Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Our brains can’t process all the stimuli to which we are exposed.  It selects to be more strongly aware of some stimuli that seem important and to suppresses awareness of others. It is like a spotlight that illuminates every detail of an actor and the scenery immediately next to him, but leaves the rest of the stage in twilight or even completed darkness. This process is attention.

Our experience of life is what we pay attention to. This is the thesis of Winifred Gallagher’s book Rapt. We may not always be happy, be can nearly always be focused and choose to pay attention to what brings us peace, joy, and a sense of meaning in the moment.

We have two types of attention. Gallagher calls the first “bottom up” attention. This is the our instinctive attention to things in our environment that are novel, potentially dangerous, or a potential opportunity.

Top down attention is intentional focus on what we choose. Our intentional focus can be very powerful, drilling into our target while leaving us unaware of things that might otherwise seem obvious. Gallagher recounts a humorous experiment in which subjects were asked to watch for a certain activity on a video. The subjects completely missed a man in a gorilla suit dancing around in the video because their top down attention was so intensely trained on the task they were instructed to pursue.

In the same manner that attention raises or lowers awareness of physical stimuli, it adjusts awareness of our own thoughts and feelings. Bottom up attention tends to focus on the most and least pleasant feelings, our highs and lows. Our top down attention can focus on any thought of feeling we want.

In turn, our thoughts and feelings affect our attention. When we are negative, our focus narrows to take in just a little. Feeling bad make our problem seem like the only thing in the world. Positive thoughts and feeling expands our attention, allowing us to take in more information. It switches us to mental broadband that allows us to be aware of more of our world both inside and out.

Attention is important to every aspect of life. Relationships are inherently paying attention to others. Intimacy in relationships is built on building common, positive experiences from paying attention to the same thing and to each other. Success requires intense, long-term attention to our goals. Fulfillment arises from taking on just-manageable challenges that hold our attention. Creativity involves a calm mindfulness that does not so much capture an idea as allow it to unfold in our awareness. Motivation comes from sorting out the competing voices in our mind and listening to the ones that advocate for our goals.

Our attentional style is shaped both by our genes and our culture. A significant part of what and how we pay attention is learned. Because of this, we can learn new ways of attending and direct our focus in new directions. If we learn to pay attention to positive emotions and opportunities for positive action, we can change our experience of life to have more peace, joy, and fulfillment.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Quiet by Susan Cain

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Gallagher, Winifred. Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. New York: Penguin, 2009.

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The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Modern life presents us with too much stuff and too much information to deal with. In The Organized Mind, psychologist Daniel J. Levitin explains how we can work with our mind, instead of against it, to handle information and make better decisions.

Attention is the critical resources for taking in information, making good decisions, and forming memories. The difficulty is that we only have so much attention to go around. Our attentional systems work to make us unconsciously ignore many of the signals that come our way; we would be overwhelmed if they did not. Our built in systems pay attention to change or to things that seem important. Our natural state is to have a wandering mind, broadly attentive to the environment, screening out the stable and safe, occasionally zooming in on something novel or critical.

We can also use the executive functions of our mind to focus attention where we want it. This can consume a lot of energy, but we can do it very effectively, sometimes focusing to the point where we lose track over everything else.

Both forms of attention have their strengths and limitations. In addition, it is costly to our attention bank to switch between modes or to switch focus from one subject to another. The load of information that we have to deal with can exhaust our attentional system, leading to inattention, poor memory, and bad decisions.

Levitin offers solutions to alleviate these problems and work with the strengths of our brains. The primary suggestion is to offload as much information as possible to the environment. The less we have to remember, and the fewer minor decisions we have to make, the better off we’ll be. Highly successful people use systems of habits, calendars, filing, labels, and standards to minimize the amount of information they have to carry in their memories. It is often not so important to know something as it is to be able to find it when you need it.

