Year in Review – 2016

It’s a week into 2017 and so I thought I’d recap the books I read this year.

COMPLETED (Short summaries below)

“American Lion” – By Jon Meacham (summarized on my Presidents’ bio blog)

“Midnight’s Fury:  The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition” – By Nasid Hajari

“The Gene:  An Intimate History” – By Siddhartha Mukerjee

“The Wright Brothers” – By David McCullough

“Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind” – By Yuval Noah Harari

IN PROGRESS

“Shoe Dog” – By Phil Knight

“Martin Van Buren” – By Ted Widmer

“On Becoming Baby Wise:  Giving Your Infant The Gift of Night Time Sleep” – By Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam

American Lion – By Jon Meacham

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):

Jackson strengthened the office more than anyone since Jefferson.  The first President to rise from poor means, he commanded a victory in New Orleans as a general and rode this star power to defeat JQA in 1828, serving two terms.  He survived the Petticoat scandal by cabinet dissolution.  Calhoun was his first veep, then Van Buren after betrayal.  Jackson defended the national government and individual rights over states’ rights by coming down hard on the Nullifiers in South Carolina, but he did not defend the Abolitionists when they were intimidated with sedition.  Through broken treaties, he personified the shameful federal push for Native removal to westward lands, which blackens his legacy.  Jackson was the first President to utilize his veto power to drive legislation.  He also fought the charter of the National Bank and was censured for it.  Ultimately, his legacy is contradictory.  He was a strong President that saved the Union and preserved its strength for Lincoln.  From a historical lens, he was selective in his desire to preserve liberty and freedom.  For some but not all.  The ultimate point about Jackson’s presidency: despite his ambivalence towards slavery and Native Americans, his actions to strengthen the office enabled Lincoln to act strongly during the Civil War.  Arguably, Lincoln relied on Jackson’s legacy–Force Bill, Nullification Proclamation and suspension of habeus corpus in New Orleans–to push the US towards a different moral character.  Also, Old Hickory was a badass.  He killed a man in a duel, almost died in a fight after being shot, and survived an assassination attempt thanks to the ghost of George Washington.

Midnight’s Fury – By Nasid Hajari

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

This book was deeply, deeply personal to me.  All of my family’s stories are intertwined with the historical events of Partition.  It actually is quite amazing and sad that we don’t study this in school.  Literally billions of lives are a generation (or less) removed from Independence and Partition, and it has shaped policies and psychologies affecting at least one-fourth to one-third of the people on this planet.

It is a little exhausting to try and summarize the history here.  I don’t want to do this, but I’d rather just say “read the long summary.”  Especially if you want to understand the very nuanced history in a volatile part of the world.  A lot of current world issues, from military proliferation, to the economic future in the 21st century, to terrorism has its roots in what happened during Partition.  The main point that I can discern, though, that the politics and personalities of two men–Nehru and Jinnah–affected the entire history of Partition, for better and for worse, and for billions of people in subsequent generations.

Sometimes, I am in awe that some of the most seminal events in modern history–not modern 20th century history, but in the last 500 years–occurred a generation ago.  World War II.  Partition, the post-War world order, nuclear proliferation, etc..  Maybe it’s naive to think that these events will have long lasting historical consequences, but man, the period between 1920-1950 was an absolute crazy time in the history of humanity.  And people who are alive now were alive then.  Just really stop and think about that.

The Gene – By Siddhartha Mukerjee

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

I’m surprised at how recent the discipline of genetics has evolved (sic) compared to other fields like physics and chemistry.  Aside from some dabbling by Ancient Greeks, it wasn’t until Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin that the area was explored.  Darwin’s theory of natural selection determined that organisms, over generations, adapted to survive external conditions, but he couldn’t place how this information was passed to progeny.  Mendel almost concurrently discovered the idea of plant hybridization.  This was only about 150 years ago.

The field of genetics exploded from there.  Mutagenetics and genetic variation theories were explored.  Ultimately the Nazis used eugenic experimentation in their Final Solution, and even before then, in some absolutely horrific ways.  The Soviets were just as macabre, but even in the United States, some terrible legal decisions were made on the basis of eugenics.

Interestingly enough, after fleeing Nazi Germany, physicist Schrodinger postulated the idea of a molecule that was sophisticated and strong enough to carry and replicate information.  DNA was discovered centuries earlier, but no one really knew what it did.  The chase towards identifying DNA function structure is just fascinating.  High drama with a cast of characters.  Franklin, Pauling, Watson and Crick.

The function of DNA is something that is just fundamentally magical and inspirational to me.  I appreciate it a lot more than I did when I learned this stuff in high school.  And what’s even more fascinating, we are just at the beginning of understanding this field.  Lot more info in this book, but these are the things that jumped out at me.

The Wright Brothers – By David McCullough

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

I guess good things can come out of Ohio.  The Wright brothers’ inventiveness and determination was shaped by Ohio and Dayton culture.  In fact, during the late 1800s, Dayton was a hotbed for inventors with among the highest per capita number of patents issued by the USPTO.

Wilbur (older) and Orville did not have any formal training or advanced education.  Their parents were not wealthy or well connected, but they did encourage their children’s curiosity and resilience.  The father once brought home a toy airplane from France for his young kids, and years later when a German aviation pioneer died, Wilbur’s dormant interest in manned flight was activated.

The brothers first opened a print shop and later a bicycle shop.  In 1899, Wilbur wrote a letter to the Smithsonian Institute requesting copies of any aviation publications.  The brothers decided to attempt building a manned aviation aircraft and moved to Kitty Hawk due to the advantageous wind conditions.  They built a bunch of gliders to focus on flight skill over structure.  Eventually, they built a flying machine and on December 17 1903, Orville flew the Flyer 1 for 12 seconds.  They had the foresight to take a picture of the event even with the nascent camera technology of the time.

In subsequent years, they developed the Flyer 3, and engaged in a contract with the French government.  They also were granted a patent for their flying machines.  They did, though, get bogged down in a patent war, which diverted their ability to perfect their machines further, which according to some historians, delayed the progress of American aviation.

Sapiens – By Yuval Noah Harari

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

The main thesis of the book is that three revolutions shaped the development of homo sapiens and put us on a fast path to short circuit biological evolution with cultural evolution.  The cognitive revolution (70,000 years ago) enabled us to think abstractly and thus create mental constructs beyond our physical world (religions, empires, commerce).   The agricultural revolution (12,000 years ago) enabled us to multiply our species at a breakneck speed, even if quality of living compared to hunter gathering may have declined for most people.  The scientific revolution (500 years ago) allowed us to gain increasing power to shape the world around us, and this was driven primarily be economics and imperialism (e.g., inventing or discovering new markets).

The big takeaway for me is the ebb and flow between biological evolution and the motivations it has on our acts vs. cultural evolution and the impact it has on our ability to break the chains of biological evolution.  Our ability to believe in collective myths (e.g., religions, money, nation-states, etc.) in very short periods of time allows us to push beyond the constraints of hunter gatherer evolution that occurred over tens of thousands of years.  For me, this calls into question the true nature of reality–if culture can change our mindsets so quickly, what is actually real?  Perhaps contributing to a cultural narrative (through science or the arts) is the most effective way to really own our collective destiny.