#bookclurb — Public Fediverse posts

#BookReview: The Emerald Mile

Ostensibly the story of a cadre of elite river guides breaking the law and risking their livelihoods and their lives to sneak a wooden dory into the Colorado River amidst the highest flood waters ever recorded, with no other agenda than to set an unbreakable speed run recorded through the roughest rapids in the western hemisphere.

The book tells this incredible tale, but much like the Colorado itself, with meandering lulls and lazy side canyons punctuation by rapids that can crush a boat to flotsam in a matter of seconds, the book intertwines this heart pounding adventure with the more placid history of the grand canyon itself, the history of the guiding industry on the river, the politics of American conservationism, the stories of the men who first discovered and traversed the canyons waters, and the biography of the men who set, and still hold that speed record through the grand canyon set in 1983. Early in the book it's difficult to follow some of the tangents, not yet sure how they fit into the narrative, but as the book progresses they coalesce into an educational, as well as thrilling tale.

If you like nonfiction and the out-of-doors, I can't imagine you not liking this book.

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#BookReview: The trouble with physics

The main focus of the book is about the string theory faction of theoretical physics, and how it took over the entire field despite offering very little in the way of useful results.

To understand why string theory is such a colossal failure, the book walks though in some detail the history of the major breakthroughs in physics from Newton to the present. There isn't much math involved, but it is perhaps to technical for a general audience nonetheless.

The broad upshots are that:

1) string theory makes no new predictions which can be confirmed by experiment
2) there are so many variables underlying the theory that whenever an experiment would seem to contradict string theory, they can just tweak a few of the variables to get a new version of the theory that is consistent with experiment, thus rendering string theory virtually unfalsifiable
3) even if it can be proven true, it doesn't actually answer any of the fundamental questions in physics

These wouldn't be major red flags for a new theory, or one that a few physicists were working on on the sidelines of the field, they would just mean that theory wasn't ready for prime-time yet. But string theory has dominated theoretical physics for the past 2 decades (at the time of writing, now almost 4).

The book goes on to document the ways in which a few leaders in the field were able to wield their influence and power (especially over hiring decisions at a few prestigious institutions) to shape almost the entire field in their own image and create a monoculture that shuns outsiders.

Though the author seems carful not to invite any comparisons, this section has lots of implications for other areas of science where monoculture is observed 👀 .

The book was published in 2006, before the LHC came online. I would have very much liked if the audiobook included an addendum or afterward covering some of the achievements in physics since publication (in 2017, at the ten-year mark would have been a good time for such a retrospective I think), and how the author feels they impact the thesis of the book.

Overall I enjoyed it, but I don't know that I can give a blanket recommendation. The details are very detail-y, so if physics isn't an interest of yours, I doubt this book would hold your attention.

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@lain #BookClurb finally staring 'The Trouble with Physics', I think you were the one who recommend it to me. 👍

I remember Michael Malice talking about Duchamp. If I recall correctly, his angle was that Duchamp was basically a big troll, and had as much contempt for the avant-garde and dadaism as he did for fine art. Does anyone know of a book that goes into more detail about this? Every book I can find seems to take a reverent approach to his 'art'. #RecommendationRequest #BookClurb