The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley

In 1905, then Secretary of War William Taft and a host of other American dignitaries took a tour of Pacific islands and Asian nations. James Bradley tells the story of this trip, along with the wider contest of President Theodore Roosevelt’s policies toward Pacific expansion and Asia, in The Imperial Cruise.

Roosevelt, with Taft as his right hand, engaged in secret diplomacy with Japan. The Senate would not have approved a treaty with Japan with terms Roosevelt wanted, and his own State Department would have strongly advised against his course. So Roosevelt sent Taft to consummate a secret deal that he could never acknowledge.

By the time Taft set sail, Japan was already responding to interactions with the West. It was remaking itself into an industrialized, militarized country in the western mold. Roosevelt saw in them American-friendly, quasi-civilized people who could expand Anglo-Saxon virtues into Asia without slipping out from under Anglo-American influence. As with almost everything related to the Pacific and Asian peoples, Roosevelt was very shortsighted.

In reading about the early 20^th Century, I’ve been struck by the pervasiveness of racism. Bradley explains how Roosevelt viewed everything through a racial lens. These were racial lenses were proudly worn by white elites at the time. The key to history was racial history. They saw the birth of civilization in the Middle East with the Aryans, who began moving west. Around the Mediterranean, where the Aryans mixed with other races, civilizations degenerated. In Germany, pure Aryans gave rise to Teutons, who inherited Aryan civilizing with values of democracy and individualism. These Teutons moved west and were further perfected in the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon civilization leapt across the Atlantic and push aside the savages of North America. To Roosevelt, Manifest Destiny had not closed with the conquering of the continent; it was ready to spread into the Pacific. White men would continue to spread their civilizing influence, subjugating or exterminating lesser, browner races when necessary as white Americans had done to their Indian wards. White elites like Roosevelt saw their westward destiny in this racial history, and it was further confirm by science in Darwinian survival of the fittest.

History and science refute such notions now. Bradley (and I) certainly don’t try to justify the attitudes or actions of Roosevelt, Taft or others. Bradley is plainly critical of handling of Pacific islands and Asia. Roosevelt’s racial views blinded him to the abilities and patriotism of non-whites. He had the hubris to pursue diplomacy on his own, secretly, without advice from the State Department, Senate or anyone else who might raise the slightest objection or concern. He tutored Japan in the ways of western imperialism, but could not imagine how well they would learn the lessons. Bradley places at least some of the blame for World War II in the Pacific at the feet of Roosevelt, whose interventions created the powerful military empire we faced in those waters.

Roosevelt was an astute manager of his image and he understood public relations. Because of this, he sent his oldest (and nearly estranged) daughter Alice on the trip. She was a celebrity, and her presence assured a lot of press coverage. Her presence was also a distraction from Taft’s secret mission.

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

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

First Samuel

Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

Water by Steven Solomon

Bradley, James. The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009.

The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

Clarence King was probably the most well-known American scientist of his time. It doesn’t hurt that his scientific reputation was built on exploration of the then still wild west of the United States of that he could spin a tale. Robert Wilson recounts the life of the accomplished geologist in The Explorer King.

King was born in 1842. He was raised in Newport, Massachusetts. He was educated at Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School.

As a young man, King was enamored of art critic John Ruskin. Ruskin thought the rugged Alps of Europe to be the best subject of art for their beauty, colorfulness, ruggedness and variety. When he met western geologists and mountaineers through mentors at Sheffield, he wanted to be part of it.

He headed out for California in 1863 and became part of the state’s geologic survey. He would spend the next decade studying the geology and geography of the American west, especially its mountains. He showed great physical prowess and courage as a mountaineer.

After working on the California survey, he went on to lead surveys. In 1864, he was chosen to lead a survey of Yosemite.

He built on his reputation from the Yosemite survey to lobby Congress to fund a survey of the 40^th Parallel, roughly the route the transcontinental railroads would follow. Though it was under the auspices of the Army Corp of Engineers, it was the first federally-funded scientific endeavor that was completely staffed by civilians. While working on this survey, he was the first to discover active glaciers in the U.S. His team published new methods of silver smelting to make the mines for productive (the survey’s first report dealt with mining in order to show the commercial value of their research to money-conscious Congressmen).

