Practically an historical artifact to me, Sex and the High Command was educational even though it was not entertaining. It reminded me that there's a sharp difference between books set in the Cold War written during the Cold War and books set in the Cold War written after the fact. Reading it while discussing [b:The Left Hand of Darkness|18423|The Left Hand of Darkness|Ursula K. Le Guin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166913055s/18423.jpg|817527] in English class, I was struck by the similarities in the two novels: both are about gender issues, and both are a product of the 1960s. But that's where the similarity ends.

Sex and the High Command definitely reads like the sort of pulp sci-fi novel that made it difficult for the mainstream audience to take science fiction seriously, the sort of novel against which Ursula K. Le Guin was campaigning, both thematically and structurally, when she came out with The Left Hand of Darkness. Now, I haven't read much pulp sci-fi. That was part of the reason I elected to read this awful book; I also saw it featured in an io9 triviagasm about parthenogenesis and decided to check it out. I'm aware there's probably much better pulp sci-fi, stressing that "better" is an incredibly relative term. . . .

The description is very sparse, so I'll deviate from my normal reviewer schema and give a brief plot summary. It's contemporary 1970s America. Captain Ben Hansen of the United States Navy is just returning home from an eighteen-month tour of duty off Antarctica. While he's been away, a scientist by the name of Dr. Henrietta Carey has perfected an orgasm-inducing parthenogenesis drug marketed under the name "Vita-Lerp" and colloquially called a "V-bomb." As a result, America's women are flocking to the FEM—Freedom, Equality, and Motherhood—party to support Carey as a presidential candidate and literally eliminate men as superfluous quantities. Hansen falls in with several high-ranking military officers and key cabinet members to plot how to take the United States back from these crazy manslaughtering women.

Yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

Let me set the thematic elements aside for the moment and solely focus on how badly written the book is. To be fair, I have read worse. John Boyd actually has a very good command of the English language, both in vocabulary and syntax. It's clear he loves describing naval operations in detail; he doesn't just say "the ship docked" but spends entire pages showing us the operation. Those more interested in reading naval fiction might get more out of this book than I did.

As a story, however, Sex and the High Command severely lacks anything resembling a sensible plot or realistic character development. Again, my context is a little vague here. What resources I could turn up seem to indicate that this isn't satire, but it belongs to a school of sci-fi that's tongue-in-cheek in its approach, bordering on absurdism but not quite philosophically adept enough to earn that label. It reads like a Saturday Night Live sketch that's 212 pages long and has also ingested steroids.

To be clear, I'm not ragging on absurdist-flavoured fiction. I'm a huge fan of [b:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|11|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide 1)|Douglas Adams|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156039839s/11.jpg|3078186]; while I couldn't quite get through [b:Catch-22|168668|Catch-22|Joseph Heller|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1242256344s/168668.jpg|814330] the first time (I was only in grade 6, so I figure I have an excuse), I'm going to try again soon. But even absurdist literature might have a point—this book does not. Both its characters and its plot are utterly superfluous; excise both from the book and the same story, minus the fanciful names, remains in its questionable glory.

Most of Sex and the High Command is dialogue, and most of that dialogue makes no sense whatsoever. I spent all my time as bewildered as the main character, Captain Hansen, who also has no idea what is going on. Normally, this shared bewilderment creates a sense of empathy between reader and protagonist. To some extent, that's true here—Hansen's probably the least worst character in the book—but any hope of identifying with Hansen is scuttled in the very first chapter by the way he arrives home after his tour of duty, waltzing into his house and expecting his wife and daughter to be waiting for him, full of analogies about how he runs his home like a boat. Right. I'm aware that this is probably just the novel showing its age combined with my inability to put myself in a 1970s male mindset, but I was prejudiced against Hansen from the start.

The trouble is, Boyd's straw men feminists (pun intended) are so flimsy that it's impossible to identify with them either. The reader is left watching insane protagonists—the de facto leader of whom is intent on nuking the continental United States—and even more insane antagonists. The method by which the women gain power, forcing the incumbent government to flee to Greenland, is specious at best. I'm not even going to talk about how the incumbent government was planning to stay in power by conspiring to get a redneck elected president in return for finding him a virgin redneck girl to marry. Only the FBI agent sent to find said girl beds her before bringing her back, and then the redneck and his new bride die when their yacht sinks while they have sex. Oh, and a grammarian literally dies of a heart attack from hearing the redneck put four prepositions at the end of a sentence.

Yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

Since the dialogue is so confusing and the actions that dialogue seems to precipitate make no sense, I spent the majority of the book turning the pages and remarking, "This book is FUBAR." Ordinarily, that's not a good thing, and Sex and the High Command is not one of those rare it's-so-crazy-it's-brilliant exceptions. It is FUBAR.