A related concept is to use categories and chunk up information. Our minds do this naturally. For instance, we typically don’t remember a telephone number as seven digits, but as two chunks of digits. We can apply a chunking strategy by breaking large jobs into doable tasks, or be grouping related tasks together. We can create scenes or stories in our mind (we do it anyway) to connect a string of events. Sleep seems to be important our natural chunking process, consolidating memories, connecting new information to old, and formulating new concepts.

Levitin presents many tools to organize information and things to make it easier on our brains. In my opinion, one of the most helpful tools is the fourfold table. This is a simple method to organize statistical information and assess the probabilities of certain outcomes. We have horrible intuition for understanding probabilities and assessing risks. Even people trained in statistics typically get probabilities wrong when they guess. The fourfold table, which Levitin describes in some detail with examples, allows one to break down the numbers and evaluate the most relevant probabilities.

The Organized Mind is not a how-to manual, though it has many strategies for organizing based on how the brain works. Levitin discusses the structure and function of parts of the brain, but is not excessively technical. A reader could skim these sections without too much loss. A reader could also focus on a particular aspect of organizing (business, time, and even social life) based on the way the book is organized, though the first few chapters have a lot of information that is background for the other sections.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Levitin, Daniel J. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Age of Information Overload. New York: Dutton, 2014.

How to Improve Your Memory by James D. Weinland

James D. Weinland’s How to Improve Your Memory is, in my mind, primarily a book on study skills. Weinland’s interest is learning, and memory is an important part of that.

As I read the book, it seemed to me that learning successfully is built on four areas: intention, attention, repetition and organization. Weinland has tips related to all of these.

Intention to learn is easy to come by when you have an interest in a subject. If you’re not interested, you’ll need to find some other motivation. Think about why you’re studying a subject and the benefits you hope to achieve. Even if you’re a student and you “have to” take a class, think of the opportunities that might open up to you if you get a good grade.

Attention is very important to memory and learning. If you forget something, it is very likely you weren’t paying attention to begin with. Remove distractions from your environment and mind (this wasn’t an issue when this book was published in 1957, but put away your cell phone and put it out of your mind). Engage as many senses as you can.

Remember that attention isn’t an infinitely available commodity. Get the rest you need. Don’t burn yourself out by focusing too long on one subject or closely related subjects. Give your mind, especially the executive functions a break, by alternating unrelated subjects, switching back and forth from mental to physical activities and making a little time for rest and recreation.

Repetition is important to memory, but it doesn’t need to be boring. Allowing time between practice sessions can actually improve performance.

Organization can go a long way to making learning easier. Some of the most successful mnemonic techniques involve arranging and associating things we want to remember with things we already remember well, especially locations. For instance, pigeonholing involves creating a spacial arrangement, such as a grid, with things to be remembered in each space. Mind maps do something similar with a more free-form arrangement that also takes advantage of our ability to remember images and colors. Memory castles are sophisticated applications of this strategy. Understanding how things are divided into wholes and parts or groups can help you break down subjects into smaller, easier to remember, parts that are connected so that remembering on item helps you remember the others.

I tend to connect the use of meaningful association to the idea of organization. Meaningful association builds on what you already know. This could be building on or filling in your background on a subject, finding analogies to familiar or using acronyms and rhymes. A related practice is it to come up with an outrageous image that represents what you want to remember. We find it easy to remember images—the more unusual the image the easier it is to recall—so we can take advantage of that by associating what we want remember with a crazy image that reminds of it.

The book is dated, but I think the advice is applicable even if the science of memory has advance. In addition, the book has the advantage of being short.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Double Your Brain Power by Jean Marie Stine

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Weinland, James D. How to Improve Your Memory. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1957.

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Do you want to live a good life?  Try engaging in some good thinking.  The quality of our life, work, and relationships, our happiness, depends of the decisions we make.  We make better decisions through good thinking that is both creative and analytical.  Such thinking can be difficult if we live in a near constant state of distraction.

