Truth in com­edy the man­ual of impro­vi­sa­tionCharna Halpern
Meri­wether Pub. 1994World­Cat • Read Online • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

This book truly is a man­ual for those who per­form — or are inter­ested in per­form­ing — impro­vi­sa­tional com­edy. It explains the fun­da­men­tals of good improv, pro­vides exer­cises and games to develop those skills, and gives real exam­ples of these games being played.

I found the book to be quite inter­est­ing, even though my involve­ment in improv goes no fur­ther than shout­ing sug­ges­tions from the audi­ence. Learn­ing about the mechan­ics of this art form makes me under­stand why good improv is won­der­ful and why bad improv is repulsive.

Some of the exam­ples given are quite intrigu­ing, show­ing how com­plex and pro­found impro­vi­sa­tional the­ater can be. Humor should be a nat­ural byprod­uct of pure improv, not an inten­tional com­po­nent. A well-trained improv group can be hilar­i­ous with­out ever going for a laugh.

The Mea­sure of All Things The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hid­den Error That Trans­formed the WorldKen Alder
Free Press 2002World­Cat • Read Online • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

In today’s world, we take for granted that a gal­lon of milk is the same in New York and Los Ange­les, that you can buy the same yard of cloth in Boston or Baton Rouge, that a pound of cheese, a pound of paper, and a pound of steel all have the same weight. But, this stan­dard­iza­tion is a rel­a­tively recent phenomenon.

The sys­tems of mea­sure­ment we use in the United States today are the prod­uct of dis­til­la­tion of a plethora of more or less stan­dard Eng­lish units. These units were in turn derived from older Roman, Saxon, and Celtic units. These units were often spe­cific to the thing being mea­sured. As a result, there were many dif­fer­ent and often incom­pat­i­ble units for mea­sur­ing the same thing, i.e. feet, cubits, ells, fath­oms, rods, fur­longs, leagues, and miles — all of which mea­sure length or distance.

The uni­fied sys­tem of mea­sure­ment employed by most of the rest of the world — the met­ric sys­tem — has no such diverse ori­gins. Dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment period in Europe, equal­ity and the build­ing of an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity were hot top­ics. For these ideals to be real­ized, stan­dards had to be estab­lished. It is unsur­pris­ing that the French, who were rest­lessly forward-thinking at the end of the eigh­teenth cen­tury, planed and exe­cuted the most ambi­tious plan for estab­lish­ing a uni­fied stan­dard­ized sys­tem of mea­sure­ment. With the idea of cre­at­ing a sys­tem that would be rel­e­vant world-wide, they decided to derive the fun­da­men­tal unit from the earth itself.

Alder tell the story of the plan­ning of the new sys­tem, the expe­di­tion that set out to mea­sure the planet, and the strug­gles to con­vince gov­ern­ments and the gen­eral pub­lic to adopt the met­ric sys­tem. France’s top two geo­de­sers, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delam­bre and Pierre-François-André Méchain, were sent to mea­sure the merid­ian between Barcelona and Dunkerque. From this, they would extrap­o­late the dis­tance between the equa­tor and the north pole, and one ten-millionth of this dis­tance would become the meter.

Obtain­ing a very pre­cise mea­sure­ment of the merid­ian at this time required the use of tri­an­gu­la­tion and hun­dreds of ele­vated obser­va­tion points. Dur­ing their jour­neys, which ended up tak­ing seven years, Delam­bre and Méchain were inces­santly beset by bad weather, sus­pi­cious vil­lagers, con­stantly chang­ing French regimes, and war­ring Euro­pean nations. Obser­va­tion tow­ers they built were blown over, burnt down, and dis­man­tled. They also ran into trou­ble when their data revealed new infor­ma­tion about the size and shape of the planet (trou­ble­some because the sig­nif­i­cance was not eas­ily grasped, and the data ini­tially appeared flawed).

Alder does a good job of explor­ing the story from polit­i­cal, sci­en­tific, and social angles. Not only does he relate the events, he also details the far-reaching sig­nif­i­cance of the work of Delam­bre and Méchain. Alder reminds us that an object as mun­dane as a ruler can have a com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing history.

Tyran­nosaurus Sue The Extra­or­di­nary Saga of Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever FoundSteve Fif­fer
W. H. Free­man 2001World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Behind every exhibit in a nat­ural his­tory museum lie two sto­ries: that of the item’s exis­tence in nature, and that of its dis­cov­ery, col­lec­tion, and study by peo­ple. It is usu­ally only with rare, impor­tant spec­i­mens that the lat­ter becomes intrigu­ing in its own right. Such is the case with Sue, the largest and most com­plete Tyran­nosaurus rex found thus far.

