The Man in the High Castle
by Philip Dick, 1962

I enjoyed seasons 1 and 2 of The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime, though there really aren’t any “likeable” characters. I think the TV adaptation of the book is the much better than the book itself. The premise of the book/show is that Germany and Japan won WWII and now jointly occupy the United States, though there is a alternate history book (in the book) or film (in the show) that shows the Allies winning the war. PKD writes with halting sentence fragments in a way that obstructed flow instead of sped it up. The character of Joe is much better in the TV series than the book. While PKD is a master of science fiction, I suggest skipping the book and watching the show.

With the job search, I haven’t been able to finish many books lately. This one, in book on tape form, sustained me on my drives to/from the airport.

Thanks to Maria for the guest book review!

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
by Paul Watson, 2017

In May 1845, Sir John Franklin of Great Britain’s Royal Navy set sail with a crew of 128 men to find the last missing link in the Northwest Passage. It was the best outfitted Arctic exploration mission to date, and Franklin was an experienced Arctic explorer. Despite this, the whole expedition was lost. The mystery of what actually happened to the Franklin expedition has captivated a significant amount of people for over 170 years.

The well-written book takes the reader from pre-1845 up to present day, describing the Arctic voyage, the various known crew members (mostly officers), Lady Jane Franklin’s personal funding of rescue operations (and fighting with the Royal Navy) and her grief and denial of losing her husband, and the multitude of efforts throughout the years to try to find the lost ships and any lost artifacts that could help solve the mystery of what actually happened — the best equipped Arctic voyage should have returned with most of its crew, not disappeared into the vast white north.

The evolution of technology, climate change, and a deep dive into various politics — including Canada’s handling of its Inuit population and how much prejudice affected the search for both any survivors and later the ships — play a major role in the book as well, and give it even richer meaning. The mystery of the Franklin expedition is well worth a read, but tying in all the other parts made this book nearly impossible to put down. It was a fascinating look at aspects of Great Britain, Canada, and later the United States and Russia.

I listened to this book as an audio book (10 discs) and it was exceptionally well read.

Thanks to Professor Kyle Cattani for the guest book review!

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground between Humans and Robots
By John Markoff, 2015

A couple of years back, Eric reviewed The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, 2014) and asked the (rhetorical) question of whether computers/robots are coming for your job. John Markoff, in “Machines of Loving Grace,” seems less interested in “whether” they will, but rather how they will behave once they get there. In particular, will we humans control these systems, or will they control us?

The Computer Science community has apparently had two long-standing approaches towards automation and robotics that not only were different but passionately opposed in a way seemingly possible only in academics. The first approach, called Artificial Intelligence (or AI), assumed that humans were superfluous and desired to create systems that operated independent of human overlords. A self-driving car with no steering wheel or brake pedals (that could show up at work to pick you up) exemplifies an ultimate application of this approach. The contrarian idea, deemed “intelligence augmentation” (or IA) sought to work with humans to amplify their abilities. A computer mouse makes it easier for a human to interact and use a computer and thus qualifies as IA. Most automobile technologies such as cruise control (and now adaptable cruise), lane assist, and emergency braking, fall into IA.

For years (decades even) the IA approach seemed to make more progress, but the two approaches now appear to be converging. Markoff argues that we are closing in on a “singularity” where robots become more powerful than humans and this raises the concern of whether they will remain well behaved—or whether they will ultimately rule us.

Markoff has been a technology and science reporter at the New York Times since 1988 but appears to have a (literally) Silicon-Valley-Centric view of the world focusing on the Stanford community and Silicon Valley companies. Perhaps that is because so many advances in the field come from this community, but it felt a bit provincial in a way that made me suspicious (even though I am a Stanford grad). Machines of Loving Grace talks lovingly about self-driving cars, robots, and Siri (and its ilk) and I liked those chapters the most. Perhaps it is just me, but the rest of the book felt like a litany of dozens of people I couldn’t keep track of.

Thanks to Telesilla Kotsi for the guest book review!

The Zookeeper’s Wife
by Diane Ackerman, 2007

The Zookeeper’s wife is another book about WWII by Diane Ackerman. The difference between this and other books concerning the Holocaust is that it is given from the perspective of a Polish person that helped Jews escape from the Nazis. Moreover, although Jan, the zookeeper, is the one who decides to hide and help Jews, eventually all the responsibility to make sure they don’t get arrested falls on the shoulders of his wife, Antonina. In this sense, the book depicts Antonina as a woman who has a gift to communicate and connect with animals. This gift was the reason why Antonina escaped arrest many times; an interesting parallelism between Germans and beasts that the author makes obvious in various parts of the book. However, it is also clear that Antonina is not a heroine who takes her life and the life of her guests in her own hands. She is a wife who always tried her best to please her husband instead.

My feelings are really mixed about the book. I think it had the potential to say a great story, a story that almost any country under the German occupation can connect with. But, the plot falls short in describing some of the main characters, i.e. Jan who leaves every day and we only get to know him through his interactions with Antonina, and Rys, the son of the couple, whose main task is to take food to their guests and play with a chicken and a bunny that remain in the zoo. Even the life and actions of Antonina seem hidden in parts where the attention is drawn to the destruction of Warsaw and the general devastation of Poland. I believe that this is a very good first novel for a teenager who knows no historical details about the WWII and needs to be introduced to the topic smoothly.

The Zookeper’s Wife became a movie this year (2017). Although the movie doesn’t do justice to all the historical research and the verbose writing of Ackerman, it is highly recommended for anyone who wants to spend an hour to understand how a couple succeeded in hiding 300 Jews in 6 years under the nose of Nazis.

Thanks to Crisson Jno-Charles for the guest book review!

Micromotives and Macrobehavior
by Thomas Schelling, 1978

Micromotivates is a proto-pop economics book by the Nobel Prize winning economist Thomas C. Schelling. The book was first published in 1978, and it expanded on research Schelling conducted on how self-segregation can arise as a long-run consequence of moderate preference for neighbors of a similar race.

The friend who first introduced me to the book mentioned that it predates our modern expectations of popular social-science books. Their assessment is mostly correct. Schelling’s writing comes off as accessible, but not to the point of diluting his underlying economics or game theory lesson. It doesn’t entice the reader with “here’s this not-obvious-thing that we think is incredibly important, that once you’ve learned it, will make you feel super smart” — a feature common to modern day pop social science books (and TED talks, which I enjoy by the way). It reads more like a Summer elective lecture on Game Theory. You’ll learn a thing or two and possibly perceive human organizational a little different, at least for a little while.

But it also plods along, sometimes belaboring a concept and I mostly skimmed the latter quarter of the book. But you should read it anyway and especially so the first half.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*#$
by Mark Manson, 2016

I don’t normally go for books with intentionally catchy or provocative titles, but I had read some decent expositions on Mark Manson’s website. The main point of the book is that you can care about a small number of things in life, so don’t go wasting your effort on unworthy ends. Mark also hates entitled people. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the book, it’s certainly not a “must read”. I listened to the book on tape, which was well-read (by someone other than the author!).

Interesting side note: The book mentions the story of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education. About a week after hearing this, Maria told me that Malala was giving a large lecture at DePauw. Interesting coincidence, since I didn’t know about her before.