Al Rowell

I really wanted to like this book. As autobiographical rambling, it affords some insights into Bradbury and his unique creative process. The book is a collection of essays with some writing platitudes, like “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” His observations on writing are, of course, inspired from his life, but his advice to writers, well, seems obvious. I would recommend only for insights into Bradbury and for his specific comments on the creative process for his major works.

This book in many places was a long plod through intricacies of mathematics and cryptography with only slight glimpses into the man who was Alan Turing. Persistence will be rewarded, eventually, as the picture of Turing emerges from a tedious chronology– an incredible genius and worthy of the label “visionary,” yet hopelessly naive in the workings of the world, both political and social. He anticipated a universal computer and laid the foundations for artificial intelligence, yet in his later years, he was relegated to a sarcastic footnote in contemporary accounts of the development of the computer.

A reader who dares to attempt this tome surely knows that Alan accepted his homosexuality as a part of his being and that he was crushed by the (conservative) British society he had a significant role in preserving with his code-breaking contributions, particularly in breaking the Enigma encryptions for the Atlantic sea campaigns. The author has made a remarkable effort in assembling from available records this portrait of a complicated man who advanced mathematics and computing, yet tragically was unable to realize all he envisioned.

The wreck of the whaleship Essex, stove in by a whale, is an established part of American lore and notably appropriated by Melville for Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea weaves together the narratives of the survivors to present their ordeal in a manner that is both clinical (with depictions of the processes of both whale rendering and human starvation) and unsparing in its presentations of the misjudgments of impetuous First Mate Owen Chase and the irresolute Captain Pollard. Beyond the tragedy of the Essex, this book captures in exacting detail life in the whaling community that was 19th century Natucket

I was drawn to this book after reading the author's article “Is Google Making us Stupid” in The Atlantic, and I share some of the author's concerns about becoming less attentive and finding it difficult to concentrate on tasks for any length of time. Carr does a remarkable job of bringing together relevant research, and he provides an impressive history of how technology has changed how people think over time. Obviously new information technologies draw our attention and distract us in many ways, but Carr seems less able to explain how we will continue to adapt than he seems to be defending the necessity of preserving how we have thought in the past.

Constantly re-read this book in high school. I still remember many of the excerpts from the Messiah's Handbook. “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.” “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.” And many more.