Tech Tuesday: The Man Who Tried to Hold Infinity

A Cold War Episode That's Never Been Told

Dr. Franklin “Sandy” Reeves believed, above all else, that nothing was perfect. Not the meter in Paris. Not the constants in textbooks. Not even the speed of light — though he would never say that out loud in a room full of physicists.

“Nothing is perfect,” he would mutter, tapping a yellow legal pad. “That’s the first fundamental.”

He worked for MITRE, which meant he worked for the Pentagon without quite admitting it. In 1962, the problem on his desk was simple enough: determine how accurately a fighter-bomber could hit its target using a forward-pointed laser and a corner reflector beyond the objective.

The mathematics were straightforward. The field intensity should vary as r⁻⁴. That’s what the textbooks said. That’s what the instructors had said.

But Sandy had a habit of looking more closely.

After the test run, he slipped a 16-inch reel of streak film into a standard projector — not because it was required, but because curiosity had always been his private religion. He watched the beam flare and fade as the aircraft crossed from far field to near field. 

Then he stopped the projector.

The intensity had doubled.

Leaning close with a magnifying glass, he saw. It doubled far too quickly.

He sat back and pondered. If the mathematics were correct, the film was wrong.

If the film were correct, the math would be incomplete.

He went home that night and began scribbling. What if light carried mass — not convertible mass, not E=mc² in the tidy classroom sense, but a companion mass that had to be accelerated from zero at the antenna? What if the outward flow of energy was not merely radiation, but acceleration?

--Mass times distance equals force.

--Energy equals hν.

--Set Planck’s constant equal to one — the convenient dodge. Let grams, centimeters, and seconds collapse into unity. c = g = s = 1.

He circled it twice. If the variables reduced, then the universe reduced. And if the universe reduced, perhaps the equations could be added — mass side and electromagnetic side — into one structure. Two triplets of differential equations. Add them properly and you reach it: A Theory of Everything. 

He wrote it in the margin once. Then crossed it out.

He wasn’t a crank. He worked with hardware. He built a computer for aircraft — a pulser amplifier circuit using a new planar transistor designed by a brilliant MIT graduate. The fall-time problem vanished. The pulses were clean. Too clean.

Some transistors were so fast that the flip-flops double-triggered and canceled themselves out. A machine that thought so quickly it thought nothing at all.

Sandy laughed when he realized it.

“Too perfect,” he said. “And perfection is impossible.”

The solution was human. Three technicians traveled with every unit. He went with them to the high-altitude test chamber so they wouldn’t balk. He passed the test.

Later, the USSR fielded intercontinental missiles and bombers became relics overnight.

The machine he had built — ounces shaved, circuits refined, technicians trained — became unnecessary and irrelevant.

He didn't rage. As usual, he returned to his notes. "Infinity," he had written, "does not mean forever. It means you can always name a number larger than the last. Energy flows from high to low until equilibrium."

Somewhere in the infinity of space, he believed, every extremum existed: 10⁻¹⁰ grams, 10¹⁰ grams; 10⁻¹⁰ seconds, 10¹⁰ seconds. The universe of universes had always been. Would always be.

Late one evening Sandy closed his notebook and looked out the window at a Maryland sky buzzing faintly with unseen transmissions. If mass and energy were twins, if fields rose and fell faster than predicted, if constants were conveniences — then perhaps the universe was not a finished equation but a balancing act of perpetual motion. Never perfect. Never still. Never ending.

Photos by the author. Galileo Museum, Florence

THIS STORY IS A WORK OF FICTION

Humanity Hanging from a Cross of Iron: Eisenhower's Forgotten Warning on the True Cost of War

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."--Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."

—JFK

First Atlas test launch, 1957*

The Eisenhower quote above is from a speech President Eisenhower gave on April 16 1953 six weeks after the death of Josef Stalin. It's been alternately called "The Chance for Peace" and the "Cross of Iron" speech. In this address Eisenhower called for global de-escalation and cooperative security as opposed to the Soviet Union's reliance on military force and regional dominance. 

In the middle of the speech Eisenhower notes that the prohibitive cost of armaments represents a theft from humanity, diverting resources from essential needs like healthcare, education, and infrastructure. He challenges the new Soviet leadership to prove their desire for peace through concrete actions, such as ending hostilities in Asia and supporting a unified, free Europe. Ultimately, the speech proposes a global fund for reconstruction, fueled by the savings from disarmament, to wage a "total war" against poverty and hunger rather than against other nations.

