North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Book Report #316

How refreshing this book was from the previous book review!

It was beautifully written, honest and romantic.  In the 1930's flight was still very much in its infancy, the realm of adventurers.

I loved the gentleness of her writing and how she and her famous husband, Charles, were surveying routes to China for the planned commercial aviation business.

The flight went from the east coast of the USA, up to Churchill on the Hudson's Bay, across the high north of Canada and Alaska to the Kamchatka peninsula, Japan and finally China.  All of this in a two-person float plane with barley any infrastructure or radio communication.  Amazing.

For an 86 year-old book it read very well.

I was especially taken by how Ms. Lindbergh rankled at the expectations of the media.  Being a woman they were only concerned about what she was wearing and what she packed for lunch.  It's nice to see how her pioneering worked to promote and push forward social equality.

I highly recommend this book.  I restored my faith in humanity and in story telling.

A History of Canada in Ten Maps by Adam Shoalts - Book Report #314

 Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land

Canadians like to think our history is boring and generally peaceful.  But the truth is much more insidious than that and our long history of violence, oppression and disregard for the Indigenous people of this land was hard to learn. 

Adam Shoalts is an Explorer in Residence at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society his previous books blend Canadian history with his own adventures into the blank parts of our map.  This was a bit of a departure for him in that the maps were not his own but those of our history.

From the very earliest maps to the more modern and complete ones he told the story of how Canada became a country.  The importance of our rivers, but more importantly that of the Indigenous nations that helped the Europeans along, was alway central to the pursuit of trying to find the edges of this unknown continent. 

I was disheartened by the violence throughout the entire book.  The conflicts between whites and Indigenous came as no surprise however there was distrust and violence between the Nations themselves.  None was more disturbing to me than the fight between the Dene and the Inuit described by Samuel Hearn in his expedition of the Coppermine River. 

Throughout the book I kept thinking at how deeply flawed humans are.  Our willingness to hurt each other and to distrust those who are not like us is so deeply baked into our DNA that I wonder if we can ever overcome it. 

I am very glad to have read the book.  I learned so much about Canadian exploration history.  Even though it was a gut punch at times it is an important book to help us understand who we are and what kind of country we want to become.  This will not be easy. 

The Adventurer’s Handbook by Mick Conefrey - Book Report #311

 From Surviving an Anaconda Attack

to Finding Your Way Out of the Desert

I loved this book.  The illustrations, the tips & tricks and the history of explorations were all neatly packaged in this small hardcover book.  It was a joy to read.

It is also a terrific guide into the subject of adventure, travel, discovery, endurance, glory and tragedy.  If you are curious about the past and how the world was discovered, mapped and understood, this is the book to reach for.

It is chock-full of brief descriptions of countless expeditions.  You will easily find subjects you are interested in and it will point you in the direction to discover more.  From mountain climbing, desert explorations, ocean sailings of discovery it's all there.  Names, dates, expedition titles all are jumping off points to discover more books or websites that will expand on what is presented by Conefrey.

While reading this book, I often put it down and went outside for some fresh air.

Highly recommended.

Mick Conefrey's website - https://www.mickconefrey.co.uk/

Mick Conefrey

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert - Book Report #309

An Unnatural History

Hold on to your optimism because this book will damage much of the hope for the future you may have.

What I enjoyed most was learning of the history of the sciences we take for granted today.  The very concept of extinction got supporters of the idea laughed out of the room.  To many scientists in the 17th century, every known creature was thought to have always been there.

When a mastodon's skeleton was discovered in the United States, it just proved that a living herd had not yet been found in the wild.  Not that it was evidence of a long-lost species.

Peter Diamandis once said, "The day before something is a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea."

The book is a long list of crazy ideas that have become accepted fact.

By page 19 it is no surprise to learn that the rapid extinction event amphibians are being accelerated by our own human activity and systems.

My constant complaint in these kinds of books is that they are full of destruction & doom and short of constructive hope & solutions.

That said, it's a terrific read.  The history of scientific discovery is especially telling.  Just think about how the very notion of climate change was universally laughed at only 20 years ago.  Not as much now.

The book does not touch on this but, I feel this is the biggest scientific, economic and social opportunity humanity has ever had.  We have the chance to reinvent everything!  

So far, our world has stumbled into the future, today we can plan it.  Reimagine it.  Improve it.  Best of all, the world is full of those crazy ideas that just might work.  Oh, my!  We could be at the inflection point where humanity realizes it's true potential.

