Category Archives: Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Crow with No Mouth: Ikkyu Translated by Stephen Berg

Posted on by
1

Crow With No Mouth : Ikkyu : Fifteenth Century Zen MasterCrow With No Mouth : Ikkyu : Fifteenth Century Zen Master by Ikkyu

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Ikkyū Sōjun was the Howard Stern of Zen masters. Born in 1394, he lived through most of the 15th century. Ikkyū served as a temple’s abbot for less than two weeks before he quit in disgust, vowing to move into a red-light district—apparently he wanted to live among people he found more honest and less hypocritical. The Zen master despised the corruption and snobbery of monastic politics.

Crow with no Mouth is a collection of Ikkyū’s verse, which is largely in the Zen tradition–featuring natural subjects and simple wisdom in a sparse style. Of course, as per my comments in the preceding paragraph, there are a few poems on topics such as cunnilingus and debauchery—so it’s not what one would call a child-friendly collection (unless one enjoys explaining the sexual exploits of a lecherous monk to one’s child.) The more explicit poems may seem like a diversion from the Zen path, but perhaps not. Maybe Ikkyū offered them as a way to train the mind, to observe one’s reaction to shocking commentary as a means of changing one’s way of thinking.

A few of my favorite lines of a more traditional nature include:

-“you can’t make cherry blossoms by tearing off petals to plant; only spring does that”

-“sometimes all I am is dark emptiness; I can’t hide in the sleeves of my own robes”

-“it’s logical: if you’re not going anywhere any road is the right one”

-“the edges of the sword are life and death; no one knows which is which”

-“even in its scabbard my sword sees you”

-“a flower held up twirled between human fingers; a smile barely visible”

-“in war there’s no time to teach or learn Zen; carry a strong stick; bash your attackers”

Here are a few of those jarring lines that I mentioned above:

-“that stone Buddha deserves all the bird shit it gets”

-“all koans just lead you on but not the delicious pussy of the young girls I go down on”

-“ten fussy days running this temple all red tape; look me up if you want o in the bar whorehouse fish market”

-“my dying teacher could not wipe himself; unlike you disciples who use bamboo; I cleaned his lovely ass with my bare hands”

-“don’t hesitate get laid that’s wisdom; sitting around chanting, what crap”

-“who teaches truth? good/bad the wrong way; Crazy Cloud knows the taste of his own shit” [Crazy Cloud was Ikkyū’s name for himself.]

When he left the monastery, Ikkyū shredded the certificate that served as his monastic credential. Some of his students found it, and pieced it back together. That led to the following verse:

-“one of you saved my satori paper I know it piece by piece; you pasted it back together; now watch me burn it once and for all”

Ikkyū’s verse asks us to reevaluate what it means to be sacred or profane. The orthodox view would be that Ikkyū fell from the sacred life of a monk. However, Ikkyū tells us that one can degrade what is important by raising the wrong things to sacred status. Conversely, some of what we believe to be profane is just rooted in habitual and ill-reasoned ways of thinking.

I’d recommend this work for those who love the spare form of Japanese poetry, and who don’t mind a hard jolt to their psyche occasionally.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Becoming Batman by E. Paul Zehr

Posted on by
Reply

Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a SuperheroBecoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero by E. Paul Zehr

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

[Note: This book is about sport and exercise science, particularly as they pertain to the martial arts. If you’re a martial artist or are interested in fitness and movement arts at the extremes of human capacity, you’re in the right place. If you’re interested in the comics and an overview of topics including how many billions Bruce Wayne needs and what technologies Batman must master, those aren’t questions addressed in this book. Such readers may find the book delving into depths they aren’t interested in on biological science. There are articles on the web that deal with topics like the “Cost of being Batman.”]

Next summer an eagerly awaited movie entitled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hits theaters. Who knows how much screen time will involve the fight between the titular characters, but the same battle has played out a number of times in the comics, and its appeal is clear. What are the limits of human capability given training, technology, and sufficient smarts? Can a man really defeat an alien that’s faster than a bullet and more powerful than a locomotive? A popular fanboy mantra is, “I like Batman, because I could be Batman. Batman has no superpowers.” So, yes, if you were a billionaire, genius, with the physique of a Greek god, and knew 127 martial arts, you too could be Batman. Or could you? That question is at the heart of Zehr’s book.

