Book Reviewed: Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union by Richard Kreitner

Some reflections on the creation of United States of America America is in a state of crisis, says the author. After reflecting on precolonial days that lead to the American Revolution, and challenging times in building the nation, he observes that it is more polarized towards division rather than a union! He sees flaws in the founders’ wish to forge a democracy: The new world did not create American exceptionalism but produced radicalism and failed hopes. According to him, the puritans, native Americans, enslaved Africans, women with little rights, and new immigrants from Europe offers a picture of the messy years of American birth. The years of the American Revolution were times of changing loyalties, fierce battles and internecine feuds that provides a stage for his reinterpretation of the history. This is a very narrow approach to narrate the American history especially when he finds that the 2016 victory of Donald Trump has furthered the division of the union. This ignores the decades of mishandling of American affairs. It is a matter of choice to bring a new idea into the White House that did not include professional politicians who are corrupt and toxic to the bone! Formative years are always challenging to any nation, and I wished the author had a broader view in his analysis. When English colonists left Asia and Africa, these colonies faced the same challenges that United States faced in creating a union with serious domestic issues. Similar challenges were faced by East European countries and former territories of Soviet Union which collapsed in 1991. The author ignores key features that made United States as one of the strongest and powerful nations in the world. For example, the battles with Native Americans on the western and Southern frontier, and the bloody civil war that lost more than a million Americans. North prevailed in the Civil War ending slavery and giving the country a new birth of freedom. But many confederates found new opportunities in the West. Settlers from the East were pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican American War and the occupation of Native American lands created new racial hierarchies. The mining, cattle, and oil industries created wealth and neo-fiscal conservatives like Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. There is no crisis over our national identity. This is manufactured over decades by politicians. Divisions at local and regional areas are not new. They were always there, and politicians have manipulated the system to their advantage to divide people along economic, social, and racial barriers. This is heard every four years!

Book Reviewed: Future Minds: The Rise of Intelligence from the Big Bang to the End of the Universe by Richard Yonck

Intelligence in the universe Human beings may not be Earth’s most intelligent beings for much longer. In fact, some predict that artificial intelligence (AI) could advance to human-level intelligence. The late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously postulated that if AI itself begins designing better AI than human programmers, the result could be "machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeds that of snails." Artificial General intelligence (AGI) is humanity's biggest existential threat, and there is an effort to create machines that can experience consciousness and grasps philosophical issues beneath the algorithms. The machine consciousness could become the byproduct of information processing and intelligence. The author looks at the future from the origin of the universe and draws on recent developments in bio-thermodynamics and the evolution of complexity in living cells. How structured and highly ordered cellular systems evolve that appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics. But they don’t, because they are not closed systems. But there is a connection between intelligence and entropy maximization. There are entropic forces that can cause two defining behaviors of the human cognitive niche; tool use, and social cooperation that leads to certain emergent properties. Intelligence is not necessarily a cognitive-based property. It is perhaps a manifestation of a much larger universal process, one that is initially dependent on probability, but with emergent properties, it is capable of self-directed volition over time. Emergent intelligence is driven by competition, thermodynamics, and entropy as a means of promoting future freedom of action. A general thermodynamic model of adaptive behavior in nonequilibrium process in open systems, the cognitive-adaptive organisms have an internal mental model of the environment they seek to adapt to. But from a probability-based perspective, high-entropy states should create the best conditions for evolution either for living species or machine intelligence. In other words, the more unrestricted the environment, the more options that can be explored. This concept of causal entropic forcing is critical to the origin of life, and machine intelligence. The author expresses his hope that future intelligence may find the purpose of this universe, this could be a wishful thinking that may never find an answer. The laws of physics are immutable, and the cosmos is limited by 4-dimesional spacetime. The natural and artificial intelligence include reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, learning, and perception. In advanced animal species, and robotics, additional requirements include the ability to move, manipulate objects and natural language processing is required. The underlying principles, besides the operation of the laws of physics and (chemistry in biological systems), is to achieve their goal through statistical mechanics, probability, information engineering, entropy, and economics. The author offers reasonable discussion in this book.

