The Road To Surfdom by F. A. Hayek

From The Week of May 30, 2010

Though I've tried at various times to embrace Libertarianism -- anyone whose read this blog since the beginning will know of my particular fondness for Milton Friedman --, ours has always been an uncomfortable marriage. While I acknowledge that free markets are a force for political freedom, and while the recent financial crisis has lent a great deal of weight to the arguments of anti-regulators the world over, I can't help but cling to the notion that there must be some sense of fairness that ought to order our affairs. Aware of my dismay, a friend recommended this famous work of classical liberalism to me in hopes it might clarify my feelings on the matter. But while Mr. Hayek, a renown 20th century economist, makes a wonderful case against socialism and centralized planning, he offers up no solutions to the question beyond simply letting the chaos of the free market reign. And so I cannot make this journey with him, not all the way. But before I explain why, let's examine Mr. Hayek's arguments.

Writing in the shadow of 1940s fascism, Mr. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which is still in print and has at many points been a best seller, is a dry, analytical but well-reasoned argument against any form of collectivism and collectivist thinking. Pessimistically, he points out that harnessing the economy for the greater good, as communists and socialists would do, necessarily delivers the economy's helm into the hands of the State in hopes that a handful of politicians will act wisely, shrewdly and honestly when it comes to managing the nation's market. But this is the catch. One cannot guarantee that these politicians will act in the best interests of the people. In fact, history shows that the State, as an institution, is an incredibly corruptive influence upon people, giving into their hands power which will change them, little by little, each time it is used. And so, one may set out, under socialism, with the intent of doing good, of re-distributing wealth evenly to everyone, of providing health care and education to everyone, but there is nothing to prevent the socialist government from changing the rules to grant themselves more power over the people, all in the name of further efficiency. Such a system, by its nature, demands that every aspect of the lives of its citizens be scrutinized in the name of greater efficiency. And that will inevitably lead to tyranny.

Socialized medicine is a good example of Mr. Hayek's argument. In every nation, the cost of health care is skyrocketing. These increased costs are no one person's fault; they are down to things like nurse pay, the price of new technology, new surgeries being covered, etc. But while countries practicing privatized medicine simply off-load these costs upon insurers who then hike up their premiums, the Welfare State has only two crappy stopgaps to rising costs, raise taxes on the people to pay the bill, or manage the care of the people. The former is nothing more than an exercise in futility. coss will always rise, but taxes cannot. The latter option is actually worse. It obligates the government to, for instance, crack down on cigarette smoking because it causes lung cancer and fighting lung cancer is expensive. It encourages the government to force people to wear bike helmets because treating concussions and fractured skulls that result from accidents without helmets is expensive. It would even dictate that government define selfish rules for where and how babies are born; there are only so many beds in the maternity ward and hospitals are crowded enough as is. While these policies may seem, individually, to be reasonable interventions, they are restrictions upon personal freedom, upon our right to choose what we can and cannot do with our own bodies. And it is this creeping, institutional control to which Mr. Hayek is refering when he talks about a road to serfdom, mile-markers on a journey to tyranny.

Mr. Hayek's argument against government influence in the free market and the lives of its citizens is air-tight. It is impossible to find honest politicians who will make the right choices all of the time. It's far safer for the people to have the free market rule the day and people set their own prices and their own rules, and save the money they wish to save, and make the choices they wish to make. Where his argument starts to fall apart is when we consider that not everyone is born equally, that some people have to make greater sacrifices to get ahead than other people do, and that the privileged very often succeed where the less privileged fail by dint of advantages endemic only to the wealthy: political connections, the best schools, family influence, etc. The chaos of the free market is fine in theory, but it is fundamentally unfair and he makes no effort here to address that. And he ought to. For there's clearly a desire among people for it to be fair. If not, there would never be socialism anywhere.

This is excellent work for what it is, a coherent, analytical statement against the Welfare State, but it fails to offer up a system more coherent than what American Republicans would have us have, a free market where big businesses have no restraints upon their growth, where they can dominate the market like sharks swimming through chum. And we haven't far afield to look to find examples where that leads to the same kind of institutional arrogance that Mr. Hayek blames the State for possessing. Good, but flawed. Certainly of interest to classical liberals, but it lacks the emotional intensity of Free to Choose which I found far more persuasive. (2/5)

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

From The Week of May 23, 2010

This is an absolute classic of science fiction and deservedly so. Mr. Heinlein has penned a wonderful and disturbing story of militarism in a future world order organized politically around the notion of a meritocracy. In many ways, the success of the book lies in how profoundly wrong Mr. Heinlein is about many of the issues he discusses here. Ironically, his savagery only adds to the novel's dystopian feel, bestowing it an intellectual punch it might have otherwise lacked.

Starship Troopers concerns, in the main, a future Earth locked in an interstellar war with an alien race referred to as the Bugs. The aliens are only viewed through the eyes of our human heroes and, thus, remain the flat, two-dimensional villains common to science fiction of this period. Rico, our protagonist, narrates the novel which covers his life from the highly influential, moral philosophy class he took in high school, to the bug attack on Earth which turns the war hot, to his bootcamp training, and finally to full fledged combat.

But while Rico's life drives the novel forward, major chunks of the narrative are taken up with the moral philosophy class that changes his life. And it is through the teacher of this class that we experience the political opinions that compelled Mr Heinlein to write this piece. The teacher makes a strong argument against the Welfare State, pointing out that people have to pay in blood for what they earn. Otherwise, they won't appreciate it. He goes on to argue that being an adult shouldn't be the only determining factor in whether or not one is fit to vote, that it's right for the world government of the time to only grant the voting franchise to men and women who serve in the military. These are but two memorable examples of the fascinating politics raised here, with Communism also taking a broadside.

