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Last week I finished The Northern Crusades, and I much liked it. Two books which would be excellent complements are Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345 and God’s War: A New History of the Crusades. I’ve gone back to Wonderful Life, and again find myself annoyed by Stephen Jay Gould’s pompous and self-aggrandizing tendencies. But I do find when he goes straight to the descriptive science, such as anatomy which I am not familiar with, he is far less insufferable. Though I’m reading Wonderful Life partly to get to its rebuttal, Crucible of Creation. When I can’t handle Gould I’ve been going through Stanislas Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read. Years ago I enjoyed his The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics, and since I’m a big reader I figured his more recent book would be of interest to me. Finally, I’ve put Victor Lieberman’s Strange Parallels: Volume 2, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800-1830 in my stack. I read volume 1, but never finished volume 2.
Any books you are reading?
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revisiting Christof Koch’s “A Quest for Consciousness.” still good! wish he’d do an update. the book has a great story about a patient who had cerebral akinetopsia which prevents you from seeing motion (like watching a DVD on 2x or 4x speed or a buffering video)
someone made a cool video to show what it might look like:
there are a couple of other related videos that are cool examples too.
I just finished “Riddle Masters Trilogy” (fantasy much like Tigana & LOTR but weaker IMHO).
I also finished the much shorter Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat, modern Persian surrealist masterpiece (reminded me of Bulgakhov’s Master & Margharita plus “Abo’s Face of Another”).
Now I’m listening to Embassy town by China Mieville, which has been featured reading sequentially in two of the London sci-FI book clubs.
Unfortunately I very rarely veer away from book club reading lists since for me to get the most out of a book; I have to discuss it.
Also it isn’t exactly reading but I saw the Killing Fields about the Khmer Rouge & Cambodian genocide. With Sam Waterstone and a very worthy movie (there’s also a book about of the same name featuring the NY Times protagonists, Syd Sharnbourg & Diet Phan). It reminded me of the movie about the Hotel during the Rwandan genocide with Sophie O & Mr. Cheadle. It’s incredible to me how the recent histories of Uganda & Cambodia are similar (Pol Pot Idi Amin) and the relationship with their neighbours (Rwanda & Vietnam; the current Cambodia has been planted by Vietnam apparently – there are 20k Vietnamese living in Tonle Sap, Cambodia’s and SE Asia’s largest inland lake while Rwanda & UG have both brought each other’s government in power, there’s a rumour M7, Uganda’s current leader, is actually Rwandese).
Trying to read Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World right now, but every time I pick it up my two year old tries to take it from me and eat it, so… slow going.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5501275-uranium
“Lots of people now are becoming much more Arabized,” he said. “You see on the streets of Pakistan, for example, people are now dressing like Arabs. Lots of people are rejecting traditional Pakistani identity…”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/30/pakistans-red-mosque-seminary_n_6579716.html
Finished “Empires of The Silk Road”, and enjoyed it. However, his theory of Shang origins being Indo-European bothered me. The linguistic evidence he cited is a bit shallow, and the archaeological evidence is by process of elimination. Is there any genetic evidence? I see from
that R lines up pretty well with where the Tokharians were, but at the same time the various nomadic invasions might have erased it if it was thinly spread in the rest of China.
Razib, I’m working through In Gods We Trust per your recommendation, as well as The Aryans by V. Gordon Childe.
Thanks for the recommendation on In Search of the Indo Europeans, that’s next on my list. Your goodreads has been a blessing.
A question for you guys.
The human traits that are often associated with success are IQ, executive function, and emotional intelligence. What is the difference between executive function and emotional intelligence? From what I find on the ‘Net seems to define these in terms of delayed gratification, impulse control, and the like. These traits are what old school types would call “self-discipline” and “good character”. Are these accurate definitions for executive function and emotional intelligence?
I’ve just finished The Northern Crusades, which I picked up on your recommendation, and also found it quite good. I’ve had good luck with all the books I’ve tried on your recommendation, Razib, so I’d like to ask you for another: Do you know of a good few books on the early Holy Roman Empire (roughly the period from Otto the Great to Rudolf I)? I’m willing to crowdsource the request also.
Right now I’m reading Jürgen Osterhammel’s “The Transformation of the World,” his global history of the 19th century. The chapter on vaccination is particularly interesting in light of current controversies. Osterhammel finds that societies practicing strong social discipline in the area of public health, and requiring, for example, that their citizens (in particular, their militaries) be vaccinated, obtained a relative economic and political benefit, when compared with societies that followed a more laissez-faire health policy.
don't know about holy roman empire. i've seen some books from that period/time but when i check reviews often they turn out to be thin gruel.
