12 Rules for Life

Wow...this is a different view on life.

The book can be summarized by the titles of the 12 chapters and rehashed in the final chapter. Clearly the author is very smart and very opinionated. He provided me with insight to many philosophers including Nietzsche, Jung, Descartes, Solzhenitsyn, and Dostoevsky. He explained bible stories including Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, the Old Testament vs. New Testament, and the meaning behind the Sermon on the Mount. He even gave good advice for relationships..."do you want to be right or do you want to have peace."
On the other hand, I take issue with many of his stated beliefs. For me he overstates the suffering of being, promotes male aggressive domination, sees Christianity as a necessary guiding light to understand good and evil, and has little trust in science and rational thought.
In reading the book I went from picturing our book club searching for meaning and truth, to thinking of the disenchanted white Americans that make up the Trump base.

The book was thought provoking, but I would not recommend it to many people, including my wife.

Frozen in Time

JTH's adventure book covered the stories of 4 downed lost planes in Greenland during WWII, the rescue efforts and survival stories, and the modern day expedition to try and retrieve the rescue plane and crew. The crashed planes included a C-53 transport where all crew was lost, a B-17 where the Canadian crew were able to walk to safety, and the B-17 PN9E that is focused on in the book. The crew of the PN9E survived over 4 months of extreme winter conditions due to heroic efforts from a supply plane, dog teams, the PBY Catalina team, and the crashed crashed Grumman Duck. The book goes back and forth between the survival story of the PN9E and the current day harried expedition to retrieve the Grumman Duck rescue plane and it's two occupants. It is interesting to learn about the hash conditions of Greenland as well as the great lengths mankind will extend to retrieve lost ones.

The Second Mountain

OK Stanley, I am confused...you chose a book written by a Jewish kid, that went to Christian schools and summer camps, became a secular Marxist in college, went to work for William F. Buckley upon graduation, is the "conservative" political perspective for Yale, the New York Times and PBS, divorces his converted Jewish wife, then marries a cute young thing and becomes a Evangelical Christian.
On top of that, he writes books on Sociology including "The Social Animal" and this one. I like and agree with much of the book, but he really looses me in the faith section. The book addresses occupation vs. vocation, contract vs. true marriage, logic vs. faith, and tribes vs. community. He describes himself as a "wondering Jew and a very confused Christian." His commitment to Christianity requires a "belief in the absurd" and he realizes that he can come across as a know-it-all.
The second mountain requires an unselfish commitment to community. He talks about the concept of weave and a commitment to serve others. He identifies with the Evangelical Christians and a humbling before God. At the same time he admits Evangelicals have in inferiority complex concerning intellect and a superiority concept concerning morals.
My take on the book is David Brooks is a complicated and somewhat confused guy. The second mountain is basically an altruistic commitment to serve ones community. To me a moral society is not dependent of blind faith.

The Third Hotel

Just finished David's book and I am not sure what happened...
Clara is a 37 year old Midwest elevator saleswomen taking a trip to Havana for a film festival featuring a Zombie horror movie. Her husband was a film professor that died a month before in an accident involving a late walk and a car. She goes ahead with the trip anyway, regularly seeing visions of her late husband and chasing them throughout Havana. The horror films help with the dislocation from reality. She becomes a guest/patient at a resort/asylum, gets in a train wreck, and somehow leaves Cuba for Florida.
Clara is a train wreck. She wanted to be married yet wanted to leave. She was an off-putting child that had regrets with her parents. She becomes a total mess with the death of her husband and a feeling of guilt.
The book is very difficult to follow. It is all over the place chronologically from zombies to fingernails.
Unusual book!

Dopesick

What is Dopesick?

Dave's book was an everything you could want to know about the current opioid epidemic and how we got here in America and especially in Appalachia. From smoking opium, to injecting morphine and later heroine, opioid usage did not take off in Appalachia until the introduction of prescription pain killers. Purdue industries promoted and distributed the pills OxyContin as a non-addictive pain killer for effective treatment of acute and chronic pain. The pills were wildly over prescribed and distributed through various pill mills resulting in massive abuse and addiction.

Dopesick is the pain and suffering resulting from trying to break the addition to opioids. The suffering is so bad that people will sacrifice everything to chase the next hit. The current policies focusing on punishment and imprisonment rather than treating it as an illness and health crisis has not worked. It is a tremendous problem that is killing many Americans. It will require years of long term drug maintenance programs and added healthcare. Maybe the Sackler family can foot some of the bill from their profits.

March book selection

My book selection for March is a murder mystery featuring Inspector Armand Gamache set in a small village in the Canadian province of Quebec. The author, Louis Penny, has written 15 books in the series and the first one was written in 2005 and titled Still Life. Liz has read all 15 and I am currently enjoying #4. There may be little to no discussion to follow, other than what is with the quirky characters in Three Pines and would we want to live there.

