The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow

First published in 2010; Bantam edition published February 21, 2012

Is philosophy dead? Stephen Hawking thinks it is. In his view, philosophy hasn't kept pace with science. According to Hawking, the ability to answer the big questions in life -- why we exist, why there is something rather than nothing -- resides in physics rather than philosophy (sort of an odd position, given the extent to which he creates a science-based philosophy in the concluding chapters). Together with his coauthor, Hawking suggests the answers to those questions in a short but surprisingly readable book that I, as a nonscientist, almost convinced myself I understood.

If Hawking's mind is a sleek and speedy Ferrari, mine is a rusty tricycle with wobbly wheels. It is to Hawking's credit that he can explain quantum mechanics in such simple terms that I can fleetingly grasp his meaning. As Hawking says, "The quantum model of nature encompasses principles that contradict not only our everyday experience but our intuitive concept of reality." No matter how often I read about these principles, I never quite grasp them, but Hawking nonetheless came close to rewiring my brain with his patient explanations. Hawking's writing is full of wit, yet Hawking is a serious thinker and The Grand Design is filled with serious thought. His brief discussions of complex questions are insightful despite their abbreviated nature.

Most of the early chapters include a brief history of science with special attention to physics. Demonstrating his ability to pack an enormous amount of information into a compact volume, Hawking tells the reader a bit about the backgrounds and eccentricities of these scientists, whose groundbreaking work he obviously admires. Admiration doesn't stop Hawking from being a critic; he repeatedly illustrates the unfortunate truth that scientists often become wedded to a theory and will postulate all sorts of fanciful explanations for experimental data that contradict the theory rather than abandoning it.

The most interesting chapter to me addresses a puzzling question: Is there such a thing as objective reality? I hope we are not all living in The Matrix, but Hawking argues that there "is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality." There are only models of reality, and the model that currently fits best with our observations is the one we choose to call reality. Different models of reality might be equally valid under different conditions, a notion that rejects the concept of an "objective" reality.

Despite Hawking's skill at explaining difficult concepts in simple terms, I became totally lost (as I always do) when, in chapter 5, he explained the difficulty of creating a Grand Unified Theory that would explain each of the four forces of nature (or however many there might turn out to be) as components of a single law. Once the discussion turns to quarks and Feynman diagrams and virtual particles, not to mention M-theory (the current best model of the grand design), I feel myself sinking into a very deep bog. That isn't Hawking's fault, and readers who are more adept at wrapping their minds around abstract notions will derive more from the text than I did.

I felt slightly less lost reading Hawking's explanation of the origin of the universe, despite the troubling notion that it is meaningless to ask what happened before the universe began because time did not exist (and "before" did not exist) until the universe originated in a quantum event. Hawking's deft use of analogy makes it possible to visualize the complex theories he's explaining. I was back on solid ground with chapter 6, where Hawking turns his attention to the philosophical implications of the quantum principles he discusses in earlier chapters (it's easier, for me at least, to be an armchair philosopher than an amateur physicist). In chapters 7 and 8, Hawking discusses the likelihood of life originating on Earth (and perhaps elsewhere in the universe and perhaps in other universes, as well) given the unique set of environmental conditions and physical laws that make life possible, providing a thoughtful and effective refutation of the notion (developed at length in Robert Sawyer's Calculating God) that a divine guiding hand must have intelligently designed those laws and conditions.

I wish I had the sort of mind that intuitively grasped the principles of quantum mechanics that underlie The Grand Design, but for readers like me who are better with words than math and more at home with novels than physics textbooks, Hawking's book is a wonderful resource. For physicists and others who have made an extensive study of the book's subject matter, The Grand Design is probably too simplistic, more an overview of current thought than a groundbreaking treatise. Physicists clearly are not part of Hawking's target audience, but I am, and I can recommend this book to those who are as unschooled as I am. Philosophy might be dead, but ideas are not, and The Grand Design is filled with them.

