Short Book Reviews: Volume I

The Creative Act: Rubin, The Drunkard's Walk: Mlodinow, [Daily] Shakespeare: Esiri, Monster of Florence: Preston, Encountering Mystery: Allison, As a Driven Leaf: Steinberg

1. The Creative Act: A Way of Being by: Rick Rubin

2. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by: Leonard Mlodinow

3. Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year compiled by: Allie Esiri

4. The Monster of Florence by: Douglas Preston

5. Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age by: Dale C. Allison Jr.

6. As a Driven Leaf by: Milton Steinberg

I started this blog in June of 2016. For those of you that may have read the long saga of my startup and the resultant lawsuit, the whole of 2015 and 2016 was my “dark night of the soul”. I was fighting and paying for a lawsuit while trying to rebuild my career, and sometimes wondering whether I even had a “career”. I tried just getting a job, which would have clearly been the smart thing to do, but all of my efforts in that direction always left a bad taste in my mouth for reasons I’ve never been able to entirely articulate, but probably had to do with some deep character flaw. 

I was trying to start a new business, but that wasn’t going very well (due to still other flaws). When combined with the overall sense of professional freefall and existential crisis everything was on the table. (Except getting a job apparently.) So with nothing else going particularly well I decided to start a blog.

We’re now seven and a half years on from that beginning. I have written (and recorded to a podcast feed) 366 entries. Enough for every day of the year even if it’s a leap year like 2024. There are definitely some clunkers in there, but there are also a lot of really good posts I'm very proud of and even a handful of truly great pieces. 

It was apparent at some point in 2023 that I was running out of steam. In large part this came about from the fact that somewhere along the way, despite my early failures, I had in fact ended up with a thriving business. In 2023 I was making the transition from it being me and my partner mostly working for one big client, to having many clients and several employees. As you imagine this was time consuming. And I had been doing my blog/newsletter/podcast for a long time. It wasn’t a perfect storm, but it was a storm.

In an attempt to inject some life back into my writing I tried a bunch of different things. Some were good, but some made me run out of steam even faster. (I would put my Patheos column into that latter camp.) 

As we go into 2024 it’s clear that something needs to change, or perhaps more accurately it’s just time to acknowledge that things have changed, and make peace with that. My business continues to take up more and more of my attention. I’m hoping to eventually transition to a place where I have hired the right people and created the right systems for the business to run itself, but at the moment I’m in the middle of that transition. The instant where it’s teetering on the edge of the next level, and I’m standing on my tippy-toes trying to both push it up over the edge while simultaneously keeping it from falling back down and giving me a concussion.¹ 

So what does all this mean vis-a-vis the blog? I’m not 100% sure. I’m reasonably confident I’ll continue to review books. It’s a good exercise even if I’m just doing it for myself. Though as you can see from the late date of this episode, the new title, and the lack of an eschatological review. I’m dialing things back here as well (or at least experimenting). Though part of the delay can also be ascribed to coming down with a moderately severe case of COVID about a week ago just as I was trying to finish things up.

So, as long as I’m continuing to do reviews I’m pretty sure that some of those books, or something else that happens is going to inflame me to the point where I’ll have to post something. On the flip side from reviewing books there’s writing books, and I still feel that I might have a book or two in me.

Who knows? It’s always possible that the lack of pressure will be exactly the thing to give me all the mojo I need. It does sometimes work that way. 

It’s definitely not over, but I do feel the need to make some sort of, as yet undefined, pivot. But in the extremely unlikely event that this is the end I’d like to thank every last one of my readers: everyone who commented, emailed, liked, or explained to me at great length how dumb I was. I’m particularly grateful to my patreons who should have already got a longer and more detailed version of this message. 

In any case, that’s enough introspection (self-pity?) for now. On to the reviews!

The Creative Act: A Way of Being 

By: Rick Rubin

Published: 2023

432 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

Advice on creativity and life from one of the best known music producers of the last forty years. 

Who should read this book?

If you’re involved in any sort of creative endeavor then I think you’ll benefit from this book. It’s also pretty good as just a book of general life advice. 

General Thoughts

If you’ve heard Johnny Cash’s cover of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt”, then you’re familiar with Rubin. It’s an incredible performance and all honor to Cash for making it probably the greatest cover song ever. But, also that performance wouldn’t exist without Rubin. It was Rubin who convinced Cash to start recording again. He also suggested that he cover that song.

Pulling off a perfect marriage of song and performer and performance is not easily done. And if you’re also hoping to pull off a creative endeavor at that level then Rubin has some advice for you. He’s not dogmatic, he’s not even very prescriptive. He’s ruminative, and he wants to encourage you to be the same. As he says:

Some ideas may resonate,

others may not.

