Author: David Evans

when a family member writes a book

David Evans1 Comment

It has to be a rule, I think, that when a family member gives you his new book, you stop what you’re doing and read it.  Having a brother-in-law for a writer could have turned out really, really badly. … He could have written books that I hated, or found impossible to get through.  (Imagine if your brother-in-law wrote Finnegan’s Wake, and you were really busy at work.  Or you weren’t really a big reader.) [from Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree, p18]

I’ve been working my way through my brother-in-law’s book for a while now, slowly but most surely.  “Nature is a solemn fact, a glorious reality, which ought to move us to higher thought and true nobility” (Clarence King, quoted in The Humboldt Current, p194).

literary halloween costumes

David Evans1 Comment

Suggestions from The Common Reader:

A. Gregor Samsa’s sister from The Metamorphosis. What was her name again? Ah, yes, Grete. Thank you internet. I don’t really know what that would look like, but I think it’d be brilliant.

…

C. You could be A Film Adaptation of Your Favorite Book. So: shorter, dumber, but also sexier, with more kicks to the face, more explosions, and maybe a happier ending. (Don’t take the “more explosions” bit too literally, eh?)

Hat tip to Bookslut

(audio) book review: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do, by Michael Sandel

David EvansLeave a comment

intriguing moral quandaries tossed with, well, something of a moral philosopher snooze-fest

For several years, I had the opportunity to work with Harvard University undergraduates, and many nights I would wander through the dining hall and see students working hard writing papers.  What are you writing on?  The ethics of dwarf-tossing, they’d say (or some other quandary).  For Michael Sandel’s course on Justice!  Now, finally, I get to experience the course first-hand through Sandel’s book.  The audiobook is narrated by the professor himself.  (Amazon tells me the audiobook is abridged, which is too bad except that the book got boring, so maybe not too bad.)

Sandel starts out strong, with an ethical puzzle about street car about hit 5 workers – but if you flip a switch you could change tracks and just kill 1 worker.  Then he introduces basic principles (freedom, welfare, virtue) to evaluate the ethics of these questions.  He goes on to use real-life examples of ethical quandaries.  All fascinating so far!  Then he tells us a bit about some of the moral philosophies (and their proponents) used to think about the answers to these quandaries.  Mill’s utilitarianism (still fascinating), John Rawls’s veil of ignorance (still interesting), Kant’s this and Aristotle’s that (okay, at this point I felt like giving up).  I wish he had woven the moral philosophy a little more tightly with the practical examples (and maybe this is more true in the unabridged print book).  As it is, some of the philosophers – particularly Aristotle – feel like they got a lot of space just for their inherent interest, which – for certain readers who needn’t be named – just isn’t that inherent.  (I started getting bored in Disc 3 of 5 of the audiobook, and stayed bored through Disc 4.  My wife tried the book and didn’t get that far.)

In the last 20% the audiobook rallies, bringing back the three main approaches to justice:  (1) maximizing utility or welfare, (2) respecting freedom of choice (whether actual choice – libertarianism – or hypothetical choice behind a veil of ignorance – liberal egalitarianism), and (3) cultivating virture and reasoning about the common good.  Sandel prefers the third (although his argument basically amounts to, Because I think it’s the best).  Still, he illuminates how Robert Kennedy argued for this approach to public life and how Barack Obama has argued along the same lines (although it remains to be seen if anything will actually happen).

On the whole, I enjoyed the audiobook, but I wish it had been unabridged (looking at the Table of Contents, I think some interesting, non-theoretical content got cut); Sandel isn’t the most entertaining reader ever (he’s not Jim Dale), but it’s nice to hear the book from his lips and get his emphasis.

