Experimental Blog #26

Comments on 2 books

"Franklin Pierce" by Michael F. Holt

The author of this book, possibly the briefest in "The American Presidents" series, writes that although Franklin Pierce was one of the "most amiable and congenial" and personally charming men to ever become an American president, he served from 1853 to 1857, he is usually ranked by historians as one of the 6 to 8 worst because of "his obsession with preserving the unity of the Democratic Party." He did what he did by consistently catering to, or appeasing the southern Democratic slaveholders. Franklin Pierce was from New Hampshire. However, could the Democratic Party, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia slaveholder; and later identified, almost to the present day, with the politics of Andrew Jackson, a Tennessee slaveholder, really have been expected to do anything to limit the expansion of slavery?
Another book in this series claimed that Zachary Taylor, who was a southern Whig, and who was inaugarated in 1849 and died about 20 months later in 1850, was America's last chance to avoid civil war, because Zachary Taylor, although a large scale slaveholder, was sincerely opposed to the expansion of slavery to the new territories.
However, would northerners have accepted a serious and firm enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Laws, including the suppression of the famous Underground Railroad? And could Zachary Taylor, had he lived, have persuaded enough southern slaveholders to accept that there would be no more new slave states?
"And so the war came," said Abraham Lincoln years later, in 1865, when the war was almost over.


"The Cave Painters" - Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists by Gregory Curtis

For about 1000 generations, or about 20,000 years, as far as we know; that is, from about 32,000 to 10,000 years ago; anatomically modern Europeans created an artistic record of cave paintings and engravings. Almost 350 such caves have been discovered so far, and except for a "widely scattered few", they are all located in southern France and northern Spain.
These cave paintings and engravings reveal the abundant large animal world in which their creators lived. The animals are represented in great, but fluctuating numbers; sometimes in "huge vivid herds" of horses, reindeer, bison, mammoths, cows, bulls, bears, and even a rhinoceros.

Experimental Blog #25

Comments on "Can't Remember What I Forgot - The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research" by Sue Halpern and "The Male Brain" - A Breakthrough Understanding of How Men and Boys Think by Louann Brizendine

Both of these books seem to be exceptional examples of the incredible developements in the neurosciences of recent decades.
The first author, Sue Halpern, has a doctorate degree and once taught at a prestigious medical college, but she is more known for her writing as an educated "outsider" to science or medicine. Her whole book is a very detailed account of research into the treatment for Alzheimer's desease. She could be described as obsessed with Alzheimer's desease to the point of being tedious, but she can be excused because this desease apparently runs in her family. Besides that, her book is none the less interesting to people with other neurological deficits.
The author of the second book, Louann Brizendine, is a practicing medical doctor, or psychiatrist, and a professor of clinical psychiatry. Her first book, "The Female Brain", was a "New York Times" best seller. Although, apparently, it did not escape some criticism.
All that I will say about her second book, "The Male Brain", is that it was similar to taking very strong medicine, or receiving very severe treatment for those of us with unlucky neurological deficits. But it was a considerable, or at least significant, help; in spite of having to recover from her medicine, or treatment.

Experimental Blog #24

Comments on 2 books

"A Mountain of Crumbs" - A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova

Elena Gorokhova's book comes recommended by 10 accomplished authors{counting Sergei Krushchev}. It provides many, both first and second hand, vivid and often charming descriptions of Russian-Soviet life. I also found the extensive comments, or reviews, of Russian classical authors to be very educational.
Although I could not really believe the author remembered her own childhood and young adult dreams of long ago as well as she describes, it didn't seem to matter very much.
The title, "A Mountain of Crumbs", comes from a second hand description of coping with the extreme scarcity of food in the early years of the Soviet Union, but it seems that Elena Gorokhova uses it to describe her own experience and opinion of the artificiality and pretending of official Soviet life. But how basically different was that life, or society, from other similar places or times?


"The Relentless Revolution - A History of Capitalism" by Joyce Appleby

This book is described as "a crowning achievement" and a "capstone to a distinguished career" and in other glowing terms by some of the author's equally distinguished colleagues. It certainly was very educational and clarifying on many pages, but on other pages the language and style seemed, perhaps, supercilious or obfuscating or, at least somewhat "trendy" or "closed to outsiders".
Since "Capitalism" is not really a creed as "Communism" or "Marxism" are, or were, perhaps even the basic thesis is debatable. That is, does "Capitalism" really have a history? Or, at least, what kind of history can "Capitalism" have outside the minds of a historically recent "specialized few"?
At least many people, both liberals and conservatives, apparently agree that since the end of the Soviet Union{if not actually several years earlier} we are living in a "new", or different era.

Experimental Blog #23

Comments on "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" - How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps - and What We Can Do About It by Lise Eliot

I feel so amazed and dumbfounded by the continuing scientific developements of the last 25 years, or so; and with the most complicated, or even mysterious, neurosciences among those leading the way; that I have decided to pass up making any more comments in this blog about this book. I don't really have anything to add to the above subtitle of "Pink Brain, Blue Brain."