We have the benefit of 60 years of hindsight from which to look down on Mr. Heinlein's work and criticize it. We know now, of course, that a system of government that only grants the voting franchise to military veterans would be an excellent way to create a fascist state, permanently set on war. In this vein, it's unsurprising that Mr. Heinlein's alien villains are so undeveloped. Fascism doesn't care what the enemy is, or what it does, or who it loves, or how its offended. Fascism's purpose is to first find an enemy and then to kill it as a means of proving its superiority. Mr. Heinlein might as well have renamed his future Earth Mussolini's world and be done with it. But this is exactly what makes the book so compelling. It has the subtlety of a jackhammer as it stands up for what it believes in. Mr. Heinlein takes no pains to hide or soften or obfuscate his fingerprints here. He opens fire from the first page and doesn't stop until the thoroughly brainwashed rico has marched triumphantly through the crucible of combat. We may disagree with Mr. Heinlein's politics, but having the strength of ones convictions is a true delight in our world which, it seems to me, is far too hesitant to own ones beliefs. (3/5 Stars)

PS: For all its eccentricities, the book is a Picasso compared to the movie which was a steaming heap.

The Invention Of Air by Steven Johnson

From The Week of May 23, 2010

Steven Johnson is a delight. He does tend to vest too much importance into his beloved statistics which can be manipulated to say all manner of things, but he is a storyteller of the first class with a mind to match. And he does not let me down in The Invention of Air.

Though he is known to scientists and historians, the name of Joseph Priestly is not widely known in the general public. It certainly hasn't the resonance of Benjamin Franklin, or George Washington. Nonetheless, Mr. Priestly was an intellectual pillar upon which many of the American founders leaned for support and for guidance. A chemist, a philosopher, and an educator, Mr. Priestly believed in such harebrained notions as religious freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Silliness, right? Well, the British government of the 18th century thought so. After a number of transgressions that offended both his neighbors and his government, Mr. Priestly was forced to flee England for America, as many of the American founders before him had done. Mr. Priestly took with him a first-rate mind, a mind which, in the 1770s, had puzzled out the components of the atmosphere, isolating Oxygen as a gas for the first time.

While the heart of Mr. Johnson's book concerns Mr. Priestly's experiments and discoveries, he fills out the story with a tender portrayal of the life of a thinker in the 18th century. The two threads of the narrative combine not only to animate Mr. Priestly, but to make the reader wonder at the absolute idiocy of the British government of the period. America was essentially founded on British-educated dissidents. To cast off such able men because they held inconvenient beliefs re-defines the whole notion of shooting oneself in the foot. They shot themselves in the foot so many times, they no longer had anything left to hit! It's an issue made more stark by hindsight, certainly, but tragic nonetheless. This story of a mighty mind operating in the midst of revolution and the enlightenment is an all-round success. (4/5 Stars)

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

From The Week of May 23, 2010

Though considerable time has elapsed since Mr. Morris first published his most famous work -- the initial printing of this 1967 classic landed him in hot water for using the word penis in an anthropological context --, it remained as compelling to me today, 43 years later, as it must have been for those who first picked it up four decades ago. Mr. Morris, a zoologist, sets out, in The Naked Ape, to examine humans through the same, analytical lens used to observe Earth's other animals. After all, we are animals too. Perhaps, in studying ourselves and our evolutionary history with a curator's dispassion, we can better understand what drives our behavior.

Did you know that, of the 193 varieties of apes, humans are the only ones without fur? Mr. Morris packs his effort with plenty of tidbits like this as he tours the naked ape with the eye of a zookeeper. But while human trivia is interesting enough -- apparently we have the largest brain of any ape --, it is Mr. Morris' discussion of ancestral humans which transforms this book from an informational booklet one might find at a zoo into a truly fascinating piece of popular science. His discussion of pair bonding I found especially riveting. Mr. Morris contends that humans are exceptionally sexualized creatures relative to other apes, that our bodies have developed specifically to attract and bind the opposite sex into relationships tight enough that, when children are produced, the relationship remains stable long enough for the child to grow into adolescence and self-sufficiency. Why do we need stable parenting? Because humans, relative to other animals, take an exceptionally long time to develop, physically and cognitively. Birds, for instance, take only weeks to fully develop. Dogs are fully grown in two years, but are capable of defending themselves long before that. But none of these animals are as intelligent as we are. Mr. Morris contends that we made an evolutionary exchange, a short childhood for self-awareness and intellect, and that it was this which required the parental bond, and that sexual attraction was the only way to maintain the parent bond long enough for the child to grow.

Mr. Morris' case has been challenged in recent years, but that's bound to happen when ones research and conclusions are 40 years old. Even if the events described here do have the air of educated guesses, his argument is compelling. And even if you disagree with the case put forward by Mr. Morris, I've little doubt that this book will spark an interest in primatology. The author has packed a remarkable amount of fascinating material into some 200 slim pages of eminently readable text. On its merits, four stars, but I have to dock a point for the extent to which Mr. Morris' conclusions have been disputed. (3/5 Stars)

Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean Carroll

From The Week of May 23, 2010

Though Professor Carroll's book is one of the most challenging texts of popular science I've read to date, it is worthy of the time spent deconstructing it. I've not encountered a single book that has gone farther in explaining the mechanics behind the diversity of species that exist on our planet.

