A satisfying tale of chairs, shoelaces, spectacles, and other everyday technology that “helps shape how we use our bodies.”
Like his mentor Donald Norman, former Princeton University Press science editor and historian of technology Tenner (Why Things Bite Back, 1998) has a fascination for the unintended consequences of not-quite-thought-through innovations. Some, he argues, have altered our bodies and minds in unanticipated ways, sometimes culturally conditioned. Americans have been wearing flip-flops, for instance, only since the time of the Korean War, and we tend to keep a smaller angle between foot and sandal than do the Japanese, who land “not with the heel strike characteristic of the American subjects but with the forefoot of flat-footed, a technique that does not absorb the shock as effectively.” Chalk one up to American ingenuity, then, and watch for shock absorbers in the next generation of zoris—a type of shoe, Tenner writes, that has also yielded an ecological mess, with millions of discarded flip-flops washing up on Pacific beaches to crowd out shorebirds and shellfish. Elsewhere, among many other matters that touch on various bits of our beings, Tenner considers the history of reclining, showing effectively that taking meals while resting on one elbow, in the manner of the Roman aristocracy, was quite hard work, and that students who study in bed get the same grades as those who diligently seat themselves at their desks. It’s all good stuff, if circuitous and a little zany. However, taking it all in is not always an easy ride, for in his rush to cram in information, Tenner can get awfully elliptical: the Maxim gun, he writes, “favored by European powers for suppressing colonial resistance in the nineteenth century, begat the rugged and portable Kalashnikov brandished by guerrillas and terrorists”—but, one wonders, how and when? His text suffers a little, too, from repetitiveness. Still, there is so much good and freshly presented material here, and Tenner is so refreshingly enthusiastic in the task, that these amount to quibbles.
A treat, all in all, for fans of technological history and would-be inventors.Pub Date: June 12, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-40722-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
Categories: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Categories: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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A tiny book, not much bigger than a pamphlet, with huge potential impact.
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A collection of articulate, forceful speeches made from September 2018 to September 2019 by the Swedish climate activist who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking in such venues as the European and British Parliaments, the French National Assembly, the Austrian World Summit, and the U.N. General Assembly, Thunberg has always been refreshingly—and necessarily—blunt in her demands for action from world leaders who refuse to address climate change. With clarity and unbridled passion, she presents her message that climate change is an emergency that must be addressed immediately, and she fills her speeches with punchy sound bites delivered in her characteristic pull-no-punches style: “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.” In speech after speech, to persuade her listeners, she cites uncomfortable, even alarming statistics about global temperature rise and carbon dioxide emissions. Although this inevitably makes the text rather repetitive, the repetition itself has an impact, driving home her point so that no one can fail to understand its importance. Thunberg varies her style for different audiences. Sometimes it is the rousing “our house is on fire” approach; other times she speaks more quietly about herself and her hopes and her dreams. When addressing the U.S. Congress, she knowingly calls to mind the words and deeds of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. The last speech in the book ends on a note that is both challenging and upbeat: “We are the change and change is coming.” The edition published in Britain earlier this year contained 11 speeches; this updated edition has 16, all worth reading.
A tiny book, not much bigger than a pamphlet, with huge potential impact.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313356-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2019
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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