Reader’s Diary

Ken Silverstein

David Hahn, a Michigan 17-year-old, was obsessed with chemistry. In particular, he was obsessed with nuclear chemistry. His obsession ended with an EPA cleanup of a potting shed in his backyard - the shed that had contained his model breeder reactor.

David showed considerable ingenuity in obtaining his nuclear materials. He obtained the radioactive isotope americium by disassembling dozens of smoke detectors and got thorium from Coleman lantern mantles. But he had no regard whatsoever for his safety and no concern for what he was doing to his immediate environment.

While author Silverstein makes it clear that David’s project was not an actual reactor, it was a radioactive assembly that contaminated David and the surrounding area. The book is clear and concise, but would have been much better had Silverstein been able to discover exactly what David had built.

Johann Christoph Arnold

Arnold has collected a few dozen stories of people who forgave, and uses them to illustrate the power of and necessity for forgiveness. The people he writes about have learned to forgive themselves, others, even God, and their lives are the richer for it.

Aside from a jarring “response” chapter from Mumia Abu-Jamal this is a moving and inspirational book. Moreover, it’s a challenge to live as Christ taught. As such, it’s fundamentally radical.

Arnold is a member of the Bruderhof Christian community movement and his stories of life and forgiveness in that organization add interest to an already-interesting book. Despite the fact that Bruderhof is Protestant, his comments on the virtues of confession challenge the Catholic reader to use the sacrament of reconciliation more regularly.

Martin Seligman

Martin Seligman has spent a lifetime studying optimism and pessimism. This book summarizes some of the results of that research and those results are bad news for pessimists. Optimists live longer and are healthier than their pessimist friends and, naturally, they’re happier. Furthermore (”of course there’s more bad news”, the pessimist reader says to himself at this point), one’s place on the optimism spectrum is largely beyond one’s control. However, Seligman describes some things that people can do to move their emotional set point towards the bright end of the scale. He also writes about what parents can do to raise optimistic kids.

Don’t mistake Seligman’s techniques for simple happy talk or saccharine “affirmations”. He says that the “every day in every way I’m getting better” approach doesn’t work. What does work, he writes, is identifying and arguing with your own negative thoughts as soon as they pop into your head.

The book is full of tests that can be self-scored or taken at the book’s Web site. The tests are valuable because they identify the nature of one’s optimism or pessimism. I’m not usually a fan of self-help books, but this book is deeper and better than its title might indicate.

Sinclair Lewis

The eponymous Martin Arrowsmith is a doctor who believes in scientific truth. Lewis’ novel is an account of the life-long battle between Arrowsmith’s ideals and the real world of medical practice. Lewis, who was the son of a small-town doctor, portrays that world as being full of scoundrels and what Arrowsmith calls the “men of measured merriment” who care more for the business of medicine than they do about medicine itself.

“Arrowsmith” is more than a period piece about medicine: Arrowsmith’s struggle to remain true to himself while pursuing a career and earning a living reflects the concerns of modern workers whatever their field of endeavor.

Steve Fishman

At the peak of the dot com boom, magazine writer Steve Fishman talked his editors out of $3000. That money was to be used to start an Internet business that would make one million dollars. The business? Online Karaoke.

Fishman didn’t make his million, but his story is priceless. It’s funny, bizarre, full of strange characters, and sprinkled with thoughtful asides on the changing nature of work and the economy.

Zac Unger

Zac Unger, an Ivy League grad from a Berkeley childhood answered a bus stop ad for Oakland firefighters and, to his surprise, found himself in firefighter training. This is an entertaining account of his experiences written in a self-deprecating style. After the story of his training and probationary period the book looses some of its narrative thread but it remains interesting, though less compelling.

Unger isn’t, at the start of his career, much like his fellow trainees and firefighters. It’s that difference, and his reflections on it, that make the book more than just “the making of a firefighters”. Underlying the book is the story of angers growing comfort and expertise in a field far from his upbringing and experience.