Literate Scientist

I bought this book last year after my family asked me a few questions about whether it was safe to buy and eat chicken and I decided to educate myself on this subject. However only this month I had a chance to start reading it. Very informative on avian influenza viruses, how they interact and spread. I liked the history of the search for 1918 flu pandemic virus. I’ve read almost 60 pages so far but one advise I got is not to wash meat before cooking: I’ve done the opposite so far. Keep reading for the moment.

Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

I finished reading Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich a few weeks ago and started reading this book. Because it was written 40 years after William Shirer’s book it provides fresh insight and analysis into why things happened certain way. The book is not focused on Hitler but more on a Nazism as a political religion in a totalitarian society. I’ve read about 140 pages so far and still not disappointed. I have a few books on the same topic to read after I finish this book next year.

The Third Reich: A New History

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This is my second Rosen’s book and I started reading on 1st of September, 2008, a year after I read “Life Itself”. Essays were written after the latter book and were intended to clarify it. Therefore if you are about to start reading Rosen’s works it is probably better to read essays first. I’m almost halfway through it and particularly like the discussion about mimesis, its roots and history. This is highly recommended book to read and if you were trained in chemistry, physics and computer science like myself you would find revelations on every page and would never look at modern science with the same eyes again.

Essays on Life Itself

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If you ask me now what book I recommend for a broad overview of mathematics I would not hesitate to point to this latest book that I just started reading:

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (Hardcover)

Although it is 1000 page book with two columns of text it is actually intended to be read from cover to cover! This book is now on top of my math overview recommendations which previously included these books:

• The Road to Reality
• Comprehensive Mathematics for Computer Scientists
• Mathematics: Form and Function
• All the Mathematics You Missed
• The Nature and Growth of Modern Mathematics

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This is encyclopedic work I bought a few months ago in a local book shop and just started reading. Highly recommended for education and another view on human history.

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The second encyclopedic book seems was written before the previous one but looks like the logical sequel to it. I start reading it as soon as I finish “Ideas”.

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

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Just finished reading the book about the emergence of forensic science in 19th and 20th centuries:

The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective’s Greatest Cases

I have never thought about how dependent the life of a suspected person was on superstitions, logic and scientific fallacies and just plain bad luck if certain personality types were testifying in a court or collecting and analyzing forensic evidence. And this was up to the middle of 20th century in developed countries like Great Britain! Realizing that we must know about forensic science and its methods in order to protect ourselves and partially considering my expertise in memory dump analysis as the part of computer forensics I ordered another book about modern forensic science and will review it later as soon as I read it.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

I was always interested in the history of Nazi Germany and I bought this book almost 8 years ago. This was one of my first history books written in English. However, only this month I began reading it when commuting to work in the morning. In two weeks I already finished more than 200 pages and I would say this is very interesting read about mass and party politics in general. Some people say in their reviews that this book has too may adjectives because it was written in 50s-60s just after the war but I would say that adjectives make this book a non-stop reading experience.

Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Being born and lived in Russia during Communist era I inherited the sense of heroic achievements of the Soviet Army during the battle for Berlin. One of my co-workers recommended me this book and I read it last summer. It really shows the other side of the this battle like disorganization and chaos on the Soviet front and horrors committed by them on German civilians. Since then I buy and read revisionist history books to see different or not officially approved views on the same historical and political events.

The Fall of Berlin 1945

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This one I discovered last year and just finished reading. Interesting collection of articles written in the late 70’s and early 80’s about application of mathematics. My favourite were two articles about statistics and two articles about Husserl. The article about Kant biography was nice as well.

Discrete Thoughts

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Links to these two books can be found on my management blog:

Management Bit and Tip 0×80

The first book (150 pages) explains the main theme of the second (1,300 pages) that establishment shapes our world. I read the first book completely and it had some revelations for me, for example, that establishment supported communism in US after WWII, that McCarthy was a hero, and that Cuban Crisis was created by the demand from grassroots movement. Certainly it is good to know about different views. I started reading the second book and it differs from other history books, for example, written by J. M. Roberts, as it puts some theory and patterns behind the narrative.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -