The Lost Island of Columbus, by Keith A. Pickering

Keith A. Pickering's book, The Lost Island of Columbus, is the story of how he solved the mystery of where Christopher Columbus first made landfall on October 12th, 1492. Given the importance of this date in world history, one would think the answer to the question would be easy, but evidently it took a hell of a lot of work to figure it out.

Pickering uses a wide range of scientific methods to uncover the truth, and in doing so he thoroughly covers the history of the Landfall Debate, which has gone on for well over a century. His arguments for Guanahaní as the site of Columbus' first encounter with the New World are highly convincing.

Unfortunately, although his work is impressive, the book is not hugely readable. It is certainly hard to argue with Pickering, but one can easily get lost in the tidal wave of figures thrown at one. At times there are so many references to maps and tables that appear later in the book that it really is hard to enjoy. Then again, his aim with this book seems to be to put any other landfall theory to the death, and so he is eager to use all the available information to put his own theory beyond doubt.

Also a bit off-putting is the extent to which the author seems determined to assert himself as the champion of a centuries-long game, and his competitors as pathetic losers. While Pickering's investigation is impressive, his attitude his hardly humble. 

The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinaw

Sometimes I go online and feel like genius among idiots. Log into Facebook and you're surrounded by people trying to explain away the latest idiotic ranting by Donald Trump, or parroting a hip meme in the liberal community. Everyone, it seems, is stupid. 

A good way to feel like a complete idiot is to pick up a book like The Grand Design. From start to finish I struggled badly to comprehend much of what was said. Physic has never been my greatest strength - in fact, I didn't even take it in high school and have always struggled with its basic concepts. 

Yet I find science of all sorts utterly fascinating, and so I was eager to read what was touted as a book that was accessible to the lay person. There are no mathematical formulas; just basic descriptions and analogies to make these concepts easier to digest. It is a book that sets out to explain the whole universe, and that's precisely where it lost me. I guess my puny brain cannot comprehend that much information. 

In the beginning, Hawking sounds like a stoned college student. Take for example, the analogy of a goldfish in a bowl, looking out at the world. To him, the world looks very different to what it actually is, yet he can create certain rules from observations that can allow him to "see" the world. Then Hawking speculates that we are that goldfish... 

Although Hawking's analogies allow even people like me to follow along, I found myself lost more often than not. Often, the only thing I could follow were the constant stream of awful dad jokes scattered through the book. It seems as though every complex explanation is punctuated with some lame punchline.  

Our Human Herds, by Martin Fritz

In Our Human Herds: The Philosophy of Dual Morality and a Theory of Moral Evolution, Martin Fritz says:

…what I propose… is that each and every one of us carries within us two distinct moral codes, either of which can be understood as right, depending upon our circumstances…

The two distinct moral codes have a biological origin. By switching back and forth between these two sometimes cooperating and sometimes conflicting moral patterns we discover that the things we find right in one view can be seen as wrong in the other.

It’s an interesting thought, and that’s pretty much the book in a nutshell. However, it goes on for almost a thousand pages of elucidation as the author tries to hammer home his point.

To expand, what he is saying above is that essentially while we now tend to think of our views as moral or immoral, right or wrong, these are actually fairly fluid judgments and they depend upon what is happening around us. What is right for one person in one situation is wrong for someone else. And this a biological imperative. He gives numerous examples and explanations, but it boils down to this: there is one mindset for when we have plenty, and one mindset for when we don’t. You could say today that this is the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives view the world through fearful eyes, and appear cold and cruel from the liberal perspective. Liberals view the world as providing more than enough for everyone and act dangerously from the conservative perspective.

“Moral conflict,” he says, “began to take shape not as a battle between right and wrong, but a needed and necessary struggle between right and right.” What he means is that we need both the fearful, outsider-hating conservative to keep the group (or herd) on its toes, and the sympathetic, bleeding-heart liberal to make sure everyone has enough. It’s a result of evolution.

