Cheesy Combustabules

Tunick, Michael H.  The Science of Cheese.  New York: OUP, 2014.

Do you eat cheese?  Depending upon where you live, you are likely to eat some sort of cheese.  And the variety of cheese is staggering!  France alone has 400 varieties.  Take a look at the following link of the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPN3KTtrnZM

  - for some of the variety of cheese eaten in England.

Michael Tunick (a research chemist at USDA) provides a brief history of cheese alongside an examination of the cheese-making process with the chemistry that creates the cheese you crave.  The chapters consider various cheese types such as cheddar, surface mold ( Camembert and Brie), or cheeses with eyes (Swiss) along with discussions of texture, amino acids, aroma, and ketones.  In other words, the author slips in the unique chemistry of the types of cheese while letting the reader enjoy the process.  

But chemistry and cheese descriptions are not all that The Science of Cheese has to offer.  Michael Tunick provides statistics (did you know that the Greeks manage to eat more cheese than anyone else? -  68.4 lbs. per person - p. 225), nutritional information, odd facts ( Edam cheese was used as a cannon ball in a naval battle in 1841 - p. 129), and even the worth of processed cheese. Plus each chapter opens with a cheese related quote and the author includes a Periodic Table of Cheeses!

So if the reader is interested in cheese, food chemistry, or just something different, give The Science of Cheese a nibble.

Greeks, Greeks, and More Greeks.

Waterfield, Robin.  Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece.  New York:
          Oxford University Press, 2018.  ISBN: 978-0-19-023430-0

Ancient Greece is a perennial topic that crops up in history, literature, and science.  Ancient Greece was the lynch pin of interactions from the East and the West. toward each other.  However, most readers do not grasp the role ancient Greece played in the formation of modern society.  In Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens, Robin Waterfield seeks to remedy that lack of context.

Robin Waterfield opens with a discussion of Archaic Greece - in other words, the Greece before Homer where the megalithic tombs that earlier archeologists thought belonged to Agamemnon and Odysseus and their ilk.  He covers the founding of Athens and Sparta and the growth of the aristocracy. Then there are chapters on the Persian Wars.  The next major period of Greek history  is the Classical Time with the Peloponnesian War, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle along with the Western Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily.  The Classical Period ends with the conquest of Greece by Phillip and Alexander of Macedon which ushers in the Hellenistic Period.  This is the time of Greek expansion across the former Persian empire all the way to India and south into Egypt.  The time of the Successors is a specialty of Waterfield who really shines in highlighting how this period really set the stage for Greek thought and culture flooding the world. 

In Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens, Waterfield presents a very readable political history of ancient Greece while also providing chapters on Greek religion, art, literature and social constructs in context.  It is appreciated that the Hellenistic period got equal treatment to the Archaic and Classical periods.

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.