Seattle Times: “a witty road map for negotiating modern moral dilemmas” “Sandel is at his best in weaving modern-day problems into convincing applications of competing theories of justice. He loses his footing, though, when he detours into the jargon of moral philosophy, at times testing a reader’s patience (at least those not compelled to take notes or face end-of-semester consequences).”

professional reviews of Super Freakonomics

David Evans4 Comments

The Telegraph (UK) MIXED: Essentially, Superfreakonomics consists of more of the same. This might get wearying were it not for the fact that Levitt and Dubner’s zeal for statistical anomalies is as undimmed as their eye for a good story. … Sex, as you will have gathered, looms quite large in this book, at least at the start; Levitt and Dubner know the importance of softening up their readers with a bit of smut before hitting them with the heavier stuff. Their research into Chicago prostitution reveal that prostitutes’ wages have plummeted in real terms in the last 60 years. … What, you may wonder, has this got to do with people responding to incentives? Unless I’m missing something, the answer is absolutely nothing. Yet perhaps this is the wrong way to read Superfreakonomics. Perhaps it’s best to forget any ideas of cohesion and just lie back and let Levitt and Dubner’s bouncy prose style carry you along from one peculiarity to the next.

WSJ blog POSITIVE:  “SuperFreakonomics,” by the economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, is not only a book with mind-blowing ideas, innovative research and quality investigative journalism, it’s also a story about creativity and what it takes to get the mindset to turn conventional concepts upside down. The authors have found their stride with “SuperFreakonomics.” As good as the first “Freakonomics” was, I found this read much more enjoyable and interesting.

The Guardian (UK) NEGATIVE:  The genius of the original book lay in its ability to turn hard data into stories as interesting as the best anecdotes. This book treats mildly interesting anecdotes as though they were substitutes for hard data. … The real problem is that there is too much of people like Allie [one of the anecdotes] and too little of Levitt. We hear something of his latest research – about how drink-walking is more dangerous than drink-driving, or why children’s car seats may be no safer than seatbelts. But we don’t hear nearly enough and too many questions are left unanswered; for instance, whether more people die walking home drunk because they are simply so much drunker than people who still think they can drive. … Superfreakonomics is not a bad book, but it’s not a patch on the first – it has very little of the charm or the originality. Yet in their rather smug preface, the authors say that they believe the second book “is easily better than the first”. Can they really think this?

Financial Times (Tim Harford) POSITIVE: This book is a lot like Freakonomics, but better. … In the end, a book such as SuperFreakonomics stands or falls on its entertainment value. And on that count, there’s no doubt: it’s a page-turner. … More revealing, though, was that I’d folded over at least a dozen pages, resolving to go back, follow up the references, and find out more. This is a book with plenty of style; underneath the dazzle, there is substance too.

The Independent (UK) POSITIVE: Levitt and Dubner, in this “freakquel” to their wildly successful 2005 book Freakonomics, offer another collection of “things you always thought you knew but didn’t; and things you never knew you wanted to know but do”.” Such as, why it’s more likely that you’ll die as a drunk pedestrian than a drunk driver, and how monkeys can be taught to use money. So it’s great fun. … Would I recommend this book to an economics teacher? Yes, provided they were comfortable discussing with their students what might be described as “adult themes”. Some of us were brought up to understand the laws of supply and demand in terms of how they affected the market for apples, cups of tea, or cars. Not our freakonomists, who instead turn to the market for paid sex in Chicago, then and now, to stimulate the reader.

LA Times POSITIVE: Thank goodness they are back — with wisdom, wit and, most of all, powerful economic insight. … The examples the authors use in “Super Freakonomics” won’t disappoint, though these are now more concentrated on edgier topics. Prostitution, terrorism and the altruistic indeterminacy of just about everything form much of the landscape in this book. Topics are simultaneously interesting and profoundly disturbing — in other words, freaky. … Surprisingly, the book left me hopeful that we can tackle seemingly intractable social problems. Human ingenuity is clearly in no short supply in “Super Freakonomics,” and we can thank Steve and Steve for making Le Freak still chic.