Book Reviewed: Lectures on the Bhagavad Gita by Swami Vivekananda

The wisdom of Bhagavadgita Bhagavadgita is the essence of Vedas that expounds knowledge and remedy the challenges of life. Swami Vivekananda offers a concise interpretation of teaching of Lord Krishna in three consecutive lectures in San Francisco, California. Vivekananda infuse vigor into Hindu thought, placing less emphasis on the prevailing pacifism but more on Hindu spirituality. There are three lectures in this short book of 40 pages. In the first chapter, Vivekananda presents a bird’s eye view of Vedas and what it meant to orthodox and non-orthodox Hindus. But he calls Upanishads equivalent of Bible, which proposes one God (Brahman), and Bhagavadgita as the commentary on the Upanishads. The law of karma gives humans a way out of for happiness, but Vivekananda argues happiness and the concept of heaven are too materialistic in nature. One must go beyond the law of karma and seek unification with Brahman, the Supreme Consciousness. Brahman has no attributes, but it is an entity that encompasses omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), Omni benevolence (perfect goodness), immutable, divine simplicity, and eternal existence. Brahman’s qualities are personal and impersonal which exists in spaceless and timeless dimensions in an unchanging reality amidst and beyond the realm of a universe. The Pure Consciousness (True Self) can transcend all possible laws of physics, all dimensions, and all physical realities. Swamiji refers to verses in Chapter 2 in which Arjuna request Krishna to guide him on how to overcome his grief at the idea of killing his own family members and teachers. Krishna explains that the cause of all grief is due to ignorance that results from the lack of understanding about the True Self. He explains the Yoga of discipline of selfless action without being attached to its fruits is essential. Vivekananda was known for his prodigious memory and the ability at speed reading. He was responsible for bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion and a force in its revival in India and raising interfaith awareness in Western hemisphere. This is one of the numerous lectures Swamiji offered about Gita and the Upanishads during his lifetime.

Book Reviewed: Preacher's Girl: The Life and Crimes of Blanche Taylor Moore by Jim Schutze

Lady from hell The story of Blanche Moore is a Southern-comfort facade of gentility, a fusion of Scarlet O’Hara and Blanche DuBois, hides a murderous revenge on men in her life. Apparently rooted in the sexual abuse from her father when she was a little girl. Blanche is seductively nice and compassionate until she would find her way of finishing them off, literally. Spiking milk shakes, or potato soups or a drink with anti-ant poisoning, she was cold and calculated killer who manipulated the men she was intimate with. The motive was for financial gain or a plain revenge. She poisoned three men in her life; her first husband, a co-worker, Raymond Reid with whom she worked with, and her second husband, a preacher who survived despite intense arsenic poisoning. She may also be responsible for her father’s death, and her mother-in-law by her first marriage. Currently Blanche Moore is awaiting execution in the state of North Carolina for the 1986 killing of her boyfriend, Raymond Reid. The 1993 movie “Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story” starring Elizabeth Montgomery offered a brilliant performance as sweet-talking cold faced killer. In fact, much of the movie is based on the research work of author Jim Schutze. It saves you great deal of time to watch the movie than read the book. In addition, it saves you from reading the ghastly details of pain and sufferings of arsenic poisoning.

Book Reviewed: Everybody's Doin' It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917 by Dale Cockrell

Boogie Nights: Domestic Revolution in 19th century New York Author Dale Cockrell focuses on music and popular dance forms to narrate the social history of Manhattan in the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century. It is a historical study of popular music and dance that identifies a connection between uninhibited sex and dancing which included gay sex, orgies, and interracial sex. These were widely promoted in Manhattan bars, brothels, and dance halls where sale of sex for cash was endemic. Social dancing was one of the ways that sex and music were linked. This book looks at race, class, popular culture, and sexuality, which includes the centrality of African-American musical culture, the sexual attitudes and behavior of working-class Americans, and the anti-vice crusaders like Anthony Comstock, Rev. Charles Parkhurst, and others who paved the way for urban Anti-Vice Commissions of the early twentieth-century that targeted these gathering places that facilitated inter-racial socializing which were believed to be inherently immoral. When Charles Dickens visited the United States in 1842, he visited several bars in the Five Points area of Manhattan, just east of today’s Centre Street & north of Worth Street, a neighborhood which at the time had both large black and Irish populations. Tap dancing was invented here by combining Irish step-dancing and African rhythmic patterns. Another account of musical life by journalist George Goodrich Foster gives an even more vivid picture of the musical and sexual atmosphere. The author tries to correlate these anecdotes to illustrate how musical exuberance, dancing and sexual acts occurred. The 1987 movie Dirty Dancing, starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey exploited a cultural banality of people’s feeling about dancing and sex. Boogie Nights, the 1997 film about a young nightclub dishwasher who becomes a porn star ties the cultural myth about dancing halls and sex. The Argentine tango, a musical genre and accompanying social dance originating at the end of the 19th century in the brothels of Buenos Aires around the same time as the emergence of ragtime in New York. The author points out that ragtime, a new musical, and dance form was composed by black musicians, to be played in dance halls and brothels was rarely written down but it is the first identifiable style of jazz. Many of these places were multi-racial venues, known also as “black and tans” which the vice crusaders campaigned against. This devastated the City’s nightlife and undermined many of its musical venues. It targeted black-run clubs to racially divide the social life. Everybody’s Doin’ It is a follow-up from Cockrell’s previous book, Demons of Disorder. This book integrates the history of working-class culture and openness of sexuality in New York. The author is musicologist and not a social historian. He traces the birth of jazz music in the dance halls and dives of New York City, but the book chapters do not flow well from one to another, and images and illustrations shown in this book has white folks in the dance hall and never shows a mixed gatherings of blacks and whites.

