Picaresque History of Science

Rats, Lice and History 

by Hans Zinsser

But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses.   - Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice & History

Zinsser's book, published in 1935, can be read as a modern adaptation of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy. It provides the reader with a picaresque description of how typhus outbreaks have influenced human history. In the days before antibiotics, he issued a challenge against germs that is still relevant today: "Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world." The lance is rusting in the chimney corner and the dragons are all dead. The war against those ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice, and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and which fly and crawl with the birds, is about the only sporting event that has not been negatively impacted by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species.

Even though this book was written almost a century ago, it hasn't become any less interesting or funny. Hans Zinsser has created an eccentric view of history, rambling about rats, typhus, the Roman Empire, lice, and everything. You can't read it in one sitting, because you'll have to keep taking breaks to calm down from the experience. I liked the book because because I learned so much - this book is a classic microbiology textbook among other things. My favorite foonote was associated with a word I'd never heard -- it said, "If the reader does not know the meaning of this word, that is unfortunate." That gives you an inkling of what is in store for you if you choose to read this book.

Poem for Today

The Complete Poems 

by Thomas Hardy

The last thirty years of Thomas Hardy's life was devoted to poetry. During this time after he had eschewed novel-writing he wrote hundreds of poems. These poems spanned a variety of styles including: satires, love poems, lyrics, reveries, and songs. The topics also spanned a great number including some focused on the Wessex countryside where he set his well-known novels. The result of all this poetic creation is a collection that rivals that of the greatest poets in the English-speaking world. I would recommend this volume to all who revere fine poetry. 

Here is a poem for this Monday selected from this collection:

To A Lady

Offended by a Book of the Writer's

NOW that my page is exiled, doomed, maybe,

Never to press thy cosy cushions more,

Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,

Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:

Knowing thy natural receptivity,

I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,

My sombre image, warped by insidious heave

Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.

So be it. I have borne such. Let thy dreams

Of me and mine diminish day by day,

And yield their space to shine of smugger things;

Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams,

And then in far and feeble visitings,

And then surcease. Truth will be truth alway.

Thomas Hardy

Finding One's Self

Things We Lost to the Water 

by Eric Nguyen

“In America, Ben felt like a foreigner, too, but in a different way, He couldn't have explained it. In New Orleans, he couldn't have explained how he and his family got there. There was a boat, a wind led them this way, and, like pilgrims, they settled. Here, in Paris, there was some choice in the matter.”  

 ― Eric Nguyen, Things We Lost to the Water





When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.

Huong gradually comes to the realization that she would never see her spouse again. Her kids, Tuan and Binh, grow up in the absence of their absent father, plagued by a man and a nation locked in their memories and imaginations, as she struggles to come to terms with this loss. As they proceed, the three adjust to life in America in various ways: Tuan joins a neighborhood Vietnamese gang in an effort to feel more connected to his heritage; Huong falls in love with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new to the area; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted country and his developing gay sexuality. Before a disaster strikes the city they now call home and threatens to split them apart, their search for identification as individuals and as a family until a calamity strikes the city they now call home and forces them to immediately find a new way to join together and cherish the connections that bind, which threatens to rip them apart.

With this magnificent novel I have once again found one of my certain to be top ten reads of the new year. This book swept me away with the fascinating story of an immigrant mother and her two boys. Ben, in particular, impressed me as the center of the story - he changes, learning to swim (at about the center of the narrative), learning to accept his gay persona, and deciding to go to Paris and become a writer. 

 Demonstrating a marvelous prose style and an ability to link together the characters' lives with details that held my interest, this first novel was wonderful and moving all the way to the last page. I immediately wanted to read it again and that is always the sign of a great read.

Divine Inspiration

Saint Joan 

by George Bernard Shaw

"The most inevitable dramatic conception, then, of the nineteenth century is that of a perfectly naive hero upsetting religion, law and order in all directions, and establishing in their palce the unfettered action of Humanity . . ." (GBS writing in The Perfect Wagnerite)





In Saint Joan Shaw attempted, and perhaps achieved, a masterpiece based on this conception. The play is a perfect example of the hero as victim transformed into savior. Shaw has developed his most enduring representation of the Life Force in Saint Joan, a protagonist who aspires to lead the common people by being a person of outstanding character and vision. Shaw's Saint Joan is witty and self-assured; she follows reason and common sense but does not conform to the stereotype of a religious martyr. Saint Joan is regarded as Shaw's only tragedy, although having many funny passages. However, it has also been described as a comedy with one tragic scene.