Becoming Batman is arranged into sixteen chapters divided among five parts. It begins logically with the question of whether Bruce Wayne needs to begin at any particular point to achieve success in transforming himself into Batman? (At the extreme, one probably can’t imagine Bruce Wayne becoming Batman if he was born with one leg a foot longer than the other and with a Quasimodo hump, but given a Bruce who is starting out “average,” what are his limitations.) In other words, how much does genetics come into play. In the first part, Zehr introduces a character, Bob Wayne, who doesn’t appear in the comics. Bob is Bruce’s twin, and is used throughout the book for comparison purposes, i.e. to convey what Bruce Wayne would look like if he didn’t train fanatically to be Batman. The question of how much of Batman is innate and how much is painstaking built by exercise and training is critical to determining how many of those fanboys really could be Batman.

There a series of chapters explaining the mechanism by which stressors result in a stronger, faster, more powerful, and more resilient Batman. The idea is that Mother Nature doesn’t over-engineer. The only way one gets stronger muscles is by overloading them, which triggers a process of rebuilding them bigger and better than before. Wolff’s Law defines the same concept for bones, i.e. bone density increases in response to increased loading. (Incidentally, the same is true of the mind. A more agile mind is achieved only by working it, and zoning out in front of the television results in a dumbening.)

The next section shifts from generic exercise science to questions of Batman’s martial arts training. What kind of martial arts (or arts) would Batman practice? There is an often quoted statement in the comics to the effect that Batman had mastered 127 martial arts. (This is ridiculous, but it does spur the intriguing question of how many systems does Batman need to learn to have a well-rounded skill-base without being a dabbler? Many will say one art—the right one–is enough, others will say that–given the varied cast of villains he must defeat–Batman needs a broader skill-set than any existing art provides.) More to the point, how many hours does one need to practice a technique to ingrain the movements into one (e.g. neurologically it takes repetition to optimize efficiency.) This is among the questions discussed in this book.

The fourth section deals with the ravages of being Batman, and how much any human could be expected to endure. In this section, one will learn about the cumulative toll of concussions, the likelihood of Batman avoiding broken bones and other injuries that would necessarily sideline his crime fighting, and the effect that working the night shift would have. (The latter might seem trivial in comparison to the former two topics, but—in fact—it’s not. It’s well established that night workers have higher incidence of some cancers and other ailments. Furthermore, as Bruce Wayne has to keep appearances up, it means not only fighting circadian rhythm issues, but also frequent sleep deprivation—the hazards of which are even clearer and occur in short order.)

There are a number of interesting topic that aren’t don’t pertain to the core question per se, but which are interesting for fans of the Batman canon and the character’s mythos. Famously, Batman doesn’t use guns or lethal force. This raises the question of how realistic it is to regularly fight hardened knaves and miscreants without killing them. One can only knock out so many of Gotham’s baddies before one doesn’t get up.

There’s a chapter about what a fight between Batman and Batgirl would be like. While strength would definitely be to Batman’s advantage, there are advantages that an equally skilled female fighter might bring to the fight? How would Batgirl (or Catwoman) need to fight to put those advantages to use? Finally, for those of us who are no longer spring chicks, there are chapters about how Batman could expect to age, and how long he could keep performing at a level at which he could defeat his enemies.

I enjoyed this book and found it both educational and interesting. It should be clear that Batman is just a teaching tool used to explore the limitations of the human body and its ability to endure a life of fighting. That said, references to the Batman comic books and movies makes for a readable text. Perhaps what I like most about this book is that most of the books that address these subjects are textbooks that are sold on the textbook pricing model (i.e. we have a limited but captive audience so let’s make them pay top dollar.) This is one of the few books that takes on these topics at the readability and pricing model of a popular science book.

I recommend it for those interested in the science of performance, martial arts, and injury.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Free Will by Sam Harris

Posted on by
Reply

Free WillFree Will by Sam Harris

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Amazon page

I had high hopes for Sam Harris’s book Free Will, but they didn’t pan out. It’s a very short book (less than 100 pages) on the subject of free will–or the lack thereof. While I’m normally a huge fan of brevity and conciseness, Harris could have put some more pages to good use. My two principal complaints regard the lack of information: a. substantiating the notion that free will is always and everywhere an illusion as Harris asserts; b. suggesting what logic is at the root of decision if our conscious thoughts are irrelevant. (If they were random synaptic firings our behavior wouldn’t be nearly so consistent. Self-preservation of genes? The hand of god? You won’t know from this book.)

Harris might claim that that’s not the purpose of this book, that one should familiarize oneself with the vast literature on the topic before getting to this book. In that case, my complaints remain two-fold. First, he shouldn’t take on such a bold and presumptuous title as Free Will (no subtitle) if he’s not going to educate us from the ground up on the titular topic. Second, if the reader has done all the scholarly reading on the subject, why should we care about Harris’s opinions?

