How Bad Are Bananas by Mike Berners-lee

From The Week of August 28, 2011

A week does not go by in which we are not reminded of the price Earth pays for humanity's ongoing existence. From mining to deforestation, from oceans polluted by our garbage to landmasses remade for our crops, the cost of civilization is everywhere and, as much as some wish it otherwise, impossible to ignore. But while there is little we can do to put an end to this exploitation, short of returning to the darkness of pre-industrial agrarian life, we can make small changes that may help slow the rate at which we devour the planet. Rather than the guilt and outrage characteristic of large swaths of environmentalist writing, this spirit of pragmatism is what fuses this effort from Mr. Berners-lee.

How Bad Are Bananas is a dogged investigation of the carbon footprint of our everyday practices. From the cars and trains that transport us to the cellphones and laptops that keep us connected, Mr. Berners-Lee meticulously calculates the cost, in greenhouse gases, of producing our food, treating our waste, entertaining our minds, and cleaning our homes. In this, he uncovers a number of fascinating truths that have the power to surprise. For instance, best estimates put cellphone use at less than 1 percent of our total, carbon output per year, vanishingly small for a device owned and used by more than a quarter of the human population. But as much as cellphones, televisions and dishwashers surprise with their economy of carbon output, staples like rice and cheese join newspapers and light-rail trains in a category of products that astonish with their carbon costliness. In some cases, cheese actually produces more CO2E than meat and rice, meanwhile, is only fractionally better than cement, a flabbergasting result which is sure to stun the environmental laity.

But as much as there are surprising results among the products chronicled here, How Bad Are Bananas does not overturn the basic truths about carbon emissions, mainly, that transportation and livestock grown for human production combine to represent an eye-popping percentage of anthropogenic carbon. So while Mr. Berners-Lee helps his readers to understand the small ways in which they can shrink their carbon footprints, the alternately frustrating and depressing reality remains, that, short of grounding our planes, junking our cars and swearing off meat, there is precious little we can do to slow down the CO2 juggernaut that threatens to transform our world.

This is admirably researched work that does what all educational pamphlets should do, entertain and enlighten. I would have appreciated a more thorough effort from the author to compare the products listed here with one another, or perhaps to rate, as a percent of global carbon use, each product so that the reader could have easily measured them against other activities. Instead, each product was measured in kilograms or pounds of emissions, a measurement which means precious little to the average reader. Nonetheless, this is an instructive read. (3/5 Stars)

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande

From The Week of August 28, 2011

For most of us, English grammar is a challenging subject. For while brave teachers have been thanklessly instructing us in its fundamentals, for decades now, English speakers have been learning their language without any knowledge of the mishmash of Dutch, French, German, Latin and Norse tongues from which it has been haphazardly assembled. As a result, most of us quickly forget the bewildering (at best) and senseless (at worst) array of rules we were taught in High School, instead, absorbing what laws we can through intuition and common usage. This is far from ideal, which makes our grammar far from ideal. And when some aspect of our character is substandard, we can count on there being puffed-up perfectionists ready to step in and correct us while being aglow with smug superiority. Thank the gods, then, for Ms. Casagrande.

From the semicolon to the subjunctive, from "I"s and "we"s to "that"s and "which"s, Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies is a playful and enlightening romp through the maddening world of English grammar. But unlike the school lessons, to which attention had to be encouraged by the threat of ruler-wrapped knuckles, Ms. Casagrande, an American author and journalist, teaches through humor, infusing an otherwise dry subject with entertaining verve.

While Ms. Casagrande's primary purpose here is to educate her readers on some core principles of English grammar, she also devotes considerable time to the castigation of grammar snobs. From Lynn Truss to the anonymous hordes who feel it their duty to correct every error, the author contends that these snobbish, self-styled, gram=mar experts are far from helpful and that they intimidate those with only passable grammar by proudly declaring their arcane knowledge. Ms. Casagrande argues that, in reality, not even grammar experts know all the rules, that some situations have no hard-and-fast rules, and that comprehension ought to be the standard by which we judge communication.

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies is an enjoyable read. While Ms. Casagrande is overzealous in her criticism of grammar snobs -- I read Lynn Truss as far more humorous than she --, her underlying point, that snobbery only inhibits learning while fostering a dangerous elitism, is both valid and well-argued. Humanity has, at many points in its history, surrendered authority to various priesthoods, all of which claim specialized, doctrinal knowledge of important subjects. But rather than using their esoteric knowledge to educate laypeople, these self-appointed guardians of the arcane sanctified their learning, insisting that only they can properly dispense its wisdom. In doing so, they claim unto themselves power that, by rights, ought to be equally held by everyone. Grammar snobs may not have nice robes or gilded crosses, but this should fool no one into thinking that they are not the newest iteration of this sad practice. Knowledge belongs to everyone and can be accessed by anyone. And whomsoever claims otherwise is only trying to make himself feel special.

Educational, funny and with a bit of intellectual bite. (3/5 Stars)

The Science of Evil by Simon Baron Cohen

From The Week of August 28, 2011

There can be little doubt that the need to know is one of man's most influential virtues. It has driven him to harness fire, fashion weapons, cultivate the land and found civilizations. But as much as this desire to understand has spurred humanity onto new heights and new achievements, its benefits are not enjoyed without costs. After all, the same need to know that ignites curiosity also drives man to find answers to more troublesome questions. Why do good people die young? Why are the righteous defeated by the ignorant? Why are we here? Unsurprisingly, answers to these philosophical queries have not been forthcoming, prompting man to sketch out his own explanations.

Evil. There is evil at work in the world, an evil that strengthens the arms of the ignorant, an evil that causes the good to die young. Evil accounts for all the inequities, all the unfairness. Evil is what infects the hearts and minds and turns them to wicked purposes.

This narrative is as old as human culture, but now, thanks to the rigors of modern science, evil, like so many other boogyman before it, is yielding. It is being brought under the inquisitive light of reason, forced to identify itself as man's inability to empathize with his fellows. After all, if man has no empathy for his neighbors, he cannot imagine the pain of harming them. And if he cannot imagine the pain of harming them, then there is nothing to stop him from harming them. And if there's nothing to stop him from harming them, then he will harm them, and for no reason anyone else can see. This, to his fellows, is evil, violence made inexplicable by an inability to imagine life without empathy. This is, at least, Mr. Baron-Cohen's premise and he argues it logically and effectively.

The Science of Evil is a swift and systematic attempt to classify and understand those among us who lack empathy. After laying out the numerous regions of the brain responsible for empathy, Mr. Baron-Cohen, a professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, transitions from a scientific explanation of empathy -- feeling discomfort at another's pain -- into an attempt to classify those devoid of empathy.

