What Non-Fiction Book have you just finished?

[death tribble]

Fortress Malta An Island Under Siege 1940-43 by James Holland

The story of Malta from the start of the war until the end of the siege. It became the most bombed place on Earth as it is very close to Italy (Sicily mostly) and could come under repeated and sustained attacks.

Vital to the Allies as a thorn in the side of the Axis the book covers the continued lives of people on the island and the destruction wrought by the bombing. It shows the hazards of trying to get new planes there on a regular basis and trying to use it as a base for Navy operations. How crucial Operation Pedestal was and the awful result as merchant ships and Royal Navy ones fell to U-Boats, E-Boats and air attack. And the flourishing of mavericks whose lives were cut short either during the war or thereafter.

Well worth a read to understand why this island was awarded the George Cross.

[DShomshak]

Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil

 

A good book for people who delve far too deeply into the minutiae of worldbuilding, and a sobering guide to exactly how modern industrial society is not sustainable. A quantitative history of human energy usage, from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to the present. Yes, people have actually worked out things like, how many calories in an antelope vs. how many calories to hunt the antelope? And every other mode and purpose of energy expenditure.

 

For me, one of the biggest surprises was the degree to which, for quite a while, water power was humanity's most intensive source of industrial energy. A 19c water turbine was tremendously efficient at extracting useful work from flowing water... right in time to be unhooked from factory driveshafts and hooked up to electrical generators.

 

Another oddity: Multi-person treadmills, used as a form of prison labor -- though one warden advocate also extolled the health and recreational benefits for the convicts.

 

Much discussion of how many people can be fed per hectare of land farmed, using various methods. Agricultural productivity increased over the millennia, but each improvement relied on increasing energy inputs, whether the intensive human labor of Asian rice cultivation or the need for more and larger horses to pull plows and other farm machines, not to mention the extraordinary labor inputs to fertilize land or the time costs for crop rotation.

 

The modern world didn't invent environmental degradation. Large areas of the ancient world, from Spain to Afghanistan, suffered deforestation even before the Iron Age, from making charcoal to smelt copper.

 

Speaking of which... Smil discusses the eventual exhaustion of cost-effective fossil fuels (they will never be truly exhausted, but eventually extraction costs too much to make it worthwhile). What then? Well, if the US tried to maintain current iron and steel production using old-fashioned charcoal instead of coke made from coal, this would require an area of forested land twice the size of North America.

 

Smil also discusses the important concept of Energy Return on Energy Investment. EG, given the energy in a ton of coal, how many tons of coal can you mine? Upper limit is 80; more often, about 20. The EROEI for a Sudi oilfield is in the hundreds. The EROEI for wind, however, maxes out at 20 but is difficult to push past 10; the EROEI for solar is currently 2. So switching from fossil fuels to renewables without crashing industrial civilization will be "challenging."

 

Early chapters are more useful for Fantasy worldbuilders, or at least designing preindustrial societies. Later chapters deal with the modern world of fossil fuel usage. Final chapter puts it all together and gives at least a little discussion of the future.

 

Also, not a book for people allergic to graphs and tables, of which there are many.

 

Dean Shomshak

[death tribble]

The 21 Escapes of Lt. Alastair Cram by David M Guss

The story of how Alastair Cram made 21 escapes after being captured as a Prisoner of War. It is also the tale of other prisoners and how they also attempted to escape and in some cases did successfully escape. Cram actually escaped several times and roamed about before being recaptured. It is a remarkable story but one that is not well known. It also details briefly his post war career. Well worth a read.

[death tribble]

Over The Top by Martin Marix Evans

A look at the 1914-18 war across Europe year by year concentrating on the battles that the British were involved in. Quite good. Points iout the lessons that the allies learned and those the Germans could not employ. For the Americans Patton, Marshall and Macarthur turn up as well as Pershing. 

[death tribble]

Tiger Tracks by Wolfgang Faust

This is a memoir by a Tiger tank driver of a few days towards the end of 1943 in Russia. The group drops from 20 Tiger tanks to a few after repeated Russian attacks including the new SU tanks and persistent Sturmovik attacks. It is short and shows war as brutal and nasty. Worth a look at the other side of things.

[death tribble]

To be sure that I do not waste a post

 

The Persian Expedition by Xenophon

The account of the Greek army that went to fight for Cyrus and then had to get back to Greece when Cyrus was killed. Xenophon was not one of the original officers who were betrayed, captured and killed by theb Persians but one who helped lead the army out of occupied territory. Fascinating.