Since Charles Darwin lifted the curtain on evolution, biologists have been striving to uncover the essence of life's diversity. Why is a bird a bird and an elephant an elephant? Geography can't be the only factor involved in the evolution of such wildly different creatures. The answer, explains Professor Carroll, a molecular biologist, lies in our genetic structure.

Bodies have blueprints. These aren't plans hidden away in some cabinet somewhere. The plans exist inside the embryo, a set of root instructions for how the embryo should develop and what it should develop into. The executors of this body plan are a set of genes known as Master Genes. Imagine that the body, as it grows, is like an office tower under construction. The genes which build the body are the various crews working on the tower. The Master Genes, meanwhile, are the foremen of these crews, instructing the grunts on where to put the windows, how long the hallways should be, and generally overseeing development. Simply put, every embryo needs a road map in order to develop into something that resembles its parents. The genes that build toes are fundamentally the same as the genes that build fingers. It's the Master Genes that ordethem to build fingers on hands and toes on feet. and so, without the road map, the organism would become a blob of disordered features that would soon expire from sheer chaos. Master Genes give us our shape and, in the process, explain why a bird is a bird and an elelphant is an elephant. Body plans morph over evolutionary time. Master genes mutate, or are overwritten, issuing different instructions to the footsoldier genes which, in turn, create a different body plan.

This is a massively oversimplified version of Professor Carroll's gripping explanation of the basics of both our world and his field of Evolutionary Development, a field which seeks to lay out the fundamental rules of life, its variety and how it evolves from one form into another. He also discusses other components of evolution, their discoverers, their experiments and their breakthroughs, providing a number of photographic aids to help along the newcomer. More over, it is Professor Carroll's determination to stay within the boundaries of common English that allows neophytes like myself to enjoy his work so much. As fascinating for those interested in evolution as it is for those seeking a better explanation for how our planet teems with such a diversity of life. (4/5 Stars)

Affinity by Sarah Waters

From The Week of May 23, 2010

Affinity may plod along at times as Ms. Waters does her level best to keep a number of literary balls in the air at once, but an outstanding final third of this dark, Gothic novel is well worth the wait.

Set in Victorian London of the 1870s, our story concerns one Margaret Prior, a thoroughly miserable young woman who, despite her upperclass privilege, has attempted suicide at least once. Though the true cause of Margaret's unhappiness does not out until later in the novel, it's immediately clear that her disposition hasn't been helped by the death of her father. Her mother only worsens the situation by treating Margaret like an invalid, stripping away the young lady's autonomy out of a fear that she'll upset herself and attempt again to end her life. As a result, young Margaret wastes away inside her house, which might as well be a prison, dying a little with each day that passes and generally seeing little light on the horizon.

If one were to compile a list of ideas on how to cheer up a depressed girl, sending her to tour a prison wouldn't be anywhere near my top ten, but this is Victorian England where at least the notion of piety towards the lower classes is encouraged among the well-off. And anyway, visiting, as its called, offers Margaret an opportunity to get out in the world, to seize her own initiative, to be her own woman by engaging with the female prisoners of Millbank. Quickly, Margaret takes a liking to these wretches. In a way, she's quite like them, a societal outcast among a group of societal outcasts. Perhaps this new arrangement will work out for Margaret and give her hope for the future, unless of course her passions run away with her and she gets in too deep with the wrong inmate, an inmate just waiting for an opportunity to reclaim her lost powers.

This is an excellent piece of fiction which channels the Bronte sisters and filters it through the lens of the late 20th century inclination for graphic detail. If Ms. Waters had been just a bit more circumspect in her subject matter, this could have been a 19th century Gothic novel. The prose is wonderfully period and the sense of creeping despair is pitch perfect. My primary quibble here is with Selina Dawes, the inmate with whom Margaret entangles. Quality character, but the flashbacks to her past, while probably necessary, slowed the novel considerably. Ms. Waters clearly wanted to explore the spiritualism of the period, but it always seemed too disconnected from the main, narrative thrust. It certainly never animated as the rest of the piece did. All in all, a great read if you like a little non-gory horror. And as mentioned, the final act is absolutely first class. (3/5 Stars)

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

From The Week of May 16, 2010

sparked by Dr. Firlic's notion of what the future will hold for the human brain, I set about looking for a more concrete treatise on Neuroplasticity, a revolutionary development in neurology, the controversial nature of which has delayed its mainstream acceptance until recently. Dr. Doidge, a Canadian psychiatrist and medical researcher, whose scorn for the neuroplastic doubters simmers within his text, considers Neuroplasticity not just an important tool in the human brain's toolbox, but perhaps the single most important driver in our success as a species.

Neuroplasticity is, in brief, the human brain's capacity to cope with damage. If a part of the brain is compromised beyond its ability to function, the tasks which have been historically handled by that part of the brain are relocated to another part of the brain healthy enough to execute those tasks. Though the precise mechanisms of how it accomplishes this are still being debated, countless experiments have proven that this is exactly what is happening. Simply put, Neuroplasticity explains how, for example, stroke victim's are able to re-learn how to walk and or talk. It explains how we recover at all from any injury to the brain. Neuroplasticity also goes some way to explaining why the blind, the deaf, etc., often report a heightening in their other senses. When a sense is lost, the region of the brain that processes those sensory signals ceases to have a function for there's no input to handle. The brain seems to recognize this and slowly, over time, re-wires that unused brain center as an auxiliary processor for another active sense. In other words, the blind may hear better because what was once their visual cortex has been re-wired to serve as a second auditory cortex, thereby increasing the total amount of the brain tasked to handle auditory signals.