Washington Post (blog – Ezra Klein) NEGATIVE:  Super Freakonomics is getting a lot of flak for its flip contrarianism on climate change, most of which seems based on incorrectly believing solar panels are black (they’re blue, and this has surprisingly large energy implications) and misquoting important climate scientists.  But before people begin believing that the problem with Super Freakonomics is that it annoys environmentalists, let’s be clear: The problem with Super Freakonomics is it prefers an interesting story to an accurate one. … It’s terrifically shoddy statistical work. You’d get dinged for this in a college class. But it’s in a book written by a celebrated economist and a leading journalist. Moreover, the topic isn’t whether people prefer chocolate or vanilla, but whether people should drive drunk. It is shoddy statistical work, in other words, that allows people to conclude that respected authorities believe it is safer for them to drive home drunk than walk home drunk. It’s shoddy statistical work that could literally kill somebody. That makes it more than bad statistics. It makes it irresponsible.  But hey, it makes for a fun and unexpected opener.

And don’t miss The Guardian’s parody:  Some decisions are very easy. Like the one to cash-in on an unexpected bestseller. But some are very hard. Would you rather drive home pissed from a party or walk? Sayonara if you choose to walk, because you’re far more likely to be run over by all the other people driving back from the party pissed! … Does it seem odd that so many top sports stars are born at the same time of year? Almost certainly not, because Malcolm Gladwell already covered this in Outliers earlier this year and it wasn’t interesting then, as it was just a spin on educational year cohorts that most people already know. But here’s the twist: a study by Captain Nemo from the Nautilus Institute shows that 99.9% of all readers won’t remember where they read it first, so we can claim this factoid as our own.  [And much, much more…]

(audio) book review: Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis (read by Geoffrey Howard)

David Evans2 Comments

wonderful behavioral insights; less convincing on the philosophy

I will likely listen to this book again.  I listened to it because (a) I loved Lewis’s Narnia chronicles at various points in my life and was interested in more, and (2) leaders of my church have often quoted this particular book, so I figured I’d see what all the hubbub was about.  Essentially C.S. Lewis here outlines Christian doctrine as he sees it and then discusses virtues which are essential to Christianity (not – to be clear – claiming that Christianity has a corner on them).  I’m far from a philosopher (and so – as he admits in the book – is Lewis), but I found the first part not entirely convincing.  While I enjoyed some of his doctrinal elucidations, I found some of his reasoning unclear, and he occasionally used the terrible “obviously” (using that rather than good reasoning when a point was not obvious, at least to this muddled reader). I got a little bit bored.

His behavioral expositions, on the other hand, were deeply insightful.  He both made points that I had never considered before and will review and also reframed behaviors I believe in with novel perspectives.  Either way, I highly recommend the book on that point.

I listened to the unabridged audiobook read by Geoffrey Howard, who did a solid job.  Also, the entire book is available on-line.

Below, I quote a few passages I really enjoyed.

Continue reading “(audio) book review: Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis (read by Geoffrey Howard)” →

(audio) book review: The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (read by the author)

David Evans2 Comments

engaging, innovative, funny, touching, tragic story of growing up and home and family: a pure delight!

A murderer has killed an entire family except the little baby, who has wandered out of his crib and to the nearby graveyard during the process. There he is protected and raised by the denizens of the cemetery (ghosts and more) during many years, as he runs up against enemies new and old and has marvelous experiences.

The book is clever and creative: At one point, Bod (the baby is named Nobody Owens on his first night) is kidnapped by ghouls and enters their alternative world on an absolutely wild adventure. The book is funny: Towards the end of the book, I could not help laughing as I listened to Nehemiah Trott, the deceased poet, describe his vengeance on a literary critic who didn’t appreciate Trott’s verse: He posted a letter saying he wouldn’t publish any more of his amazing poetry, saving it for posterity instead: Served the critic right! This just preceded by a line from Bod like, “And who better to trust than a poet?” (Maybe a non-delusional poet.)  There is an indulgent schoolyard-vengeance episode where Bod uses his special graveyard skills to achieve justice at a local school.  The supporting characters, Bod’s guardian Silas, Silas’s friend Miss Lupesky, and the ghosts of the graveyard, are fabulous.

