December 2013

Yoni and Noam,

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel 

by Avi Shavit.

Forgive me for sending you both the same book but I just finished it and I could not put it down. It has had incredible reviews, and it is a remarkable view of a remarkable country.
This is Israel, written by a liberal Israeli who has access to both the rich and famous and the poor and dispossessed. It is a nuanced story, way beyond the crap put out by the Jewish establishment and the crap put out by the Arab fellow-travellers.
This includes both the critical history and the author's view of the future. This is subtle, sometimes contradictory but wonderful complex stuff and yet very readable.
By the time you finish this book you will have a much greater understanding of the situation in  Israel than you could get from anywhere else.

November 2013

It is Two for one Month (books with appeal to boys and girls)

For Yoni, The Goldfinch: Donna Tart. I have yet to read this..But, I am listening to the serialization on the BBC, I will read it, honest.
Anyway it is an exciting fast paced but literary novel and I think it will appeal to both of you, so it is a toofer.

Noam:
 The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans : Lawrence N Powell. No, of course I haven't read it but it has very high reviews and is an accesible , yet scholarly work on the founding and growth of your new home town.

October 2013

Yoni: Alan Furst: Night Soldiers.
This guy is very popular now, and rightly so. I just finished a book of his set in Paris immediately prior to the second world war. This is the first in the series. Set mostly in Paris and roaming through Middle Europe. People work for both sides, they try and do the right thing which may mean they end up working with the bad guys every now and then, I think that you really will enjoy this.
p.s. I also sent you the new Jhumpa Lahiri book, that is for Daci.


Noam: Jarrod Diamond: Guns Germs and Steel. I have read this and you will enjoy this very much. How geography and inventions and of course microbiology have changed the course of human events. That's not to say that great leaders have no role but apparently geography and a number of critical quantum leaps in technology perform the real historical movements.

September 2013

Yonatan: Alexander Fleming, The man and the myth.
Yoni, first an apology. I had to buy this second hand from the UK it might take a week to arrive.
This will make you the king of ID for a while. This well thought out book describes the "accident" that led to the discovery of penicillin and takes an approach which proves that it cannot of been an accident but a well thought out set of experiments. It goes on to describe the great showman that Fleming was taking the Nobel prize and all...

Noam: Shaman: At his request

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/214525930/shaman-takes-readers-back-to-the-dawn-of-humankind

August 2013

Two science books this month, fiction for Yonatan, History for Noam

Yonatan: Berlin Wild. I read this about 15 years ago. I see now that it is out of print so I have sent you a "very good" second-hand copy.
There can't be many novels connecting scientific research and the Holocaust but there is at least one.
Boy survives in Berlin, through his association with a research lab. A little far fetched perhaps?
I loved this, I was amazed to see it out of print.

Noam: Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History.
It is hard to find you a book on the history of Microbiology that I have read. Most of those are either too technical or so out of date as to be useless. This seems a lot better though. There are a number of books explaining the historical effect of microbiology (think the black death, and Jared Diamonds Guns, germs and History) It is from 2007 and does go into SARS etc. I think that you will find it just technical enough and not written for idiots but easy enough to read so that it is not written for academics.

July 2013 (a bit late)

July 2013:
Yoni Sacred Games by Vikram Choudry
I was amazed when I first read this exciting Indian detective novel. It presents a side of India which is rarely discussed and only now is being written about. This book was an opening to his work and since this novel I have read everything he has written and much modern Indian fiction besides. It is a longish novel, but can be read quite quickly. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I did. If you enjoy this then it's fast forward to "a suitable boy" by Vikram Seth the longest novel written in English!

Noam: A walk in the woods Bill Bryson. this is of course, a result of our recent visit to the Smokies. In his usual style Bryson begins with the optimistic aim of walking the whole AT. He tells the story in a way which could be likened to listening to Ian and me chatting about something we did when we were younger, but done brilliantly by Bryson. I know you will love it.