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The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood

Published by Oxford University Press on May 23, 2012 

Bruce Hood argues that the self is an illusion, "a powerful deception generated by our brains for our own benefit." He contends that a correct understanding of self contradicts the popular view that we are individuals within our bodies, "tracing out a pathway through life, and responsible for our thoughts and actions." His argument that the self is merely an illusion will probably not be well received by the portion of the mental health and self help industry that makes a living teaching people to understand themselves, control themselves, or change themselves. Hood argues that none of those objectives can be accomplished, although we might maintain the illusion that we have accomplished them, because we cannot change or control what does not exist.

Is the argument convincing? Yes and no. According to Hood, who we think we are is a product of external influences: "it is the experience of others that defines who we are." Our brains manufacture models to make sense of the external world, and we experience those models as "a cohesive, integrated character," but the model is just a construct, not a reality. I buy that, but I'm not sure the word "illusion" is synonymous with "mental construct." I suppose one could argue that any product of the brain -- a thought, an emotion, a sensation -- is in some sense an illusion as opposed to a tangible reality, but I find that difficult to accept that creations of the brain are correctly categorized as illusions.

Hood's thesis, as summarized in the last chapter, is that the self is the product of the mind, built over time from observing externalities. I'm not sure why this means that the self is an illusion. A house is built over time from materials derived from external sources, but a completed house is no illusion. Yes, the self may be based on imperfect memories and misperceived experiences. Yes, the self is "continually shifting and reshaping" as external influences change. That tells me that the self is fluid, not that it isn't real. Of course, Hood contends that the brain fights hard to protect the self illusion, and that may be exactly what my brain is doing as I write this. Even if "self" is an illusion, however -- and Hood acknowledges this -- it is a useful illusion, and one with which we are stuck. As Hood notes, we "need a pretty strong sense of self to survive," so even if self is an illusion, it is one most of us need to embrace.

On the other hand, perhaps my quibble is only a semantic disagreement with Hood's use of the word "illusion." Much of Hood's argument is indisputable. Hood presents the heart of his argument in the preface. The remainder of the book is packed with information. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the brain: how it functions and how it develops during infancy. Chapter 2 focuses on the social interaction of babies, who (Hood says) are hardwired with a Machiavellian ability to manipulate adults. He also discusses the development of self-consciousness during infancy. Chapter 3 explores the notion of the "looking-glass self" (the theory that we conceptualize ourselves based on how others see us), examines the role memory plays in the development of the sense of self, and discusses the phenomenon of false or induced memories. Hood's premise is largely dependent upon this research. If our sense of identity is based on a composite of our memories, and if our memories are inherently unreliable, are we really who we think we are? Hood also discusses the role that gender and stereotypes play in shaping the sense of self, as well as autism and psycopathy, ADHD and impulse control. Chapter 7 discusses the fallibility of memory and the relationship between memory and identity.

Some aspects of the book are likely to be controversial, particularly the assertion that "the freedom to make choices is another aspect of the self illusion." Chapter 4 suggests that people are not truly responsible for their actions -- a point of view that is shunned by a criminal justice system. That brain injuries rather than conscious choice may lead to aggression or pedophilia is a reality that the law would prefer to ignore. More doubtful, however, is Hood's assertion that our actions are never a product of free will. Toward the end of chapter 4, Hood acknowledges what seems obvious: even if free will doesn't exist, we might as well accept the illusion that it does because the illusion makes us happy.

The most valuable concept that follows from Hood's argument is his rejection of the notion that "winners," extraordinary achievers who manage to overcome formidable obstacles, are inherently better than "losers," the large majority of people who are limited by their circumstances. Hood asks why we blame people for failing to achieve "rather than the circumstances that prevent them from achievement." I suspect that society isn't ready to accept the ramifications of that simple question.

Much of the rest of The Self Illusion could come from Psychology Today. It's all very interesting and Hood credibly connects the wide-ranging topics to his central premise. Do we lose our sense of individual identity in a crowd? Do we join groups to define our identity? Why do we fear ostracism? If the self can be easily molded (even made to do evil) by group membership, can a core self really exist? What do identity disorders say about our actual identity?

