Category Archives: Reviews

This isn’t exactly a horror novel, but it was horrifying. It scared the pants off me. I don’t want to say too much about it to avoid spoiling any potential surprises. Carlson tells the story of a nanotech plague, and its few survivors, in a spare, fast style. There are plot twists aplenty, and neither the heroes nor villains are as simple as they might first appear. Strongly recommended if you like science fiction, apocalyptic fiction, or well-written and scary fiction.

Let me save you the effort of reading this cynical and depressing book: the good guys lose. All of them, in fact: the lawyers who go nearly half a million dollars in debt financing their client’s suit against an egregious polluter, the plaintiff herself, a Mississippi Supreme Court justice running for re-election, and even the candidate who replaces her. The only winner is a slimy, money-grubbing billionaire. I don’t expect every book I read to be Pollyanna, but I was surprised by the degree of cynical commentary that Grisham slipped in here. Not recommended.

As soon as I saw this book on the net, I knew I had to read it. Here’s a capsule review. First, it has perhaps the most vulgar language of any book I have ever read. It made the worst cursing I heard in the Marines seem like a Sunday school lesson. If you are easily offended, definitely don’t read it. (Even the table of contents would be enough to get the book an R rating if it were a movie!) There’s a funny comment on Dobyns’ blog in which an 11-year-old complains that his dad won’t let him read the book, to which Dobyns responds “Your dad is correct. You can’t read No Angel until you’re 30.”

Second, the author is clearly as crazy as an outhouse rat. Infiltrate the Hells Angels? Why not do something less crazy, like jumping off a bridge with an anvil duct-taped to your head?

Dobyns recounts his early career in the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms and explains how his personality led him to seek risky undercover assignments. When he sees an opportunity to attack the Angels from within, he has a hard time convincing his superiors, but eventually wins them over through a combination of persistence, solid evidence gathering, and missteps by the Angels that make them seem like a bigger danger to public order than they might actually have been. If anything, I was surprised by how trusting the Angels leadership was, but that’s as much a testament to Dobyns’ skill as an undercover officer as it is to their desire to quickly expand throughout Arizona.

Dobyns (and his ghostwriter) tell a fascinating story in vivid detail. It’s clear throughout that Dobyns respects many aspects of the Angels culture, like their sense of brotherhood and honor. That doesn’t mean that he’s willing to excuse their actual criminal behavior, and he makes that clear as well. The story itself is fascinating; Dobyns starts by creating a fake chapter of a Mexican motorcycle gang and uses it to establish credibility with Angels leaders, culminating in their invitation to “patch over” and join the Angels. Along the way, hijinks ensue: there are beatings, gun sales, boozy motorcycle rides, and testosterone galore. (I don’t want to be more specific so I don’t spoil any surprises!)

At the end of the book, I couldn’t help wondering whether the sacrifices he and his family made were worth the eventual outcome of the case, in which internal squabbling amongst the prosecution team resulted in lower sentences and the dismissal of charges against a few key players. (As a bonus, now Dobyns has a lawsuit against the ATF claiming that they are failing to protect him and his family from reprisals.)

Highly recommended for those with thick skins and strong stomachs.

As I was scanning this morning’s New York Times, I saw an obituary for Art Code. I’d never heard of him, but he was an instrumental player in the creation of the Hubble Space Telescope. That was only one of the many things I learned from reading Zimmerman’s excellent book on the genesis, development, deployment, and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Zimmerman has written a fascinating account of the early genesis of the whole idea of space-based telescopes; much of this early work was done by Lyman Spitzer, another scientist you probably haven’t heard of but who (IMHO) deserves wider recognition (and who was born in Toledo!)

Zimmerman clearly and engagingly chronicles the process by which we got the Hubble, including the (almost-incredible) bungles made by Perkin-Elmer in finishing the primary mirror, the drawn-out process of figuring out what the actual problem was, and the ingenious engineering solution (COSTAR) that fixed it. If anything, he provides too much detail of some of the bureaucratic wrangling. It’s easy to get lost in his description of the wrangling that took place between various factions at different NASA centers and the Space Telescope Science Institute. However, he does a splendid job of articulating how revolutionary the HST was as a scientific instrument, and how much knowledge astronomers in different specialties were able to learn from it.

If you have even a passing interest in Big Science, this is a great read; likewise if you’re an astronomy buff. Highly recommended.

It’s hard for me to decide how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I appreciate its candor and clarity. Broughton spent years in the newspaper business, and he is an engaging writer with an excellent eye for scene-setting and description. His portraits of the characters in his Harvard Business School (HBS) class are sharply drawn, enough so that I felt I was there in the classroom with him at some points.

