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Review: Shadrach in the Furnace

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Shadrach in the Furnace by Robert Silverberg My rating: 0 of 5 stars I came across this book completely by chance, and I decided to read it because I was intrigued by two attributes. The first was the title, and the second the fact that is a post-dated science fiction novel written in the seventies about 2012. In the book by 2012 humanity had undergone a catastrophic crisis and the remaining 2 billion people are ruled by a single dictator, the Mongolian leader Genkins II Mao IV Khan. He is incredibly old and he is kept in good health by the unceasing efforts of his personal physician Shardach Mordecai. Shadrach has a bunch of electronic implants, wirelessly linked to the Khan that provide him with real time biometric information, so he can monitor his sole patient continuously. The whole world is plagued by an infectious disease called the rot, that everyone gets sooner or later, with the exception of the ruling elite in Ulan Batar who have access to...
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Review: Perdido Street Station

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Perdido Street Station by China Miéville My rating: 4 of 5 stars I knew it would be difficult to find something like The City & the City but I was hoping a book from the same author would approximate it. It didn't - this is a very different book - but it has charms of its own. It is definitely a book that rewards the patient. The world described in the book a more dystopic version of Terry Pratchett's Ankh Morpork. Instead of the standard fantasy species, the inhabitants are grotesque caricatures reminiscent of the creatures in Mos Eisley from Star wars. Living in a real dystopic world myself, I find little comfort reading about fictional ones. To make things worse the original story lines in the book appear weak and trite. What kept me reading was China Mieville's masterful command of the language and his powerful imagery. After about 250 pages of nearly forced reading, a novel and unexpected story line arises and this one is grippi...
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Review: Dersu the Trapper

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Dersu the Trapper by Vladimir Arsenyev My rating: 4 of 5 stars Years ago I watched Kurosawa's movie Dersu Uzala and it made a tremendous impression on me. It remains to this day one of my favorite movies. It was much later that I found out that the movie was based on a book and that the book is a true story. "Dersu the Trapper" is the story of a Russian military officer who befriends a native of the Taiga when he is out surveying the largely unmapped expanses of the Russian far East, around the year 1905. The adventures described in the book are quite remarkable, but the author's matter of fact style makes them believable and approachable. The author does not try to create a literary masterpiece and only allows himself a few flourishes of the pen, but he describes his experiences with feeling and authenticity. He is not afraid to talk about his shortcomings and mistakes that he made during the expedition, and how Dersu helped him ou...
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Review: Probability with Martingales

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Probability with Martingales by David Williams My rating: 5 of 5 stars There is a large gap between classical and modern (measure theoretic) probability theory in that the later seems so much harder. However, without measure theory probability theory lacks a solid theoritical basis and leads to unsurmantouble problems in tryingto define stochastic processes. I found this to be the best instructional book for those who want to transition from classical to the measure theoretic probability. I am not sure it is the best introductory book for measure theory and Lebesgue integration although the author offers a complete exposition in the first chapters. It is however an excellent exposition of how to apply these results in probability theory. By reading the book and doing the exercises the reader can gain intuition and start formulating probabilistic problems in this framework. View all my reviews
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Review: Electrodynamics and Classical Theory of Fields and Particles

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Electrodynamics and Classical Theory of Fields and Particles by Asım O. Barut My rating: 5 of 5 stars An excellent book that explores the extent to which one can take Field Theory and Electrodynamics within a non-quantum mechanical framework. The book starts with a very comprehensive exposition of (quasi) axiomatic relativity and the relativistic formulation of field theory. Although a classical treatise this book is extremely helpful to the student of Quantum Field Theory, since the methodology of deriving gauge-invariant field equations are essentially identical in the classical and quantum setting. View all my reviews
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Review: The Comedians

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The Comedians by Graham Greene My rating: 3 of 5 stars The story takes place in Haiti in the 60s during the brutal dictatorship of Duvalier. The story is centered around an aged white man, who returns to a devastated Haiti in desperate search for a place to call home. The book's main character and narrator, Mr. Brown, was born in Monaco and has lived more of less like a drifter and a fortune hunter. When he inherited a hotel in Haiti from his semi-estranged mother he finally had a place of his own for the first time. Duvalier's regime drove away tourism and his hotel languished. Nevertheless, with nowhere else to go he returns to the island and stubbornly tries to make a home of the hotel, and a family of his lover, who is the wife of a diplomat. On the boat there, he meets Major Jones, the Smiths, and some other characters, who are to comprise the cast of "the Comedians". The book is of course not a comedy, and it is very sparsely ...
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Review: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino My rating: 5 of 5 stars An amazing and truly original book. The hero is the reader. The reader starts reading a book and just when the plot begins to thicken, the story changes and another story begins. The reader tries to recover the original story but soon becomes entangled in the new one. This goes on and the reader is following a path of unfinished stories, each fascinating and each written in completely different style. This book is a true masterpiece! View all my reviews
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