#BookReview: The War Below by Ernest Scheyder

Do The Needs Of The Many Outweigh The Desires Of The Few? 20 years ago as I was wrapping up my Computer Science degree requirements at Kennesaw State University just outside of Atlanta, GA, there was a massive debate raging around campus. At the time, the school – new to the “University” title, having had it for less than a decade at this point – was trying to grow from the commuter college it had been since its inception 40 yrs prior into a full fledged research level University… complete with student housing. The problem was that where the University wanted to place some of its first dorms was on the hill directly behind the Science building… where an endangered plant of some form was found, which kicked off rounds and rounds of going back and forth with various Environmental Protection Agency types. To be quite honest, I was never directly involved in any of this, but being on the school’s Student Media Advisory Board for a couple of years, I was connected enough to at least the reporting that I heard about at least the high points.

In The War Below, Scheyder looks at just these types of examples, where larger, grander ideas butt up against some much more local concern. Where the larger, grander idea is always “The only way we can see to fight climate change and stop carbon emissions while maintaining the global economy as we currently know it is to produce advanced electronic machines that require certain minerals to function, therefore we must obtain these minerals wherever they may be found.” Which admittedly means that for those that are more adamant that human-caused climate change isn’t a real thing or is some level of alarmist bullshit… well, you’ve been warned about a central tenet of this book in this review now.

However, Scheyder doesn’t really stay on the climate change debate itself, instead focusing on the more micro battles. “We found a supply of this particular mineral – but as it turns out, this particular plant that only exists in this exact spot also is dependent on this mineral, and therefore some are acting on behalf of the plant to stop us from getting to the mineral.” Or “We found a supply of a different mineral – but it happens to be under a location that some Native Americans consider sacred, and they’re trying to stop us from destroying their sacred spot.” Or “We found a supply of another mineral – but it happens to be in the middle of a town, and nearby residents don’t want to sell their land to us.” Every chapter is built around these and other variations of the same types of battles, pitting humanity’s need for these particular minerals against some more local, more intimate desire.

Scheyder does a remarkably balanced job of talking to both sides and presenting both sides in a way that they will likely consider the reporting on themselves to be pretty close to fair – as he notes within the text a few times, his job isn’t really to make a decision for humanity so much as to present the competing interests and allow humanity the chance to choose for itself.

Is our survival – as we currently see it – worth forcing ourselves on someone who is more intimately connected to that spot on Earth than most of us will ever directly be?

This book isn’t the call to arms that Siddarth Kara’s Cobalt Red, released almost exactly one year earlier and describing the outright horrors and abuses rampant throughout much of the cobalt industry specifically, was. Instead, as noted, it is more of a balanced and even nuanced look at the competing interests surrounding how and even if certain materials can be obtained in certain locations, and how these small, individual battles can impact us all at a global level.

In the case of KSU’s Student Housing vs the plant, fwiw, apparently it was resolved in favor of KSU’s Student Housing at some point in the last 20 yrs, as now the entire hill that was once a battleground is now a few different student housing complexes. In the cases Scheyder details… well, read the book. Some of them were still ongoing at the time Scheyder had to hand his book off for final editing, but he gives up to that moment details on where they are in such instances.

Very much recommended.

This review of The War Below by Ernest Scheyder was originally written on January 9, 2024.

#BookReview: The Seventh Plague by James Rollins

Like Riding A Bike. It had been quite a while – and a few *thousand* books – since I read the prior book in this series. In the intervening years, I’ve started a few different bookish projects, begun reviewing every book I read, and even met Mr. Rollins himself a few years ago, just before the insanities took over the world. And yet coming back into the world of Sigma Force, to pick up here with Book 12 as I gear up to read an Advance Reviewer Copy of the upcoming Book 17, Tides of Fire, was truly like riding a bike. Even across all the years and all the books, Rollins told enough of the backstory here for me to be able to remember what was going on in this world – without rehashing every minor detail. For example, he would mention Monk’s prosthetic hand… without going into the details of that mission (book) and how he lost it. So this made it quite easy indeed to get into the groove of this particular book… and boy, what a book.