To this end, Mr. Baron-Cohen's research leads him to divide our subjects into two major groups, Zero Positives and Zero Negatives. The zero represents the amount of empathy the subject displays while the designation of Positive or Negative denotes the bent of the subject's personality. For instance, a Zero Positive might be a harmless Autistic, someone with a mind beset by the beauty and the safety of the world's mathematical constructs. Zero Negative, meanwhile, could be any of a number of antisocial personality types ranging from the psychopathic (P), to the narcissistic (N), to the borderline (B). Such personalities are capable of great harm, ruthlessly deploying weapons of violence and manipulation in order to mercilessly achieve their own ends.

Though brief, The Science of Evil is a fascinating and educational examination of Zero-Empathy personalities and the harm they are capable of. But unlike the prior generations of so-called experts who would have dismissed these humans as misfits, Mr. Baron-Cohen has shed some light on how Zero Empathy comes about and how it can be avoided. In doing so, he does not only enlighten his readers on the role empathy plays in gluing together human society, he helps us to understand that there is no such thing as evil; there is merely that which we do not understand. To call this evil is to allow ourselves to shelter in our prejudices, to dismiss the unknown as unworthy of our exploration. Such narrowmindedness only begets ignorance and that we must not accept. (3/5 Stars)

1848 by Mike Rapport

From The Week of August 28, 2011

since man blundered into civilization, he has been at war with himself. Much as theologians would have it otherwise, this is not a conflict of angels against devils, man's best against his worst, in a battle for his soul. No, this is a war of actual significance that has consequences for himself and for humanity.

Opposing one another across the battlefield of human nature are two powerful antagonists, man's desire for order and man's desire for freedom. The former subverts freedom by electing tyrants to impose peace and structure upon the world. The latter, meanwhile, agitates against order by investing every man with the pains and responsibilities for his own liberty. Unlike conventional wars, this most internal conflict may never end; after all, the wisdom necessary to find the proper balance between such contrary forces may only be found in the divine. But as help from the gods does not seem forthcoming, all we can do is look to past skirmishes and hope that somewhere, within this sea of tyrants and troublemakers, we can find some kind of harmony. In this effort, the revolutions that convulsed Europe in 1848 can be quite instructive.

1848 is Mr. Rapport's meticulous reconstruction of the cries for liberty that thundered across Europe in that most revolutionary year. A generation after the Congress of Vienna restored authoritarian rule to a continent tormented by Napoleonic populism, an entirely new disagreement erupted, putting to an end 30 years of imposed peace. Unlike the Napoleonic Wars which were rooted in a dangerous and ultimately tragic militarism, this new war was social in nature, fuelled by the socioeconomic inequities characteristic of all authoritarian states. The working classes, in want of access to food, capital and self-rule, rebelled, overthrowing a monarchy in France, igniting the spirit of national unity in Italy and the German states, and rolling back the imperialism of the Habsburg Empire which, at this time, governed much of central Europe. These revolutions, influenced both by the democratic success in the United States and the intellectual contributions of Marx and Engels, sought to replace kings and emperors with presidents and prime ministers. Constitutions were written, republics declared, parliaments held.

But while these revolutions achieved many, early successes, it took only a matter of months for discord to set in. The revolutionaries had, in the end, only the revolution in common. They were, otherwise, ethnically, politically and socially diverse. Some wanted only an end to authoritarian rule while others desired democracy. Some favored only a limited franchise while others agitated for universal male suffrage. Some wanted a moderate, progressive actualization of reforms while others advocated that the rotten anthill be kicked over and swiftly replaced with a new and better way. Under these pressures, these once-united revolutionaries fragmented into combative factions, some insisting on order, others shouting for freedom. Against this divided front, it proved surprisingly easy for the washed-out tide of absolutest rule to sweep back across the European shore and obliterate most, if not all, of the political gains of 1848.

It is no surprise that the 1848 revolutions hold little fascination for anyone outside academia. But for Napoleon III and Giuseppe Garibaldi, this upheaval produced no historical giants, men who withstood the rigors of time to be immortalized by our culture. More over, Mr. Rapport's scholarly style, here, does very little to make these uprisings any more accessible; 1848's dryness is on par with most of its characters. But while Mr. Rapport fails to inject his work with the verve characteristic of most popular histories, he has done a wonderful job of both thoroughly reconstructing a tumult of chaotic and confusing events and extracting from them a logical conclusion. For while the revolutions of 1848 may not have given birth to many actual reforms, they sparked in the hearts and minds of the subsequent generations ideas of freedom and universal brotherhood that would culminate in the liberalization of the 20th century.

A solid history. Mr. Rapport does not miss his subject's central dilemma. Man desires to be free, but how free? How much discord is he willing to entertain in order to be free? It is a question that doomed the revolutions of 1848. Will it linger over us for the centuries to come as well? (3/5 Stars)

Evil For Evil: The Engineers 02 by K. J. Parker

From The Week of August 21, 2011

In Devices And Desires, K. J. Parker introduced readers to a mechanical universe in which precision and exactitude are matchless virtues which, if sufficiently mastered, can convey extraordinary powers upon both society and the individual. In Evil For Evil, the author expands upon this theme by arguing that these standards of personal conduct open up the mind to possibilities of perception and manipulation that, when cleverly used against the other players in life's game, can bring both victory and revenge. Though Parker earns points for novelty and for the courage of realizing that novelty in a vivid and interesting setting, he, or she -- the author's identity is unknown --, fails both to convince the reader of this premise and to maintain the reader's interest through to the lengthy novel's modest conclusion.

When we were last with Ziani Vaatzes, the exiled Mezentian foreman, wanted by his homeland for both fleeing his own execution and deploying his knowledge against the Great Republic that taught him, the city state that took him in was being obliterated. Betrayed to the besieging enemy, the hopeless Duke Orsea and his people were attempting to flee the Mezentian mercenaries who, having suffered massive casualties in the taking of the city, were set on slaughter. But whereas Ziani, by rights, ought to have run out of luck and been re-captured by the victorious forces, we find him, now, escaping into the protection of Duke Valens who, out of love for Orsea's wife, rides to the rescue of his fellow duke and his beleaguered people. But while Valens' ride has won them a brief reprieve, the relentless, Mezentian eye will soon turn to his lands where, despite Valens' cunning and extraordinary intelligence, there seems no force capable of stopping them. Or is there?

