Category Archives: Book Notes

Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, and Its Reviews

Posted on Tuesday 11 October 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This is what would be called a “literary science fiction” novel in that it’s clearly SF yet is written by a writer with a “literary” background rather than one in the SF genre, and so whose approach would be expected … Continue reading →

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Kasner & Newman, MATHEMATICS AND THE IMAGINATION

Posted on Friday 30 September 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here is another older book out of my library, one to set alongside George Gamow’s One Two Three… Infinity, which I reviewed back in August. This book is even older. Published in 1940, this is Mathematics and the Imagination, by … Continue reading →

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Prognostic Myopia: More about Justin Gregg

Posted on Thursday 22 September 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Picking up from where I left off yesterday. My basic summary of this book is: humans are not “stupid”; the issue is that human intelligence has both good and bad consequences, and apparently we can’t have the good without the … Continue reading →

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Justin Gregg: IF NIETZSCHE WERE A NARWHAL (2022)

Posted on Wednesday 21 September 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a recent nonfiction book with a provocative thesis and some interesting points which nevertheless I give a mixed review of. Perhaps helpful to consider scoring the book along several independent parameters, like on some of those cooking shows, e.g. … Continue reading →

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Frederik Pohl’s “Outnumbering the Dead”

Posted on Sunday 11 September 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This week’s novella covered by the Facebook Group reading Gardner Dozois’s big anthology first discussed here is “Outnumbering the Dead” by Frederik Pohl. Coincidentally, it was first published as a chapbook, in December 1992, in the same UK publisher’s line … Continue reading →

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Son of Longtermism

Posted on Monday 22 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Some 14 days ago, in this post, I linked and quoted from a NYT guest essay by William MacAskill about valuing the future as much as we value the present. Which struck me as a reasonable position to take, a … Continue reading →

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George Gamow: One Two Three… Infinity

Posted on Wednesday 10 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s an oldie, not just for first being published in 1947 (see Wikipedia) but also for being one of the first science nonfiction books I ever read, back when I bought this copy in 1969. (Seen here is the Bantam … Continue reading →

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David McRaney, HOW MINDS CHANGE

Posted on Thursday 4 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion (Portfolio/Penguin, June 2022, 330pp) Almost a decade ago I discovered two books by David McRaney, YOU ARE NOT SO SMART (2011) and YOU ARE NOW LESS DUMB (2013) that … Continue reading →

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Randy Olson, HOUSTON, WE HAVE A NARRATIVE

Posted on Monday 1 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This is an interesting book that I’m disappointed by only because it’s not the book I wanted to read. That is, not the author’s fault. An interesting, useful, book nonetheless. (University of Chicago Press, 2015, trade paperback, 260pp) Olson’s book … Continue reading →

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David Brin, POLEMICAL JUDO

Posted on Monday 25 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a 2019 book, self-published, subtitled “A Brazen Guide for Sane Americans to Bypass Trench Warfare and Win Our Life or Death Struggle for Civilization.” This is a book full of sound and fury, an expression of Brin’s rage … Continue reading →

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