The pacing is excellent. Gaiman intersperses stand-alone tales (like the ghoul abduction) with the ongoing subplot involving the killer who killed Bod’s family.

I listened to the unabridged audio version, narrated by the author, and I’m so glad. He did a fabulous job.

This is the best book and most fun I’ve had in a while.  (I found another Gaiman book very funny a few years ago: Good Omens, which was more pure funny.)

Note on content: This is not for little children (e.g., my five year old); the villain in this story is a ruthless serial killer. Gaiman is very careful not to show any blood or violence, but there is the threat of violence several places, and several other places that are scary in other ways.

book review: The A.B.C. Murders, by Agatha Christie

David Evans1 Comment

a serial killer who leaves train guides with the bodies

In this novel, Poirot is rejoined by his old, marvelously obtuse friend Hastings (whom we haven’t seen since Lord Edgeware Dies, four novels ago, since when he has been at his ranch in Argentina). A serial murder goes on the rampage, sending challenging letters to Poirot in the process, and Poirot and Hastings are on the trail!

Hastings hasn’t gotten any smarter, but that’s not particularly unrealistic; I’m not sure that hanging out with a great detective would make me any more of a great detective myself, either.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book was the intertextuality. I’m a total sucker for references, even if they’re fictional – I loved the references in Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics and still loved them (albeit less) after figuring out that most were invented. Hastings comes to visit Poirot, and Poirot suggests that it would be very nice to have a really interesting, challenging murder to solve together. Hastings talks about how multiple murders would be better, as having one murder at the beginning followed by a long ruling out of suspects can be tiresome (which seemed a reference to the recent and lovely Death in the Clouds). At some point Poirot mentions that he recent almost got killed himself (an allusion to Three Act Tragedy), Poirot reminds Hastings how love can be found in the context of murder (an allusion to Hastings’ finding his own wife in Murder on The Links), etc.

A minor annoyance is that Christie tries so hard to make Hastings the real narrator that she has a big explanation at the beginning about how it is that Hastings is narrating certain things he didn’t observe; I think it’d have been better simply to drop Hasting’s role (or leave those things out), but it clearly wasn’t my call!

I found the ending a little unsatisfying although I cannot put my finger on way. Christie had me completely fooled as to who the murderer was, multiple times, but somehow the final identity left me less convinced than some, like the last book (Death in the Clouds). But it was an entertaining read for my hotel in Tanzania.

Next comes Murder in Mesopotamia, but I think I need a little break from Poirot. Little Dorrit, anyone?

project placement bias in the evaluation of Christianity

David EvansLeave a comment

If Christianity is true then it ought to follow (a) That any Christian will be nicer than the same person would be if he were not a Christian. (b) That any man who becomes a Christian will be nicer than he was before. … Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works. The question is what Miss Bate’s tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick’s would be like if he became one. …

We must, therefore, not be surprised if we find among the Christians some people who are still nasty. There is even, when you come to think it over, a reason why nasty people might be expected to turn to Christ in greater numbers than nice ones. That was what people objected to about Christ during His life on earth: He seemed to attract “such awful people.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [available in full on-line], Book 4, Chapter 10)

book review: Death in the Clouds, by Agatha Christie

David Evans2 Comments

the solving of an airplane murder soars above the average

When I started this book, I admit that I hoped what would happen is that someone would get killed and then Poirot would somehow solve the mystery before the plane ever touched ground. It would be like Murder on the Orient Express except … on an airplane. Which was just two Poirot books ago, which is probably one of the reasons Christie didn’t do that. (For an author so prolific, I find her wonderfully creative from book to book in her contexts and twists and even the flow of action.)

Instead, the murder takes place on an airplane in plain view of everyone, which narrows quite a bit both the field of potential murderers (tough to have someone stowed away on a plane) and the method. Poirot works through, candidate by candidate, until he reaches a wholly surprising conclusion.

I found it engaging, interesting, and the ending was satisfying.