On the other hand, he essentially enrolled at HBS, going about $175,000 in debt, to see whether business school might afford him some other career opportunities. While most of his other classmates had clear goals (mostly involving the amassing of personal wealth, sadly but unsurprisingly), he seemed to be trying to decide what he wanted to do. In that respect, he was in HBS but not of it; to me that seems like quite a wasted opportunity.

Broughton makes some excellent points about the cultural impact of MBAs, writing that “MBAs determine the lives many of us will lead, the hours we work, the vacations we get, the culture we consume, the health care we receive, and the education provided to our children.” Through that critical lens, he examines what he learned at HBS and finds it somewhat wanting. He cites Andrew Carnegie as an example; Carnegie was perhaps one of the least ethical, even rapacious, businessmen ever to walk the earth, yet he is chiefly remembered for his many good works later in life. Broughton asks the fair question of whether having more Carnegies is on balance a good thing for the US, and by extension the world.

From the perspective of a small business owner, I certainly enjoyed the descriptions of the various HBS classes. Some clearly would be of use to me, while others wouldn’t. As an inducement to attend HBS (which it clearly isn’t intended to be), the book falls short. As a lucid description of the experience, and a thought-provoking reflection on the effects of the business culture driven in large part by HBS graduates and marketing, it succeeds quite well. Highly recommended.

I love reading about science in all its forms, but I find many science articles in the mass media to be dumbed down or poorly written and thus uninteresting. During a recent trip to the library, I happened upon this collection and decided to give it a try. My experiment was well-rewarded, as this is a superb collection of fascinating and well-written stories. Some standouts in this collection include Atul Gawande’s “The Score“, which traces the industrialization of childbirth (though I would argue that improvements in anesthesiology have made almost as big an impact); Lawrence Altman’s “The Man on the Table Devised the Surgery“, about Michael E. DeBakey’s very unusual surgery in 2006, and Jerome Groopman’s “Being There“. This last was especially poignant for me, as it discusses the pros and cons of allowing family members to be present during resuscitation attempts for trauma victims. I will carry to my grave the sounds and sights of Dad’s visit to the Albany Medical Center emergency department, and I still am not able to decide if it was good or bad that I saw those things.
Anyway, I highly recommend this book, and I’ll be on the hunt for the 2008 edition when it’s published.

I’d never even heard of Cinerama before watching the Blu-Ray edition of How the West Was Won with John and Amy. Cinerama Adventure is a fascinating look at the then-revolutionary Cinerama system. Think of it as a predecessor to IMAX, except that it provided better peripheral views at the expense of requiring three separate cameras and projectors. If you’re at all interested in 1950s pop culture, film and video technology, film-making, or flying a camera-equipped B-25 into an active volcano, you’ll find plenty of things to interest you here. My favorite part might have been the discussion of how the movie industry targeted Cinerama to help counter the television-induced drop in movie theater attendance. I wonder if there’s a parallel with the current theater industry… maybe they could try something innovative instead of whining so much.

Sometimes I read a book on some topic that inspires me to think of myself doing something with that topic– a book on aircraft design might make me wonder how I would fare as an aerospace engineer. Other books I read help me appreciate a topic or activity without necessarily wanting to do it myself (cf. A Blistered Kind of Love).

Winterdance did neither of these. It made me say, repeatedly and often aloud, that this guy is flat-out crazy. The Iditarod is one of the most grueling events in the world, and this guy wanted to run it. The story of his preparation for the races made me alternately wince (mostly for his wife, poor soul) and cringe. Imagine: sleeping with your dog team in its kennel, in your yard; letting fifteen sled dogs pull you on a bicycle then having to walk fifteen-plus miles home after they run off and leave you; getting sprayed by half a dozen skunks. The race itself is no better. I found myself unable to stop reading and concurrently wishing the book would end on the next page. I can’t really recommend it, but it was definitely an experience that will alter how I see future books. In fact, perhaps that’s the best summary I can come up with: the book is like the Iditarod in that respect.

Moskos has written a tough critique of US drug laws, but he’s cleverly disguised the first two-thirds of the book as a cops-on-the-beat tale of his time spent on the streets of the Eastern District of Baltimore. If you’ve watched The Wire, much of what Moskos says will sound familiar: the current US war on drugs is a wasteful effort that does little to curb violence (mostly perpetrated by the sellers, not the users) while doing nothing to help the users kick their habits. The anecdotes are amusing; the sociological data Moskos includes are valuable, and his argument is strong. Well worth reading.

I recently needed a case for my iPhone 3G. I had a CaseLogic slip case for my original iPhone, and it was a solid “OK”: a little clunky, a little ugly, but enough to get the job done. I wanted something with less bulk. On the advice of a few iPhone-toting friends, I decided to try the Switcheasy Capsule Rebel. Verdict: I love it. It looks great, and it provides an excellent tactile feel. It doesn’t feel slippery, slimy, or slick. Highly recommended.