Get Your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight

The title of Sarah Knight’s book, Get Your Sh*t Together, suggests what is inside. There is cursing on practically every page. There is tongue-in-cheek humor. There is advice on how to set goals and achieve them.

If you’ve read many books on self-help, getting organized, setting goals and success, Knight’s recommendations won’t be new to you. However, many will find her style helpful and appealing. She writes with directness, simplicity and humor.

She has a take on motivation that you don’t see everywhere: focus on what annoys you. A lot of people advise that you conjure up a richly detailed vision of the life you want. That is hard. The vision can seem out of reach. You don’t have to imagine annoying things; they are right there bothering you. If you can do something to reduce the annoyance, you’ll want to, and if some series of steps will eliminate it, they’ll seem worth the effort. The life you want may reveal itself as you shed the annoying things you want to get rid of.

Once you have a goal (stop this annoying thing by taking some action), you need a plan that breaks into manageable steps. You’ll also need to set aside time to give your energy and attention to taking those steps. It also takes commitment to follow through.

Because it takes time to get things done, you may need to make time by spending less of it on other things. Knight discusses priorities. I’ve observed that the people who are the worst at having it together seem to have no priorities. If you can learn to spend more time on what is really important, and focus on it, you’ll be way ahead.

Knight’s book isn’t for everyone. The cursing starts in the title and doesn’t let up. However, I appreciate her brevity, simplicity and directness. The concepts are easy to grasp; the challenge is in implementing them.

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

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

Knight, Sarah. Get Your Sh*t Together: How to Stop Worrying About What You Should Do So You Can Finish What You Need to Do and Start Doing What You Want to Do. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2016.

Feeding the Fire by Mark E. Eberhart

Mankind is hungry for energy. The United States is a huge consumer of energy, and our lifestyle depends on it. This makes us, and other developed countries, vulnerable. The burning of fossil fuels is leading to a changing climate that could have many negative ramifications. Our dependence on foreign sources of fuel, especially oil, have embroiled us in wars oversees and made us uncomfortable allies with nations that do not share our values.

Chemistry professor Mark E. Eberhart suggests that we need a good energy diet. Unfortunately, after spending a couple of chapters of Feeding the Fire setting up the idea, he ends up having only a little to say about an energy diet in the final chapter of the book.

In between, however, he tells an interesting history of energy from the big bang to our age. He also provides a primer in thermodynamics aimed at an audience that hasn’t studied science or engineering. If the book had purported to be about that, I’d probably be speaking about it in glowing terms. If you’re looking for a book that explains energy and how it works that is written for an audience with little scientific background, this is a good option.

Though most of the book concerns itself with the dispersal of energy through the universe and the development of technology, the energy diet is mainly a matter of policy. The central element of Eberhart’s vision is an “energy-industrial complex” modeled on the way the U.S. military works with industry on the long-term development, delivery and reliability of technology. U.S. energy policy is so disjointed that in practice we have no policy, but with imagination and discipline (and arguably the setting aside of partisanship for matters of national security that transcend it) we could develop a comprehensive policy that gets our efforts moving toward a more secure, efficient and cleaner future. It doesn’t even need to be a perfect policy, just a commitment to take specific actions and set specific standards to make things better over time.

Eberhart has some specific recommendations, especially related to the development of electric vehicles and supporting technolgies. In the 12 years since Feeding the Fire was published, we’ve made some headway on many of them. This is in spite of the fact that we still do not have a comprehensive energy policy.

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

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Eberhart, Mark E. Feeding the Fire: The Lost History and Uncertain Future of Mankind’s Energy Addiction. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.

Happiness is a Choice by Barry Neil Kaufman

What if it is within your power to make yourself happy or unhappy? Barry Neil Kaufman is convinced you can. The theme of his book is as simple as the title, Happiness is a Choice.

To Kaufman, unhappiness is a learned response. We face many situations, some are stressful or things we would not have chosen, but our emotional response to them is largely a matter of our judgment of them. If we change our perspective, if we develop a new vision, our feelings will change, too.

The book contains many examples form Kaufman’s life and from the experiences of his clients. He and his wife have an autistic son. They look at is as a challenge to love, engage with and communicate with someone who deals with the world in a different way. One of his clients was devastated by the loss of his mother. He chose to remember all of the ways she helped him and had a positive influence on his life. His gratitude lifted his spirits.