Thematically, this book is a mess. I will ignore the fact of its anti-feminism—declaiming that would be futile—and focus only on the unrealistic portrayal of its feminist antagonists. Yet another one of those pesky relativistic qualifications: the feminist movement as we know it today was very young in that era, and it's not like Boyd could go online and do a couple hours' research on the subject (the non-existence of the Internet was also probably an obstacle to such an endeavour). And the movement was scary to those in power, as change always is. Still, Boyd grievously misrepresents the feminist platform.

The most striking example comes toward the end of the book, after the women have assumed power and are making it ever harder for men to be men and small green furry creatures from Alpha Centauri to be small green furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Boyd has the women, led by the "Mother Presiding" Dr. Carey, hyper-feminize America. And in so doing, those same women are behaving like non-feminist women who just happen to have homicidal urges any time they see a man who isn't blindly docile to the New Logic of women. Whereas feminism now focuses on gender equality and eliminating difference, Boyd's feminists exhibit traits that modern feminism claims exist primarily because of male dominance in society—ergo, in a female-dominated or gender-equal society, those traits would be minimized or non-existent. As a result, while Sex and the High Command probably stands as an interesting example of how reactionaries viewed the fledgling feminist movement of the 1960s, it's hardly a valid critique of that movement.

So, Sex and the High Command is neither an intellectually-stimulating polemic nor a rousing adventure novel. It has no interesting characters, very little clever or even cogent dialogue, and a distinct absence of plot or true resolution. So already, this book has managed to alienate the two largest (non-disjoint) sets of SF readers: those who seek profound themes and those who just want to relax and read a good story. Only those interested in historical artifacts or people like me, who will read something that they suspect is awful just for that suspicion, will find this book appealing. But that may be optimism on my part.

Because repetition is key: yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

My gut reaction to this book: "Wow, this guy spent a lot of time figuring out to how to describe things."

Maybe it's a shallow statement, especially coming from a writer, but it's true. Revenant made me think about how literary fiction tends to put more emphasis on lyrical descriptions than other genres. And along with that, you get all these characters that are apparently not only observant, but verbose in their observations. A certain amount of description is necessary in any book; literary fiction runs the risk of introducing so many trite phrases that the book becomes a bundle of intense adjectives connected by some common nouns, populated by characters who apparently all have English degrees.

Revenant succeeds in presenting the same scenes differently from the perspectives of different characters. Quantity of lyrical descriptions aside, Tristan Hughes does establish a distinct voice for each of Neil, Ricky, and Steph. So when any two of them described the same scene, it would be laced with different prejudices, different assumptions, and different observations. Neil saw Mr. Jones in a sympathetic light while Ricky viewed him as an arrogant, shambling old man. This is something that really intrigued me and kept me reading even when the book felt slow.

Part of that slowness is an endemic quality owing to the book's setting and themes. Taking place on a small Welsh island, Revenant is retrospective and introspective. It's has very little action, and the action that does take place is motivated by internal conflict more than any external force. Any substance in the book comes from those conflicts, and from how the characters work through them as individuals, alone. (Because none of these people talk. They just don't. They spend the entire book not talking.)

Childhood can be traumatic, and Revenant captures that feeling perfectly. It has a traumatic event, yes, but it's also the way in which the characters, who are now adults, look back on their childhood in general. With distance between the past and the present, the characters pass judgement and form conscious opinions as to how their childhood influenced their lives. Now they've come together after years apart, years that have changed them, and we see them try to finally come to terms with that trauma.

There's plenty of observations the characters make that I found valid. I especially enjoyed Ricky's reflections on how time doesn't diminish the feeling of intimacy between truly good friends—ten years ago can feel like ten hours ago between good friends. Some of the observations feel a little too valid, as if the characters have been moulded into certain mindsets and told what people whom they represent would say a certain thing. Again, Ricky, as the wandering, unfulfilled adult who never quite grew into maturity, fits this description.

We never do get much detail on what the characters were doing between childhood and the present-day part of the book. Neil stayed on the island; Steph presumably went to the mainland. Ricky was "away." This gap in the narrative lends itself to the characters as representatives of types of people rather than actual persons, something that mars the otherwise poignant microcosm that Hughes creates on this island. The characters are mouthpieces, not people, and every time I read a book like that, I get a sudden desire to pick up something by [a:John Irving|3075|John Irving|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1185830374p2/3075.jpg]. There's a man who knows how to weave emotional truth into a fulfilling story and create real, living characters.

Revenant is an origami piece of a story: beautiful but fragile. It's an interesting execution of the same old ideas and themes that we see in retrospects of one's childhood, to the point that I'd almost say the themes are executed too well. It's skilfully and exquisitely written but doesn't take any thematic risks, choosing instead to play it safe.

Honestly, I'm a little intimidated.

