The Elegance (and Flaws) of Math and Science

 "For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without concerts, parks, or museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity’s most beautiful ideas. In Mathematics for Human Flourishing, written for a wide audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award‑winning mathematician and educator weaves parables, puzzles, and personal reflections to show how mathematics meets basic human desires—such as for play, beauty, freedom, justice, and love—and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. These desires and virtues, and the stories told here, reveal how mathematics is intimately tied to being human. Some lessons emerge from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother’s, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher’s letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can—and must—be open to all." (from Amazon.com)

"Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket. Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous. Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS. As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew." (from Amazon.com)

Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World is by Matt Parker. "Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations enabling the design of skyscrapers and bridges. Most of the time this math works quietly behind the scenes . . . until it doesn’t. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences. Math is easy to ignore until a misplaced decimal point upends the stock market, a unit conversion error causes a plane to crash, or someone divides by zero and stalls a battleship in the middle of the ocean. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never been more fun." (from Amazon.com) (Purchased with LSTA Grant Funds 2021)

"Science is how we understand the world. Yet failures in peer review and mistakes in statistics have rendered a shocking number of scientific studies useless – or, worse, badly misleading. Such errors have distorted our knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as medicine, physics, nutrition, education, genetics, economics, and the search for extraterrestrial life. As Science Fictions makes clear, the current system of research funding and publication not only fails to safeguard us from blunders but actively encourages bad science – with sometimes deadly consequences. Stuart Ritchie’s own work challenging an infamous psychology experiment helped spark what is now widely known as the “replication crisis,” the realization that supposed scientific truths are often just plain wrong. Now, he reveals the very human biases, misunderstandings, and deceptions that undermine the scientific endeavor: from contamination in science labs to the secret vaults of failed studies that nobody gets to see; from outright cheating with fake data to the more common, but still ruinous, temptation to exaggerate mediocre results for a shot at scientific fame. Yet Science Fictions is far from a counsel of despair. Rather, it’s a defense of the scientific method against the pressures and perverse incentives that lead scientists to bend the rules. By illustrating the many ways that scientists go wrong, Ritchie gives us the knowledge we need to spot dubious research and points the way to reforms that could make science trustworthy once again." (from Amazon.com) (Purchased with LSTA Grant Funds 2021)

"For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the Sun. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and fun illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day." (from Amazon.com)

More New Nonfiction for Your Enjoyment

The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age is by Steve Olson. "A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph, decades of secrecy, and the unimaginable destruction wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb. It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs. In the desert of eastern Washington State, far from prying eyes, scientists Glenn Seaborg, Enrico Fermi, and many thousands of others―the physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff at the facility―manufactured plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and for the bombs in the current American nuclear arsenal, enabling the construction of weapons with the potential to end human civilization. With his characteristic blend of scientific clarity and storytelling, Steve Olson asks why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Olson, who grew up just twenty miles from Hanford’s B Reactor, recounts how a small Washington town played host to some of the most influential scientists and engineers in American history as they sought to create the substance at the core of the most destructive weapons ever created. The Apocalypse Factory offers a new generation this dramatic story of human achievement and, ultimately, of lethal hubris." (from Amazon.com)

"From the Edgar-nominated author of the bestselling Mrs. Sherlock Holmes--Brad Ricca--comes the true story of a woman's quest to Africa in the 1900s to find her missing fiancé, and the adventure that ensues. In 1910, Olive MacLeod, a thirty-year-old, redheaded Scottish aristocrat, received word that her fiancé, the famous naturalist Boyd Alexander, was missing in Africa. So she went to find him. Olive the Lionheart is the thrilling true story of her astonishing journey. In jungles, swamps, cities, and deserts, Olive and her two companions, the Talbots, come face-to-face with cobras and crocodiles, wise native chiefs, a murderous leopard cult, a haunted forest, and even two adorable lion cubs that she adopts as her own. Making her way in a pair of ill-fitting boots, Olive awakens to the many forces around her, from shadowy colonial powers to an invisible Islamic warlord who may hold the key to Boyd’s disappearance. As these secrets begin to unravel, all of Olive’s assumptions prove wrong and she is forced to confront the darkest, most shocking secret of all: why she really came to Africa in the first place. Drawing on Olive’s own letters and secret diaries, Olive the Lionheart is a love story that defies all boundaries, set against the backdrop of a beautiful, unconquerable Africa." (from Amazon.com)

