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Mary Ann Dimand has commented on (9) products.

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Mary Ann Dimand, January 30, 2013

Stiglitz explains macroeconomics, and the role economic inequality plays in macroeconomic performance. This is an accessible and yet sophisticated presentation, despite Stiglitz's tendency to attribute social disequities to underclasses internalizing stereotypes rather than being limited by upperclasses and punished for divergence from stereotype.

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Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn

Mary Ann Dimand, January 20, 2012

This is a kind - of - not - quite - a - palimpsest of Dickensian / Victorian culture, and also a kind of anti-utopia. It offers peculiar delights without reaching perfection-- and there's nothing else like it, really.

The culture of Dingley Dell is based on the works of Charles Dickens and a classic edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannia-- the only books left to an enclave of orphans isolated from the rest of the world to protect them from a devastating plague. Most of the residents of Dingley Dell live under the harrow (domination) of the Brahmins of their small society. Nonetheless, they're satisfied enough, by and large-- despite the class issues that appear in microcosm here. At least, they're comfortable enough if they're middle-class. Except for those who leave the valley for the perilous outside world, and are necer seen again, or return to be confined for insanity....

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The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today by Rob Dunn

Mary Ann Dimand, January 19, 2012

A fascinating, intimately ecological account of how humans and other mammals make part of biological networks. Anthropological, medical, historical, and biological stories amplify the story of how we live best in balance with microorganisms and macro-competitors despite our mental clinging to absolute notions of purity and safety.

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Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide by Brett McCracken

Mary Ann Dimand, January 1, 2012

Much of McCracken's book reads like something from an Official Christian Hipster Handbook-- it's hard to beleive he really wants what's he's saying to be taken that seriously. I bet I'm not the only reader who thought, "How is it I'm only meeting `wannabe' hipsters, if hipsterdom is all about expertise and a focus on passionate interest?" and "Why do only people raised conservative seem to count as Christians the last decade or so?"

And yet McCracken's last chapter does a lot to redeem the book. At the end, he focuses on participation, not cool criticism or stop-by-for-a-cup-of-holy consumerism, as the heart of lived Christianity, and he does it well. (He does also come out as convicted that same-sex love is contrary to God's will. Not one of my favorite parts, and surely a dealbreaker for some readers.)

Overall, a worthwhile though occasionally tiresome read.

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The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Leonard Susskind

Mary Ann Dimand, October 18, 2011

This is a fantastic discussion of how physicists arrive at, work through and argue about conceptual problems. Susskind not only explains with tremendous lucidity, but he intersperses the account of dispute over the problem of whether black holes destroy information with the history of physics that led to this point, discussion of the sociology of physics, character portraits of well-known scientists, and a bit of Susskind's own biography. The result is a brilliantly paced, entertaining, shiningly illuminating book that's my current pop-physics favourite.

And it would be worth it just for the explanation of relativity physics.

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