Stephen Budiansky

Print:5/28/2019 (W. W. Norton & Company, 592 pages, 9780393634723 [illustrated with photographs] ); Audio: 15/28/2019 (Tantor Media, 16 hrs. 38 min., 9781977354655) ; Feature Film: No.
Series:

MAIN CHARACTERS:
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Fanny Holmes

SUMMARY:
A sweeping portrayal of the life of Oliver Wendell Holmes from childhood, through college, the Civil War, his days as a lawyer, his days as a Massachusetts judge, and his days as a Supreme Court Justice. It includes many written opinions with commentary.

AUTHOR:
According to his website, Stephen Budiansky (March 3, 1957) “. . . is the author of eighteen books of biography, history, and science. In 2011 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts as a writer of general nonfiction.” He has a fascinating past, so I will quote more from his website:
“Stephen Budiansky grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Lexington High School. He received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Yale University in 1978 and a master of science degree in applied mathematics from Harvard the following year. From 1979 to 1982 he was a magazine editor and radio producer at the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C.; from 1982 to 1985 he was Washington correspondent and then Washington editor of the scientific journal Nature. After a year as a Congressional Fellow at the U.S. Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment, he joined the staff of U.S. News & World Report, where he worked for the next twelve years in a variety of writing and editing positions, including national security correspondent, foreign editor, and deputy editor.”

NARRATOR:
According to Goodreads, “Robertson Dean has recorded hundreds of audiobooks in most every genre. He's been nominated for several Audie Awards, won eight Earphones Awards, and was named one of AudioFile magazine's Best Voices of 2010. He lives in Los Angeles, where he records books and acts in film, TV, and (especially) on stage.” He has a marvelous voice and delivery, seemingly particularly suited to this book.

GENRE:
Biography, law, history

LOCATIONS:
Massachusetts, D.C.
Philosophy, history, Civil War, law, Supreme Court Justices

EVALUATION:
Long, but quite good. It doesn’t paint Holmes as a Saint, but as a good, well-meaning, compassionate person (who maybe made a mistake here and there, some which he later realized, some not. It quotes landmark opinions that were often descents, but have since become the rule.

QUOTATION:
“As oft noted as the justice’s mental and physical vigor was his extraordinary embodiment of the sweep of history. As a Union officer in the Civil War he had barely escaped death at Ball’s Bluff and Antietam when musket balls tore through his chest and neck, missing heart, spine, and carotid artery by an eighth of an inch. He had spoken to Grant and shaken hands with Meade at the Battle of Spotsylvania, and seen Lincoln dodge enemy fire at Fort Stevens during Jubal Early’s raid on Washington. As a boy he knew Ralph Waldo Emerson as a family friend and dimly remembered Herman Melville, a summer neighbor, as ‘a rather gruff taciturn man’. Traveling Europe after the war, he climbed the Alps with Lesllie Stephen, better known to later generations as the father of Virginia Woolf; while in law school he became fast friends with Henry James and his brother William, soon to become, respectively, the novelist and philosopher of their generation. To Holmes they were ‘Harry’ and ‘Bill’. On visits to England he met the young Winston Churchill and the old Anthony Trollope; in Washington, Bertrand Russel stopped by more than once to talk philosophy.”

RATING:
This one gets a 5 for bringing Holmes to life, making me wish I knew him, and covering so much so eloquently while keeping it interesting.
… (mehr)

What a mixed bag! The discussion of the co-evolution of humans alongside domesticated animals and plants is so well articulated, as is the critique of our persistent romanticized view of "nature," now created from afar since so many of us have such a mediated experience with anything remotely wild and even then, what appears wild when we are only occasionally stepping out of the built environment may still be profoundly shaped by co-evolutionary forces that we don't recognize. I've read similar analyses in other books (e.g. pieces by Temple Grandin), but those were written at a later date, so it was interesting to read this argument at a much earlier point in that conversation. So those parts were great, but the diatribes against animal rights advocates is completely out of control. By contrast to his thoughtful analysis and deconstruction of naive understandings about the relations between people and animals and plants, in discussing animal rights movements the author gives into self-indulgent slams against tactics and doesn't attempt to address any of the real problems this movement was trying to surface. Interestingly, he predicted a great backlash against their perspective because of the tactics, but that is not in fact how history has played out.… (mehr)

Þokkalegasta lesning. Tyrfin á köflum þegar Budiansky útskýrir helstu dulkóðanir og leiðir til að brjóta kóðana en hann útskýrir ágætlega brösótta fæðingu NSA, stofnanavæðingu og klúður. Þrátt fyrir að Bandamenn gætu brotið alla helstu kóða Öxulveldanna í Seinni heimsstyrjöldinni reyndust þeir brátt óbrjótanlegir í Kalda stríðinu. Sovétmönnum gekk að mörgu leyti betur gegn tæknilega öflugri andstæðing með njósnurum og árangursríkum gamaldagsaðferðum. Besti árangur njósnastofnana stórveldanna var kannski að sýna forystumönnum ríkja sinna að þrátt fyrir hættuna á kjarnorkustríði væru engin skref tekin til virkja kjarnorkuflaugarnar og þannig minnka óttan við gagnkvæma eyðingu.… (mehr)