I didn't realize that The Master and Margarita is an "unfinished" masterpiece, complete in its narrative but still unpolished prior to Bulgakov's death. As with any published unfinished work, there's a certain amount of third-party editing that will alter the interpretation of the text. To compound this problem, I'm an Anglophone reading a translation from Russia. I'm not as familiar with Russian literature or Russian history as I could be. As a result, a great deal is lost in translation across the barriers of both language and culture.

This book is rife with allusions literary, cultural, and musical. Bulgakov constantly makes plays on words that refer to Russian writers and poets with whom I'm not familiar, as well as incorporating aspects of poems and works, like Faust, that I haven't read. By reading the notes at the end of this edition, I get the idea that there's a great deal of irony at the expense of the Soviet regime in 1930s Russia—again, it was difficult for me to appreciate that on my own. I feel like this is a book full of subtext I can't comprehend at this point in my life. That's nothing to be ashamed about. I'm young, and I'm sure that as I grow older, I will re-read books and discover new elements to them that went undetected before. Still, it's frustrating, especially in something as sublime as The Master and Margarita.

Of course, those eponymous characters don't actually show up until later in the book. First we get to see the effects of the devil's visit to Moscow. Indirectly or directly referred to as "the devil" and "Satan," Woland isn't necessarily "evil" in the absolute moral sense of the word. He's a trickster and a tempter, but from the perspective of some people, like Margarita, he's an omnipotent saviour. He represents darkness, yes, but a darkness that must exist so that we may also have light—an embodiment of a dualistic philosophy at odds with the overt Christian nature of the mythology in this book. This is not merely a story about a sympathetic devil character; it's a decontextualization of the devil as part of the Christian mythos. Bulgakov does this partly to evince religious themes, but I suspect it's more to satirize Soviet society.

Investigators conclude that the inexplicable events in Moscow during Woland's stay were the result of a group of highly-skilled foreign hypnotists. The sheer absurdity of the previous sentence should drive home the gleeful way in which Bulgakov prods at the strange bureaucratic creature that was his government. Everything must be explained, rationally and according to the proper procedure, even if the explanations eventually offered are nonsensical and absurd. Everything has its place in the grand scheme.

As the epilogue puts it, referring to the characters in the narrative, "Absolutely nothing happened to them, nor could it have since they never existed in reality." There's a twin meaning to this sentence. Nothing happened, because some of the events depicted in this story border too close to criticism of Bulgakov's government, something that would have met the heavy hand of the censors. This is an utter and complete work of fiction, a dream of a character who himself is fictitious. At the same time, it emphasizes the categorical denial by the government that anything supernatural could be responsible for the disruptions in Moscow: the official Party line is that God doesn't exist, so neither does the devil.

The devil isn't the only one treated sympathetically here. Pontius Pilate is portrayed in a sympathetic light through chapters from the Master's destroyed manuscript. Here, he's just this guy, you know? Doing his job. Managing people, networking, joining Facebook groups—er, I mean, interrogating prisoners. We get the sense that he actually believes Jesus is a harmless guy, a genuinely nice guy, but Pilate has to execute him anyway, because he spoke out against Caesar (notice the parallels to 1930s Russia). I loved this version of Pilate, finding in him a kernel of nihilism that would ordinarily seem out of place in a book about Christianity. Pilate is a tragic character, neither saviour nor saved. He is offered no potential for redemption, forgiven only by the grace of Margarita after nearly 2000 years of limbo. And, as with most of the ill-fated characters in this book, Pilate didn't stand a chance. Fate was gunning for him, just as Fate was gunning for Berlioz, for Bezdomny, for the Master himself until Margarita, again, stepped into the fray. So what about the Master and Margarita? When they finally grace us with their presence, were they worth the wait?

The Master is a fairly undeveloped character. We don't learn his real name. All we know is that he's an artist who managed to earn the undying devotion of the beautiful, capable Margarita. And he wrote a novel about Pontius Pilate that eventually resulted in him being committed to a psychiatric institution. In terms of plot, he exists mostly so Margarita can save him. And I suppose he provides some interesting information to Bezdomny. Thematically, the Master represents the persecuted writer. There's a sense of the despair that, even if an author is permitted to write certain works and promised little censorship of them, he or she still exists in an intolerant, suspicious society, and thus his or her work will always suffer and be constrained. The Master is constantly struggling not just for freedom but for an understanding of what form that freedom will take. He frees himself of any name, save the honorific given to him by Margarita. He frees himself from society by entering a psychiatric clinic. He is freed from life and from Moscow when Azazello "kills" him. Perhaps most notably, he frees himself from the one thing in his life that has consumed everything else, the novel about Pontius Pilate. He burns the manuscript, only to discover that "manuscripts don't burn," and have it restored to him by Woland—a very romantic condemnation of censorship if ever there was one. The Master reinvents himself almost as often as Woland and his demonic associates do.