There have been several various scifi tales over the years seeking to explain some or all of the Plagues of Moses, and yet Rollins here manages to do it in a way I’d never seen before, while incorporating several other wide ranging myths and techs as well… as Rollins does. So while the driving force is the Plagues of Moses (and one of them in particular), we also see Nikola Tesla and some of the mysteries around his life. We see the mystery of the elephant graveyard. We even get appearances from both David Livingstone *and* Mark Twain. And cutting edge discoveries such as a strange new class of bacteria.

All rolled up into one action packed, near balls to the wall, globe trotting adventure trying to save the world before the forces of… well, misguidedness, let’s call it in this case… can try to destroy it in their hubris.

Truly a fun read, and one I’m glad I’ve come back to after all these years. Very much recommended.

This review of The Seventh Plague by James Rollins was originally written on June 3, 2023.

#BookReview: Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

Comprehensive Look At The World Of Waste. I’ve seen bits and pieces of some of this in some books, such as Plastic Free by Rebecca Prince-Ruiz, Unraveled by Maxine Bedat, Worn Out by Alyssa Hardy, Pipe Dreams by Chelsea Wald, and Sewer by Jessica Leigh Hester, just to name a few. And I’ve even lived a version of some of it, having worked at a US nuclear waste disposal facility a couple of times over a period of a couple of years. But this is the first book I’ve ever found that really covers all aspects of waste from nearly every possible angle. About the only glaring omission, perhaps, is space junk – the orbital debris that causes headaches for new and existing satellites and the International Space Station and could one day cause a *major* problem terrestrially via knocking all satellites out of usability (an issue known as the Kessler Effect, and used quite well in the late Matthew Mather’s Cyber Storm trilogy of fiction).

But what Franklin-Wallis *does* cover, he truly does cover in remarkable depth and clarity, using a combination of direct interviews and scholarly research to give both a human face to each particular issue and ground it in its full severity. This books is truly quite eye opening in several different respects, and will likely greatly add to the overall discussion of the topic… assuming enough people read it. Which is, in part, where this review comes in. Go read the book already. 🙂

The documentation is *maybe* *slightly* low at about 21% of the overall text, but this is actually within the lower bound of “normal” in my experience, and thus not worthy of a star deduction nor even true criticism, I’m simply noting it because I try to make a similar note in most non-fiction reviews.

Overall truly an excellent book full of both reality and hope, and very much recommended.

This review of Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis was originally written on April 8, 2023.

#BookReview: Small Farm Republic by John Klar

Questionable Sources Mar Intriguing Premise. This book’s general premise – a strategy for the American Right to lean in to its traditional principles, ignore “Climate Change”, and yet still manage to out-green the American Left – is a truly intriguing idea, one Klar has clearly put quite a bit of thought into. His general plan does in fact read like a Republican was trying to put together exactly that type of plan, but in a fairly realistic, “this is actually politically viable” manner. (Rather than the “pie in the sky” so many demagogues of all stripes generally propose.)

What calls this book into question are the sources it uses – two, in fact, that I’ve reviewed before and which have proven to be questionable themselves (Chris Smaje’s October 2020 book A Small Farm Future and Shanna Swan and Stacey Colino’s February 2021 book Count Down). Citing either one as what the author considers to be legitimate evidence would be enough for a star deduction on its own, and thus the two star deduction here.

This review of Small Farm Republic by John Klar was originally written on April 1, 2023.

#BookReview: Escape From Model Land by Erica Thompson

Astrology == Mathematics. For Sufficiently Large Values Of 2 While Imagining Spherical Cows. Thompson does a truly excellent job here of showing how and where mathematical models of real-world systems can be useful, and where they can lead us astray – perhaps a bit *too* good, as at times she has to jump through a few mental hoops to excuse the inadequacies of preferred models such as those related to climate change and the spread of COVID. On climate models in particular, she actually raises one of the several points Steven Koonin did in 2021’s Unsettled – namely, just how wide each cell of the model is by necessity and how much variation there is within these cells in reality yet models must – again by necessity – use simply an average value throughout the cell. But she discusses a wide variety of models in addition to climate, and again, she truly does an excellent job of showing their benefits and how they can harm us. One star is lost due to the extremely short “future reading” section in place of a more standard bibliography (20% or so is fairly standard in similar nonfiction titles). The other star is lost because this book does have a robust discussion of the numerous COVID models and *I DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT COVID*. I am waging a one-man war on any book that references this for any reason at all, and the single star deduction is truly the only tool I have in that war. Still, again, this book really is quite good – as a narrative alone, indeed better than the three star ranking would seem to indicate. Very much recommended.