As Ziani is settling in to work for his second duke in a matter of months, a mysterious stranger arrives, pleading to become assistant to the wanted Mezentian engineer. Dismissive at first, Ziani's impression of this tall and ugly human evolves rapidly when his new assistant proves himself to have an intellect, in some ways, superior to Ziani's own. However, as much as this new stranger may offer Valens and his people a weapon that might level the playing field against the Mezentian armies, his dark past may well make it impossible for that advantage to be realized.

For lovers of dark fantasy, Evil For Evil has much to recommend it. It presents an unrelentingly bleak view of human relationships, deeming them to be based on treacherous emotions. In this universe, love is the most terrible force in the world for it is the only power capable of causing he who experiences it to jeopardize all in order to hold faith with it. While this makes the read unendurable at times, it also provides it a great deal of dark energy which Parker puts to great use by laying waste to the conceits of happiness and heroism. Given that the fantasy genre is all-too-littered with spunky, world-saving wizards and the fluffy, happy fellows who love them, this is a welcome digression into potent, imaginative realism.

But for all this, Evil For Evil must be considered a three-pronged failure. Most importantly, it is interminably long. Its 700 pages are bloated with endless and repetitive monologues on the nature of human failing, the removal of even a handful of which could comfortably reduce the piece by a couple of hundred pages. Secondly, it makes an unsuccessful attempt to convince the reader of its most vital plot point, that one man can, through sufficient foresight and planning, manipulate entire civilizations and their leaders into a succession of actions, all designed to bring about a single, future outcome. Not only is this highly implausible, it directly clashes with another of the author's themes, that plans rarely if ever work out the way their planners expect them to. In a universe based on realism, this is an annoying dependence on deus ex machina. Finally, but for one major incident, the book is almost entirely expository. It seeks more to justify its few developments than to launch the reader towards a satisfying conclusion. I will read on, mostly because I'm sufficiently invested to want to know how the story ends, but my suspicion is that this could have easily been a duology with the first volume concluding with the major event in this piece, and the final volume picking up from that.

Disappointing. Seven-hundred pages is a lot of dead trees for far too little advancement. (2/5 Stars)

Bonnie Prince Charlie by Carolly Erickson

From The Week of August 21, 2011

Though scientists will, I imagine, continue to debate, for some time, the question of nature versus nurture and which plays a more prominent role in the development of a human being, nature must have the upper hand. For it seems, in life after life, that our environment has a profound say in who we are and what we make of ourselves. From the faiths we proclaim, to the morals we espouse, to the biases we hold, and the ideologies we advocate, the things we believe in are imprinted upon us by the society to which we belong. There's nothing inherently wrong with this; after all, there are plenty of societies that inculcate their citizens with kindness and generosity. But of course, in such a scenario, a great deal of importance rests on the quality of that inculcating society. If it is healthy and good, then its citizens are bound to follow in its footsteps. But if it is plagued by inequity and narrowmindedness, then these shortcomings will burden its people with flaws they will struggle to overcome. There can be few better examples of this principle at work than Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Christened Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Silvester Severino Maria Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie was born, in 1720, to the self-styled James III of England and VIII of Scotland whose Catholic father, James II, was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. As a result, the Bonnie Prince was not born in England but at the papal court in Rome where his father James, after two miserably unsuccessful attempts to reclaim the throne for his father, came to reside, exiled from his homeland. Young Charlie was groomed, from an early age, to be the great, Catholic hope, the Stewart who would return to a Britain lost to Anglicanism, raise up the banner of the pro-papal Stewarts and win back the throne for his crownless father. As such, while his younger, more artistic brother threw himself into a pious and Romantic education, Charlie was mastered in the art of combat and infused with the arrogance necessary for a man to overcome all odds in the achievement of a difficult goal.

In 1744, the 24-year-old Charlie snuck out of Italy and relocated to France where the French king, agreed to support a Catholic invasion of England with ships and men under the Stewart banner. But when the vagaries of seasonal weather combined with general incompetence to scuttle the planned French invasion, an impulsive Charlie, believing Jacobite loyalists would rally to him the moment he raised his standard on British soil, ignored the entreaties from his father to return to Rome and boldly sailed to England where a skirmish with the British navy forced him to land in desolate Scotland. Charlie's boldness was born out, however, when, within the year, he had forged a Scottish army capable of marching on London. But when factional infighting forced a retreat at the vital moment, the dream was doomed and, in 1745, at Culloden, the dream died in a decisive and devastating English victory.

Ms. Erickson, a veteran biographer, has done justice, here, to a worthy subject. For while her reconstruction of the Jacobite rebellion is compelling and entertaining, it's her portrait of Charles Stewart himself that captivates. This is a man trained practically from birth to achieve a single, nearly impossible dream, to restore his father to his rightful throne. And so, when circumstances conspire to kill that dream, he is a failure. Without a Catholic monarchy in england, he is nothing more than a nobleman, a man trained to do the one thing he cannot achieve. It's no wonder then that he slowly became a cruel, selfish, licentious drunk, a man playing out the string of life with the knowledge that he could never actualize what he was made for. The pall that would cast over ones life beggars the imagination.

This is as much a study in character and human nature as it is a biography of the death of the Stewart dynasty. In both respects, it is a wonderful success. (5/5 Stars)

Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles

From The Week of August 21, 2011

It is a sad but universal maxim of human nature that we demonize that which we most fear. Be it the rise of the industrial might of Asia, or the influx of immigrant populations into our communities, or even the building of an Islamic community center near Ground 0, we all denigrate peoples and faiths, corporations and governments, because it helps to justify our prejudices. It is infinitely easier to indulge in thoughtless spite than it is to examine the ugly truths that linger behind our fear. For most of us, this ill will is internal, a mental monologue covered up by a veneer of politeness. But for those few among us who possess genuine power, bigotry can ignite wars from which some people never recover. So it is now; so it has ever been. It is a maxim to which the lost people of Carthage would surely testify.

Raised in what is now modern-day Tunis, Carthage was a powerful, north African state which plied the oceanic waters between Africa and Europe for much of the first millennium BCE. Though it is now best remembered for the mercilessness with which it was exterminated by the Roman Republic during the Third Punic War, Carthaginian power predated Roman might by centuries. In fact, for most of its history, Greek Syracuse was its chief rival and antagonist, not the Romans who would eventually annihilate it. A mighty naval power, Carthage was a magnet for wealth, successfully deploying a powerful, oligarchical council which guided it to Mediterranean prominence. But while its achievements enabled its expansion into Spain, Italy and Greece, it was also its downfall. For it stoked up in prideful and powerful Rome jealousy and envy for which the Roman character was ill-equipped to suffer.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed is, in the main, a treatise on the history of Carthage, the mythology of its founding in ninth century BCE, its rise to mercantile supremacy in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, its obliteration at the hands of the ruthless Roman Republic in the first century BCE, and the years between in which its great generals, its geographic advantages, and its entrepreneurial spirit made it an immensely successful civilization. But while Mr. Miles details, here, the history of this Phoenician society, now remembered for Hannibal, its greatest and most prodigal son, and for the Romans sowing salt into its soil, it is the fearfulness with which the Romans viewed Carthage that connects this ancient tale to the present day.

