranes by a dying little girl - OK. 

Working hard to weave in Trump.

Couldn't see how it added much to John Hersey's 1946 classic ("Hiroshima") - which followed six survivors - very immediate - lacked backward-looking perspective but that probably was a plus. 

The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese (2023)

Rose picked this for book club. Kind of long but it was OK. The second time we've been asked to read a Verghese book.

Thought it would be duplicative of the other book, but no so much. 

Kerala as a place of interest, I just know it’s different but not so much why.  Water! Much more criss-cross with the west than many other places in India - catholics, islam, etc. Roman coin hoards, Hard for the Mughuls to make headway. 

100 years of solitude feel - overlapping names in the generations.

The idea that Elsie didn't much love Phillipose, even told him that she believed he would not interfere with her work. 

A little weird that young Elsie guiding Digby's hand was too much like a lover.

Big Ammachi is a fine character - kind of central to the book. She is married into a family that experiences death through water or drowning, sometimes in odd ways, repeating over generations.

Her husband also an incredibly fine human

The way Digby’s hand was repaired (somewhat) - I just ran into that in an X post. Had no idea. 

A version of Matron from the prior book was a key character here.

The Communist stuff always strikes me as absurd - meaning the author probably described it accurately! Lenin Evermore, of course. 

Even tossed in a reference to liberation theology - same.

The idea of the Western Ghats as a protective barrier.

The elephant - huh? 

So much leprosy.  Digby immunity impressive.  

Destiny of the Republic - A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (Candice Millard, 2011)

(308 pages)

Book club selection per Nicole.

An era of US history I don't know much about. Garfield was elected in 1880 and assassinated shortly thereafter.  The author focuses on four people - 

1. James Garfield - author presents him as a great guy; not running for president (or at least effectively demure about it) but becomes nominee after an impasse.  Great orator, family guy, has a farm in Ohio, ancestors carved out life on the farm.  Civil War veteran with success despite no experience. 

2. The assassin - Guiteau or somesuch name - pretty much mentally ill, not very interesting. Minimal or zero security for US presidents at this era.

3. Alexander Graham Bell - had achieved great success with the telephone, now thought to apply related principles to create a device to locate the bullet embedded in Garfield. Probably on a useful track but this was difficult to pull off.  I was interested in the descriptions of Bell's creative process - in a way it reminded me of Mandelstam's (per the book immediately prior).  Inventive outbursts, keep going while the flame is burning!

4. Lister (of antiseptic medicine fame) and Bliss (Garfield's doctor) - avatars for the then state-of-the-art medical practices.  US doctors generally uninterested in Lister's ideas at this phase.  Bliss poking his fingers into the wound - guess what, lots of infection! Not that long ago.

Medical treatment in DC in the summertime - intense heat - a group try to create a sort of air-conditioning system.  Includes John Wesley Powell.

Insanity defense in the assassin's trial.  England's McNaughton rule.

Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese, 2009)

658 pages.

A good story.  Long, but well constructed.  All the pieces fit, including application of medical specialty.

Ghosh as a perfect person. Also Sister Mary Praise. And Matron.

Hema (and others) bringing across many things we saw in India (rangoli, mask, food).

Genet kind of an annoying character; her mother not stable.

Some idea of what it might have felt like to move from India to Aden and then to Ethiopia.

Gave a reader like me some feel of the uncertainty in unstable government situations (I of course have not had to deal with this).  We grew up familiar with Selassie, Mengistu.  And heard of Eritrea. Author speaks to Italian influence here - more than I would have expected.

I found especially striking the part where Marion lands in NYC for the first time.  The sensations of a new world - one could kind of imagine how this might feel. This was a favorite section. (Reminded me, though in the smallest way possible, of returning to that same airport in June 1975 after three weeks in Europe, though my surprise was mostly seeing (being reminded of) the hugeness of American automobiles and the width of American roads.)

