Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Ever since we discovered that Earth is round and turns like a mad spinning-top, we have understood that reality is not as it appears to us: every time we glimpse a new aspect of it, it is a deeply emotional experience. Another veil has fallen."

In Preface, the author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli, a renowned theoretical physicist and a philosopher of science, addresses his book to "those who know little or nothing about modern science." Although I am an applied mathematician, an engineer, and have even taught a course on mechanics (a classical part of physics), I know very little - really next to nothing - about modern physics. I have learned a lot from that tiny book (total of 81 pages!) and I absolutely love Dr. Rovelli's amazing way of making some basic tenets of contemporary physics almost understandable by amateurs like myself. This is the best popular science writing I have ever read!

The first lesson deals with "the most beautiful of theories" - Einstein's general theory of relativity. We read wonderful passages like

"[...] the gravitational field is not diffused through space; the gravitational field is that spaceitself."

We then read about curvature of space and that "it isn't only space that curves; time does too." The second lesson focuses on quantum mechanics, which in layman's terms posits that energy is discrete rather than continuous. And it is here that to my delight (and likely to screams of horror of many people) randomness and probability appear! Dr. Rovelli states at the end of the chapter that the equations of quantum mechanics and their consequences "remain mysterious," and suggests an idea that "reality [of the physical world] is only interaction." So cool!

I am omitting two next chapters in my summary, Architecture of the Cosmos and Particles (with its Standard Model, confirmed experimentally in 2013 yet still considered unsatisfactory). The Fifth Lesson focuses on the contradictions between the current form of the two main theories of physics - general relativity and quantum mechanics - and on the current efforts of physicists to combine the two theories. One such effort is the loop quantum gravity theory and Dr. Rovelli, in extreme modesty, neglects to write that he is one of the founders (if not the main founder - that I do not know) of the theory.

Naturally, the lesson titled Probability, Time, and the Heat of Black Holes, is my favorite! Even a mention of the word "probability" makes my heart beat faster and here it becomes a central mechanism of physics. Dr. Rovelli writes

"This bringing of probability to the heart of physics, and using it to explain the bases of the dynamics of heat, was initially considered to be absurd."

And what about the following stunning passage:

"[...] the intimate connection between time and heat. There is a detectable difference between the past and the future only when there is the flow of heat. Heat is linked to probability; and probability in turn is linked to the fact that our interactions with the rest of the world do not register the fine details of reality."

Finally, in the lesson called In Closing, the author writes about "ourselves" - us, the humans. He dwells on the nature of consciousness and the issue of free will. In a passage that unfortunately becomes more and more relevant with each passing year he points out the "incomprehension and distrust of science shown by a significant part of our contemporary culture." He also offers a sobering prediction that "our species will not last long" and alludes to the damage that the species keeps doing.

A beautifully written book about Very Difficult Things.

Five stars.


View all my reviews

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think."

The Last Lecture (2008), a New York Times bestseller, is a wonderful book indeed. For once, even such an avowed cynic and elitist as this reviewer agrees with most other readers. The book was written by a professional author, Jeffrey Zaslow, from tapes recorded by Randolph Pausch, a professor of computer science who died of cancer before reaching the age of 48. The book expands on the main topics of the actual last lecture that Dr. Pausch gave at Carnegie Mellon University after he had been given a diagnosis of only a few months to live. Yet The Last Lecture is not about dying, but an upbeat meditation on how to live:

"I lectured about the joy of life, about how much I appreciated life, even with so little of mine left. I talked about honesty, integrity, gratitude, and other things I hold dear."

The leading motif in Dr. Pausch's book is the life-driving importance of striving to achieve one's childhood dreams:

Whatever my accomplishments, all of the things I loved were rooted in the dreams and goals I had as a child... and in the ways I had managed to fulfill almost all of them."

Naturally, there is a lot about teaching in this short book and as a university professor myself I read these passages with great interest. I agree with the author that although

"[i]t is an accepted cliché in education that the number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn"

a better teaching goal is

"...to help students learn how to judge themselves."

One will find a lot of first-class, non-trivial advice on how to live, where some of the recommendations are real pearls of wisdom. Just take this:

"I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long term."

And the deepest and most beautiful sentence in the entire book about one of these things that make life worth living:

"It's a thrill to fulfill your own childhood dreams, but as you get older, you may find that enabling the dreams of others is even more fun."

Down-to-earth, simple wisdom is there too, for instance about shortcuts to success

"A lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard."

Very, very strongly recommended read.
(This review is dedicated to EVK.)

Four-and-a-half stars.

View all my reviews

Brain Droppings by George Carlin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"They say if you outlaw guns, only outlaws and criminals will have guns. Well, shit, those are precisely the people who need them."