Elizabeth Kolbert's website - http://elizabethkolbert.com/

Elizabeth Kolbert

Dissapointment River By Brian Castner - Book Report #303

Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage

I love stories like these.  

This is a real-life, modern-day, canoe journey of the Mackenzie River.  The author decided to follow in the footsteps of Alexander Mackenzie who paddled the river in the hopes of finding an inland Northwest Passage.  "The Mackenzie river is the longest river system in Canada, and includes the second largest drainage basin of any North American river after the Mississippi." (Passage from Wikipedia)

From his starting point at Great Slave Lake all the way to the Arctic Ocean Brian Castner weaves his voyage to that of Mackenzie's.  At certain points in the trip Castner and Mackenzie stood on the same spots, on the same dates, 227 yeas apart.   

Blending history to the modern day by replicating an event, is an effective way to bring history alive and to compare the two worlds.  At times, the author is vividly imagining what Mackenzie and his party went through only to be knocked back into the present by the passing of a speedboat or a container ferry.

In many ways, life has not changed at all in the Canadian north in 1779 Mackenzie was trying to find his fortune, the industry of the day were furs.  Today, oil, gas and mining dominate.

I was thankful for the trip Brian Castner took and glad he chose to write about it.  I was thrilled to shoot the rapids with him from the safety of my couch.  I was happy to learn a bit more about Canadian history and to simply answer the question as to how the river got its modern name.  It is traditionally known as the Deh-Cho by the way.  I was also very happy to learn that no way in hell would I want to take a similar trip.

This was a terrific story.

Brian Castner's website - https://briancastner.com/

The Canal Builders by Julie Greene - Book Review #301

Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal

I enjoyed the angle the author took on this legendary infrastructure project, that of the people who built it and manged the endeavour.

People from all over the world came to work on it but it was also a product of its time - systemic racism, brutal working conditions, undervalued human needs and American hegemony made the reality of the construction an ugly thing.

But this was the reality of the times, it was normal.  It would never stand today.  Which made me wonder, could it even be achieved today?

The book illustrates just how far we've come in our respective societies from that day and how far we still have to go.  Throughout our history there has always been an "us" and a "them."  Nothing has really changed in that respect just the definition of us and them.

Still, this is an important document to the history of the Panama Canal and it's construction.  It focused on people instead of the engineering and I appreciated that.

Julie Green's website - https://history.umd.edu/users/jmg

Audio book narrated by Karen White

Julie Greene

PostCapitalism by Paul Mason - Book Report #215

I had a difficult time with this book.

It was mostly me, I just could not penetrate Mason's writing.  I found myself reading a passage and having to re-read it again to understand what he was saying.  It was like that for most of the book.

The subtitle was certainly a bit misleading - A Guide to Our Future it hardly was.  3/4 of the book was spent on describing capitalism's long history.  Over and over again the author would take us on a tour of the past.

Finally, in the last section, he began to apply theory to a new economic model.  It is interesting to contemplate the effect the digital realm is having on the economy.  It was also a challenge to imagine how a society would work without money.  Try it.  Every single aspect of our way of life relies on it.  It's like water.  We need it.

I found the book a difficult read but that has only spurred me on to wanting to learn more about it.  It is a curious notion to think that we are in the first decades of this very transformation.  Like everything else, I believe a solution will be found.  You have to believe that otherwise living is just too bleak.

I am not so sure I would recommend this book as I had such a difficult time with it.  But, without it, I wouldn't know where else to look to try to get a better understanding of a world without money.

I a search for more understanding on the subject I found The Postcapitalist Future website.  Try reading the manifesto first and see if that sparks any new insights.  -  http://postcapfuture.com/manifesto/

Paul Mason's website - http://www.paulmasonnews.com/

Paul Mason

Just Getting Started by Todd Babiak - Book Report #206

I am an active member (user?) of the Edmonton Public Library.  Whenever I go down a literary rabbit hole, the library has been there to provide me with books to satisfy my curiosity.

Lately, I've been interested in history: Canadian and local history in particular.

And what could be a better read than the history of the Edmonton Public Library itself?

Babiak did a terrific job of blending local history to that of EPL.

In the early days of Edmonton, we were punching above our weight in the pursuit of a library but since Calgary had built a Carnegie funded branch, Edmonton felt it needed one too.  But, interestingly, the Carnegie group had many strings attached to any money gifted to build a library.  This did not make the "founders" happy so they went it alone to build the Strathcona branch.

This was in the times when Edmonton and Strathcona were two separate towns.  How can Strathcona have one and not Edmonton, the capital city?  Edmonton's own library was rushed into being in a space above a liquor store and meat shop.