Fif­fer tells the story of Sue’s dis­cov­ery and exca­va­tion — an excit­ing tale, but a rel­a­tively short chap­ter in her time among humans. It is only after Sue’s skele­ton has begun to be pre­pared for study that her recent his­tory becomes truly interesting.

The FBI seizes Sue, alleg­ing that her find­ers have vio­lated numer­ous fed­eral laws that deal with the col­lec­tion and sale of fos­sils — but not yet charg­ing them with any crimes. A four-way own­er­ship bat­tle ensues among the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, Sue’s find­ers, the Sioux man on whose ranch the dis­cov­ery was made, and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. (Strange that a head­line like “Sioux Sue for Sue” wasn’t men­tioned any­where…) mul­ti­ple years of legal pro­ceed­ings occur before the mat­ter is finally decided. The solu­tion is cer­tainly not to everyone’s lik­ing — Peter Lar­son, one of Sue’s dis­cov­er­ers, is sen­tenced to two years in prison.

This book takes an inter­est­ing look at the cur­rent state of rela­tions between pro­fes­sional degreed sci­en­tists and pro­fes­sional “ama­teur” col­lec­tors, at least in the field of pale­on­tol­ogy. It also sheds light on a mul­ti­tude of laws, reg­u­la­tions, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies — whose applic­a­bil­ity and juris­dic­tion often become con­fused in the wilder­ness of the west­ern United States. Fif­fer also pro­vides some good infor­ma­tion about the his­tory of ama­teur and pro­fes­sional ver­te­brate pale­on­tol­ogy in the Amer­i­can West.

The Mother Tongue Bill Bryson
Harper Peren­nial 1991World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Although he is best known as a travel writer, Bill Bryson spent a num­ber of years as a copy edi­tor. Know­ing that, it is unsur­pris­ing that two of his ear­li­est books (and one of his more recent ones) are about language.

In this book, he makes the bold attempt to trace Eng­lish from the begin­ning of human lan­guage to the present day. He details large lin­guis­tic shake-ups of the sort that accom­pany inva­sions, occu­pa­tions, and less vio­lent cul­tural meld­ing. Also promi­nent are the sort of diver­gent evo­lu­tion that result in sep­a­rate dialects, or even sep­a­rate lan­guages over long peri­ods of time. Bryson does a good job of demon­strat­ing bor­row­ing between lan­guages, show­ing that the flow is almost never unidirectional.

I find some of Bryson’s claims to be dubi­ous, or at least chau­vin­is­tic, but this is meant to be an enter­tain­ing book, not a piece of schol­arly writ­ing. And it is quite enter­tain­ing. Humor per­vades this book, both cre­ated by Bryson and inher­ent in the sub­ject matter.

One of the most inter­est­ing things about this book is unin­ten­tional, yet inevitable. In the fif­teen or so years since it was pub­lished, parts of this book have become out-of-date. How bet­ter to demon­strate the flu­id­ity of Eng­lish usage?

The Devil’s Teeth A True Story of Obses­sion and Sur­vival Among America’s Great White SharksSusan Casey
Holt Paper­backs 2006World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Casey weaves a com­pelling mix­ture of sci­ence, adven­ture, and char­ac­ter study — of both human and ani­mal sub­jects. Her tale of life among the sharks, marine mam­mals, birds, and rugged biol­o­gists on the Far­al­lon islands near San Fran­cisco is quite intriguing.

Inspired by a BBC doc­u­men­tary, Casey man­ages to obtain a brief pass to visit the Far­al­lones and write about the White Shark Project. Dur­ing her three-day visit, she gets hooked — on the oth­er­worldly islands, the mas­sive sharks, and the devoted indi­vid­u­als involved in the project. Over the next two years, she begs and bends rules to get two more stays at the Farallones.

Casey vividly recounts the dual won­der and hor­ror of watch­ing sharks feed on seals and sea lions. She tells of the thrills of see­ing rare marine and avian life nearly every day. She also details the hard­ships inher­ent in liv­ing and work­ing on jagged, bar­ren out­crop­pings of rock in the mid­dle of the tur­bu­lent ocean. In addi­tion to her own adven­tures, Casey includes sto­ries from the biol­o­gists, entries from the project’s log­book, and a fairly exten­sive his­tory of human activ­i­ties on the islands. The Devil’s Teeth is alto­gether a very inter­est­ing and well-written book.