This points to something I think is worth noting. You do not have to solve problems to be happy. Kaufman never suggests that problems will disappear or that things will always be to your liking. He is persistent in suggesting that you can find a new way to look at it so you can respond with more happiness.

Happiness, then, is more important than getting what you want. You won’t always get what you want, but you don’t have to be unhappy about it. This is the first of Kaufman’s six shortcuts to happiness.

These shortcuts are mindsets that help you focus on ways to be happy in any circumstance. I’ve already mentioned another: letting go of judgment.

All the shortcuts can be summarized in one. Decide to be happy.

Happiness isn’t necessarily ecstasy. Kaufman ties happiness to love. Happiness is loving yourself.  Loving others is being happy with them. In any situation, you can choose love and happiness.

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

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

I Can Make You Happy by Paul McKenna

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

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

Kaufman, Barry Neil. Happiness is a Choice. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991.

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.

Move by Rosabeth Moss Canter

The major elements of America’s transportation infrastructure and policy frameworks are six decades old (or older in the case rail). We haven’t even kept up with the maintenance since then. In addition to taking care of what we have, we need to adapt to the changes in technology, culture and the economy that have occurred. Our policies haven’t been keeping up.

In Move, Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter explores how we got here and how we can move forward. We got here by adopting a defense-oriented policy that emphasized cars (especially interstate highways) and air travel, largely ignoring rail, public transit and intermodal development.

The path forward has several elements. First is a focus on mobility. Transportation infrastructure is a technical, bureaucratic realm of deep silos. Mobility changes the focus to moving people and products around communities and the nation in whatever ways make sense. Physical mobility and economic mobility are tied, and if we want to strengthen our economic leadership on the world stage, we need to break down internal policy barriers to advancing the way people move.

That means developing a national strategy. Of course, a rigid approach won’t work because we have varied nation. However, national priorities and frameworks can make room for regional priorities, adaption and leadership.

Money is always in issue. There are potentials in public-private partnership (PPP), and that can be arranged in many ways. America has a world-leading freight rail system that has very limited public investment. Airports are generally owned by governments, and attempts to privatize them have meet a cool response from possible investors. However, there are examples of successful PPPs in which there is something for everybody.

I already mentioned that technology has come a long way in the past several decades, especially in the realm of communication and data analysis. Some transportation industries, such as airlines, are taking advantage of the opportunities in new technology, while other are lagging. There are many ways our transportation system can be smarter, and we need sensible ways of incorporating technology in ways that are safe without losing out on the benefits through unnecessary delays.

This requires leadership and vision, especially in government. Politicians are often motivated by short-term wins, but mobility is a long-term investment. We need leaders who can see passed the next election and the boundaries of party.

Finally, citizen engagement is important. Plans can quickly fail if the people who are going to use, pay for and otherwise feel the ultimate effects of new transportation policies and infrastructure are not informed, involved and empowered to take action that works for them.

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

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

1939 by David Gelernter

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

The prevailing myth of invention is that it is the product of a solitary genius. Steven Johnson takes on this myth in How We Got to Now.

Johnson’s book is a history of invention with a focus on six particular innovations. He demonstrates that simultaneous invention is common, suggesting that societal knowledge, norms and expectations play a part in invention—at least in providing an environment in which certain types of inventions can be created and flourish.

Thomas Edison and the light bulb is the classic myth challenged by simultaneous invention. Humphrey Davy demonstrated an incandescent electric light in 1802 and Frederick de Moleyns received the first patent for a light bulb in 1841. By the time Edison got involve, people had been working on light bulbs for 30 years, and the potential for electric light had been now for 70 years. Edison and his team of collaborators deserve a lot of credit for creating a commercially successful electric lighting system, inventing solutions to many problems along the way, but is a story of systematic hard work.

Edison’s electric lighting system depended on a lot of prior technology, which relates to another of Johnson’s points: clusters of inventions. An invention can illuminate a previously unnoticed problem (or create a new one). For instance, the availability of affordable books that follow Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press revealed that many people were farsighted. This sparked a demand for reading glasses. The tinkering with lenses led to the invention of telescopes and microscopes. Galileo took up the telescope and made discoveries in astronomy that reshaped how people saw the world. Robert Hooke used the microscope to explore a seemingly alien world of the very tiny thing all around us, though the revolution he inspired took longer to bloom.