A few may awaken an inner knowing

you forgot you had.

Use what’s helpful.

Let go of the rest.

Each of these moments

is an invitation

to further inquiry:

looking deeper,

zooming out, or in.

Opening possibilities

for a new way of being.

As you can see it’s a little bit “woo”, but sometimes it’s exactly through the act of trying to get specific — to make something less woo — that robs advice of its utility. And certainly guidance on how to be creative falls into that category.

You may also get the sense that Rubin trades a lot in aphorisms. This is true, and I read this book shortly after reading Finite and Infinite Games. You may remember how dismissive I was of that book, how I excerpted a section at random and it was all but gibberish. Well if I do the same thing with this book. Here’s what I came up with:

Be mindful not to abandon a project prematurely because you have given in to all-or-nothing thinking. I have witnessed several artists start projects and throw them away for this very reason. It’s easy to create a piece, recognize a flaw, and want to discard the entire work. This reflex happens in all areas of life.

When you look at the work, practice truly seeing what’s there, without a negativity bias. Be open to seeing both strength and weakness, instead of focusing on the weakness and allowing it to overwhelm the strength. You might come to realize 80 percent of the work is quite good, and if the other 20 percent fits in just the right way, the work becomes magnificent. This is far better than trashing the work because one small part isn’t a perfect fit. When you acknowledge a weakness, always consider how it could either be removed or improved before discarding the entire piece.

It’s not the most earth shattering advice ever given, but it’s clear, straightforward and useful. The book is full of such advice and I’m glad I read it.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives 

by: Leonard Mlodinow (M-laudinoff)

Published: 2008

272 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

The numerous ways people attempt to find patterns in processes that are actually random, drawing heavily on the work of Daniel Kahneman (CAN) and Amos Tversky (e.g Thinking Fast and Slow.)

What's the author's angle?

I think Mlodinow’s motivation is 50% genuine desire to educate the public and 50% sheer frustration with the many mistakes people make around this topic.

Who should read this book?

For most people interested in this topic I would recommend Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness instead of this book. Fans of Kahneman or people interested in the mathematical history of randomness and probability may want to also read this book, but there is no circumstance under which I would recommend this book in place of Taleb’s. 

General Thoughts

Someone on the internet (I really need to get better at tracking who and where) claimed that this book was Taleb’s philosophy only better. In my memory this same person also claimed that it preceded Taleb’s books, i.e. they were saying Taleb was just duplicating work that Mlodinow had done previously and better. Given how influential Taleb has been to my thinking, if there was something out there that was even better, I obviously had to read it. 

Whoever it was, they were wrong. This book preceded neither Fooled by Randomness nor The Black Swan. This part is forgivable, since I may be misremembering. But I remember very clearly and distinctly that they said it was better. It’s not. 

This book had quite a bit of character, but Taleb’s books have more. The book had some interesting examples. Taleb’s were better. Drunkard’s Walk dabbles at being a self-help book. Taleb doesn’t care if you're helped by his books or not. (Perhaps that’s a point for Mlodinow?) However in my mind the key difference was who they’re annoyed with.

Mlodinow is annoyed with everyone; to a certain extent that’s fair, we all fall prey to the biases he describes. But what neither he (nor Kahneman for that matter) acknowledges is that most of the biases he describes were adaptive, and many still are. (i.e. False positives on patterns are better than false negatives. The classic dilemma: is there a tiger in that bush?) As such the average person might, on net, benefit from making the “errors” he describes. Or in any case they are not likely to cause much harm, being, after all, only an average person.

The same cannot be said for the Masters of the Universe — the bankers, hedge fund managers, scientists, and technocrats who run things. When they make these mistakes it may cost billions of dollars, and, far too often, thousands of lives. Taleb directs the majority of his vitriol at this latter group. And indeed, given their responsibilities, they should be expected to know better. Most of the time they don’t, and give no indication that it should be their responsibility to know better.

To put it succinctly:

Mlodinow points out that people often find patterns in things that are actually random. His endeavor is interesting.

Taleb points out that those in positions of power often set the world on fire because they think they’ve found patterns in things that are actually random. His endeavor is both critical and urgent.

Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year

Compiled by: Allie Esiri

Published: 2019

572 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

A collection of 365 daily quotes from Shakespeare with explanations.

What's the author's angle?

I got more of a “quick buck” vibe out of this book than I expected. Shakespeare is obviously in the public domain so anyone could put together this sort of collection. The explanations which proceed each quote required some effort, but on the whole I didn’t get the feeling this was a labor of love.

