The Rambles Bookshop is made up of the following sections.
Now Reading
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Isaac Newton
James Gleick (ISBN 0375422331)
Who was Isaac Newton?
In his own age, Newton was a god of reason who created
a perfect and perfectly rational
universe. To a later and more romantic age,
he became a monster, a bizarre unsociable creature who
stripped the world of its rich mystery. More recently he has been outed as a closeted
mystic who delved deeply into religious prophecy and alchemy.
As John Maynard Keynes famously pronounced, "Newton was not the first of the age
of reason. He was the last of the magicians." Which Newton do you see? James Gleick does
a fine job in this book of telling the story not only of the man, but of how
he was perceived. After all, where exactly are the lines that separate magic,
religion, and science? They are foggy enough even now, and in the 17th century
they were indiscernible. Newton, in pursuing occult matters, wasn't engaged in a
childish sideshow. He was doing the same thing that led him to his law of universal
gravitation. He could not know that his investigations into the biblical prophecies of Daniel
would not lead him to results as fundamental as his physics. He was simply doing
what he did better than anyone before or since: observing, theorizing,
experimenting, and systematizing. In so doing he sharpened the lines between
what we now think of as the clear and separate domains of science, magic, and
religion, though this was certainly not his intent.
It's just that his science succeeded where his theology did not. But who can blame him for
thinking that his vision could penetrate any topic?
Gleick's book is very good, a sympathetic and rounded portrait of a strange
and extraordinary man.
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Engineering
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Apollo: Race to the Moon
Charles Murray (ISBN 067170625X)
This book is built around the very human stories of the engineers (we've heard enough about the astronauts) who built a machine
that took men to the moon and back. In less than eight years, they built a great big machine that took people to the surface
of the moon and back. The authors have a real flair for digging into the details that make the stories and the people come
to life, underscoring this is how it really happened. All engineers should read this book; it's immensely entertaining, but
it's also a real sourcebook of stories about how to get extraordinarily complex engineering projects done on time and on budget.
Caldwell Johnson, one of the lead designers of the Apollo vehicle, sums it up well: After a while, you really become appalled that you've gotten yourself involved in the thing. At first, it's an academic exercise.
And then the first thing you know, there's people building these things, and they are really getting ready to do it, and you
start thinking: Have I made a real bad judgment somewhere, and the damn thing is just not going to work at all?
Star Chamber reference: July 21, 2000.
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Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Richard Rhodes (ISBN 0684824140)
 If you liked the Making of the Atomic Bomb, you'll enjoy this.
The technical material that Rhodes has to go on seems a little thinner here,
and most of it was only recently declassified. Still, the accounts of the first
Russian bomb are unforgettable. It's hard to believe the Soviets could make such
a powerful army with raving paranoids like Stalin and Beria in charge.
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The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes (ISBN 0684813785)
 "It is still an unending source of surprise for me to see how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could
change the course of human affairs." --- Stanislaw Ulam.
This book is a true epic, covering many years of physics history as well as the history of weapons of mass destruction. Rhodes
has superb storytelling skills, and the book ends with a fascinating discussion of how science, having been recruited by politics
to solve political problems, yielded, against all expectation, weapons so destructive that the nature of political discourse
was changed forever.
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Path Between The Seas : The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
David McCullough (ISBN 0671244094)
 We hear often of the great adventures but not the flawed ones. We know of Shackleton's remarkable second voyage but not his
fatal, aimless third. The French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps attempted to build two great canals. He succeeded wildly
with Suez and failed utterly with Panama. This book is a wonderful characterization of big idea men. Lesseps thought big all
the time. His grandiose vision served him well in Suez and ruined him in Panama. Panama was ultimately conquered by the industrious
Teddy Roosevelt and his swarms of well-organized industrious yankees. One interesting observation that comes out in this book:
the Panama canal could not be built any faster today than it was back in 1914.
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History
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The Civil War: A Narrative--Fort Sumter to Perryville
Shelby Foote (ISBN 0394746236)
 If you only have time to read one book about the Civil War, then read these three. Foote's comprehensive trilogy reads like
a novel.
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The Fall Of Paris: The Siege And The Commune 1870 - 1871
Alistair Horne (ISBN 0736649905)
 This is the first of Horne's trilogy about Franco-German naughtiness; the other two are about the World Wars. I hadn't realized
how much the Franco-Prussian war set up World War I. If the French are to be chastised for their harsh terms at Versailles
in 1918, then the Prussians must answer for what they squeezed out of Paris in 1871. The triumphant unification of Germany
actually happened at Versailles even as France was on the verge of surrender. The subsequent removal of so much territory
in Alsace and Lorraine virtually guaranteed future conflict. Even an unphilosophical reader must feel a certain poignancy
when pondering the endless misery that was being sown for future generations. Furthermore, the Paris Commune that followed
the capitulation taught Karl Marx important lessons that were later applied with great success by Lenin. I didn't know much
about French nineteenth century history, but this weird little war is so singular it makes a compelling read.
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The Second World War: A Short History (Parker, Robert Alexander Clarke, Struggle for Survival.)
Robert Alexander Clarke Parker (ISBN 0192802070)
 I saw this described in a review in the Economist as the best single-volume treatment of World War II, and it is indeed very
good. What sets it apart is the fact that it dwells on the motivations of all the major players, giving a strategic sweep
to events that are generally described as one damn thing after another. It shows, for example, Hitler making an informed decision
to invade Russia based on assumptions about the growing strength of Britain and the U.S. over 1941-43. This book is good for
giving structure to the apparent chaos.