Johnson explores other aspects of invention and society. I think it is fair to say that his view of how invention works is a lot messier than the myth. Inventors are at the right place at the right time, with open minds that are prepared (likely by accident) to make a connection and a willingness to do the work of thinking, testing and making something new. They probe the boundaries of their fields, tinker and throw themselves into hobbies that bring them, often with companions, to crossroads that challenge their notions of where they can go and how they can get there.

On the whole, Johnson presents a vision of hope in our history. We are not dependent on genius or serendipity; human creativity is both a social and an individual process in which the collision of ideas leads to new ideas. We live in an era where the collision of ideas may be more possible than ever.

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

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

The Big Necessity by Rose George

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

Circles by James Burke

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Great Stink by Clare Clark

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

The Pinball Effect by James Burke

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Steven Johnson also wrote

The Ghost Map

The Invention of Air

Johnson, Steven. How We Got To Now: Six Innovations that Make the Modern World. New York: Riverhead, 2014.

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

As a Man Thinketh, a short book written by James Allen, has become a staple of self-help literature. Many stripes of self-help teachers have referred to it since, from the mystical to the practical-minded.

As the title suggests, Allen teaches that a person’s life and achievements are results of his thoughts. Thoughts are the seeds. These seeds grow into actions. The fruit of actions are wealth or want, health or illness, joy or despair. It simply depends on the kinds of seeds you plant.

If you’re not intentionally planting seeds, preferably thoughts will produce salutary and beautiful results, your mind will be seeded with whatever falls there. Your life will be weedy, having mixed and low-value results.

Each chapters of the book is an essay on some aspect of Allen’s theme. They deal with character, life conditions, health, purposefulness, achievement, vision and peace. I each case, Allen suggests the life you have is the life you choose through your habits of thought.

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

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

Allen, James. As a Man Thinketh. White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.

Amos

Amos was a shepherd in Judah who God called to deliver a message to his nation, its sister nation Israel and the surrounding countries. His tenure as a prophet occurred during the reigns of Uzziah in Judah and Jeroboam in Israel. His message had three components: an indictment of the nations for their sins, a warning of the oppression to come from occupying nations and a hopeful vision of the kingdom to come.

Amos warned the people, and particularly called out the leaders of the nations, that God saw their sins and He would not tolerate them forever. In particular, greed was rampant. People used dishonesty and force to gain wealth, especially to exploit those who were already poor. The leaders of the nations were complicit and expanded their own wealth by these means.

The luxurious lifestyles of these aristocrats was not to last. Amos warned them of the judgment to come in the form of subjugation to a foreign empire. That empire would be Babylon.

Like many of his contemporaries, Amos had a vision of a future restoration. Israel would be restored to nationhood for a while after the end of its occupation by Babylon (and later Persia), but these prophetic visions also extended the unending kingdom of Christ.

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

Isaiah

Second Chronicles

Amos. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

Jen Sincero believes you can live the life you really want. She writes about how in You are a Badass.

Much of what you’ll find in Sincero’s book can be found on other self-help works. Sincero admits as much. Her tone, which is often humorous, is skeptical of the religious-tinged “woo-woo” stuff you’ll find in much of the self-help ouvre. Even so, she desparately wanted to change her life and was willing to try things that seemed silly to her. She wanted in badly enough to spend hard-earned money on books, seminars and workshops at which you whack pillows with bats. It worked.

The basic principle is the law of attraction. Your thoughts attract or create from the stuff of the universe by some means the life you have. If you want a better life, you need to change your thinking so that you are clear about what you want, have a willingness for action and keep a positive mindset. This concept has been around for a long time, though it was popularized anew a few years ago by the widely popular book (and related media) The Secret.

Sincero branches off in many directions from this central idea. Each chapter presents a related idea and tools for implementing them.

The good life starts with a decision. Decide what you want and that you’re willing to do what it takes to achieve it.

She encourages readers to love themselves. Appreciate that you are a unique person with a special place in this world and treat yourself with some respect.