Margarita reinvents herself one major time, becoming a witch to save her lover. But we get glimpses of previous transformations as we learn how unhappy she was with her life as wife to a well-off man. The Master changed that for her, and with him gone, she has little for which to live except the hope that he may one day reappear. The fact that Margarita seizes upon any chance to help the Master, even if it means making a pact with the devil, instantly makes her one of the most human characters in this narrative. Margarita is neither innocent nor pure; however, she consistently acts on behalf of others rather than herself. When granted a boon by Woland, she first asks for another rogue to be spared her eternal Sisyphean torment. She then asks for the Master to be returned to her—selfish on the surface, but remember that she believes he will genuinely be happier with her than elsewhere, and such is the case.

Their happy ending is not the only happy ending, if the narrator is truthful. Woland's merry little group—and more the members of the group than Woland himself—cause a good deal of disruption in Moscow, burning buildings and scattering fake notes and, heaven forfend, foreign currency! They ruin some lives, but the actual body count is quite low. And the epilogue insists that the majority of the characters whose lives are deranged in this story end up the better for it, finding niches in which they are happier. Again, is this really the work of the devil? Woland is, more than a straight avatar of the devil, the embodiment of chaos more often just disruptive than harmful.

The Master and Margarita is dense but not dull. It's not light reading, in that there's enough subtext to keep you thinking about it long after you're finished the book. At the same time, there's genuine wit and irony in here, of the kind that demonstrates humour isn't just for comedy. This is a book very much a product of its time and of that time's politics that is very much relevant in any time with any politics.

Just so there are no illusions, from the top I want to make one thing clear: this is a difficult book to read. It is short, and Robert Klee explains concepts and theories very well. Nevertheless, he covers so much that I had to refer frequently to the glossary to keep all the terms straight. I read this book in two weeks because I'm taking a Philosophy of Science & Technology course; if you're reading this book out of general interest without a companion course to further your understanding.

So that's the good and the bad right there about Introduction to Philosophy of Science. The "clear and lively explanation of key concepts and issues in the philosophy of science" is, for the most part, accurate. I'm not as on board with Klee's choice of scientific field for his examples. Now, as a mathematician, I'm naturally drawn first to physics, so I'm biased. I concur with Klee when he says that philosophy of science texts overuse physics as the exemplar. And immunology is an interesting and different choice. However, when the text is not "clear and lively," it's usually during one of the more convoluted examples Klee offers up from immunology. This seems more a problem with the examples and the way they're written than the choice of immunology as the source of illustration.

Speaking of illustration, what was with Klee's Corel Draw figures? Maybe I'm being too harsh here, but those did not impress me. Klee's great at explaining with words, but I would have welcomed the contributions of a professional graphics artist.

Still, that's a minor point of criticism against a rather useful book. Introduction to the Philosophy of Science is structured well; Klee introduces various competing theories about scientific method, outlines the proponents and opponents of them, the problems with them, etc. I found the last two chapters the most interesting, because they discuss feminism in science and the realism versus antirealism debates. I read a little about the former in [b:Feminism|822888|Feminism Issues and Arguments|Jennifer Saul|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178691829s/822888.jpg|808692], by Jennifer Saul, so I liked reading more about it from a philosopher of science's point of view. The latter debate seems at the same time very important to the philosophy of science and very abstract from the practical scientist's point of view. Klee's choice to leave it for the end of the book is a good one, for it invokes the various theories and positions advanced in all the previous chapters.

Klee freely admits when he's biased (and the bias tends to show), but that doesn't interfere much when he presents the arguments of people with whom he disagrees—there's only a tiny amount of snark. And, in a way, I know he doesn't bias the text, because even after reading this book I still don't know where I stand where it comes to something like positivism—I see the merits, and the flaws, but mostly I see why this is an introductory level text. I could read an entire book on positivism now, because Klee has given me the necessary background.

So read the book (if philosophy of science is something you want to investigate or have to investigate for credit). You'll learn more than you are from this review. . . .

I am more and more impressed with H.G. Wells. This is the third book of his I've read, and it's by far the best. The first two were The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, arguably better known than The Island of Dr. Moreau but not, in my opinion, better works of fiction.

As with those other two books, The Island of Dr. Moreau features a first-person erudite British male narrator. Much like the narrator of The War of the Worlds, Edward Prendick finds himself in the middle of an untenable situation not of his own making. However, he more resembles t he protagonist of The Time Machine, who is an adventurer and a man of action. This latter point is important: Edward Prendick does things in this book. He isn't just a passive observer of a Martian invasion or an intervener in events that haven't yet happened. Having stumbled upon a radically different society, Prendick recognizes that he needs to act in order to survive.