P. M. Forni points out in his book The Thinking Life that we live in an age of distraction.  The Internet, cellular phones, and ubiquitous media have made it possible for us to be in an almost constant state of stimulation.  In a diet of constant feeding, our minds have no time to digest, so much of what comes in passes out mostly unchanged.  We can find information in an instant, but it takes more than an instant to take it in and retain it.

Excellent thinking, reflection, introspection, and deep learning, take time and energy.  Not only that, they require some devotion and discipline.  I think one of the most useful points Forni makes is the importance of attention, the opposite of distraction.  I have read the works of memory experts that suggest that we do not remember things because we did not pay close attention to them to begin with.  If we want to know what is going on around us, especially with the people we care about, we have to be attentive.  If we want to remember something, we have to pay attention when we experience it.  If we want to do some serious thinking, we have to attend to some thoughts and put aside others, at least for a while.

Fortunately, our power of paying attention, and other abilities important to thinking like decision making, can be improved with practice.  Throughout The Thinking Life, Forni provides advice on how to develop your thinking abilities.  Each chapter ends with specific questions and exercises aimed at helping you increase your ability in some area of thinking.

In his argument for the benefits of thinking, Forni draws on an ancient Greek philosophy known as Stoicism.  Famous Stoics include Zeno, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca.  Forni doesn’t suggest that we be stoical.  He suggests that we practice moderation and self-discipline so that we can set aside time and energy for the important task of thinking, which leads to better decisions and more happiness.

Moderation and self-discipline are virtues, something the Stoics held in high regard.  Another virtue that Forni encourages is humility.  I think humility is one of the greatest virtues.  Humility is a condition for honestly assessing our place in the world so we can see where we need help, see where can help others, and learn.

These comments scratch the surface of Forni’s short book.  He addresses a problem in our culture with thoughtful advice and concision.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard (illustrated by Tomie De Paolo)

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Forni, P. M.  The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction.  New York: St. Martin’s, 2011.

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Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

In a previous job, I worked in the field of industrial safety.  This is partly a matter of regulation, so there was often great concern about the rules. Though it was necessary to follow the rules, I also wanted to people to think. If they were going to be safe in reality, they needed to be aware, use their imagination, solve problems and ask for help.

I found a parallel to this in P. M. Forni’s approach to civility. As he put it in Choosing Civility, “Consideration is imagination in a moral track.”

In the early chapters Forni considers the notion of civility and how it relates to courtesy, politeness and manners. He wrote, “Being civil means being constantly aware of others and weaving restraint, respect and consideration into the fabric of this awareness. Civility is a form of goodness; it is gracious goodness.” Civility is the art of living well with others.

The second part of the book includes brief chapters on the rules of civility. In some cases, Forni prescribes some behavior, but in mostly this is an exploration of how awareness, respect and consideration of others can practiced in various ways.

I think a few of these worth highlighting. The first of Forni’s rules is to be attentive. Your attention is one of the most important and valuable things you can give to someone. Paying attention to others is the starting point of showing respect and acting in kindness.

Related to attention is listening. Careful listening is a skill. When practiced well, it can build understanding and rapport between people. It requires focus, generosity, responsiveness, restraint and cooperation.

I think Forni’s admonition to avoid complaining is especially worthy. We have legitimate concerns that we should speak up about, but often complaints are just a way to drag people into a negative outlook or some minor problem that is not theirs.

“’Nice’ is something that must be built, something that doesn’t simply happen or come to us out of the blue but instead requires work," P. M. Forni, Choosing Civility

P. M. Forni also wrote The Thinking Life.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Forni, P. M. Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002.

The Gospels

The Bible has four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. “Gospel” comes from an Old English word meaning “good news.” The gospels are the good news of the incarnation of Christ, the coming of God to save us from sin and death, to redeem us to Himself, and give us a new, eternal life. They are also biographies of Jesus, summarizing his deeds and sayings.

It may seem redundant to have four biographies of Jesus. Each Gospel emphasizes different aspects of Jesus, and together they give the reader a fuller picture of Him.