Want drives human action: want of stuff, want of emotion, want of power. And so, when Carthage dared to stand before the assembled might of Rome and demand that the Italian state recognize it as an equal, to treat with it on the terms of a worthy opponent, the want of Rome, to be the best, to have no equal, to be supreme in every way, drove it to commit genocide against Carthage, to refuse to stop until it was no more. For only then, in the destruction of an enemy, could the preeminence of the Roman Republic be truly declared.

This is an excellent and scholarly work. Mr. Miles is as detailed in his reconstruction of Carthaginian civilization as he is in sketching out the sociopolitical forces which tied the region together during its reign. But as much as this work teaches the reader about Carthage, it is surprisingly vague on the Roman side of the equation. Yes, there are brief descriptions of some important figures, Marcus Cato, whose famous quote gave this book its title, Fabius the Delayer who was so successful in fighting Hannibal, and Scipio Africanus, the man who eventually destroyed Carthage, but these figures seem like afterthoughts. Perhaps the author considers the Roman side of this story to have already been decisively told. Nonetheless, I required more.

There are lessons here, not only for humans individually but for powerful nations as well. You may, for awhile, assuage your fears by vanquishing those you consider your enemies, but ultimately those fears will end you. For the enemy is ultimately in your own character, not in those who are not like you. And if you must fight the enemy to prove your own worth, then you will only wind up annihilating yourself. (4/5 Stars)

Devices And Desires: The Engineers 01 by K. j. Parker

From The Week of August 14, 2011

We know, from our own history, that great conflicts can begin from the smallest provocations, the wrong enemy antagonized, the wrong alliance made, the wrong marriage consummated. Had these moments in space and time played out differently, entire calamities might have been mitigated, perhaps even avoided. Never has this truism been more apparent than in K. J. Parker's clockwork universe of wars, clans and engineers. For here, in this world of mountains and deserts, hatreds and jealousies, even the tinniest sparks can ignite conflagrations powerful enough to extinguish civilizations.

In the Great Republic of Mezentia, life unfolds with exquisite regimentation. A civilization of far-seeing engineers, Mezentia has managed to perfect virtually every mechanical process known to man, bending these talents to the manufacturing of goods of a quality to shame all competitors. By positioning themselves as the one-stop shop for everything from domestic clocks to the weapons of war, they have grown immensely wealthy and exceedingly powerful, so much so they have little motivation to be kind to their friends or merciful to their enemies. But rather than channel this phenomenal success in engineering into innovation, Mezentian society has come to be governed by strict codes of law and design. After all, Mezentian creations are perfect in every way. And if one attempts to improve upon a perfect design, then one is implicitly admitting that the design in question is flawed. That is an abomination.

Ziani Vaatzes, a foreman of a Mezentian ordinance factory, is the last man any Mezentian would consider an abominator. And yet, when investigators from the bureau of Compliance discover that, in creating a mechanical doll for his young daughter, he has illegally improved upon the perfect design, he is swiftly arrested and sentenced to be executed. Initially, Ziani appears to be resigned to his fate until the infuriating obstinance and insensitivity of his jailers towards his family provokes him to shrug off his compliant nature and effect a bold escape from his prison, from Mezentia, and from his life. Abandoning everything he's ever known, Ziani flees to the mountainous borderlands where, if he succeeds in ingratiating himself with the two combative peoples who inhabit these hostile lands, he may be able to exact his revenge upon the people who called him abominator.

Littered with dark characters and darker deeds, this first effort in a trilogy from K. J. Parker interweaves the fates of four primary provocateurs whose conflicting wants and desires may well bring death and destruction to their people. In addition to Ziani, there is the hopeless Duke Orsea who senselessly provokes a war with the Mezentians, the ruthless and highly intelligent Duke Valens who tries to protect Orsea for the love of the bumbling duke's wife, and Miel Ducas, Orsea's loyal right hand who was not made for the life that has shackled him. Altogether, their plots and schemes, needs and wants, create a treacherous tangle of temporary alliances designed to gain advantages which forever seem elusive.

But as much as the author's characters are a strength of the story, they are also its primary weakness. For while Devices And Desires is darkly, cleverly, and satisfyingly plotted, and while its conclusion holds promise for the next two volumes, there is a disturbing uniformity of personality here that is already grating. It may be that the world K. J. Parker created here is intentionally populated by people with minimal to no emotional affect. If so, there ought to be some explanation for this flatness, some indication of why both the Mezentians and the people of the mountain duchies experience so few emotions other than anger, jealousy and fear. And most of this is internal, hidden behind masks of politeness and suffering.

Devices And Desires has an intriguing premise, many cunning characters and an inventive world, but its characters are so consistently, pointlessly sociopathic that one has to wonder about the headspace its author was in it when it was composed. Engaging and promising, but its bleakness requires justification. (3/5 Stars)

Egypt On The Brink by Tarek Osman

From The Week of August 14, 2011

With luck, Egypt will soon be free. Empowered by a wave of young Egyptians who make up almost 70 percent of the country's population, the stifling statism that has, for the last 60 years, restricted their freedom and ripped away their opportunities for economic success may soon be drowned, replaced by an open democracy capable of building on its energetic and hungry youth to create a modern nation. But while we can remember the crowds that bravely filled Tahrir Square in the spring of 2011 and hail them as courageous revolutionaries who overthrew a crumbling dictatorship, there is only one way to have even a remote idea of what will replace Hosni Mubarak's security state. We must journey into the past and examine Egypt in the 20th century: its people, its governments, and the ideas that impelled both their successes and their failures. This Egypt On The Brink achieves with clarity and grace.

Published a year prior to the 2011 Arab Spring, this treatise from Mr. Osman, on 20th century Egypt, its politics, its economics and its religion, makes the Tahrir uprising seem like an inevitable outcome of 60 years of political corruption and societal decay. Who is responsible for this desolation? The three men who have hovered over Egyptian life since independence in the 1950s.

Gamal Abdel Nasser rose out of the fog of obscurity to guide his country away from British colonialism and into an ideological marriage with the USSR. Under Nasser, Egypt became a command economy that saw millions of impoverished Egyptians educated and welcomed into a new middleclass, dominated by the public sector. But when, in 1967, his plans to unite the Arab world under a single, pan-Arabic banner were crushed by Israel's shocking victory over the combined might of Egypt and its Arabic allies in the Six Day War, Nasser's reforms lost legitimacy, a reality which only hastened their decline into the bureaucratic stagnancy typical of Soviet-style economies.

Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Nasser by being the least offensive of the available options, not only abandoned the Nasser plan, he ran in the opposite direction. Politically and economically, Sadat embraced the West, implementing Al Infitah, a program of privatization which both enriched and ingratiated him to Egypt's elite. However, when Sadat's reforms only succeeded in cementing an Egyptian oligarchy, the millions of Egyptians who were elevated to the middleclass under Nasser were mercilessly dropped back down into poverty, creating widespread discontent. This discord crescendoed with Sadat's assassination in 1981.

Which brings us to Hosni Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship. Forever marked by the terror of being at Sadat's side when the president was killed during a military parade in Cairo, Mubarak left behind Nasser's socialism and Sadat's capitalism to carve out his own identity, the leader of a security state. He consolidated Sadat's oligarchy and kept faith with Israel and the United States while, at home, he cracked down hard on dissent, imprisoning his enemies and dissolving any forms of organized opposition to his authority. Unfortunately for the Egyptian people, Mr. Mubarak did not learn one of the major rules of human nature, that denying someone a thing, no matter its form, only makes him want it more. After a series of assassination attempts, Mubarak was overthrown in 2011 by the Tahrir revolt.

Egypt On The Brink is a marvelous and concise breakdown of the difficulties the Egyptian people have faced over the last seven decades in which they have been bounced from colonialism, to socialism, to capitalism, to the militarism. They have been the victims of a cruel game of political experimentation driven by the desire of three powerful men -- Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak -- to seize power and impose their ideologies upon their people. And so, while Mr. Osman has done a wonderful job elucidating the tragic march of Egyptian history, his greatest achievement here is to present to his readers a potent, systematic indictment of not only authoritarianism, but that form of political paternalism that infuses ambitious men with the misguided belief that they know best. We only needs look to Egypt to grasp the full cost of such folly.

This is riveting work, only marginally dated by the revolution that so quickly followed it. (4/5 Stars)

To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild

From The Week of August 14, 2011

Despite the best efforts of historians to record its significance, World War I has been, in Western culture, overshadowed by its bigger, louder successor. This is logical. After all, World War II was the first war of the modern era, a war prosecuted with cutting-edge weapons and contemporary nation states. Not only did World War I involve horse-mounted cavalry, the generals who fought it out deployed 19th century ideas of honor and bravery and, in doing so, consigned their men to be slaughtered by the millions. World War II was ignited by an epic antagonist in Hitler, a man so demonic, he could not have been imagined by dramatists. World War I was launched by the pettiness and the pride of monarchs who, in committing their countries to the ruinous conflict, wrote the final chapter on their era before ushering themselves into history. But while it's clear to see how the bigger, starker World War II defined the remainder of the century, World War I gave rise to powerful voices and vital ideas that laid down the destinies of political movements for decades to come.

In To End All Wars, Mr. Hochschild, a journalist and author, traces the lives of several influential figures in British politics and society in a largely successful attempt to create a portrait of life during World War I. From the political dissidents who were jailed for their unwillingness to fight to the staunchly pro-government loyalists who considered such dissent in a time of war treasonous, Mr. Hochschild uses his subjects to explore not only the manner in which public opinion was shaped during this dark period of European history, but the extent to which great strife polarizes people by creating opposing camps into which people, on the basis of class background, political affiliation, and career path, sort themselves. In the case of Britain from 1914 to 1918, this sorting created three distinct, powerful groups: the conservative loyalists who believed in the war, who felt it a matter of British pride to fight it out, and who deemed dissent to be un-British; the socialist opposition who hated the war, who wanted it ended as soon as humanly possible, and who advocated political revolution to see those objectives realized; and everyone else stuck in the middle who were asked to fight the war, to die in its battles, to suffer its deprivations, and to bear up under its pains with dignity and grace. No surprise then that this unhappy stew generated extraordinary tumult in Britain during these five years of international calamity.

From Lloyd George, Rudyard Kipling and John French, loyalists all, to Emily Hobhouse, Keir Hardie and the Pankhurst clan, socialists all, Mr. Hochschild's vivid biography of a society during one of history's most senseless wars is surprisingly gripping. After all, this is a tale not of battlefields and tactics; this is a chronicle of the lives of desperate and passionate people who stood at the nexus of a pivotal moment in humanity's history and insisted that their presences be felt, that their ideas be heard. Through their own words, and Mr. Hochschild's reconstructions of their lives, the reader is presented with a composite view of the homefront during wartime and the epic conflict which, for such citizens, characterizes all wars.

Do we agitate against our government, like Sylvia Pankhurst and Bertrand Russell, putting our beliefs ahead of the betterment and unity of our nation during a difficult time? Or do we support our leaders like Kipling and French, demanding that the people suspend their beliefs for the betterment of the cause and the nation? To do the former is to risk being labelled un-British, or un-American, an unpatriotic traitor to ones people and the soldiers dying for the cause. To do the latter is to risk being a helpful stooge for the government, a willing dupe who, infected by propaganda, spreads this insidious virus to the people. It is a question yet to be satisfactorily answered, but one which Mr. Hochschild's subjects all confront in their own ways.

This is a wonderful examination of a vital time in our world's history, a time in which the fate of a century was being written not only in the blood of the men dying in Flanders Fields, but by the revolutionaries who dared to be heard, dared to force their ideas into the world. A riveting tapestry of time lost to history. (5/5
Stars)

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

From The Week of August 07, 2011

Torn between east and west, between democracy and authoritarianism, between secularism and Islam, turkey stands at the crossroads of our world. One side lies Europe, a continent of order, peace and prosperity. On the other lies the Middle East, a region of chaos, violence and poverty. How can one nation of 80,000,000 people, forged from the wreckage of the bloody first world war, maintain its cohesion in the face of such lacerating disharmony? Though The Bastard of Istanbul primarily concerns itself with the trials and tribulations of an extended, bifurcated, Turkish family, with branches in Istanbul and the southwestern United States, Ms. Shafak's characters are a delivery system for deeper messages about women, nationalism, freedom and Turkey.

For 19-year-old Asya, life is a series of disappointments and restrictions which, together, have kindled in her twin fires of rage and nihilism. The eponymous bastard, Asya was born, out of wedlock, into a family of difficult women, three aunts, two grandparents and one mother, all of whom, at one point or another, live under the same roof.

