A Few Quick Book Reviews

What the Dog Saw: Malcolm Gladwell

This is a collection of essays published over the last decade in the New Yorker. If you haven't previously read the essays in that magazine, I would describe this book as a must read. Most of the essays are excellent, interesting, and thought provoking. I would describe 75% of the essays as Grade A. A few of the essays were a little boring and felt dated (especially the essay sharing its title with the book), but I'm sure that even the essays I didn't like would appeal to many people.

Pirate Latitudes: Michael Crichton

I think of Michael Crichton as my favorite fiction writer for about a ten year period (roughly, 1988-1998). His best books (Rising Sun, Sphere, Congo, the Andromeda Strain) are some of my all time favorite fiction books. Pirate Latitudes was found on Mr. Crichton's computer after his death, and it was publish posthumously this year (2009). I enjoyed reading the book (it only took a couple days), it is clearly better than anything some author's publish, but it wasn't his best work. It also clearly isn't Crichton's worst book either -- it is equal in quality to the Great Train Robbery or Eaters of the Dead, and better than, say, Airframe. I wish we knew more about this book. Did Michael Crichton just finish it before his death and intend to publish it? Did he finish it years ago and just kept it around for the day when he needed money? Did he write it years ago, but he wasn't happy with it and kept hoping he could come back to it and finish it some day? The publisher claims it was written concurrently with another recent book (Next), but, frankly, I don't believe them (or maybe I just think they are wrong). It feels more like Crichton's earlier work (Eaters of the Dead, the Great Train Robbery). We'll never know -- I'm just thankful to have a couple more Crichton novels in my life (I say "couple" because there was, apparently, another novel found on his computer!) Finally, Spielberg is turning Pirate Latitudes into a movie. I think this could work as a movie -- although the book is very violent.

The Help: Kathryn Stockett

Honestly, I bought this book because the reviews on Amazon were so overwhelmingly positive. The book is, at times, very good and thought provoking. At other times it was boring. I recommend this book because it describes, with amazing insight, a time and place (Mississippi in the 1960's) not that from from where I am at this moment. I think that I forget just how cruel and hateful some people are, and, at the same moment, how loving and kind other people are. I hope that I can be like Skeeter and not Hilly. In summary, I think 100 pages could be cut from this book, and it would be an A, but, as is, I have to give it a B+.

Weather

I've lived in both Bozeman, MT (very dry and very cold winters) and Chandler, AZ (very dray and very hot summers) for multiple years. I also consider myself to be a lover of moderate weather. I'm not much of a skier, so I don't love the cold snow, and I'm not much of a swimmer, so I don't love the sun. Considering all these things...I consider myself to be the world's foremost expert on the tolerability of very hot versus very cold weather. What is easier to survive -- the winters in Montana where the temperature dips down to 20 below or the summers in Arizona where the heat reaches 115. Some people love the cold or the hot, and, for them, the answer is simple. For the average person, however, the debate comes down to two facts:

(1) very cold weather (define here as below zero) is both very painful and very inconvenient because you need to wear so many layers. Very cold weather is undebatably more painful than very hot weather.

(2) the Arizona heat is simply relentless since you expect triple digit highs every day from May 15 till Sept. 15. The Montana cold may be painful and annoying, but it usually lets up after a week or two.

There are a number of lesser considerations: (a) the Arizona heat that keeps you indoors happens when the days are longest, and the nice weather happen when the days are relatively short, (b) you don't have to shovel photons, and (c) the temperature difference between indoors and outdoors is, on average, less in Arizona. However, these are all smaller issues. Ultimately, if you have to choose Montana weather or Arizona weather it is simply a question of do you like your pain short and severe (i.e., Montana) or milder but relentless (i.e., Arizona).

Book Review: The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons

I love to read. I especially love anything written by Bill Simmons. The Book of Basketball is the best NBA related book I've read by a large margin. It is very informative and incredibly funny. I'd give it an A. In honor of Simmons, I'll include a top five list. Imagine you are on a deserted island, and you get five books to read per year, one from each of your five favorite authors (they must be living, which eliminate D.F. Wallace and M. Crichton). Here's my list:

(1) Donald Miller (although I can't imagine him writing one book per year)
(2) Malcolm Gladwell
(3) Phillip Yancey
(4) Chuck Klosterman
(5) Bill Simmons

backups:
(6) John Case
(7) John Grisham (both 6 and 7 are entertaining but not especially interesting)
(8) Robin Cook
(9) John Gierach (both 8 and 9 are too repetitive for the top 5)
(10) John Krakauer

Book Review: Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

There are only a few writers that I will pretty much read anything and everything that they write: Donald Miller, Bill Simmons, and Jon Krakauer are definitely on the must read list for me. Krakauer's latest book is about Pat Tillman and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I really enjoyed the background on Afghanistan and Tillman. Tillman is an ASU alum and I taught at ASU from 2004-2008 so I feel a small connection to him (I also feel a connection to Krakauer because I rode mountain bike with him for 3 days in Utah once upon a time). After the detailed background, the book focuses on Tillman's death and the subsequent cover-up. It is very well written.

Reading this book will make you more informed --- doesn't everyone want to be more informed. You will read about some incredible individuals, some frustratingly stupid individuals, and individuals that fall somewhere in between. I highly recommend this extraordinary book. Grade: A-.

Book Reviews

I read a couple books recently that discuss Game Theory, Sociology, and Economics.

Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher. The focus of this book is on the basics of game theory (a branch of mathematics) and its applications to 'everyday life'. The book emphasize the importance of cooperation and how to obtain cooperation in situations where it may not be obvious. Fisher is an excellent writer and the book is fairly easy to read. So easy to read, that I would have actually preferred a little more mathematics along the way. I would suggest this book to anyone interested in learning about the types of problems game theory can address. Grade: B

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford. This book is basically a collection of summaries of behavioral economic studies that yielded interesting results. Harford tends to focus on studies that show mathematically (and often using game theory) that the decisions we make are rational. The book is similar to Freakonomics or Predictably Irrational except those books were written by the researchers that did the studies while Harford mostly describes the work of others. The book is well written and had a few especially interesting sections, but, overall, it felt a little recycled. Grade: C+

Author's Note

Donald Miller is the greatest living author (and Bill Simmons is second). Here's the authors note from Donald Miller's latest book (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years):

"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record onto think about the story you'd seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you'd feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either.

Here's what I mean by that..."

Follow-up: I just finished the book. Excellent -- certainly in my top 10 all time. Grade: A

My healthcare story

I won't pretend to know how to fix health care in the US. I just know it is broken. I learned this 2 years ago when I injured my wrist in a biking accident. It was a pretty bad wrist injury requiring surgery and a few weeks of physical therapy. My surgery and recovery treatment were excellent examples of the good parts of US health care. We have the best specialists in the world. The bad part of my treatment came after I arrived at the hospital as a trauma patient. (Yes, the emergency/trauma parts of the system are horribly broken). I had to wait a few hours for surgery (I had eaten food), and someone ordered an MRI scan of my abdomen. This is just crazy since I was completely coherent and I had zero abdominal pain (they could have pushed on it all they wanted). The biggest crime here was that no one asked me about the scan. They just wheeled me down to the MRI machine and sent my insurance a HUGE bill for a completely unnecessary scan. I'm sure the person that ordered the scan would say that he/she was just being careful and trying to avoid a lawsuit, but I also suspect that the fact that I had good insurance had something to do with this. Shouldn't reasonable evidence of internal injury be required before ordering a horribly expensive test?