After absorbing as much of this information as I could, I think Hood's evidence for the nonexistence of self can be summarized this way: 1. We do not always behave as we expect to behave. 2. We often behave as we think others expect us to behave. 3. When we are in a group, we engage in group behavior rather than behaving as individuals. 4. Behavior is sometimes caused by a mental disorder. This summary is too simplistic to be fair, but I don't think the broader arguments in The Self Illusion convinced me that self is an illusion so much as it reinforced my understanding that the self is complex. Clearly we construct a sense of ourselves that is influenced by a variety of factors (from dopamine to Twitter), but I'm not sure that construct is illusory so much as it is malleable. In any event, Hood assembles a large amount of information that is useful and interesting, whether or not you ultimately agree that it proves his point.

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Deadly Valentines by Jeffrey Gusfield

Published by Chicago Review Press on April 1, 2012

Deadly Valentines takes its name from Chicago's St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, the bloody conclusion of which is described in the book's prologue. While Deadly Valentines tells the story of Vincent Gebardi, a/k/a "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, a charming gangster who almost certainly planned and may have participated in that gruesome event, it does so within the broader context of crime and politics in Chicago during the 1920s.

Deadly Valentines is divided into three parts. The first chronicles Vincenzo Gibaldi's life from his arrival in Ellis Island as a Sicilian immigrant in 1906 at the age of four through his family's move to Chicago during the era of Prohibition. As he grows up in Brooklyn, he is instilled with Sicilian values which, according to Jeffrey Gusfield, center upon the necessity of revenge, obedience to a code of honor, and keeping your mouth shut. By the age of sixteen he is calling himself Vincent Gebardi. Later he adopts the Irish-sounding name Jack McGurn to give his boxing career a boost. He gets a different sort of boost when his boxing is noticed by Al Capone, who employs him to guard shipments of bootleg liquor. On a parallel track Gusfield describes the wild and rebellious young life of Louise Rolfe in Chicago.

Part two begins with the murder of McGurn's stepfather, who unwisely competed against the Genna crime family in the distribution of illicit alcohol. Gusfield then shifts the focus away from McGurn to set the stage for Chicago's gang wars, beginning with the burgeoning rivalry between Capone and Dean O'Banion. McGurn returns to center stage in 1926 when he orchestrates a series of murders that Capone has sanctioned. As odies pile up on the streets of Chicago, McGurn moves up to a leadership position in Capone's organization. In 1928, Gebardi hooks up with Louise in a merger of two unstoppable egos.

Part three, appropriately entitled "Massacre," addresses the St. Valentine's Day killings and their aftermath. Impetuous prosecutors look like boobs after predicting with certainty their ability to convict McGurn. Federal prosecutors do only a little better, obtaining a short-lived, absurd conviction of a Mann Act violation -- a conviction justly overturned by the Supreme Court. With Capone in prison for tax evasion and facing constant harassment by police, prosecutors, and rival gangsters, McGurn decides it is time to focus on his golf game. Organized crime is transitioning from bootlegging to gambling and racketeering and McGurn's influence and health begin a steady decline that culminates in a violent death.

Deadly Valentines captures the colorful culture and rapidly changing attitudes of the Roaring Twenties. Gusfield writes in some detail about the growth of jazz and the live performances that (together with the free flowing hooch) made Chicago a swinging town. The hypocrisy of Chicago's news media and the corruption of Chicago's police, politicians, and judiciary are recurring themes. Another is public tolerance, and even a degree of admiration, for celebrity gangsters who, at least, could be counted on to keep the local speakeasy stocked with safe alcohol. Still another is the lust for publicity displayed by the few Chicago police officers who aren't on the take, a desire that causes them to arrest McGurn repeatedly on bogus charges. My favorite theme concerns the eagerness of police and politicians to destroy civil liberties when they can't solve crime by conventional means.

