Why Are We Not Falling?

Svec, Carol.  Balance: A Dizzying Journey Through the Science of Our Most Delicate Sense. 
          Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2017.

Have you every wondered why you suddenly tripped over nothing as you are walking down the sidewalk?  How about finding you no longer enjoy roller-coasters like you did as a teenager?  And then there is the question of why you get nausea riding in a car or at the movies.  Well, Carol Svec has answers to these questions and even more you have not thought of yet.

In a style similar to Mary Roach (including funny footnotes), Carol Svec provides a through overview of what balance is and the central role it plays in our lives.  She starts with a look at the inner ear's part in keeping us upright and spends time looking at the causes of motion sickness.  She then points out that each of us have rocks in our heads that help us know which way is up and which way is down. And she continues with the part played by our eyes in balance.  Then proprioception problems are discussed with the case of Ian Waterman.  After these discussions of the major components of balance, the books wanders through a number of balance related issues: sound related dizziness, shaky camera movies, flight simulators, virtual reality, and outer space.  Carol Svec finishes the book with a look at how kinesiology, virtual reality and exoskeletons can aid in keeping us upright in old age.

Balance provides a quick read through the science of how we stay upright and what the future may hold for us. 

Special Effects Man

Kimberlin, Bill.  Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir.  Guilford, CN: Lyons Press, 2018.

If you Google Bill Kimberlin, you will find out that he has credits for special effects for a number of well known movies including Return of the Jedi, Mars Attacks, Back to the Future II & III, among others.  You would also find out that he directed/produced/edited/filmed American Nitro, a documentary on drag racing.  But that is not all to his life.

Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir is a story of Bill Kimberlin's life told in short, wandering, non-sequential chapters.  In a major way, the subtitle is the important term in defining the book's purpose since he is telling his story, not a history of Star Wars, or Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).

Bill Kimberlin opens with chapters on his first job at ILM, doing the special effects for the space battles on Return of the Jedi,  so we learn what life was like working at ILM.  But he also intersperses chapters on his life before and outside ILM to the mix.  We learn about the movies he made (American Nitro and Jeffries-Johnson 1910), his family background (bootlegging and Pretty Boy Floyd included), and his life ambitions/goals.  He is not afraid to name-drop along the way as he tells about various movies he worked on and the effects he helped create.

If the reader is wanting the inside scoop on Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic, he may be disappointed, but if he or she is looking for a life story spent in the trenches of film magic, Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir may just be the ticket!

The Marines of World War I

Gilbert, Oscar E., and Romain V. Cansiere.  First to Fight: The U.S. Marines in World War I. 
         Philadelphia: Casemate, 2017.  ISBN: 978-1-61200-508-9

The Marines are known for the hard fought Battle of Belleau Wood, but there is much more to their World War I history than that one battle.  In First to Fight, Gilbert and Cansiere seek to provide the reader with the tale of the U. S. Marines during the course of the whole war.

Gilbert and Cansiere provide a readable, full history of the U. S. Marine Corp during World War I.  They examine the expansion of the Marine Corp, the role of the Marines in the Mexican Expedition, the safe-guarding of the Azores, ship board duties, female Marines and Marines in the air.  But the main body of the book deals with the Marines who fought in the U. S. Second Division, the only division in the U. S. Army that was half Army and half Marines.  All the major engagements (Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, Blanc Mont Ridge, and Meuse-Argonne) are covered in decent detail.  The book finishes off with the occupation of the Rhineland.

Gilbert and Cansiere provide a personal view of the war by utilizing several sets of personal papers and later interviews rather than just relying on official documents.  They provide maps of individual battles, but their strict focus on the heroics of the Marines creates a situational vacuum in regard to the rest of the 2nd Division and the broader picture of the course of the war.  The book is recommended for those readers who already have a grasp of the war and want to delve into the details of individual units. 

Did Curiosity Kill the Cat?

Livio, Mario.  Why?: What Makes Us Curious.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. 
       ISBN: 978-1-4767-9209-5

Could curiosity kill a cat?  Or a human?  Why are we curious?  When did humans become curious?  And why do we ask so many questions? These are only some of the topics that Mario Livio pursues in Why?: What Makes Us Curious.