He then became quite specific on what increased military spending actually eant. The cost of modern armaments should not be understood as a line item in a budget, but as a direct sacrifice of human well-being. 

One modern heavy bomber (in 1953) cost the equivalent of a modern brick school in more than 30 cities; or two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 people; or two fine, fully equipped hospitals; or 50 miles of concrete highway.

One fighter plane cost the same as a half million bushels of wheat.

One destroyer could have built new homes for more than 8,000 people.**

This reframing was timeless because it pierced the abstract veil of national security budgets in order to force a moral reckoning. Eisenhower was not just making an economic point; he was arguing that a nation's true strength is measured in the well-being of its people, not the sophistication of its arsenal. To reiterate: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Eisenhower’s speech was a direct and powerful appeal to choose a different future. The world faced a choice between the "dread road" of fear and arms and the "highway of peace" built upon a total war against poverty and need. His proposal was to dedicate the world's strength, resources, and imagination "to serving the needs, rather than the fears, of the world." The monuments to this new kind of war, he said, would be "roads and schools, hospitals and homes, food and health." 

It was as if the backbone of Eisenhower's speech was taken from Robert Frost's famous poem The Road Not Taken. There are two roads ahead, he said. We'd like you, leaders in the Kremlin, to join us as we stroll down the path of peace. It's the Kremlin's responsibility to choose correctly. 

How did this speech ultimately play out?  

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. The U.S. stockpile grew rapidly in the 1950s due to expanded fissile material production and thermonuclear weapon development starting in 1954. Production rates accelerated in the late 1950s, exceeding 7,000 warheads per year in 1959–1960. The Soviet Union's nuclear weapons collection grew much slower so that by the end of the decade the U.S. had nearly 10 times as many bombs and missiles as the Soviets.

While making a public appeal for peace, the U.S. was simultaneously taking clandestine measures to overthrow foreign leaders we didn't like. In 1953 we overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in Operation Ajax. The following year we took down the democratically elected President Arbeniz of Guatemala. 

In 1956 and 57 the CIA, with British and Turkish intelligence, attempted military takeovers, assassinations, staged incidents, propaganda, and bribes to topple pro-Nasser governments under President Shukri al-Quwatly and successors in Syria. All plots were uncovered and failed, increasing Syrian ties to the USSR.

From 1957-59 the CIA gave support for the Permesta Rebellion in Indonesia. By providing arms, funding, and aerial bombings through front organizations like Civil Air Transport, the U.S. sought to destabilize President Sukarno's government. The effort failed, with the rebellion defeated by 1961 after a U.S. pilot was captured in 1958, exposing involvement.

 

In Iraq (1959) the CIA planned with Egyptian collaboration to support nationalist elements, including Ba'athists, in an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim on September 7, 1959. Tactics included providing weapons and training to prevent a perceived communist takeover. The attempt failed, and Qasim remained in power until 1963.

According to David Halberstam, in his book The Fifties, "Administration officials had few moral qualms either about their role or about deceiving the American press and people. They saw themselves in an apocalyptic struggle with Communism in which normal rules of fair play did not apply. "

Eisenhower’s speech was a direct and powerful appeal to choose a different future. How did our nation's actions align with his appeal for a peaceful future? 

I think it interesting President Eisenhower's last speech was a warning to Americans.

Here is the speech in which President Eisenhower first made reference to what he called the "military-industrial complex." President Eisenhower gave this speech just days before stepping down,  yielding power to the newly elected JFK.

More than seventy years later, as nations continue to build arsenals of breathtaking expense and destructive power, Eisenhower's words echo with renewed urgency. 

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This post was conceived after I saw Eisenhower's speech referenced in relation to a recent article noting our current trillion dollar defense budget, the highest in U.S. history. 

Related Links 

Eisenhower's "The Chance for Peace" Speech

Dylan's Masters Of War Didn't Just Apply to the Cold War

*The SM-65 Atlas was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. With the proliferation of intercontinental missiles there was simultaneously a surge in family fallout shelters and air raid drills.

**Based on the way planes and ships are built today (e.g. the F-35 fighter jet), these numbers are way off.

Author Historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin Shares Insights from His Research on The Cold War's Killing Fields

Just over a year ago I discovered an audio version of Paul Thomas Chamberlin's well-researched and thoroughly engaging The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace in our local library. I listen to books while commuting, and from the getgo it was a compelling read. I was soon writing about it and ordered a copy of the hardback for ongoing research purposes.