This clan of females suffers a curse, chiefly that their menfolk never seem to be able to survive into middle age. The only male who has defied this curse is Mustafa, Asya's uncle, and he may have only been spared by fleeing Istanbul for America where, for the last 20 years, he he's lived with an excitable American woman who came to him a single mother with a half-Armenian daughter. Years on, the daughter Armanoush, or Amy to her American friends, is a bright, articulate and bookish college student who, finding herself gripped by a desire to explore her Armenian roots, secretly travels to Istanbul where, as the step daughter of Mustafa, she is welcomed under the roof of Asya's wild family of women.

It would be difficult for scholarly Armanoush and hedonistic Asya to have less in common, and yet, as Armanoush begins to delve into her Armenian family's tortured history, the two youths bond tightly. Asya has her cynical eyes opened to the Armenian genocide which Turkish society has tried to sweep under the proverbial rug, and Armanoush learns, through her associations with Asya's free-spirited circle, that, counter to the expectations of her anti-Turkish Armenian friends, Turkey and its people, while reluctant to admit the sins of the past, are not hate-filled warmongers. They are people, good and bad, living their lives. And in this, they are no different than anyone else the world over.

The story crescendos when, learning that Armanoush has lied to them about her journey to turkey, Rose and Mustafa hurry across the globe to Istanbul to retrieve her, a fateful decision which will have profound consequences to both branches of this eccentric family.

Though The Bastard of Istanbul opens slowly, indolently laying out its myriad players and their assorted troubles, it rapidly acquires a powerful momentum that impels it to a shattering conclusion. Ms. Shafak's characters shine. Everyone from thoughtful Armanoush and nihilistic Asya to their thorny and zealous relatives have distinct and difficult personalities. But while her living, breathing characters give her work its color, they are also the doorways through which she can explore the challenging questions of Turkish society.

Asya embodies liberal, secularist turkey. Frustrated and angry, she flails to find her roots in a world that is, often, hostile to her existence. Armanoush, meanwhile, represents that part of the Armenian Diaspora that wishes rapprochement with Turkey, an acknowledgement of and a settlement to the butchery of 1915. It's no surprise, then, that both women face such insurmountable lives. After all, the tide is against them, not only in Turkey but in much of the rest of the world which seems increasingly unwilling to enjoin with its enemies on peaceful, common ground.

The Bastard of Istanbul is slow to ignite, but its launch, when actualized around the halfway mark, is spectacular and engrossing. I could have done without Ms. Shafak's occasional digressions into religious mysticism which felt shoehorned into the story to help clue the reader into its central plot point, but the rich history and the vivid world more than made up for this flaw. (4/5 Stars)

I Know I Am But What Are You by Samantha Bee

From The Week of August 07, 2011

Writers are the lifeblood of television shows. After all, it's almost impossible to enjoy an episode of any program riddled with stilted skits, awkward dialogue and senseless plot twists. The Daily Show, then, must have some phenomenal talent empowering it. For no other program has maintained such sharp satire, such mocking wit, for such a long time. Though this latest effort from a Daily show performer is more a limited memoir than a mocking comedy, Ms. Bee displays, here, the charm and the humor that infuses The Daily Show of which she's been apart since 2003.

Born in Canada to wildly eccentric parents, Ms. Bee clearly had an unusual adolescence. Enthusiastically delving into her past, she details not only her awkward sexual encounters -- she appears to have been quite a magnet for older, pervy men --, she unapologetically embraces her early roles as depressive, car thief, and crapped-on girlfriend. About the only noteworthy absence in the life described here is normalcy with which Ms. Bee seems only passingly familiar. But then, when ones formative life is shaped by asshole boyfriends, inappropriate parents and strange, strange men, one is bound to trade in boring, old normal for exciting and exhilarating bizarre.

From horribly awkward family vacations to drug-fuelled concerts, I Know I Am But What Are You is a fun romp through Ms. Bee's entertaining adolescence, but there's very little here about her latter life and virtually nothing about her time on The Daily Show. The writer of a memoir is under no obligation to lay out the totality of her life in a single work, but the omission of her adult life from this piece is quite jarring. There are references to it, of course, brief allusions to her husband and childbirth, but these are little more than glances in the direction of events after Ms. Bee turned 20.

It's no doubt an impulse for comedians to look nostalgically back on their childhoods; after all, these are the years that shaped them into the funny, sarcastic and zany wits that so capably amuse us. And yet, our lives have arcs, trajectories, moments of change and maturity. Ms. Bee is commendably raw and open about the ungainliness of her youth and the moments of painful silence and loneliness that punctuated it, but such tales have been told many, many times before. If it's to be told again, the recipe must be spiced up with a new variation on an established theme.

Despite having her Daily Show six-shooter primed and holstered, Ms. Bee's refusal to draw and fire confines this memoir to conventionality. Amusing and, at times, playfully terrifying, but more than a little disappointing as well. (2/5 Stars)

Dirt by David R. Montgomery

From The Week of August 07, 2011

Humanity is beset by dualities. North and south, liberal and conservative, rich and poor... Philosophically, politically, and even geographically, we find polarities everywhere we look. And so it should not be a surprise to find the same polarized forces at play in the study of our species. Futurist scholars disregard what has come before to focus on what's to come next while historian scholars reject the future to focus on the past. While Mr. Montgomery is undoubtedly an adherent to the latter, historian camp, Dirt is an intriguing attempt to bridge the gap between past and future under the umbrella of a single, logical premise.

Civilizations live and die on the health of their soil. For there is nothing more fundamental to the functioning of any civilization than a steady supply of food, or so argues Mr. Montgomery. Great empires from the Romans to the Mayans have expanded to meet their food supply, only to crash when either that food supply is cut off, or when political instabilities, created as a result of expansion, bring them down. People must eat. And if they cannot eat, they will not sit idly by and waste away to death; they will fight wars for the resources they require.

After laying out this theory of civilization extinction, Mr. Montgomery investigates the soil itself: its properties, its systems, and most importantly its limitations. For as farmers have known for centuries, soil can be exhausted by heavy use. What hasn't been common knowledge until recently is why. Enter the relentlessly scientific Charles Darwin who discovered that earthworms are a vital component in healthy soil, creatures capable of enlivening rocky mush into nutrient-rich earth for plants and crops. Building from this idea, Mr. Montgomery goes on to explain the methods used to work the land, how those methods have improved over time, how the yields from the land have grown to fit an expanding population, and, finally, how humanity is about to reach the land's capacity to feed all of its exploiters.

