The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan
Fiction
Random House
2014
448
***WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014***
Richard Flanagan’s masterpiece, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” is one of those reads powerful enough to move one to tears—more than once in my case. I heard a radio interview in which Flanagan recounted how his research landed him in Japan, face to face with a notoriously brutal former Japanese prison guard known as “the Lizard.” Flanagan’s father suffered at the hands of this very man whose trademark vicious and repeated slaps were much feared. Wanting to experience this for himself, Flanagan finally persuaded the now “courteous, kindly and generous old man” to demonstrate the slaps for him. He reported that the first and second strikes were not unbearable, but that after the third one, he felt as if the whole building was shaking and swaying—because it was, thanks to an earthquake that had just hit. Flanagan went on to describe the fear he saw in the man’s eyes and his realization that, generously, it must be said, whatever evil was, it wasn’t in the room with them.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Maggie O'Farrell
Fiction
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2006
245
Iris Lockhart is stunned when she receives news that her great-aunt Esme, a previously unknown woman edited out of her family's history, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital, where she has been confined for more than sixty years, and soon discovers that Esme holds the key to long-hidden family secrets that could change her life forever.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O’Farrell, is a beautifully written and haunting tale rooted in hard to fathom English historical fact. That is that up until about 1952, a man could have his wife or daughter institutionalized in a psychiatric unit as long a general practice physician—who did not even have to examine the woman—signed off on the order. Thousands of women, it turns out, were thus put away for the slightest of aberrations. Taking long walks, not wanting to get married or growing hair too long. Horribly, long incarcerations often meant that questionable or trumped-up diagnoses became self-fulfilling prophecies. O’Farrell’s plot is a deftly woven page-turner that takes us back and forth through three generations. Things in the near present really come to bear when Iris, the unknowing granddaughter of the eponymous Esme, gets an out of the blue phone call notifying her that the institution where she has been held for the last sixty years is closing. This is the first that Iris has ever heard of Esme. As the layers of family history peel away, we are reminded that secrets and darkness can lurk in ways never imagined.
The Big Picture
Sean Carroll
Science
Dutton Adult
May 10, 2016
480
"Language philosophy, quantum mechanics, general relativity--they're all in The Big Picture. Sean Carroll is a fantastically erudite and entertaining writer." --Elizabeth Kolbert *Publishers Weekly #1 Most Anticipated Science Book of Spring 2016*
The Guardian Books podcast is a go-to source for in-depth and skilled author interviews. Richard Lea’s discussion with Sean Carroll on his latest book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, is a perfect example of the edifying banter we can plug into and make our smartphones smart.
Carroll, a research professor specializing in dark energy and general relativity at the California Institute of Technology, has done a fantastic job distilling hard-core science into language that makes profound ideas accessible to most. For example, Carroll compares the difference between statements of scientific facts versus the values upon which we peg our morals. When it comes to facts, you are either right or wrong. The universe is expanding, or it is not. We don’t have the same metric for our values. There are no criteria to judge the correctness of what we believe is meaningful or not.
Carroll explains that, on average, the human heart beats three billion times in a lifetime. That’s a big number, but not that big he cautions. We feel our heart beating, slowly but surely towards an end. So short of some overarching transcendent axiom, our personal choices to attach value, meaning, and a purpose to our world are essential. In fact they are all we have. “This is not a dress rehearsal,” he says, the implication being that we had better make the right decisions. As if we needed more pressure.
Wondering why we are here and what it means is a good thing in Carroll’s mind. Of course, this requires going beyond the focus of how to survive and flourish in our material lives. Human life, says Carroll, is at its best when examining bigger, more profound existential questions. When we do that, science comes into contact with art and literature and the other ways we have of making sense of the world. For those that need a primer on the big why, The Big Picture is just what the shrink ordered.
Our Final Invention
James Barrat
Computers
Macmillan
October 1, 2013
336
A documentary filmmaker, bringing together Artificial Intelligence experts from around the world, explores the terrifying possibility of catastrophic outcomes once we share the planet with intelligent machines who are smarter and more powerful than we could ever have imagined. 25,000 first printing.
James Barret’s, Our Final Invention, is a sobering account of how our intelligence may ultimately get the best of us. The realization of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is more probable than we think with potential ramifications that are mind-boggling. Once we develop machines that are self-aware and continuously self-improving (singularity), superintelligence will evolve exponentially. How we factor into this state of affairs is not assured. We have achieved supremacy over other species because of our intelligence. The assumption that super-intelligent systems will deal with us benevolently falls apart when one considers our track record at the top of the pecking order.
The Unwinding
George Packer
History
Macmillan
May 21, 2013
434
George Packer’s “The Unwinding” is told through the personal stories of characters plucked from both ends and all over the middle of the wide and varied demographic landscape that is America. While these individuals lead lives that are diametrically different, one realizes that they are all intimately entwined, even if the strength of the fabric they form is not assured. Rarely pedagogical, Mr. Packer’s important book, allows readers to, through the intimate details of real lives, come to their own conclusions – mostly that, as the title of the book suggests, all is not well in America. And yet, one also gleans that if only those in power acted for the greater good, then America could realize its full and untapped potential. If only.