The 40^th Parallel survey made King famous, though not because of the many contributions to science that came from it. King’s team heard rumors of a diamond discovery in Colorado. It would have been very embarrassing for them to have walked over such a valuable mineral resource without observing it. They tracked down the site of the discovery and determined it was a hoax; the site had been planted with rough diamonds and other uncut gemstones that the con men had bought mostly with money from their marks. Stories of massive fraud sells newspapers, especially when the names of big money men in San Francisco and New York are attached to it. King was the hero of the story.

When the U.S. Geological Survey was created, King was appointed to be its first director. His career as a scientist was already on the decline. He would turn his attention to making money in mining, but he would not be successful. He would have no money when he died.

This leads to an interesting point about King, though it is not the focus of Wilson’s biography. King had nothing to leave for his secret family. He was married to a black woman. This was a very unusual thing at the time. To protect his reputation, he kept the marriage a secret. He did not even reveal to his wife his real identity until shortly before he died (she knew him as James Todd). His friend John Hay provided for Ada Copeland Todd (and the five children she had with King) after King died in 1901.

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 Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Wilson, Robert. The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West. New York: Scribner, 2006.

The Big Necessity by Rose George

George, Rose. The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters. New York: Metropolitan, 2008.

Rose George wants people to talk about something they don’t usually talk about: shit. Human excreta is a huge problem in much of the world. Even in the West where flush toilets are nearly ubiquitous, safe disposal of the waste is a daunting problem. There is probably nothing that could do more to improve human health, productivity and prosperity worldwide than to improve the disposal of human excreta, i.e. to really deal with our shit.

George deals with both the highs and the lows of disposing human waste. The pinnacle is found in Japan, the land of high functioning toilets. Japanese butts are pampered with heated seats and built-in warm-water bidets just for starters. On the other extreme, some people have nothing better to resort to than open defecation in the bushes or even the street.

There is no simple, one-size-fits-all solution to sanitation. One reason is water. The waterborne sewage systems of the relatively water-rich, flushing West would not even begin to work in the dryer parts of the world. Even where great and affordable technology exists, sanitation can be thwarted by misunderstandings of culture and society.

George’s look at how culture effects sanitation make a lot of sense, but it is easy to overlook. Many sanitation programs have failed because well meaning planners have imposed solutions from the top. The successful solutions seem to be coming from the bottom, where people find solutions that fit the local customs or where local awareness is awakened before solutions are proposed.

Another interesting thing about the book is that George has talked to many people who are trying different ways to solve the sanitation problem in different parts of the world. There a lot to be learned from their successes and failures. Maybe by openly discussing the shit, and seeing what works and doesn’t from both a social and engineering standpoint, we can come up with better policies and programs—or simple human interactions—that will lead to better living for everyone through sanitation.

Order this book here.

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Stark, Rodney. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. New York: Random House, 2005.

Rodney Stark argues in The Victory of Reason that the West grew to prominence in science, technology, commerce, and power because of its foundations in Christianity. Personal freedom, democracy, and capitalism grew and eventually flourished in Western Civilization because Christianity provided a philosophy and set of beliefs that such things were possible, achievable, and valuable. These things failed, stumbled, and declined in other parts of the world because the cultures, particularly religions, that prevailed there supported philosophies and beliefs that lead another direction.

It starts with a notion of God that is almost unique to Christianity: God is a being of reason. Therefore they could use human reason, however imperfect, to understand God and increase our understanding of Him. Christian theology wasn’t simply asserting scripture, but reasoning about God and His Word to increase, refine, and improve knowledge and doctrine.

The Christian faith embraced progress through reason in doctrine. Christians looked forward to becoming progressively better believers. God is immutable, but those who believe Him can grow in understanding as they mature and with successive generations. This religion of belief contrasted with religions of practice, which inherently looked backward to established law.

These foundational beliefs in reason and progress carried over into Christian views of the physical world. It was a real place made by God. In addition, because God created the world using His reason, we can understand it using ours, just as we can use reason to increase our understanding of God. This belief gave impetus to modern science. Some credit goes to the ancient Greek philosophers, some of who had faith in reason and others in experimentation, though not both at the same time. Islamic philosophers admired, preserved and closely studied the Greeks. However, it was Christians who took these resources and added their own worldview to create modern science. Early scientists were Christians, often supported by the church directly or through universities, which were connected to the church at the time. Western nations gained a lead in science that they still hold.

