Knowing What We Know by Simon Winchester

KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW offers perspective on knowledge and its acquisition from a well-known, best-selling author, Simon Winchester (The Professor and the Madman). Winchester begins with a discussion of what is knowledge (“justified true belief”) and looks at how it has been created, organized, stored, and disseminated over time. In his exploration, he ranges from ancient times (referencing Plato, Socrates, and others) to “Modern Magic” and asks some rather profound questions for today: “If all knowledge, if the sum of all thought, is to be made available at the touch on a plate of glass, then what does that portend?” or “If machines will acquire all our knowledge for us and do our thinking for us, then what, pray, is the need for us to be?” Throughout the text numerous anecdotes are shared and an entire chapter is devoted to teaching children while other sections deal with topics such as libraries, culture, the printed word, journalism, and engineering. In addition, there is a several page Bibliography, listing books which Winchester consulted and/or recommends for further reading. The tone throughout is somewhat dry and scholarly, although KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW received a starred review from Booklist. For those who are interested, here are links to reviews in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance

WHEN THE HEAVENS WENT ON SALE by Ashlee Vance is subtitled “The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach.” One could easily assume that Vance, a feature writer at Bloomberg Businessweek and author of the New Your Times bestseller Elon Musk, would be writing about companies like Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Branson’s Virgin Galactic. He does comment on those companies but focuses this text on four others: Planet Labs, Rocket Lab, Astra, and Firefly Aerospace. Vance is adept at combining stories of pivotal events (e.g., the Indian launch resulting in near simultaneous deployment of 88 satellites for Planet Labs) and unusual facts (e.g., from the 1960s to 2020, the number of machines orbiting Earth had increased to roughly 2,500 and “From 2020 to 2022, something astonishing happened: the number of satellites doubled to 5000.”). Readers will learn a great deal from this well-written text, particularly as Vance introduces many of the key founders and players, saying, “it was important to me to let them tell their own stories and for you to hear how they talk and think in their own words.” WHEN THE HEAVENS WENT ON SALE is full of dreams fulfilled and dreams dashed; it received a starred review from Publishers Weekly (“Vance’s feels-like-you’re-there storytelling captures the ‘spectacular madness’ of the moonshots. It’s The Right Stuff for the silicon age.”).

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

THE WISHING GAME by Meg Shaffer is, for me, reminiscent of some childhood mysteries like Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game or E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler or Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Velvet Room. They allowed for young readers to put themselves into a character’s shoes and try to puzzle out a situation. In THE WISHING GAME, Shaffer brings four adults, former runaway children, to Clock Island, the home of Jack Masterson, a best-selling children’s author. He has devised a new game where one of them could win what is essentially a fortune: the only copy of his new book. A main character, Lucy who workers as a teacher’s aide, is desperate to win so that she could afford to foster and eventually adopt seven year-old Christopher. The clues are often word games and/or require knowledge of the best-selling series. The story is entertaining, but a bit slow moving in parts with a budding romance (between Lucy and the books' illustrator, Hugo Reese) for further distraction. Described as whimsical and charming by other reviewers, THE WISHING GAME is a LibraryReads selection for May and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Dual Memory by Burke and Witch King by Wells

Wanted to share a few comments about some new science fiction and fantasy offerings from Macmillan’s Tor Publishing Group: 

DUAL MEMORY by Sue Burke revolves around sentient machines or systems and seems very timely given the recently expressed concerns about Artificial Intelligence. This well-written and suspenseful story is set on Thule, a land in the Arctic region where the inhabitants, while anti-war, resist an active opposition to those who attempt to invade. A visitor, Antonio Moro, is wounded in a rocket attack and stays behind to work as an artist. He’s given Par Augustus, a robotic executive assistant, as a gift and the adventures truly begin. Par is to follow three ancient robot laws: “Don’t hurt humans, don’t let myself get hurt, and obey human laws as appropriate.” Readers, however, will question how long that will last as Par gains more and more knowledge. Antonio, too, transforms as he experiments further with his art; they form a formidable team. DUAL MEMORY received a starred review from Booklist (“If Ursula Le Guin had written about AI machines, it would have looked a lot like this marvelous fable”).

WITCH KING by Martha Wells (Network Effect and others in the Murderbot series) is the introduction to a new world featuring the title character, a legendary demon named Kai, and his companion, Zeide, who is a witch searching for her missing wife. Politics and conflict abound. I honestly found this novel a bit difficult to follow – not only are there many characters, the rather lengthy (414 pages) book also jumps around in time between the current action and past events involving the same characters. However, Amal El-Mohtar, reviewing for The New York Times, found this temporal aspect to be a plus, writing, “timelines play off each other wonderfully: Elements introduced in a dizzying rush of world building become welcome context for the flashbacks, which in turn escalate tension in the present” and chose WITCH KING as one of just five science fiction and fantasy titles to suggest as Summer Reads. Wells’ many fans should (and will!) certainly give this book a try. WITCH KING appeared as a LibraryReads selection for May 2023 and Wells is a prolific, outstanding author in this genre – she has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and three Locus Awards.

Every Brain Needs Music and Your Brain on Art

EVERY BRAIN NEEDS MUSIC by Larry S. Sherman and Dennis Plies has a wonderfully playful and whimsical cover which reflects the authors’ approach to the important topic of the value of music. Larry S. Sherman is a professor of neuroscience at Oregon Health and Science University, an amateur musician, and a frequent lecturer on the brain and music. Dennis Plies is a former music professor at Warner Pacific University and has recorded multiple albums in genres including gospel, classical, and jazz. They clearly have great affection for their topic and have written an engaging and informative text which they hope “will be of interest to anyone who loves music and is interested in gaining insights into how we create music, teach and learn music, and perform and listen to music.” Students who are researching this topic will also find much of value; approximately forty per cent of the text contains appendices with information on two surveys, extensive references, and a detailed index.

YOUR BRAIN ON ART by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross is all about “How the Arts Transform Us” and the authors look at a wide variety of arts, including architecture, crafts, music, painting, sculpture, and more. Their credentials are wide ranging and impressive, too: Magsamen is the founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab, Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Ross is the Vice President of Design for hardware product area at Google and a National Endowment for Arts grant recipient. They begin with a simple quiz and discussion of an Aesthetic Mindset and then turn to aspects like the impact of arts on mental and physical health. Students may find the tone and content to be rather dense or academic and therefore a bit more difficult to decipher and appreciate. However, a range of authors, (e.g., Duhigg, Levitin, Louv, and Pipher), have commented positively on this new text and we will have a copy on our shelves for those who are interested.