Note to myself: Never again read a collection of George Carlin's musing on the trolley, when commuting to work! The trolley was quite crowded, only one available seat which I took, my co-passengers cramped and then I started exploding with laughter. I did everything to contain myself: to no avail! Poor people around me were stiff with fear of this giggling maniac in their midst.

Not everybody will like Mr. Carlin's humor: dark, cynical, deeply disappointed with the human species. George Carlin, famous for his "seven dirty words" routine, is one of the most influential stand-up comics of all time. Extremely opinionated and ruthless in his criticisms of all manifestations of human stupidity, hypocrisy, and evil:

"This species is a dear, hateful, sweet, barbaric, tender, vile, intelligent, confused, virtuous, evil, thoughtful, perverted, generous, greedy species. In short, great entertainment."

I am also opinionated and my opinions coincide with his in almost every aspect of his criticism of the human race. I am just thousand times less funny than he is and also I do not have the courage to express my opinions out loud. Take the epigraph quote about guns: why would any normal, average person need a gun? How would I ever use a gun in my life? I believe that only outlaws and criminals really need guns. I am certainly for outlawing guns for regular people.

Mr. Carlin is merciless particularly about us, the "Americans":

Traditional American values: Genocide, aggression, conformity, emotional repression, hypocrisy, and the worship of comfort and consumer goods."

Also:

"The keys to America: the cross, the brew, the dollar, and the gun."

In addition to making bitter fun of people's fascination with violence, religion, sports, television, etc. the main target of Mr. Carlin's hard-hitting satire is the language. First, he attacks the various language inconsistencies, clichés, oxymorons, and redundancies, like in

"Unique needs no modifier. Very unique, quite unique, more unique, real unique, fairly unique and extremely unique are wrong, and they mark you as dumb. Although certainly not unique."

But it is the critique of euphemisms ("I don't like euphemisms. Euphemisms are a form of lying." Precisely!) and politically correct speech that is the most devastating. I do not have the courage to quote Mr. Carlin's musings in this area. But I certainly agree with him.

The reader will find some bittersweet humor, slightly tinged with melancholy, like in:

"There's an odd feeling you get when someone on the sidewalk moves slightly to avoid walking into you. It proves you exist. Your mere existence caused them to alter their path. It's a nice feeling. After you die, no one has to get out of your way anymore."

and also completely silly yet unbelievably hilarious quotes like

"One time, a few years ago, Oprah had a show about women who fake orgasms. Not to be outdone, Geraldo came right back with a show about men who fake bowel movements."

The reader will also find the famous monologue about "stuff" in its entirety.

George Carlin's Brain Droppings (1997) is the third most hilarious book I have read in my life (after Wstep do imagineskopii (not translated from Polish to English, and most likely untranslatable) and The Third Policeman . I am rounding the rating up. Yay!

Four-and-a-half stars.

View all my reviews

Introduction to Probability: Second Revised Edition by Charles M. Grinstead
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"One may summarize these results by stating that one should not get drunk in more than two dimensions."

The above is the most extraordinary sentence one can find in a university textbook on advanced mathematics! Charles M. Grinstead's and J. Laurie Snell's Introduction to Probability (Second Edition, 1997) is indeed a most remarkable textbook, by far the best text that I have ever used in my almost 40 years of teaching undergraduate mathematics and computer science. Probability was my favorite field of mathematics during my own studies in the early 1970s, but I somehow avoided teaching it, most likely because I had not found a textbook that I really liked. Until Grinstead and Snell.

Standard textbooks heavily focus on the combinatorial aspects of probability, which do not interest me too much. When I teach the upper-division probability course I love to emphasize the calculus-based approach, particularly when it involves multidimensional calculus and its applications to joint probability distributions. Grinstead and Snell's approach is virtually tailor-made for my probability course.

The second factor that makes me love the textbook is the emphasis on random numbers and pseudo-random variables generation. Having worked in the field of mathematical modeling and simulation for over 40 years I believe this is a natural approach to ground the probability course in. Grinstead and Snell's geometry-based problems that use the cumulative distribution functions to find the densities are a wonderful teaching tool: the students can also appreciate the applications of calculus: many of my students seemed to like discovering the connections.

Yet another great feature of the textbook is its emphasis on the moment generating function. Naturally, it is used to prove the Central Limit Theorem, the fundamental theorem of probability and the foundation of statistics. I follow the mathematical argument in class every time I teach the course so that math majors can appreciate a little more elaborate proof than the usual toy ones.

I also love the inclusion of a chapter of random walks (from which the epigraph is taken). When teaching partial differential equations (another of my favorite fields in math) I often discuss the Tour du Wino method of numerically solving the Laplace equation, which uses the random walks approach. The authors provide the famous proof by Pólya, which shows that a random walk must eventually return to the origin in one or two dimensions, but not necessarily for higher dimensions.

