Author: David Evans

ringing book recommendation – Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide, by Grant Hardy

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an analysis that takes the Book of Mormon on its own terms

I loved this book!  Grant Hardy steps away from the ways of reading generally adopted by non-Mormon scholars (trying to show what it tells us about Joseph Smith), Mormon scholars (trying to prove its truth through identification of literary techniques unique to Hebrew literature), or lay Mormon readers (seeking verse by verse for inspiration) and instead suggests “that the Book of Mormon can be read as literature – a genre that encompasses history, fiction, and scripture – by anyone trying to understand this odd but fascinating book.”  In doing so, he examines the book as the work of three principal narrators – Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni – each very distinctive in circumstances, style, and sense of audience. 

What I loved about this book:

  • Hardy analyzes not only what IS there but what ISN’T there but perhaps should be.  For one example, Nephi recounts his father Lehi’s blessings to each of his children, except his blessing to Nephi!  Why might that have been excluded?  (Admitted speculation – albeit textually suggested – ensues.)  For another, Hardy points out that with one major exception, the Jaredite record (Book of Ether) seems to be almost entirely non-Christian.  
  • Hardy is a believer – as of a fabulous interview I heard in April 2011 on the Mormon Stories podcast he was serving in a Stake Presidency – but does not shy away from the difficult elements of the Book of Mormon.  How does Nephi quote from elements of Isaiah that the best Biblical scholarship suggests were written long after Nephi et al left Jerusalem?  What about the passages that rely heavily on New Testament prose?  Hardy explores potential explanations, and which are more likely to be faith-based rather than evidence-based. As Hardy says, “As believers, we should read it as carefully as possible, and we should bring to our study the best biblical and historical scholarship available, but there is enough theological flexibility to accommodate whatever we might find” [1].
  • In his analysis of the Book of Mormon as literature, he draws on other scripture traditions, from Zen classics to Tibetan tests to Hindu sacred poetry.  He also draws on literature, from Gulliver’s Travels to Nabokov’s Pale File to Don Quixote.
  • The footnotes are fabulous: They provide all the additional information and source material that you could want.

I hope to come back to this text again and again, and – more importantly – use it launch my own much more careful reading of the Book of Mormon and other sacred texts.

If you don’t want to trust me, here are a few other reviews worth reading:

  1. Steven Walker, BYU Studies, 50(3), 2011 – link
  2. Julie Smith, Times & Seasons Blog, 15 August 2011 (adapted from her Dialogue review) – link
  3. 12 Questions with Grant Hardy at the Times & Seasons Blog, 7 September 2011 (part 1, part 2)
  4. For a non-Mormon perspective, see Alan Wolfe, “Chloroform in Print: Does the Book of Mormon Get a Bad Rap?” Slate, 17 May 2010 – link

[1] 12 Questions with Grant Hardy, Part 2, Times & Seasons Blog, 7 September 2011.

book recommendation – The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande (narrated by John Bedford Lloyd)

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a little long, a little overexuberant, but Gawande is always worth reading when he’s writing about medicine

I loved Atul Gawande’s collection Better. At the end of that collection, he talks about experimenting with checklists to reduce accidents in surgery. This book is entirely dedicated to that concept. When he focuses on the medicine, whether his own practice, that of other doctors, or in public health work, he really elucidates the experience of medical practice and shows how checklists have made a massive difference in patient health. I found the description of his work at the World Health Organization, and the subsequent failures and successes of their work with checklists, to be particularly interesting.

One of the most compelling insights is how checklists can shift the balance of power within a surgery, empowering nurses and other staff to stop surgeons from making mistakes and forcing pre-operative communication and (resultant) team-building. This shift – from the evidence presented here – has massive positive impacts for patient health.

When Gawande strays into construction and financial markets, the examples are less compelling (I started to wish the book had been one of Gawande’s great New Yorker articles). For example, he shows how several successful financial traders have used checklists, but there is no counterfactual in the style of the trials employed in medicine: There also seem to be lots of successful financial traders without checklists! Nevertheless, Gawande has convinced me that it is worth experimenting with checklists to reduce errors in my own life.

Below are excerpts from two professional reviews (both New York Times). Both were very positive, but the excerpts demonstrate the caveats. Finally, I include a link to the Wall Street Journal review, which is more negative. (Incidentally, I believe the WSJ reviewer misreads Gawande’s last case study, of an emergency airplane landing in the Hudson River.)

Note on potentially offensive content: None.

Robin Marantz Henig, "A Hospital How-to Guide That Mother Would Love," New York Times, 23 December 2009. Very positive with caveat.

But in his effort now to apply the checklist to all walks of life — venture capitalists, skyscraper construction workers, restaurant chefs — he occasionally treads uncomfortably close to the territory claimed by his New Yorker colleague Malcolm Gladwell, taking a single idea and trying to make it fit almost every situation. Maybe there’s a case to be made for why checklists help in enterprises as diverse as finance and government, but Dr. Gawande doesn’t really make it convincingly. Nor does he need to.