 

Finished September 28th 

[Cygnia]

Just finished up "What If? 2" by XKCD's Randall Munroe

[DShomshak]

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

 

A breezy tour through the long, weird story of one of humanity's most important inventions, that is also one of the most misunderstood. Also the contributions of some of the most important people you've probably never heard of, such as John Gay: a Scotsman exiled from England for murder, who became first a gambler, then the inventor of modern(ish) central banking, and perpetrator of one of the world's first stock market bubbles that ended up crashing the economy of France. Also, Luddites, Cypherpunks, mathematicians and some economists and central bankers who have no right to be so interesting. Despite the lightness of style, this book also helped me finally to understand what William Jennings Bryan was about with his famous "Cross of Gold" speech and the Bimetallism controversy in the late 19th century US. And did you know that for several decades in the US, any bank in the US could print its own money? (Including one note blazoned with the image of Santa Claus.)

 

Highly recommended. And yes, there's stuff you can adapts for your Fantasy setting (it wasn't all "gold pieces," folks) and some speculations about the future of money that might become part of your SF setting.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

 

[Cygnia]

The Science of Murder -- The Forensics of Agatha Christie

 

It scratched my true crime bug in a unique way, showing how forensics of the time evolved and, in turn, how Christie adapted.

[Old Man]

 

Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect Study Guide (2nd Edition)

 

This book is really long on general IT architecture and really short on Google specifics.  We'll find out whether it's relevant to the actual exam in a couple of days.

 

[DShomshak]

Still, it would be pretty cool to be able to say, "I am a Cloud Architect."

 

Dean Shomshak

[Duke Bushido]

The Honda Service Manual for the VTX 1300C, S, RS, and Fury

 

(Yes; this is the sort of thing I like for pleasure reading)

 

 

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Still, it would be pretty cool to be able to say, "I am a Cloud Architect."

 

Dean Shomshak

That’s the idea anyway. 

[Bazza]

So…are you responsible for climate change?

[Old Man]

My wife does blame me for everything. 

[death tribble]

Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally

The book on which the film Schindler's List is based. The film gives more time to Amon Goth than the book does. But Schindler did a lot more than the film credits him with. A truly remarkable man whose actions were not as a result of a Damascus revelation or conversion but because he could do it. Well worth getting and reading. I got it cheap as a local supermarket had it for £2.99. Money well worth spending.

[Cancer]

Nature's "must read" science books from 2022 (this list got to me today so I have read none of them yet):

 

8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World by Jennifer D Sciubba

 

Salvador Luria: An Immigrant Biologist in Cold War America by Rena Selya

 

Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass by Frank Close

 

A World Without Soil by Jo Handelsman  (this seems to have come out in late 2021, but the review appeared in January 2022)

[death tribble]

Big Week by James Holland

This is about Operation Argument and what led up to it. This was a week of concentrated bombing by day and night of Germany concentrating on taking on the Luftwaffe in the air and on the ground. The targets were primarily factories that made parts or the airframes for the German airforce. And the American airforce were using the new long range fighter the Mustang that could stay with the bombers all the way to the target and back. The book covers what led up to the week of bombing that took place in February 1944 and why it needed to take place. The British and Americans were undergoing separate strategies in attacking the Germans but the Luftwaffe were still able to meet them by day or night so something needed to happen before the invasion of Europe took place. It looks at the commanders and participants on both sides which also includes James Stewart who did not need to be there. He volunteered and got around people trying to stop him risking his life by undertaking missions over Occupied Europe. Well worth a read.

[Joe Walsh]

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart

This book is about the myth of the self-made person, how pervasive it is in American culture, where it came from, what we've done to ourselves by making it a core tenet of our civilization, and what we should be doing instead.

It was quite an interesting read. I knew the idea of 'pulling oneself up by ones bootstraps' was an idea that gained popularity a couple hundred years ago, but I didn't know its origin as a ludicrous idea that was used for satiric effect, then subverted into its current meaning where we've somehow taken this absurd idea and come to believe it's real. I also didn't know Little House on the Prairie books were one of the means through which this lie was spread.

The book is a bit uneven, with some chapters having less of substance to them than others, and some arguments being weaker than others, but overall it was well worth the time and money.

[Cygnia]

Murderess Ink, an old (1979) book about women in the mystery genre (authors & characters both)

[Cancer]

Working on The Sea and Civilization, by Lincoln Paine.  It was a Christmas present I have been slowly working through.  Enormous book, starts with Egypt and continues to very recent times.  Lots of stuff that my English-language education left out about the maritime enterprise over history.  The same guy also wrote a different massive tome, "Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia", of which I managed to snarf a copy a dozen years back or so from Half Price Books.  