Of many other nice features of the textbook I should mention the authors' clear treatment of the Bayes' Theorem and the fascinating Historical Remarks that accompany many chapters. A truly wonderful book! The best textbook I have ever used!

Five stars.


View all my reviews

The Sea by John Banville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark."

"The past beats inside me like a second heart."

John Banville's The Sea (2005) offered me one of the most remarkable literary experiences of my life. After just a few pages I knew I was reading a magnificent novel. By mid-book I was absolutely certain this was one of the very best books I had ever read. And I kept reading, very slowly, savoring the masterful prose. And then... Then the ending came, the last few pages where the author suddenly decided to explain things, and some of the extraordinary charm of the novel instantaneously dissipated. Real life turned into a story; human truth turned into a plot. What a disappointing moment!

The Sea is a masterpiece fully deserving its Man Booker Prize; I will naturally round the rating up to five stars, but - to me - it is no longer a novel unique in its greatness, which it had been until the ending. In this inept but heartfelt review I am trying to convey my early feelings about the novel before the very ending broke the spell.

There is no linearity in life; life is not a story. Things in life occur for no reason and for no reason they do not occur either. Life is a jumbled collage of events that had once happened. The present is the accumulation of the past, but they also exist concurrently and one flows through the cracks of the other:

"[...] it all has begun to run together, past and possible future and impossible present."

Max Morden, a retired art historian, is an 11-year-old boy, playing on the beach with the Grace family, his wife Anna is dead, the boy falls in love with Mrs. Grace while Anna is dying "leaning sideways from the hospital bed, vomiting on to the floor," and the boy falls out of love with Mrs. Grace during an erotic experience at the beach, Anna is getting the death sentence from the doctor and the magical moment with Mrs. Grace - the culmination of the boy's love - begins to happen

"[...] in that Edenic moment at what was suddenly the centre of the world [...] and blonde Mrs. Grace offering me an apple [...]"

But the magic of the moment is broken by a hurricane of events. And it all begins and ends with the sea, the great infinity that created us and then absorbs us.

So deeply human the novel is that - although nothing even remotely similar ever happened to me - I feel all these events belong to me as they belong to all people. I feel that my past and everybody else's past merge with Max Morden's past in the universal human past. The truth of the elderly art historian, a grieving widower who is the 11-year-old boy in love with a mature woman is my truth and the truth of all people.

There is so much more in the novel: there is Claire, Max's "ungainly, unpretty daughter," and there are unforgettable Miss Vavasour and the Colonel. The boy's disgust at the mingling of God and sex, and a fragment seemingly taken straight out of another of my favorite authors, Cees Nooteboom:

"We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while [...]"

There also is the absolutely stunning passage about Max becoming aware of the dichotomy between himself and that what is not-himself:

"In her I had my first experience of the absolute otherness of other people. [...] the world was first manifest for me as an objective entity.

Luminous, breathtaking prose.

Four-and-three-quarter stars.

View all my reviews

Looking for Alaska by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"She had the kind of eyes that predisposed you to support her every endeavor."

A beautiful sentence from a wonderful book. A few months ago I reviewed Uglies, a very good novel in the Young Adult genre, recommended by a student of mine. I was astonished by how much I liked the book and became quite embarrassed of my generally disdainful attitude towards the genre. So when the same student highly recommended another YA novel I could not wait to read it. John Green's Looking for Alaska (2005) is a terrific book; although it is addressed to young people, it treats them as they should be treated - as adults.

We meet Miles Halter as he leaves his "family and Florida and the rest of [his] minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama." He refers to François Rabelais' last words when he says

"That's why I am going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps."

Miles' adventures at the Culver Creek Preparatory School provide the plot of the novel. His roommate, Chip, aka "the Colonel," introduces him not only to the school's social structure but also to Alaska, "the hottest girl in all of human history." The plot is riveting and amazingly plausible to the very end.

This is a wonderfully mature book in how it handles serious topics and would do well as mandatory reading for all teenagers. Had I known the book twenty-something years ago, when my daughter was in her early teens, I would have wanted her to read it. I haven't found anything naive, cheap, condescending, overly simplistic, or brazenly didactic in the novel. It is amazing how much good stuff, how much common sense it packs with regard to life advice. And how well it handles the topics of sex and sexual initiation for which - as I understand - it got into some trouble with the self-proclaimed guardians of morality who attempt to perpetuate their own sexual hangups in their children. No vulgarity, no titillation with the subject, no guilt; just the healthy way of treating Things That Need To be Dealt With.

Completely unexpectedly I found a passage that touched a theme which would naturally belong to the type of Books for Very Old People that I love to read but which I would never expect to find in a YA novel. Take the quote that seems to come straight from Cees Nooteboom, the greatest scholar of human impermanence:

"Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did. Because memories fall apart too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow.

