The First World War (book)

John Keegan The First World War (1998) A very good book, with some flaws. Keegan surveys the political and military development. He has a knack for telling the story of battles so that one can follow them. He includes the human dimension, both of the soldier in the trenches and the generals behind the lines. He doesn't comment much on the actual destruction of life, nature, and property, but the few references to these things are enough. There aren't enough pictures, and apart from titles on the picture pages there is no attempt to key pictures to chapters in the book. The maps are deficient, since they do not show all the places mentioned in the history, which is especially irritating when a battle hinged on a particular place. I suspect that production budget limits had a hand in this, as coloured maps are really the only way to convey the information properly.
     Keegan's style is elevated and in places almost elegiac. I learned a lot of things, eg, the number of generals sacked, especially by the French and Russian commanders; and the lack of co-ordination between front line and commanders, most of it caused by limited or absent technologies. On the other hand, too many commanders were unwilling to listen to their technical staff and fully exploit what technology they had.
     Several things stand out for me. One, the effect of the structure of government, especially in Germany and Russia, which had a lot to do with the precipitation of the war. Two, the long time it took for commanders to learn the lessons of their own defeats. Three, the superiority of German warmaking, even though the German commanders made the same mistakes as their French and British counterparts. Four, the indecisiveness of the outcome. It was the entry of the USA into the war that tipped the balance in favour of the Allies, and so forced the Central powers to accept defeat. Without the USA, there would, I think, have been peace negotiations among equals, for by the fall of 1918 both sides were worn out, both sides had depleted their human and material resources, and both side were facing a collapse of morale. As it was, the Allies had the upper hand, and, unused as they were to this situation, they gave in to their desire for revenge (almost always in previous European wars, peace came about not so much because one side won, but because the two sides decided there was no advantage to be gained by continued fighting). The first world war settled nothing, and so made the 2nd inevitable. It also created conditions that made a Hitler possible but not inevitable; so that Hitler made the war worse when it did come, but did no more than trigger it. The TV series Fall of Eagles (1971) covers much of the same ground in its last four or five episodes, and is worth seeing in conjunction with this book. **** (1999)

Stardust (Robert Parker, 1990)

Robert P. Parker Stardust (1990) (Borrowed from BR library.) A TV star is being harassed. Spenser takes on the job of protecting her, and then finding the murderer of her stunt double. After a series of vignettes typical of the genre, the case is cracked more by luck than skill, as the star goes to LA to be with a mobster who fathered her child. It transpires that her own father molested her when she was a toddler, which explains a lot of course.
      Good fast hard-boiled smart-ass style. Spenser is the scarred knight of American detective fiction. Parker knows the genre, and does a skilled job. The chapters are short, with good dialogue; the whole thing is very cinematic –  almost a script. As is usual with this genre, the love-interest is mere decoration (Spenser's lover is a psychologist, and you would think she could give him some relevant information, but she is definitely on the sidelines.) There is a politically-correct Black, Hawk, who is Spenser's good buddy, as expected in books of the 80s and 90s. The pathetic fallacy runs strong, again as required by the genre. Parker has an eye for telling detail, and the landscapes are nicely described. I read this book because a friend told me his book was more in the style of Parker, so I wanted to find out what this meant. *** (1999)

2026-06-10: Cover image added, and minor editing.

Murder and it Consequences *Mulisch, The Assault, 1985)

     Harry Mulisch The Assault (translated 1985) In 1945, a police commissioner is murdered by the Dutch underground. A family is killed in retaliation, with the exception of the youngest boy. The story tells of the night of the murder, then of a number of incidents that remind Anton Steenwijk of that night and enable him to assemble the pieces into a coherent picture of exactly what happened and why. Beautifully written. Psychologically subtle and profound. The evening after I finished it, I heard part of a CBC documentary on the children of the Nazis (in The Loss of Innocence series.) The book resonated even more.
     The story works because it focuses entirely on the after-effects of the murder and the Nazi retaliation for it. The absurdity of clinging to established procedures in the last days of the war, the routines of everyday life maintained despite the incursions of a war descending into defeat, the superficial normalcy overlaying a deep malaise, all are presented in a straightforward style that catches you and doesn't let you go.