(audio) book review: Nonviolence, by Mark Kurlansky, read by Richard Dreyfuss

David EvansLeave a comment

accessible, compelling history of a revolutionary idea

I learned an immense amount about non-violence from this book. Of course, we read about Ghandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. But the vast majority of the time is spent on less famed examples. We learn of non-violent resistance in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and under Nazi occupation during World War II. We learn of a non-violent army led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan in India that allowed themselves to be mowed down by the British with nary a violent move, leading to 80,000 more joining their number (149-150). Kurlansky explores the history of justification for war within the Christian church (and the strong-willed dissidents). He also examines non-violent alternatives to the actions chosen by wars that are often defended: World War II, the American Revolution, the American Civil War. I occasionally felt my interest flag, but only briefly. The book is accessible and generally well paced.

Two complaints:

1. It seems clear that Kurlansky is a fan of non-violence.   That is not in and of itself problematic; in fact, I am quite sympathetic. However, occasionally it feels like he isn’t exploring the full picture. For example, he cites a peaceful demonstration before the American Revolution, refusing to let judges chosen by the Crown to be seated in their courthouses, as an example of a non-violent victory: Yet he admits that the colonists had weapons, although they didn’t use them. The threat of violence is not non-violence. I admit, though, that I am forgiving of his occasional inconsistency: This is a book demonstrating possibilities more than proving a point.

2. Euro centricity. There is time spent on Latin America and Asia (not much on Africa as I recall) but the lion’s share is spent on North America and Europe, and the other areas are often touching those (i.e., India getting rid of the British). I would have enjoyed seeing more of non-violence in other parts of the world independent of European and American interactions. But you can’t do it all in a short book.

And at the end, we get 25 lessons that sum it all up, such as:

1.There is no proactive word for nonviolence.

2.Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.

3.Practitioners of non-violence

4.Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.

And so on.

Richard Dreyfuss narrates the unabridged audiobook; he barks a bit, but this is definitely better than watching Mr Holland’s Opus. I recommend it (the book, not the Opus). I learned a great deal and largely enjoyed it.

accessible, compelling history of a revolutionary idea 4

I learned an immense amount about non-violence from this book. Of course, we read about Ghandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. But the vast majority of the time is spent on less famed examples. We learn of non-violent resistance in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and under Nazi occupation during World War II. We learn of a non-violent army led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan in India that allowed themselves to be mowed down by the British with nary a violent move, leading to 80,000 more joining their number (149-150). Kurlansky explores the history of justification for war within the Christian church (and the strong-willed dissidents). He also examines non-violent alternatives to the actions chosen by wars that are often defended: World War II, the American Revolution, the American Civil War. I occasionally felt my interest flag, but only briefly. The book is accessible and generally well paced.

Two complaints:

1. It seems clear that Kurlansky is a fan of non-violence. That is not problematic; in fact, I am quite sympathetic. However, occasionally it feels like he isn’t exploring the full picture. For example, he cites a peaceful demonstration before the American Revolution, refusing to let judges chosen by the Crown to be seated in their courthouses, as an example of a non-violent victory: Yet he admits that the colonists had weapons, although they didn’t use them. The threat of violence is not non-violence. I admit, though, that I am forgiving of his occasional inconsistency: This is a book demonstrating possibilities more than proving a point.

2. Euro centricity. There is time spent on Latin America and Asia (not much on Africa as I recall) but the lion’s share is spent on North America and Europe, and the other areas are often touching those (i.e., India getting rid of the British). I would have enjoyed seeing more of non-violence in other parts of the world independent of European and American interactions. But you can’t do it all in a short book.

And at the end, we get 25 lessons that sum it all up, such as:

  1. There is no proactive word for nonviolence.

  2. Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.

  3. Practitioners of non-violence

  4. Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.

And so on.

Richard Dreyfuss narrates the unabridged audiobook; he barks a bit, but this is definitely better than watching Mr Holland’s Opus. I recommend it (the book, not the Opus). I learned a great deal and largely enjoyed it.