The novel is imbued with the love of books. It mentions so many great authors: François Rabelais, Gabriel García Márquez (a quote from The General in His Labyrinth provides a sort of motif for the entire novel), Kurt Vonnegut (his Cat's Cradle is one of Alaska's favorite books), poetry of Auden. While the author provides a charming description of Alaska's physical beauty - from which I took the epigraph - it is her love of books that adds a more important dimension to her "hotness."

Many wonderful passages in the novel: let me just mention the touchingly sweet Thanksgiving scene at the Colonel's mom. Then, there is all the humor, which made me laugh out loud so many times. True, I like to laugh and I probably laugh much more than an average person but I do not remember ever in my life laughing as hard as when I was reading the scene of the Great Prank during the Speaker Day at Miles' school. When Lara, the Romanian student, tells the speaker to "subvert the patriarchal paradigm" and he proceeds accordingly I got a hysterical attack of laughter which lasted 10 minutes and almost ended in suffocation. Oh, how I wish I were a part of a prank like that!

A beautiful love story whose poetry will be understood by young people, yet a mature and wise story. I am not quite sure what's going on with me: while always so stingy with the rating stars I am going to round up my 4.5 rating, even though the novel has not been written by any of the usual suspects like Joyce, Coetzee, Nabokov, Vonnegut, García Márquez, White or Nooteboom. Thank you, EK!

Four-and-a-half stars.

View all my reviews

Ascension: John Coltrane And His Quest by Eric Nisenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"[...] the more one listens to Transition the more one hears a diamond-hard beauty unlike anything else in music. That something so roiling can also have such beauty is one of the paradoxes of Coltrane's art. A lot of great twentieth-century art, since it reflects its time, seems to confront and challenge its audience: Guernica, Finnegans Wake, The Rite of Spring. Like those modern masterpieces, much of Coltrane's work [...] has a modern grandeur unlike anything that has come before it.

Just last month I reviewed here Bill Cole's John Coltrane - a pseudo-research book full of New Age mumbo-jumbo and Fela Sowande's gibberish - which escaped the minimum rating on the strength of possibly interesting musicological analysis. Since I love John Coltrane's music and unreservedly admire what he stood for and what he tried to achieve in his art, I had to erase the anger caused by Mr. Cole's painful failure of a biography. In the ultimate contrast Eric Nisenson's work, Ascension. John Coltrane and His Quest is a totally wonderful book - deep, balanced, thoughtful, and focused.

I vividly remember the day (in 1966, I believe) when I first heard John Coltrane's music: I can see the room in my mother's small apartment when suddenly manic saxophone shrieks and wails came on the radio, immediately followed by utterly beautiful music. I remember my total fascination with the sound and with the raw power and deep passion of the music. Eric Nisenson begins his wonderful biography with an account how he first saw and heard John Coltrane live with his classic quartet (McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Jimmy Garrison) at the Half Note:

"Coltrane [...] played roiling arpeggios alternating with ribbons of intense lyricism often accentuated by saxophone cries and wails. [...] He seemed to be not in this world, and I, as well as most of the audience, [...] felt we had long left it far behind, too. [...] My body felt exhilaration, transport, even as much as my mind and spirit."

The story of Coltrane's life and his music is told traditionally, in a chronological manner. The author focuses in more detail on transcendent and timeless masterpieces in Coltrane's opus, such as A Love Supreme or Transition. Mr. Nisenson has the courage to call out failures as well, such as the audacious yet unsuccessful attempt to enter the realm of free jazz, Ascension or the bizarre artifact of the Sixties, Om.

The passages about A Love Supreme are some of the most compelling writings about music:

"[...] the last section on A Love Supreme [...] creates the impression of perfect stillness, like a man on his knees with his head bowed. It is utterly radiant and transcendent, at times pleading, almost sobbing in its need to be with God. It is one of the few works of art that, like the Sistine Chapel or Chartres Cathedral or Bach's St. Matthew's Passion is itself a religious experience."

The subtitle of the biography refers to Coltrane's quest, which - as most music critics agree - was the "quest to reach and find God through seeking within." Yet the author is careful to explain that Coltrane was not worshipping any particular God but rather "a personal synthesis of [...] ideas basic to all religions," Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and others. Mr. Nisenson also points out that Coltrane's quest was more of spiritual than religious nature and that it might have been a search for the universal truth.

Coltrane's personal statements about wanting to be a "force for good," his continual search for that perfect sound, and the fact that never in his career had he made any concession to popular taste or cared what the audiences wanted to listen to tell me that his quest was for the three Transcendentals: Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. Certainly not for things that we, mere mortals, crave: Money, Power, and Fame.

A great biography! I will round the rating up.

Four and half stars.


View all my reviews