Most of the action is weighted toward the end of the book. Ordinarily this is a problem, but Wells did a fine job of maintaining my interest during the build-up to the catastrophe that forces Prendick into action. First there's the shipwreck that results in Prendick ending up on Moreau's island, and then we get to meet the infamous Moreau himself. Although by our standards Wells' science is laughably implausible, it does the job of advancing the story and advancing legitimate themes. Prendick's struggle over how to view the Beast Men—are they animals? Human? Some abomination in between?—felt genuine. And it was an internal conflict inexorably tied to an external one, for it would govern how he decides to deal with the Beast Men once he is the last "human" left alive on the island.

That he survives, in the end, is not in question. The introduction provided by the protagonist's nephew reveals that Prendick would return to England after being rescued. At first I wondered why Wells would destroy a potential source of suspense, but then I realized it wasn't a source of suspense, because Prendick's survival is necessary. The final chapter of the book demonstrates why:

My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then that. . . . I know this is an illusion; that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk. Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and assistance, and long to be away from them and alone.

Wells accomplishes two things with this paragraph. Firstly, he captures somewhat the feelings of the shipwrecked survivor: someone who has been so long deprived of society and food and shelter that he or she, while no mad, must forever look at society in a different light. Secondly, he speaks to a latent fear of some of the implications of then-new Darwinism. This idea that humans came from animals, are inextricably animal by nature, is scary, especially to people who consider themselves among the most civilized society on Earth.

One aspect of the plot I wish Wells had explored more is the ethical ramifications of Moreau's experiments. Obviously they're implicit in the situation, since Moreau has fled to the Pacific to do his experiments without worry of interference or ridicule by the general public. While Prendick condemns Moreau's experiments, it seems to be more out of a visceral disgust for the procedure than a philosophical objection to the idea of "raising up" "lower" animals. Wells spends so much time building up to the discovery of Moreau's experiments only then to jump immediately into the catastrophe and Prendick's subsequent survival.

The Island of Dr. Moreau has also increased my appreciation for the psychological side of Wells' science fiction. I've always been aware of its existence, but I don't think I gave it enough credit before. Wells manages to portray the collective feeling of hopelessness engendered by Martian invasion, the sense of outrage against the injustice perpetrated on the Eloi, the fear of loosing any rigid line that separates Human from Beast . . . there's more going on here than I originally credited, and I'm starting to see now why Wells is so revered, both for his contributions to the nascent genre of science fiction and to the field of literature in general. There's relevance here, and consummate skill, so while it's good to be sceptical of "the classics" like I try to be, it's also important to keep an open mind. Just not a vivisected one.

Welcome to our universe. We only get one (regardless of however many there are). The search for a more complete understanding of our universe, out into the macroscopic and deep into the quantum foam, is a search for an understanding of who we are, why we're here . . . and where we might end up. This is a book of sublime thought that takes the ivory tower and turns it into an ivory ladder that anyone, given inclination and opportunity, can choose to ascend, one rung at a time. I cannot emphasize enough how important this book is to physics: it's a Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica for the masses.

Unlike Newton's groundbreaking scientific treatise, A Brief History of Time doesn't contain Hawking's own body of scientific work, but rather an overview of the development of theoretical physics, including relativity and quantum mechanics. Yet it's as important as the Principia, for in a single book we have a comprehensive look at a field of study often considered by the general populace to be obscure and esoteric. In a few hundred pages, Hawking demonstrates why we should be interested in the universe. He explains how relativity overturned the classical theory of Newtonian gravity, how quantum mechanics has exposed the flaws in relativity, and how physicists continue to search for a theory of quantum gravity to unify relativity and quantum mechanics in a Theory of Everything.

Relativity and quantum mechanics are the foundations of physics, chemistry, and biology as we know them today. While A Brief History of Time cannot, obviously, serve as a detailed explanatory text of every phenomenon, it acquaints the reader with the two fields that underly all phenomena, from optics to cell division. Reading this book gives you understanding that will help you with future intellectual inquiries.

Even if you're not interested in science, however, and have no intention of going further than this book, there's still something in here if you've ever wondered how the universe works. Hawking does not deliver a dry lecture consisting of complicated formulae and logically-implacable mathematical theorems. There are new terms, and some of the concepts might seem counterintuitive, but Hawking always has an analogy or concrete example at the ready. I won't claim that you'll understand everything he discusses—I know I didn't. And, as Hawking points out, even the most brilliant scientists still don't have a complete understanding. At the very least, you'll have a much better appreciation of what we don't understand, and why current scientific theories about the universe work but still have certain problems.

I am immensely grateful to my grandparents, who gave me this book as a Christmas gift, for its illustrations make it superior to previous editions. Utility aside, let's be shallow for a moment: the illustrations make the book so beautiful. This is a true coffee-table book (and probably, for many people, that is all it will ever be, sadly). It's well worth reading, but it's also perfect for keeping in the living room—you can always open it up to an interesting illustration and show off your physics knowledge!

