Bookwi.se

Reposting the review because the Audiobook is the Audible Daily Deal for Dec 3 – $5.95

Takeaway: The history of cancer is a good proxy for the history of medicine.

The Emperor of All Maladies deserves all of the praise (and the Pulitzer) it has received.

Like most really good popular non-fiction books, it understands the necessary balance between the presenting facts and telling stories.

Almost every times I started to get slightly bored by the science or history, the author told a story.  But the stories never took over the book, they only supplemented the history or science.

What I found most interesting about the book was how often cancer was a part of technical innovation that affected others areas.  Medicine was improved because of surgery to removed cancer.  Cancer clinical trials were the root of a lot of changes in mathematics, social science research and insurance modeling.  Human trials and medical ethics were expanded and changed and re-evaluated throughout medical history in large part because of cancer research.

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During World War II, the unexpected heroes of the Pacific front were the Coastwatchers in the Solomon Islands, located off the northeast coast of Australia. These non-military volunteers–“government officials, plantation managers, gold miners, a department store buyer, a pub keeper, an accountant, a rancher”–were tasked with monitoring Japanese activity and reporting useful data to the Allies. They lived discreetly behind enemy lines, dealing with natives of ever-changing loyalties, constantly moving their cumbersome radio equipment around the islands to stay one step ahead of the Japanese, rescuing and caring for downed Allied pilots, and providing a steady stream of valuable geographic data about the islands to the commanders.

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Summary: A near retirement age Ender has to deal with another attempt at Xenocide, this time against two alien species and all of Ender’s family may die in the process.

I always warn people when I talk about my love of Ender’s Game that the rest of the series is very different from the first book.

Ender’s Game is young adult book  But Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind are not.  They are fairly serious adult oriented science fiction book that are as much about the ideas as the story line.

Which is I think the point of the xkcd comic about Xenocide being a lesser book.

After re-reading Ender’s Game I wanted to read more of the series again.  I skipped Speaker for the Dead, because I have read it nearly as many times as Ender’s Game.

Xenocide picks up right after Speaker for the Dead, or at least a spaceship ride after Speaker for the Dead.  That one ride ends up being 30 years for Ender and the world he is on and only a few weeks for Milo (Ender’s step son).

The central government has sent ships to destroy the world that Ender is on. That world is home to the first new species discovered since the Formics.  And unknown to anyone else, it is the new home to the Formics as well.

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Summary: The Trinity is not just one of our theological points, it is essential to the entire Christian faith.

My year of reading about the Trinity has been mostly disappointing.  I have not read nearly as much as I wanted, but I have been disappointed in almost everything I have read.  The only book I have really liked was a fairly academic (and expensive) book on the development of Trinitarian Thought before 400 AD.

But Michael Reeves new book Delighting in the Trinity: an Introduction to the Christian Faith was different.  First, it took the historic development of the Trinitarian theology seriously (it was not only looking at post-reformation thought like a lot of Evangelically focused books are.)

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There are lot of books out there about how Christians should (or should not) engage in politics, but I’ve had three popular-level works on my to-read list because they pretty well cover the landscape: Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics , Wayne Grudem’s Politics – According to the Bible , and this one by Greg Boyd.

Doug Wilson blogged through Boyd’s book a few years ago. I read his posts immediately after Boyd’s chapters, and his commentary was extremely helpful (http://dougwils.com/tag/c125-greg-boy…; the posts are in reverse order). Wilson ably criticizes Boyd’s theology of political engagement, and calls it out for being a jumble of incoherence and inconsistency.

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