I think this book would help a lot of people understand the effects of Nazism and WWII, of the effects of occupation and war, as well as the distortions inflicted on social connections by totalitarianism.  Mulisch's mother was a Jew who died in a concentration camp; his father was an Austrian who was convicted of collaboration with the Nazis. Heavy baggage. ****

The Elegant Universe (book)

Brian Greene The Elegant Universe (1999). About string theory. Excellent overview of Newton --> Einstein --> Planck, and summary of problems with the Standard Model: The incongruity between general relativity and quantum theory. Although Greene goes to great lengths to stress what isn't known, he more than half convinces me that string theory (or one of them, anyhow) is right. For one thing, he explains the hidden dimensions so well. However, absent experimental data, and absent any near future likelihood of getting any, the whole thing is beginning to look suspiciously like medieval scholasticism, spinning elegant and consistent theories about matters that can't be observed. Except of course that in principle string theory is experimentally confirmable, unlike theories about angels.... Oh well, it's fun, and it suggests all sorts of SF story ideas. *** (1999)

The American Dream: the 50s (book)

Richard B. Stolley & Time-Life Books editors. The American Dream: The 50s (1998) In Our American Century series. Very Ameri-centric. Touching, in some ways: the T/L editors avoid anything that might seem like taking sides or making moral judgements (with one exception -- see below). Decisions are generally presented as natural events, that just happened. Fallout shelters are shown, but their utter uselessness is not mentioned. The McCarthy era is shown as a Bad Man doing Bad Things, but with no attempt at analysing why McCarthy was so successful for so long. And so on.
     The photos are all interesting, and some are superb. The book is best at conveying the naive optimism of a society that has just discovered the joys of consumerism. The consequences of this lifestyle are a long way off – and the few who are warning about it are shown as endearingly weird avant-garde artists, and therefore not serious critics. In fact, the whole notion of criticism is absent (except in terms of the inexplicably bad people). That the social structure itself might be founded on illusions and lies is never hinted at. I guess when you don't want to take responsibility for the society that you participate in, the only way to explain evil is that it is the result of bad men doing bad things. That social change is an ongoing critique of the past is an idea that one may draw from the evidence of this book, but it is not an idea that it is in the book. A book of great strengths and great weaknesses. **1/2

Science Fiction: The illustrated Encyclopedia

John Clute, et al. Science Fiction. The Illustrated Encyclopedia(1995) A coffee table book: thick glossy paper, beautifully printed, lots of pictures, well designed. And quite reliable and informative. It appears the text is by Clute, and he had a team of people helping out with the pictures, fact checking, etc. It is of course not as scholarly and inclusive as a true encyclopedia would be, but within its limits it's well done. It should have a more complete section on authors (the ones included get mini-critiques, so there was obviously a space problem.) Clute's judgement of films is defective IMO; among other things, he just doesn't like Star Trek, and over-values Star Wars. He has a bias towards hard SF, and gives high marks for humour - which makes his omission of Spider Robinson curious. Maybe he just doesn't like Robinson's smart-alecky tone. The tone of the book is a bit too earnest for my taste. All the same, it's a book any serious reader of SF should have. A similar book on (science) fantasy would be welcome. *** (1999)

Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning. Vol. II: Patterns of Plausible Inference

George Polya Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning Vol. II: Patterns of Plausible Inference. (1954). I skipped Vol. I, which deals with mathematical induction. The two books are intended as texts, either for self-study or for a course. This purpose of this volume can be seen in this example. Given A -> B and B, what can be deduced? By formal logic, nothing; i.e., the truth of A cannot be inferred from the truth of the consequence. (However, if B is false, then A is false.) Polya shows that in fact the truth of A will be more or less credible depending on a number of relevant factors. For example, if the truth of B is less credible without the truth of A than with it, then B supports A. Or, if B is more credible, then A is more credible; and so on. IOW, the truth of A lies somewhere between 0 (false) and 1 (true).
     Polya notes that credibility of A depends in part on the judge's experience and background. He is very close to fuzzy logic here, but he doesn't take the next step because he can't see any supportable way to compute that value. Fuzzy logic formalises that personal judgement, and so can provide computations (which are used to control machines, e.g.) Polya uses probability theory, interpreting probability as credibility, and thus provides strong support for his POV. He's also interested in the use of plausible reasoning in mathematical research. An interesting book. I like its assumption that its subject is worth pursuing. Polya writes very clearly, and I was able to follow about half of the math. The general principles of plausible reasoning seem to me to be obvious. *** (1998) Update 2012-12: It seems to me that Polya was a pioneer of what became fuzzy logic, but I can’t recall any acknowledgement of this in the fuzzy logic text I read.