Roman Catholic nuns had so many highly valuable, unselfish roles for a few centuries there.  Kind of sorry that went out of fashion.

Matron's idea of "Nurse Sense" - that made sense to me.  Applies in other professions as well.

The Anthropocene Reviewed (John Green, 2021)

Book club selection, per Zach.

"Anthropocene" in title gave it a scientific feel with pretty much no relevance to the little stories.

Per the introduction, I also thought he was going to talk a lot about how humans affect the earth but then don't know much how to manage the change they're causing.  That didn't seem to happen much at all.

Apparently the guy is a pretty successful author so I'll assume it's just me who's missing out.  But these stories generally seemed pretty shallow, and weren't saved by the "reviews" at the end of each.

I liked the one about the "three farmers" in the photograph.

He's interested in communicating about his anxieties etc.  Written in Covid era and this comes through way too much.

Discussion of pain was thought-provoking. Viral meningitis.  

I liked the "World's Largest Ball of Paint" story a lot.  I need to see it. A good way to think of our miniscule contributions.

I liked the idea of measuring time in Halleys (comet circuits).

My book appears to be signed!

Trust (Hernan Diaz, 2022)

(402 pages) 

Book club selection, session not held.

The book's structure is clever; and I liked the title of the first part ("Bonds").  But I just read "The Alexandria Quartet", which does a deeper dive into a similar structure.

I didn't care that much about any of the characters. 

Where did Vanner get his information for book one?  Bevel and wife both scrupulously private.   

Author is dutifully feminist, the only two strong figures are the Italian writer and Bevel's wife. 

Author has picked up a fair amount of financial terminology. But the notion that a single individual (even if a brilliant woman) can move multiple markets over multiple years is ridiculous. Also the notion that an individual can study reports overnight and make major moves the next day on a consistent basis (this was going on before brilliant wife took over).

Not to mention that this wife, without much schooling, completely masters disparate disciplines such as literature, painting, music. In addition to high finance. 

Not sure where the author lands on the usual questions about socialism and capitalism (anarchism also in this telling). but it feels standard issue. Capitalism as restricting freedom!

Why did she marry Bevel if so strong, independent - just a victim of the times? Denies him any closeness.

Book 4 - long, lucid explanations of her financial genius don't fit with the rest of Book 4 - short snippets (and why would she write these long explanations, except as a plot device)?

Anarchist father fits the type; see also Joseph Conrad's description in "The Secret Agent."

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (Yuen Yuen Ang, 2022)

(Kindle)

Book club selection (via Rose; session held (via Zoom) June 12, 2022).

The problem of development.  I much like thinking about it but the challenges, the local difficulties.

calling China "capitalist"; yet all the interviews seem to be with government officials; the entire story is about government control; five levels etc; what relevance the long imperial history - bureaucrats, exams, top-down has been accepted forever - ?

Deng - a leader.  His "Southern Tour" revives lagging momentum.

Willingness to "let some get rich first" was a key.

And China has accomplished a lot.

more broadly:  societies that don't tolerate inequality also don't improve economically.  yet the "inequality" complaint makes people miserable.

TVEs (township and village enterprises) - (from corporate law perspective) who really owned/controlled?  neither state-owned or owned by private individuals - ? surrogate entrepreneurialism - ?  I didn't understand.

what relevance England, US, Holland?  emergence there centuries ago was not complicated by an overweening global economy

author's theme:  coevolution: harness weak instits to build markets; then emerging markets stimulate better instits; strong instits preserve markets.  at the beginning, settle for "good enough" governance (aid agencies shouldn't strictly insist on "democracy", however defined).

corruption

aid agencies killing local initiative, opportunity.  Is it permissible to compare to domestic welfare programs?

functioning administrative states left behind by colonizers (Singapore, India) - to what effect?

Nollywood an odd case

I liked the interview approach, the review of local records - an interesting dive into the situation in various Chinese locales.  Just not sure how far it takes us.