Though Neuroplasticity is the main drive of Dr. Doidge's exciting book, Neuroplasticity itself can't be completely understood without an explanation of how the human brain learns. And this is the second major focus of The Brain That Changes Itself, a description of what Dr. Doidge calls neural mapping. From infancy, whenever we perform an action,a code is laid down in our brains; think computer program. If an organism had to re-learn how to perform an action every time it tried to do it, that organism would be dead within days. So survival is intrinsically linked to reacting quicker than the thing trying to prey upon you. The brain's way of learning how best to react is to remember how an action was performed, store that action as code, and use that code as a shortcut whenever that action is performed in the future. Try to walk for the first time and you have no idea what to do. Too many muscles have to move, too many commands have to be sent and organized, that coordination is impossible. But if our brains hold shortcuts for actions like taking a step, or groups of actions like running, then, over time, our performance improves because every time we perform the action, we strengthen the neural map, the shortcut, which has reduced a complex action to a reflex.

Dr. Doidge has penned a complex story, but one which is as fascinating as it is dense. The descriptions of the experiments proving Neuroplasticity are lively and engrossing, as are the cases which neurosurgeons are attempting to figure out ways to aid Neuroplasticity in the severely disabled. This is well-rounded and gripping discussion of Neuroscience, a must read for anyone even remotely curious about how we learn. (4/5 Stars)

Another Day In The Frontal Lobe by Katrina Firlik

From The Week of May 16, 2010

Dr. Firlik, an American neurosurgeon, has compiled, here, an interesting blend of genres. Part memoir, part neurosurgery 101, and part odyssey through the human brain, Another Day In The Frontal Lobe could easily be three separate novels, and yet her composite functions surprisingly well.

Though television shows like Gray's Anatomy have gone some way to illuminating the lives of neurosurgeon's, it's difficult to trust a scripted drama when it is not compelled to be truthful. Dr. Firlik's account of the long years of schooling and how socially isolating they can be is poignant. The hospital becomes such a center of focus that it's difficult to build a life outside ones career and ones colleagues. Even so, Dr. Firlik seems well-aware of what she has gained in the bargain, highly specialized knowledge that allows her to perform extraordinary feats of medicine which, even half a century ago, would have been unthinkable. And this is the second stage of her novel, describing in detail the trials and tribulations of the operating room: its composition, its tools, and its personnel. She mixes in enough of her casework to create a tasteful recipe of human interest and solid science which keeps the reader engaged long enough to transition into the part of her work that shines brightest.

I imagine the human brain will be an object of fascination for many decades to come as it stubbornly refuses to relinquish its many secrets. And such, there is plenty of room for speculation concerning its workings and its most vital systems. Dr. Firlik discusses in this final, successful section the current events of neurology, from the exciting concept of neuroplasticity to Dr. Firlik's fascination with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation which has been put forward as a possible solution to any number of neurological problems. Her thrilling conclusion, a rumination on the future of Neuroscience and the improvements in the human brain that we may be able to induce as soon as 20 years from now, left me more than a little giddy, for what this will mean for humanity, and jealous, of Dr. Firlik. For she has clearly chosen a life path which has placed her at the heart of a profession rapidly evolving, a profession which will have a great deal of influence upon the shape of the 21st century.

A bit too scattered at times, but it gains momentum as it proceeds to an excellent conclusion. (3/5 Stars)

Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan

Alongside The Steel Remains, this is Mr. Morgan's best work. In a future America balkanized into three distinct nation states, a dangerous experiment has been loosed upon the unsuspecting public. Thirteens, the savage legacy of genetic engineering programs which sought to create perfect, human soldiers by re-engineering the hunter-gatherers from 10,000 years in humanity's past, have been shunned by a society afraid of their powers, a society unwilling to face up to the responsibility of being their makers. And now that one of these Thirteens has escaped Mars colony to return to Earth, there's only one man capable of tracking him down and eliminating him before he does more damage than he's already done, a fellow thirteen turned hunter of his own kind.

I have a long-form review of this book up at my website. To read it, click here. But if you've ever trusted my reviews, just move along to the Amazon link. This book is the reason why Mr. Morgan occupies such rarified air in the world of SF. (5/5 Stars)

The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

From The Week of May 16, 2010

As our population grows, and as the social fabric of the Internet brings that population closer together, the odds of encountering someone who shares your exact name will increase, probably sharply. But even if this becomes more common, we will never top the story of the two Wes Moores.

Only two years apart, two boys are born with the same name, into the same Baltimore neighborhood. They walked the same streets, struggled with the same poverty, and yet neither they nor their families ever crossed paths. One Moore moved to New York, struggled in school, wound up in military school, rebelled and then finally settled down into a stable, productive life as a financial analyst, army veteran and author, specifically of this book. The other Moore stayed in Baltimore, dealt drugs, killed a cop and is currently serving a life sentence. Two lives headed in exactly the same direction until a moment in time forced a divergence, ascending one Moore to success and plummeting the other into Hell. The two may never have crossed paths were it not for the author Moore seeing his own name in the newspaper, a warrant issued for his arrest for a robbery gone wrong. And after he realized it was the other Wes Moore, he began to follow the case, to speak with the other Moore, to learn how they had come to such different ends.