You see?  This is actually quite interesting.

I was captivated by the book.  The writing was crisp and never lacked a sense of humour.

It was a terrific read that coloured in part of Edmonton's past for me.  I enjoyed learning about the library that I love so much.

Todd Babiak - http://toddbabiak.com/

Edmonton Public Library - https://www.epl.ca/

Todd Babiak

Edmonton's own Carnegie Library - Demolished in 1968

Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen - Book Report #186

This was a difficult book to get through, not because it was a hard read (I experienced it as an audio book) but because the subject matter was so difficult to digest.

The author, Jacobsen, did a staggering amount of research which I was so very impressed by.

I had a vague notion of Operation Paperclip - I knew it had something to do with the assimilation of Nazi scientists, the most notable of them all was Wernher von Braun who was instrumental in the design of the Saturn V rocket that took Americans to the moon.

But what did he do during the war?  What did he see?  What was he responsible for?

The questions were repeated many times for a surprising amount of men who were moved to the United States and exploited for their knowledge.

This book brought me to wonder just how important is it to stay ahead of the "enemy?"

Some good has come from all of this but the source material is truly terrifying and made me feel that there is no real hope for humanity.  We are so consumed with gaining power and killing each other that I wonder if there is any real hope for our species.

And much of the methods of killing, poison gas for instance, was simply added to the arsenal and perfected by the West.

I highly recommend this book.

It is truly a work that will help to heal the world that is, surprisingly, still influenced by the horrors of World War Two.

But be ready for it, Jacobsen does a commendable job of staying neutral in her reporting.  She just lays it out from the records that have been recently declassified.

It is a difficult thing to learn.

Annie Jacobsen website - http://anniejacobsen.com/

Annie Jacobsen

The Aviators by Winston Groom - Book Report #181

The subtitle says it all; Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight.

These three men came of age just whey flight itself was born.  They were instrumental in the progression of aviation.  All were heroes.

Each man should and actually have had books written about them individually. What made this book so compelling was how intertwined their lives were.

Coming into this book I only knew one name, Lindbergh and only for his trans-Atlantic flight ("Only," let's not belittle what he did here.)

I felt rather lucky that I had only vague notions of these three men, which made the book so fascinating and entertaining.  Really, these guys lead the kinds of lives that are works of fiction today.

There is no way I can sketch a brief bio of each man and I won't try.

Let me just say that if you are even the slightest bit interested in the the history of flight and the history of World War Two then this is the book for you.  Not only will it entertain and inform but it will leave you wanting to learn more.

The period from World War One to the end of World War Two changed everything about life.  It created the lifestyle we have today.

I highly recommend this book.

I enjoyed it as an audio book but I have already placed my order for the physical book as I can't imagine not having it on my bookshelf.

Winston Groom

Murmurs Of Earth, The Voyager Interstellar Record by Carl Sagan - BookReport #133

Think of the Voyager record as a time capsule from Earth of the 1970's.

The book is really a collection of essays about the creation of the Voyager record.  Which itself is quaint, knowing how technology has progressed since then. Even now, with the current resurgence in popularity of vinyl records, a person would be hard pressed to even play the Voyager record if it was available to buy.  It was encoded at 16 2/3 RPM in order to pack as much information as possible into it.

For The Future Times and Beings by Carl Sagan. I was surprised and a bit disgusted by the politics that came into the project and by some of the vitriol that was launched at the project team for what was included and what was left out.  It is lucky it was made at all.

The Foundations of the Voyager Record by Frank Drake.  The second essay tackles the difficult subject of just how you compose a message to an alien race.  There have been other instances of humanity sending proverbial messages in bottles.  Notably Pioneer 10 and 11 have plaques attached that caused much controversy because they included nude figures of humans.  In November of 1974, from the Arecibo radio telescope, a message was sent to the globular star cluster, Messier 13, which will take 25,000 years to get there.  In this transmission was an easily decode-able binary message that I thought would be quite difficult to understand.  As a matter of fact, I certainly would not be able to understand anything that has been sent so far.  I shouldn't worry about that since the intended audience are the scientific minds of unknown alien races not regular alien folks like me.

The plaque attached to Pioneer 10 & 11

The message sent by the Arecibo Observatory

The Voyager golden record cover

Pictures of Earth by Jon Lomberg: explains each individual photograph that is on the voyager record.   Here, again I was struck at how much thought went in to selecting each photo.  