I will say that if you liked Matrix Revolutions, the third Matrix movie, you will love this book. SPOILER: In that movie, we find out that Neo is the central element of an elaborate plan to fool people into thinking they have some control over their own lives. In Harris’s book, Neo is replaced by the conscious mind.

There’s a scientific literature supporting the notion that free will is an illusion–though Harris only touches on it. This conclusion has been reached by observing that subconscious parts of the brain involved with decision-making light up well in advance of the conscious parts of the brain. [On a note unrelated to the book: we also know that individuals with damage to the emotional centers in the brain become unable to make decisions because all options hold the same weight.] The most illuminating example offered is an experiment in which participants were asked to press a button to select a letter or number of their choosing from among a string of changing letters / numbers. Some subjects felt the scientists had mastered precognition (a class III impossibility according to physicists–i.e. impossible according to the laws of physics as we know them.) What was really happening was an exploitation of the lag between when the individual’s subconscious decided and when their consciousness became aware of their decision.

Harris briefly mentions a couple of these neuroscience experiments, but then expects that the reader will treat the free will illusion as law. That is, we are to accept that always and everywhere people’s subconscious minds decide some measure before their conscious minds. Maybe there has been a broad enough scientific investigation of the topic to safely conclude that free will is always and everywhere an illusion–but Harris does make this point.

Harris tells us about couple of studies in which, a.) there’s no cost differential between the different options; (i.e. is it possible that the mind treats decisions about picking a spouse or a house differently than picking a letter or number for which there is no objectively better or worse option?) b.) those studied are a random sample of individuals who have no particular expertise with their minds—probably mostly college undergrads. (If I drew a random sample of people and asked each to lift 300 lbs over his or her head. If no one could do it, would I be safe in concluding that lifting 300 lbs was something forever beyond the capacity of every member of the human race? In other words, what if exercising conscious control over decision-making requires training and expertise with the mind.)

There are a couple of red-flags for me about Harris’s approach to the subject. First, Harris scoffs at the suggestion that it might be that the conscious can overrule the subconscious, and seems to deem this as unworthy of study because it would just be the subconscious making a second decision instead of the conscious truly vetoing. Anytime a scholar is dismissive of another scholar’s attempts to further probe into a question signals that a pet theory has become a sacred cow.

Second, Harris suggests that anyone who truly studied his own mind in action couldn’t help but realize the fallacy of free will. People who can’t imagine that others see the world differently than them are also a point of concern when it comes to getting sound information. Could it possibly surprise Mr. Harris to learn that there are people who’ve spent far more time alone with their minds than he, who’ve concluded quite the opposite?

Alright, I may have overstated Harris’s position when I suggested the conscious mind is relegated to a Matrix Revolutions-style (and Rube Goldberg-esque) machine for tricking us into thinking we have choice and control over the direction of our lives. I suspect Harris would agree that evolution doesn’t over-engineer, and a conscious mind that is just part of a trick would be the vastest act of over-engineering in the history of the universe. (Unless the universe is a hologram, as some physicists are now suggesting–presumably based on the notion that their math works out in 2-D.)

I just don’t have a good idea of what purpose Harris thinks the conscious mind serves. His central point seems to be that we still need to keep putting rapists and murders in jail so they can be kept off the streets. We just shouldn’t bear any ill-will toward them because they had no control over their decisions. However, if we set a tone with our conscious thought stream, then whether the individual’s decision to act was conscious or not they would have culpability by virtue of stage-setting. If we don’t have any control over our conscious thought stream then there would be no benefit to courses of study that help one improve one’s state of mind, but there’s also a scientific literature showing that people who begin meditative practices, yoga, and the like do see tangible positive changes. (Not to mention that Harris should give all the money back for the books he has sold about meditation, i.e. Waking Up.) If we have conscious control of our thought stream, but that thought stream is irrelevant, then we should be walking around in a constantly perplexed state.

To add to the confusion, Harris uses the term “choices” to refer to his “decisions,” but according to his paper he doesn’t make any choices. He—like all of us—are slaves to some unknown–or at least unexplained–process. Black boxes aren’t persuasive.

I can’t say I’d recommend this book, unless you’ve read extensively on the topic and are rounding out your reading experience. This book isn’t the ideal starting point for engaging this subject—as it seems when you are reading the blurb–because you’re as likely to come away more confused than when you began reading.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Gotham Writers’ Workshop: Writing Fiction by Various

Posted on by
Reply

Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing SchoolWriting Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York’s Acclaimed Creative Writing School by Alexander Steele

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

This workbook-style guide to writing fiction is put out by the well-known New York City creative writing school. With 11 chapters, it delivers lessons on all the elements of fiction including: character development, plotting, establishing point of view, honing description, building realistic dialogue, varying pacing, establishing voice, determining a work’s theme, and carrying out revisions. It also has a chapter that goes into the business of writing (as opposed to the craft of writing which is the bailiwick of the first ten chapters.)

