non-fiction

The Cello Suites

Book Notes kitt decided around 21:45 on 20 November 2020 to publish this:

The Cello Suites is such a lovely book, a good, fun, wholesome read. The book tells three stories: Johann Sebastian Bach's biography, Pablo Casals' modern discovery of the previously unknown Cello Suites by said Bach, and the author's journey from meeting the Cello Suites for the first time, and learning about Casals's discovery and Bach's history, to researching and writing the book. The tale in three parts is woven together delightfully, given insights into all three main characters: Bach, Casals, and Siblin.

Gosh, this is such a lovely weaving of three lives bound together by the puzzle of the book-titled music, I strongly recommend it.

My discovery of this book was from an XOXO recommendation for the Song Exploder podcast, from which I found the Yo-Yo Ma episode and references to this book. I recommend that podcast, too (at least, that episode).

Beyond all these concerns was Bach’s restless nature, his tendency to become dissatisfied with a job after a spell, to feel constrained by limitations, musical and otherwise, and not to be content with the status quo, but to move forward once he’d mastered the musical possibilities offered by any given situation.
Page: 101

At the concert, which was broadcast on radio, Casals appealed to the democratic countries (which had just let Hitler walk all over them in Czechoslovakia) not to abandon Spain. “Do not commit the crime of letting the Spanish Republic be murdered,” he pleaded. “If you allow Hitler to win in Spain, you will be the next victims of his madness. The war will spread to all Europe, to the whole world. Come to the aid of our people.
Page: 111

The Great Influenza

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 18:44 on 4 August 2020

Rob Whiteley recommended this book to me, Ryan Holiday recommended this book to his reading list, and I strongly recommend this book to pretty much anyone who will listen. The Great Influenza was written over ten years ago and tells us ALL ABOUT the (no longer) upcoming pandemic. The parallels between the 1918 Spanish Flu and the 2019 CoVid19 pandemic are disheartening, making this book both a history book and a playbook on how NOT to handle a pandemic.

The Great Influenza tells us the history of The Spanish flu, which probably should have been called the Kansas Flu, which went from February 1918 to around April 1920, infecting about 500 million people (or about a third of the world's population). Somewhere between 20 million and 50 million died during that pandemic, even as people said "it's just the flu." Up to 60000 people die in the US from the flu even today, but hey, "it's just the flu" seems to be the dismissive way we ignored the warnings 100 years ago, and today.

The book is also an exploration of science, broad strokes on how we discover new ideas, hypothesize and test those ideas, and form theories of phenomena and solutions to problems. Discovery is rarely a straight line, yet we see only the end result, often ignoring all the hard work that goes into that end. There are many, many failures for every success, in science and pretty much everywhere. Barry explores some of these failures and shows how they lead to our successes.

Of note, we still don't have a cure for influenza, 100 years later. We have yearly vaccinations to prime our bodies to fight off the influenza viruses, but that's not the same as having rid the world of small pox.

Weird

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 08:58 on 16 July 2020

Okay, when your tribe recommends a book, and an Internet Personality™ who has not failed in his book recommendations for you recommends the same book, well, you kinda have to read said recommendation. This book is that recommendation. This book is worth that recommendation.

Here's the thing, when you are the odd one out, when you are the weird one, your life is more difficult than the lives of those who fit in, who make friends easily, who aren't teased for being who they are, who don't stand out. Khazan understands, having been the weird one. She goes through how it feels to be weird, retells her journey, reviews many others' journeys with being weird, tells us there is strength in our weirdness, and lets us know it gets better. It does.

There's a cadence to this book that is welcoming, like sitting with a friend you've known for decades at a quiet cafe in a small European city and talking for hours. It's a nice feeling. During that conversation, Khazan tells us about the inverse correlations between societies' conformity and freedoms, about how different opinions lead to better decisions, about how being outside is a strength, and about how you have the choice to confirm or stay weird.

I enjoyed this book, and likely would have devoured this when I was 11 years old and crying that I just wanted to be normal, why wasn't I normal? I've found peace in my gracelessness, in my dorkitude, in my being the only girl in a group of "hey guys!" but it took a long, long time to find that peace. I would argue this book many years ago might have helped me accept myself faster. For that, I recommend this book to anyone who is even just a little bit weird. I'd tell them, "It's okay. Here, read this one, and Grit and let's talk."

