Rating: 4/5 Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work (New York: Basic Books, 1998). Have you ever wondered how a computer actually works? How is it that a wafer of silicon no wider than your thumbnail can do all the things that computers do? How can a device that at it’s most...
Rating: 3/5 Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2011). This book was a bit of an emotional see-saw for me. I found myself agreeing then disagreeing with her almost page by page. But before I analyze, let me describe the book. It’s...
Rating: 4/5 Keith Devlin, The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern; A Tale of How Mathematics is Really Done (New York: Basic Books, 2008). One of the intriguing things about studying history is hindsight. As a music historian, I was fascinated by the...
Rating: 1/5 Anton Zeilinger, Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010). I just can’t do it. I’m 100 pages in and I just can’t bring myself to slog through the other 200. I love science books, I am fascinated by physics, and I still want a math degree one...
Rating: 4/5 Oliver Sacks, Musicophila: Tales of Music and the Brain (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2008). I received this book as a gift on my birthday back in 2008, but at the time I was studying for my comprehensive exams so I was somewhat over saturated (understatement!) with music readings. I’m sorry, Blais, but I’m...
Rating: 5/5 Wendell Berry, Imagination in Place (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2010). I have read a fair bit of Wendell Berry lately, and I will soon be looking more closely at his fiction. This collection of essays is more autobiographical and is certainly more literary. The overall focus is on influence—how we...
Rating: 3/5 Juan Enriquez, The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future (New York: Random House, 2005). As I read the book (and specifically, as I slogged through the insane typography) I wasn’t sure whether I should accuse him of genius or hubris. After finishing the book, I decided it’s...
Rating: 5/5 Wendell Berry, What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2010). I can’t say enough how much I enjoy Wendell Berry’s writing. At a technical level, his writing is beautiful. He uses plain language , and his arguments are clearly and logically laid out. At a content...
Rating: 3/5 John Brockman (ed.), Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net’s Impact on Our Minds and Future (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011). Edge.org is a sort of think tank, and every year, John Brockman comes up with a question to ask “over 150 of the smartest people in the world.” This year’s question...
Rating: 3/5 Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010). Well I’ve decided to stop reading books about education for a while. I just get too frustrated and frankly, too hopeless. If Adele and I are ever in a...