Category Archives: Book Notes

John Allen Paulos, IRRELIGION (2008)

Posted on Wednesday 18 March 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

John Allen Paulos, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Hill and Wang, 2008. John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics who’s become, over the past three decades, well-known as … Continue reading →

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Sam Harris, THE END OF FAITH (2004)

Posted on Wednesday 18 March 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Norton, 2004. In the 2000s, in the aftermath of 9/11, several well-known intellectuals wrote books examining the bases and legitimacy of religion in general. Four of them—Sam … Continue reading →

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Daniel Gilbert, STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS (2006)

Posted on Friday 13 March 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

The author is a Harvard psychologist, recently familiar for several TV commercials he’s done for Prudential, which typically depict him in a public park doing surveys of groups of people. (https://www.ispot.tv/topic/expert/k7f/daniel-gilbert). This seems to be the only book the author … Continue reading →

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Hans Rosling: FACTFULNESS (2018)

Posted on Wednesday 11 March 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a book that explores why most people are wrong on key facts about the world, thinking it worse than it is, e.g. concerning poverty, life expectancy, etc. In a sense it’s a modern-day counterpart to Steven Pinker’s THE … Continue reading →

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Yuval Noah Harari, HOMO DEUS: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017; 2015 in Israel)

Posted on Friday 7 February 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This is, in effect, a sequel to SAPIENS. Top level summary: It opens with a long prologue: now that humanity has largely overcome famine, plague, and war, what next? Three possibilities: immortality, happiness, divinity. However these are predictions; this book … Continue reading →

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Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015)

Posted on Sunday 2 February 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) This is a history of the human species in the context of “Big History” – the first page sketches the history of the entire universe as a backdrop – and … Continue reading →

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Carl Sagan’s THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: Science As a Candle in the Dark

Posted on Friday 31 January 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a book I think of as one of my foundational nonfiction books, i.e. a major book of central importance for its discussion of a critical theme. That theme, essentially, is that given the prevalence of pseudo-scientific claims in … Continue reading →

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But What’s at Stake? Hal Clement’s Needle

Posted on Wednesday 22 January 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Needle (Astounding Science Fiction, May-June 1959; expanded to book form: Doubleday, 222 pages, $2.50 in hardcover, 1950) by Hal Clement Hal Clement (legal name Harry Stubbs) was one of the stable of science fiction writers developed by John W. Campbell … Continue reading →

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Things Are As They Are: George R. Stewart’s EARTH ABIDES

Posted on Wednesday 15 January 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Here is one of the best science fiction novels of all time. It’s about the entire world, and implicitly the entire human race, and it’s as timely as ever as, for one reason or another, humanity faces the realization that … Continue reading →

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Peter Watts essay: “Understanding Sarah Palin, or, God Is In the Wattles”: Summary and Comments

Posted on Saturday 21 December 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

From the book Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays (Tachyon, November 2019), a selection of posts from the blog of Peter Watts, which has been running since 2007. Watts is the noted author of high … Continue reading →

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