One point I found very interesting is this:

Feeling precedes logical justification. Usually, it is after we become aware how we feel that we look for logical arguments to support this emotional position.

How true that is, and it sits nicely with books I’ve read last year about psychology.

Overall, Fritz’s book was pretty interesting and certainly it’s hard to argue with his statements. It was certainly not very original, but he does acknowledge that the dual morality theory is not his own. One problem I had was that, while the concept as a whole is somewhat complex, the book tended to often become bogged down in over-simplicity - a tendency to state the obvious. It was also very repetitive, which sucked the enjoyment out of reading it. 

Cannibalism, by Bill Schutt

Bill Schutt’s forthcoming book, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, is an informative and yet very light-hearted look at a fascinating subject. From the animal world to the human world, the author explores cannibalism in a non-judgmental way.

His premise is that cannibalism is perfectly reasonable from an evolutionary perspective, and the first half of the book is devoted to examining its prevalence in nature. As it turns out, cannibal animals are rather common. From parents eating their offspring to children eating their parents, and from an easy meal to mating benefits, cannibalism proves itself a useful tool throughout the animal kingdom.

Schutt consciously avoids sensationalism, preferring not to dwell upon famous cases of survival cannibalism, with the exception of the Donner party story, or cannibal killers who’ve been in the newspapers. As he rightly observes, there are plenty of gory books devoted to these people.

Instead, he talks about cannibalism in China and Papua New Guinea, where it never achieved the taboo status that it did in the West, at least until very recently. From Chinese children slicing off body parts to feed their parents to tribesmen eating their dead out of respect, it is a gory and yet fascinating part of the book.

Also of interest is the section on diseases spread through cannibalism, such as BSE in the UK and kuru in Papua New Guinea. And speaking of medical issues... did you know cannibalism was conducted in the name of medicine in Europe? 

Cannibalism comes out next year from Algonquin Books. Do yourself a favour and pre-order it.

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond's 1997 classic non-fiction book is a study of history, geography, anthropology, and other scientific disciplines. It is a readable, highly informative work that won a Pulitzer Prize and has proven very popular in its field over the past twenty years.


Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, attempts to answer the question of why the European powers, or rather the Western World, came to power rather than Asian, African, or South American societies. He suggests this notion was brought to him by a New Guinean friend who asked why it was the European nations who conquered and colonized, and not, for example, Oceanic civilizations. "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Elsewhere he asks why Spain invaded South America instead of the Mayans invading Spain.

His central theory is this: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." He painstakingly makes the point that societies took different paths for four reasons:

1. The native crops and animals in each region.
2. The orientation of continental axis, which hinders or promotes the diffusion of agriculture.
3. Transfer of knowledge.
4. Population density.

While it is true that European historians have often attempted to use racist theories to explain Western hegemony, at times Diamond seems to go to the opposite extreme. At the beginning of his book he seems eager to explain himself as different from previous generations and free from their racial prejudice. Throughout the book, he pours on the political correctness, which is at times excruciating. He makes outrageous racist statements about white people which are as bad as what you might expect to find in a more traditional "whites are superior and that's all you need to know" sort of study.

It is easy to see why this book earned so much respect. It is incredibly well-researched and does offer a fantastic explanation for why different societies took different paths. I've heard from an anthropologist friend that political correctness is a curse throughout all anthropology these days, so I suppose you just have to suffer through that and accept it for what it is. 

I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That, by Ben Goldacre

I read this book while on holiday in South Africa and Swaziland, among some of the most amazing landscapes on earth... and sadly, surprisingly, the book really bored me. Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with much that Dr. Goldacre says. He's obviously an intelligent man doing important work. I just don't think this book needed to be a book.

The book is a collection of Ben Goldacre's articles, which mostly appeared in The Guardian. Individually, these are well-written and really very fascinating bits of writing. After the first few, I was very impressed. However, it goes on and on and on... Eventually you just become rather tired of Goldacre's voice, even thought you agree with him.