Hope you enjoy the escape...here are some key players:
Surete chief inspector Armond Gamache, wife Rene Marie
Artists Clara and Peter Morrow
Bistro and B&B gay hosts Gabri and Olivier
Crazy foul-mouthed poet Ruth Zardo
Book store psychologist Myrna
Assistant detective Jean Guy Beauvoir, trusted agent Isabelle Lacoste, and troubled agent Yvette Nichol

The Circuit

Just finished Bob's sports selection all about the 2017 professional tennis circuit. The book truly digs into the personalities and athletic specialties of many of the top 20 or so male players. Although 2017 ended with a sense of natural order of Nadal and Federer clearly establishing themselves as the number 1 and 2 players, you witness the fall of Murray and the struggles of Djokovic from injury, and simultaneously sense the rise of many young stars ready to move into the top positions. The book lets you experience the grind of the long season and the struggles to get to the top levels. It provides a window to the sheltered, privileged, yet tortured life of the typical tennis star and the often brooding and boorish behavior. The book is an everything you every wanted to know about men's tennis written by someone that loves the game...maybe TMI

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

At first I was skeptical of Paul's choice this month thinking that it was going to be another business book on how to succeed in the 21st Century. It turns out that Yuval Harari is a gay male historian living on an Israeli commune practicing extensive meditation. The 21 lessons are his deep thoughts organized in chapters from disillusionment to meditation.
Harari states that the only certainty in life is change and he fears that many people are in danger of becoming irrelevant. He describes religions and politics as collections of stories. Nations are built on these stories resulting in nationalism, communism, and liberalism. People adopt various levels of religious belief based on Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or other stories. The author states that moral behavior does not depend on religion and only a secular society has the primary objectives of seeking truth, compassion, and freedom.
The author feels that people should be aware of the dangers of power, technology, and rituals in controlling our minds. He feels that though meditation we can better understand our own minds and have a better chance of finding truth.
Yes Paul, this book should make for an interesting conversation.

Exit West

Bill's selection of Exit West is a timely personalizing of the current immigration crisis. We all tend to forget that refugees from Syria and other war torn countries are very much like you and me. They are, more often than not, bright, skilled, and hard working young people that are able to contribute mightily if given the chance. Mostly they are good people that are subjected to tremendous hardship through no fault of their own. The author puts a face on these individuals and their secret doorways of escape.

Tailspin

The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall and Those Fighting to Reverse It
Steven Brill's book is a detailed explanation of everything that is screwed up in America and how we got here. He divides Americans into the protected and the unprotected. Although the country has prospered over the past 50 years, the profits and spoils have primarily gone to the protected class. He describes this group as the meritocracy (as opposed to the aristocracy) that has taken over with their talents and privilege. With advance training, this privileged group has used the "financialization" of the "casino economy" to accumulate vast wealth and control. Unions and workers have been greatly weakened and inequality has risen to new heights. Workers have been left behind by globalization and automation combined with inadequate retraining. Poverty levels continue to plague the country along with decreasing safety nets.
In the mean time, the protected class has built "moats" to safeguard their interests. Using techniques such as gerrymandering to suppress voters, Hastert Rule to block legislation, and the nuclear option to pass judges, congress has been able to serve their special interests. Money has become a major factor in all legislation, particularly with the recent passing of the Citizen's United case removing limits on corporate contributions.
The book describes a steady progression of enriching the protected meritocracy from the complaining Carter, the exploiting Reagan, the finessing Clinton, the shopping W, the hopeful Obama, leading to the irrational Trump. The Republicans have been a unifying force in leading the progression (ie Newt 90's) culminating in the total resistance of the Obama administration.
The book ends by calling for resistance from a coalition of the middle class and the poor to "storm the moats." Unfortunately, "Things may get worse before they get better."

How Democracies Die

This 2018 book by Levitrsky and Ziblatt is a warning to Americans of what is currently happening to our "democracy" and where we may be headed. The book examines the fate of previous democracies on their path to authoritarian states from Europe in the 1930's, Latin America in the 1970's, and more recent authoritarian rulers. More often than not, "democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves." The authors warn against the gradual breakdown of democratic norms and use the terms tolerance (acceptance) and forbearance (restraint) to describe how a democracy can be sustained. They describe authoritarian rule as rejecting the democratic rules, denying legitimacy of opponents, tolerating violence, and readiness to curtail civil liberties. The Republican party has made a pact with the devil by nominating a president that meets all four criteria. The authors point out that this erosion of democratic norms has been a gradual process that has accelerated since the late 90's. Republicans have been greatly influenced by big money groups, the Tea Party movement, focused media, and racial identity. The book ends with a chapter titled "Saving Democracy" and describes three possible futures for America. They have suggestions for both parties and provide hope that through elections and strengthening of the "guardrails" the democracy can be saved.