-Matthew, traditionally recognized as being written by that apostle, gives particular attention to demonstrations that Jesus is the Messiah, frequently referring to the Old Testament. Jesus had a masterful understanding of the Old Testament, as shown in Matthew’s record of the Sermon on the Mount.

-Mark focuses on Jesus’ miraculous deeds, proofs of His deity. It is the shortest of the four books.

-Luke pays particular attention to Jesus’ character and teaching ministry. It is thought to have been written with a Greek audience in mind, and that may make it more accessible to modern readers than the other gospels.

-John expresses a high Christology, showing Jesus’ claims to deity in His teaching and actions. John devotes more attention to the week leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion than the other gospels.

The gospels corroborate each other. In theological terms, this is referred to as the harmony of the gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke, collectively called the Synoptic Gospels, track together particularly well.

Some have supposed that Matthew and Luke draw from Mark as a source, or that all have a common source in some unfound book. The more straightforward explanation is that found within the Bible that witnesses of Jesus’ life or their close associates authored the gospels. Matthew and John were followers of Jesus during his earthly ministry. Mark was a member of the early church and new the apostles and others who personally new Jesus. Luke claims to have been closely associated with the apostles and to draw on eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus. Luke indicates that there were many written accounts of the life of Christ. History (supervised by God) preserved four books that were as authoritative very early by the church.

Calling the gospels biographies of Jesus may set up some false expectations for readers of modern biographies. Ancient biographies were often collections of a famous person’s sayings or a summary of their deeds (Mark is a good example of this); they were not necessarily chronological accounts of a person’s life. The gospels are somewhat chronological, but their middle parts may also be organized along other lines: teachings, miracles, deeds of high character, and other concepts.


If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Genesis
The Holy Bible
John
Luke
Mark
Matthew
Proverbs

Loving in Flow by Susan K. Perry

The concept of flow has become popular over the last couple of decades. According to social psychologist Susan K. Perry, couples can experience flow in their relationships. She describes how in Loving in Flow.

Couples who experience flow are engaged, often in everyday things. The take pleasure in their relationship and want to keep it going. The lose self-consciousness and develop a sense of “us.”

Flow is not a state you can stay in all of the time. You can learn to fall into flow more easily and stay in it longer. Ordinary couples with ordinary problems can experience more flow.

Perry covers a log of ground in this book. She gives advice dealing with conflict, better communication, a happier sex life, protecting your relationship from an affair and other potential areas of problems or improvements.

Along the way she shares stories of her own marriage and of couples she interviewed. She and her husband overcame things that have broken other marriages and moved on to something much better. You might find something to connect to, even hope, in the experiences of these couples.

Because she covers a lot of ground, I sometime lost the thread of flow. Attention seems to be an important aspect of flow working in a relationship. By focusing on you connection to you partner and the value of your relationship, you can keep other things in perspective. You can see what is going on around you and inside of you that may be a trigger for arguments. You attention to and care for your partner’s feelings will make you more empathetic. Focus on your partner can intensify connection during moments of intimacy, such as when you’re having sex. You magnify what you attend to, so give attention to what is best in your partner and the life you share to enjoy it and to fall in love again and again.

Perry provides a lot of practical advice. Readers will likely find several things they can do. The may also find encouragement in the tales of couples that overcame obstacles and gained a source of great satisfaction.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Perry, Susan K. Loving in Flow: How the Happiest Couples Get and Stay that Way. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2003.

Quiet by Susan Cain

I am an introvert.  So is Susan Cain, author of Quiet.  I imagine so are many of the other readers of this book on introversion and its strengths as they look to understand themselves and live more comfortably in a world the favors the outgoing.

Cain divides her book into four parts corresponding to four questions about introversion.  What are the roots of the preference for extroversion in the West, especially in America?  Is introversion real, a quality inherent to our nature?  Are there cultures where introversion is preferred?  Finally, how to introvert live in an extroverted culture?

