I must be getting old and sentimental. There were times while reading astrophysicist Neal deGrasse Tyson’s new book Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization that I found myself getting a bit misty-eyed. Sometimes it was a reaction to specific images, as he recounts the social impact of our first looks at our earthly home floating in the vast tapestry of space There was the photo taken by the astronauts of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, the first to circle the moon in preparation for the landing the following year, our first view from a distance far enough away to see Earth as a whole. I remember watching live on television that Christmas Eve as they livestreamed their view of Earth while reciting the first few verses of the Book of Genesis. deGrasse also discusses the 1990 picture sent back from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it passed Neptune nearly 4 billion miles away. Now the earth is just a tiny ‘pale blue dot,’ in the words of science writer Carl Sagan, barely visible at all.
Other times, my emotional response came more from a yearning for humankind to communicate and collaborate better, since despite our differences, our varying experiences and cultures, we’re all HERE, sharing this amazing little ball of life, the only one we have so far identified, our home that sustains us through an intricate interplay of physics, chemistry and biology.
This is the theme of the book: how science could and should inspire us to get along better. It is a theme that runs unevenly through the book’s ten chapters. Sometimes the point is pounded, as in the chapter entitled Conflict and Resolution, which begins:
One of the great features of a working democracy is that we get to disagree without killing one another. What happens when democracy fails. What happens when we hold no tolerance for views that differ from our own….Do we long for a world where the moral code, our values and our judgments—all that we believe are right and wrong—are deemed correct and unassailable.
This kicks off a discussion which encompasses global conflicts over politics, religion and resources, nuclear arms, climate denialism, vax deniers and more. Sometimes he finds ways to point to ways that those with opposing views each can be seen as having some validity, other times he condemns science denial. And woven throughout is always some intriguing science. For example, when discussing conflict over resources, he points out that space, with its solar energy, freshwater comets and metal-laden asteroids, is an abundant future source of our needs. A single large asteroid contains more rare-earth metals that have been mined in all our history on Earth.
Other chapters emphasize the science, with the politics lightly woven in. One example is Risk and Reward, about statistics and probability, and the very human tendency to misunderstand and ignore them. Here we get the amusing anecdote of a convention in Las Vegas hosting 4000 physicists. The casino had one of its least profitable stretch of days ever. Why? The scientists understood the laws of probability too well to be tempted to gamble.
Overall, it’s a fun book. deGrasse writes in a style that almost feels like you’re having a discussion in a bar. We debate the ins and outs of most of the great challenges of the day, from racial politics to vegetarianism, We learn endless amusing tidbits. Most astronauts in our space exploration years orbited Earth at a distance of a mere 250 miles, not much more than the distance from New York to Washington. It would take four hundred million pints of ice cream to give you a lethal dose of the of any residual amounts of the herbicide glyphosate that might be in it, but it would take only 20 pints to give you a lethal dose of sugar. The population of India is 40% vegetarian, the UK is 20%, and the US is only 5%. Even meat-loving Argentina has 12% of its population declaring themselves vegetarian.
He believes in science, and argues that we all would be better off if we did so as well.
THIS WEEK’S NEW HARDCOVERS
- The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th, by Denver Riggleman. Former House Republican and the first member of Congress to sound the alarm about QAnon provides readers with an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the January 6th select committee’s investigation. Riggleman, who joined the committee as senior technical advisor after he was asked to help, lays out the full intent and scope of the plot to overturn the election. The book includes previously unpublished texts from key political leaders. And it also contains shocking details about the Trump White House’s links to militant extremist groups—even during the almost-eight-hour period on January 6th when the White House supposedly had no phone calls. The man responsible for unearthing Mark Meadows’s infamous texts shows how data analysis shapes the contours of our new war, telling how the committee uncovered many of its explosive findings and sharing revealing stories from his time in the Trump-era GOP.
- The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics, by Raina Lipsitz. This book explores what it calls the first major leftwing generation since the 1960s through the mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all heralding a new, youth-inflected radical politics.
- Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II, by Bruce Henderson. One of the last, great untold stories of World War II, kept hidden for decades even after most of the World War II records were declassified in 1972: the saga of the Japanese American U.S. Army soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater, in Burma, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, with their families back home in America, under U.S. Executive Order 9066, held behind barbed wire in government internment camps.
After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was desperate to find Americans who spoke Japanese to serve in the Pacific war. They soon turned to the Nisei--first-generation U.S. citizens whose parents were immigrants from Japan. Eager to prove their loyalty to America, several thousand Nisei--many of them volunteering from the internment camps where they were being held behind barbed wire--were selected by the Army for top-secret training, then were rushed to the Pacific theater. Highly valued as expert translators and interrogators, these Japanese American soldiers operated in elite intelligence teams alongside Army infantrymen and Marines on the front lines of the Pacific war, from Iwo Jima to Burma, from the Solomons to Okinawa.
- State of Disaster: The Failure of U.S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change, by Maria Cristina Garcia. This was published last week. Garcia focuses on Central America and the Caribbean, where natural disasters have repeatedly worsened poverty, inequality, and domestic and international political tensions. She explains that the creation of better U.S. policy for those escaping disasters is severely limited by the 1980 Refugee Act, which continues to be applied almost exclusively for reasons of persecution directly related to politics, race, religion, and identity. Garcia contends that the United States must transform its outdated migration policies to address today's realities. Climate change and natural disasters are here to stay, and much of the human devastation left in their wake is essentially a policy choice.
- Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back, by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow. Scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels’ use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.
- Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All, by Owen Ullmann. This portrait of the heart and mind of Janet Yellen is the riveting story of one of the most remarkable careers of recent times. The ultimate glass-ceiling buster, Yellen is the first person to hold all three of America's top economic policy positions. Currently Treasury Secretary (the first woman to hold the job), she has also been chair of the Federal Reserve and of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
- Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, by Annie Proulx. The novelist, a lifelong environmentalist, brings her wide-ranging research and scholarship to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important yet little understood role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that greatly contribute to climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four stunning parts, Proulx documents the long-misunderstood role of these wetlands in saving the planet.
- Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City, by Matthew Teller. This highly original “biography” features the Old City’s Palestinian and Jewish communities, but also spotlights its Indian and African populations, its Greek and Armenian and Syriac cultures, its downtrodden Dom Gypsy families, and its Sufi mystics. It discusses the sources of Jerusalem’s holiness and the ideas—often startlingly secular—that have shaped lives within its walls. It is an evocation of place through story, led by the voices of Jerusalemites.
- Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation, by Stephen Hyden. A leading music journalist’s riveting chronicle of how beloved band Pearl Jam shaped the times, and how their legacy and longevity have transcended generations.
All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them. If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be appreciated. Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 15% each week). We also partner with Hummingbird Media for ebooks and Libro.fm for audiobooks. The ebook app is admittedly not as robust as some, but it gets the job done. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month.
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