"Rarely does a work of history contain startling implications for the present, but in The People, No Thomas Frank pulls off that explosive effect by showing us that everything we think we know about populism is wrong. Today “populism” is seen as a frightening thing, a term pundits use to describe the racist philosophy of Donald Trump and European extremists. But this is a mistake. The real story of populism is an account of enlightenment and liberation; it is the story of American democracy itself, of its ever-widening promise of a decent life for all. Taking us from the tumultuous 1890s, when the radical left-wing Populist Party―the biggest mass movement in American history―fought Gilded Age plutocrats to the reformers’ great triumphs under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Frank reminds us how much we owe to the populist ethos. Frank also shows that elitist groups have reliably detested populism, lashing out at working-class concerns. The anti-populist vituperations by the Washington centrists of today are only the latest expression. Frank pummels the elites, revisits the movement’s provocative politics, and declares true populism to be the language of promise and optimism. The People, No is a ringing affirmation of a movement that, Frank shows us, is not the problem of our times, but the solution for what ails us." (from Amazon.com)

The King of Confidence is by Miles Harvey. "In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect's leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king. From this stronghold he controlled a fourth of the state of Michigan, establishing a pirate colony where he practiced plural marriage and perpetrated thefts, corruption, and frauds of all kinds. Eventually, having run afoul of powerful enemies, including the American president, Strang was assassinated, an event that was frontpage news across the country. The King of Confidence tells this fascinating but largely forgotten story. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years in power, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive." (from Amazon.com)

 

New Nonfiction

The selection I've selected for this blog include new nonfiction titles featuring historical events and Civil Rights era history.

Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South is by Mike Selby. When the civil rights movement exploded across the United States, the media gave the world a glimpse of racial violence and stalwart determination. While most saw the struggle to simply order a cheeseburger, ride a bus, or use a clean water fountain, there was a virtually unheard-of struggle lurking in the background—the right to read. Several American states strictly enforced racial segregation, though it was technically illegal and public libraries were not immune to these racist policies. Though libraries were desegregated on paper, there were no cards given to African Americans, no books for them to read, and no furniture for them to use. These conditions gave rise to the Freedom Libraries—more than eighty parallel libraries that appeared in the Deep South and were staffed by civil rights voter registration workers. Terror, bombings, and even murder from racist groups would be visited upon these Freedom Libraries, however, they persevered and managed to forever change libraries and librarianship. 

Author Jia Lynn Yang discusses American immigration between 1924 and 1965 in One Mighty and Irresistible Tide. In 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so strict that it slowed large-scale immigration down to a trickle for decades. Arrivals from southern and eastern Europe as well as almost all of Asia were banned. The author recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson worked to abolish the 1924 law. Even through a world war, a refugee crisis after the Holocaust, and the Red Scare, a coalition of lawmakers and activists worked to help Jewish, Irish, and Japanese immigrants enter America. In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act finally opened the door to migrants at levels never seen before—and changing this country in the process. 

Peniel E. Joseph compares and contrasts the lives and works of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr in The Sword and The Shield. These two civil rights leaders represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights. While the nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American history, the movement’s militancy is either maligned or erased. The author upends these misconceptions and paints a nuanced portrait of two men who—in spite of different family histories, religious affiliations, and class backgrounds—inspired one another. Malcolm’s push to connect pan-Africanism to an international human rights agenda mirrored the “beloved community” that King articulated in his speech at the March on Washington. Similarly, the anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns of King’s final years echoed Malcolm’s anti-colonialist ideals. So, Martin Luther King, Jr. was more revolutionary and Malcolm X more pragmatic than we have been taught. 