What does it take to have a successful Book Club?

A few weeks ago, PBS had a guy on the Newshour who stated 7 things he felt it took to make a successful male book club.

1. Pick a good name - He came up with "Literary Domination Society" to sound macho. We settled on no name.
2. Take turns picking the book - check
3. Pick new and interesting books - check...mostly
4. Everyone must read the books - check
5. Rate all the books - check...eventually
6. Keep records - check
7. Keep going - double check

We are about to complete our 20th year, even without a name. Way to go guys!

How to Change Your Mind

Eight months ago Dr. J had us read a difficult book called How Emotions are Made. This time we read an equally tough book on how to unmake the organized brain. The author teaches us everything we ever wanted to know about psychedelic drugs, provides a comprehensive history of their development, and takes us along for three trips on LSD, mushrooms, and smoking the toad. Pollan provides an argument in support of the benefits of psychedelics for providing end of life comfort, treating addictions, and dealing with depression and anxiety.  He also suggests that we may be once again moving towards accepting psychedelic drugs for recreation use and finding spirituality.
I enjoyed learning about familiar names of the psychedelic 60's from Abby Hoffman (discovered LSD) to Timothy Leary (Harvard professor and LSD for all). There was Ken Keasy, Marshall McLuhan, Cary Grant, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Eldrich Cleaver, Robert Kennedy, Ram Dash, and John Lennon. There was the interesting conservative character Al Hubbard providing support for the early development to the ultimate demise from the overreach of Timothy Leary. The book gave more meaning to the phases "far out", "acid test", "psychedelic", "peace and love", "be here now", and "tune in, turn on, drop out".
The author ends by praising the benefits of psychedelics for combating the over-active default mode network (DMN) brain. We live in a world with high depression, anxiety, OCD, and addiction, that can be treated by non-addictive drugs that increase entropy and thinking outside the box. He points out that many in Silicon Valley (ie. Jobs) have been taking micro doses to help their creative thinking. He argues that a pure psychedelic, taken in the proper amount, with a trained guide, can be a benefit to many people by quieting the ego and increasing ones spirituality.
The book left me thinking that I am not ready to book my trip, but I am more open to seeing the potential benefits. There will be tremendous resistance from the current social order, however who knows where it will eventually go?

Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

This book was kind of a downer about Millennials written by an unhappy Millennial. The book defines the Millennial generation as the group of Americans born between 1980 and 2000 (now 28 to 38). Our book club consists of Baby Boomers (1946-1965) and late Silent Generation. The author, Malcolm Harris, is a self described communist and editor at The New Inquiry.
The book takes the reader through childhood, college, and work to describe the life and times of the generation. He addresses law enforcement, reward systems, and consequential generational behavior. Oddly the overall behavior of Millennials is better than one would expect given their age and prior generation roll models. Despite the dangers of social media and easy access to drugs and porn, drug and sexual abuse are down in the overall group (particularly when discounting for use of marijuana). He portrays the generation as victims suffering "intellectual degradation" that is overly "managed in the workplace."
The author has a point that the generation is inheriting significant problems of inequality, debt, and environmental damage. It will be up to his generation to tackle these critical issues and I hope there are individuals that will be up to the challenge. The author comes across as overtly cynical and his "seven signs of the bad future" paint a bleak picture. Hopefully a tactic including a combination of "buy it", "vote it", "give it", "protest it", and "put it down" will help guide the generation towards constructive change and positive solutions.

Waking up White

Bob's book was an interesting choice of a woman's take on the very sensitive issue of racism. Wikipedia states that "racism" has evolved from a believe in the unique differences in races of humans (ie. genetics) to a modern definition of the practice of racial discrimination. A recent poll asked if our president was a racist and 49 percent said yes and 46 percent said no, mostly along party lines. The truth is we are probably all racist to a certain degree. On the other hand, the current administration practices and supports white supremacy and empowers racial discrimination.
The female author is more sensitive to the nuances of racism than us typical males. She points out that women use webs instead of ladders and are better collaborating than competing. She states that a bullying situation has a bully, a victim, and bystanders. The bystanders have an important role in curbing the bad behavior. She expresses that we need to go beyond tolerance to engagement and solidarity.
Although she lost me a few times by being a touch over-sensitive, she expresses a view that is currently underrepresented in America today.

The Invention of Nature...Hooray for Humboldt!