Although Gusfield tells McGurn's story in lively prose, his sentences are occasionally awkward and the writing becomes less polished as the book progresses. Some of the information he provides is redundant. The text is well documented with copious endnotes but the writing doesn't have a heavy, academic feel. There is abundant drama in McGurn's life and Gusfield allows it to shine through in his narrative. He is perhaps too judgmental about Louise's sexual freedom (girls just wanted to have fun even before Cyndi Lauper wrote their anthem); Louise's alleged "hedonism" seems perfectly ordinary when compared to the 90210 crowd of modern times. In addition to being a "gold digger" and a "boozy barfly," Louise is, in Gusfield's view, "morally bankrupt," a harsher judgment than he ever visits upon serial killer McGurn. Why Gusfield reserved his invective for Louise is puzzling. On the other hand, he properly condemns the bluenose view (popular at the time) that blames jazz and other "race music" for the demise of female virtue. On the whole, despite my qualms about Gusfield's treatment of Louise and occasional lapses in his writing style, I would recommend Deadly Valentines to "true crime" fans and to anyone interested in an convincing portrait of a celebrated gangster.

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Midnight in Peking by Paul French

Published by Penguin on April 24, 2012

The mutilated corpse of a foreigner found at the base of Fox Tower on January 8, 1937 posed a special problem for Peking police. The victim was a free-spirited young woman named Pamela Werner. When Pamela wasn't attending school in Tientsin, she lived in Peking with her adoptive father, Edward Werner, a scholar and former British consul. She had been beaten to death and then dumped at Fox Tower. Multiple wounds were inflicted post-mortem in an apparent attempt to dismember the body. Sections of her skin and some of her organs had been removed.

The task of investigating the crime fell to Han Shih-ching, with the assistance of Detective Chief Inspector Richard Dennis, who headed the police in the British Concession in Tientsin. Dennis delved into Edward Werner's troubled past, learning of the problems he caused in his various diplomatic postings before he got sacked, a history suggestive of mental instability. Gossip -- the favorite sport of the expat community -- suggested that death and tragedy were Werner's constant companions, including the suspicious death of his wife.

A little more than a third of the narrative has passed by before a promising suspect emerges, but if solving the crime were that easy there would be no story to tell -- at least not a story filled with drama and intrigue. Fortunately for the reader (less so for Han and Dennis), the British government increased its efforts to impede Dennis' investigation, suggesting that a cover-up, if not a full-blown conspiracy, was afoot. Brits Behaving Badly becomes a subtext, as does the concept of "saving face," a characteristic often associated with Asians but quite applicable to the British living and working in China. Racial bigotry also played a role in the British government's insistence that the investigation should focus on Chinese rather than foreign residents.

The investigation took place as Peking prepared for invasion by the Japanese. As in any complex investigation, Dennis and Han pursued a number of false leads. The investigation brought them into contact with foreign residents of Peking who indulged in (to put it delicately) unusual recreational activities, suspicious but not necessarily related to Pamela's murder.

A little more than halfway through the narrative, Dennis finally receives information that provides a credible solution to the mystery while pointing to a suspect who is beyond the law's reach. At that point, however, Peking is virtually under siege by the Japanese and Pamela's disappearance is all but forgotten. Dennis is recalled to Tientsin, the official investigation is closed, and it falls to Werner to use his own resources to discover the truth about his daughter's death. He pursues that goal relentlessly over the course of several years.

Midnight in Peking reads like a well-paced murder mystery, but it is ultimately a tale of corruption, not just within the Peking police but, more startlingly, within the British government, whose officials valued the façade of British civility more than the truth. The narrative proceeds at a steady pace and is enlivened by insightful examinations of the principle players. Paul French provides the reader with enough background facts to add flavor but not so many as to bog down the narrative in needless detail. The text is well-documented in a series of endnotes. It seems likely that, for the sake of good story telling, French re-creates some scenes and conversations in greater detail than the historical record allows, but the book suggests no reason to believe that he has plays fast and loose with historical fact. His attempt to tie the "fox spirit" into the story -- representing a woman who beguiles and betrays -- is colorful but a bit weak. Still, Midnight in Peking is a fascinating look at a forgotten moment in a distant land, an unsolved murder that "slipped from history" despite the compelling evidence of guilt that Werner finally assembled, and that French faithfully reproduces.