Ideas from this book have helped serve as a lens to better appreciate a number of other books I've read this past year including Seymour Hersh's books and Ken Burns' Vietnam, among others. I consider Chamberlin's book important for any Baby Boomer who has grown up in this period of history as it helps us understand many of the events that formed a backdrop for our own personal histories from McCarthyism to the Space Race to the Concert for Bangladesh and the ongoing Middle East turmoil.

Paul Chamberlin is currently Associate Professor of History at Columbia University. He taught for six years at the University of Kentucky after receiving his PhD from Ohio State University. He previously studied at the American University of Cairo and the University of Damascus and has held fellowships at Yale University and Williams College.

I recently reached out to the author as a means of learning more about this work and an excuse to keep talking about the so more people will read it.

EN: What was your motivation for writing The Cold War’s Killing Fields?

Photo by Ross Yelsey

Paul Thomas Chamberlin: There was a general consensus among historians that post-1945 era conflicts took place in the so-called Third World. Nevertheless, it struck me that we didn't have a clear idea of where, when, or how -- precisely -- these conflicts happened. The discussion was all generalities and few specifics aside from disconnected wars such as Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. I wanted to create a narrative map that would give a sense of shape to the heretofore shapeless violence of the Cold War age. In doing so, the book also suggests a new periodization to the post-1945 era and tries to suggest a sense of proportion to the era's global patterns of violence.

EN: One of the key takeaways for me was that the so-called Cold War took place in the context of the post-Colonial era. That is, the World Wars 1 & 2 liberated the rest of the world’s peoples from the Colonial powers. How did this “revelation” become so clear for you? And why is it still not grasped?

PTC: Historians in my field are fairly accustomed to thinking about 1945 as a major transition in international affairs from a world of empires and colonies to a world of nation-states. Likewise, we often approach the Cold War in the context of decolonization. What I found in the course of my research, however, was that most of the era's largest conflicts were not wars for decolonization -- i.e. conflicts aimed at pushing out colonial powers. Indeed, most of the bloodiest wars took place inside postcolonial societies that had already driven out their colonizers. These battles, then, were struggles for control of postcolonial states. My sense is that, in general, most readers and diplomatic historians don't always differentiate between decolonization and postcoloniality. Beyond this, Eurocentrism and Americentrism still tend to direct a lot of folks' away from the wider world.

EN: I would like to have seen you apply this truth/reality in more depth to South American power struggles of the 50s to 80s. Are you working on a follow up on that topic?

PTC: Not at the moment, I'm currently working on a project that looks at the Second World War as a clash between competing imperial powers. The Latin American case is interesting, but I found that it didn't quite fit into the story I was trying to tell. On the one hand, the casualty figures just weren't there in Latin America. Though the region certainly saw more than its fair share of vicious wars, the body counts of the conflicts in Asia and the Middle East dwarfed those in Latin America. Moreover, the sort of conflicts that Latin America experienced as well as U.S. interventions in the region began long before 1945. As Latin American historians have argued, then, the conflicts taking place there weren't really Cold War phenomena. Rather, they relate to a deeper history stretching back to the early 20th century and even the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. For more on this, it's worth looking at Greg Grandin, Stephen Rabe, and Alan McPherson's work.

M26 Pershing tanks in downtown Seoul, Korea

EN: The great tragedy, as you point out repeatedly, is how damaging all this has been to the innocent civilians who are just trying to go about their business and survive. Why are our leaders so oblivious to the suffering they generate?

PTC: Nationalism teaches us to see the world as broken up into separate, national boxes. Leaders and the people they represent tend to care more about the deaths of their fellow countrymen and women than the deaths of foreigners. My guess is that this will remain the case so long as we remain unable to see ourselves as global citizens. The big challenge moving forward in this regard seems to be climate change. How do we put our common interests as humans above our narrow interests as Americans, Chinese, Russians, etc.? Unfortunately for the time being, it seems our narrow national consciousness maintains a pretty strong grip.

EN: How do American citizens properly process all this bad behavior by its own leaders?

PTC: I think it's helpful to gain a better sense of history. It's been my impression that officials have historically tended to act in good faith but their priorities were often rooted in short term interests and unfounded anxieties. This was certainly the case during the Cold War when exaggerated fears of the Soviet Union led the United States to militarize the Cold War and stage disastrous interventions in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. But fear and short-term thinking are powerful forces -- I'm not sure how we can move past them.