This review of Escape From Model Land by Erica Thompson was originally written on July 15, 2022.

#BookReview: Chimera by Michael McBride

Human Hubris Leads To Disaster. This is a creature feature tale combined with a disaster tale, with a unique and fairly inventive creature combining with a massive blizzard in the Arctic Circle to create one hell of a ride. McBride uses a dual timeline approach to show us how the creature came to be and just how one scientist in particular had their noble goals turn out so horrifically, along with showing the “now” of having to rescue any possible survivors once the creature runs on its inevitable (due to the genre) rampage. McBride actually teases some even more horrific creatures, but the focus is completely on the titular Chimera. While not in any way a political book (similar to the greats of the genre in that regard), in showing yet another way that altruism and hubris can in fact lead to disaster, this book actually makes some solid points about caution and even corporate and government interests – and back-room dealings – in the areas at hand. But again, these are more minor points in the tale, more throw-away commentary that fleshes out minor characters than truly central to the actual story. Truly a story that fires on all cylinders and offers much for anyone that is remotely a fan of science fiction in general or creature features in particular. Very much recommended.

This review of Chimera by Michael McBride was originally written on September 26, 2021.

#BookReview: To Rule The Waves by Bruce Jones

(Mostly) Solid Examination Of History And Current Events. This is a fairly well documented – nearly 100 pages of its 400 are bibliography, *in addition to* at least a few paragraphs of footnotes at the end of every chapter – examination of both the history and current events of why both commercial and military control of the oceans is so important to human advancement. Some of the facts presented are truly mind-boggling, such as the sheer size of the Maersk Madrid – a ship used as a recurring case study, where if its full load of possible shipping containers were transported in a standard 2-high rail configuration, the train just to load this singular ship would stretch for *78 miles*. Others are more “standard fare” for most anyone who knows anything about the history of ocean travel or oceanography. Still, the book is current through March 2021, which is remarkable considering that I acquired this ARC in early June 2021. A must-read on a wide variety of issues from the complexities of modern logistics to the root cause and practical implications of modern military struggles to even the loss of American manufacturing jobs and the rise of Donald Trump, this book shows how control of the oceans has impacted all of these topics and many, many more. Really the only more “YMMV” section is the emphasis on global warming/ global cooling / climate change/ whatever they’re calling it these days alarmism in the final section, but even here there are enough actual facts to warrant close examination. Very much recommended.

This review of To Rule The Waves by Bruce Jones was originally written on July 20, 2021.

#BookReview: What’s The Use by Ian Stewart

Beware The Mathivores. And Stewart’s Myopia. Ok, so the title of this review is a bit of a spoiler, as a “Mathivore” is a creature Stewart describes in the final chapter while summarizing the book. But it doesn’t *actually* give anything away, and it makes for an interesting title to the review. (One suspects it wouldn’t have worked as well for the title of the book, though I think it would have been awesome. :D) Beyond that, I also find it interesting that the only other review on Goodreads for this book at the time I am writing this one is from a historian with a bare knowledge of mathematics, and I am actually a mathematician (though nowhere near as degreed as Stewart, having just a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and lacking a handful of classes for separate Bachelor’s degrees in both Mathematics and Secondary Mathematics Education) with a fair knowledge of history. More than a “normal” person, likely much less – at least in some areas – than the other reviewer. ANYWAY, y’all care about what this book is about, not about me. 😀 But my background does play a bit into my own experience with the book, so I thought a brief summary was warranted.