In his blog, Goldacre liked to tear apart bad science. He'd attack journalists for reporting bullshit "science" stories, as well as scientists and organizations for releasing them. His methods were interesting, but they only really function as a blog. Looking back over the years, it loses its value. They were important artifacts of their time, for sure, but who cares about what appeared in the Daily Mail fifteen years ago?

The book is also poorly edited and put together. It is repetitive in places, and jumps from subject to subject. Why this book needed to be made, I don't know... I'd much rather read something by the author that is altogether more coherent. 

The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science

"Intelligence is no inoculation against bias." 

Perhaps to some, the above quote is blindingly obvious, but I suspect that most of us, myself included, like to think that with acquired knowledge comes freedom from all forms of ignorance - biases included. Alas, that's only true up until a point. Intelligent people are far from perfect, and we all have our own biases in life - some more damaging than others. 

I think that we all, more or less, over-estimate our own intelligence, too, and that probably contributes to our idea of intelligence as precluding us from the trap of bias. We assume that bias and ignorance go hand in hand because we see these in the people around us, and yet that's not very likely, is it? We're all biased in some way, regardless of intelligence. 

This a key theme of Will Storr's book, The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, which I bought after reading a few Jon Ronson books and being promised by the algorithms at Amazon that Storr was popular among Ronson fans. And I was not disappointed. 

I admit that I bought the book because I like books about science and psychology. The title made me think that Storr would simply berate religious types throughout the book. So there's my bias: I'm an atheist, and whilst I believe in a live-and-let-live world, I enjoy reading books that tell me I'm right about the world, and then educate me with lots of stuff I didn't know, too. 

The book begins with Storr out in the Aussie outback, talking with a famous creationist. I was excited. This was the beginning of some creationist-bashing. I love evolution and books about the history of our world. 

Indeed, Storr is also an atheist and a man of science (well, an interest in science). He makes no secret of the fact that the creationist is undeniably wrong in his beliefs, and yet he makes another interesting point: the creationist is a highly intelligent man. 

In our modern social media world we like to engage in tribalism just like the days of yore. Liberals and conservatives, religious and non-religious alike, we are evolved but nonetheless ruled by our tribal mentality, and we forget sometimes that people on the other side - the "them" that Ronson wrote about, are often just as intelligent, if not more, than "we" are. Yes, they can be wrong and still smart. So can we. 

That should be obvious but it's not. Or at least it's something that we need to remind ourselves of. As the quote I began this article with observes, our adversaries aren't necessarily stupid because they're wrong, and we aren't necessarily right because we're smart. 

Storr goes on from the anti-evolutionist to speak with holocaust deniers, past life regressionists, homeopaths, Illuminati-believers, and other people who are absolutely, 100% wrong in their beliefs. He doesn't mock them, but instead explains through science how they came to be this way. How could intelligent people believe such unintelligent things? 

I've not read a horror book in a long time but this one gave me the chills. Reading it, I realized just how unreliable the human mind is. We cannot trust our memories, nor can we rely upon our perceptions. Our brains make stories to justify gut feelings. No matter how scientific we try to be, we are only human and we make mistakes. 

Storr also takes on skeptics and the defenders of science to show that it is not just the religious people who are wrong, or the ones with non-mainstream beliefs. The title, in fact, is a tad misleading in that regard. At the end of this book I felt I couldn't trust my own mind. I worried I'd start seeing ghosts because maybe they were real and I'd deluded myself, or maybe they wouldn't be real but my brain would see them anyway.... 

The conclusion to this fantastic book is that humans are natural story-tellers and we don't even realize that we're telling stories. Liars don't usually know that they're lying. The heretics don't mean to be wrong and they're not idiots; they're just flawed humans like all of us. We all think of ourselves as the hero of a story, but:

"Heretics are often betrayed by the spotless coherence of their plots. They tell the clearest tales with the most perfect separation of good guy and bad. It is why they should be trusted." 

Read this book. It will change you.