The Rise of the G.I. Army: 1940-1941 by Paul Dickson tell the story of how America forged a powerful army before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, there was still a strong air of isolationism that existed in the U.S. The US Army ranked 17th in the world—behind Portugal—and was totally unprepared to defend the country, much less engage forces in Europe and the East. Yet, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the American Army landed in North Africa and went on to lead the campaign that would defeat the Nazis. This is the story of how America’s military went from a disparate collection of camps with obsolete weapons to a well-trained and spirited army ten times its prior size in just under two years. From the selection of George C. Marshall to be the Army chief of staff, to the peacetime draft of 1940 and the massive (and unprecedented) military maneuvers in Tennessee, Louisiana, and the Carolinas in 1941, the Army was forged and led by dynamic men—Eisenhower, Patton, Stilwell, and Bradley. 

Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College is by Nancy K. Bristow. Just after midnight on May 15, 1970, white members of the Jackson city police and the Mississippi Highway Patrol opened fire on students in front of a women’s dorm at Jackson State College—a historically black college. Less than a minute later, two young people were dead and another twelve were injured. Drawing on new interviews and sources, the author lays out what happened in Jackson and the role racism played in the shootings and its aftermath. Jackson State was a state school led by an entirely white Board of Trustees and was known as a conservative campus. When protests broke out over the proceeding decade, the activists were expelled. By 1970, however, students were once again responding to the move for civil rights for the African American community. It was this changing campus that law enforcement attacked. In the aftermath, victims and survivors struggled to find justice and a place in public memory. Despite multiple investigative commissions, two grand juries, and a civil suit, no officers were charged, no restitution was paid, and no apologies were offered. It seems that Jackson State was overshadowed by the shooting of white students at Kent State in Ohio just ten days earlier. The author endeavors to bring this tragic shooting once again into the spotlight. 

More Yummy Recipes!

 

“People are lonely,” author Sam Sifton writes. “They want to be part of something, even when they can’t identify that longing as a need. They show up. Feed them. It isn’t much more complicated than that.” Regular dinners with family and friends, he argues, are a metaphor for connection, a space where memories can be shared as easily as salt or hot sauce, where deliciousness reigns. The point of Sunday supper is to gather around a table with good company and eat. From years spent talking to restaurant chefs, cookbook authors, and home cooks in connection with his daily work at The New York Times, Sam Sifton’s See You on Sunday is a book to make those dinners possible. It is a guide to preparing meals for groups larger than the average American family (though everything here can be scaled down, or up). The 200 recipes are mostly simple and inexpensive (“You are not a feudal landowner entertaining the serfs”), and they derive from decades spent cooking for family and groups ranging from six to sixty. From big meats to big pots, with a few words on salad, and a diatribe on the needless complexity of desserts, See You on Sunday is an indispensable addition to any home cook’s library. From how to shuck an oyster to the perfection of Mallomars with flutes of milk, from the joys of grilled eggplant to those of gumbo and bog, this book is devoted to the preparation of delicious proteins and grains, vegetables and desserts, taco nights and pizza parties." (from Amazon.com)

Authors Hugh Sinclair, Cynthia Verna, and Calibe Thompson have a new cookbook called Taste the Islands: Culinary Adventures in a Caribbean Kitchen. "Enjoy a fun and delicious journey through the Caribbean in this vibrant collection of gourmet and home-style recipes. Hugh Sinclair and Cynthia Verna, known as “Chef Irie” and “Chef Thia” on their television show Taste the Islands, introduce ingredients and flavors that open windows into the region’s many cultures. Sinclair and Verna share their own recipes as well as traditional island favorites. Starting with “stop gap” snacks like fritters made from malanga root and continuing through desserts and cocktails, they include refreshing salads like pineapple pepper slaw, soups with “a healthy dose of soul” made with bases such as calabaza pumpkin or black beans, and main dishes such as curried goat or mussels chorizo in mango coconut sauce. From the authors’ home nations of Jamaica and Haiti to St. Lucia, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago, the communities represented in these dishes have deep histories. The recipes feature both native and colonial food traditions that have been passed down for generations and showcase African, European, Middle Eastern, and Asian influences. Sinclair and Verna also incorporate tastes and techniques from their international travels, capturing the eclectic variety of Caribbean cuisine today. Filled with colorful photographs and infused with the joy of two expert chefs celebrating the foods that are closest to their hearts, Taste the Islands brings the places, histories, and rhythms of the Caribbean into your home kitchen." (from Amazon.com)

New Paperback Romances to Steam Up the End of Summer!