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The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War
Samuel Eliot Morison (ISBN 1578660033)
The amount of activity undertaken by the U.S. military in World War II is truly
staggering to contemplate. Germany had to fight on an east and west front, but
America fought on an east and west front both separated by thousands of miles
from the homeland. This meant mastery of the seas was imperative. Morison's book
does a thorough job sketching out the scope and drama of U.S. naval operations
in the war, and since he was literally on the scene at the time, he adds a welcome
journalistic touch from time to time.
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To Lose a Battle: France 1940
Alistair Horne (ISBN 0140134301)
 Hard to believe now, but the French army was widely considered the greatest in the world at the beginning of 1940. It is painful
and eye-opening to see how quickly it was punctured, deflated, and slashed to ribbons by a smaller but infinitely better armed
and trained German force in May and June of that year. This book paints an excellent picture of how inferior doctrine (static
defense as opposed to fast-moving armor attacks) can absolutely wreck an army. Poor France. She lost so many men in World
War I and then learned all the wrong lessons as a result.
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Myth and Religion
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Afterzen: Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear
Janwillem Van De Wetering (ISBN 0312204930)
 Adventures in an American Zen monastery. Van de Wetering's writing is notable for its deep and sometimes unflattering honesty.
This is a characteristic that is often entirely absent from books about Zen, which makes it doubly refreshing. Zen adepts
can be petty and vain just like everybody else. You know this must be true, but nobody wants to talk about it. In this book,
a collection of essays really, we see glimpses of a monastery going to pieces because of its arbitrary and despotic roshi.
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Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas R. Hofstadter (ISBN 0465026567)
 This book served as my introduction to Zen when I was in 10th grade, so even though it's more about math than Zen, I am listing
it here. Hofstadter does a good job of tying together the imponderables of Kurt Godel's undecideability theorem and Zen's
famous unanswerable koans. The overall theme is the way in which the "strange loops" of paradox appear in religion, biology,
psychology, art, and math. It made a tremendous impression on me long ago and still inspires me.
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Techgnosis: Myth, Magic + Mysticism in the Age of Information
Erik Davis (ISBN 060980474X)
 Riff on the mythological nature of modern technology.
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The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery
Janwillem Van De Wetering (ISBN 0312207743)
 A Dutch adventurer travels to post World War II Japan to try out Zen Buddhism. Van de Wetering was definitely Zen before it
was cool to be Zen. This is one of my favorite books about Zen because of the author's extremely level-headed approach to
the topic.
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The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell (ISBN 0385418868)
 This is the companion book to the PBS series "The Power of Myth," and really it consists mostly of Bill Moyers interviewing
Joseph Campbell. But since it served as my introduction to the work of Joseph Campbell, it is particularly memorable. I remember
as I read it for the first time thinking "Yes. Yes, of course. This is so obviously correct."
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Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings
none (ISBN 0804831866)
 This is one of those great books, like Alice in Wonderland, that you might dismiss for years, and then one day you catch the
weird logic of it and can't stop thinking about it. Lots of strange stories, including many of the profoundly pointless koans that Zen is famous for.
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Other Nonfiction
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Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (ISBN 0394711955)
 Naipaul writes unflinching and often unflattering stories about his travels in Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This
book was written in the late 1970s, around the time the Shah was deposed and the American embassy in Tehran was overrun by
student radicals. Despite its age, the book feels like it could have been written last year. Naipaul's directness on this
thorny topic is refreshing: he describes a populist Islam that is unsurpassed at seduction but weak at construction. Again
and again he hears magical faith being prescribed as the cure for all ills, particularly those imposed by external forces
of Westernization. Since Islam defines itself as a religion that also encompasses politics, economics, and law, its cultural
scope in an Islamic country is almost boundless.
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Andy Kaufman Revealed: Best Friend Tells All
Bob Zmuda (ISBN 0316610984)
 This book is like a striptease on Andy Kaufman's weird upside-down world. Kaufman is the guy who would never come clean; he
would never admit that his many put-ons were put-ons. After reading about Kaufman's endless antics and meta-antics for a while,
you start to wonder if there really was any there there. The author of this book, Bob Zmuda, was his partner in crime for
many years, writing much of Kaufman's material, and if we assume that this is not yet another put-on (which, given the acts
to which he is confessing, is a dubious assumption), he completely exposes how all the illusions were maintained. The result
is very compelling, laying bare a life Kaufman seemed to hide even from himself.
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Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (Vintage Departures)
Tony Horwitz (ISBN 067975833X)
 The shadows that the Civil War casts across this country, particularly the southern parts of this country, are long and sometimes
depressingly dark. (Star Chamber reference: January 13, 1999)
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Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players
Stefan Fatsis (ISBN 0618015841)
 A good read, filled with an obligingly weird cast of characters. There is something deeply appealing about a bruising, trash-talking
pro tour for Scrabble heads. The author, Stefan Fatsis, goes native and eventually becomes an expert player himself as he
tells his story. I like the part where he's talking to the former world champ, Joel Sherman, who's complaining that Scrabble
should be more popular than chess, because it's more accessible. Millions of people could watch, he whines. "Watch what?"
replies Fatsis, "watch you play TREHALA, and then run for their dictionaries?" (Rambles reference: April 27, 2002)
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