Sandeep Jauhar, "One Thing After Another," New York Times, 22 January 2010. Very positive with caveat… Overreach!

Gawande’s missionary zeal can give the book a slanted tone. For instance, there is almost no discussion of the unintended consequences of checklists. Today, insurers are rewarding doctors for using checklists to treat such conditions as heart failure and pneumonia. One item on the pneumonia checklist — that antibiotics be administered to patients within six hours of arrival at the hospital — has been especially problematic. Doctors often cannot diagnose pneumonia that quickly. But with money on the line, there is pressure on doctors to treat, even when the diagnosis isn’t firm. So more and more antibiotics are being used in emergency rooms today, despite the dangers of antibiotic-­resistant bacteria and antibiotic-associated infections.

Even when doctors know what works, we don’t always know when to apply it. We know that heart failure should be treated with ACE inhibitor drugs, but codifying this recommendation in a checklist risks that these drugs will be prescribed to the wrong patient — a frail older patient with low blood pressure, for example. Checklists may work for managing individual disorders, but it isn’t at all clear what to do when several disorders coexist in the same patient, as is often the case with the elderly. And checklists lack flexibility. They might be useful for simple procedures like central line insertion, but they are hardly a panacea for the myriad ills of modern medicine. Patients are too varied, their physiologies too diverse and our knowledge still too limited.

Less positive – WSJ:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704320104575015294037289412.html

book recommendation: Bossypants, by Tina Fey (unabridged audiobook read by the author)

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uneven but overall amusing (at worst) and lots of fun (at best)

Tina Fey provides a comical memoir of growing up, going to school, getting involved in comedy through Second City (a comedy troupe in Chicago), her time on Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, and then being a mom. I especially enjoyed her narrative of getting on SNL, battling sexism in comedy, and starting up 30 Rock. (I always enjoy these behind-the-scenes looks at programs I enjoy, and this is very good example.) Other parts, like her commentary on being a mom, was less exciting, although even there, the description of the breast milk militants was very funny.

As a narrator, she reads the book wonderfully. Note on content: There is strong language strewn throughout and some sexual humor, so it won’t be for everyone.

Seven out of ten!

PCHH – Poseurs, Plate-Spinners, And Six Bucks In Pennies – the links

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In today’s lovely episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, the team discusses Appreciation Day some more.

Then they discuss Frank Bruni’s column on being on the outside of the Harry Potter craze and being a poseur, which reminds me of Pierre Bayard’s great book How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read.

Thanks, guys!  See you next week!

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Super Happy Monkey Time – the links

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I love NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, and I always wonder where I can find links to all the cool things they discuss.  So I decided to post them myself!

So for last Friday’s episode, Super Happy Monkey Time, here is what I’ve got:

  1. Stephen proposes Appreciation Day
  2. Right Place at the Right Time
  3. Wish You Were Here
  4. What’s Making You Happy?

what i read and saw in June

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Books

19. Best of the month!!!  Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock.  I thought this biography was completely compelling and fascinating and fun.  Wonderfully well documented.  I wrote a longer review, which you can read here: my longer review.  9/10

18. A Savage Place, by Robert Parker (audiobook).  Spenser (#8) goes to L.A. to help a TV reporter bust a big story.

17. Promised Land, by Robert Parker (audiobook).  Spenser (#4) goes up against militant feminists and loan sharks.  (And we meet his long-term buddy Hawk.)

16. The Judas Goat, by Robert Parker (audiobook).  Spenser (#5) goes to Europe to track down terrorist assassins!

Movies

22. Beginners (theater) – Sweet movie about falling in love and the courage to start a new life, played out in two generations by Ewan McGregor and his father (in the film), Christopher Plummer.  It reminded me of when I fell in love, nine years ago.  8/10

21. Lost (Season 2) – Compulsive viewing.  Two groups of survivors meet up.

super-sleuth skills for spotting a scientist

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I really enjoyed this passage from the memoir of physicist Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman:

I don’t know why, but I’m always very careless when I go on a trip, about the address or telephone number or anything of the people who invited me. I figure I’ll be met, or somebody else will know where we’re going; it’ll get straightened out somehow.

One time, in 1957, I went to a gravity conference at the University of North Carolina. I was supposed to be an expert in a different field who looks at gravity.

I landed at the airport a day late for the conference (I couldn’t make it the first day), and I went out to where the taxis were. I said to the dispatcher, “I’d like to go to the University of North Carolina.”

“Which do you mean,” he said, “the State University of North Carolina at Raleigh, or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?”

Needless to say, I hadn’t the slightest idea. “Where are they?” I asked, figuring that one must be near the other.

“One’s north of here, and the other is south of here, about the same distance.”

I had nothing with me that showed which one it was, and there was nobody else going to the conference a day late like I was.

