The Canon
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
by Natalie Angier.
Mariner Books, 2008.
This would be a decent overview of a broad range of basic science topics, but unfortunately the writing style ended up really putting me off. Rather than making the material more accessible, the author’s attempts at wit just confuses things and after a while gets annoying.
Rating: 5/10
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Ratio
Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
by Michael Ruhlman.
Scribner, 2009.
Ruhlman gives readers the ratios behind many basic recipes, and tells you when you should follow them and when you may need to make adjustments or what variations you might want to try. Most of the ratios are related to baking, but also included are some meat-based ratios, stocks and sauces. Knowing and understanding these ratios will ultimately give you great flexibility in the kitchen.
Rating: 8/10
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Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper
Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China
by Fuchsia Dunlop.
W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.
Fuchsia Dunlop gives us an entertaining account of how she fell in love with Chinese food and cooking, as well as the surrounding culture and history.
Rating: 9/10
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The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe
by Donal O’Shea.
Walker & Company, 2007.
In The Poincaré Conjecture, Donal O’Shea explains a conjecture in topology from 1904 that had remained unsolved for nearly a century. Aside from its importance in topology, the conjecture also has implications on determining the shape of our own universe. It is also one of the seven Millennium Prize problems listed by the Clay Institute in 2000, with a one million dollar reward for a correct solution. It was finally solved in 2002 by Grigory Perelman and since then his solution has been accepted. He may be eligible for the Millennium Prize but does not appear to be interested. In 2006, he was awarded the Fields medal—the highest honor for mathematicians and which also carries a monetary reward—for his work but he declined the award.
In this book, O’Shea takes us through the history of the conjecture and the attempts at solving it, and also takes some time to give us the historical context along the way by describing the social and political climate surrounding each mathematician that has sought to prove the conjecture. He does a good job of providing relatively clear and simple explanations of the complex ideas in topology and non-Euclidean geometry involved, but the book does move at a fairly brisk pace (minus the notes at the end the main text is only 200 pages long) so some work is still required to follow along, but I never felt completely lost. This book contains a nice mix of mathematical ideas and history for a general audience, and it managed to keep my interest throughout.
Rating: 8/10
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Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
by Bill Buford.
Anchor Canada, 2007
In Heat, Bill Buford, a writer for The New Yorker, leaves his job to become a cook at Babbo, a top Italian restaurant in Manhanttan. Buford has written a clear and interesting account of his struggles to learn his way in a fast-paced and demanding kitchen as a professional cook, and really brings to life the environment and the personalities of the people that he works with. Eventually, as he becomes more confident in his abilities and his passion for cooking grows, he is drawn to Italy by the desire to learn authentic Italian cooking techniques, including the butchering of meat. As he studies under some of Italy’s masters, we are also treated to a sentimental overview of the history and traditions of Italian cuisine. Bill Buford’s memoir is a well-written, fascinating book and I really enjoyed it.
Rating: 8/10
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Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
edited by Andy Oram & Greg Wilson.
O’Reilly, 2007.
Beautiful Code is a collection of essays by master programmers, each discussing a piece of code or software architecture that they find particularly beautiful or elegant. The essays cover a wide range of topics and some will really challenge your understanding, but readers who put in the effort will be rewarded. This is an invaluable resource filled with practical wisdom from gurus, and pretty much all of the code is taken from software in actual use. This book is a must-read for any programmer, and could one day be regarded as a classic text on programming.
Rating: 9/10
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The Möbius Strip: Dr. August Möbius’s Marvelous Band in Mathematics, Games, Literature, Art, Technology, and Cosmology
by Clifford Pickover.
Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006
As the title implies, The Möbius Strip explores the strange characteristics of Möbius strips and other related one-sided or single-surface constructs, like Klein bottles and real projective planes. It delves into a wide range of topics like topology and higher-dimensional mathematics, as well as introducing places where they might naturally be found in chemistry and cosmology. While there are a small number of places where formulas are presented, they are not completely essential to enjoying the book. This is a worthwhile read on a truly mind-bending topic.
Rating: 7/10
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Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
by Oliver Sacks
Alfred A. Knopf, 2001
Neurologist Oliver Sacks gives us a memoir of his childhood and, at the same time, a brief history of chemistry. Oliver describes how he became interested in science and chemistry through the inspiration of his relatives. As the book moves through Oliver’s early life and his fascination with scientific experiments, we get to follow his path, learning about famous scientists and their importance in history. This is both a personal and an educational account of a perpetually curious experimenter.
Rating: 7/10
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Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
Touchstone, 1998
In Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Hafner and Lyon take us all the way back to the earliest days of computer networking. We are introduced to all of the central figures that were responsible for building the precursors to the internet we know today. In contrast with the rapid growth we see now, the early days seem glacial. The equipment was primitive and had to be custom built. No one had any idea initially how they could connect disparate computers together and make them talk to one another. The fact that the protocols that they eventually came up with are still in use on the internet today, and have managed to survive its explosive growth, is a testament to the genius and vision of these pioneers. The authors have managed to capture not only the tough technical hurdles that needed to be overcome, but also the motivations and the leaps of insight of the people involved during this historic time. This is an enjoyable book that moves at a fairly brisk pace, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing a little more of the technical details.