What Cain calls the “Extrovert Ideal” arose with a cultural shift to a focus on personality.  This isn’t personality as a trait as she uses in the rest of the book, but personality as personal forcefulness, persuasion and salesmanship.  This seems to have arisen naturally over time with the rise of industry and our move to cities.  We were less producers and more sellers, and the main thing we had to sell was ourselves.  Cain uses as an example, though the trend started earlier, Dale Carnegie (a Missourian like me).  Carnegie propelled himself from shy farm boy to dynamic people person by mastering public speaking and he built and business that still exists today on teaching people to be more outgoing.

The distinction between introversion and extroversion is more that cultural, though.  There is evidence that inborn physiological difference play a role in these personalities.  Cain discusses research on the subject that  suggest there is a biological basis that at  least partly explains introversion, though life experience likely still plays some role.  There is not a 100 percent correlation between being a “highly reactive” or “highly sensitive” person and being an introvert, but many introverts reading this book will probably recognize themselves in these categories.

Though the Extrovert Ideal prevails in the West, introversion seems to be preferred in the East.  We see this in the quiet studiousness that has become the reputation of Asian-Americans.  Many Asian cultures prefer quiet, reserve, deference, reflectiveness and other traits associated with introversion.  They are seen as wisdom, politeness and respect.

Though extroverts draw most of the attention, and that will likely continue, introverts have strengths that can be useful in organization and society (introverts aren’t antisocial, they just deal with stimulus differently than extroverts).  Introverts are more likely to pay attention to warning signs.  For instance, Warren Buffet predicted the collapse of the internet bubble.  He wasn’t being a bearish pessimist; he was just paying attention to signs that reward-hungry extroverts were ignoring.  Cain found her questioning mind and quiet demeanor made her an excellent negotiator because she could question assertions without seeming overly aggressive.  I’ve often found myself in the role of mediator and negotiator for the same reason; I could listen, sort out what people really wanted, and offer a compromise.

Not only that, Cain offers a path for happy introversion.  We can be true to ourselves and be as extroverted as we need to be to accomplish those things that are truly important to us.  Extroverts can be as quiet as they need to be, too.

Reading Quiet prompted me to think a lot about my introversion.  With a few exceptions (I was never especially afraid of public speaking—it got me out of the crowd of pressing bodies in the audience), I’m a typical introvert.  I may write about it sometime.  I suspect many introverts who read it will find much to reflect on, especially since such reflection will come naturally.  It is a worthy book for extroverts, too, for insight into the many obvious and hidden introverts in their lives, probably a few very close to them.

Cain, Susan.  Quiet: The Power if Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.  New York: Crown, 2012.

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Stat-Spotting by Joel Best

We are confronted with statistics in the news wherever we turn: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet. It can be hard to sort out what meaning to make of the numbers, especially when there are competing statistics or interpretations.

Sociology professor Joel Best provides advice on recognizing suspicious statistics in Stat-Spotting. This is by no means a technical or mathematical guide to statistics. It is aimed squarely at the layman who is confronted by statistics in the news and from the mouths of politicians or experts.

A good place to start is with a bit of advice that Best puts toward the end of the book (this isn’t inconvenient; it is a short book). If a number seems shocking, unbelievable or far outside of what your own experience might lead you to expect, it is probably worth digging into it some more.

Not every bad statistic is the result of bad faith. By the time a statistic reaches the public, it has been through several hands. It starts with some research, which may be undertaking by a fairly neutral party or by an advocate. In either case, they have a motivation to get attention for their work. Someone has to bring a study to the attention of the media, and they may add a layer of interpretation on the statistics. Finally, reporters, editors and producers are looking for stories that are sufficiently interesting or important to draw an audience.

This is a process that can introduce mistakes, even unintentionally, and bring sensational statistics to the fore. Many of these people don’t know any more about research methods or statistical analysis that you. The math and logic of statistics, especially when it relates to probability, can be counterintuitive, and even professional researchers sometimes don’t have a solid grasp on it. Of course, some of these people are producing statistics with the intent of supporting a particular point of view.

