Experimental Blog #6

Comments on 2 Books


"Perfect Rigor" - A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century by Masha Gessen

Besides what it says in the subtitle, this book can also be interesting for many other reasons, such as, education in the former Soviet Union, soviet society in general, life for Jews, especially mathematical geniuses, in the Soviet Union, the mathematical problems that concerned the "mathematical elite" in that country and elsewhere, the mathematicians themselves, and even anybody's personal history and educational problems anywhere.
The author, Masha Gessen, evidently very excellent in mathematics herself, came to America as a young girl with her parents. However, it seems she has since returned to Moscow. The author has written, edited, or translated several other books, some of which I have looked into, but this book is the only one that I decided to read and finished.


"Listen Up, Mr. President" - Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do by Helen Thomas and Craig Crawford

The author, Helen Thomas, is called the "dean of the White House press corps", having started as a White House correspondent in 1960. She is familiar to many millions of TV viewers, and is usually in the front row at president's news conferences.
Besides many other things, I learned about their 3 presidential models, that is, the "Madisonion" model, who lets congress lead policy. William Howard Taft is presented as one of the last and best examples of this model. The "Hamiltonian" model, who is described as "heroic" and who rises above political parties and leads, or tries to lead, depending on public opinion. The authors say that all the presidents since John F. Kennedy are more or less of this model. And the "Jeffersonian" model, who is the leader of his party and pursues its goals in a way most resembling a parlamentary government.
I also learned about "signing statements". This means that when a president signs a bill passed by congress into law, he says, and writes, that there are certain parts that he does not agree with, and he will enforce them only under certain circumstances, or even not at all. Although the practise goes back almost 200 years, when some presidents felt some wording needed to be clarified, it eventually became a way for presidents to avoid confronting congress with a direct veto. "Signing statements" seem to have become the primary way that modern presidents have become so comparatively powerful.