Progress carried over to social and political issues as well. In particular, Christian beliefs about human equality made the church a leader in the abolition of slavery in Europe and later the Americas. It also gave rise to increasingly democratic governments, personal freedoms, and property rights. This created an environment where capitalism could flourish. Capitalism love technological development, and it didn’t hurt that it was growing in cultures that were amenable to science, and these things grew together creating new levels of freedom, opportunity, and wealth. Christian theologians had the flexibility and reasoning power to adapt doctrine to these new developments while remaining true to received scripture.

Stark supports his arguments with examples from history. One of the more interesting things about the book is the way he compares examples from the Christian world to counterexample from other cultures, such as China or Islam. China was a prominent, technologically advance culture that did not hold its lead. Islam preserved Greek knowledge during Europe’s supposedly dark ages, but did not advance. It was the late bloomers in the Christian West who had the philosophical tools to build success upon success. He also contrasts the winners and decliners in Europe and the Americas, showing how successful and wealthy nations became that way by embracing religious liberty, democracy, and capitalism, while those that declined held to or recreated feudal systems.



If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck
Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel
God Wants You to Be Rich by Paul Zane Pilzer
How We Got Here by Andy Kessler
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived by Steven K. Scott
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek

The Caped Crusade by Glen Weldon

Based on his self-description in The Caped Crusade, Glen Weldon and I are close in age. Unlike Weldon, the limited selection of broadcast television channels in my rural community did not present 1960s Batman series. My childhood impressions of the Dark Knight came almost exclusively from the comics. My favorite version of Batman is the “World’s Greatest Detective” (when I came across his team-up with a very old Sherlock Holmes in Detective Comics 500, I had to have it). I’m also fond of the adventure hero who hues close to his pulp roots—basically the Shadow or Doc Savage in a bat suit (I also had to buy Batman 253, in which the awestruck superhero acknowledges the Shadow as an inspiration).

I suppose that I staked out my position on Batman because that is partly what Weldon’s book is about, the contradictions between Batman the character and Batman the idea, and the tension between stories loved by hardcore fans and stories appreciated by a wider audience who engage with Batman in diverse ways.

Weldon illustrates this tension, and the character’s shift as the pull is sometimes stronger in one direction or another, through the history of the character. He sees a cycle in Batman’s depiction. He starts as a dark loner. He becomes a father figure (most directly to Robin). He grows into the patriarch of a family (Robin, Alfred, Batgirl, and Huntress just to start a list). Then a desire to revitalize the character, get back to roots, or satisfy the core fandom returns him to the loner stage.

The hardcore fans Weldon writes of generally conceive Batman as serious. They want a Batman who is realistic and gritty. In my experience as a reader of comics, “serious,” “realistic” and “gritty” are often code words for prurience, grotesquery and gore. I’m not interested in that in comics or any other media.

These fans have a love-hate relationship with the Batman of other media (they just hate the Adam West version). The Tim Burton films revitalized public interest in Batman when the comics were in a serious sales slump. (The hardcore fans hate the Joel Schumacher movies. I’m with them on that.) In the Chris Nolan trilogy they finally got a Batman who is serious and has acceptance in the wider culture.

That culture is much wider now than ever, especially due to the Internet. Comics fandom was once very insular, and in some ways it still is. In the Internet age, many people are engaging the character and idea of Batman. Comic book fans, cosplayers, fan fiction writers, movie buffs, fashionistas, retro TV watchers, hipsters and a host of others are interacting with Batman’s stories, history, image and iconography. It is a world that some of the old hardcore fans may find discomfiting, but it may be a place where Batman can have lasting relevance.

Weldon plainly likes that prospect. In his view, the super-straight Adam West Batman and the grounded, brooding Chris Nolan Batman can coexist. They are both really Batman. People have always focused on the aspects of the character that resonated with them. They have also imposed on him interpretations that the writers and artists that created his stories never imagined. We do this with every text, but few texts have the longevity of Batman. That may be the Weldon’s other point. We can take any version of Batman as seriously as we want, or we can simply enjoy the stories. He is a fictional character after all.

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

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil

Fic by Anne Jamison

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner by Michael Schumacher

Wisdom from the Batcave by Cary A. Friedman

Weldon, Glen. The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.

The success of the West...rested entirely on religious foundations

The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.

-Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason

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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A Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen

Esolen, Anthony. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2008.