In fact, I would go so far as to say that understanding these two concepts (that there may be more than four dimensions, and that curvature in three dimensions is a straight line in four or more) contributes to an understanding of the majority of this book. The barrier here is one of geometrical conception and not physics knowledge; i.e., you don't need to be able to solve its equations to understand relativity.

Some of the illustrations are somewhat redundant or even confusing. Others are invaluable supplements. For example, both of the books hinge on the idea that the universe has more than three dimensions: there's at least four (spacetime), and probably more like 11 or 26. Now, when Hawking uses the existence of these extra dimensions to explain how relativity results in the curvature of spacetime or why gravity is weaker than it should be, it makes sense—but we can't visualize it, because it's impossible to visualize any more than three dimensions. The illustrations depict four-dimensional space as a three-dimensional diagrams (with a spatial dimension removed and replaced by the time axis), which at least gives a better idea of what Hawking means by, "The mass of the sun curves space-time in such a way that although the earth follows a straight path in four-dimensional space-time, it appears to us to move along a circular orbit in three-dimensional space."

This book isn't perfect. Hawking's original treatment of time travel, for instance, leaves much to be desired. He rectifies this in The Universe in a Nutshell, providing a much more comprehensive look at how general relativity might allow time travel. Yet other parts of the second book heavily retread what Hawking discusses in A Brief History of Time, to the point of using similar or identical examples. This is not surprising, considering the two books were published separately. My advice is that if, like me, you read these books back-to-back, then skip over any parts of The Universe in a Nutshell that you like. Even Hawking admits in the foreword that the book is designed to be less linear than A Brief History of Time; delve into those chapters that interest you and don't worry too much about reading every single word on every page.

Regardless of how one reads it, A Brief History of Time should be required reading. As its track record indicates, it has well served its purpose as an accessible physics text. This is a book that presents theoretical physics as a comprehensible, cohesive conversation between Hawking and the reader. This edition, with its illustrations and the inclusion of a second book, The Universe in a Nutshell, is perhaps the best edition of the two books published to date.

This book bored me. There, I said it. Perhaps the most damning phrase a reader may utter of any book. That I persevered is more due to the book's length and my own obstinacy than any particular virtue of How the Irish Saved Civilization. My interest began to wane well before I was halfway through. The first half consists of several anecdotes that set the stage for the history: the fall of Rome, the lives of Saints Augustine and Patrick. I was anxious for the book to get to the "good part"—you know, the part where the Irish save civilization.

In retrospect, ironically, the first half of the book is the better half. Thomas Cahill provides an interesting look at the external pressures on Rome during the fifth century, as well as a brief biography on Augustine and one on Saint Patrick. These episodes bored me not because they lacked quality but because Cahill didn't bother to tell me why they were germane to his thesis. So for the first hundred or so pages, I took it on faith that he would eventually get to the point.

Unfortunately, he does, and it's underwhelming. I knew going into this book that its title was hyperbole; I did not expect a literal argument that the Irish singlehandedly lead us out of the Dark Ages. But it quickly becomes clear that Cahill has very little to argue, which is probably why more of the book is devoted to anecdotes and an exploration of Ireland's literary history. Cahill spends a lot of time quoting from various works, most of them Irish poetry or folklore. And that's all well and good; I don't mind a look at history from a literary perspective. Yet he never manages to convince me that somehow the unique combination of Ireland's geographical isolation, the oral traditions and religious practices of the Irish, and the mission of St. Patrick moulded the Irish into the perfect template for monastic life.

The paucity of Cahill's argument becomes clear toward the end of the book. Far from the claim on the inside of the jacket, that "Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works" would have been lost without the intervention of the Irish—which, let's be fair, might be the work of an earnest editor or marketing person—Cahill admits:

The Hebrew Bible would have been saved without them, transmitted to our time by scattered communities of Jews. The Greek Bible, the Greek commentaries, and much of the literature of ancient Greece were well enough preserved at Byzantium. . . . But Latin literature would almost surely have been lost without the Irish. . .

Now, the loss of Latin literature would be a big deal, granted. Nevertheless, this passage highlights the essential flaw in the book, one all too common in works of popular history. In analyzing only the Irish contribution to this complex swathe of history, Cahill risks over-representing the significance of that contribution. I don't doubt that the establishment of monasteries in medieval Europe was crucial to the preservation of literary works, but that's not the only factor.

Worse still, Cahill switches gears mid-sentence, moving from a caveat to an even wider, more general claim:

. . .and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of Irish, the first vernacular literature to be written down. Beyond that, there would have perished in the west not only literacy but all the habits of mind that encourage thought. And when Islam began its medieval expansion, it would have encountered scant resistance to its plans—just scattered tribes of animists, ready for a new identity.