There are a couple of features of this book that set it apart from the vast canon of writers’ guides. First, this isn’t a single author work, which means the reader has access to a much broader pool of experience than one would in a single author text. It also means that an author can be assigned a topic according to his or her strengths as a writer.

Second, across the chapters, they use Raymond Carver’s Cathedral as an example work, and they provide that story in an appendix for those who haven’t read it. It’s not that the authors exclusively use this short story for examples. But it’s useful to have a common story and to include it because there are so many great stories and novels available that no matter how well-read one’s readership, there will be works that some haven’t read. (e.g. Much as I should’ve, I haven’t yet read nor seen the movie Gone with the Wind–a common exemplary work because it’s a beloved book, a movie, and because pop culture references [e.g. The Simpsons] have made the gist of it available to even those slackers who’ve neither read the book nor seen the movie.) There’s a reason why writers’ book authors often use movies to describe story elements, because there are many fewer movies than books and vastly fewer good movies—thus a higher likelihood of a common experience. Yes, there are a few works common across most school curricula, but there’s no better way to ensure that a book doesn’t get read thoroughly than to assign it as required reading.

A third useful feature of this book–but not one that is in any way unique to it–is that it offers writing exercises throughout to help build one’s skills through practice. This is where the value of such a book truly lies. The advice such books offer are almost always the same—sometimes hackneyed but almost always valuable. (A lot of tired advice is tired because it bears repeating owing to the constant infusion of new writers who repeat the same errors.) A final useful element of the book—but also one that features in many similar guides—is a checklist in the appendices that allows one to rapidly consider the book’s key questions as they apply to one’s own writing project.

I’d recommend this book as one of the most useful writers’ guides that I’ve read.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates by Xenophon

Posted on by
Reply

The Memorable Thoughts of SocratesThe Memorable Thoughts of Socrates by Xenophon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

 

Xenophon gives us an alternative to Plato’s accounts of the lessons of Socrates. As you probably know if you are reading this, Socrates left nothing behind by way of written teachings. All we know of the great philosopher’s teachings come from the accounts of his students. Xenophon’s version (Memorabilia of Socrates) is stylistically different from Plato’s dialogues(e.g. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo), though Socrates’ wisdom and method (questioning) remain consistent.

I enjoyed Plato’s dialogues on the last days of Socrates more than Xenophon’s Memorabilia. This owes to Plato’s narrative approach, which tells us the story of Socrates’ trial, conviction, and execution. Philosophy is more palatable embedded in a story. However, all of these works (Xenophon’s and Plato’s) are short, readable translations, and so it is worth reading all of them to get a broader access to the thoughts of Socrates.

As with Apology, Xenophon conveys Socrates thoughts on piety and corruption of the youth (these were the charges raised against Socrates that resulted in his hemlock sentence.) Socrates maintained that he was pious, but he did think it a weakness to trouble the gods with questions that men should be able to solve for themselves. His emphasis on self-reliance and fortitude is part of why we so respect Socrates. One sees the imprint of Socrates on the school of Stoicism that would come later. In Memorabilia, Socrates openly mocks those men who cannot bear adversity as well as their slaves. (Yes, Socrates wasn’t so infallibly wise as to see the folly of slavery. I no more advocate paleomania [irrational exuberance for old thinkers / ideas] than I do neomania [irrational exuberance for new ideas.] Still, people live in the context of their times, and if one expects a person to be ahead of their time in all aspects, one will be disappointed.)

Socrates discusses governance and politics frequently in this volume. To a large extent, this is by way of trying to convince men that he believed would be good for governance to participate, and convincing those who he believed wouldn’t be effective leaders (e.g. Euthydemus) not to participate. Toward the end of book (part IV) he talks about the various forms of government (e.g. Monarchy, Aristocracy, Plutocracy, Tyranny, and Democracy.) These ideas no doubt informed Plato’s illumination of eight forms of government in The Republic.