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Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro

First published in India in 2010; published by Black Cat on February 28, 2012

Subtitled Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars, Beautiful Thing grew out of an article Sonia Faleiro wrote about Mumbai's "bar dancers" that was never published because it wasn't considered newsworthy (perhaps because the bars were officially banned in 2005). It is true that Faleiro's subject isn't groundbreaking, yet the world she investigated -- a world she found fascinating and intimidating even as it left her "feeling frustrated and hopeless" -- deserves to publicized, if only to illuminate the impact of poverty on women who live in a culture of limited options.

Faleiro sketches the hierarchy of sex workers in Mumbai, from the waitresses in a Silent Bar who provide manual relief while serving drinks and tandoori, to brothel workers, to call girls and massage parlor employees. Bar dancers reside at the top of the heap, in part because they sell sex discreetly and infrequently (and thus do not consider themselves to be sex workers), while facing many of the same challenges: paying bribes to the police to avoid being brutalized by their cattle prods; working for violent employers; enduring rude comments and the judgment of a society that regards their profession as impure. Still, by dancing for men, bar dancers gain freedom they could not otherwise enjoy. They do not have to live at home, under the domineering rules of fathers or husbands. They can speak to men to whom they are not related without fear of punishment. Their customers think the bar dancers are dancing for them, but according to Leela (the dancer with whom Faleiro spent tbe most time), the customers are dancing for the bar girls: exchanging money for an insincere smile, rewarding cheesy lines from Bollywood romances with lavish shopping trips, forsaking loving wives for the illusion of a satisfied lover.

Most of the book consists of stories that Leela and other bar dancers told Faleiro about their lives. Faleiro also interviews customers, bar owners, pimps, and a transgender hijra. Faleiro reports the stories told by bar dancers uncritically, without noting that tales of woeful pasts (rapes by their fathers and sons and cousins and strangers) told by women who are ashamed of their profession, as well as tales of success (the power they wielded over men who adored them) may not be entirely true. This seems particularly likely in Leela's case; her smug, self-centered nature is not conducive to honesty. Still, it is certain that the women Faliero interviewed endured horrid lives before they became sex workers, even if they might exaggerate the horror when they chat with a sympathetic listener. Although Leela is more than a little annoying, it would be impossible to read this book without feeling empathy for the abused women in Mumbai and anger at, not just the abusers, but the people in their lives who do nothing to help because they regard the violent behavior of men as none of their business.

Faleiro paints a bleak picture of Mumbai, one that is filled with gangsters and petty criminals rather than Bollywood celebrities. She describes a city ruled by corruption. She attempts to explain why men seek out bar dancers and how the dancers become obsessed with the unlikely hope of romantic love and marriage as the only means of erasing the stigma of their profession. In a chapter that showcases the book's strongest writing, Faleiro interviews a woman who has been diagnosed with HIV Wasting Syndrome and talks to Leela about what will happen to the woman's child.

Beautiful Thing has its flaws. Faleiro often leaves Hindi words and expressions untranslated, and while the meaning is frequently apparent from the context, I still felt I was guessing. An appendix with a glossary of Hindi words translated to English would have been a useul addition to the book. At some point, the stories begin to sound the same; there is too little to differentiate them from each other. Beautiful Thing has the feel of a lengthy magazine article that has been fleshed out to fill the pages of a book.

The second part of the book addresses the 2005 ban on dance bars, a cynical attempt to distract voters from the city's underlying problems (poverty chief among them) by focusing on illusory "quality of life" issues. (Perhaps the politicians in Mumbai learned from Rudi Giuliani, whose war on petty crime in New York City during the 1990s coincided with a spike in unemployment.) Far from improving the quality of life in Mumbai, the ban increased the city's population of destitute women by throwing the bar dancers out of work, placing the women at increased risk of disease and sexual assault. Leela did not fare well after she lost her job as a bar dancer, although there are always places for a sex worker to find employment. As this section of the book illustrates, the real story here is not that poor and abused women turn to sex work, but that poverty and abuse are so often ignored or tolerated by people of means. Beautiful Thing reports nothing new, but the reporting is nonetheless worthy of attention.

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