Book Reviews: NonFiction


Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos

This book deals with the numeric counterpart of illiteracy which is so prevalent in our supposedly techno-savvy society. (Paulos coined the word 'innumeracy' based on the word 'illiteracy' just in case you didn't get that from the title).

Paulos has a wealth of of good ideas for improving mathematics education in the schools. In addition, he has put together a lot of interesting mathematical exercises for the reader in an effort to better acquaint him or her with the relationship between everyday quantities like tens and hundreds and the more unfamiliar millions and billions.

The book also covers some elementary statistics using examples from cards and dice. In short, it's a great book.

I became acquainted with Paulos's writings from another book I picked up earlier called A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper in which he discusses everything from voting schemes to space-station funding. I highly recommend these books.

Incidentally, I credit a high-school teacher named Garth Gooch with opening my eyes to math. If it hadn't been for Gooch, I might well be as numerophobic and suspicious of science in general as a lot of people today are. (Witness the Kansas Board of Education, for example, or the radical environmentalists who give that movement such a bad name). Still, I never did go as far in math as I wanted to simply because I got started so late. Books like this have helped me to overcome many of the limitations I've been subject to as a result.

Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age and Other Books by Jimmy Carter

This is the first book I've read by Jimmy Carter. Written in 1992, it tells the story of his first political campaign in 1962, exactly thirty years before. Running for a state senate seat, Carter encountered a level of corruption and blatant disregard for voting rights that we have a hard time imagining today. This radically changed during the next few years, resulting in the extension of political power to African Americans for the first time.

In the 1990s, Carter notes, we are again at a major turning point as we struggle to find ways to extend economic power to African Americans and other minorities in order to lift them out of the poverty that has overwhelmed them for generations. In an appendix at the end of the book, Carter describes the work the Carter Center is doing in Atlanta to bring prosperity to areas where urban blight has been allowed to fester for much too long.

The book captures the flavor of the era quite well (at least as far as I can tell from movies and news clips I have viewed of that time period), but Carter is able to see through the eyes of those whom he opposed, as well, and I felt like he gave them a pretty fair hearing despite his dislike for most of what they stood for.

Carter has written several other interesting books, as well. Others that I can recommend are Always a Reckoning and Other Poems, Carter's first book of poetry, which contains illustrations by his 16-year-old granddaughter and some very insightful if sometimes amateuristic poems, Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith, a collection of sunday school lessons Carter has taught at his hometown church in Plains, and A Government As Good As Its People, which is a collection of Carter's speeches as governor of Georgia, a candidate for the US presidency, and as president.

What attracted me to Always a Reckoning was the genuineness and personal nature of the poems. They lack the urbane and often incomprehensible flavor of much contemporary poetry, which could be construed as a negative thing but, for me, is mostly a positive. (In fact, in a recent televised interview discussing the book, Carter mentioned how difficult it was to convince his publisher to allow him to publish poetry. What finally convinced him to change his mind was when Carter clipped out a poem from the New Yorker and sent it to him, explaining that if such a poem was good enough to be in print then his poems certainly ought to be. Having read many New Yorker poems myself, I had to laugh).

I felt I really got to know Carter as a person through these poems which address issues like family, home, and standing up for what you believe in in a very personal and, thus, powerful way.

I'm not a very religious person these days, but I do have a spiritual side which I try to nurture. Carter's sunday school lessons (in Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith) gave me yet another glimpse into the mind and heart of this great man. He's willing to talk frankly about struggles he's had with envy and the inability to forgive. I was genuinally moved by a story he told about a journalist who had used Carter's stolen notebook to help Ronald Reagan prepare for the 1980 presidential debates. It took him many years to forgive the man, but eventually he was able to do so. He also discusses his daughter's decision to leave the Baptist church due to some members' tendency toward primitive beliefs on the subject of equal rights for women and minorities, using this as an example to highlight problems that sometimes result when we use (or abuse) holy scripture to push our own often selfish agendas. Many parents would be embarrassed to acknowledge that their children aren't following the same path they are. Carter, on the other hand, pays tribute here to his daughter's willingness to think for herself.

