Book Review: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It has taken me a while to get around to reviewing this book. I finished it a few weeks ago and it is still effecting me. This is only the second book I've read that chronicles a modern African experience. The first being A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. Both left me with a painful ache in my heart for the suffering that must be going on right now on that continent.

Infidel is something of an autobiography that tells the author's journey from Somalia to Holland, from Muslim to atheist. By the end you will understand why she is now an atheist. If you had any interest in becoming a Muslim before reading this I don't see how you could hold onto that desire after.

It also tells a story of sexual oppression and abuse that is also happening this very day. Hers is a first-hand account of how horribly unequal women are in the eyes of men. Even passive, god fearing Christians like to point out how the bible holds women as second-class citizens. So it isn't just Muslims, but those women sure seem to have it worse than any others.

While reading it I wondered how much strength it took for Ali to run away from her forced marriage. What made her different? If given the chance how many other women do the same? A man I work with is from Pakistan and arranged for his daughters to marry men from Pakistan, even though the girls grew up here in America. I know that one of them refused. Fortunately, he's something of a passive man so he didn't kill her like we read about. But I wonder what went on in their house. If she hadn't been in living away at college would she have had the choice she made? I remember when he was asking me about the visa process (my wife is from outside the US and my wife and I did the visa application ourselves) and he told me about the arrangement I cringed inside. I couldn't believe it was 2006, in the United States, and this guy was arranging a marriage for his daughter. When he told me earlier this year that it didn't work out, that his daughter wouldn't follow through with it, I was so happy that she took a stand. But so many women don't get that choice.

Last night my wife and I watched "Submission: Part 1", the short film that got Theo Van Gogh killed and put Ayaan Hirsi Ali into hiding. I wish women all over the Muslim world could see this film or read her story. I wish they could have the chances and the courage to take those chances like Ayaan Ali did.

I was deeply moved by this story. If you haven't read it I strongly suggest you do.

Audiobook Review: The Dream of Reason

The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb

I've always had a love for philosophy. I enjoy discussing topics like ethics and I enjoy discussing science just as much. But I didn't know much of philosophers outside Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates, who's name I always pronounce in my head like Bill and Ted did, thanks dudes!!!

The Dream of Reason served as a primer for western philosophy up to the Renaissance. Much time is spent on early philosophers and their main ideas as these served as the foundation for most of their successors.

As audiobooks go, this one was hard to digest. This was definitely a book for reading, not listening. There were just too many names to consume while sitting in traffic. I found myself having to listen to sections twice, more because an idea would be discussed and my mind would start to ponder it and a few minutes later I would realize I had no idea what had been discussed after that.

Anyone looking to get a broad understanding of western philosophy should pick up this book, though I suggest you get the paper version so you can ponder all those wonderful ideas! If you must get the audiobook be prepared to pause and repeat sections.

The Dream of Reason gave me some great starting points for further study. I enjoyed learning about the Pythagoreans (the math geek in me) as well as Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism. I wish it had delved more into the later philosophers, though. All the same, I enjoyed the book...

Book Review: Galileo's Daughter

As embarrassed as I am to admit it, my knowledge of Galileo's life before reading Galileo's Daughter could be written in a few sentences. I knew he was a great scientist. I knew he did something with telescopes and was an astronomer. But that was about it. I knew he lived part of his life under house arrest but I couldn't tell you why.

But after reading Dava Sobel's biography of Galileo Galilei called "Galileo's Daughter" I feel I have followed his life the way we follow that of some insightful blogger. To put it that way seems to cheapen the experience, because in today's world we don't have eloquent hand written letters like the one's presented in this book. Sometimes when you follow the writings of bloggers you wonder why you must endure painful discourses on their most mundane happenings. In the case of Galileo's Daughter you welcome those trivial details as it casts a vision of the great philosopher that you don't get in a dry science textbook.

I picked up Ms. Sobel's book a few weeks ago while perusing the science section of Borders. I wanted something scientific but also something lighthearted. Upon seeing another book by the author of Longitude I snatched it up and quickly drove home to read it. If you haven't read Longitude or seen A&E's movie, I suggest you stop here and pick up either. You won't be disappointed. I saw the movie first then read the book later and Dava Sobel does an excellent job of turning a biographical story into a page-turning journey without sacrificing historical accuracy.

Galileo's Daughter continues the precedent set by Longitude and places the biography of Galileo against the backdrop of letters written to him by his daughter, Virginia, who adopted the name Maria Celeste when she became a nun. Only the letters from her survive as the letters from him were destroyed after her death. But Sobel gleans much from letters sent by the scientist to his peers.

Applying the morals of a 2008 humanist to the life of Maria Celeste I found myself angered to see her locked inside a convent. Of his three children she seemed the most adept at understanding his thoughts and his theories but she was limited by the norms of society in the 1600's. If you weren't married by age 16 then you became a nun and being an illegitimate daughter she couldn't be married. But this did not stop her from becoming literate in Italian and Latin.

I became so entranced by Sobel's account of their live's that by the end of the book I found myself distraught at how their lives ended. The best dramas could not ask for a better ending to it's character's lives as that of Galileo and his daughter Virginia. Any father who has a daughter should read this together with her. I can only imagine the discourse that will follow between them after reading Ms. Sobel's eloquent account of two loving and intelligent people.