Ntuple Indemnity

This week’s selection: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) by John le Carré.

In brief: Cerebral, meticulous, labyrinthine—though not what I would call gripping, and almost certain to be better on second reading. This is the sort of mystery where the procedure of discovery largely involves retelling fragments of the story and sewing them together. The resulting patchwork is everything a character-driven spy novel should be, conscious of both the seriousness of Cold War realpolitik and the human failings of the operatives in play. It’s an expository plod, but the destination is well worth the trek.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, keep reading below.)

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This week’s selection: Hexaflexagons, Probability Paradoxes, and the Tower of Hanoi (2008) by Martin Gardner.

In brief: This revised anthology of Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” columns in Scientific American, the first of fifteen volumes, is an ample exhibition of the author’s repute as the canonical journalist of recreational mathematics. Though the brevity of the articles leaves the details of proofs bottled up in the extensive bibliography, the non-technical approach goes a long way towards illustrating the everyday relevance of esoterica in topology and combinatorial theory.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on Hexaflexagons, Probability Paradoxes, and the Tower of Hanoi, keep reading below.)

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This week’s selection: Persepolis (2004) by Marjane Satrapi. Translated from the French by Mattias Ripa and Blake Ferris.

In brief: This memoir-in-comics of a liberated Iranian woman who grew up in the Islamic Revolution—or, if you will, between Iraq and a hard place—is about as penetrating a look at life under the veil as one is likely to find. A supreme demonstration of resistance through art, here is that rare specimen of autobiographical identity-crisis literature with the political weight to stand outside itself and really matter. If you think you know anything about Iran, read Persepolis and think again.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on Persepolis, keep reading below.)

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This week’s selection: The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2008) by J.K. Rowling.

In brief: This companion book to the Harry Potter series condenses Rowling’s thematic material into five playful fables, each delivered with the impeccable polish and Pythonic cleverness we have come to expect. The annotations written in the voice of Albus Dumbledore provide the Potterverse with a suggested literary history that parodies our own, though they unwisely attempt to interpret the fairy tales on the reader’s behalf.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on The Tales of Beedle the Bard, keep reading below.)

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This week’s selection: Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (1999) by Matt Ridley.

In brief: A dense but concise tour of the twenty-three chromosomes of the human genome, Genome is better consumed as a chapter-by-chapter survey of modern genetics than as a unified book-length argument. All the same, Ridley’s primer advances a responsible optimism toward genetic science in a manner that openly resists sensationalism.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on Genome, keep reading below.)

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