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incendia posted:In terms of recent reads, When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales of Neurosurgery is an excellent look into the people and personalities who get into the field. It's presented as a series of explorations of patients through the author's medical career and can be very formulaic, but his accounts are gripping and I'm a shameless whore for excellent medical non-fiction. It's similar to some of Atul Gawande's work, so if you enjoy his style I'd definitely recommend it. Have you read Do No Harm by Henry Marsh? It's about the more personal side of being a brain surgeon in the UK. I found it very compelling. Emperor of All Maladies, which is the history of Cancer research and treatment is great also.
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Jan 27, 2016 03:29
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I just finished The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, which was a nice little tour of some major philosophers and thinkers throughout history. I did my undergrad in philosophy, so a lot of it was just a refresher on things I had already studied, but Durant is an engaging and very clear writer with a knack for breaking down complex ideas into digestible chunks, as well as explaining all the major objections to them afterwards. Not quite as thorough as Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, but also a bit less complicated than some of Russell's connections-to-connections-to-connections can be, because Durant is treating mostly on individuals, rather than concentrating on schools of thought and their development into one another. A very good introduction to western philosophy. Both are, really. I much preferred the Wil Durant book over Russell's. There's a tone that Russell has when writing about people or ideas he's not in favour of that I find off-putting.
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Jan 27, 2016 03:32
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I just finished Going Clear. I found the first few parts of the book really fascinating, through Hubbard's life and the early days of the Sea Org. There's a lot of detail about the church that gets mentioned in passing, because it's more or less written as a narrative running chronologically from Hubbard's childhood through to Paul Haggis leaving the church. I would have preferred more of a structured explanation of some of these things. I.e. There's bits and pieces explained about the OT levels during the period Hubbard was developing them or when discussing someone who has attained a particular OT level, but there's never a real summary or overview of them.
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Jan 27, 2016 03:55
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Right now about 2/3 of the way through A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. It's written by a nerdy Jewish guy who went to Africa to study how stress affects the health of Baboons. It doesn't cover any of the science really, but alternates between the field study of the Baboons and Sapolsky's travels through East Africa. The field work parts cover Baboon politics, behaviour and stories of a particular group, mixed with pretty witty accounts of all the difficulties of doing field work in remote parts of Kenya and the different cultures he encounters. The travel parts do a great job of giving an overview of the modern and colonial history, religious/ethnic divisions, etc in the different East African republics. It's very witty and very informative, not a very dense read at all. I'm enjoying it a whole lot.
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Feb 1, 2016 01:27
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As a non-american with a vague idea of Joseph Smith and no idea about FLDS Under the Banner of Heaven was a great read. Turns out I'm wrong because of mountain climbing or something.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:43
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