Yes, this is a self-indulgent rumination on a trivial connection. There is, after all, nothing overly karmic in a name. It's not like the author Moore's success robbed the other Moore of his fair share. We are the result of our circumstances and our experiences. But the sheer similarity of their backgrounds was novel enough to carry me into the book's core theme. On what decisions does the success of a life hinge? What moments set us on the good path as opposed to the ruinous? And though Mr. Moore, the author, leans towards self-righteousness at times, he had the curiosity and the diligence to investigate and ask, and reflect. And, by in large, The Other Wes Moore is the successful outcome of his musings. (3/5 Stars)

The Family That Couldn't Sleep by Daniel Max

From The Week of May 16, 2010

It strikes me that we understand both a great deal and hardly anything at all about how organisms work. An incalculable number of hours have been spent by countless scientific minds working out the processes that underpin life. But though we're strong on the broad strokes of the thing, we are so weak on the specifics that we don't even know the function of some of the most prolific cells within our own bodies. This may say something none-too-flattering about the intelligence of humanity as a species, but it may simply be that life is by its nature the most complex thing imaginable. And that cracking that code isn't easy. Mr. Max has put forth, in The Family That Couldn't Sleep a chilling example of just how ignorant we are of ourselves and the organisms we depend on.

Mr. Max, himself the sufferer of a degenerative condition, has chronicled, here, an Italian family afflicted by an appalling curse. At some point, during middle age, each member of this family has a significant chance of waking up one morning and never again being able to return to sleep. No matter how exhausted they are, they cannot and will not rest until they die, usually within the span of a week or two. How can such a thing possibly afflict a single family? They have inherited a trait from a common 19th century ancestor in whom a deadly modification was made. This trait only activates in some of the family members which is how they've been able to survive to reproduce through the subsequent generations. And so, in a metaphorical sense, the disease has put, above the head of each member of this family, a kind of invisible guilllotine which may or may not strike them down. There's no way for them to know if the trait will activate or not. If it does, they die, painfully and horribly. If it doesn't, they live normally for the rest of their lives. Remarkable... And, to say the least, worthy of scientific investigation.

Though Mr. Max's description of and interviews with the afflicted family captivate, it's the science here which startles. For Mr. Max concludes that the sleeping sickness suffered by the family is the result of a malformed protein called a Prion. Prions, it so happens, are also the prime suspect in the cause of Mad Cow Disease for prions, once they enter the body, can convert healthy proteins into destructive prions which, in turn, pervert more healthy proteins until enough damage has been done and the organism dies. Mr. Max's vivid explanation of the history of Prion research, of the Mad Cow scare in Britain and how this all relates to our poor, Italian family is skillful and edifying.

I do not know when we will understand how life functions, but I know this. The journey to understanding is bound to be frightening if it throws up surprises even half as fearsome as Prions. Work well done... (4/5 Stars)

The Woman Who Can't Forget by Jill Price

From The Week of May 09, 2010

Ninety-nine percent of us have, from time to time, lamented our faulty memories. We misremember facts, misplace our possessions, and forget entire events, all things that hurt us and our relationships with others. Memory can even so thoroughly convince us of the truth of a thing that we must be presented with irrefutable proof before we will admit we were wrong. But what if we were capable of improving memory? What if we could ensure that nothing we experienced was ever forgotten? Wouldn't we leap at that opportunity, to experience, with perfect clarity, life's highlights? We might, but Ms. Price would not recommend it.

Jill Price has a remarkable oddity in her brain, a malformation which has supercharged her capacity to save and access Autobiographical Memory, a type of human memory which helps to put life's experiences in something like a chronological and sortable order. If you were asked to remember important events which happened to you in 2001, or to recall the restaurant at which you celebrated your birthday in 1998, or to remember where it was that you last wore your black jeans, you would be using Autobiographical Memory to find an answer. Customarily, memories, or access to them, fade with time, a fact most of us find annoying, but Ms. Price's case provokes another theory. Perhaps memories fade with time because they must in order for us to remain sane.

Ms. Price can remember every experience that has happened to her since her childhood. She can remember the discord of every fight, the sting of every disappointment, the hurt of every social wound. She can remember them in such vivid detail that she re-experiences the emotions attached to those memories each time she recalls them. Ms. Price's condition is extraordinarily rare and perhaps this is why we idealize perfect recall, because we dream only of its advantages, settling arguments, performing better on tests, killing at dinner parties, and not its aforementioned disadvantages which would surely cripple most of us who endured such unfiltered life.

Perhaps memories fade with time because memories are inextricably linked with emotion. It matters not if emotion is imbedded in the memories themselves, or the process of recalling the memories triggers the emotion. Everything from elation to agony is there, an unhealed wound. And if, on a daily basis, we were forced to endure our life's highs and lows, in perfect clarity mind, would we not go a little bit insane? Thought of this way, the evanescence of memory may be a self-defense mechanism, protection against re-experiencing trauma that would handicap us. Could Ms. Price be disabled, not blessed? It's an odd way of looking at such a remarkable gift, but Ms. Price's enthralling description of her battles with her own memory, as she tries to carve out a life for herself that is something like emotionally stable, convinces that it does hamper more than it thrills, that it hurts more than it helps, and that we shouldn't be so quick to ask for what we can't possibly understand.

This Is quality work with a compelling premise and a well-argued conclusion. (4/5 Stars)

The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks

From The Week of May 09, 2010

Whenever I am engaged in a discussion about physical disabilities, be they my own or others, invariably the conversation ends on some version of the following, positive note. "Well, at least I can think clearly. Take away my mental health and what's left?" Bravely, painfully, Dr. Saks shows us exactly what is left, madness and despair, far more of both than my well-meaning naivety could have imagined.