In the first scene the Robert de Baudricourt ridicules Joan, but his servant feels inspired by her words. Eventually de Baudricourt begins to feel the same sense of inspiration, and gives his consent to Joan. The servant enters at the end of the scene to exclaim that the hens, who had been unable to lay eggs, have begun to lay eggs again. De Baudricourt interprets this as a sign from God of Joan's divine inspiration. It is with this simple beginning that the spirited spirituality of the seemingly innocent young Joan begins to take over the play to the point where she is leading the French troops against the British. Her voice exhibits a lively purity that is augmented by an unlimited imagination.

Several values clash in Saint Joan's universe. The church is envious of its ability to rule the world. Although Joan's deed is mostly individualistic or Protestant in nature, England (Warwick) and France (Charles) are envious of their patriotic might. She supports the individual's right to define God whatever they see fit. In this historical incident, France is the fortunate beneficiary of Joan's whim and her military prowess. The play's underlying message is that there is no room for love or charity in Joan's world. The Catholic Church and English and French politicians, at best, are about shaky ideals like morality and patriotism and posture. I would visit the Inquisitor replies, "I would go to the stake myself. . . .”

Shaw's play features Joan as an outsider who seems lonely only when she is among those who voiced the common opinions of the day. Her multi-faceted personality is hidden behind her single-minded pursuit of a vision of god's design for her life. Saint Joan is a tragedy without villains. The tragedy exists in a view of human nature where the incredulity of intolerance of both religious and secular forces battle each other. It is made even more interesting by Shaw's epilogue that brings the play into the current time and provides an opportunity for Shaw to discuss the play with the audience. Whether this play is truly great or almost great it is definitely Shaw at his dramatic best.

An Intricate Road Trip

The Lincoln Highway 

by Amor Towles

“Wouldn’t it have been wonderful, thought Woolly, if everybody’s life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s. It would just fit snugly in its very own, specially designed spot, and in so doing, would enable the whole intricate picture to become complete.”   ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

I previously enjoyed both The Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow, but Amor Towles has succeeded in surpassing both of those novels with The Lincoln Highway. It is a road story with four young men exploring America and finding themselves. While these four are at the center of the novel it literally explodes with characters, most of whom are fascinating. By the time an older black man named Ulysses arrives on the scene and bonds with young Billy I was hooked and found it hard to put the book down.

In June 1954, the warden of the juvenile work farm where Emmett Watson, then 18 years old, had recently completed a fifteen-month sentence for involuntary homicide, drove him back to Nebraska. Emmett plans to travel to California with his brother Billy, age 8, so they can begin a new life there after losing their mother and father, respectively, and the family farm to bank foreclosure. However, as the warden pulls away, Emmett notices that two of his work farm friends had snuck inside the car's trunk. They have come up with a completely new strategy for Emmett's future, one that will send them all on a perilous voyage in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. The suspense builds as the journeys of the main characters head toward a denouement that is worth the more than five hundred pages it takes to get there.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel was more than entertaining with his multi-layered literary styling while providing an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

An Idealistic Doctor

The Good Doctor 

by Damon Galgut

“The funny thing is, I don't care too much. You think you love something so badly, but when it's gone you find out you don't care so much.”   ― Damon Galgut, The Good Doctor







The Good Doctor was an entertaining book with fascinating lessons from the experiences of the titular character. It was a story of hope and misery, love and rejection, political success and defeat in the shifting reality of the post-apartheid South African steppes. The well wrought narrative is fleshed out in sparse prose. 

The newly hired, spotless, idealistic doctor, Laurence Waters, is greeted by Frank Eloff, a burned-out spouse, doctor, and person, on his first day on staff. They reside in two different psychic realms despite sharing a subpar bedroom and doing medical duties in an understaffed clinic that the new political administration ignored. Frank's pessimistic evaluation of Laurence is that "he won't endure." Their story and the denouement held my interest throughout the novel.