EN: Who are some of the people whose voices you respect today?

PTC: That's tough, there are so many. I think Timothy Snyder has had some interesting things to say in the last few years about our current situation. I'll also listen to Rachel Maddow’s show when I have some time to check in on current American politics (albeit with a strong editorial take). I think Shoshona Zuboff's Age of Surveillance Capitalism puts forward some interesting ideas.

EN: Can you recommend 2 or 3 books for further reading?

PTC: Off the top of my head, Odd Arne Westad's Global Cold War and The Cold War: A World History cover some similar themes as my own book. Daniel Immerwahr's How to Hide An Empire is another really interesting take on U.S. global power. Another book I'm looking forward to reading is Megan Black's Global Interior which looks at the Department of the Interior as a paradoxical agent of American expansionism and globalism.

EndNote: Thank you, Paul. I believe you've made an important contribution toward better understanding our history.

Related Links
Killing Fields: New Book Proposes that the Cold War Wasn't Really Cold, It Was Just Different
The Thích Quảng Đức Episode (A Snapshot from The Cold War's Killing Fields)
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Revisited
The Cold War's Killing Fields at Amazon
Korean War photo via Good Free Photos

"Go Away Bomb:"---Dylan Writes A Song for Izzy Young

The early Cold War was a pretty scary time for American civilians who were being bombarded with messages about a potential impending atomic holocaust. Death by means of The Bomb was a very real possibility in the back of many of our minds. Books like Nevil Shute's On The Beach and films like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove kept the notion alive.

Many ordinary people, like my cousins' family in Cleveland, built bomb shelters in their homes, stockpiling food and water. Schoolchildren everywhere were trained in what to do in the event of a nuclear war, much the same as we practiced fire drills.

Mad Magazine, a staple in many households, had a cartoon series called Spy vs. Spy which also played off this cold war theme. To a certain extent few of us were untouched, including a young Bob Dylan, who translated our shared anxiety into language that resonated with us.

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"Go Away Bomb" MSS original. Notation upper right by Izzy Young.
From the Bill Pagel Archive, courtesy Bill Pagel

One of the items on display at Karpeles Manuscript Museum Library during Duluth Dylan Fest this coming month is an original manuscript which Dylan wrote for and at the request of Israel "Izzy" Young, who owned a music store called the Folklore Center. This original document from the Bill Pagel collection is one of numerous rare and unique items from the Pagel Archive that will be on view through much of the summer here.

When the young Bob Dylan arrived in New York in 1961, his first destination was Greenwich Village. Izzy Young's Folklore Center, at 110 MacDougal Street, became one of his haunts. He would often hang around the store listening to Izzy's records and writing songs. In his Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote this about the Foklore Center: “The place had an antique grace. It was like an ancient chapel, like a shoebox-sized institute.”

Side 2. "Go Away Bomb"

Young asked Dylan to write a song for an anti-atomic bomb songbook Izzy hoped to put together. Though Izzy never put out the songbook, he did hang on to this early unreleased Dylan manuscript for over 50 years before parting with it. Izzy Young himself wrote the notation in the upper right corner of the manuscript, “1963 Bob Dylan wrote this when I asked him to do a song for a bomb song book.” Dylan delivered the song the day after he was asked to write it, according to Young.

The song stays within the realm of the social movement and our nation's shared fears about nuclear war during the early 1960’s. Dylan’s songs “Let Me Die In My Footsteps,” “Masters of War,” “Talkin’ World War III Blues” as well as “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” all reflect this same theme.

In addition to the manuscript Bill Pagel is including two photos of Izzy Young at the Folklore Center  from those early Greenwich Village days.

About Izzy.

Izzy Young, circa 1980. Photo source: Library of Congress.

Israel Goodman Young (March 26, 1928 – February 4, 2019) was a noted figure in the world of folk music, both in America and Sweden. He was owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village and, after moving to Stockholm in 1973, also opened and operated the Folklore Centrum store there. Izzy organized the first New York concert by Bob Dylan and devoted decades of his life supporting folk music.

When a teenage Bob Dylan arrived in New York in the winter of 1961, Young became something of a mentor for him.

Young’s music store, which doubled as a small performance space, had a small back room where Dylan plinked out songs on an old typewriter. Young was struck by Dylan’s ability to absorb everything he heard, but was otherwise unimpressed. “Then he began writing those great songs and I realized he was really something.”

