I made the mistake of reading Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead before her more celebrated work Atlas Shrugged that supposedly provides the clearest articulation of her philosophy of objectivism. After a promising start, The Fountainhead degenerated into a dreary polemic, with two-dimensional stereotypical characters behaving in utterly predictable ways, the whole thing written in melodramatic …
Category Archive: Books
Jan 27 2012
Maurice Sendak
I was tempted to not watch Stephen Colbert interview children’s book author Maurice Sendak, thinking it would not be interesting. I was wrong. Sendak turns out to be a funny and feisty guy, one of the few who can match wits with Colbert. (To get hints on how to view clips on The Daily Show …
Jan 09 2012
The story of a slave in the White House
Some of the most interesting segments on The Daily Show are those involving authors and books that I had never heard of before. In this segment, Jon Stewart interviews Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, author of A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons. The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More: Daily Show Full …
Dec 23 2011
Book review: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
The main thesis of Steven Pinker’s latest book is that violence has declined dramatically over time and that we are now living in the most peaceful time in history, and to suggest reasons for this. The decline has not been uniformly steady but has a saw-tooth pattern of periodic upticks of violence followed by steeper …
Dec 21 2011
Book Review: With Liberty and Justice for Some by Glenn Greenwald
This is an infuriating book. There were many times during last weekend when I was reading it that I wanted to hurl it against the wall though I am not by nature prone to such dramatic displays of emotion. The reason is not the usual one, which is that one hates the book. It is …
May 23 2011
Why people believe in gods
A new book Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith explains the basis of religious belief and the mechanisms that go into creating religious belief structures. I have not read it yet but it looks interesting and I will get to it soon. Why We Believe in God(s): A …
Mar 25 2011
Review: The Count of Monte Cristo (no spoilers)
Long time readers may recall that I really liked the 2006 film V for Vendetta (if you haven’t seen it, you really should). V’s inspiration is Edmond Dantes, the hero of The Count of Monte Cristo and he repeatedly watches the 1934 black and white film with Robert Donat in the title role. You can …
Dec 01 2010
Paperback writer
My book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has now been released in paperback.
Oct 04 2010
Book review: Quicksand by Geoffrey Wawro
The title of this book is taken from a quote by British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey at the dawn of the twentieth century who said that “The Arab question is a regular quicksand” and that, along with the subtitle America’s pursuit of power in the Middle East, tells you pretty much what this new …
Sep 30 2010
Book review: The Grand Design (Part 4 of 4: Religious implications)
In part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this review, I reviewed the physics in the book The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. In this last part I want to look at the book’s implications for religion. The book seeks to address three questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? …
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