She says people should do what they love. You only live so long and it is important that you enjoy life. In addition, don’t get hung up on a single purpose for your whole life. As you grow and you circumstances change, your purpose will change as well.

Your relationships with other are important, too. Surround yourself with people you want to be like. On the other hand, don’t compare yourself to others; it is a recipe for disappointment. Forgive others and yourself so your past doesn’t drag you down.

Even though it can be corny, do some of that old-fashioned self-helpy stuff. Use affirmations. Visualize your ideal life. Make a vision board.

What set’s Sincero apart from others is her tone and humor. She presents herself as a person who is not interested in mysticism. She’s interested in making a better life and she is concentrating on what works. If it works, she doesn’t care if it’s advocates are a little freaky. She sprinkles her book liberally with humor and spices it with a little foul language.

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

Acres of Diamonds by Russel H. Conwell

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

Make Miracles in Forty Days by Melody Beattie

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

The Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

The Success Principles by Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer

Write It Down, Make It Happen by Henriette Anne Klaus

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Sincero, Jen. You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2013.

You Can, You Will by Joel Osteen

In You Can, You Will, megachurch pastor Joel Osteen discusses qualities of a winner. Actually, Osteen might say that you’re already a winner, you just need to start believing and acting one to see in come to fruition.

First, winners have a vision and they stay focused on in. A practical way that Osteen suggests to keep your vision before your eyes is to put things in your environment, like sayings or objects, that remind you of your vision.

Winners stay focused on their goals. In particular, they don’t get derailed by trying to please everyone or to please people who are never happy. They know the difference between being kind and generous and taking improper responsibility for the happiness of others.

Osteen encourages people to expect good things to happen. Reinforce this belief by actively remembering good things that have happened to you in the past.

Be positive intentionally. Do your best to enjoy whatever you can in your current situation, even while you hope and work for something better.

Winners strive for excellence. Do the best you can and look for ways to improve. Show your desire for excellence by taking care of yourself and your things.

Always be growing. If you’re not working to improve your abilities, you’ll get left behind. Besides, if you have big dreams, there are probably many things you need to learn and improve on your way to achieving them.

Make service a lifestyles. Try to make life actually better for actual people. As a bonus, you’ll have more satisfaction with life.

Finally, be enthusiastic. Stir up your passion. It’s easy to get bogged down and discouraged, so you have to intentionally maintain a good attitude that will carry you through rough times.

Mostly, this is standard self-help material. Osteen touches on a more deeply and fundamentally Christian topic in the chapter on serving others. The Bible repeatedly describes God as a helper of the poor, widowed, orphan and oppressed. He repeatedly expresses the pleasure he takes in His people when they help needy people.

Though he doesn’t devote a chapter too it, Osteen emphasizes the need to surround yourself with good people. You need to spend time with people who will challenge and encourage you. Spend as much time as you can with people you want to be like.

Joel Osteen also wrote I Declare.

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

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Osteen, Joel. You Can, You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner. New York: Faith Words, 2014.

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron, is arguably one of the first computer scientists in history. She wrote what some considered the first computer program about a century before any computer was built, especially anything we would recognize as computer. James Essinger presents a summary of her life, and particularly a defense of her accomplishments, in Ada’s Algorithm.

In any discussion relating to the Byrons, it’s easy to get distracted by Lovelace’s father. In addition to being a famous poet, he lived a high life (often on the money of others) and had many lovers. Lady Byron, who separated from Byron and preserved her family wealth from his extravagances, made sure their only daughter had minimal contact with him. Lovelace had an education in math and science very unlike other women of her time because Lady Byron hoped it might counterbalance any of the excesses the girl may have inherited from the wild Byrons.

Lovelace took to math quite well. In a later age, she might have become a professional mathematician. In her own 1800s, her tutors sometimes complained that she reached too far for a woman, and strove to grasp at realms of math that only men had the stamina to explore. Fortunately her mother, and later her husband, William, Lord King, Baron of Ockham (later elevated to Earl of Lovelace), did not let such foolishness restrain her mathematical education.

She was still quite young, only 17, when she met the much older Charles Babbage, inventor of the partly build Difference Engine and never built Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was a calculating machine that could be programmed using punch cards. Though it was a mechanical device, not an electronic computer, Babbage’s structure (processor, memory, input and output) is the same structure of modern computers. Not only did Babbage conceive of computers a century before one was built, he drew plans for substantially completing such a machine, though the manufacturing technology of the time could not have made the parts required.