Rating: 8/10
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This is a great list of some excellent science fiction authors of this decade.
We are blessed so far this decade with an amazing crop of new science fiction novelists.
Writing in a variety of styles, this crew is arguably more insightful, more interesting, higher intensity, and bolder than many (but not all!) of their predecessors — and in my view revitalizing the genre at a time when more new technologies that will radically reshape all our lives are incubating and percolating than ever before.
So, taking nothing away from authors like David Brin who have long been established and continue to produce top-notch work, here are my nominations for the top 10 new science fiction novelists of — more or less — the decade, plus one bonus.
And, they’re not all British.
Adventures From the Technology Underground: Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them
William Gurstelle
Three Rivers Press, 2006
This is a wildly entertaining book filled with colorful characters and powerful, dangerous machines. Gurstelle takes us on a tour of what he calls the Technology Underground with concise run-downs of many awesome devices and the science behind them. Driven by creativity and passion, the builders like to push the boundaries with inventions that have little practical purpose other than to entertain and excite. With any complex and frighteningly powerful contraption, things don’t always work as planned, and this just makes their stories even more amazing. Those who have felt the DIY maker’s urge will enjoy the profiles of these extreme tinkerers. At just over 200 pages this is a short, fun read.
Rating: 8/10
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The Computer: An Illustrated History
Mark Frauenfelder
Carlton Books, 2005
This is computer pr0n at its finest. This large, beautiful coffee-table book chronicles the evolution of the computer through hundreds of photographs. Following the earliest counting devices, hulking mainframes, personal computers and game consoles, the book documents the seminal figures who shaped the industry and the complex machines they created. It’s a delight simply flipping through all of the pictures and reading about the genius and vision behind these fascinating devices. The historic photos and the evocative writing both really draw you into the book and make you feel like you are reliving the golden age of computing. The Computer is a wonderfully nostalgic book that belongs on any computer geek’s shelf.
Rating: 9/10
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Founders at Work
Jessica Livingston
Apress, 2007
This book contains 32 interviews with founding members of different tech startups. Most of the interviews follow the same general format: how they got their idea, their first steps in forming a company, how they executed their plans, and what major obstacles they encountered. I think the author captures the character of many of these startups quite nicely in the introduction to the book: “In its plain form, productivity looks so weird that it seems to a lot of people to be ‘unbusinesslike.’ But if early-stage startups are unbusinesslike, then the corporate world might be more productive if it were less businesslike.”
Far from being a dry business book, the stories are engaging and inspiring. There are lots of great insights to be found in these interviews. Max Levchin tells us how much effort they spent to find ways to combat credit card fraud at PayPal, which became their main advantage as their competitors bled money from chargebacks. Mike Lazaridis was able to leverage their technical skills at Research In Motion to build a robust and reliable system for delivering wireless email. Philip Greenspun’s interview is a cautionary tale on what can happen when venture capitalists bring in incompetent managers to run your company.
Founders at Work is a good read for anyone curious about turning a wild idea into a sustainable business.
Rating: 7/10
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Decoding the Universe
Charles Seife
Viking, 2006
This book looks at how physicists are using information theory to further our understanding of universe. The book begins with an introduction to how communications and cryptography lead to the field of information theory. From there, we see how information theory and thermodynamics are closely related through the concept of entropy. The bulk of the book looks at how both relativity and quantum mechanics are actually theories of information transfer. By far, the most enlightening part of the book is the explanation of how one particular interpretation of quantum mechanics–the many worlds interpretation–influences the structure of the universe.
Throughout this book, the author provides the clearest explanations of the bizarre and seemingly paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics and relativity that I have read. It tells us how some of the paradoxes in those theories can be resolved with information theory. The writing manages to give you a great high-level understanding without getting too bogged down with the details. Anyone curious about the nature of the universe needs to read this book. Highly recommended.
Rating: 9/10
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Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos
Seth Lloyd
This book from Seth Lloyd, a Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering at MIT, aims to promote a quantum computational model of the universe. He argues that using information theory, we can resolve the problems that currently exist between Einstein’s theories of relativity, and quantum mechanics. By thinking of the universe as a very large information processing system, i.e. a quantum computer, we may be able to create a new Theory of Everything that unifies all of physics. Of course, this work is relatively new, so many details still need to be worked out. While the first half of the book does a great job of explaining quantum mechanics, the latter half of the book wanders into hand-waving territory when trying to explain the new model. However, the writer’s explanations are clear and concise and I found it hard to put this book down.
Rating: 8/10
Just got back from the book signing for Rollback
I Am a Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter
This latest book from cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, while not quite as much fun as his mind-bending classic, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in some ways goes further and is more focused in explaining how consciousness might arise as an emergent property from the chemistry and biology of the brain. The author’s tone here is much more contemplative, philosophical and personal, while the previous work explored many diverse topics including mathematics, art, music, language, illusions, computational theory, and of course intelligence and consciousness. I would recommend reading the earlier work first, which has become a true classic, but this latest book is probably much more accessible to a general audience.
Rating: 8/10
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