What a fascinating read which grew on me the more I entered the worlds the author created. People of the Book is like a detective story, a collection of short stories of the Jewish people’s plight through the centuries, and story of a young woman who labors to find herself as she struggles against the iron will of her judgmental mother an immensely successful surgeon. In her follow-on novel after her Pulitzer Prize winning March, Geraldine Brooks delivers a collection of stories within the framework of another story which binds them all together. Some have compared this to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, yet I don’t get that at all, except for the convention of looking into the past to gain some sense of revelation in the present. The themes and genre were distinctly different in my view.

A fictional account of the actual historical Sarajevo Haggadah, an antique Jewish prayer book, it places Hanna Heath, and Australian book conservator on the job to restore the tome before it goes on museum display. During her work, she finds small articles and unique details within the book - a butterfly wing, a stain on a page, a hair, and more – and they provide the device for the narrative to span the imagined history of the book, going back in time with each episode, all of which are woven into Hanna’s story in the present (set in 1996).

Each story has a poignancy of the human condition, portraying times in Europe’s history many of which are on the more obscure side of traditional Western readership awareness: the plight of Muslim and Jewish refugees during the tumultuous years of the Communist resistance against the Nazis in Yugoslavia during World War II; the challenges of Jewish life in Vienna in 1894 where undercurrents of anti-Semitism are growing more pronounced with each day; Venice 1609 where the Jewish Ghetto struggles for survival under the iron supervision of the ruling Catholic hierarchy; Tarragona, Spain 1492, where labors for survival under the lethal dictates of the Inquisition are always on the razor’s edge; Seville, Spain 1408 where Muslim rulers treat their Jewish slaves with fatal disregard. As Hanna commits herself to risking both her professional reputation and her relationship with her mother on the line, the reader delves continually deeper on a voyage of discovery of all the book’s mysteries. It was a rewarding, well-paced and educational read, and I recommend it highly.   

I bought this book at a garage sale for a dollar. I confess my first impression of the title, cover graphics and high level messaging, was that this might be kind of a New Age-ish genre tract with touchy-feely sentiments expressed, and not backed up with reliable research. Maybe’ yes,’ maybe ‘no’ on the purchase. But reading more of the book sleeve made me take pause, and at a garage sale, for a buck, I’m not seeing too much downside to the investment. And indeed, sometimes there is work from the New Age field which has merit, but the genre is crowded, in my view, with a volume of extraordinary and speculative writing that I exercise caution when committing my time to enter that world of content.

Reading this book, however, was something completely different than I expected, and it stands as one of the top ten books of my life. It was the source of a paradigm shift in how I viewed history and the ascent of man (with a nod to Jacob Bronowski’s great work of the same title). It was with The Alphabet Versus the Goddess that I began to keep notes, with page notations on a separate piece of paper, which are still tucked into the book and which I use for reference even now. To quote Larry Dossey, MD and author, from the back cover of the book: “This is a bomb of a book – a highly original, titillating thesis that will delight, infuriate, challenge and enlighten.” I was not infuriated, but I could see how other readers might be.

Before his death in 2009 Dr. Leonard Shlain (comedian Albert Brooks’ father-in-law), was chief of laparoscopic surgery at California Medical Center and also the author of Art & Physics: Parallel Vision in Space, Time, and Light. His credentials as a respected traditional physician and a published author were established before this book. The table contents for The Alphabet Versus the Goddess gives a glimpse of the journey through the evolution of knowledge in store for the reader. From Image/Word, Hunters/Gathers, Right Brain/Left Brain, Males: Death/Females: Life, the writing forms associated with the pre-Biblical religions – cuneiform and hieroglyphs  – and on to the Hebraic writing, Shulain describes the foundations of the development of knowledge and how it was transmitted to the people of these cultures. The book explores oral traditions, Asian pictographic based forms of writing, as well as the advent of Christianity and Islam with their accompanying forms of writing, and the author analyzes the collective influence and impact on their host cultures. The book’s scope spans all the way to the present where a new literacy is evolving that encompasses the Internet generation – screen based, not the written page, which is more search oriented, icon-driven and visual, less linear and verbal. It’s a fascinating exploration into how knowledge evolved, how it was conveyed, with both oral and written traditions, and how these forms of content conveyance impacted the very foundations of how people thought, and how those modes of thinking molded various stages and forms of society. I highly recommend this thought-provoking and enlightening work. I’m due to read it again soon. 

I clearly remember the first time I heard mention of Professor Joseph Needham’s name. I was taking a summer class in World History at Boston University where I learned that Chinese explorers came by ship to Eastern Africa long before Columbus got credit for discovering the New World. The existence of this British professor who shared rich insights into China’s inner secrets immediately intrigued me. It was not until many years later, however, that I came across this book in a Daedalus catalog, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I’d want to read it. Joseph Needham was the man who opened a window on China’s history to the world, and Simon Winchester tells the story of this unique man in a page-turning story filled with vivid and rich experiences depicting a man and a time with rare, entertaining and informative insight.

In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University in England, Joseph Needham met a visiting scientist from China with whom he ultimately had a life-long affair, a relationship that would impact the course of his life, and by extension mankind’s understanding of China. Through her, he became acquainted with elements of the hidden story of China, its ancient technological and scientific past. Needham became deeply intrigued by the country, the culture, the people and the rich tradition of their inventiveness. As a result, Needham was determined to explore that blind spot in Western understanding of China, and after studying the Chinese language, accepted an invitation to visit China. That visit was the beginning of a decades-long relationship with the country, with a series of expeditions, which culminated in his writing a seventeen volume encyclopedia – Science and Civilization of China – documenting the comprehensive story of China’s history and their long list of technical innovations that the Western world has benefited from, but has up to that point little or no awareness or appreciation of their origins.

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom reads much like an epic fast moving novel at times, with cinematic moments where Needham is visiting the most remote regions of China in search of rare books, or a escaping a city under attack from Japanese, which is doomed to fall two days later. Balancing intimate personal stories with accounts engaged with the struggle for international political advantage, Simon Winchester paints an informative and engaging picture of Needham’s life and work. Learning about Needham is indeed an important chapter of history to understand the world from a more informed perspective. I read this book after my own visit to China. I enjoyed it immensely, and felt richer after finishing it, and it provided added context to places I had visited. I highly recommend this informative and entertaining read. I would not be surprised if we see a movie of his life sometime in the near future.