The Good Lord Bird (James McBride, 2013)

(458 pages)

Book club selection (via Zach; session held (via Zoom) April 24, 2022).

I was wondering whether this 2013 book would be written the same way in 2022. All-talk wealthy urban whites now are considered  heroes instead of windbags - as unsparingly portrayed in this book. Would the author even use the term "slave" in 2022?  Would it be "enslaved person?"  Anyway.

Author clearly is a good writer, and the book moves right along - gives a glimpse into the world of Kansas-Nebraska when law and order barely existed.  Bad.

Interesting glimpses into slave relationship (even if we have no chance to have a good feel) - the danger of reading; "sir" every time; no backtalking; illuminating conversations about the pain of separation when family members sold down the river (still unimaginable).  Being a slave in any geography at any point in history seems mostly awful.

As Onion deals with Annie - says being invisible as male doesn't make much difference because invisible as a Negro anyway - third parties just see your race. Hmm.

I don't have a good feel for how much John Brown moved the needle.  He certainly was in the 1960s-1970s history books.  His sons play a prominent role. In this telling, he comes across as much like as an insane killer as anything else.

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman appear.

The Age of Wonder (Richard Holmes, 2008)

(484 pages)

Book club selection (via me; session held (via Zoom) January 30, 2022).

I had read this in 2010, my summary from back then is here.  I think I liked it better this second time around.

Notes used for book club remarks:

Age of Enrichment - starts c. 1800 - how this fit in.  Industrial Revolution and trade preceded . . . knowledge, efficiency, productivity - why we are wealthy today.

General approach - lots of science/technology - this alone made the book worthwhile for me - some of the details about how the pioneers functioned, biographical touches

The difference from similar books:  made far more interesting by linking these developments to how it felt, how it affected thinking about the universe, religion, man's place, etc., biographies

Banks - brought the exotic to life - a different lifestyle - seeing new worlds, new value systems.  Praised by Linnaeus!  Then his long role at Royal Society.

Herschel - size of the universe; likelihood of other galaxies.  Finding Uranus. His sister.  Geography suited to celebrity visitors - fixed location, near London etc.

Ballomania - thinking of today's space entrepreneurs - private wealth funding.  Immediate recognition of military utility.  

Mungo Park. The "unknownness" of Africa.  Imperial considerations.

Davy - Lengthy story but perhaps the most interesting.  The notion that chemistry could explain nearly everything, including workings of the brain and replacement of the soul. That we can invent safety lamps etc to deal with most any problem.  Then discovering how complicated it all is. Important as we consider events of 19th and early 20th century, their optimism was not entirely irrational. Incredible level of interaction with famous poets and others. Defining what “science“ would be going forward, the idea of hope (similar to poetry), looking forward to better things.

Did the Romantic poets and artists inspire the scientists (using the newly-coined term), or vice versa?  Strong synergies, I thought this part was really interesting.

Throughout the book, not this chapter alone, the idea that we knew so little circa 1800s.

When folks look back in say 2222 - how will we look circa 2022?

The ongoing tension with France, the way Bonaparte dominated British thinking. Children were threatened with Boney, not a bogeyman!

Scientists as polymaths . . . Goethe (Sorrows of Young Werther) and study of light.

Frankenstein chapter - this was probably the most interesting - another example of developing a new way of understanding key processes - thinking of Kalinithi and looking at brain lobes.  Vitalism.  Studying the cranium, classifying.  Things we haven't made much progress understanding.

Fear of science destroying wonder - not new.  

When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi, 2016)

Book club selection (via PJ; session held (via Zoom) November 21, 2021).

A doctor who wishes to also be an author gets cancer, and writes about it.

Preface is written by a friend - talks a lot about Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici".  This struck me because a quote from the book is on frontispiece of my copy of Bach's Goldberg Variations.  Beautiful description of music (written well before Bach but still).  (Not yet inspired to read Browne's book, however.)

Useful recounting of things we've heard before - doctor as listener, guide.  The awfulness of cancer treatments.  What it felt like with the clock ticking, loudly.