The Center Cannot Hold is an autobiographical account of Dr. Saks' lifelong confrontation with Schizophrenia, a widely misunderstood condition which, if possible, is even more agonizing and terrifying than the misapprehension of it which prevails in our culture. Tormented by crippling bouts of anxiety, Dr. Saks suffers episodes in which reality itself seems to be coming apart and re-ordering itself into something new and terrifying, something that only she can see. To her, this reality is completely real. She cannot understand how we cannot see it, understand it, and be tortured by it as she is. These episodes nearly derailed Dr. Saks' promising career in academia which had to be put on hold on numerous occasions while she languished in various institutions. Though these hospitals promised her aid, they seemed to harm as much as help, plying her with a dizzying array of changing drug cocktails and treatments which inspired more dismay than confidence. Dr. Saks eventually relied upon the aid of loyal and tireless friends, along with a few remarkably patient therapists, to knit together a life anyone could be proud of.

The Center Cannot Hold is, in every way, a success. It educates us about Schizophrenia and the terrible price its sufferers pay. It inspires us with the empathy shown to Dr. Saks in her times of greatest need. But most importantly, it is a triumph of the human mind to find a way around its own damaged circuits and create for itself something like stability. The incalculable hours Dr. Saks has spent trying to find an equilibrium that, every day, we take for granted is humbling and inspiring. I can only congratulate her on an excellent book and a fight well fought. (4/5 Stars)

A Seaside Practice by Tom Smith

From The Week of May 09, 2010

Dr. Smith has penned here a lovely autobiography of his time as a doctor practicing medicine in the Scottish country during the 1960s. Homey descriptions of the beautiful country would make even a hermit yearn to travel there and taste the heather, to stay awhile in Dr. Smith's cozy home, to take long walks upon the unchanged land, and to watch Dr. Smith offer his patients a brand of human comfort which seems lost on many, urban doctors. The conciseness of the tale is admirable and takes very little away from the doctor's more spectacular cases. There's laughter and sadness here in equal measure. And in-between, though delivered gently, a reminder for us all of what is life's greatest virtue, love: of family, of country, and of those who need it most. (4/5 Stars)

Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

From The Week of May 09, 2010

Readers of this blog will remember my fondness for Ms. Griffith who won my heart with the indomitable Aud Torvingen. Though Ammonite has no such transformative character, and though it's plot teeters at times on the edge of a literary cliff, this her earliest novel, welds a frightening premise onto an inventive world to create a worthwhile if uneven effort.

In a future in which diseases still have the power to frighten, there is a planet colonized by humans which is sending ripples of fear throughout humanity. It has generated a virus which inevitably kills the men who step foot upon it. Though women are inexplicably spared death, they are changed, mentally plugged into the planet (Jeep) in a way that no one quite understands. Marghe, our heroine, an anthropologist by vocation and a lost soul by circumstance, is attempting both to study and cure the virus. But after descending from orbit to test out a new antidote, she is kidnapped, separated from the injections that keep her safe and infected with the very virus she was hoping to immunize the colonists from. Locked into hardship, Marghe soon surrenders to her intellectual curiosity and puts her time on Jeep to good use. After all, the human authorities may never allow her to rejoin her civilization now that she carries such a deadly pathogen. She will have to go native and learn what she can.

Though Ammonite is primarily propelled by Marghe, the novel's B plot follows the commander of Jeep's garrison. comprised of women forbidden to leave the world, conditions are difficult and tempers quixotic. For all the time spent on Jeep, they've kept themselves largely aloof from the colonists. But with Marguerite's disappearance and the up-tick in local tensions, that isolationism won't last.

While the plot holds up and the characters are interesting, it's the novelty of the virus and the extreme social dynamics it creates which animate this piece. Yes, this is a bit too obviously the product of a college daydream about what life would be like on a planet full of women, but the sociology saves it from veering off too far into crazy feminism land. Good work, but it's unable to avoid tropes of the genre. (3/5 Stars)

The State Of Jones by Sally Jenkins

From The Week of May 09, 2010

The State Of Jones by Sally Jenkins

At what cost principles? Captain Newton Knight had many occasions to ask himself this question as, in a life largely devoted to standing up for his beliefs, he lost almost everything, unable to even keep his descendants from white-washing his memory. And why wouldn't they want to cleans themselves of this life-long rebel? The son of a plantation owner, Knight grew up abolitionist in the slave-holding South, a white man who would have had every advantage of history and class had he followed the company line and fought for what the Confederacy believed in. But when he refused to secede his conscience to what he considered to be the morally bankrupted Confederacy, he was cast out, labelled a lover of Negroes and shunned from proper society. He and his family were robbed, hunted and pilloried. Existence for Knight's offspring must have been brutal, unless of course they rejected their infamous ancestor and joined all right-thinking men in the idea that whites were superior.

The human need to force conformity upon his fellows will always astonish me. During the American Civil War, Captain Knight deserted the Confederate army, wanting no part in fighting a Union he believed in. He believed in equality among races. How could he not? Rachel, the love of his life was black, a woman he would marry and spend his life with. It was for that sin, the sin of love, that doom was visited upon him and those like him, people who did not want to hate, people who did not want to divide. Unwilling to go quietly into the night, Knight organized himself and his supporters into a band of guerillas, declaring their county free of the Confederacy. They defended their land from soldiers and their pro-slavery countrymen, all while trying to communicate with the North, to tell them that not all Southerners thought alike on the great question of the day.