Our civilization is on the verge of disintegration. However, by recovering the best of our historic culture, philosophy, religion and government, the wisdom of our ancestors, we can recover the great things we’ve lost and continue to enjoy the advancements they’ve made possible. That’s Anthony Esolen’s message in this book.

Esolen is unabashedly conservative and religious. He sees this as keeping with the best traditions of the West. He wants to build on the hard won lessons of history, not throw it out because a new age supposedly calls for new thought.

He does not romanticize the ancients. The Greeks who bequeathed to us logic and democracy practice some of the worst kind of rhetoric and abuse of power. The Romans who had some wisdom in affairs of family and state pervert patriarchy with misused authority and undermine industry with slavery. Even the Church, with its worldview that made the best of Western Civilization possible, could go astray. If anything is consistent through history, it’s that evil people do evil things and even people of good intentions can fall short of their ideals.

Our age has dispensed with ideals. Many of the historic revolutions that advanced human happiness were surprisingly conservative in that they carried with them the best traditions of the past. The revolution we’re experiencing discards tradition as irrelevant and dangerously ignores the lessons of even the recent past. Government takes the place of God, or takes on nearly god-like power, scientific management of society supplants individual kindness and community and convenience and convention take over for law and ethics.

In spite of the alarm he sounds, Esolen is optimistic. Western Civilization, especially the Christian West, is built on hope, a hope in One who is good and active in accomplishing good in the lives of men. He doesn’t say abandon the present, but neither abandon our past, especially not the One that gives meaning to the story of human history.

Water by Steven Solomon (204)

Solomon, Steven. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. New York: Harper, 2010.
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Steven Solomon’s Water is an epic history of civilization from its roots to modern time. Solomon’s thesis is that inventively mastered their water resources have risen and those that have outpaced their available water or innovations have declined. There are lessons in this history for us who live in an age where some nations already experience serious water scarcity and even relatively water rich nations are squandering their natural fortune.

The book generally follows sequences of technology, geography, and politics. In technology, it moves through waters many uses from irrigation to transportation, energy and sanitation. The geographic motion of the book is from east to west, starting the early innovations of Asia, sliding to Europe, then jumping the Atlantic to North America. The political trend begins with ancient, totalitarian hydraulic societies and moves on to gradually democratizing nations and the splintered, competitive, yet surprisingly workable and cooperative, market-oriented Western republics.

In the final chapters of the book, Solomon deals with the threat of water scarcity. Some parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Asia, are already facing water shortages. Those fortunate enough to have other sources of wealth, like oil, are importing virtual water, especially in the form of food. Control of water resources is becoming a matter of international diplomacy, national security, and possible war in much the way oil was in the last century. This is especially true in the arid, populous Middle East and South Asia. Many of the water poor live in lands that are highly populated, arid, unstable politically, and have long-standing enmities with neighboring countries.

Relatively water rich nations, like the United States, have problems, too. Much of it stems from using water inefficiently and for less productive activities. This is especially problematic in the dry western states, where long-standing, vested interests have sought to protect their subsidized access to water while others, sometimes more efficient and high value users, pay great premiums for the limited remaining available water. This isn’t strictly a western problem; eastern cities are also droughts, growing populations, industrialization, intensive agriculture, and aging infrastructure that strain their water resources.

While the problems are serious, Solomon seems hopeful that, as in the past, we may be able to develop technological, organizational, and political solutions to these issues. He objectively discusses national and international efforts to solve the looming water crisis. He seems to have more faith that workable solutions well arise in the more water rich, democratic West, where a combination of government regulation, free markets, substantial local control, and varied regional solutions are giving rise to innovation.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Ancient Engineers by L. Sprague de Camp
Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris
Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury
Exodus
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
The Great Stink by Clare Clark
Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark
Water by Marq de Villiers
When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

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He that has not mastery over his inclinations lacks the first principle of virtue and industry

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

Literature Review: Cost Overruns & Delays in Municipal Construction Projects

March Featured Book

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Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

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Seize this very minute

The success of the West rested entirely on religious foundations

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Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

For those looking for a brief survey of technological history around the world, Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey would be a good start. With just a little preface to introduce ideas about how civilizations interact in relation to technology, Pacey dives into a historical narrative of the development of major technologies. He starts in A.D. 700 and continues almost to the time the book was published in 1990.

