A disappointingly superficial book about a number of fascinating subjects.
From his vantage point as host of NPR’s popular radio show Science Friday, Flatow (They All Laughed...From Light Bulbs to Lasers: The Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions That Have Changed Our Lives, 1992, etc.) has acquired an impressive overview of current science. Unfortunately, this book fails to go beyond that overview.
The book is divided into 12 chapters: new research on the brain, cosmology, climate change, alternate energies, nanotechnology, space travel, ocean life, the science versus religion controversy, scientific pioneers, the future of cyberspace, new approaches to science and the pros and cons of stem-cell research. By covering such broad terrain, the author sets himself the nearly impossible task of adequately exploring each concept. Lacking footnotes or a bibliography, it may be difficult for readers to seek further reading on any of the included subjects. The book’s strength lies in the author’s balanced coverage of controversial issues, such as the feasibility of switching to biofuels or using nuclear energy as a replacement for gasoline. The high point is Flatow’s discussion of why planes fly, based on NASA researcher Norman Smith’s crusade to substitute Newton’s third law of motion for Bernoulli’s principle. Many of the interviews cover intriguing, cutting-edge material—including a discussion of quantum computers with Seth Lloyd, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, and quantum gravitation with Lee Smolin, a research physicist at the Perimeter Institute. But other parts of the book feel dated, such as the section covering memory and the effects of age on the brain, conducted with Dr. Aaron P. Nelson, chief of neuropsychology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Flatow certainly has a knack for finding the appropriate professionals to discuss each topic, but the resulting narrative will likely confuse newbies and frustrate more knowledgeable readers.
A disappointingly superficial book about a number of fascinating subjects.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-073264-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Collins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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