Author in the early going was trying to figure out "the relationship between meaning, life, and death" - lots of discussion about this.  Thinking perhaps he would be the one to figure out the un-figure-out-able.

Husband-wife relationship - a little hard to read - husband never really gave up prioritizing career.  Then the illness intervened.

Dropping author names, similar to Amor Towles.  Ivan Ilych (Tolstoy) as a deep discussion of dying.

Some discussion of religion - the idea of original sin - which I think he described well - forget the theological strangeness, it speaks to something observed in human nature from the beginning.

Having a child in this kind of situation.

You can't read this without the main message being - don't screw up the days you have on trivia.  Not a new idea, but this is a good vessel to express it.

Metamorphoses (Ovid, 8CE)

(512 pages (with notes))

Book club selection (via Nicole; session held (via Zoom) October 2021).

Another book I was interested in, but wouldn't have picked up absent a book club assignment.  Ovid's masterpiece; weaves in lots of myths.

Creation story right upfront - even in Roman times (and before), an Eden myth.  Things were great!  Then humans screwed things up!  Then a Flood.

Echo, Narcissus.   Phaethon has trouble with chariot - Phaeton automobiles.  Orpheus.  Orpheum theaters worldwide.  That aspect goes on and on - interesting.

Things we see in art galleries:  Andromeda's rescue; Rape of Europa; etc.

Jove a bit of a roustabout.  Not alone. 

Lots of violence, but how about Book 6, p. 144, Tereus - takes wife's sister, cuts out her tongue, his son pays, he dines - even by standards of all these stories, this was most graphic so far

What does this tell us about the listeners?  Meaningfully different than today's common TV fare?

Made me muse about a world where almost no one could read, and even fewer could own a manuscript (book).  Does predominately oral delivery encourage this type of literature?  

And how widely were these stories known?  Perhaps locals just knew their local stories?  Did the stories spread in the same form, or did [central] government have the tools to make things universal?  (Thinking of Discovery of France - centralized control of schooling for propaganda; printing.)

Triumph of Christianity concepts about ethics not connected to religion - and how.  (so many examples incl. rape, incest).  How the time was ripe for a new religion - these stories were old; Ovid's retelling masterful yet backward-looking and servile; not inspirational!

So many folks turned into birds or rocks or whatever - seemed odd.  I started wondering whether this was related to their view of the afterlife.  Even good folks could only foresee a dismal life as a "shade".  Perhaps virtuous victims were getting a good deal by living on as an animal or rock (avoiding both the rest of their now-unhappy life and also afterlife as a "shade")?  Unvirtuous victims get stuck as some undesirable animal or rock?  What is this metamorphosis business?

Ajax's debate with Ulysses was entertaining - classic brawn v. brain

I liked when the stories had more length - this happened toward the end, with Troy, Aeneas

Kind of odd how quickly things are skipped through - necessity, I suppose - Achilles death doesn't even mention his heel.  Dido just a line or two (she has her own opera!)

Fascinating to me that regimes controlled artists even 2000 years ago (and no doubt much farther back than that).  

Boys in the Boat - 9 Americans and their Quest for Olympic Gold (Daniel Brown, 2014)

Book club selection (via POC; session held (via Zoom) September 6, 2021).

A glimpse of faraway Seattle (distant in time and geography) - useful.

A view of the Depression, the dust storms, the national mood.  Hoovervilles.  Genuine "hard times."  Useful context for the 1930s.  How the perception of "hard times" has evolved.

Many of the 1930s Washington stories resonated with stories we were hearing about the Depression when growing up in 1960s Iowa - vivid memories - and relatively fresh, the Depression didn't end until WWII.  (It would be like us today talking about events from late 1990s.)  They wouldn't have been surprised to hear of children in Washington working like adults, folks doing without, they were doing their version of the same.  Describes a hand-cranked cream separator.  Laying asphalt - classic summer job.  Making do.