Best points out 32 ways in which the statistics you see may have a problem. These are easy to grasp and don’t involve much if any math. He presents them in simple terms, and in each case provides an example from the news.

There are a lot of demands for our attention and action, and statistics are often cited as part of these appeals. It is helpful to approach these numbers with some skepticism. Stat-Spotting provides accessible tools for testing the reasonableness of the statistics we come across day to day.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough

Best, Joel. Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Statistics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008.

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Maury Klein’s book The Power Makers is a history of power from the Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine to the foundations of America’s electric grid.

Unlike many historians who look at the history of electric power, Klein gives a lot of attention to steam. We haven’t had steam engines directly powering industrial plants for decades, but steam turbines are still central to the production of most electricity in the United States. Even nuclear power plants use steam turbines to run their generators, they just use the heat from nuclear reactions rather than from the combustion of coal or natural gas to boil water and heat the steam to more than a thousand degrees.

Klein gives attention to many lesser known names in the history of power. He shows that Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse had rivals other than each other, such as Elihu Thomson. Nikola Tesla is well known as the genius who invented the AC motor, but other engineers helped develop his prototype into a commercial product, such as mathematically talented engineer Benjamin Lamme. Many talented inventors tried their hands at making electric lighting and power systems better. Only some of them had the vision, business sense, good partners and luck to turn their ideas into successful products. Few of them are widely known today.

Electrification had clear, direct effects in industry and transportation. Klein discusses how it’s influence reached into other sectors of the economy. Corporate management and finance changed to meet the needs of a growing new technology. For instance, Edison General Electric was able to take advantage of a new New Jersey law that allowed corporations to own businesses in other states. Electric companies grew, expanded and consolidated through numerous mergers and acquisitions. They had a demand for capital that nearly rivaled the railroads, another transformative technology that had shortly preceded electric power.

As the availability of electricity grew, certain industries were able to grow, too. Some chemical and metals manufacturing required abundant electric power to catalyze chemical reactions or generate the high temperatures of electric furnaces. Manufacturers flocked to Niagara after a lager hydroelectric power station started operation there in 1895.

Klein brings the many thread of his story of power together by reflections on three great fairs: the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the first, a giant steam engine that powered exhibits by means of belts and pulley was a significant attraction. By the second, electricity was on display, and the White City fairground was a model for testing AC power systems. By the 1939 fair, large power utilities of the type we would recognize today were becoming common. By then it was no big deal to flip a switch or pull a lever and get power so, unlike the previous to fairs, no dignitary undertook a show of doing it; the power was on from the start.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Grid by Gretchen Bakke

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

The Lighthouse Stevensons by Bella Bathurst

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

1939 by David Gelernter

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe 

Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

Klein, Maury. The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.

The Gospel of John

The Gospel of John. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

More than the other gospel writers, John emphasized the deity of Jesus--that Jesus is God. The other gospels contain this part of Jesus’ nature, but John stated it explicitly in his opening statement, which mirrors the opening of Genesis, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (NKJV).

After this introduction, John starts his biography of Jesus shortly before He started His opening, with the witness of John the Baptist to who Jesus is. Mark’s gospel begins at this point, too. This would have been an important testimony to John the Apostle because he was probably a follower of John the Baptist before he became a disciple of Jesus.

As Matthew lays out prophetic demonstrations that Jesus is the messiah predicted in the Old Testament, John presents a number of Jesus’ claims of deity. Other witness, most importantly God the Father and John the Baptist, a prophet, corroborate these claims. Other supporting testimony comes from Jesus’ disciples, His family and, surprisingly, evil spirits. His miracles and, ultimately, His resurrection provide additional support for His claims. In John and the other gospels, He is called the “Son of God” and this is clearly understood as a claim of equality to God; it was one of the charges against Him when He was sentenced to death.