What I appreciate most about Socrates was his groundedness and appreciation of the importance of the body. One can read a lot of philosophy without hearing mention of the body (beyond the thought that it might be an illusion created by the program that runs our brain-in-a-vat system.) One gets the idea that proponents of this discipline largely think of the body as a cart that drags around their great, big, lovely brains. Not so with Socrates. In fact, he rebukes philosophers for not taking care of themselves. He mentions the importance of nutrition, exercise, and sleep [this is where he’s ahead of his time.] Also, Socrates recognizes the damage done by having too great an attachment to comfort. (Here one sees an interest point of overlap with Eastern philosophies that derive from yoga–with its niyama of tapas [austerity and self-discipline.] By the way, that isn’t the only correlation between the Eastern and Western mindset we see in Socrates. e.g. At one point, a wealthy man complains about the poor behavior of his servant, to which Socrates asks upon whom this condition should reflect poorly—the master not the servant. Confucius made a similar statement to this one.)

I think this classic is well worth reading. It’s short, readable, and offers a great deal of food for thought. If you don’t have time for multiple accounts of Socrates’ teachings, you might be kept more enthralled by the Platonic dialogues, but surely you can make time for Socrates.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The Painted Word by Phil Cousineau

Posted on by
2

The Painted Word: A Treasure Chest of Remarkable Words and Their OriginsThe Painted Word: A Treasure Chest of Remarkable Words and Their Origins by Phil Cousineau

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

The Painted Word is a collection of interesting words with definitions, insight into each word’s origins and evolution, and interesting or humorous usages. These aren’t all GRE words (massive and mostly useless words that have little value beyond impressing admissions committees.) Many of the words will be familiar to readers without huge vocabularies. On the other hand, there will be words that are new to even New York Times crossword puzzle solvers.

As the title suggests, there’s a little bit of an art-related theme. However, I’m not sure I would have noticed this if it hadn’t been for the title. There are a number of colors included among the words—colors known mostly to interior decorators and not to most heterosexual men. There are also a few artistic styles (e.g. intimism.) However, the bulk of the words aren’t clearly related to the fine arts. Many of the entries are loan words, i.e. words that have been used in English literature or other English-language media but which are of foreign origin.

I’ll include a few of the words that captured my own interest:

Autologophagist: one who eats his / her own words
Bafflegab: language that misleads—intentionally or not
Cataphile: a lover of catacomb crawling
Inkhorn: an over-intellectualized word
Lambent: shining with soft light on the surface of something
Millihelen: the amount of beauty that would result in the launch of a single ship.
Monogashi [Japanese]: the sigh or sadness of things
Sonicky: A great sounding word—coined by Roy Blount Jr.
Oculogyric: eye-rolling
Phlug: belly-button lint
Snollygoster: a shrewd but corrupt politician
Ubantu [Bantu / Xhosa]: the interconnectedness of all things

This book is full of fun insights and statements. I learned that “hush puppies” were literally carried to throw to noisy dogs to get them to stop barking. There are many interesting and humorous quotes. For example, Brendan Behan said, “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves.” Brief vignettes are used to help give depth of understanding to words. One such story is about a Luddite looking upon the operation of a steam shovel who said to his friend, “Were it not for that steam shovel, there would be work for hundreds of men with shovels…” to which his friend replied, “or thousands of men with teaspoons.”

I enjoyed this book. You don’t have to be fascinated by the minutiae of semantics to find it readable and interesting. It’s not as much like reading a dictionary as one might suspect.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The Wit and Wisdom of Master Yoda by Yoda

Posted on by
Reply

The Wit and Wisdom of Master Yoda: Master Yoda QuotesThe Wit and Wisdom of Master Yoda: Master Yoda Quotes by Yoda

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

[I normally put a link here to the books I review, but wouldn’t want anyone to accidentally buy this one by mistake.]

This review is the same rant I put in my weekly reading review today. If you saw it there, don’t bother reading onward.

This book was a stinker, and I can’t recommend it for anyone–though its saving grace is that it’s slim and thus only wastes a tiny bit of one’s time. What the author apparently did was to watch a Star Wars movie marathon and pull every Yoda line out and collect them together. This is a sad effort in two ways. First, while Yoda isn’t a lead in the movies (and, therefore, has a limited number of lines), there’s a vast canon of Star Wars books, and it doesn’t look like the author trolled any of them for quotes. Second, some of the lines are neither witty nor wise. Occasionally, Yoda has a line equivalent to, “take a left at the second light,” and the author includes such banal quotes. Furthermore, some of the quotes appear a second time in either reduced or extended form. Beyond all these complaints, the author doesn’t even take the time to put together meaningful front matter to tell the reader something interesting that they don’t already know, and thus doesn’t establish his worth in producing such a book. (Also, he doesn’t seem to know accepted protocol for writing quotes inside quotes–i.e. use of single quotes. Which I guess means he probably didn’t just cut and paste all the quotes because then they would have been grammatically correct.) He also could have at least provided told us which movie each quote was from. It’s a lazy effort. It succeeds spectacularly in being lazy. If you’ve seen the movies (or have basic cable so that you can readily do so by way of one of the frequent Star Wars marathons) you’ll gain nothing from this book.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The New Rules of Posture by Mary Bond