June 2013

Noam:
Len Deighton, Bomber.

This is a rather straightforward story, told with outstanding skill of the everyday horror of fighting a war. The book details a single bomber mission over Germany and the crew who must risk their lives to complete it, This book struck me all the more as you and Yoni , in another age, would have been in this position. The sheer fear of the raid and the crews "who don't come back" every night. Even in what is still seen as a just war, on an individual basis, there is an internal struggle with fear as much as an external one with the enemy. Deighton is a master story teller you will really enjoy this. The companion volume, fighter is out of print I will bring you my copy in June.

Yonatan
FatherLand.

I read this about 15 years ago and found it really chilling. ON the face of it it is a simple detective story but the plot is set against a Germany that won World War 2, where Hitler is now an old man and America never entered the war (a bit like the isolationists and  Pat Buchanan wanted to happen). The story twists and turns as details emerge from history which have been suppressed by the totalitarian government. There are a number of novels which use this theme, but this is by far the best.

May 2013

Noam: the double helix (new annotated edition).

Noam, you asked for non-fiction history of science, and this is the mother of them. The real story of the discovery of DNA structure, by 2 young researchers, in Cambridge. This is how real science used to bE done before anyone really knew anything and there were huge gaps in our knowledge. I think there  is an essay by Aaron Klug in this edition, about the role of Rosalind Franklin.

Yoni: Master and Commander

Well, you knew we would get there eventually if you like this one the box set will have to wait for your birthday! These books kept me mesmerized for a whole year, I could not put them down. I will probably reread them all. They are without a doubt the best historically accurate  adventure fiction ever written. I am not the only one who thinks this either, half the most famous current authors think so as well.

"Patrick O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels has been described as "a masterpiece" (David Mamet, New York Times), "addictively readable" (Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune), and "the best historical novels ever written" (Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review), which "should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century" (George Will)."

April:
Noam- why e=mc2 and does anybody care
Brian Cox
This guy is great, he frequently does a BBC radio show and is hilarious, and he works at CERN. Which in itself is rather remarkable. This is a great book which I honk that you will really enjoy.

Yoni: the hare with amber eyes
I first heard this guy, who is a famous potter, as a podcast from Jewish book week. This is his family story, partly about the very rich Jews of Vienna, partly about the holocaust but it is really a great story.

March

Noam, Berlin Noir:

The Bernie Gunther Trilogy by Philip Kerr
It is 1936 and we are in Nazi era Berlin, the olympic games are about to start, the Jewish population is waking up to a new reality.  Detective fiction at its very best...
The trilogy spans the war years and gives a grimy and bleak picture of life in wartime Berlin for ordinary people.  These are wonderful books, it took the author, Philip Kerr, another 14 years before he wrote the next one in the series. I read them a few years ago, loved the dark picture as he paints the struggle of an otherwise decent detective.



Yoni
Going Postal:

No explanations needed: There is a new TV series on Amazon prime for 9.90, read the books first. Discworld is a wonderful place.

February 2013

Yonatan:
Dissolution: J. Sansom
This book spent a long time on my wish list, several years in fact. It was a real revelation when I got around to reading it. It is a book of a genre which I am sure has existed for years but which I have only recently discovered, historically accurate fiction. This is a detective story set in Tudor England. The protagonist is a hunchbacked lawyer and it involves a number of historical figures and incidents. Later in the series there is even a fleeting Jewish interest. When you finish the first you will ask for the rest.

Noam:
The mind body problem: Rebecca Goldstein

I know you enjoyed the Boltzmann book so I thought you might enjoy this which is a philosophy book wrapped in a novel. Indeed a Jewish philosophy book in a novel. The author is a Professor of philosophy and the daughter of a Rabbi. She has written a book about Spinoza which you might like to read later. The title is a clue that yopu are about to hear a discussion of Descarte's philosophy that there is a distinction between body and mind, something that materialists like me don't really accept.
I throughly enjoyed this and I am sure you will as well.