Marisa Guerin PhD - January 11, 2018
Without any attempt to write detailed reviews (unless asked by someone) here are some of the books I've found interesting in recent months. All over the map in terms of genre...
> SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind and HOMO DEUS: A Brief History of Tomorrow, both by Yuval Noah Harari -- bracing, stimulating. He outruns his data often, but they are really very interesting reads.
> HOMEGOING by Yaa Gyasi -- beautiful novel tracing the generations from slavers on the Ivory Coast in 1700s.
> NOW: The Physics of Time, by Richard A. Muller -- lots of physics, and a fascinating proposal of "now" as the expanding time part of the expanding timespace universe.
> HILLBILLY ELEGY: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance -- I was interested in this story. Evokes compassion.
> REALITY IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS: The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelli -- Physics again. Not something I master, but something I am interested in contemplating, to the degree I can wrap my mind around it.
> STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel -- Interesting story set in a post-pandemic devastated world.
> Trilogy: THE THREE BODY PROBLEM; THE DARK FOREST; DEATH'S END, by Cixin Liu -- an epic, mind-blowing sci-fi work spanning 400 years as humans face an impending invasion. Sometimes slow in book two, but always amazing. And interesting to notice the writing style of a Chinese writer. For example, no swashbuckling frontier hero...
> THE INEVITABLE: Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces that will Shape our Future, by Kevin Kelly -- really good way to expand my boomer-generation awareness of what the implications are for the technologies already with us.
> SPAIN IN OUR HEARTS: Americans in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Adam Hochschild -- Good writer and a heart-rending story that my own relatives lived through, tragedies and all - war is horrible, and this one was especially brutal, on both sides.
