Being Mortal, Atul Gawande

Death and ways of dying is a thing that a lot of people don’t like to think about, but which is really, really important, and Atul Gawande’s book treats the issues with sensitivity, thought and a wisdom born of experience. It’s not just a doctor’s point of view on death, but an educated look at the ways people die in our society, how things can be different, and a personal point of view — as well as talking about his patients, Gawande talks about his own father’s experience of dying.

It’s not a cold and clinical book, at all; in fact, I found myself crying while reading parts of it. I don’t necessarily always agree with Gawande (I think that voluntary euthanasia and better end of life care can and should co-exist, while he is much more cautious about whether allowing euthanasia causes people to pay less attention to providing better palliative care), but I do respect his point of view and his careful exploration of the facts. He discusses different ways of running nursing homes, different case studies, and different approaches to death and dying, and never did I feel that he was seeing an illness instead of a patient, a problem to be solved instead of a person.

I think this is a very worthwhile read for doctors, for patients, for young people and old people, for carers… for everyone. These are discussions that need to be had. My family know what I want to happen if I were to be ill without hope of recovery, when I would want the life support machines turned off, that I would want my organs to be available for transplants, etc. Do yours?

Rating: 5/5

Talking Hands, Margalit Fox

Talking Hands is in part the story of the development of sign languages around the world, and in part an exploration of the development of language and how that might have occurred in human history. The little Bedouin settlement which is the main case study is a place where a sign language has arisen independently of other sign languages, and its development has mirrored that of the development of spoken languages in ways which may reveal important things about the way the human brain handles language.

Most of the neurological stuff wasn’t new to me, and it’s definitely on a level any reader can appreciate; it doesn’t go into massively technical terms, or dissect vast case studies about the way injuries affect the brain, etc. The historical context of sign language and how people treated deaf and dumb people in the past was newer for me. I wasn’t aware, for example, that for ages people — even deaf people — considered sign language inferior because it lacked the sort of grammar people recognised. It was even suppressed in favour of cumbersome sign language which followed word-for-word the pattern of spoken language, ignoring the potential for a spatial grammar.

Margalit Fox comes across as a science writer rather than a scientist, making the book very accessible — either on its own, or as a complement to more in-depth works about language like Steven Pinker’s. I didn’t find it as fascinating as her book on decrypting Linear B, but her writing is clear and concisely informative, and I enjoyed reading the book. I wasn’t always sure about the way she characterised actual people; I wouldn’t find some of those descriptions very flattering/respectful… but she did write it with the approval and help of the team working in the Bedouin village, according to her introduction, and it’s never disrespectful about disability or intelligence.

Rating: 4/5

The Ancient Paths, Graham Robb

The problem with this book is that, despite Graham Robb’s claims of having disbelieved the idea and sought extra hard for proof, etc, etc, it’s hard to believe something which is so broad and sweeping, which if true would change the perceptions of a whole period of history. Despite his attempts to methodically lay out the proof, it still reads kind of like someone excitedly believing in ley lines, or maybe better, imagining they can see the lines of intelligence-made canals on the face of Mars. It feels so massive and coincidental, especially because Graham Robb comes to this from the point of view of someone cycling across the ancient paths, rather than an archaeologist or historian.

Would I like to believe that the ancient Celts were this clever, this organised, this technologically advanced? Yes. And the idea of things being laid out along the solstice line isn’t so far fetched on its own: archaeologists like Francis Pryor have claimed similar for sites like Seahenge. But you don’t have to coordinate across the countryside to lay things out along solar lines, and place names could turn out to be a false signal — maybe it was just a common way to refer to places, maybe it was just a way of saying ‘the middle of nowhere’.

As far as I can tell, when Graham Robb links deities and folklore together, he isn’t going against the general wisdom, and that and the way some of his evidence hangs together makes me think that parts of his theory do have merit. It just seems overall too sweeping, and too much like wishful thinking — and sometimes his explanations of how x or y might have happened sound far too much like a story. In the end, I don’t have nearly enough knowledge of the field to make any real judgement on the theory.

Nonetheless, this does make for an interesting read, explaining the ways fairly advanced mathematics would’ve been possible, how communication might have been kept up across all the Celtic areas, and how some myths and stories might still connect to reality. It feels like a good story, regardless of whether the history and theory is sound.

Rating: 3/5

Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional, David Waltham

For the most part, I found Lucky Planet interesting enough, though at times there were gaps when it comes to the possibilities for life elsewhere — and no mention at all of the idea that there could be life somewhere else on Earth which uses molecules of the opposite chirality to us, suggesting more than one separate origin of life. There was nothing about the Viking biological experiments, which per Michael Brooks’ pop-science books are still thought by some to have shown evidence for life on Mars — the experimenter, Levin, still thinks so, and he’s not alone.

I think the problem with all these theories is that they rely on a gut feeling of how likely life is to arise and, once arisen, to become intelligent. Obviously, as Waltham points out repeatedly, because we exist, conditions are possible in which we can exist and observe (a condition called the anthropic principle). That tells us nothing in itself about how likely life is to arise, though. In fact, with everything that might indicate how likely life is to arise, we have a sample size of one.

It’s really impossible to scientifically judge, I think. It depends on whether you decide life is likely or unlikely, and follows from there. Waltham does discuss all the factors that make Earth a rarity, which may constrain life. But again, sample size of one, so how do we know that a planet’s satellites or seismic activity or atmosphere or predominant minerals are important or not? Life doesn’t have to look the same as us (but if it did, that would go a fair way to confirming Waltham’s point; we require very specific circumstances to have arisen, after all).

So, if you’re looking for an answer, I don’t think Waltham has one for you (though nor does anyone else, by the same logic).

Rating: 3/5

Ashoka: the Search for India’s Lost Emperor, Charles Allen

Ashoka was an emperor of India who, for around two thousand years, was virtually unknown. After war-like beginnings, he became a Buddhist and began to spread Buddhist values throughout his kingdom, with the hope of conquering neighbouring territories with moral force rather than military force. There’s a certain amount of idealism about this emperor and the good works he may or may not have done, but Allen’s book does show that he seems to have been dedicated to his vision.

However, this book is less about Ashoka himself and more about the search for him — the India enthusiasts, often British people coming over to run the colonies, who hunted down the references, visited the ancient sites, and began to put things together. He’s relatively sympathetic toward those endeavours, with the attitude that if Britain did no other good for India, well, we had these clever people who helped them figure out their own history. I don’t have anything to set against that (although he does often mention local experts in languages and religion), but if you’re sceptical of a colonial narrative, I would say this verges on that territory.

It is a fascinating story, though, and doubly so to me because I know so little of India in either time period. I did sometimes wish I was better at geography, so I could draw more of it together on a mental map, but alas, I couldn’t even sketch the shape of India. Ashoka’s story is definitely worth telling, and so too that of the people who reinstated his legacy, I think.

Rating: 4/5

Grave Secrets of the Dinosaurs, Phillip Manning

Finding an intact skeleton of a dinosaur is rare enough: some of the famous specimens that look complete actually aren’t, with gaps filled in by guesswork, or from other skeletons. Partial finds are much more common — but even then, compared to all the dinosaurs that ever lived, the number that survive in some form as fossils is tiny. Every find provides new clues: an impression of skin, the hint of a feather, the presence or absence of marks which tell us how dinosaurs stood or walked.

This book is about the holy grail of paleontology: mummies, i.e. remains with soft tissue preservation. They can tell us an astonishing number of things about a corpse, and they can even include preserved biological molecules that can be tested — perhaps even DNA. This book goes through the past discoveries which have fuelled hope for soft tissue preservation, and given a lot of food for research in themselves, but the main point is an almost totally preserved specimen from Dakota. It includes background into the research and the discovery, and then a few chapters on what’s happening now. Frustratingly, it went to print before the research was complete, so readers might be left wondering if the Dakota mummy was ever successfully scanned, etc, and what that might have revealed.

It’s very much a work on an evolving situation: there’s more to learn from Dakota than is contained in these pages. That’s for sure. But that could be the case for years and years to come, so I’m glad this book exists and is accessible to laypeople.

Rating: 3/5