With this book, Stewart *mostly* does a truly remarkable job of showing the history and current uses of math, in many ways many may not be aware of or at minimum fully aware of. With my background, I knew that there was *some* form of math in the background of most of the techs and issues Stewart discusses, but Stewart goes full-bore on the details, yes, quite often showing samples of the actual equations – or at least types of the actual equations – involved. And these are far beyond E=MC^2, y’all. 😉 But still, Stewart’s explanations, at least to my own mathematically inclined brain, were straightforward enough, and there is enough humor (of the British variety) sprinkled throughout to make the overall text much more palatable to the average reader.

But there *are* a couple of weaknesses even from my own perspective, and they combined to knock the book down a star – neither by themselves was quite enough, but combined they are.

The first is that while Stewart does a remarkable job of showing how math is integral to so many fields from elections to medical scanning to photography to fingerprinting, he doesn’t do so well in showing how it shapes everyday life outside of the tech people use and the things going on around them. He doesn’t show how people actually *use* math every day, from calculating how much a trip will take to estimating their grocery bill or restaurant tab to deciding any of the numerous factors related to personal finance and building or maintaining any form of home. Perhaps a follow-on book could explain how these maths shape even more people’s lives.

The second is Stewart’s Myopia. By this, I mean those issues where the Professor. At several key points – likely not caught by someone less familiar with the mathematics of the fields – Stewart dismisses advances in mathematics that oppose his positions. In one, while there is indeed still much work to be done, Stewart’s disdain for autonomous cars belies the stunning advances made in mathematics related to the field. In the other big one, Stewart seems completely ignorant of the emerging mathematics showing the many varying holes in the current “Climate Change” “science” – including some written by a man who quite literally wrote one of the first textbooks on climate modeling with computers. Another, more obscure one, was where Stewart mentions numeracy and Bayesian statistics, but seems ignorant of Bernoulli’s Fallacy (or at minimum dismissive of those who pursue that line of mathematical thinking).

Overall, this *is* a strong book with quite a bit to be commended. It could simply have been a bit stronger. Very much recommended.

This review of What’s The Use by Ian Stewart was originally written on July 26, 2021.

#BookReview: Jungle by Patrick Roberts

Intriguing Premise. Fascinating Start. Back Half Marred By Politics And Questionable Scholarship. This book had an utterly fascinating premise, one I’ve read a couple of other books over the last year in the same arena – the history of wood and palm oil in those prior books. And y’all, the front half of this book, mostly concerned with prehistory, was *awesome*. Roberts tracks how the development of what we now call in English “jungle” began in the earliest geological eras of plant life, through the time of the dinosaurs, and into the evolution of humanity from our earliest barely-more-than-ape forebears to modern Homo Sapien Sapien.

But then we get into the first millennium ish AD and Roberts turns his focus to the native populations of the Americas – and blaming Columbus specifically and Europe generally for every ill to come since. Even while noting cases where conquest would not have been possible except that certain elements of the native populations betrayed other elements for their own personal power. Ok. Still has some solid points about the interrelationship between humans and jungle here, but even here the politics is quite heavy handed – though admittedly typical for elitist academics and perfectly in line with that level of thought.

Coming into much more recent times – within my lifetime ish, since the 1980s – Roberts goes deeper into the politics, even openly praising Greta Thunberg (a bit ironic, given Roberts’ own actual academic pedigree vs Thunberg’s lack of one). But worse than that, he actively gets a bit lax with his scholarship through this point, noting the spread of Ebola into the US during the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak… without acknowledging that it was (mostly) active – and *safe* (as safe as anything *can* be with Ebola) – efforts by the US government to bring US nationals back to within the US for treatments. Instead, the implication from the author is that this was more direct results of lackadaisical regulations and rampant environmental destruction. He also (accurately) notes the 3,000 people killed by Hurricane Maria in 2017… without noting that Hurricane Irma had come through many of the same regions as an even stronger storm just two weeks prior, causing quite a bit of damage that ultimately led to a larger loss of life than normal when a second major hurricane (Maria) came through so soon after. (Disclaimer here: I moved to northern Florida in August 2017, barely a month before Irma and barely 6 weeks before Maria. I had a planned cruise in November 2017 to San Juan and St Maarten, among others, moved to Aruba and Curacao due to the combined effects of the two storms.)