Mario Livio opens the book with a chapter on what is curiosity.  He then turns to an examination of two men (Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman) who exemplify curiosity.  He then delves into various theories about what causes curiosity to arise in a person, the physical aspects of curiosity as revealed by neuroscience, followed by a very brief account on the rise of curiosity in humans.  Next he interviews a number of scientists such as Feeman Dyson and Brian May who are known for their curiosity on why they are curious.  And he ends the book with a chapter on why and how curiosity exists.

In this short, readable book, Mario Livio makes a decent case for curiosity being one of the defining characteristics of being human.  He also whets the reader's appetite for knowing more in regard to the exploration of the human mind and physiology.

Wise Science or Scientific Theology?

McLeish, Tom.  Faith and Wisdom in Science.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
        ISBN: 978-0-19-870261-0

Do you wonder about the divide between science and faith?  Are puzzled by when and how this chasm came about and if it permanent?  If so, Prof. Tom McLeish of Durham University (UK) has some news for you.  He sees the divide as more a issue of perception rather than fact.

Prof. McLeish opens the book with an examination of the "Clamour of Voices" that arise when trying to discover a working definition of "science."  He then guides the reader on a journey through the past looking at specific cases of "natural philosophy" beginning with a strange jelly, then Brownian motion, then a 13th century bishop studying the properties of light, Bede on the water cycle, and ending with a discussion on the reality of the mind conducted by a brother and sister in the 4th century A.D. In the rest of the book the author looks at how questions of creation, nature, chaos an order are discussed in the Old and New Testament of the Bible while also looking at how science tries to explain storms, comets, chaos and naturally arising order.  The climax of the book is a delving into the book of Job with an examination of questions raised about science.  The author finishes with a chapter on how to bring faith and science back together.

Tom McLeish has not written a polemic condemning those who hold differing beliefs.  Instead, if the reader is willing to listen to arguments from different viewpoints, he or she will find plenty of fodder for thought in Faith & Wisdom in Science.

Unready or Over-Counselled?

Roach, Levi.  AEthelred the Unready.  New Haven, CN: Yale UP, 2016.  ISBN: 9780300196290

 British history is full of strange figures.  Aethelred the Unready is one who may have received undeserved approbation by posterity.  At least that is the strategy Levi Roach follows in Aethelred the Unready.

In six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion, Levi Roach presses his case that Aethelred is more competent than portrayed in general histories.  Chapter one digs into his father's court, his mother's role in the court and the milieu of Aethelred's childhood.  Chapter 2 continues his childhood after his father's death, his brother's rule and death, and his ascension to the throne.  Chapters 3 through 6 covers his reign, digging into all possible sources of information (charters, The Chronicle, sermons, and various archival material, etc).  Roach lays the groundwork of his argument in the Introduction and then, in the Conclusion, he presents the fruit of his scholarship and argues that while Aethelred was not successful in combating Viking invasions, it was not because of incompetency of the king, but instead a combination of bad counsel, in-fighting at court, competent opponents, and sheer bad luck.  Ultimately, the reader need to look at the evidence and make up his/her mind regarding King Aethelred.

Did the FBI Bungle the Osage Murders Case?

Grann, David.  Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.  New
          York: Doubleday, 2017.  ISBN: 9780385534246

Are you looking of obscure murders not often examined today?  Or are you looking for incidents in American history that seem to be brushed under the rug.  In either case, you have hit upon a find.  Killers of the Flower Moon attempts to illuminate a tale out of American history of horror brought about by greed, jealousy, concealed ambition, not to mention corruption in  high places that helped to lay a base for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to grow into the behemoth that it is now.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, Grann opens with the terror gripping Mollie Burkhart, an Osage Indian, the middle of three sisters.  One sister is killed by a shot in the back of the head, another sister has her house blown up while she and her husband were sleeping, and Mollie's mother was likely poisoned.  Why did these murder's and numerous others happen?  Greed over oil headrights owned by the Osage Indians.  But the mystery lies in who inspired these assassinations.  And this is where the FBI (then known as the Bureau of Investigation) enters the picture.  Local officials were turning up nothing, neither had private eyes, so the government had been called in.  They managed to partially solve the situation, getting a few convictions and declaring victory.  But as the author reveals in the last few chapters, the BI's investigations never answered several key questions and murders still occurred after victory had been declared.

Most readers will enjoy the story despite the rabbit trails that the narrative wanders into upon occasion.  However, be prepared to be enraged over the greed and incompetence displayed by public officials during this case.