Just before embarking for Berlin - author describes the 1936 heat wave as the rowers spend time in NYC.  EMG family always talked about that summer - crop wilted, dragging mattresses onto lawn to be able to sleep.  (At age 7, he thought it was an adventure.)

While in NYC hotel - author mentions the rowers meeting Joe Fortenberry (captain of Olympic basketball team) - Antiques Roadshow tells us he was credited with the first slam dunk, and with prompting a rule change to outlaw defensive goaltending.  Hitler required outdoor basketball - gold medal game was played in sand in a driving rainstorm.  Appraised his gold medal at $100-150k.

Pocock as a mystical figure - compares to who?  Horse whisperers.  Author says Pocock's grandfather worked on Stanley's Lady Alice!

History of rowing; how it doesn't start, but becomes, elite.  Development of shells.  This was interesting.

Got a little carried away at the end - Hitler watching the US overtake Germany as a harbinger of WWII outcome.  But OK.

A view of rowing as a sport of national interest - interesting and it was hard to believe - this is the early 1930s, not that long ago.  Boxing, baseball, horse racing, ? Then I see the movie "After Office Hours" on TMC - 1935 - in theater lobby, Clark Gable et al are discussing the races at Poughkeepsie!

A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles, 2016)

(462 pages)

Book club selection (via Chris; session held (via Zoom) July 18, 2021).

Count is so slick, so perfect, so all-knowing.  So a bit hard to relate to, at least through first half of the book.

(Though he does get educated occasionally - including by young version of Nina.)

Kind of reminds me of the lead character in "The Martian".  Incredible equanimity in the face of whatever.  No real suspense even in seemingly suspenseful situations - you know he's going to make it.

And while internal exile was awful - in so many ways I agree that he was lucky to have been exiled to the hotel.  Access to finest food & booze when ordinary citizens lived in poverty.  Free from military service (even at his age it likely would have been an issue).  Leading actress immediately (and then constantly) undressing for him.  It could have been Siberia or a firing squad.  Etc.

Picking on Montaigne huh?  Kind of unacceptable esp as author offers Montaigne-ish touches fairly regularly, musing on how one might live.  Note to Count:  don't read Montaigne straight through!  2010 halfway point.  By coincidence, had just finished the remainder. 

List of writers, poets seemed so odd given what happened to them . . . but later he does tell us how they went silent.  Bulgakov, Mandelstam, Akhmatova.  Kind of a greatest hits recitation, so many favorites.  Chekhov.  Chopin's E flat Nocturne!  That's the one!

Nina to Siberia - long history of spouses following exiles east - going back to tsarist times.  Incredible stories and yes many disappeared.

Long lines to view Stalin's body in '53.  Stalin's refusal to leave Moscow did seem to matter during '41 German offensive. But is Stalin's legacy really so complicated?  Constantly excusing butchery on the basis that Russia was a special case and Bolshevik's extreme measures were not optional - not buying it.

Perhaps just failing to align with my own views on the subject . . . I would have preferred for the author to be clearer about criticizing socialism in Russia (if that was his belief).  He describes the NYT's slavish-inexcusable fawning over Soviet system (so little has changed!); but veers toward repeating it. 

Though the Count's final moves are all about disenchantment with Soviet system - while remaining rooted in Russia.

A very good read.

Ship Fever: Stories (Andrea Barrett, 1996)

(256 pages)

Book club selection (via Emily; session held (via Zoom) May 23, 2021).  (Debbers, in Phoenix, joined from 706.)

Collection of short stories; science themes; I liked it.  Here are my discussion notes on the eight stories:

1 - Mendel & his nemesis; Tati & his nemesis; Richard the husband not very flattering portrayal; Euro assistant romanced by wife.  Tati had a letter from Mendel, it's given to Richard.  Unflattering portrayal of 70s students.