Like the other gospels, John gives a lot of attention to the days leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus. The crucifixion is the central act of Jesus’ ministry, in which He suffers all the punishment and death we deserve so we no longer have to pay it and can become recipients of God’s mercy; it is the central act of God’s mercy.

John gives more attention to Jesus’ post-resurrection ministry than the other gospels. His death and resurrection becomes the basis of our reconciliation with God, and this is symbolized especially well in Jesus’ restoration of Peter, which ends the book. Outside the courtroom where Jesus’ was tried, Peter denied being one of His disciples. After His resurrection, Jesus sought out Peter and said, “Follow me,” just as He did when He first called he disciples.


The other gospels are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels because they offer synopses of Jesus’ life and because of the similarities in the material they cover. John covers some of the same material, chooses many episodes that aren’t covered elsewhere.

What may be most striking is that John expresses focuses on Jesus’ highest attribute, His deity, while at the same time presenting the most private and affectionate view of Him. Jesus showed his power over death by raising Lazarus, but He wept because his friend had to suffer death. John showed us Jesus writing on the ground with His finger before showing mercy to an accused adulteress. The apostle who explicitly called Jesus the creator of all things referred to himself as the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” as if they were best friends. It is a radical thing about John’s gospel, and about the teachings for Christianity, that the all-powerful, perfect, sovereign God, creator and judge of the universe, could love us with such tender affection that he could take on humanity and suffer a horrible death to save us and reconcile us to Himself.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Matthew
Mark
Luke
Other books of the Bible

The Innocent Man by John Grisham (audio book)

The Innocent Man by John Grisham (Random House, 2006)

Audio book read by Dennis Boutsikaris

This is the story of the trial of two men for the murder of Debra Sue Carter, a young woman who worked as a waitress in Ada, Oklahoma. Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were convicted of a crime they did not commit, and the justice system consumed more than a decade of their lives before minimally correcting its error.

I’m not surprised it took so long to overturn the convictions of these men. I’m surprised it got so far to begin with. The police investigation was very incomplete and shoddy, even for 30 years ago when technology and science played a much lesser role in collecting and analyzing evidence (Grisham strongly suggests the Ada police had ties to drug dealer, including one of the detectives on the case, and that influenced the investigation). The lawyers for the defense were competent, but they were not supplied with the means to mount a good defense for their poor clients. Williamson was clearly mentally ill, but there was never a proper determination of his fitness to stand trial. The evidence was so thin I’m surprised a trial was permitted. They even let a former Ada police chief sit on the jury (admittedly, he was not forthcoming during jury selection, but you would think someone in that small town would have known or pressed the issue more).

I can understand the thirst for answers, especially in a small community where a violent crime captures the public attention. It reminds me of the 2005 conviction here in central Missouri of Ryan Ferguson for the of journalist Kent Heitholt in 2001, when Ferguson was still in high school. The conviction rested on some uncertain eyewitness accounts, possibly influenced by police and prosecutors, and the confession Charles Erickson. There seems to be little evidence against Erickson except his drug-induced loss of memories of the night of the crime. He took a plea bargain to testify against Ferguson. As with Williamson, police and courts seemed to pay little attention to the mental state of Erickson.

In spite of the lack of evidence to back up the witnesses few, in my mind Erickson is a very sketchy witness even to his own involvement, the jury convicted Ferguson. People wanted answers, order, justice, and a sense that the issue was resolved so they could return to a safe life. This made them blind to all the problems with the case against Ferguson. The police felt those public pressures and were too ready to go with a problematic case rather than go through a tough investigation that might lead to no answers. The case had other problems, and as people began to admit to false confessions and prosecutorial influence of witnesses, the conviction was revisited and overturned in 2013, after Ferguson had spent most of his 20s in prison.

I think our justice system is often close to the mark and produces mostly good results. However, it should not take years, or decades, to correct such problematic cases as these. In fact, these cases should have never come to trial based on such flimsy evidence.