 

As a gamemaster: want to send your players on a nautical adventure and have the "nautical" part matter?  This is a great source.

[Joe Walsh]

Poverty, By America, written by Matthew Desmond.

I was skeptical about this one going in since it seemed like one of those books that doesn't really dive into the root causes and doesn't offer any real solutions. But a relative was very enthusiastic about the book, so I decided to listen to it on my commute. I was pleasantly surprised! The book makes it clear that how much poverty a wealthy country has is a political choice. It goes into some detail about the choices we've made that have led us to our current situation of growing poverty and homeless encampments, inescapable debt, etc., the array of different choices we have available to us, and their likely outcomes. There were a lot of interesting nuggets in the book. The only criticism I have is that the audiobook's narrator sometimes says a word or two in a sentence much quieter than the rest, so listening in a noisy environment like a car is sometimes challenging. Other than that, though, I give this one a strong recommendation to anyone interested in the topic.

 

Edited May 7, 2023 by GM Joe

[Cancer]

The late James Hornfischer's The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-45.  Focused mostly on Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet, and to a lesser extent Kelly Turner, particularly the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the invasion of Saipan and then Tinian; these two islands were selected for conquest specifically to become bases for strategic bombing campaign using B-29s.  There is also a long look at Paul Tibbets and his command of the 509th Composite Group, including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  Much time is spent with Spruance (and essentially none with Halsey) and the operations of the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, and with the operational planning and operations of the Marines invading Saipan.  There is some discussion of the operation of the Japanese government after Saipan and Hiroshima in particular.

[DShomshak]

On the Operation of Demons, allegedly by the 11th-century CE Byzantine scholar and theologian Michael Psellos (or, Latinized, Psellus), in the 1843 translation by Marcus Collisson.

 

I'm reviewing it here because people have taken it as meant to be nonfiction for almost a thousand years. That is not self-evident because Psellus (or someone claiming to be him) wrote it in the form of a dialogue between two characters, "Timothy" and "Thracian." Moreover, the information about demons is given at another remove, as Thracian says it's what he was told by a Mesopotamian monk who had formerly been a demon cultist before converting to Christianity, and Timothy, Thracian, and the monk Marcus provide anecdotes from their lives to illustrate what demons do. So to my modern sensibilities it reads more like a rather dry attempt at in-game fiction, with characters telling exposition-heavy anecdotes to explain the concepts of the game world. Was Psellus trying to write a Fantasy novella and wasn't very good at it?

 

Be that as it may, this short work is of interest for laying out basic tenets of literary Satanism. Cultists degrade themselves to make themselves more open to demonic influence because they imagine they'll get some kind of power from the spirits. Breeding children for sacrifice to demons? Yep, it's here, ready to be recycled right down to the latest Satanic cult panic.

 

Possibly of more interest for a gamer is Psellus' classification and description of the demons themselves. There are, he says, 6 basic types of demons: Igneous (associated with fire and residing at the greatest distance from the Earth's surface), Aerial, Aqueous or Marine, Terrestrial, Subterranean, and "Lucifugous" (Light-Fleeing) They tempt mortals to sin by whispering directly into their minds. They also perform corporeal evil: Aqueous demons pull swimmers down to drown, while Subterranean and Lucifugous demons can pour into people's lungs to choke them. Though demons are invisible to ordinary human senses, and intangible, they are not truly bodiless: Their bodies are merely of a diffuse substance; i.e., Desolidified.

 

The dialogue ends abruptly. Timothy asks a question about how demons achieve apparent foreknowledge, and Thracian protests that it's getting late and about to rain, he'll pick up the discussion some other day. The end.

 

The earnestly pious translator offers a few speculations that Psellus was trying to find spiritual explanations for swimmers getting leg cramps or miners choking on gas, but much of his footnoting deals with unpacking Psellus' text in regard to Scripture. He also gives some historical concept -- such as that Psellus was apparently setting his dialogue in the 4th century CE, since it starts with a description and condemnation of a Manichean sect, the Euchitae, from that period.

 

If you're interested in the history of demonology and beliefs about Satanists, this is a worthy read. (I should have read it long ago; there are things I'll crib for the Descending Hierarchy.) It's also blessedly brief and, as I hinted before, more gameable than most works of demonology. But probably not of much interest for anyone else.

 

Dean Shomshak

[death tribble]

The Histories by Herodotus

The cause of the Persian-Greek conflict that culminated in 479 BC with the battle of Plataea by the father of history Herodotus. The story of the rise of Persia and how it came into conflict with Greece. It is long and entertaining.