The Confederacy claimed that slavery was a distraction from the main issue, the right to set their own laws as they saw them, to govern themselves as a state in a union of states. If their laws allowed for slavery, then slavery they would have and the federal government had no right to impose anything upon them to the contrary. But of course we know this is garbage. Humans act out of self-interest. Within a capitalist system, it is within man's best interests to accumulate wealth. Slave-owning was good business. Therefore, slavery was always going to be clung to by the states who practiced it. And it's this that distinguishes Captain Knight. In the dark sea of self-interest, he shone like a beacon of hope, a man a hundred years ahead of his fellows. But like all of those who are ahead of their time, he was punished for that grave crime of non-conformity, of rebellion.

Ms. Jenkins movingly captures Captain Knight, his family, their plight, and the hearts both open to and hardened against his cause. More tragically, she writes darkly of the years after the idealistic Knight's crusade, how he was thrust into post-war oblivion by a defeated but uncowed anti-black South, how his ancestors were obligated to denounce Rachel, their progenitor, because acknowledging her would be admitting they had in their veins the black blood that would disqualify them from being land-owning citizens. It is a gut-wrenching tale, but one I'm better for having read.

A moment in time will come for us all, a moment in which we are tested, Stick with the injustice we know because it is familiar and profitable to us, or acknowledge that it is wrong, go against our own self-interest and live knowing we do so righteously? History suggests many of us will choose self-interestedly, but I'd like to hope that there are, walking among us, enough Newton Knights to remind us that self-interest is not the only path, that the rightness of a thing matters more than its cost, and that this is the only way to a life lived justly. (5/5 Stars)

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

From The Week of May 02, 2010

It could be anyone, argues Ms. Stout, an American psychologist at Harvard: your boss, your co-worker, your friend, your father. According to the the Mclean Hospital, in a random sampling of 25 people that you know,odds are that lineup will include a sociopath. When the condition was first diagnosed, it was called Guiltlessness, an accurate summation of a neurological pathology which liberates its sufferers from the burden of a conscience. No guilt, no shame, no remorse, no compassion... Without these emotions, one cannot experience empathy. And if one cannot experience empathy, then one cannot experience humility. It's difficult, it turns out, to have humility when ones worldview is reduced to the strong versus the weak, the superior versus the inferior, the smart versus the thick.

Ms. Stout does a wonderful job frightening the reader half to death by describing, in vivid, eerie detail, the powers of a sociopath. Unencumbered by debilitating emotions, they are free to manipulate those around them in the cruellest and most brazen of ways. And they do love to manipulate. Rather than suppress their desire to compete, the absence of a conscience turns sociopaths hyper-competitive, driven by a need to demonstrate their superiority. They will use anyone necessary to achieve their ascendance because, to them, superiority is all that matters. Ms. Stout fills in her description of Sociopathy and its role in our society with disturbing portrayals of personal cases in which she has offered therapy to the victims of Sociopathy, men and women so twisted round in knots by their tormenters that they often don't even believe that they've been victimized. To think that such powerful and unchained minds operate throughout society, at every level of government, business, education, finance, sends a chill down the spine.

How true are Ms. Stout's claims? Reading her account of sociopaths leaves one with the strong impression that civilization should have long ago collapsed under the weight of millions of crushed personalities, that the perniciousness of this mental illness is a rampant and untreated malignancy that's metastasized through society. And yet we're all still here, notionally healthy, many of us the fortunate beneficiaries of loyal families. So where's the damage? Ms. Stout argues that the perpetrators are, of course, largely confined to very specific circles of society, positions of high power which convey upon the sociopath the legitimacy they crave. But of course, there's no way to prove this. All humans manipulate. Even if sociopaths are better at it than we are, thanks to their ruthlessness, how much better? How much better does one have to be to be considered a sociopath? These questions make it difficult to measure their impact, let alone put a hard number on how many of them breathe our air and operate our institutions.

This is a powerful and unnerving book, filled with real examples of damage done to good people by sociopaths.. To the extent that it raises awareness of this cruel condition, Ms. Stout has done good here, discussing at various points ways to both recognize and cope with a sociopath. But she does seem to suffer from an affliction common to authors of non-fiction, a tendency to over-inflate the importance of their subject matter. This is almost inevitable when we consider how much time must be invested to research their subjects. Nonetheless, it is an ailment to which Ms. Stout is not immune. This is good and edifying work, but I wonder if the world is just a bit more sane than Ms. Stout would have us believe. (3/5 Stars)

And I Alone Survived by Lauren Elder

From The Week of May 02, 2010

When, in 1976, Lauren Elder found herself whimsically accepting a ride in a friend's Cessna, she expected it to be a fun, three-person day trip to Death Valley that would have her safely home by nightfall. She could not have known that, in boarding the plane, she would be committing herself to her life's most harrowing challenge. For, only hours later, she will have crashed in the Sierra Nevada mountains, isolating her and her dying companions at 12,860 feet and miles from the nearest human soul. By the next morning, her companions will have died and Ms. Elder, though herself wounded, will have to face the reality that, if she is to survive, she will have to manage it without any formal training, any help from the outside, and without the proper supplies or clothes necessary to weather her inhospitable conditions.