Who should read this book?

If you can’t get enough Shakespeare then this has a fair amount of information about the times in which he lived, and some quotes you might not be familiar with. Otherwise I would skip it. 

General Thoughts

I very much like the idea of a book you read a portion of every day of the year. And I grabbed this book as my 2023 book. Within this very specialized genre, this was a below average entry. Some of the quotes I was sure would be in the book weren’t, and a lot of the entries that were seemed pretty jejune. And while the explanations were nice, I think they could have better illustrated what made a particular quote/excerpt noteworthy.

For 2024 I picked up The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class. Hopefully (see above) I’ll report back on it this time next year.

The Monster of Florence

By: Douglas Preston

Published: 2013

368 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

The story of Preston moving to Florence and becoming enmeshed in an unsolved string of murders which have all been linked to the same person: the Monster of Florence.

What's the author's angle?

As you might gather from the word “enmeshed”, while Preston starts as a disinterested observer, he ends up getting a lot closer than he would like. I have no specific example of bias, but if I were him I’d have an axe to grind. 

Who should read this book?

If you like true crime stories, murder mysteries, or tales of bureaucratic incompetence then you’ll like this book.

General Thoughts

Murder mysteries are particularly prone to spoilage, so I will resist saying too much other than that the story is fascinating, Italian police are incompetent, and apparently parking (in the lascivious sense) was very widespread in Italy.

Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age 

By: Dale C. Allison Jr.

Published: 2022

263 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

An overview of supernatural religious experiences ranging from overwhelming manifestations of divine love, through visitations by deceased relatives, up to near death experiences. Containing a good mix of anecdotes and actual hard data. 

What's the author's angle?

Allison is a noted religious scholar who teaches at the Princeton Theological Seminary. And this book is at least as much about convincing religious leaders (priests, pastors, etc.) of the reality of these events as it is about convincing the average individual.

Who should read this book?

If you have any curiosity at all about how many people have supernatural religious experiences, and what those experiences might be, then you should read this book. I think you’ll be blown away by the scope of these experiences. 

General Thoughts

I would really like to do a full post on this book. In the past I would have in fact promised such a thing, but as I said things are in a state of flux at the moment. So I’m just going to cover three topics very briefly:

First, Allison emphasizes over and over again how reluctant people are to share their profound religious experiences. Which is part of why these experiences are not more widely recognized. Obviously this reluctance muddies the waters of data collection, but there are nevertheless some very interesting results:

When first asked whether they had ever encountered a dead husband or wife, only a single individual (a spiritualist) answered affirmatively. After, however, the interviewers informed the widows and widowers that apparent contact with the dead is a common part of the grieving process, not a symptom of mental debility, they opened up. As it turned out, fully half had felt the presence of their departed spouse, and a third reported seeing, hearing, or speaking with a loved one. One out of fifty suddenly became twenty-five out of fifty. Two percent became 50 percent. With assurance, people were honest. Without assurance, they kept quiet.

Second, this book was the first time I encountered a description of a phenomenon called “terminal lucidity”. Apparently many people who have been incoherent for years will often, at the very end, become surprisingly lucid. Here’s an example from the book:

Scott Haig, the well-known medical columnist and clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, had a patient, David, whose lung cancer, as so often happens, had metastasized to his brain. David’s speech, as a result, was slurred. Then he became incoherent. Then he could no longer move. He eventually became wholly unresponsive. According to Haig, he showed “no expression, no response to anything we did to him. As far as I could tell, he was just not there.” A scan revealed that cancer had eaten most of his brain. And yet, an hour before his death, and after he had already begun to breathe irregularly, he awakened. He smiled, spoke clearly to his gathered family, and held their hands. Only then did he slip away. The attending nurse opined that it was “like a miracle.” This was Haig’s verdict: “It wasn’t David’s brain that woke him up to say good-bye that Friday. His brain had already been destroyed. Tumor metastases don’t simply occupy space and press on things, leaving a whole brain. The metastases actually replace tissue. Where that gray stuff grows, the brain is just not there.”

Anecdotes are one thing. (Though that one seems particularly powerful.) But what kind of data do we have? Well…

One small survey of ten caregivers in a nursing home showed that seven were familiar with terminal lucidity. A larger study of forty-five Canadian hospice or palliative care volunteers found that 33 percent professed witnessing the phenomenon. A review of 338 deaths at a Korean teaching hospital uncovered only six instances;  but a study of a hospice in New Zealand found six cases of lucidity in 100 deaths; and Alexander Batthyány, a cognitive scientist associated with the Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna, maintains that about 10 percent of patients with dementia display terminal lucidity.