Finally, in perhaps the most glaring questionable fact in the entire text, Roberts points to COVID-19 case counts “as of the end of July 2021”. Except that I’m writing this review on July 15, 2021, almost exactly halfway into the month down to the minute, and I’ve had this book in ARC form since May 12, 2021. (And I should note that this book appeared to be mostly completely print ready at that time, though the publisher and author may claim that there were indeed a few more edits since that point.) Even if one assumes that this particular line was placed in the book by say May 10, at the very latest stages before making it available on NetGalley (where I got it), and even if one assumes that the actual number at hand is accurate (I have no real reason to doubt it, though I personally stopped paying attention to these particular numbers over a year ago), wouldn’t it have been better scholarship to note that the case count was “as of the end of May 2021”? Or was the author projecting and hoping this either wasn’t noticed, that he would be proven correct prior to publication (still almost exactly two months away, as this book is currently shown to publish on September 14, 2021 at the time of writing this review), or that this particular fact could be updated prior to publication with the actual number? None of those three options point to the same level of scholarship of the beginning of the book, and indeed the fact of their existence brings into doubt all prior points and presumed merits. Thus, including that particular fact ultimately does more harm to the entire text than even the most blatant of political biases displayed earlier in the text.

Still, ultimately this was a very approachable text that even when taking into account its standard academic biases generally presents an intriguing look into the history and development of humanity, and it actually has a respectable bibliography, clocking in at around 26% of the text. Thus the book is still ultimately recommended for that alone. Just… make sure you read other competing books in the same area in addition to this one.

Post Script: While looking for the author’s website for the blog version of this review, I found out that the author is indeed a seeming expert *in prehistoric jungles*, having published several articles in peer reviewed journals over the last decade. But nearly every single article listed on his website deals with the prehistoric era, which perhaps explains the difference in how excellent this particular book was when it was discussing this particular era vs the problems that began mostly when he left it. Which is leaving me, for one, *very* interested in a follow up book expanding on the first half of this one with even more details, perhaps, of the environments, fauna, and flora of these prehistoric eras the author seems to know so well.

This review of Jungle by Patrick Roberts was originally written on July 15, 2021.

#BookReview: After Cooling by Eric Dean Wilson

Interesting History Marred By Marxist Politics And Alarmist Propaganda. In the description of this book, it is claimed that we will get a look at history, science, road trip, and philosophy as it relates to Freon and its history. Well, the philosophy is avowed Marxism (even quoting Marx directly to begin one of the sections) and the “science” is mostly alarmist “Global Cooling” / “Global Warming” / “Climate Change” junk wherein he cites in part some of the very studies that Stephen Koonin’s Unsettled – released just weeks earlier – shows to be problematic at best. And unlike Wilson, Koonin is an actual climate scientist, one who worked at a high level under Barack Obama, no less. Instead, Wilson outright declares that it is the stuff of nightmares to think that any form of warming is natural, that man *must* be the cause of *all* warming and that we *must* thus be able to stop it.

These factors noted – and seriously, if you can’t stomach a fatal dose of Marxist ideology, don’t bother reading this book – the history presented here, even while presented fully rooted in anti-white, anti-capitalist screed form, is actually interesting and worthy of discovery by those who may not be aware of it, such as myself when going into this book. The road trip episodes that frame each section are interesting in and of themselves, as Wilson tags along with a friend who is buying up stockpiles of Freon American Pickers style in order to destroy them to claim the carbon credits under California’s Cap and Trade system.

There is a compelling story to tell in the need for better ways to cool and comfort, and there are promising techs and strategies that don’t rely on Marxism and government mandate to achieve them. Unfortunately this book ignores all of this.

Finally, the citations and bibliography… are minimal, for such fantastical claims, accounting for barely 15% of the text, and are rarely directly cited within the narrative itself.

It is because of all of these factors that I am quite comfortable with the 2* – without the history and road trip, it would have been half even that – and would be lower than even that, were such possible on review sites. Not recommended.

This review of After Cooling by Eric Dean Wilson was originally written on June 11, 2021.