A Government as Good as its People is a collection of speeches Carter gave as governor of Georgia and while campaining for the presidency. His first inaugural speech is also included. These speeches contain many insights into the Carter's personality both as a politician and as a man. I enjoyed the moving tributes to his parents, wife, and children that are to be found scattered here and there throughout the book. I believe the book is out of print now, but get a copy from your local library for an educational look back at the 1970s and earlier. Several of the speeches contained interesting analyses of the Democratic and Republican parties throughout the twentieth century, as well.

Why Not The Best? is an autobiography of Jimmy Carter's life from his boyhood through his service in the Navy and on to the presidency. I hadn't realized until I read this book how well educated in the sciences President Carter is. He was active in pioneering nuclear submarines for the Navy and taught mathematics and physics to men who later manned and maintained these systems.

Incidentally, in Innumeracy (see above), John Allen Paulos relates a brief anecdote about a presidential candidate in the 1980 elections who asked his staff to research how to convert the fraction 2/7ths into a decimal value for one of his kids who needed to know for a homework assignment. I can bet it wasn't Carter (not by a long shot) but I can hardly imagine that Reagan (the obvious candidate for such an anecdote) still had kids young enough to be in school in 1980. Perhaps it was someone in the primaries, I don't know. Anyway, I thought it was an amusing story.

Borderlines: a journey in Thailand and Burma by Charles Nicholl, 1989

It is very unfortunate that this book is out of print. Still, if you're interested, it is likely your public library has a copy. In fact, we discovered the book at our own library in Herndon, Virginia.

Amy picked the book up shortly after we returned from a two-week trip to Thailand early in the year 2000. Written by a British journalist, it tells the story of his visit to Thailand and the many interesting characters (both Thai and Western) he met on his journey. I can't say how accurate his depictions of the beliefs and life view of Thais/Buddhists are (my sense is that they are fairly accurate but, perhaps, faulty in certain minor respects), but I think they are valuable, and the book is very much worth reading if you are contemplating a trip to that country (which I recommend)!

Earth Movements/Jewed I-Hoi by Ofelia Zepeda, 1989

Another World Right in Your Back Yard

If you live in or near Tucson or Phoenix, AZ, you may not realize that there is another world right in your back yard - one that is very worth your while to explore.

Ofelia Zepeda and others of the Tohono O'odham tribe have spent several years pioneering the art of writing in their native language, and the results are spectacular. This bilingual CD comes with a beautifully designed booklet containing all the O'odham and English texts so that you can follow along as she reads. There are some 16 texts about varied topics, including personal experiences and historical and tribal lore. Each is read aloud in both O'odham and English. If you don't know much about this desert tribe, these poems will educate you in addition to edifying you in that way that only true poetry can.

Zepeda's voice is intoxicating whether she's reading in English or O'odham. O'odham is her native language, so her English is slightly tinged with an accent that is reminiscent of desert rain or maybe that warm, safe feeling that comes from being part of a close-knit family.

This is a great introduction to her work which appears in several volumes of Sun Tracks, a literary series published by the University of Arizona. It offers a window into the worldview of the Desert People that countless volumes of dusty old anthropological tomes could never quite conjure up.

If, after listening to this CD, you find yourself interested in knowing more about the O'odham language as I did, Zepeda has written a grammar of O'odham (or Papago as it is also known) which is also available from Amazon. It is entitled A Papago Grammar and it is a useful book and very easy to use since it is written by a linguist who has a good sense of how to present linguistic materials.

Zepeda's poetry and prose is printed in both English and O'odham in other books. Click here to see what else is available.

Mississippi Solo: A River Quest by Eddy L. Harris, 1988

If you're the kind of traveler I am, you like to get off the beaten path and see something besides strip malls filled with Duncan Donuts and Exxon stations. You'd probably enjoy Eddie Harris's story of his journey by canoe from Lake Itasca, Minnesota, the headwaters of the Mississipi River to New Orleans where it spills into the Gulf of Mexico.

This book lacks a lot of the flowery language of more celebrated travelogues, but it more than makes up for this in its simple and straightforward use of contemporary American English. It reads so smoothly and effortlessly that it's like sitting around a campfire at night listening to a friend tell you a story.

Harris's descriptions of the towns that dot the Mississipi make me eager to get out on the road and explore places like Saint Paul, and Hannibal, Missouri and Vicksburg, Mississipi. I think the book may be out of print now, but you can probably find a copy at your local library.