2 - Linnaeus - forgetful/slipping old man in sleigh, stops in house; recalls Apostles sent to the far reaches, so many with a bad ending (was this what happened?  I think yes.)  One shows up at the house.  Sounds like his immediate family wasn't very heartwarming.  

3 - littoral zone - a couple goes on a summer project, their marriages are broken.  not sure if this is finished, or if another story will come back to it?  Not very interesting.

4 - Rare Bird - Sarah Anne disappears with Mrs. Pearce.  Interested in whether swallows winter underwater.  Correspond with Linnaeus.  Brother's wife and child die, he goes to America; Sarah Anne's letters found later.

5 - Soroche - Zaga marries wealthy/older Joel, gets sick in Peru, widowed, loses $$.  Siblings unhappy with her, as are stepchildren.  Doctor that she meets in Peru makes a comparison - Fuegians who went back to England didn't fit in either place.  That's the interesting angle, even Willa Cather wrote about it.  

6 - Birds with No Feet - Alec tracks Wallace . . . who is way more successful.  Wallace publishes, gets sponsors, does an article about natural selection.  Alec travels cheap; excels at finding specimens; early batch lost in ship fire.  Alec eventually not comfortable "back home" - he "went native."  Gifted at finding stuff, not so much at coming up with any unifying theories.

7 - The Marburg Sisters - two messed-up kids, not interesting

8 - Ship Fever - longest - quite interesting - dr. who can't get traction goes to an island where Irish emigrants are quarantined; his childhood sweetheart volunteers (her husband is on the ground in Ireland writing articles); he hangs out with immigrant Nora.  Made this come alive in an interesting way.  Minor criticism - usual unthinking unflattering references to business, making a profit, wealthy folk.

The Triumph of Christianity - How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (Bart D. Ehrman, 2018)

(294 pages)

Book club selection (via me; session held (via Zoom) February 21, 2021).

Re-read of a book first read in 2019, here's what I wrote then.

Notes from this time:

• Be honest - most or all probably wondering why I picked this.  Kind of disjointed; in part the author seems to be rationalizing his own spiritual journey.
• I didn't pick it to support a particular religion, or the idea that religions end up being very convenient for secular purposes.
• The selection is for my usual reasons.  Best way to process current news cycle is to ignore the current news cycle as much as possible, while learning as much as possible about history.  Then things that seem unprecedently difficult or dangerous turn out to be anything but. 
• When looking for books on history, I'm looking for ones that offer up a few ideas I wasn't previously seeing.  For its shortcomings, this book fits the bill.
• For better or worse, western civ is dominated by Christianity.  Other parts of the world deeply affected.  Seems useful to know how that happened, and how some of the key elements got launched.
• Jesus was a loser.  Jews were losers.  Jesus's followers were losers.  Provincial dorks.  No money.  No military (unlike say Islam).  Nothing written down, no "orthodoxy."  No central authority.  How did this possibly grow from a few dozen to many millions (with little growth in first century or two)?  
• Paganism as just "living" - something everyone did (except the Jews).  Relatively unstructured.
• Christianity as radical in so many ways

            --incorporating ethics into religion

            --even if lip service too often - unprecedented idea that each individual is equal before God

            --exclusivity - zero sum game - for the first time, a convert to the new religion means one less member of the old religion.  Threatening to the older religion.

            --hellfire!  Heaven!  Ups the stakes immensely.  Pascal's wager makes sense.

            --perceive a Duty to "save" third parties

• Old religions constantly adding new deities - minimizes conflict.  Monotheism + exclusivity + heaven/hell + duty to save + doctrinal debates = recipe for all sorts of religious conflict.
• Constantine - Rome - centralized authority.  What a path it set the church on.
• Nicene creed - 325 A.D.   The whole point was "one God" - now are there three?  Heretics - three persons in one God!  Etc.
• Challenges where a charismatic founder (see also Muhammed) writes down nothing and provides little or no structure. What are presented as sacred writings were prepared by others decades, hundreds of years later.
• No grand synthesis.  Some ideas.  Hopefully useful as you process western art, literature; think about religion as part of private and public life.

