Although this book is science fiction, it contains one of the most insightful in-depth depictions I’ve read about how scientists solve problems, here in extremis.
I identified strongly with the central character of Mark Watney, inadvertently abandoned by his crew, as he figures out, step by inventive step, how to survive long enough as the lone inhabitant of Mars until NASA can find a way to get him back to Earth. Ridley Scott made an excellent film that is faithful to this book, but the book is even better. I found it well-written, witty, propulsive, and very entertaining.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old human error are…
I’m a Murakami fan, and this is one of his strongest novels. I enjoyed the shaggy dog, or more accurately, shaggy man, quality of the story, in which one or two mundane events lead to an unpredictable series of encounters and metaphysical journeys.
The search for a lost cat morphs into the search for a lost wife, with segues into local Japanese politics, the past and future of an abandoned house, and female acquaintances invading the protagonist’s dreams. When the protagonist befriends an elderly Japanese survivor, it leads to stunning long passages on incidents during Japan’s occupation of Manchuria during World War II and to exercises, either forced or voluntary, in solitary confinement. Imminent change is signaled several times by the mysterious call of a wind-up bird.
Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.
I enjoyed the authors’ marshaling of a wide range of new archaeological and anthropological research to upend much of the conventional narratives about the beginnings of human civilization. Early human societies centered on agriculture and experimented with diverse self-organizing principles.
Agriculture and animal domestication did not lead ineluctably, as old narratives insisted, to the protection of personal property in hierarchical cities and states with clear leaders. Although it is not a point of particular emphasis, the book clarifies that human societies thrived once Earth’s climate stabilized after deglaciation from the last Ice Age, while various human societies have since collapsed when regional climate anomalies, such as extended drought conditions, occurred.
I find lessons in this history for how human societies may deal, or fail to deal, with ongoing climate change.
A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction…
How do you get a universe capable of supporting life? The book is a non-mathematical survey of a half-century of physics, cosmology, and biology research, illuminating the rare conditions that allow for life in our universe.
The science is explained with the help of analogies and metaphors. An intricate tapestry of elegant experiments has revealed a series of crucial imperfections–deviations from perfect symmetry, homogeneity, or predictability–that allow for the right structures in the universe and the possible assembly of life’s building blocks.
Many of these deviations are tiny and seem mysteriously fine-tuned to allow life. The book’s title is inspired by a drawing by M.C. Escher, whose perfect symmetry is disturbed only by the artist’s signature.