EdNote: The info here about the late Izzy Young and his Folklore Center was stitched together from Mr. Young's obituary in the New York Times and Nicole Saylor's Blog Post for the Library of Congress.

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Related Links & Sources
Izzy Young Obituary, NY Times
Izzy Young's Folklore Center (Nicole Saylor)
BobDylanWay.com
2019 Duluth Dylan Fest Schedule
Hibbing Dylan Project
A Bob Dylan Timeline (at New Pony)
Spy Vs. Spy

Recent Readings and a Pew Research Study About Who Does Not Read Books in America

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
--Ray Bradbury.

This past week I read an article on Medium about reading books and how women are reading more than men now. Not only that, but that more women are enrolled in college than men, which at one time was heavily skewed toward males.

I intended this post to be a list of my recent readings with summaries of the books I'd read, but then I decided instead to begin by drawing attention to some findings from a Pew Research study on who doesn't read books in America. Since there are many studies showing a correlation between reading,  education and wealth generation (or career empowerment), it seems that a primary aim of good parenting should go beyond making sure kids have food, shelter and a safe place to live, but should very definitely include reading, writing and 'rithmetic as basic foundation stones for a successful life, just as it was in grandma's day.  (Good social skills can be added here, too.)

All that to say, here were a few numbers from the Pew study. And again, the interesting feature here is not "who" is reading, but who is not reading.

24% of Americans have not read a book in whole or in part in the past year. In other words, reading books doesn't appear to enter their minds as something having value.

They assessed reading habits by age, income, gender, level of education attained and race. In most cases there were few surprises. More men have not read a book (25%) than women (22%), fewer whites have not read a book as compared to blacks and Hispanics. People in the lowest income bracket (under 30K/year) are three times more likely to not have read a book the previous year.

When compared to a 2016 study regarding libraries, "the same demographic traits that characterize non-book readers also often apply to those who have never been to a library." Sad.

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My apologies if it sounds like I was ranting. No doubt if you've gotten this far you are a reader, so I'd best move on.

My reading list is always longer than my available ti
me, which is probably the challenge for all avid readers and lovers of books. Here are a handful of books I've completed recently, followed by a few others that I am in the process of reading.

The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace
Paul Thomas Chamberlin

I read the HarperCollins audio version of this book, which was so powerful I bought the hardback and am reading it again. The audiobook is read by Grover Gardner. While reading it I kept feeling like this was the saddest book I'd ever read. My reason for this was two-fold. First, it is heartbreaking how the superpowers (Soviet Union, China, USA) are playing this global power game but the people in power moving armaments and making decisions seem unharmed by any of it while literally millions of innocent civilians are being killed, wounded, displaced. The litany of horrors committed during this "time of peace" after the last world war is mind-boggling. Second, the degree to which our own country (U.S.) was complicit in generating all this human suffering just makes one ashamed.

I strongly recommend the book because it is the first and best book that I've seen or know of that connects on the dots regarding the miscellaneous and seemingly unrelated conflicts in various parts of the world during the Cold War.

We Die Alone
David Howarth

This is another audiobook I read. (See my review of the Untold Story of the History of Talking Books) The story was originally published in 1955. It is literally an amazing story of survival in the most harrowing Arctic circumstances. It is the story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian who ends up in Britain to return as part of the resistance. A boat with 12 men come into the fjords on a mission, but are thwarted by the Nazis. All are captured or killed except Baalsrud, whose toe is shot off. He escapes, and must now survive.

All that (above) occurs in the very beginning of the story The rest is one challenge after another including frostbitten feet, and an assortment of other complications The writing is totally compelling. One reason I wanted to read this is that I also have a compelling survival/escape novella that I have written about a young man with a withered leg who escapes from Estonia as the Red Army is heading West at the end of WW2. 10% of the population of Estonia fled in a single wave, whic should tell you something about life under Stalin from 1940-42. If I can tell Ralph's story (Uprooted) half as well as David Howarth tells Jan Baalsrud's, then I will be happy.

Don't Quit Your Day Job
Michael Fedo

The full title is Don’t Quit Your Day Job: The Adventures of a Midlist Author.  s a memoir recounting the five-decade writing career of Michael Fedo, whose books have not attained best-seller status, despite receiving mostly favorable reviews in publications such as The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, among others. What follows here are a few excerpts from my review of the book on Amazon.