Posted on by
1

The New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand, and Move in the Modern WorldThe New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand, and Move in the Modern World by Mary Bond

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

This book’s author, Mary Bond, was a UCLA-trained dancer who became an Ida Rolf-trained Rolfer. If that sentence makes no sense, you’re probably unaware Dr. Ida Rolf and her self-named system. Rolfing was popular decades ago, but fell out of favor—possibly owing to its reputation for being agonizing. (However, I did recently read an article suggesting renewed interest in this practice.) Rolf’s system is generically called Structural Integration, and it’s intended to better align the body with respect to the force of gravity. The heart of the practice (though not addressed in this book) is a massage-like system that focuses on fascia (connective tissue) rather than musculature (as massage generally does.)

[This paragraph is background, but isn’t about the book per se. Feel free to skip it if you are familiar with structural integration or don’t care.] It should be noted that Rolfing is controversial. I’m not sure what to make of this controversy. On the one hand, the system hasn’t been helped by zealous advocates and practitioners. In any such system, zealots often suggest their beloved system is a panacea for all that ails one. Furthermore, the more hippie-esque practitioners try to reconcile / unify Structural Integration with ancient systems like Ayurveda or Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM.) This neither helps to validate those ancient systems nor improves the case of Rolfing as a methodology rooted in science. On the other hand, not even yoga has been free of haters. There is a sector of humanity that is openly hostile to the notion that the only way for many people to feel better is for them to do the work of improving their bodies (e.g. posture, range of motion, strength, etc.) (i.e. If your problem is rooted in your shoulders not being over your hips or you have an imbalance in your core between your ab and back muscles, there is no pill nor surgery to cure you—you’ve got work to do. And—it should be noted–both of my examples can cause a person to feel like crap in a number of different ways.) Another element of controversy is that Structural Integration places special emphasis on fascia (connective tissue.) While it’s not clear from scientific evidence that fascia deserve special attention, I’m also not sure that Rolfers don’t have a point when they note that everyone else completely ignores this tissue.

Having written all that, The New Rules of Posture isn’t a book about Rolfing as massage-like practice. Instead, as its subtitle (how to sit, stand, and move in the modern world) suggests, this is a book about how one can improve one’s posture, breathing, and movement (i.e. most notably walking). It’s arranged as a workbook, and it contains over 90 exercises and observations for the reader to perform. The author calls these exercises “explorations” and “practices”; the latter are more extensive and are more likely to require revisiting.

The ten chapters are arranged into four parts: awareness, stability, orientation, and motion. Each part has two or three chapters. The author divides the body into six zones (pelvic floor, breathing muscles, abdomen/core, hands, feet, and head)—the first three of which are associated with stability and the latter three with orienting the body. The six middle chapters (parts 2 and 3) are each tied to one of these zones. The book uses vignettes and side-bars in an attempt to make the material more palatable to readers who aren’t deeply interested in the topic.

The author gives attention to a wide variety of modern-day activities that can have an adverse impact on bodily alignment such as driving, computer time, and rushing about. I suspect this book will offer something useful to almost anyone.

The book’s graphics are line drawings—some are anatomical drawings and others demonstrate postural problems or exercises. The drawings are clear, well drawn, and useful. In addition to the usual front and back matter, there’s a brief bibliography and a resources appendix.

I’d recommend this book for yoga teachers and those interested in the body generally and movement and postural improvement specifically. If you’re having problems that you think may be linked to postural problems, this isn’t a bad place to start thinking about how one might improve one’s situation. It’s very readable and clear.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Why Do People Get Ill? by Darian Leader and David Corfield

Posted on by
Reply

Why Do People Get Ill?Why Do People Get Ill? by David Corfield

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

This book’s title might suggest that it’s about the germ theory of disease or genetic anomalies, but it’s actually about why some people exposed to germs or carcinogens don’t get ill, while other people become ill at the drop of the hat—even when they have no exposure to the immediate cause of illness. (e.g. A Japanese study found that hypersensitive subjects had skin reactions when exposed to a harmless leaf when they were told that it was from a lacquer tree [i.e. that it was mildly toxic.]) It’s well established that stress plays a role in one’s level of health. Of course, it’s not merely the presence of stress, but the nature of it and how it’s dealt with that matter. Our bodies are supremely skilled at conquering invaders and repairing damage as long as our parasympathetic nervous system is engaged sufficiently for our body to do the work of fighting infection and healing. Leader and Corfield’s core argument is that it’s how we worry rather than what we worry about (or even whether we worry) that influences proclivity to become ill. More specifically, the authors propose that the inability to communicate feelings can play a significant role in one’s propensity for illness.