Meg Cabot begins a new Little Bridge Island series with the novel No Judgments. "When the “storm of the century” severs all power and cell service to Little Bridge Island—as well as its connection to the mainland—26-year-old Sabrina “Bree” Beckham isn’t worried . . . at first. She might be on her own, but she’s got a landline and plenty of supplies. But Bree does become alarmed when she realizes how many islanders have been cut off from their beloved pets. Now it’s up to her to save as many of Little Bridge’s cats, dogs, and birds as she can…but to do so, she’s going to need help—help that arrives in the form of an entirely different super storm: her boss’s sexy nephew, Drew Hartwell, the island’s most notorious heartbreaker. But when her ex shows up just as Bree starts falling for Drew, she has to ask herself if their steamy connection was only a result of the stormy weather, or something that could last during clear skies too." (from Goodreads.com)

One to Watch is a novel by Kate Stayman-London."Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers--and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television? Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition--under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. She's in this to supercharge her career, subvert harmful anti-fat beauty standards, inspire women across America, and get a free hot air balloon ride. That's it. But when the cameras start rolling, Bea realizes things are more complicated than she anticipated. She's in a whirlwind of sumptuous couture, Internet culture wars, sexy suitors, and an opportunity (or two, or five) to find messy, real-life love in the midst of a made-for-TV fairy tale. In this joyful, razor-sharp debut, Bea has to decide whether it might just be worth trusting these men--and herself--for a chance to live happily ever after." (from Goodreads.com)

Rachel Winters delivers her new novel with Would Like to Meet. "After seven years as an assistant, 29-year-old Evie Summers is ready to finally get the promotion she deserves. But now the TV and film agency she's been running behind the scenes is in trouble, and Evie will lose her job unless she can convince the agency's biggest and most arrogant client, Ezra Chester, to finish writing the script for a Hollywood romantic comedy. The catch? Ezra is suffering from writer's block--and he'll only put pen to paper if singleton Evie can prove to him that you can fall in love like they do in the movies. With the future of the agency in jeopardy, Evie embarks on a mission to meet a man the way Sally met Harry or Hugh Grant met Julia Roberts. But in the course of testing out the meet-cute scenes from classic romantic comedies IRL, not only will Evie encounter one humiliating situation after another, but she'll have to confront the romantic past that soured her on love. In a novel as hilarious as it is heartwarming, debut author Rachel Winters proves that sometimes real life is better than the movies--and that the best kind of meet-cutes happen when you least expect them." (from Goodreads.com)

Critically acclaimed author Mia Sosa delivers a sassy, steamy enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy--The Worst Best Man--about a woman whose new job requires her to work side-by-side with the best man who ruined her wedding: her ex-fiancé's infuriating, irritating, annoyingly handsome brother. A wedding planner left at the altar. Yeah, the irony isn’t lost on Carolina Santos, either. But despite that embarrassing blip from her past, Lina’s managed to make other people’s dreams come true as a top-tier wedding coordinator in DC. After impressing an influential guest, she’s offered an opportunity that could change her life. There’s just one hitch… she has to collaborate with the best (make that worst) man from her own failed nuptials. Tired of living in his older brother’s shadow, marketing expert Max Hartley is determined to make his mark with a coveted hotel client looking to expand its brand. Then he learns he’ll be working with his brother’s whip-smart, stunning—absolutely off-limits—ex-fiancée. And she loathes him. If they can survive the next few weeks and nail their presentation without killing each other, they’ll both come out ahead. Except Max has been public enemy number one ever since he encouraged his brother to jilt the bride, and Lina’s ready to dish out a little payback of her own. But even the best laid plans can go awry, and soon Lina and Max discover animosity may not be the only emotion creating sparks between them. Still, this star-crossed couple can never be more than temporary playmates because Lina isn’t interested in falling in love and Max refuses to play runner-up to his brother ever again..." (from Goodreads.com)