The book is essentially an overview of Mr. Fedo’s life as a writer, but it’s written in such a way as to provide good lessons all along the way. Each story has a purpose and though it is a book for writers, it would be useful for many other careers in the creative arts.

His first chapter, Authorities and Experts May Be Wrong, is a lesson I learned myself and have written about more than once. “Who Are Your Experts?” is something everyone has to address at various points in a career. We are shaped by those whom we listen to, and sometimes we don’t have enough experience to recognize the difference between good and bad advice.

Though primarily a book for writers, each chapters contains lessons for writers, I think others might enjoy reading about his life in the writing biz. He writes in an easy-going style that would make this book worth reading the most valuable one being to make sure you can pay your bills before you launch into the deep. It's a memoir designed to be both entertaining and instructive.

Read my blog post about his writing workshop and the reading he gave from this book.

The Year of Less
Cait Flanders

Amazon version has livelier cover.

The full title is actually, The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store.
It's a short book with a promising title, related to several other book I've read about simplifying one's life and reducing clutter. Unfortunately, I didn't care that much for the reader. (The author.) She's a blogger whose primary theme seems to be her self. The book essentially documents her efforts to live on less and the lessons she learns along the way. One reviewer on Amazon (who liked the book) wrote, "This book isn't about minimalism or decluttering (although it will inspire you to pursue those goals!), it's about living with less, consuming less, and ultimately needing less." Another wrote, "To the uninitiated: trust your instinct to "buy less" and pass on this." I almost quit the book two or three times, but plowed through anyways.

My biggest problem was that I was unable to relate to a person who "buys things" to make herself feel better while racking up massive credit card debt. By shopping to make oneself happy, I am referring to replacing all the furniture in the living room, clothes, etc to the tune of $30,000. There were a few good insights early on and I thought there would be more. As a blogger she has built a following who apparently enjoys her transparency and candor. For the wider public, it should have been an article in a magazine.

CURRENTLY READING
I have a number books in mid-stream. Some I will write about in the future, one I already wrote about but need to finish.

The Unexpected Gambler
Robert Asiel

This book and the next are about guys who learned how to win by cheating, as in power or dice games. Asiel went to Las Vegas as a 17-year-old and became a poker dealer at a casino at which time he learned that the casinos were also crooked. (EdNote: It's my understanding that things have changed because the odds already favor the casinos and they do not have to cheat to rake in the dough.) Asiel subtitled his book, A History of Casinos Cheating the Public and One Gambler's Revenge. It sounds like a self-rationalization to me, but most of us spend a lifetime justifying one form of bad behavior or another.

Robert Asiel went to Vegas in the 60s, while the casinos were still mob run. Later in life he was all over the country and did a lot of cruise ship hustling as gambling opened up everywhere. In the end he was wanted by the FBI, but not before he'd lived a life of adventure. Like Fast Jack (below) he did finally get nailed and spent time in the pen. The book will likely surprise you at the games people play.

Fast Jack: The Last Hustler
John Farrell

One of the more interesting places to hear good stories is from the cab drivers in Las Vegas. On my first trip the Las Vegas our cabby told about how far downhill Vegas had gone since the corporates took over and the mob no longer ran the casinos. We asked for an explanation and he said in the old days you lose all your money at the gaming tables and the casino would put you up for the night and pay for your ticket to get home. "Not any more," he said You lose all your money and the send you packing.

Fast Jack was born in 1937 so he came of age in the Fifties. He learned all the tricks of the hustler's trade and then took them to another level. As a card and dice mechanic is also learned the risks involved, including being beat up, shot at and doing time. He wrote his memoir because the world has changed. In the old days most gambling was a private matter. The hustlers knew where the action was. Nowadays, casinos, riverboats and cruise ships are everywhere.
At age 80, Jack's dice moves are still astonishing. Here's a video with no special effects showing off some Fast Jack dice mechanics.
Here's a podcast of Fast Jack being interviewed on Maria Konnikova's show Grift.

An End to Upside Down Thinking
Mark Gober

The subtitle of this book is Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life.  Gober's book is essentially an assault on the arrogant assumptions of science, specifically as it pertains to materialism. The notion that consciousness could evolve from matter did not make sense and he began to explore this problem in greater detail. He learned that this area of science is one of the biggest stumbling blocks and is still not yet resolved.

Though I'd not finished the book yet, I wrote a review earlier this month and interviewed the author afterward.

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Aren't books amazing? There are so many varieties of books, and so many stories still to be told.

What have you been reading lately? I hope it's good.