Reader’s Diary

Lawrence Goldstone and Nancy Goldstone

Michael Servetus was a Spanish polymath: a theologian and physician. He was burned for heresy in 1553. His anti-trinitarian writings had set both the Catholic Church and John Calvin against him, and it was Calvin who was responsible for his execution. His writings were burned; only three copies of his book “Christianismi Restitutio” (Christianity Restored) survive and the Goldstones tell their story as well as their author’s.

The story of his life as told in this book is a kind of core sample of the renaissance. The Goldstones are not historians and some of their judgments are suspect (for example, they repeat the fallacy that the Catholic Church outlawed vernacular Bibles and prohibited laymen from reading the Bible), but the book is an interesting random walk through Servetus’ times.

Joey Anuff and Gary Wolf

This is a funny memoir about the parting of a fool and his money. While recounting his own misadventures the author introduces us to a variety of characters, from internet stock riggers to get rich quick motivational speakers. Don’t seek financial advice here, unless you need and example of what not to do.

Tom Groneberg

Midwestern liberal arts graduate Tome Groneberg discovered the he wanted to be a cowboy. This is a embarrassingly honest account of his metamorphosis. He tells us of working as a ranch hand and becoming a rancher. He was unsure of his skills and full of self-doubt. I do wonder why he didn’t keep some of this painful stuff to himself, but I’m glad he didn’t.

“The Secret Life of Cowboys” is a first-class documentary on the modern cowboy and a fine memoir of a man pursuing his vocation and seeking his identity.

Nicholas Basbanes

Basbanes’ previous books were historical and journalistic accounts of books, libraries, and collectors. This book is aimed at advising the collector. Because of its emphasis, it has limited appeal to the non-collector, but the sections on the internet’s affects on the used book market are interesting.

Lawrence Goldstone and Nancy Goldstone

To say that this book is much like the Goldstone’s previous books is to say that it’s worth reading. Here they give us more personal essays from the world of book collecting. A large part of the book is devoted to John Anderson, a New England book dealer turned forger. Anderson’s amateurish forgeries of inscribed books were eagerly (too eagerly, the Goldstone’s suggest) snapped up by other dealers, some of whom eventually unmasked him.

Steve Lohr

This book fills a void in the history of computing. While there are books about the earliest computers, and many books about the microcomputer revolution, there are not many about the history of software. Lohr covers the development of computer languages starting with the first assemblers and continuing through Fortran, COBOL, and up to Java. While the book is interesting (I was surprised at the real story of how directly Microsoft’s “Word” descends from work done at Xerox PARC) there are gaps in the coverage. The most glaring omission is Lohr’s failure to even mention scripting languages, particularity Perl.