Parts science, history, memoir, and environmentalism, Dirt is a wonderful look into a world that we all take for granted. We all enjoy the products of civilization: cellphones, airplanes, restaurants, and movie theatres. But Mr. Montgomery successfully argues that all of these trappings come about as a result of the health of our soil. Without that, there is no food. And if there's no food, there's no people. And if there's no people, there's certainly no Iphone. What's more, what humans take for granted they have a tendency to abuse. We have made unique changes to Earth, modifying it in ways that can only be labelled experimental. What began 10,000 years ago with the agricultural revolution lives on, today, in a population that has exploded out to seven billion purely on the back of the capacity of the land to feed them. But none of the practices we have used to feed that population are natural or sustainable.

Mr. Montgomery does an excellent job of explaining how this has come to pass and offers researched ideas for how it can be mended for the future. For one thing seems clear. If we exhaust the soil, if we have no other way of growing food, nothing else matters. Billions of people will starve and die, all because of the health of something we consider dirty. (4/5 Stars)

The Crimean War by Orlando Figes

From The Week of August 07, 2011

Though governments will always withhold from their populations the true facts of war, its costs, its blunders and its barbarities, there can be no doubt that, thanks to our ubiquitous media, the people of the world have access to many more truths of war than they did a century ago. From imbedded reporters to corroborated reports of attacks, the people can, on a daily basis, keep abreast of campaigns and their atrocities without having to quit their couches. However, war wasn't always fought so openly. In fact, prior to World War II, the imbedded reporter was a rarely spotted species. Such newsmen were almost invariably creatures of the government, toadies who avoided the wrath of military censors by publishing propaganda pieces meant to shore up support along the homefront. So how and when did war become open? How and when were the consciousnesses of people the world over made aware of war's true price? How and when did the tide of humanism reach the battlefield and attempt to elevate the value of every human life?

In The Crimean War, Mr. Figes, a British historian of Russia, delves into this 1853-1856 European conflict, exposing not only the imperial and religious forces that caused it but the extent to which it popularized the horrific plight of the common soldier. For even in this relatively brief skirmish that pitted an ambitious and proud Russia against the Ottoman Turks and their French and British allies, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were felled by bullets on the battlefield and by disease and hunger off it. To demonstrate the role sickness, starvation and exposure to the cold played in the conflict, Mr. Figes vividly documents a single siege in which more than seven times as many French soldiers died off the battlefield as died on it.

This affliction was by no means confined to the French. Of the 130,000 lives lost during the yearlong struggle for Sevastopol, more than 100,000 were non-combat casualties. But unlike with past wars, such deprivations did not go unnoticed. Thanks to letters and news stories from the front that detailed the tragic conditions, the Crimean War gave birth to the careers of crusaders like Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole whose work on behalf of sick and wounded soldiers helped to change perceptions of the value of life.

But while Mr. Figes does a terrifyingly vivid job illustrating the battlefields, the notables who fought on them and the changes the media brought to them, he is equally determined to expose the roots of the conflict. Portraying the emperor of Russia as something of a boy taken by the trappings of war, he describes how Nicholas I clashed with the French over who was the rightful protector and overseer of the Christian population within the Ottoman empire, how Nicholas' militarism doomed any hope of a diplomatic solution, and how the European powers were, as a result, drawn into what was essentially a localized rivalry between the Russians and the Turks. Tragically, this is neither the first nor the last time that pride and theology have come together to empower war.

The Crimean War is a lengthy and detailed primer on what is, 150 years on, something of a forgotten conflict, quite overshadowed by the 20th century conflagrations that followed it and the Napoleonic tumults that preceded it. That said, Mr. Figes is successful in his attempt to humanize the war by bringing to light the humanistic trends it impelled and by connecting its casus belli to the seemingly universal human failings of pride and self-importance. In this, he makes this old war relevant to the 21st century reader. But while some might find the author admirably thorough, the level of detail Mr. Figes applies to the war's peripheral players, and the extent to which he seems determined to highlight every futile skirmish, causes the read to drag considerably. While there's much here to learn from and be immersed by, there's also plenty here to find oppressing and repetitive. (3/5 Stars)

Blood Magic: The Ballad of Kirin Widowmaker 01 by Matthew Cook

From The Week of July 31, 2011

While Blood Magic falls well short of greatness, the dearth of genuinely dark fantasy fiction leaves enough room on the literary stage for this maiden effort from Mr. Cook to come forth from the shadows and have a moment in the limelight. For while it will never grace any top ten lists, or be found lovingly tucked away next to hardcover copies of more venerated series, its antiheroine protagonist, its ruthless bloodshed and its merciless conclusion combine to lend it a punch to the guts both entertaining and savage.

In a kingdom beset by the Mor, a cruel race of powerfully built, intelligent bipeds set on savagery, Kirin, a young woman with a tragic past, does what she can to protect a band of the king's soldiers from their terrifying foe. For the Mor, recently thought to have been nothing more than myth, have fallen upon them with their multiple arms and their mastery of fire, leaving them outmatched and overwhelmed. Kirin, their scout, is their only hope.

Having come into a dark, necromantic power during a troubled and abusive adolescence, Kirin has shaped herself into a keen huntress and a powerful magician. Channeling the essence of her dead, beloved sister, she has long since outstripped her teacher for knowledge and strength. Unlike her fellow necromancers, who can only raise dumb and slow-footed wretches, her Sweetlings, the corpses she animates into loyal servants, are vicious, swift and lethal, faithfully protecting her and the company of soldiers whose lot she's thrown in with.

After a particularly costly battle, Kirin meets a young mage, Lia, an innocent who is abroad with Brother Ato, an older, judgmental priest who has little love or patience with Kirin's black magic. The two travelers have little experience with the life of attrition Kirin and her band face. Nonetheless, they are determined to aid them and the realm and, in doing so, will attempt to reform the dark necromancer by unraveling her past to discover just what pains her so.

For a seminal effort, Blood Magic must be considered a success. Kirin is a gripping antiheroine, a sadomasochistic wanderer as pained as she is savage. In her, Mr. Cook has given life to his greatest achievement here, a character worthy of a series. However, as much as Kirin fascinates, shocks and entertains, the author fails to imbue any of his other creations with the same animating spark. Lia and Ato are little more than cardboard cutouts of fantasy-fiction good guys. And Kirin's sister, present as a voice in the necromancer's head, is nothing more than a foil and an excuse for Kirin's more grievous sins.