That gave me an idea. “Listen,” I said to the dispatcher. “The main meeting began yesterday, so there were a whole lot of guys going to the meeting who must have come through here yesterday. Let me describe them to you: They would have their heads kind of in the air, and they would be talking to each other, not paying attention to where they were going, saying things to each other, like ‘G-mu-nu. G-mu-nu.’”

His face lit up. “Ah, yes,” he said. “You mean Chapel Hill!” He called the next taxi waiting in line. “Take this man to the university at Chapel Hill.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I went to the conference.

book review: Storyteller, the Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock

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the fabulous story of a fantastic storyteller

I grew up hearing and reading the stories of Roald Dahl. From the novel Charlie & the Chocolate Factory to the short story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar to the memoir Boy. I loved them all!

In this wonderful and compelling biography, Donald Sturrock rises to the challenge of writing a biography almost as interesting as the stories of its subject. Dahl apparently found biographies boring. “Why on earth would anyone choose to read an assemblage of detail, a catalogue of facts, when there was so much good fiction around as an alternative?” (p6). I loved many elements of this book; among my favorites are the following:

  1. While Sturrock is clearly a friendly biographer, he paints no picture of a saint, demonstrating how much previous biographical work on Dahl is rose-colored, how Dahl was mercurial – by turns generous and kind and then rude and judgmental, sometimes (later in life) making unfortunate public statements.
  2. Dahl was a storyteller through and through: many stories from his own memoirs was fictionalized. “I don’t lie. I merely make the truth a little more interesting…” (p4)
  3. In the wake of a tragic accident that left Dahl and Patricial Neal’s son Theo with serious head wounds, Dahl teamed up with a craftsman to develop a special valve that would drain excess fluid from the head which was effective and very cheap (as a result of neither inventor gaining from it), the valve “was used successfully on almost three thousand children around the world” (p392). Likewise, after his wife Patricia Neal suffered a serious stroke, Dahl took an intensive rehabilitation approach which led to a very rapid recovery and return to acting for Neal, ultimately “revolutioniz[ing] treatment for future stroke victims” (p444).
  4. Hearing how long Dahl struggled to achieve professional success is inspiring.

But without doubt my favorite part was the story of the stories:

  1. How Dahl’s agent, for years, encouraged him to try children’s fiction;
  2. How James & the Giant Peach came to be the first children’s book;
  3. How Charlie and the Chocolate Factory evolved dramatically in plot;
  4. Tidbits such as how the NAACP forced the change of the name of the first chocolate factory movie to “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (because they thought the book was racist and didn’t want the movie to support book sales), and how Dahl disliked the original movie: He preferred Peter Sellers for the role over the chosen Gene Wilder, who he found “pretentious” and “insufficiently gay [in the old-fashioned
    sense of the word] and bouncy” (p513).

I just loved this book. It is well written, easy to read, and meticulously documented. I’m glad to have it in my library.

what I read and saw in May 2011

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Books

15. Mortal Stakes, by Robert Parker (audiobook) – Third Spenser detective novel. Wittiest detective I know. 7/10

14. Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin [translated by Chi-Young Kim] (audiobook)

Movies

20. The Time Traveller’s Wife (DVD) – I enjoyed this love story. Also had enjoyed the book. 7/10

19. Get Low (DVD) – Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek star in this redemption tale about holding onto guilt and then letting it go. Low key. I really enjoyed it. 7/10

18. Gnomeo & Juliet – Animated garden gnomes and the music of Elton John, in the same movie. Don’t go breaking my heart! 6/10

17. Os Muppets Conquistam Nova Iorque [The Muppets Take Manhattan, dubbed into Portuguese] (DVD) – I love the muppets, but this was not their strongest outing. Still, the Portuguese was fun. 5/10

how the first draft of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory was wildly different (including that Charlie was black)

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from Storyteller, by Donald Sturrock, p415 – I am loving this book.

"At the beginning, there were no Oompa-Loopa factory workers and no Grandpa Joe to look after Charlie. Nor were any of the child grotesques present in their final form. Characters who were eventually eliminated from the adventure or substantially altered included Elvira Entwistle (the prototype of Veruca Salt), Miranda Grope (who fell into the chocolate river), Tommy Troutbeck (who disobeyed Wonka and ended up in the Pounding and Cutting Room), Bertie Upside (who overheats after eating too many warming candies), Marvin Prune, Violet Stabismus and Herpes Trout. The plot, too, was quite different. It was a detective story in which Charlie strayed from Wonka’s gaze long enough to be accidentally coated in quick-drying chocolate. Mistaken for one of Wonka’s giant ‘chocolate boys,’ he is delivered as an Easter present to Wonka’s son, Freddie. Trapped inside his chocolate shell, and left overnight in Wonka’s home, Charlie witnesses a burglary. The following morning, when he has been liberated from his cocoa prison, he helps identify the thieves and is rewarded by Wonka with a huge sweetshop of his own. … Most strikingly perhaps, in the early drafts, Dahl described Charlie as a ‘small NEGRO boy,’ who boldly confronts Wonka…"