The Bone Hunters The Heroic Age of Pale­on­tol­ogy in the Amer­i­can WestUrl Lan­ham
Dover Pub­li­ca­tions 1992World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

In the middle-to-late 19^th cen­tury, the Amer­i­can West was wild and dan­ger­ous, not only for cow­boys and min­ers, but for pale­on­tol­o­gists, geol­o­gists, and other sci­en­tific explor­ers as well. Url Lan­han relates the sto­ries of the early pale­on­to­log­i­cal expe­di­tions in the West and the dan­gers and hard­ships they encoun­tered. He is also quick to point out how often these tales of adven­ture were used — or mis­used — for pub­lic­ity. The two big names in Amer­i­can ver­te­brate pale­on­tol­ogy at the time, Oth­niel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, spent less time in the field and were at con­sid­er­ably less risk of harm than their papers and reports often sug­gested. This was the era of the gen­tle­man sci­en­tist, who often left the real work entirely to under­paid, unac­knowl­edged sub­or­di­nates. Marsh was espe­cially con­trol­ling, for­bid­ding his tal­ented assis­tants from pub­lish­ing any­thing in the field of ver­te­brate pale­on­tol­ogy, some­times even pub­lish­ing their work ver­ba­tim as his own.

The famous feud between Marsh and Cope plays a large role in the book, but is by no means the whole story. A host of other his­tor­i­cal fig­ures are involved, includ­ing John Wes­ley Pow­ell, Fer­di­nand Hay­den, T. H. Hux­ley, and Ulysses S. Grant. Lan­ham also writes a great deal about the actual pale­on­to­log­i­cal and geo­log­i­cal work done by these pio­neers. He also includes more recent revi­sions of their work. As the book was writ­ten in the early 1970s, some of its sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion is out of date — the work of John Horner, Bob Bakker, and oth­ers post­dates this vol­ume. Alto­gether, this is a very inter­est­ing look at the pio­neers of west­ern Amer­i­can pale­on­tol­ogy, and of the Wild West in general.

The Mean­ing of Every­thing The Story of the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­narySimon Win­ches­ter
Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, USA 2004World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

This ambi­tiously titled book tells the story of one of the most ambi­tious book projects ever under­taken. The Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary took 70 years and six edi­tors to reach a com­pleted first edi­tion. Those 12 vol­umes con­tained 414,825 head­words on 15,490 pages.

Win­ches­ter relates the sto­ries of the ded­i­cated men (and sur­pris­ingly for Vic­to­rian Eng­land, women) behind this gar­gan­tuan work. He includes not only the leisured intel­lec­tu­als who pro­posed the project and the vari­ety of peo­ple who worked directly on the OED, but also many of the thou­sands of vol­un­teer read­ers from all walks of life who pro­vided the raw mate­r­ial for the dic­tio­nary in the form of illus­tra­tive quo­ta­tions. Far from being a dull story, the tale of the OED’s cre­ation is one of clash­ing philoso­phies, incom­pat­i­ble per­son­al­i­ties, extreme ded­i­ca­tion, and the tri­umph of endur­ing qual­ity over ephemeral marketability.

Both this and Winchester’s ear­lier related work — The Pro­fes­sor and the Mad­man — are solid, enjoy­able accounts of a book that is any­thing but just a dictionary.

Guten­berg how one man remade the world with wordsJohn Man.
John Wiley & Sons 2002World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

That Johann Guten­berg invented the mov­able type print­ing press is com­mon knowl­edge. But beyond this sim­ple fact, not much is usu­ally men­tioned about the man. There was cer­tainly not much more infor­ma­tion pro­vided in any of my his­tory classes.

John Man does a won­der­ful job of giv­ing us not only Gutenberg’s back­ground, but also that of the var­i­ous tech­nolo­gies involved in mak­ing mov­able type prac­ti­cal. The reader is also pro­vided with the socio-historic con­text that made such an inven­tion pos­si­ble. Along­side this are exam­ples of why the tech­nol­ogy was not devel­oped ear­lier else­where — reli­gious pro­hi­bi­tions; non-alphabetic writ­ing sys­tems; lack of grapes, olives, or other rea­sons for pre-existing press tech­nol­ogy. Man does a good job of dis­pelling the notion of the dei­fied inven­tor, at least in this par­tic­u­lar case: Gutenberg’s motives had much more to do with gold than with God. Writ­ten more in a lec­ture style than stan­dard schol­arly prose, this was a quick, infor­ma­tive, and sat­is­fy­ing read.