The Great Influenza - The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (John M. Barry, 2004)

(546 pages)

Book club selection (via PJ; session held (via Zoom) January 10, 2021).

Timely re-read of a very good book first read in 2013, here's what I wrote then.

Notes from this time:

• Consistently states that masks do not work.  2018 updated afterword misses the mark on work from home. Feels there is a last mile problem. Otherwise, seems pretty accurate.
• Interesting that no one can come up with a cure for influenza.
• We run into Jon Snow on page 27.
• Woodrow Wilson, propaganda, getting the country into war, and then total war.
• The press as an accomplice of government.
• Armies and plagues; the extent to which World War I drove the outcome here. Troop movements within the US and around the world. The need to suppress information. Spanish flu!
• India with 20 million deaths, yet barely a ripple of notice.

Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi , 2004)

(160 pp (graphic novel))

Book club selection (via Nicole; session held (via Zoom) mid-October 2020).

liked the tone of the discussion about the revolution - effective at ferreting out the hypocrisy 

attitude of many toward Islam today reminds of Communism in 30s-50s, and still to this day.  Wilful blindness.  example: so intent on supporting Palestinians (or some vision of what that might stand for?)  against imperialist Israel that refuse to see that Palestinians (or aspects Islamism writ larger) has issues (like everything).  Very strange.

A religion founded on conquest and "end of time" religious principles, sometimes this bleeds through.

Iran as a political mess - poor, illiterate. Tehran no particular history. 

tough sequence post WWI:  shah-revolution-iran/iraq war

didn't so much like:  author felt very superior to other women she viewed as less enlightened . . . hmmm . . . associate freedom with sex and drugs, next stop is the analyst.  Husband as someone they all knew wouldn't last - huh?

didn't really care about her relationship travails

useful to see ourselves in these ostensibly extreme situations

when everything becomes political . . . how much do we differ?  government control of schools, ideology, statue toppling, street mobs 

after tracking this pretty closely with govt major and law school - now totally (and happily) keeping distance from politics

cycle when something like this lasts >1 generation . . . folks grow up in it . . . how to change?

you get a scenario where an all-encompassing $6T govt is claimed to hinge on a single SCt seat . . . each of the last dozen vacancies was claimed to determine the fate of the republic . . . 

deep orthodoxy in US; % of educators with identical political views

things that resonated:  tourist to Caspian; Reghabis leaving before borders closed

good book, thought-provoking

Hymns of the Republic - The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War (S.C. Gwynne, 2019)

(416 pages)

Book club selection (via Zach; session held (via Zoom) 23 August 2020).

Initially not a fan because it lacked battle detail, which I always enjoy.

But in the end the book works quite well - much more focus on personalities (North and South); that requires some summarizing, if not shortcutting, given that extensive biographies exist on most of these folks; but it feels like a good/fair overview.

Discussion of some of the political points was useful; Lincoln's need to obtain votes from the border states; the 1864 election; race issues had a certain immediacy compared to today.

The armies learning to "dig in" in a more systematic way that influenced war-making for a long time - hadn't thought of that - look at Petersburg, especially.  (Side thought: relatively little large-scale war happens after Civil War that tactics (perhaps, weaponry) to defeat trenches didn't develop (Spanish-American war; Franco-Prussian war; Russo-Japanese war; Boer war); perhaps this contributes to WWI trench stagnation, slaughter.  Interesting to think it was taking shape here in the Civil War.

Discussion of early Washington DC - small, yucky.  Interesting; it was a fairly new city without air conditioning.

U.S. Grant - gets a fair treatment, I think.  Still thinking about how interesting his memoirs are.

Sherman - he and Grant got it, in terms of modern (total) war.  Soldiers facing inevitable attrition rates; property destruction, etc.  Nothing glorious about it anymore, if there ever was.

Greek fire was mentioned for the second book club selection in a row (Confederate plotting here that came to naught).