There was a considerable effort in making sure each selection built upon another. Even with the nearly four decades that have passed you can get the impression that this is really a time capsule of sorts. The technology in the images has certainly moved on. But there is also a timeless quality to most of it; images depicting human beings will never be outdated. Unless we tragically don't continue as a race. 

A Voyager's Greetings by Linda Salzman Segan: was probably the most touching section of the book.  I was not surprised, by this point, that there was an agonizing amount of thought put into this portion of the project.  The bulk of this essay was occupied by a chart depicting; the language the greeting was spoken in, what was said printed in the characters of that language, the English translation, the speaker's name, the countries where the language is spoken, how many millions of people speak that language and the percent of the world's population that represents.

I was quickly drawn to the English translation column and found the greetings to be very poignant, hopeful, funny and respectful.  If I take this book off the shelf to show someone, I will most likely flip the pages of this section first.

Voyager

The Sounds of Earth by Ann Druyan.  On the Voyager record there is a collection of typical sounds from Earth; volcanoes, earthquakes, thunder, wind, rain, surf, crickets, frogs, footsteps, heartbeats, laughter, Morse code, train, truck, jet and many more.

All the sounds are laid out in a chronological order of life on Earth.  My personal belief is that this may be the most confusing portion of the record, just because sound effects, on their own require a familiarity with the source.  Many of the sounds tie with the pictures and are roughly in the same sequence as the photos so there is an elegance and logic to it.

Voyager's Music by Timothy Ferris.  I'll be honest here; I skipped most of this essay.  I love music and have something playing in the background as much as possible.  (I'm listening to some Gene Ammons as I write this). I am not, however, well versed in classical music, or traditional world folk music which comprises the bulk of the music selections.  I also am very weak in the terms used to describe music and its creation, so much of the discussion here just went over my head.

I do believe the addition of music on the record to be an inspired choice. Talk about putting our best foot forward.

The Voyager Mission to the Outer Solar System by Carl Sagan.  Since this book was published in 1978 and the first encounters with Jupiter did not happen until the next year the essay is worded in forward-looking language which made reading it quite special.  Sagan speculated on what would be learned based on what was then only theorized or remotely detected.  The flybys of Uranus and Neptune were still in the planning stages. 

It is a treat to see just how well the scientist of the day predicted what they found.  I was especially taken by what they knew of Io, Jupiter's innermost moon; they knew it was orbiting through a doughnut-shaped cloud of material that was thought to come from its surface but not why.  How wonderful it must have been when Voyager showed it to be caused by intense volcanic activity.

A massive volcanic eruption on the surface of Io.

The final essay is the Epilogue by Carl Sagan. Here we get back into the romanticism of the project and where we find ourselves today (2015).  Now that both Voyager 1 and 2 have crossed into interstellar space the final question to answer is what to do with the remaining propulsion fuel?  Currently the spacecraft are headed to open space but there is some thought being made to alter course and send them to nearby star systems.

Sagan also speculated how long the Voyager records can physically last given the environment of space; radiation and micrometeorites will have the greatest influence on the durability of the messages it contains.

Final thoughts.  If you can track down a copy of this book it is well worth adding it to your collection.  I took from it a sense of satisfaction and pride from what it contained and the efforts of the project team. I can't think of a better way to introduce humanity to the galaxy.

Carl Sagan holding the Pioneer plaque.

Astounding Armstrong by Jeffery D. Kooistra

April 2015

This was a very interesting bit of history.

Sadly there are legions of people who are forgotten in the popular consciousness.  People whose work is still felt and used today.

If you say "radio" you'll think Marconi.  

If you say "FM radio" you'll probably come up with a blank, I know I did.  

Edwin Armstrong is not a household name but it should be.  In our home and cars, we benefit from Armstrong's work.

Like so many folks, Armstrong's story does not end well.  He was defeated by patent trolls and greedy corporations.  And yet we benefit where he did not.

Take the time to read Kooistra's article.  Then perhaps read a bit more from Wikipedia. As mentioned in the article, there is not a whole bunch written about Armstrong but it is worth knowing a bit more about a man who has impacted all of our lives.

Edwin H. Armstrong Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong

Jeffery D. Kooistra:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?6763

Jeffery D. Kooistra

Book Report #90 - Train by Tom Zoellner

Book 14 of 52
Page count - 310-ish

I really enjoyed this book.  It's hard to classify; it's part travel & adventure, part history and part social science. Through it all is a passion for trains, all of them, and why not?  Trains are quite a fantastic invention, something that has blended into the background that we don't notice unless we are at a crossing waiting for it to pass.

