Doubt the Experts

For a number of reasons, I'm out of my winter reading mode and will probably proceed through this book, by Thomas Piketty, very slowly. ...

I had been hoping to start commenting on another book by now, but the one I was reading wasn't worth it. It was on algorithms and turned...

I'm glad to be finished reading about Charles Darwin, because he isn't the best subject for a biography. However, he fits the patter...

During his final years, Darwin seems to have scaled back on his work a little. He continued with plants, writing on insectivorous ones, and ...

Though Darwin's health remained uneven, he continued to write books. His next one was The Descent of Man , which was published in 1871. ...

When Alfred Russel Wallace got home, he and Darwin developed a cordial relationship but did not seem especially close. Wallace moved in with...

Origin of Species soon became widely discussed. One of the first major events in England occurred at the British Society for the Advancement...

This book starts where the other left off, in 1858, when Darwin was 49, and that year turned out to have an explosive effect on the remainde...

I suppose that most people are already tired of hearing about the coronavirus pandemic, but I ought to say something about it, since it is o...

I've finally finished this volume. Janet Browne, the author, has been conscientious, but there isn't much evidence of psychological ...

Darwin soon rented a house on Gower Street in Bloomsbury, near University College London (the street, coincidentally, where I stayed on my l...

After Tahiti, the Beagle  made a long voyage to New Zealand, during which Darwin was often seasick. Especially compared to Tahiti, Darwin fo...

Darwin became enchanted by the tropical jungle that he saw when the Beagle arrived in Bahia in February, 1832. They sailed down the east coa...

The pace of the book is so slow that I find it a little tedious. After more than two hundred pages I'm only up to 1832, when Darwin was ...

This is the first of two biographical volumes on Charles Darwin written by Janet Browne, who has spent much of her career studying Darwin...

I had been hoping to start a new book by now, but it's coming from England and hasn't arrived yet. Therefore, I've decided to wr...

I noticed that I haven't made a Diary post for a while and decided to now. Although these posts are sort of fillers, I think that they p...

I've just finished reading this book (actually, a cheaper advance uncorrected proof) by Stuart Russell, which represents a continuation ...

The chapter on climate change, "In Hot Water," focuses primarily on policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and does not addre...