Book Reviewed: Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven't Tried Yet by Meggan Watterson

The sacred embrace of Mary

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene presents a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge. Both the content and the message lead inward toward the identity, power, and freedom of the true Self. The soul is set free from the powers of matter and the fear of death. For example, The Savior said, all nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots (Mary 4:22, Pages 1 to 6 of the original manuscript containing chapters 1 - 3 are lost. The extant text of this gospel starts on page 7, chapter 4). Such a metaphysical message is all too familiar in the ancient Hindu scriptures of Upanishads and the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. Mary’s teachings reject the most fundamental concept of Christian beliefs (e.g. John 3:16) that Jesus paid for the sins of others, and whosoever believe in him as a savior will find everlasting peace. The gospel of Mary also rejects that there is such a thing as sin! For example, Then Peter said to him, you have been explaining every topic to us; tell us one other thing. What is the sin of the world? The Savior replied, there is no such thing as sin (Mary 4:25). Another distinctive feature of the gospel Mary is that God is not referred to as the Father, and this gospel does not say that Jesus is the son of God. The parables of Jesus that is the only form of Jesus’ teachings found in synoptic gospels are not found in this gospel.

When the Christian church leaders decreed that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are to be canonized to form the New Testament, at the council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., they also believed that no rival gospels must exist that contradict the canons. Therefore, the gnostic gospels such as the gospels of Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Philip, and others were destroyed.

This book is written to re-emphasize the teachings of Mary who was the closest female follower of Jesus. She was present at the Jesus’ crucifixion, she was there at the burial, and she was there alone at the empty tomb, and the first to witness the resurrection. In fact, she was assigned to carry out the mission of the ministry of Jesus Christ. I recommend the original work of Harvard University Professor Karen King “The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the first woman apostle” for a deeper discussion.

Book Reviewed: Every Tub Must Sit on Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston by Deborah G. Plant

The heart and mind of Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neal Hurston was a part of Harlem renaissance, an intellectual, social, and artistic explosion centered in Harlem during the roaring 1920s. She was also an anthropologist, folklorist, and a playwright. She is well known for her pivotal novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which is about a Southern love story told by a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams. It is the story of a black woman, fiercely independent and her evolving selfhood through failed marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. Another book Hurston is known for is Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” about the life of a man named Oluale Kossola, who was transported from West Africa to slavery in Alabama in 1860. Her work is a testament to Zora’s singular vision amid so many competing pressures to love blackness at a time that determined to hate it.

In this book, Professor Deborah Plant of the University of South Florida examines Hurston's philosophy and politics considering black women's resistance to domination and struggle for empowerment. Hurston reflected on her innermost thoughts as the only place in which she could escape societal limitations and freely express herself. She found affirmation, a place to heal, restore and recover. She constructed alternative images of herself to stand in opposition to the controlling, stereotypical images of women, built on objectification and subjugation. Hurston deeply believed that the black culture is a vital component in their full political emancipation, individually and collectively. She discovered new (literary) frontiers; she searched for lost cities; she navigated boats; and she climbed mountains. Like the men of her day, she smoked in public, wore pants, spoke her mind, and loved setting her hat at a rakish angle. Her belligerence, tendency to stand and do battle for what is right stands out conspicuously in her life. Zora Neale Hurston leaves us several empowering legacies. Her life expresses the transformative and revolutionary possibilities of an androgynous spirit. Zora was a Republican, a feminist, and believed in the work of Booker T. Washington on black education and self-emancipation.

The author could have revised the order of chapters that made it easy for readers to connect with Zora Hurston better. The writing is in metaphysical style and the reading would be bumpy. I recommend this book to readers interested in the life of Zora Neale Hurston and black American history.