Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices - Mosab Hassan Yousef

Son of Hamas tells the story of Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father, Hassan Yousef, is the co-founder of Hamas. Though initially a proponent of jihad and intifada, the younger Yousef recanted and became a spy for the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet. His position made him the most valuable mole the organization had, and by his own account he was instrumental in avoiding numerous terrorist plots.

The book chronicles Yousef’s life while providing a primer on the contentious history of the land that bore him. His stance with Israel is unwavering, but his sympathy for his people is evident. He faces particular anguish when discussing his father, a man he admires greatly on a personal level, but whose endorsement of actions—tacit or otherwise—that bring death and destruction to Jews and fellow Muslims alike seems contrary to his gentle nature.

There is an element of spy thriller to the story’s second half, as Yousef chronicles the spycraft he undertook to avoid detection for nearly a decade. Primarily, though, the text is plainspoken and matter of fact, though Yousef doesn’t hide his emotion when describing traumas of his past.

Yousef is a polarizing figure in current times, and his absolutism puts off some moderates, but his book is engaging and worth a read for anyone who ants to view this complex and intractable conflict from a new angle.

The Killing of Crazy Horse - Thomas Powers

Sometimes I get on a topic and I can’t remember how I got there. So it is with the conflict between the United States and the plains Indians in the latter half of the 19th century. Usually it’s Wikipedia’s fault, but this particular rabbit hole could have come from anywhere. In this case it led to The Killing of Crazy Horse, which, as the title suggests, uses one incident as a focal point to view a much longer conflict.

Crazy Horse, a fearless Sioux warrior and gifted tactician, features prominently in the book, but more as a symbol than as a man. Part of this is due to his notoriously taciturn nature. Though he commanded much respect among his people, he said little, leaving the sermonizing to more loquacious figures like Red Cloud and Sitting Bull. His words are scarcely recorded, and there isn’t even a known picture of him. The most prominent characters in the book are therefore figures adjacent to Crazy Horse, those who fought with him and, to a greater extent, those who fought against him, notably General Crook and Lieutenant Clark. The marquee role goes to William Garnett, a half-Sioux man who served as an interpreter and had a foot in both worlds. Together, their shared experiences show Crazy Horse in bas relief, carving out the absences to reveal a picture of the man.

Descriptions of the battles are highly clinical, tracing movements with almost pedantic precision in a style common to civil war histories but that I often struggle to follow. Apart from this, the narrative is mostly about relationships, and Powers does a good and even-handed job of showing life on the plains during that period. A good book for those interested in the topic.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder

I came across this book after reading an article by Timothy Snyder on the history behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In his piece, Snyder discusses the long history of invasion experienced by Ukraine and other Eastern European nations existing in the dubious space between belligerent powers. This is an area he explored more broadly in Bloodlands, the title of which refers to a swath of land roughly contiguous with Poland, Belarus, and the Ukraine. where the vast majority of civilian death in the European theatre occurred between 1933 and 1945.

Much of this death was part of the Holocaust, but Snyder demonstrates that the Nazis were not the only genocidal force operating in that particular time and place. He provides a detailed rundown of the atrocities that the Soviets committed in these lands as well, from the imposed famine in Ukraine to the Great Terror to the purging of Polish intellectuals. He emphasizes that many of these places were subject to not just one invasion, but two or three, as the Nazis and the Soviets moved from allies to belligerents, and the Nazis from invaders to a broken, retreating army.

Of course, the Holocaust is given much focus, as its deliberate and racist intentions arouse particular loathing, but Snyder makes it clear that the Ukrainians and Poles were at times targeted almost as deliberately by the Soviets, if not with the same absolutist intention to eliminate them.

Snyder’s prose is academic but approachable, engaging and clear without much ornamentation. He had a tendency to repeat certain points, which I suspect is an effective way to ensure the general thesis is clear, though it sometimes grated a bit to hear the same fact several times. Overall, an important study of a particularly brutal stain on human history, one which it is hard to look at but must never be forgotten.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life - Bill Bryson

I’m on another Bill Bryson kick, and recently reread A Short History of Nearly Everything and A Walk in the Woods as well, but I don’t have much to say about those other than that they’re both great, so I’m going to focus on At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

At Home’s conceit might be the stragest of all of Bryson’s work. It is generally described as a history of domestic life, an encapsulation that is ostensibly accurate, but also a lot tidier and more constrained than the actual work. Essentially, Bryson takes readers on a narrated tour of his home, an 18th century rectory in rural England, and uses each room as a jumping off point to discuss related themes. Some rooms lend themselves to these themes more directly than others—the bathroom leads pretty obviously to sanitation and hygiene—but it is the odder offshoots that are probably the most rewarding. The Hall, for example, seems liek a pretty drab subject for a history, but it is actually among the most fascinating in the book, detailing as it does the rise of the modern house as we now know it. This is because early houses were essentially nothing but halls, with private rooms coming to be alongside a shift in human ideas of domesticity and privacy.

The book can have a bit of an odd sock drawer flavour at times, and Bryson isn’t afraid to go off on tangents, expounding on the lives of dust mites or regailing us with such underestimated household dangers as staircases and paint, but on rereading I was struck by how well the whole thing holds together. As he did later in his work One Summer: America 1927, Bryson weaves together disparate strands into a rich and diverse tapsetry, one that highlights the texture of individual fibres without undercutting the harmony of the whole. His trademar kwit and humour is evident throughout.

Though arguably one of his more forgotten books, At Home is by no means Lesser Bryson. It’s an excellent piece of work, and well worth a read.

The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics - James Kakalios

There’s a saying that goes, “If someone tells you they understand quantum physics, they’re lying.” There’s probably some truth to that, given how much about the universe is still not understood, but I also think it does a bit of a disservice to non-scientists who might be interested in learning about the basics quantum mechanics, as it suggests that it’ll all just go over their head and is therefore not worth doing. I won’t lie and say that none of what James Kakalios discusses in The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics was beyond me, but I will say that, even as a hapless English major, I learned a lot about the basic underpinnings of quantum mechanics and how there theories are applied to the devices I use every day.

I should add that I did have a bit of a primer in the subject, as prior to picking up Kaklios’ book, I read Quantum Theory: a Very Short Introduction by John Polkinghorne. The two works compliment each other nicely. Polkinghorne provides a chronology of the various theoretical breakthroughs that inform quantum theory, and is more technical. Kakalios, on the other hand, avoids a linear approach, and instead highlights select aspects of quantum mechanics in order to explain it’s real-world applications.

The science Kakalios presents is simplified without being excessively diluted, and he employs a number of creative analogies to explain different aspects of quantum physics. Some of these are a little tricky (I needed to read through the orechestra-balcony-mezzanine analogy for semiconductors a couple of times, and would still probably screw it up if I tried to explain it to you now), but given the complexity of the subject, they do a great job.

The real treat of the book is Kakalios’ humour, which I would describe—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—as disarmingly dorky. There’s genuine with beneath the cornier jokes, but also a genuine earnestness that I found endearing. It’s clear that Kakalios knows and loves his subject, and is excited to help more people learn about it.

If your interest is more in the theoretical aspects of quantum physics, Polkinghorne’s book might be more what you’re looking for, but if you’re after a primer that’s fun to read with plenty of real-world examples, Kakalios’ book is for you.