How do people survive situations they aren't prepared for? What fine line exists between life and death? What are the true limits of human endurance? And I Alone Survived explores all such questions as Ms. Elder narrates her survival against all odds. Dressed in a blouse, a wrap-around skirt and boots with two inch heels, and debilitated by a broken arm and facial injuries, she has to descend 12,800 feet of treacherous mountainside, negotiating snow-packs, ice-sheets and ravines in an endless and numbing odyssey. Her iron-willed determination to press on despite her injuries and the hopelessness of her plight is awe-inspiring. And the sheer courage it must have taken to set out on her mission instead of waiting at the crash-site for help is matchless by anything I've heard of. People survive the unexpected by believing in themselves, by planning out what they must do and by executing that plan. And while luck plays a role in why they lived while others died, their calmness and rationality in the face of the overwhelming keeps them focused on their goals, not on their pains. They survive because there are no limits to human endurance, not while one is alive. We can do what we must do, so long as we want it enough, need it enough. That is what Ms. Elder teaches us. That is why she alone survived.

This is a gripping book and it's no surprise that, after 35 years, it remains in print. Ms. Elder, who went onto become an artist, captures herself wonderfully here, a young woman caught in that awkward time after college but before she's settled on her life's direction. She has just as keen an eye for her friends as she does for herself, nailing Jim, the pilot, as the cocky and overconfident showoff for his girlfriend. The night Elder spents with Jim, huddled in the crumpled plane, desperate for warmth, is is a beautiful illustration of their differing attitudes towards their predicament. This is first-class non-fiction. (4/5 Stars)

Alice by Stacy A. Cordery

From The Week of May 02, 2010

Some lives are lived so richly, so extraordinarily, that their spirits must be preserved for posterity so that others might look back upon them and taste some measure of what it must have been like to live in exceptional times. Ms. Cordery has set herself the task of chronicling just such a life. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, styled by the world the American princess, rebel, political activist, globe-trotter, tragic... Ms. Cordery may be working with excellent clay, but her end product is still made pleasing by her own quality efforts.

Alice Longworth lived 96 years on this earth. A Washington D.C. Legend, she loomed over the capital's social scene for nearly the whole of her life, dictating the rise and fall of personal fortunes while watching the generations of the powerful come and go. But long before she presided over dinner engagements, she was the American Princess, the first American celebrity. Daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, she was born into fame, but it was her personality which kept the still-developing media spotlight upon her. For she seemed at times allergic to custom, flaunting the conventionalities of a woman's role in favor of smoking when she wanted to, riding trains how she wished to, voyaging where she longed to, and dating whoever the hell she yearned to. A celebrity must needs be a free spirit to captivate the media's attention and Alice clearly had spirit in spades.

Though much of her defiance seems to have stemmed from a difficult relationship with her father who, on some level, seems to have blamed Alice for the death of her mother, her keen mind may have caused her to rebel regardless. In 1905, she was the headliner of the so-called Imperial Cruise, a diplomatic mission to Asia in which she outshone the seven senators and 23 congressmen who accompanied her. Greeted by ecstatic crowds at every port, she became the first global, American celebrity, a royal without a title which was certainly something the British could understand. Her wedding, the formalization of her relationship with Nicholas Longworth who became Speaker of the House, was the most anticipated event of its year. But though the alliance lasted until the alcoholic Longworth's death, and though it kept her at the heart of power, the marriage was, in many ways, the beginning of a new and dark chapter in Alice's life, one which would come to dominate the decades to come.

Some celebrities live loudly, flamboyantly, craving the attention paid to them by our rapacious media. But though Alice did not seem afraid of the attention, Ms. Cordery successfully portrays the sense of grace that seems to have infused her. Alice handled her fame with a class that we have forgotten and would do well, I think, to revive. For there's something eminently powerful about a graceful star, a brilliance that spans generations, inspiring us even while invading us. Alice was the epitome of such a creature and Ms. Cordery brings her to life in pleasing detail. (4/5 Stars)

The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

From The Week of May 02, 2010

In connecting the Big Burn of 1910 to an entertaining retelling of the history of both firefighting and environmentalism in the United States, Mr. Egan has done a wise thing. For it's clear, early on, that, for as spectacular as the Big Burn was, charring 12,000 square kilometers and killing 87 people, many of them firefighters, the event itself is far too faded in our cultural memory to warrant being the subject of an entire book. Without television cameras and constant flyovers to tell its tale, the fire remains mostly confined to legend and, thus, hard to animate. But couching it inside a discussion about the Forestry Service, its origins, its mission and its policies, Mr. Egan has crafted an quality micro history of a fire that changed the United States.

We journey from Theodore Roosevelt's White House to the forests of Washington and Idaho in this tale of politics and pyrotechnics. Woven into vivid descriptions of the Big Burn, retold through previously published eyewitness accounts, we see how this singular fire put to rest a great debate over how the land should be shaped. Was it proper to fight fires? Was it not better to let them burn, presumably as they had always done for time immemorial? Or was it better to intervene and curtail the damage? The Big Burn ended the question, causing the United States to adopt a plan of intervention where possible. But if, in time, this policy has been questioned, sometimes vehemently so, the Big Burn did give one, transformative victory to environmentalists. The spectacular gave Roosevelt and his allies an opportunity to pass ideological legislation which codified and strengthened the Forestry Service, justifying it on the basis that good stewardship of the land was inherent to American patriotism, that something has to be preserved for future generations, that they might enjoy nature as much as the generations which came before. And in this, we see the cultivation of the vein of naturalism that's run through the American character ever since, serving as a counterweight against corporate rapaciousness.

This is a satisfying read, but the focus is a bit too narrow to be truly edifying to anyone who isn't already interested in the Forestry Service or in environmental conservation. Needed a bit more macro to delight. (3/5 Stars)