Kai Bird (2005)

Hard to imagine a better scientific and political biography.

I had a rough understanding of Oppenheimer’s story: his management of the Manhattan project, his victimisation during the McCarthy witchhunts, and his directorship of the Institute for Advanced Study. What I hadn’t realised was his own scientific standing: his association with Born, Bathe, Dirac, Heisenberg, and others, and the fact that his own contributions rank alongside theirs, including his first formulation of the equations describing black holes. Despite not entering at all into the technicalities, the authors make clear how deeply embedded he was into the initial descriptions and elaborations of quantum mechanics.

The book is squally strong when dealing with the development of the bomb and with the aftermath, the lead-up to Oppenheimer’s trial as a security risk brought about in part by his principled opposition to the development of the “Super”, or hydrogen bomb. The treatment is well-balanced, making no attempt to hide the part Oppenheimer played in his own downfall (although still being somewhat at a loss to describe many elements of his behaviour).

The picture that emerges is of a profound scientist and humanist who was destroyed at least in part by his own fragilities and complexities: aspects of his character that undoubtedly helped in his greatness as we as leading to his downfall. That this element of Greek tragedy would have been deeply appreciated by Oppenheimer himself only adds to the sense of a contribution spoiled by the actions of men who failed to understand what drove him and what he could give.

5/5. Finished Thursday 1 January, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Barney Sloane (2011)

A detailed examination of the Plague in London in 1349 and subsequently. Sloane finds a novel way to track the progress of the Black Death, using wills and ecclesiastical replacements to identify “hot spots” that can be tentatively projected out to the rest of the population. While being very careful to recognise the limits of this approach, he arrives at a mortality rate of around 45% of London’s population.

One surprising snippet from the book is the surprisingly few children couples were having in the 14th century: not much higher than in modern times in Europe, in essence, whereas I’d expected something closer to rates in modern Africa.

The book has a good bibliography into modern Plague research, which (given I’m reading this for professional purposes as well as just for interest) will come in handy.

4/5. Finished Wednesday 24 December, 2014.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Niall Ferguson (2012)

In a great fan of Niall Ferguson’s writing and scholarship, but this isn’t one of his better works. It’s not that there’s anything at all wrong with his central message that many of the institutions that have raised-up western civilisation are being undermined. The problem I have is the fatalism with which he presents these problems, and the notion that it is somehow pre-ordained by historical processes: a view that feels almost Marxist without the positive expected outcome.

I think this is a book that cries out for a longer treatment or a second volume, an analysis and comparison of other approaches to societal problems, or an analysis of the ways in which the tensions that Ferguson sees building up might be released, even if those comparisons and processes would inevitably end in disaster.

2/5. Finished Wednesday 17 December, 2014.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

John Neffinger (2013)

An essay masquerading as a book.

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed it. It’s just that the point it’s making – that the way we project ourselves involves a mixture of strength and warmth, which are two concepts that sit uneasily together and make it hard to make the impressions we seek to make ‐ could have been stated in a longform essay rather than a book. Instead we’re treated to the same concepts applied to different personal-development challenges in ways that don’t really seem to contribute anything to the message.

2/5. Finished Wednesday 17 December, 2014.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Mary H. Kingsley (1897)

A great insight into a period now long in the past. Mary Kingsley was clearly ahead of her time, not only in her independent travel but also in her perceptions of indigenous cultures in Africa and the coastal islands. But she was also distinctly of her time in the casual assumptions of sex and race that at times get rather wearing. The sensation is somewhat like reading a Rider Haggard novel: the same sense that the author means well and is impressed by the cultures being described while at the same time feeling they’re both intrinsically inferior and unbridgeably different.

3/5. Finished Thursday 4 December, 2014.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)