Alexander Von Humboldt lived nearly 90 years from 1769 to 1859. He was considered by many to be the most famous man of his time, following possibly Napoleon Bonaparte. According to the author, more places, plants, and animals on earth are named after him than any other person.
Above is a document from his 6,000 mile travel through South America documenting the plants and topography 1799-1804. In his 60's he traveled over 10,000 miles through Russia by horse drawn carriage between May and November 1829. He climbed many peeks, crossed many rivers, traversed  valleys and plains, while all the time carefully documenting his findings and adding to the human understanding of the natural world.
Wikipedia refers to Humboldt as an influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science for his glorification of nature. On the one hand he worked for the king of Prussia and on the other he was critical of authoritative rule and slavery. He was an adviser to Thomas Jefferson, lived in Paris in the Napoleon years, comrade to Bolivar, was friends with Goethe, and mentored numerous young scientists with his open sharing of information and seminars.
I see Humboldt as the first great environmentalist. He had an early understanding of the dangers to the environment from the Industrial age including climate change from CO2 emissions, deforestation, and threats to biodiversity.
Humboldt provided the foundation and inspiration for great thinkers for generations to come including Darwin, Thoreau, Marsh, Muir, and Haeckel. His Naturgemalde drawing above, Views of Nature, and comprehensive Cosmos series provided a treasurer trove of information for others to build from. Nonetheless, he has been largely forgotten in America, probably because of being Prussian and the pursuing world wars.

Who we are and how we got here

I finished the book and it was a tough one. I must say, I liked it more than I thought I would and I took away several nuggets from reading it.
How old are modern humans? There was a major migration out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, but there are remains of early humans from earlier migrations dating 100,000 to 150,000 years ago in remote corners of the world. Early settlers in the Americas were thought to be only 10,000 years ago, but now they have found remains from much earlier. Much has happened in Eurasia, India, and China in the past 4,000 years, but there are many secrets in the ancient past including numerous ghosts in the genome. What is our individual heritage? Europe had early hunter gatherers, farmers from Iran, and hunter gatherers from the Russian steppe (not to mention a touch of Neanderthal). China had the Han dynasties, Taiwanese settled islands from Madagascar to Indonesia, and how did the early humans get to Australia? Apparently all modern humans originated in Africa at some point in time, in one wave or another.
Interesting how mutations in the genome can be traced for health concerns and are a problem with isolated populations. Also interesting how aggressive males like Genghis Khan can spread their Y chromosomes across a wide area. There are ethical issues to be addressed in this emerging field and we must guard against the evils of racism and nationalism and focus on understanding and embracing our diversity. "In this field, the pursuit of truth for its own sake has overwhelmingly had the effect of exploding stereotypes, undercutting prejudice, and highlighting the connections among peoples not previously known to be related."

Enlightenment Now

TMI! Either this was a really difficult read or I am not very enlightened.

This was like a "Short History of Nearly Everything" with underlying explanations. A comprehensive review of history, philosophy, political science, religious studies, and science as well as some Sam Harris like reasoning thrown in.

Although I finished the book, I feel I could read it again and come away with much more. I like the idea of the Monty Python saying "always look as the bright side of life" and the hope that the world will continue on a road of "progress". I do worry about mankind's impact on the environment and lack some of Pinker's faith in humanism. However, I do believe an expanded enlightenment and humanism is our best hope against Romantics, fascism, and theocracies.

Origin

I really enjoyed Dan Brown's latest book. It was again a travel log book with an exciting plot with lots of twists and turns. It brought back lots of visual images from our trip to Spain in 2008. I love Barcelona and the rest of Spain and above are pictures from Barcelona, the Spanish countryside, a very large church in Girona, and the Cathedral outside the Palace in Madrid. I like everything Gaudi, Winston Churchill is a hero of mine, and Sam Harris is one of my favorite authors. Brown addresses the challenges of current religions, technology, as well as the concept of Singularity...what's not to like.

John H pointed out the major question from the book, "Would you rather live without technology, or in a world without religion? Would you rather live without medicine, electricity, transportation, and antibiotics, or without zealots waging war over fictional tales and imaginary spirits?" Will "The dark religions...depart so sweet science can reign." Or, as Father Bena sees it, there is a place for an enlightened Christianity that becomes a "spiritual partner of science" to "help humanity build a moral framework and ensure that the coming technologies will unify, illuminate, and raise us up...rather than destroy us."

How Emotions are Made

This is the first book that I needed to take notes throughout in order to better understand. There are recurring themes throughout, including emotions are constructed and not essential to each one of us. We make our own predictions and are ultimately in control and responsible for our actions. We create our own affective realism, concepts, and social reality.
The book made me think of other books including The Gene, The Social Animal, Younger Next Year, and Waking Up. I thought of the TV show Bull in the legal chapter. It made me think about the concepts of evolution, religion, spirituality, biology, and culture. I also thought about the use of language and other short cuts to aid in making faster and better predictions (like the CRSPR technique in genetic sequencing).
Nevertheless, this was a really hard book and I am finished with my book report.