High tide in Tuc­son essays from now or neverBar­bara King­solver
Harper­Collins Pub­lish­ers 1995World­Cat • Read Online • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

In this col­lec­tion of essays, King­solver dives into a diverse set of top­ics. Her writ­ings range from humer­ous mus­ings on the bio­rhythms of a stow­away her­mit crab to exas­per­a­tion at the Amer­i­can de-humanizing of the effects of war. The bril­liance of her writ­ing is evi­dent through­out, var­i­ously man­i­fest as wit, beauty, and poignancy. King­solver is best known as a nov­el­ist; I must add her works of fic­tion to my read­ing list.

Colum­bus Was Last From 200,000 BC to 1492, A Hereti­cal His­tory of Who Was FirstPatrick Huyghe
Anom­al­ist Books 2005World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

In the first few chap­ters, it became evi­dent that Mr. Huyghe really wants to believe the­o­ries built on very sparse or ques­tion­able evi­dence. A look at his pre­vi­ous writ­ings (which are not listed in this vol­ume) reveals books about sea mon­sters, UFOs, and bigfoot-type crea­tures — which sheds some light on what he con­sid­ers cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion. To Huyghe’s credit, he does often present oppos­ing view­points. How­ever, he doesn’t con­sider every­thing, and is obvi­ously biased towards the more spec­tac­u­lar and less cred­i­ble theories.

The best chap­ter of this book, in my opin­ion, is the last. Here, Hughye points out that accounts of Columbus’s voy­ages con­tain many incon­sis­ten­cies, con­tra­dic­tions, and omis­sions — the very things that cast doubt on accounts of other voy­ages. While this doesn’t prove that other accounts are true, it shows the impor­tance of third-party reports and inde­pen­dant ver­i­fi­ca­tion. If these existed for oth­ers, like St. Bren­dan, their tales might be far more believ­able. Huyghe’s point that Colum­bus should be known as the first con­questor of Amer­ica rather than its dis­cov­erer is a good one. We know defin­i­tively that other Euro­peans (the Norse) had been here hun­dreds of years before, and immi­grants from Asia (Native Amer­i­cans) had already been here for thou­sands of years.

The pres­ence of so much evi­dence for other vis­its to Amer­ica, albiet often sparse and incon­clu­sive, makes it seem likely that at least some of it is valid. Huyghe shoots him­self in the foot by putting too much stock in the most far-fetched the­o­ries. Had he pre­sented all the same data, yet remained on the skep­ti­cal side of the fence, my opin­ion of this book would be much higher.

See also my rant about this book.

What Went Wrong West­ern Impact and Mid­dle East­ern ResponseBernard Lewis
Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, USA 2001World­Cat • Read Online • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

An illu­mi­nat­ing look at the his­tory of the Islamic world’s rela­tions with other cul­tures. It exam­ines how at first the flow of knowl­edge and tech­nol­ogy went from the Islamic world to the West, then began to reverse direc­tion around the Renais­sance. Lewis man­ages to be intel­lec­tual and pithy while keep­ing his prose extremely readable.

Dia­mond The His­tory of a Cold-Blooded Love AffairMatthew Hart
Plume 2002World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Not exactly what I expected. “Recent” should have directly pre­ceeded “His­tory” in the title. Lit­tle men­tion is made of dia­monds in antiq­uity, or even prior to the 19^th cen­tury. Inter­est­ing for what it is, if a bit ram­bling at times.

Update: The title that Ama­zon has (“Heart of an Obses­sion”) isn’t actu­ally printed on the book any­where. The book itself uses the “Cold-Blooded Love Affair” title I used in the title of this entry.

Ver­ba­tim From the bawdy to the sub­lime, the best writ­ing on lan­guage for word lovers, gram­mar mavens, and arm­chair lin­guistsErin McK­ean
Har­vest Books 2001World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

A very inter­est­ing and enter­tain­ing col­lec­tion of arti­cles on lin­guis­tics, ety­mol­ogy, and gen­eral logophilia. The writ­ings range from seri­ous anthro­pol­ogy to wacky word­play. This book actu­ally made me laugh out loud on a num­ber of occasions.