Throughout the book, Pacey describes the interactions between civilizations as a dialogue. Straightforward, direct transfer of technology from one civilization to another is rare in his view. The success and development of a technology that originated in a foreign culture depends a lot on the customs, organization, government, economy, and technology of the receiving culture. Very often, the adoption of a foreign technology spurs adaptions, improvements and even new inventions among the adopters. Even the rumor of a foreign technology can spur people invent, or independently reinvent, solutions to a problem. Pacey is keen to recognize this stimulus effect in cross-cultural dialogue related to technology.

In addition to recognizing the inventiveness found in many cultures, Pacey is careful not to overemphasize mechanical inventions, which might tend to put the focus on the West. He points out that the development of more efficient and productive crops and agricultural practices in Asia were also important technologies.

Another important technological improvement centered on organization and abstraction. As technologies became larger and more complex, they exhausted what could be experienced directly by craftsmen. Improvement depended on developing new ways of thinking about materials and work. Scale drawing and model-making became a way to deal with complex construction. New principles of organization were applied to work, such as specialization and division of labor, especially as people began to work with powered machinery. Some technological improvements even required a new way of understanding materials, spurring interest in the development of sciences, especially chemistry.

Pacey follows this progression through guns and railroads and into the 20^th century with computers, nuclear power, and flights to the moon. He doesn’t stop there. Instead, he takes a look, seemingly “back,” to survival technologies. Technologies related to agriculture, sanitation and environmental health in the 20^th century have a huge impact on the way we live today. In the decades since this book was published, the Internet has revolutionized the way we think about computing and communications, but in many ways our health, wellbeing and lifestyles depend on technologies that are centuries old and we cannot neglect them. Perhaps in an ongoing cross-cultural dialogue about technology, new and old, we can find solutions to current and future problems (climate change, water shortages, clean energy, food security and more) that are adaptable to the various needs, scales and organizations of cultures around the world.

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

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Pacey, Arnold. Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990.

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STEM Books

I’ve reviewed 39 STEM-related books (and counting).  STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  As you may have seen in the news, there is a push to improve STEM education, interest students in STEM fields, and grow the number of workers in these fields.  The idea is that these will be the skills needed by workers of the future.  If you’re a STEM educator or a student considering a career in STEM fields, you might like to take a look at some of these books.

I’ll confess that I’m not an educator, but I think most of these books will be accessible to high school and college students, and a few to middle school students.  The list is also a reflection of my career and interests in engineering, public health, policy, and history.  Even with these biases, I think it is a good list for someone looking for STEM-related books.

How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty

I was fascinated by robots as a kid.  I enjoyed reading Isaac Asimov’s robot stories.  I longed for the Omnibot 2000 in the Sears Wishbook.

Robots have come a long way.  In How to Build an Android, David F. Dufty describes the short strange life of a very complex robot made to look and talk like science fiction author Philip K. Dick.  The robot had a very sophisticated and lifelike head and complex artificial intelligence.  As with most complex things, it was the work of many people who had to solve a lot of problems.

If you’re interested in robotics, this is an interesting nontechnical book.  In addition, you’ll get introduced to some freaky sci-fi.  You may even get as (somewhat) legitimate reason to use the word “Dickhead” (capitalized, it refers to a fan of PKD, so don’t go using it on anyone).

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways by Earl Swift

The Interstate highway system in the United States is one of the most enormous structures built.  Some of the prospective STEM students who read this may actually be younger than the Intestate system, though in some sense it is never complete because it needs constant repair and maintenance.  The Interstates were completed in the 1990s, but the Federal-Aid Highways go back to 1916.

Earl Swift wrote an accessible history of the Interstates in The Big Roads.  If you interested in automobiles or transportation, it’s a good read.

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Deborah Cadbury describes seven wonders of engineering in Dreams of Iron and Steel.  It covers almost a century of history, but many of the events are concentrated in the Victorian Era.  That was a time of great technological innovation.

Though the book is history, many of the structures still stand.  Railways, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Suez and Panama Canals, and Hoover Dam stand testament to an age of big engineering.

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios

Though the memory of Professor Wragg’s sneer prompts me to not make this confession, part of my interest in science and technology came from comic books.  Iron Man was cool.  Spider-Man’s web shooters were very cool.  Superhero comics are full of fantasy, admittedly, but the strange, unrealistic science and technology they depict have inspired many to study STEM in reality.