I read the Northern Crusades about 25 years ago for a paper in college. The area covered became a pretty influential part of Europe and the world until WWII destroyed a German Prussia for good. The area isn’t well covered in general world histories.
Razib, are you interested in Stanislas Dehaene’s latest book, Consciousness in the Brain? I bought that one recently and am making my way through it; it’s pretty good so far.
I agree with #6 that your goodreads and “edifying books” list has been a godsend.
The most interesting book I’ve discovered in the past few days (thanks to James Thompson’s blog) is Earl Hunt’s Human Intelligence, a broad and refreshingly cautious look at IQ testing and correlates of IQ scores with life outcomes. I had already read Ian Deary’s Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction and wanted to learn more, but Arthur Jensen’s book The g Factor is a bit much for me. I am very glad to discover Hunt’s book as he is a clear and commonsensical writer. I’ve finished the first chapter on Amazon’s site and would gladly recommend it so far.
What is your take on Obama’s “Precision Medicine Initiative” announcement this week, specifically the genetic mapping project? I don’t understand exactly how it’s supposed to work but it sounds good in principle.
agree: re: shang. i think that’s a case of having a hammer and looking for nails.
Thanks for the recommendation on In Search of the Indo Europeans, that's next on my list. Your goodreads has been a blessing.Replies: @Razib Khan
np. i need to categorize my goodreads soon so it’s more useful.
i’m agnostic. seems like good smart people are on both sides.
I agree with #6 that your goodreads and "edifying books" list has been a godsend.
The most interesting book I've discovered in the past few days (thanks to James Thompson's blog) is Earl Hunt's Human Intelligence, a broad and refreshingly cautious look at IQ testing and correlates of IQ scores with life outcomes. I had already read Ian Deary's Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction and wanted to learn more, but Arthur Jensen's book The g Factor is a bit much for me. I am very glad to discover Hunt's book as he is a clear and commonsensical writer. I've finished the first chapter on Amazon's site and would gladly recommend it so far.
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Intelligence-Earl-Hunt/dp/0521707811/Replies: @Razib Khan
i have that book. will hit it later, though those books re: consciousness tend to underperform.
Right now I'm reading Jürgen Osterhammel's "The Transformation of the World," his global history of the 19th century. The chapter on vaccination is particularly interesting in light of current controversies. Osterhammel finds that societies practicing strong social discipline in the area of public health, and requiring, for example, that their citizens (in particular, their militaries) be vaccinated, obtained a relative economic and political benefit, when compared with societies that followed a more laissez-faire health policy.Replies: @Razib Khan
Jürgen Osterhammel’s “The Transformation of the World,” is in my stack.
don’t know about holy roman empire. i’ve seen some books from that period/time but when i check reviews often they turn out to be thin gruel.
Razib, you’ve worked with FTDNA and I don’t know if you’re already taken a look at these, but here are the MyOrigins results for most of the high quality ancient genomes that have been recently publicized.
http://www.fi.id.au/2014/12/ethinic-makeup-of-ancients-ftdnas.html
It is kind of interesting that some of them, like Loschbour and Anzick-1, score the way they do. In theory Loschbour should share ancestry with all Europeans, not just (north)eastern ones, and through ANE same goes for Anzick.
the issue is myOrigins is using modern reference populations, which are often linear combinations of the ancient groups. the ancient groups aren’t easy to interpret with modern variation. we had to use modern populations because modern people understand that. pure ANE do not exist today, for example.
Anzick-1 is not an unmixed representative of ANE like Loschbour is of WHG, and ANE ancestry in Europeans is not as high as WHG ancestry, but a comparable point stands for it since ANE is also everywhere.
Yeah, neither WHG (Loschbour) or ANE exist as pure populations in present times, but both are mixed into modern Europeans and in WHG’s case the influence is heavy everywhere save certain Mediterranean regions. I mean, in such a context it is interesting that Loschbour, which represents a group that contributed much to all European populations, only shows East Europe and Finland in its results. These clusters likely do have the most WHG ancestry, because they represent regions with highest WHG ancestry according to the famous Lazaridis et al paper and indeed Loschbour’s MyOrigins result reflects that. Still, the difference in WHG ancestry compared to Scandinavian, West European and British Isles clusters is not that big yet those three don’t show up at all in the result.
Anzick-1 is not an unmixed representative of ANE like Loschbour is of WHG, and ANE ancestry in Europeans is not as high as WHG ancestry, but a comparable point stands for it since ANE is also everywhere.