Misexplaining Business

O'Rourke, P. J.  None of My Business: P.J. Explains Money, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, 
         Liabilities, and Why He's Not Rich and Neither Are You.  New York: Atlantic Monthly Press,
        2018.  ISBN: 978-0-8021-2848-5

P. J. O'Rourke is known for "humorous" writings on a wide variety of topics.  In None of My Business, P. J.tries to provide a off-kilter look at money, economy, mutant capitalism, the digital economy, and consumption.

 P. J. O'Rourke opens the book with the admission that he does not know how get wealth.  But he tries to have fun with discussing economics as a blood sport that he enjoys as a spectator.  He then proceeds to have three chapters under the heading "How I Learned Economics by Watching People Try to Kill Each Other"; four chapters under "Money and Banking"; three chapters under "Mutant Capitalism"; twelve chapters under "The Transition"; six chapters under the heading "Consumption"; and finishing with seven chapters under "Random Walk".

Basically P. J. O'Rourke has taken everything including the kitchen sink that he thinks he knows about money, economics, consumers and the like, stirs it together, and hung it out to dry.  So the reader's enjoyment will depend upon their interest.  But the chapter comparing the cost of a middle class lifestyle from the 1950's with today is worth the price of the book.  So, if you like P. J. O'Rourke or humorous examination of economics, you may like this book.

Ian Fleming, Why a Gold Typewriter?

Fleming, Fergus.  The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming's James Bond Letters.
          London: Bloomsbury, 2015.  ISBN: 978-1-4088-6547-7

"My name is Bond, James Bond." That iconic phrase has been heard in every James Bond movie and spoken in most of the books when James Bond introduces himself..  And in a way, The Man With The Golden Typewriter is an introduction to Ian Fleming's voice as he was writing James Bond.

Fergus Fleming has done the James Bond aficionado a huge favor by collecting the letters written by Ian Fleming or to Ian Fleming that relate to the James Bond books and the other books he wrote from 1952 to 1964.  The book is arranged with 17 chapters (one for each book Fleming wrote plus chapters regarding guns, correspondence with Raymond Chandler, and notes on Americanism in Bond tales) that discusses the book, major events that happened during the time of correspondence, and them the letters themselves.  At the end of the book is a listing of titles Fleming wrote and a list of James Bond movies current as of the time the book was published.

The book title comes from the fact that Ian Fleming acquired a gold-plated typewriter after he sold Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel (pp. 14, 16).  It is the little nuggets of knowledge found in the letters that make the book fun to read!  So reader does not need to be a James Bond or Ian Fleming scholar to appreciate the information found in this book.  If you enjoy James Bond, you are likely to enjoy The Man With The Golden Typewriter.

  

The Battle of Poitiers, 1356 A.D.

Witzel, Morgen, and Marilyn Livingstone.  The Black Prince and the Capture of a King, Poitiers
           1356.  Oxford: Casemate Publishers, 2018.  ISBN: 978-1-61200-451-8

During the One Hundred Years War between England and France, three battles stand out - Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt - as great English victories over larger French forces.  When Edward, the Prince of Wales was 16, he stood in the front lines at Crecy.   Ten years later, now known as the Black Prince, Edward led English and Gascony forces on a series of extended raids in southern and central France.   The battle of Poitiers resulted in the capture of the French king and temporary ascendance for England.

Witzel and Livingstone provide an excellent sense of context and importance to the campaigns that lead to the battle of Poitiers.  They carefully set the stage for the battle with a look at opposing forces, the terrain, the fighting the preceded the battle, and then a look at the result of the English victory. 

Witzel and Livingstone provide as much detail as is available in regard to the battle itself..  They look at the layout of the terrain, the position of forces, the way that French attacks developed and the counterattacks of the English. They discuss and speculate where details are sparse, but are careful to cite what sources are available while examining the validity of those sources. 

If the reader is looking for a readable yet scholarly examination of the Battle of Poitiers in context, The Black Prince and the Capture of a King is the book to read.

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!