Humankind

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 09:05 on 11 July 2020, kitt created this:

This book has an excerpt from it published a couple months ago about what what really happened when six boys were shipwrecked on a crappy island for years, in the way of The Lord of the Flies. Spoiler alert: they were not the horrible fictional characters of that book, rather, they adapted and were incredibly "civilized," a term that, after reading this book, I'm more than a bit put-off with. Maybe "advanced" or "cultured" would work better? Cultivated? Sophisticated! There we go.

Another spoiler alert: you should read this book.

When I started reading this book, I was somewhat rolling my eyes, thinking it was going to be a remake of Enlightenment Now, which was WAAAAY better than the actively-disliked Rational Optimist, but still a "yeah, yeah, I already read this" book. Except Bregman actively talks about Pinker's earlier work that says humans are awful beings, and then says, "welllllllllll, about that."

Which sets the stage for just about every major study you've heard about that tells us humans are awful creatures. I mean, we are, but.... welllllll, actually....

Take the death of Kitty Genovese in New York City in March of 1964, everyone says it is the abdication of responsibility, that when surrounded by a crowd doing nothing as you're being murdered, call upon one person to take action. Except, the whole story about how 37 neighbors ignored her death wasn't accurate: they didn't hear her. And the one who did actually did his best, and she died in a friend's arms. The newspapers reported the made-up news of uncaring neighbors, because it sold more newspapers.

Loonshots

Book Notes kitt decided around 13:40 on 30 May 2020 to publish this:

I've had this book on my reading list for a couple months now, checking it out of the library and returning it unread. Finally read it, and am glad I did. If I were in a position of power and influence at a company that has research and product development departments / organizations, I would insist that everyone in those groups also read it.

Okay, so, according to Bahcall (who, let's admit, has more experience than I, and likely you, do), product (anything you do, whether sell a physical object or provide a service, but mostly sell an object) development falls into two categories: incremental improvements on an existing product or an implementation of a revolutionary new idea. How a product makes it to the end user varies. While a revolutionary product can kickstart an organization, you need the improvements people to sustain it. Artists to create and soldiers to sustain.

I loved how various physics models came into play in the telling of different companies' histories. Hello, phase transitions. Hello, emergence.

The book provides a number of growing company pitfalls, and, delightfully, ways to avoid them. How awesome is that?

The appendices of the book are excellent summaries of the book, which, quite honestly, I'm going to be reviewing frequently. If nothing else, reminding myself of the five laws of loonshots from Bahcall's own site. I strongly recommend this book for anyone working to create something new, and state the book is worth reading for everyone.

So many things have broken down inside a cancer cell by the time it starts proliferating that there’s no easy fix.
Page 5

My resistance to after-the-fact analyses of culture comes from being trained as a physicist.
Page 9

The War for Kindness

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 12:47 on 11 May 2020, kitt created this:

This book is referenced many times in The Happiness Lab podcast. Lori Santos mentions it also in her class, The Science of Happiness. When a scientist is recommending a book, and refers to it many times, might be time to go to the source and read it yourself.

Which I strongly recommend with this book.

Actually, I recommend this book for anyone with a polarized viewpoint of the world, because the book shows, if you're willing to read and ponder, how alike we are, how divided we are, and how we can walk a path towards not being divided.

Takes effort to build empathy, and, yet, the rewards are amazing. Honestly, I think hate and spite take too much effort.

Anyway, if you'll read, I'll buy you a copy. Strongly recommended.

Online, the first thing we encounter about a person is often the thing we’d like least about them, such as an ideology we despise. They are enemies before they have a chance to be people.
Location: 159

Work from many labs, including my own, suggests that empathy is less like a fixed trait and more like a skill—something we can sharpen over time and adapt to the modern world.
Location: 276

Carol Dweck teaches people that they can grow—become smarter, more open-minded, and more empathic. This causes them to work harder in the moment, persevere in the face of challenges, and notice their own strength. But mindsets, for instance about intelligence, can also produce slow-twitch change by turning into self-fulfilling prophecies. People who believe in themselves do things that give them even more reason to believe. They adopt habits of mind that work over the long term.
Location: 803

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