Cahill fails to provide any evidence for such a disingenuous picture of Europe after the fall of Rome. How exactly does illiteracy cause Christian kingdoms to revert to animism? Indeed, earlier in the book Cahill has nothing but praise for preliterate Ireland's spirit and culture transmitted through oral history.

He repeats this sort of behaviour all too often, making statements that seem in obvious need of more explanation and, importantly, some sort of proof. Earlier on while mentioning Augustine's youthful flirtation with Manicheism, Cahill remarks, "Like Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormonism, it was full of assertions, but could yield no intellectual system to nourish a great intellect." The irony of that sentence is almost worth reading the entire book, for it alone is full of assertions.

It's clear that Cahill has both a good grasp on and a clear appreciation for Irish literature and history. That's great. Someone with more interest in that subject than I have would probably find it more rewarding. Were this a book devoted to Irish literary criticism, it would get high marks. But it's not. It's about history. Yet Cahill paints his history with broad strokes, and he doesn't always pause to provide, say, sources. Consider the preface to the bibliography:

. . .rather than list every book I consulted, I'd prefer to tell you about the ones I found especially valuable. Of course, some of the more deeply held things are sourceless—or rather, one can no longer remember where one first learned them.

I can agree with Cahill on one thing here: some sources aren't memorable. How the Irish Saved Civilization is one such source. Although it has some interesting history to it, Cahill's focus is too narrow to sustain interest. This is a book caught between the hyperbolic claims of its popular history title and the more realistic claims demanded by scholarship. Rather than erring on one side or the other, and sticking to it, Cahill vacillates between the two extremes, making it a poor example of either.

I have long had a somewhat unhealthy admiration of British humour, which is somehow superior to most other forms of humour in its unique blend of intelligence and absurdity. And no institution, as it is portrayed in fiction, epitomizes British humour better than that of the British butler. Think of Blackadder (in Blackadder the Third) or Batman's Alfred. These unflappable, infallible men serve their employers with a grace that almost defies description. Even in the direst of emergencies, they carry on like it is the most routine circumstance imaginable. There's a word for that.

It's dignity.

In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro dares to define dignity and give it a voice. My reservations about Ishiguro's narration from Never Let Me Go are absent here: Stevens is a wonderful narrator. His very self-conscious, hesitant attempts at introspection concealed as recollection are just one example of why this book is best described as charming.

Ishiguro demonstrates his talent for using the personal stories of his characters as windows into the past. During his time serving Lord Darlington, Stevens was privy to—but did not participate in—many meetings by very important persons in between the two world wars. We see the master through the eyes of the servant, and Ishiguro brings the unreliability of a first-person narrator to bear, portraying Darlington with all the confusion and inconsistency that the haze of memory conveys.

For the fact of the matter is that Stevens is a very biased narrator, something that is crucial to the theme of this book. We all too often forget that others lived through the history we receive only as story, much revised and often laden with judgement. As someone who learned about World War II from history textbooks, written as they are by the victors, my conception of Nazi Germany has always been a stark and absolute one. As it becomes clear through Stevens' recollections that Lord Darlington was a staunch supporter of appeasement, Ishiguro gives us a glimpse at why intelligent people like Neville Chamberlain could advocate for a policy like appeasement. The Remains of the Day captures not only the events of the past but their essence in a way only fiction can.

Stevens' trip through the English countryside of 1956 presents a contrast to his heyday serving Lord Darlington. Stevens is the last of a dying breed of butlers serving a dying breed of nobility, as evidenced by his difficulty bantering with his new employer, Mr. Farraday. The people he meets on his journey invariably mistake Stevens as a gentleman himself—and he does not always disabuse them of this notion, perhaps out of a sense of pride, but more because of the awkwardness of the situation. In his decades of attempting to cultivate the "dignity" he believes makes a great butler, Stevens has acquired more gentlemanly traits than many who call themselves gentlemen by breeding and blood. He is noble in character if not in deed—a situation that Stevens seems constantly to regret as he reviews his life and his profession.

There's a subtle sense of sadness to The Remains of the Day. Even when Stevens recounts his proudest professional moments, they are tinged with personal loss: the death of his father, and the loss (in more ways than one) of Miss Kenton. Stevens always treats his own feelings cautiously and with a certain dismissive attitude that is easy to mistake for naivety. It's not as simple a case of denial. It might have started as denial in the past, but from the tone of his recollections and the way he phrases some of his opinions, it's clear that Stevens realizes some what of he has missed. He has regrets, but he is at heart a practical man. And he is alone. There are no equals in whom he can confide, not since he has lost touch with the fellow butlers he respected. So Stevens seeks solace in his memories.

The finer aspects being a butler may seem like mundane fodder for a novel. Yet it's that quotidian quality that makes those memories so powerful and The Remains of the Day such a sublime story. The mundane has meaning. Every conversation that Stevens recalls, whether accurate or not, is important; the more ordinary such a conversation seems, the more important it must be—otherwise, why would he remember it? Ishiguro chooses to investigate the vagaries of human existence not in an emperor or a warrior but a butler. As the reactions of the villagers remind us, Stevens exists in that nexus between worlds, neither of the nobility nor quite a part of the common people.

