The Periodic Table

The Periodic Table
by Primo Levi
translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal
Schocken; Reissue edition (April 4, 1995)

One itty-bitty superfluous whine: back when I was assigned The Diary of Anne Frank as a compulsory reading in secondary school, with all due respect to Frank, I remember thinking, “Why can’t we be given The Periodic Table instead?!”

Moments of Reprieve

Moments of Reprieve
by Primo Levi
translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman

Written unplanned at different times and on different ocassions, Moments of Reprieve is a collection of fifteen short stories, each centred on one character only. There was Eddy, a self-absorbed green-triangle juggler and a thief, Tischler, a carpenter who recounts the story of Lilith. Bandi, a mild Hungarian whose name was Endre Szántó (reinforcing in Levi “the vague impression that a halo seemed to encircle his shaved head” to which Bandi explained laughingly: “Szántó means plowman, or more generically, peasant”), whom Levi taught to steal and cheat.

Penis fencing

Ha. That got your attention. (Did it, did it?) Whatever. Something to keep you entertained on Valentine’s day, while you sneer on oh those poor, gullible folks, scrambling for long-stemmed roses, or chocolate bonbons, or lacy nighties, or strawberry champagne, or whatever those scams capitalists are ripping them off for. Yes, those whores of war, those losers. We’ll delight in exploding penises instead.

Anyway, back to the exploding and fencing penises: SBS has concluded the last part of Dr. Tatiana’s three-series (science musical) show. Instead of the book’s sassy sex advice columnist (who’d put whatsername of that Sex and the City to shame), Olivia Judson appears in the doco as a leggy, white-leather-clad Dr Tatiana the sexpert consultant, riding along in her Mustang for her research, consoling all-dancing, all-singing, hanky-panky creatures (“from frustrated fruit flies to lovelorn golden pottos”).

A Time for Machetes

A Time for Machetes: The Rwandan Genocide: The Killers Speak
by Jean Hatzfeld
translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
Serpents Tail (June 30, 2005)

Shying away from close analysis of the big picture, Hatzfeld instead focuses on the hands and foot of the genocide, i.e. common men and a few local leaders. The interviews are compiled into chapters, each focusing on specific aspects, interspersed with some overviews and notes by Hatzfeld.

Drug Use in Australia

Drug Use in Australia: A Harm Minimisation Approach
edited by Margaret Hamilton, Allan Kellehear, Greg Rumbold
Oxford University Press, Australia, 1998

An introductory book containing essays about drugs and drug use in Australia that challenge the “prevailing” (?) judgemental, often insufferably simplistic views about drugs and drug use, and discuss instead the current “harm minimisation” approach, aimed mainly for tertiary students, but readable for general public.

Madness Explained

Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature
by Richard P. Bentall
Penguin Global; New edition (December 28, 2005)

The book is divided into four parts. Part one deals with the history of psychology: it sketches the simplifying effect that Kraepelin’s classification had on the theory and practice of psychiatry and its growth, the triumph of APA, centred around Euro/American-centric ideas, that doesn’t sufficiently take into account cross-cultural differences, and how the production of DSM was greatly influenced by political and economic agendas (particularly DSM-III) as it strove to create a global standard in psychosis and to synchronise with WHO’s ICD, each subsequent DSM growing more fine-grained yet still failing to improve its kappa value.

Rwandan genocide

I’ve promised to write more on this, and Shun asked me about Hotel Rwanda sometime ago where I had only given him a very sketchy, garbled reply (the movie itself I haven’t yet seen). In a world where the word “genocide” has penetrated popular propagandastic vocabulary the way the word “fascism” does (let’s not even go there), and where genocides and sexual scandals are plastered next to each other in screaming headlines, I didn’t want to further add the confusion and misinformations. My intention here is merely to add bits and pieces from a number of books and essays that I’m familiar with in an easily-read fashion and to (hopefully) avoid oversimplified generalisations.

Jared Diamond’s Collapse

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive
by Jared Diamond

Whereas Guns, Germs and Steel explains why history unfolded differently on different continents with varying successes, Collapse gives the other side of the coin: how societies crumble. While the main points of the book emphasize environmental and ecological factors (mostly self-induced), Diamond never reduced it to a mere environmentalist’ diatribe, pragmatically writing as a middlemen with experience of both environmental problems and of business realities.

The book is divided into four parts, beginning with part one analyzing modern Montana as a model of the world, a site so commonly associated with natural beauty but still with its share of seemingly-remote environmental problems. Part two studies how past, thriving societies (Easter Island, Anasanazi, Mayans, Vikings, Norse Greenland) came to their end, closing by analysing why some societies, after being brought down by environmental problems, managed to survive. In part three Diamond, building on what he’s explained from previous chapters, dissects some prominent crises in modern societies, taking his picks on Rwanda (genocide), the Dominican Republic and Haiti, China and Australia. He concludes in part four by explaining why societies make disastrous decision and what can be done to stop ours from going down the same disintegrating path.

A well-written “sequel” to Guns, Germs and Steel that acknowledges world’s problems with (as always) level-headedness and impressive knowledge, at the same time gives reasons for hope, the book provides good introduction to an increasingly important, urgent topic.There is also plenty of resourceful (and most I find accessible) suggestions at the end of the book for further readings.