Lovelace was a friend of Babbage for many years. In 1843, about 10 years after they met, Lovelace published a paper explaining the operation and capabilities of Babbage’s machine. She had an even larger vision of it than the inventor. He saw the Analytical Engine as a tool for performing complex calculations accurately. She saw that it could do more than mathematical calculations; it could manipulate any symbols in almost any way instructed, so it might “compose” music by manipulating notes according so some rules, or perform logical functions, or handle any other information that might be digitized. She foresaw that what we now call computer science would become a discipline distinct from math.

She thought the paper might be better received if it was unsigned, but at the encouragement of her husband she published it under her initials. It was quickly discovered that “A. A. L.” was a woman, and almost a quickly dismissed as irrelevant. It wasn’t until the 20^th Century, when people were actually building digital computers, that the work of Babbage and Lovelace received some respect. Though modern computers do not have a technological connection to the Analytical Engine that was never built, it certainly has a strong conceptual connection.

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

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

How to Build and Android by David F. Dufty

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Essinger, James. Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age. 2013. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2014.

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

German physicist Max Planck was one of the most famous and well-respected scientists of his day. His work formed the foundation of quantum mechanics and is still relevant to physics today. He lived through both world wars, and these resulted in tragedy for his family.

Planck is a brief biography of the man by another physicist, Brandon R. Brown. Brown focuses his book on the last years of World War II, but from there reaches far back to his subject’s birth in 1858 and forward a little to his death in 1947. It is interesting that Brown did not choose to take a chronological approach given that entropy and the irreversibility of time were subjects of great interest to Planck. Perhaps he wants to readers to be somewhat unsettled, no doubt the way Planck must have been unsettled by events of his lifetime and the conclusions younger scientists drew from his own theories.

Brown presents Planck and as a flexible thinker who contributed to physics and accepted new theories at an age when most of his contemporaries were ready to shut the books on what could be learned. Apparently what most of us like to think of as middle-aged (at worst) is ancient for a physicist. His own work on thermal radiation established fundamental concepts of quantum theory, though he didn’t use the term “quanta.” When a young Albert Einstein proposed his special theory of relativity, Planck quick promote and build on it. He was slower to come around to general relativity (as wild as it is to us, it was insane to many in that time), and both men suffered philosophical heartburn from the quantum mechanics served up by the generation that came up under them.

Planck was very loyal to his country. His brother Hermann died in the Franco-Prussian War, and the family became intensely patriotic. At the start of World War I, he was hopeful that the war might strengthen and unify Germany. His oldest son, Karl, died at Verdun, and Germany fell on hard times.

Things were more complex when the Nazis took power. At times, his reputation as the nation’s most prominent scientist gave him leeway to resist anti-Semitic policies. At other times he acquiesced, hoping that the excesses of Nazi policies would be smoothed out or even reversed by the necessities of governing and the needs of the nation. He was so hopeful he even encouraged Jewish colleagues to stay. The Nazis saw no need for moderation, so Planck’s influence quickly waned. His son, Erwin, became involved in a resistance movement that hoped to topple the Nazis. He was implicated in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Though the Planck family appealed to every ear in and around the Nazi regime that might have sympathy, Erwin was convicted and eventually hanged. (Planck survived his first wife and four of his five children).

Brown doesn’t judge Planck too harshly, though some might. He had no love for the Nazis, but perhaps too much love for Germany, its scientific achievement, and its international standing, may have made him reluctant to boldly oppose them. This led to a break in his relationship with Einstein, though the younger eminence spoke very kindly of Planck even many years later. Because of he refused to embrace the Nazis, and he was well-liked by many foreign scientists, the Allies gave him a place in rebuilding the German scientific establishment after the war. The British, French, and Americans reorganized scientific institutes into the Max Planck Society, which is still active in supporting all manner of scientific endeavor.

I think the book is approachable for most adult readers who may have an interest in Planck or his times. Brown does not get so deep so deep into the science that he loses readers; he tries to explain it in a way that will make sense to a general audience. The structure of the book may make it difficult for a young reader to follow.

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

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios

Brandon R. Brown. Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.