Times have changed since the 1950s. Divisions still exist in society, although they too have changed. But people, for the most part, haven't changed. Like Stevens, we walk the fine line between personal and professional, and at the end of each day, we look at what remains and ask if it's worth it, if we've done well. If we're content. And so, in keeping with a long literary tradition, Ishiguro explores the human condition through a butler. I could not ask for more.

I must confess that, as a kid and an adolescent, I never shared the ardour for comic books many of my peers did. I collected Archie comics and read the odd Superman comic, but that was about it. So unlike most, who come for the superheroes, I came to The Physics of Superheroes for the physics.

As an aspiring teacher, I love to hear about new ways of teaching difficult or boring topics to students. While I don't find physics boring, I can see it being difficult—and, depending on how it's presented, perhaps dull. There's no chance of that happening when the likes of Superman, Iron Man, and the Flash are involved. Even those like me, who aren't diehard comic book fans, will enjoy this innovative approach to freshman physics. I admit I was surprised to see Professor Kakalios derive examples from comic books for every major topic. From a pedagogical perspective, The Physics of Superheroes deserves high praise.

Because I am impatient, I powered through this book in three days. I do not recommend you do the same. This is, after all, a physics book—cunningly disguised as a discussion of superheroics, but a physics book nonetheless. There is a reason that freshman physics courses take up the entire school year: the brain is just not meant to absorb so much so fast. My math and physics background allowed me to keep afloat, but I can see many people buying this book for its attractive premise but then panning it for getting too difficult.

For the first few sections, Kakalios has no problem. Newtonian mechanics might be daunting at first, but its deterministic nature makes it reassuring: if you put the same variables in, you'll also get the same result. It's the probabilistic, indeterministic nature of quantum mechanics that leaves some people uncomfortable. If you have trouble visualizing an electron as matter wavefunction in a "probability cloud" about the atomic nucleus instead of the simpler "solar system" model we learn in high school, don't feel bad. Many of physics' most brilliant minds objected to quantum mechanics on similar grounds when it was in its infancy.

Modern physics is quite complex, and that's reflected in any book on the subject, no matter how well-written. Kakalios does not always succeed in the later chapters, and he often doesn't make enough connections to his superhero examples as he explains a physics concept. I'm willing to cut him slack, however, because this is a survey book. For those interested in more depth, there's a lengthy list of recommended reading in the back.

Still, I learned plenty. Certainly I won't forget what Kakalios taught me about the relationship between mass, density, and volume, thanks to the Atom, Ant-Man, and Mr. Fantastic. Density is mass divided by volume, and if you want to shrink yourself or grow larger, you're best to increase your mass and hold your density constant. On a related note, perhaps Kakalios' most impressive feat is one he accomplishes at the beginning of the book. First he calculates how much force Golden Age Superman's legs must provide to allow him to jump 1/8th of a mile in the air. From this, Kakalios deduces the acceleration due to gravity on Krypton and concludes that Krypton likely had matter from a neutron star in its core—hence why the planet exploded! Kakalios' love for his topics, both physics and comics, is obvious in the writing.

I should also mention that I went to see Professor Kakalios when he gave a talk at Lakehead University (when I subsequently bought this book). If you have a chance to attend a talk, do so. You can also see some videos on the book's website. Certain examples, and much of Kakalios' humour, are better experienced in lecture instead of literary form. Nevertheless, The Physics of Superheroes joins Bill Nye the Science Guy and The Magic School Bus in teaching science as it is meant to be taught: with levity.

I went through alternating appraisals of Overture. At first I thought it was boring, then sweet, then sickeningly romantic (if I ever hear the words "torrid but virginal liaison" again, I will snap, I swear), and finally, musical.

I can't say I like the main character. She is one of those people who feels a constant, almost pathological, need to sabotage her own happiness. And I just can't accept that philosophy--even in the name of art. I couldn't help but yell at Tasha throughout the entire book, telling her what a fool she was being.

It wasn't a waste of time, though. As someone who enjoys classical music, I liked hearing Goldstein's descriptions of it through Tasha and her emotions. Some of those passages in which Tash explains how playing the music makes her feel ... those are the best parts of the book, the most real. I don't play an instrument (I took piano lessons, but lack the technical skill to ever be really good). But I appreciate music, and I enjoyed being able to understand music from the point of view of a musician.

As a novel, Overture isn't that good. As a character study, it is slightly better, if you can avoid the urge to hunt down this "Tasha Darsky" and try to talk some sense into her. But if you plan to read this, you must first have a stomach for plot-twisting romance and, of course, music.