The authors review many interesting studies from medical literature. For example, rhinovirus may be a necessary condition for a cold, but it’s not a sufficient condition. In other words, many exposed individuals never become symptomatic. The same has been shown for tuberculosis, malaria, and a host of other ailments. (It may be true for all ailments.) Another fascinating study found that sporadic bombing in London’s suburbs correlated with higher ulcer rates than the constant bombardment in the city. This suggested that the predictability of a stressor was important vis-a-vis its health effects—apparently more important than the presence or severity of the stressor. Also, there are the many studies about the correlation between certain times / events and disease onset (the most well-known of these is that the most frequent time of death from heart attack is between 8 and 9 in the morning on a Monday.)

Leader and Corfield make a compelling argument in support of their thesis that’s rooted in an extensive review of the scientific literature on the quirky complexities of illness. I’m not certain that I’m completely convinced that what they believe is most important is what is in reality most important. (To be fair, it’s not a matter of deficiency of approach so much as the complexity of disease onset and the difficulty of establishing a hierarchy of importance.) However, the beautiful part of the scientific approach is that even if one doesn’t buy the authors’ arguments hook-line-and-sinker, the book is still a valuable read because it presents a great deal of research–as well as some interesting food for thought on the present state of the medical establishment. I suspect the authors didn’t win many friends with medical doctors, given the strong critique they present. Leader and Corfield point out, what most of us have long suspected, that the money-makers in healthcare are expensive pharmaceuticals and surgery, and that this has created a dangerous incentive. Of course, the authors’ point is that this has undermined the value that psychological approaches might have, but the same could be said to be true for postural realignment therapies or other neglected approaches to treatment. The last chapter is a searing critique of the state of the medical profession that suggests that doctors are disproportionately ill-conditioned to listen to patients and to get to the root causes of their ailments.

The book’s organization is reasonable, but could have been improved. There’s a great chapter on the immune system, but it’s chapter 11 of 15 chapters. It would have been useful to move that text closer to the front of the book so that readers would have access to this primer as they considered why the solution might be found internally rather than in the medicines and surgeries that they are conditioned to believe are in virtually all cases necessary.

Of course, I understand that the authors’ thrust is on the psychological rather than the biological/physiological front, and this undoubtedly played into the organizational decisions. It may be true that the book isn’t about how a body can knock out ailments, but why it occasionally fails to; however, understanding how we defeat illness is an important part of the backstory.

There are important chapters on heart conditions and cancer. These are important not only because those diseases are major killers, but because these are the nasty diseases that many will be skeptical of the relevance of mind-body factors. In other words, many will accept that our attitude and approach to stress may be relevant in whether one breaks out in hives, catches the flu, or gets an ulcer—but may not except that a force as powerful as cancer can be swayed by one’s mindset and behaviors.

I’d recommend this book for anyone interested in how good health can be fostered.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The Book of Ninja [The Bansenshukai] Trans. by Anthony Cummins and Yoshie Minima

Posted on by
Reply

The Book of Ninja: The Bansenshukai - Japan's Premier Ninja ManualThe Book of Ninja: The Bansenshukai – Japan’s Premier Ninja Manual by Antony Cummins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

The Bansenshukai is a 17th century manual of ninja tradecraft and fieldcraft compiled by Fujibayashi Sabuji. If you’re doing related research or are a geek about historic warriors and / or spies, you’ll likely find this book intriguing–and parts of it even fascinating. However, it’s important to note that this translation’s title The Book of Ninja may conjure up expectations of stories of derring-do and assassinations set in medieval Japan. This isn’t that book. This book contains an extensive discussion of morals, guidance as to how commanders should employ ninja, how to don a disguise and impersonate your way into enemy territory, technical discussion of how to infiltrate long-obsolete fortifications, insight into how to pick medieval Japanese locks, and instructions for how to make torches and rope ladders. This book won’t teach you how to be a ninja. (a.) I suspect no book could do that, b.) This one holds back a lot of secrets, and c.) Most of the information is obsolete from a practical stand point. (However, it’s likely to have many ideas of a strategic or philosophic nature that one might find thought-provoking.)

