Experimental Blog #17

Comments on 2 books

"Chances Are" - Adventures in Probability by Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan

For the most part, this book was for me very intriguing, thought provoking, and entertaining. The scope of the subjects that it touched upon was amazing. However, it is difficult for me to say very much in detail because the book was often somewhat, or more than somewhat, beyond my understanding.
It seems that our brains are constantly looking for patterns, order, or predictability in a more fundamentally patternless, disordered, and unpredictable world.


"The Last Days of the Romanovs - Tragedy at Ekaterinburg" by Helen Rappaport

The Soviet period of Russian history, about 71 to 73 years, is, as yet, far from being completely explained, but this book is an excellent first step at the very heart of the subject. The author's earnest attempt to unravel and describe Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's relationship to the massacre of the Romanov family and 4 others with them is very thorough and persuasive; and her detailed account of the last 14 days is, if not true, at least seems to be something very similar to what actually happened.
Helen Rappaport shows how Lenin knew all about the execution of all 11 people well in advance of the event, and allowed it to happen. And that he certainly would have executed the Tsar and Tsaritsa under any circumstances. Lenin was, at the time, very overburdened with many other matters, and the fate of the Romanov family and their household staff was of little concern to him.
The author also mentions that the three most active and influential party members who brought about the massacre; namely Yakov Sverdlov, Fillip Goloshchekin, and Yakov Yurovsky, were of Jewish origins; and that this generated much anti-Semitic commentary for several decades. The author seems to consider the importance of the Jewish backgrounds of these three men as only a coincidence.
Finally, as much as I appreciate the author's work, I don't think that she was very well informed, or informative, about permafrost{she wrote that there was permafrost in the Ekaterinburg region} or adrenaline{she referred to adrenaline to describe both sides of the massacre}, but I did enjoy her use of the word 'inscrutable', which I think I remember she used 3 times.