Zoellner focuses much of the book on the passenger train, something that is nearly unknown in North America but in each segment he points out that it was, and still is, the freight train that is the driving force that brings these machines into existence.  The first train was built to haul coal and, for most regions in the world, that is exactly what they are still doing today.

Passenger service is an interesting part of the railroad business and through Zoellner's travels we see just how the character of each country is infused into each length of track.  We go from the frumpy old British system to the chaos of India; I found myself gasping at how insanely the Indian system operates.  We also get to experience Amtrak, the Trans-Siberian, the Peruvian freight over the Andes and the Chinese high-speed train into Tibet.

Although Zoeller begins each trip as a travelogue he quickly blends the history of the railway with the history and politics of the region and brings the present day into the story.  Not only does he tell us how the thing was built but also how it impacts the people around it.

His last segment is spent on the Spanish AVE high-speed passenger train.  It is here that he also talks about the future of passenger travel and how it is struggling to take hold in the USA.

I highly recommend this book.  It has a nice way of appealing to travel enthusiasts, history buffs and has a nice way of describing life in other parts of the world.

 His website is HERE.

Tom Zoellner

Book Report #85 - Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

Book 9 of 52
Page count - 17 CDs, 20 hours 40 minutes

I struggled with whether I should include this in my challenge since I did not "read" it.  However, it was far too important a book not to include.  Plus, this audiobook was unabridged and took over 20 hours of my time to consume.

I grew up during the Cold War and there were times that I was very scared my life would end in a thermonuclear flash.  According to Eric Schlosser there was more to be scared of than Geo-political tension between the super powers.  There were countless accidents, mishaps, losses, crashes, fires and human errors with atomic and thermonuclear weapons that it is a wonder we are all still alive today.

The book was chilling.  It scared me to my core.  I found the level of paranoia of the first two decades of the Cold War to be nearly incomprehensible.  How could men of power be so foolish?

The book itself followed a terrible accident that happened at one missile silo in the United States.  The author explained just how dangerous the Titan II missile system was on it's own, never mind that one of the most powerful warheads sat on top of it.  From the moment a technician accidentally drops a socket down the silo and damages the missile Schlosser takes us on a journey of just how that weapon was developed and the history behind the cold war as well.

It was an enormous subject that could have branched off into the Space Race, espionage, satellite development and submarine warfare.  I would have gladly listened to more.  But limits must be put on to the scope of a book and there was a lot of material to ponder here.

There were a couple of times in the history of the arms race that fiction played a powerful role in it's direction.  The first was the 1958 book called Red Alert by Peter George (published under the pen name Peter Bryant) which told the story of a rouge USAF general launching a first strike against the USSR.  The novel was so profoundly plausible that it was distributed among the decision makers in the US military and influenced readiness and safety policy for decades.  It was also the book that was the basis of Stanley Kubrick's movie Dr. Strangelove.

Red Alert is in the public domain and I've downloaded a copy which I will review here in the future.

The other bit of fiction was the Jason Robards TV movie The Day After, which showed how a nuclear war affected the residence of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.  This show had such a profound effect on President Ronald Ragan that after watching it, he began to negotiate with the USSR to stop nuclear testing and reduce the arsenal.

I once reviewed the book Seawitch by Alistair MacLean -( http://eric-the-mailman.blogspot.ca/2012/09/book-report-48-seawitch-by-alistair.html ) and blasted it for the unbelievable lack of security surrounding a military weapon storage facility.  Well, I was wrong about the security; there were many instances in Command and Control that illustrated incredibly lax measures taken to prevent the theft of atomic weapons.  Fiction may be fiction but it can be spot on.

READ THIS BOOK.

NOTE - Be ready to have the shit scared out of you at the end.  Just saying.

Eric Schlosser

Book Report #38 - San Francisco's Powell Street Cable Cars

Images of Rail

San Francisco's Powell Street Cable Cars

By

Emiliano Echeverria and Walter Rice

In preparation for my trip to San Francisco I bought this book for some insight into the famous cable cars.

The book itself is dedicated mostly to archival photos with lots of informative captions. What narrative there is in the book is used mostly to explain the differing eras of the system.

I had no idea their history would be so colourful. The system was always under threat of closure; it was first saved by the citizens of SF in a 1947 vote; then the system itself was designated a national historic landmark in January, 1964. From 1982 to 1984 the entire system was shut down and essentially replaced and rebuilt.

The book was wonderful; full of interesting stories. I'm glad I read it and I can't wait to step on to one. Considering what I now know about them, a ride will be very special to me.