Why is this book important and interesting (though–as I’ve suggested–some of its content seems patently boring)? We live in an era of information overload, and it’s difficult to fathom how little is truly known about the ninja of medieval Japan. We live during a time in which even the most secretive agencies document everything always (even if they sometimes manage to shred or burn that information.) In their heyday, the ninja weren’t big on writing down true and interesting information for fear it would fall into the wrong hands. Lack of documentation and false documentation were key elements of security. There are only a few manuals like this one in existence, and the Bansenshukai is considered by many to be chief among them by virtue of being the most extensive. (FYI- The other well-known manuals are the Shoninki and the Ninpiden, both of which also have English language translations available. Beyond these manuals, there are some surviving familial scrolls.) It should be noted that these manuals were written after the warring states period (though before the Meiji Restoration) when there was a fear that this information might be lost precisely because it was historically conveyed via word of mouth. And, it should be noted, throughout the work there are frequent statements to the effect of “there is an oral transmission”—meaning that key parts haven’t been written down and are only to be taught in person by hands-on instruction.

The Bansenshukai is organized into 22 volumes. The first volume is background and introductory information. The second and third volumes are more philosophical, dealing with achieving the “correct mind,” the former dealing with morality and the latter offering perspective on life and death.

The fourth through seventh volumes are designed to educate military commanders about how they might get the best use of ninja.

The next group of volumes (8 – 10) cover Yo-nin, which is the act of infiltrating enemy territory in the open through use of disguise and deception. The Japanese term yo is the same as the Chinese term yang, or sunny side—as opposed to yin (in in Japanese) which means the shady side. So these volumes offer advice for operating out in the open—in the light of day, so to speak. The previous volumes are contrasted with the next set of volumes (11-15), the In-Nin, which deals with covertly breaking into enemy houses and castles. Together the Yo-nin and In-nin chapters are likely to be the most interesting to the general reader–excepting the last of these (vol. 15, which deals with lock picking.) While I said that this book isn’t full of stories of legendary exploits, I don’t mean to suggest Fujibayashi didn’t use vignettes to reinforce his points (there are plenty of them)—just that these stories aren’t told to entertain but to educate.

The next two volumes are entitled Tenji I and Tenji II, and they discuss what the author considered the opportunities bestowed by heaven. The first of these chapters is mostly Chinese astrological hokum in painful detail. The second is a primitive primer on meteorology—which I suspect is a mix of good and bad advice based on the science of that time and place. (These people were exceptionally observant but the product of superstitious times, and so one can imagine fact and fiction being muddled together.) At any rate, I found the second chapter to have some quite interesting information of which I’d like to know more about the veracity.

The final set of volumes are on ninja tools (i.e. ninki.) These include chapters on climbing tools like rope ladders, water crossing devices like inflatable seats, breaking and entering tools, and many recipes for incendiary and explosive materials. Like the chapter on locks and lock picking, these chapters will mostly be of value to individuals with a heavy interest in the history of technology—with a particular focus on Japan and / or East Asia. In many ways the ninja were by necessity technologically advanced by the standards of that time in Japan’s history (keeping in mind that because of literally centuries of war, Japan wasn’t at the cutting edge of a spectrum of technology in the 17th century as they are today—though they made swords that at least rivaled if not surpassed those anywhere else in the world, but swords were on the way out or passé by that time in many places.)

There’s an additional text on strategy that forms an appendix to The Bansenshukai. To the front, there’s an explanation of Japanese locks of the time, written by a historian of such minutiae. There’s also front matter by the translator, providing valuable background material. Each chapter is heavily endnoted. These endnotes are generally explanatory in nature. While the text is quite readable given its era, there’s much that requires further explanation. Sometimes the notes elaborate on a statement in the text and sometimes they suggest that an explanation is unknown—either way that information can be quite beneficial. The graphics are simple drawings (I believe they come from the original text), and in some cases they wouldn’t be useful without the explanation of the text.

One will note a heavy Chinese influence in The Bansenshukai. There are frequent references to Sun Tzu and many of the vignettes use to illustrate points involve tales from China—though there are also many that feature Japanese warriors as well—e.g. Kusunoki Masashige, a samurai famous as a paragon of loyalty but who was also known for his use of ninjutsu and unconventional tactics, features prominently throughout the work—though it’s unknown how many of these tales are fact and how many legend.

If you’re still curious about the contents of this book after hearing what it is and isn’t, I’d highly recommend it. There’s a lot of thought-provoking information in the book, and if you’re doing research on the subject this book is essential reading. I should also point out that while I’ve suggested that much of the information is obsolete in the modern era, it’s not all so. There are some interesting perspectives on strategy, tactics, philosophy, and ethics in this book. [Plus, if you want to be the office ninja, it’s a must-read along with Machiavelli’s The Prince.]

View all my reviews