Physicist John Kakalios uses examples from comic books to explore real physics in The Physics of Supeheroes.  Sometimes comics get there science right.  Even when they get it wrong, it can be instructive.  If you know what people are talking about when they refer to the “New 52,” you may find this book to be a great introduction to physics.

1089 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics by David Acheson

Here is another confession: I’m not especially interested in math.  I endured a lot of math classes to study engineering.  Reading David Acheson’s 1089 and All That did not require such endurance.  For one reason, it is a short book.  For another, Acheson doesn’t expect his readers to be mathematicians; it is enough to follow the outline of the math he discusses.

I recommend this book because so many people have a fear of math.  1089 can be followed by many high school students and older folks with math phobias.  Just take a deep breath, relax, and follow along as well as you can.  You’ll see that math can be interesting, useful, and even beautiful in a way.

The Brooklyn Bridge: They Said it Couldn’t be Built by Judith St. George

Judith St. George’s The Brooklyn Bridge is a short history of and iconic bridge.  Written for the bridge’s 100^th anniversary, it is also the story of the engineers who sacrificed life and health to see it completed: John Roebling and his son Washington.  John Roebling was a German immigrant who built many suspension bridges and owed a wire-making business.  He gave his son and extraordinary education in bridge engineering for the time, and before beginning work on the Brooklyn Bridge he served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Why should a cutting-edge STEM student read about a bridge that is almost 130 years old?  It’s because we still use and rely on very successful, centuries old technologies.  Improving and rebuilding our infrastructure will be an important part of our economy.  As recently as 2010, New York City and the federal government committed $500 million to repair and repaint the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski

STEM lumps together science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  Is there a difference between science and engineering?  Is it important?

Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history and author of The Essential Engineer, believes there is an important difference.  At heart, science is about increasing knowledge.  Engineering is about invention.  Of course, new knowledge makes new invention possible.  Just as often, though, engineering runs ahead of science.  Sometimes science didn’t advance until someone invented the instruments to conduct new observations and experiments.  The invention of the microscope made possible the science of microbiology.  Steam engines were built and greatly improved before we had a modern scientific understanding of thermodynamics.  In fact, thermodynamics was to a large extent born out of desire to understand steam engines. In this sense, it is an engineering science (study of manmade things) as much as a natural science (study of natural things) or branch of physics.

Petroski’s focus in the book is the importance of engineering to policymaking, where it is often overshadowed by science.  Policy, science, and engineering play off of each other a lot.  Most of my career as an engineer has been related to government, policy, and regulatory compliance.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

The Ghost Map by science writer Steven Johnson is the story of the birth of epidemiology.  Epidemiology is a medical science that uses statistics to help us understand how diseases operate in a population.  Using various statistical and geographic tools, long before we had computers and GIS, physician John Snow demonstrated that cholera, once a recurring plague that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in some outbreaks, was a waterborne disease.  This understanding, initially met with much skepticism, allowed officials to intervene to prevent the spread of the disease.  For those who say of their math classes, “I’ll never us this,” here is a case where math (and science and policy) were used to make a great difference.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

It is not much publicized today that the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806 had a partly scientific mission.  Captains Lewis and Clark were charges with bringing back samples of the flora, fauna, and culture of the western territories.  It was also hoped that they would find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean.  In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose writes about the scientific mission as well as the policy, diplomacy, and commercial hopes the expedition carried.

Of course, what attracts most people to the Lewis and Clark expedition is that it was a great adventure.  There is a place in STEM fields for thoughtful adventurers and explorers. 

Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson

A list like this deserves something strange, creepy, and more fun than you care to admit.  Right now, thousands of very young future STEM workers are catching bugs and snakes, breaking their toys to see what is inside, or staring into space with a weird expression of vacancy and concentration.

Jan Bondeson’s Buried Alive is not a morbid book.  It is sometimes humorous, especially in consideration of topic.  From a STEM point of view, Bondeson shows how knowledge accumulates over time.  The fears and activities of our forefathers may seem strange to us, but they sometimes made sense in light of what they knew.  Buried Alive doesn’t simply play off our fascination with the grotesque and death, though the book might not have been written if we lacked that fascination, I think it reminds us to approach our ancestors with a touch of grace and humility.  Maybe our progeny will show us the same courtesy.

If you’re looking for something for a younger student, check out this post→ from Joanne Loves Science or these recommendations→ from STEM Friday.  By the way, I also write about engineering, infrastructure and the environment at Infrastructure Watch.

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