But though this is something of a one woman show, and though the Mor fail to do more than provide an enemy for Kirin to fight, Mr. Cook's willingness to be different, to explore true darkness, to have a conversation about guilt and shame, and to investigate the nature of life in its many forms makes this work memorable and unusual. A mixed but compelling bag. (3/5 Stars)

Peak Everything by Richard Heinberg

From The Week of July 31, 2011

Unless one stands to profit from the plundering of Earth's resources, or is an ideologue who holds with such plunderers, it seems painfully clear that humanity is burning through its planet's fossil fuels at an alarming rate. After all, it doesn't take a mathematician to work out that today's four billion industrialized humans are going to burn through our finite amount of fuel infinitely faster than yesterday's few hundred million agricultural humans. More people plus higher fuel requirements equals more fuel used faster. And given the exponential rate at which the human population has expanded over the last 60 years, we've never used so much so fast. So being that we have a problem here, chiefly that our technological civilization is entirely dependent upon a fast-disappearing, finite resource, what do we do and what will the future look like without oil, coal, and natural gas?

Mr. Heinberg, a journalist and environmentalist, attempts to tackle these important questions in Peak Everything, a 200-page anthology of the author's essays on issues ranging from human psychology to future sustainability. After an attempt to explain the resource-profligacy of both the Greatest Generation and the Boomers they gave birth to, he moves on to what the world might look like if fossil fuels were no longer readily available. Being that transportation is the most fuel-hungry human industry, Mr. Heinberg logically assumes that, absent a wildcard like fusion power, by the end of the 21st century, our world will be made up of thousands of localized economies, that our food and our goods will be produced within a few hundred miles of where they are consumed, and that only the most valuable components will be fetched from elsewhere. In other words, he imagines a world of affiliated city states, community nations that are largely independent of one another and incapable of being united. The cost, to a centralized bureaucracy, in time and energy, to hold onto distant territories would simply be unaffordable.

This is the best case scenario, one in which society has sufficiently braced itself against the scarcity of fuel to plan for its future. The worst case scenario, meanwhile, finds humanity in its current state, making only a token effort towards sustainable energy while recklessly and needlessly hurtling towards the exhaustion of the fuel supply. Most writers on the subject, including Mr. Heinberg, agree that this will invite a widespread collapse of a society ill-prepared to transition to a post-fossil-fuel world. Mr. Heinberg cheesily concludes his work with an open letter from the future in which the author warns us about the consequences of inaction.

Despite the weakness of the final essay, Peak Everything packages an adequate summation of our current fuel problem with an intriguing conception of our future world to create a serviceable work that speaks to the problem of our rapid depletion of Earth's resources. Unfortunately, Mr. Heinberg's speculations on the causes of our profligacy fail to hit upon the most obvious explanation for our wastefulness.

While evolution is incredibly efficient, performing a cost benefit analysis on seemingly every decision -- is this new mutation (the brain) worth the energy it requires? --, human beings are not. They have never had to be. Since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, we have existed in a vast abundance. Yes, there have been droughts and shortages, but these dearths are intervals between long stretches of time in which food, land, and labor have been readily available to us. We haven't had to make the same life-and-death choices evolution has had to make. The human brain requires some 20 watts of power per day to perform all its countless functions. The best super computer humanity can design performs at only a fraction of the speed of the human brain and requires a million times as much power. Why?

Because humans can afford to be inefficient. We can afford to have our disposable Iphones to pour water down the drain, to get a new car every three years, and to not think about recycling. There is no motivation to be efficient in an abundant society. This is why we are profligate. Tell someone it's bad to buy an Iphone because we have only so many petroleum products from which to make its plastics and he'll shrug and tell you that's someone else's problem and he'll use that phone for a couple of years and throw it off for the new version. But tell that same someone that the Iphone he's about to buy is the last one he'll ever have and see if he doesn't cherish it, protect it and keep it for many years to come.

Scarcity drives efficiency which, for humanity, is both a positive and a negative. We are eminently adaptable, so we should be able to make ourselves efficient, to conform to the new paradigm. However, this also ensures that we will never change until we have to change, until we have no other choice.

Peak Everything is a worthy read, but its weak conclusion and its occasional omissions reduce it from a must-read to passably interesting non-fiction for anyone interested in our dwindling resources and what that may mean for the future. (3/5 Stars)

In Pursuit of Silence by George Prochnik

From The Week of July 31, 2011

From noisy neighbors to construction crews, from power washers to leafblowers, noise is an ever-present thunder in urban environments. If you're not living next to a highway, train-tracks, or a busy intersection, you're under a highly trafficked flight path to the local airport, forced to endure the repetitious din of hundreds of planes coming and going on a daily basis. For most of urban history, the growl of modern machines was tolerable, confined to roads and airways and the occasional lawnmowing on a Saturday afternoon. But since the advent of affordable power tools, escape into quiet is now impossible and no neighborhood is free of daily double-digit decibel ratings. Silence is golden. but more importantly, it's disappearing.

In Pursuit of Silence is an investigation into the rise of urban noise and the impact it has on humans and nature, physiologically and psychologically. After spending a million years evolving in a much quieter environment, human beings now find themselves bombarded by auditory stimulation they are ill-prepared for. This has lead some scientists to posit that noise pollution not only disrupts complex thinking, it may be a root cause of autism, literally re-wiring the infantile brain which is defenseless against the thunder that begins the moment the baby is born.

From birds who have their mating calls drowned out by passing cars to the horn and engine-filled clamor of New York City streets, Mr. Prochnik points out that the world is not only getting noisier, there's been only a token effort to keep the growing din in check. Noise pollution has historically been avoidable, but with the rapid rise of Earth's human population, finding silence is getting harder and harder. And yet, whenever society adjusts to a new phenomenon, subcultures are spawned to welcome and service those who find the new developments disturbing. From Buddhist temples to Japanese xen gardens, Mr. Prochnik profiles these sacred spaces, describing the physical and psychological responses to the total absence of noise.

But while spaces are being developed to shelter noise-avoiders, noise-revellers have staked out their own ground. Mr. Prochnik spends time, here, with Boom Car aficionados, men and women who gut their cars in an effort to pack so much stereo equipment inside their hollowed-out shells that the power of the sound produced literally distorts the air in and around the car, packing a punch capable of shattering windshields.

Mr. Prochnik has done justice to an under-discussed and overlooked externality of modern society. In highlighting the ways in which noise changes our world, he's brought attention to an issue that ought to be legislated and controlled. Millions of people spend a premium on their homes to live in nice, peaceful neighborhoods that have been graffitied by suburban noise. One should not have to go to a Japanese xen garden for silence. One should be able to walk out of ones own front door to locate peace and quiet. Now that science is beginning to detail the impact of noise, perhaps something will be done to curb the thunder and restore some semblance of peace to our world.

This is a thoughtful read. And though Mr. Prochnik makes his own feelings felt on this issue, he is much less inflammatory than I am on this subject and that is to his credit. (4/5 Stars)