Third, there are of course near death experiences (NDEs).  Obviously this is pretty well covered territory, but I found it interesting how confident the people who’ve had NDEs are that they were not hallucinations. That it wasn’t some last gasp of a dying brain:

Most NDErs insist that their experiences were not dream-like or confused but real, even hyperreal. A recent survey found that, of 1,122 NDErs, 95.6 percent claimed that their experience was “definitely real.” Another 4 percent thought it was “probably real.” That adds up to 99.6 percent. That is about as unified as human testimony or opinion can get.

One common feature of a NDE is that the person floats above their body. Later they’re able to describe what was happening around their body in vivid detail. Skeptics will point out that it’s no great feat to describe what was happening in your near vicinity. But what about a control group, what about asking people who didn’t experience an NDE to describe what happened. Apparently some researchers decided to do this and their answers were “unimpressive”. 

There are stories of people experiencing an NDE describing things they couldn’t possibly know about. As Allison points out if even one of these is true, then science would need a whole new way of understanding the world. Here’s an example:

These are the words of an inpatient medical director for a hospice center: “I continued my conversation with Ricardo, hoping there was something he would say that would prove his experience. ‘Dr. Lerma, I need your help.… When I was out of my body and floating up above the trauma room I spotted a 1985 quarter lying on the right-hand corner of the 8-foot-high cardiac monitor.… Could you please check for me? It would mean so much.’ I was curious and skeptical enough to oblige him, and went to the emergency room with a ladder. I climbed up, with the nurses standing by. They were also curious to know if a patient had really been able to see something while we were bringing him back to life.… To our total amazement, there it was, just as he had seen it, and even the year was right: 1985.… Still skeptical, I wondered if this man could have put the quarter there, so I checked some of the details, and found there was no way he could have known the quarter was there. It had been years since he had been able to climb a ladder… I could find no connection with anyone who had worked on the newly built trauma rooms.

I’ll close with one final example which basically sums up the whole theme of the book:

These are the words of another cardiologist: “He told me everything that I had said and done, such as checking the pulse, deciding to stop resuscitation, going out of the room, coming back later, looking across at him, going over and rechecking his pulse, and then restarting the resuscitation. He got all the details right, which was impossible because not only had he been in asystole and had no pulse throughout the arrest, but he wasn’t even being resuscitated for about 15 minutes afterward. What he told me really freaked me out, and to this day I haven’t told anyone because I just can’t explain it.… I just can’t explain it. I don’t think about it anymore.”

As a Driven Leaf

By: Milton Steinberg 

Published: 1939

480 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

A fictionalized account of Elisha ben Abuyah a Jewish heretic from the first century and his struggle to reconcile hellenistic logic and reason with his Jewish faith.

What's the author's angle?

Despite it being a sympathetic portrayal of a heretic, Steinberg was a conservative rabbi. While the book is open to a variety of interpretations, it’s clear that it was partially designed to illustrate the ultimate fruitlessness of trying to understand the world solely with reason.

Who should read this book?

I really liked this book. If you enjoy philosophy, religion, deep questions, history and Judaism then I feel confident in saying you will like it as well. 

General Thoughts

I rarely mention whether I read a book or listened to the audiobook. This one I listened to. It was narrated by George Guidall who is one of my all time favorite narrators. I mention this because it’s one more reason to read the book. (Or one less reason if you think Guidall’s narration makes me biased.)

This book was written a long time ago, and yet it felt very applicable to our current situation. So many churches, including my own, seem to be caught in the position of the Jews in first century Palestine — surrounded and beset by an all-conquering power. This power seems to offer peace and stability, greater access to verifiable truth, and above all a more enlightened method of thinking. And aren’t a lot of the things required by your religion kind of silly anyway?

In the book, Elisha confronts this challenge by deciding to pursue the truth no matter where it takes him. In the process he abandons his people and his faith. He doesn’t undertake this journey out of selfishness or hedonism, but rather he does it because of an unshakeable commitment to doing the Right Thing whatever that might be. This commitment leads him on a strange quest where every step seems completely logical, but ends up having nearly the opposite effect of what he expected.

We appear to be following a similar path. Prioritizing self fulfillment has to be the correct path. “More” seems obviously better than “less”. And everyone wants to be amused and entertained. But then, when it’s too late to turn back, all of this frivolity swallows the world. 

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I’m reminded of a quote from Churchill, “Now this is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” I don’t want to compare anything in my life to World War II, but I’ve always liked that quote, and perhaps, at this moment, it’s applicable.

1. Also, full confession, on top of all the other demands on my time I really want to play through Baldur’s Gate 3…