Saturday, December 26, 2015

A History of God




Title: A History of God
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Vintage, 1999 (First published 1993)
ISBN: 9780099273677
Pages: 511

Men always believed in god – some god, be it a force of nature, one among a pantheon, a personal one or a universal one. It helped mankind find solace among the manifest evil of their day to day lives. They thought him to be an arbiter of human affairs providing justice and fairness in all transactions. Many attributes were added to him in due course, like omnipotence and omniscience. This obviously created practical difficulties. How can an omnipotent god allow evil to thrive in the midst of his followers? Citing a case from recent memory, many Jews thought that god was dead in the gas chambers and torture rooms of Auschwitz. Philosophers stepped in to provide a way out of the paradox by traditionally assigning transcendence to god and making him detached from this world. Armstrong traces the story of the birth and development of the concept of divinity from ancient Sumer to the end of the last century. The book is very relevant to our society which is racked with suicide bombers encouraged to waste their own as well as of a good many innocent ones, by the misguided conception of a god. The author opines that in order to face the spiritual challenges of a new century, we need to have a look at the history of god and hence the relevance of this book. Coming from an author who had been a nun once, this book is written with the sharpness one would associate with a person of the priestly class. Though she has lost faith in god, the book is written in an objective way – never once allowing the author’s personal faith stand in the way of narration.

An excellent coverage of the origin of the concept of divinity in the middle-eastern region is presented. Earliest civilizations came up with a belief system that was thankful to the godhead for creating order by dispelling chaos. Sumerian origin myths appearing in the litany of Enuma Elish speak about a featureless watery realm existing in the beginning, on to which life forms and geographical features were created by god. Armstrong argues that this is a distant memory of the swampy land of the ancestors of the Sumerian people. Their brave act of creating a civilization from the primal disorder is projected on to a god who is credited with creation of the world. Paganism ruled the world in that distant era. They surmised a bewildering multiplicity of gods who were worshipped in the form of idols, poles, trees or mountains and others. Contrary to popular belief that the pagans considered the idols to be gods, the author asserts that it was a monotheist conceit to accuse their rivals of worshiping material objects. The devotee offers his prayers to the divinity who is ‘represented’ in the idol and not the material itself. Ask any practicing Hindu even now, and he will cheerfully declare that he is only worshiping an aspect of the god which transcends the material world. Similarly, paganism is inherently tolerant as there is always room for another god. Then comes the contrast with monotheism, as represented by its oldest representative, Judaism. The world first glimpsed a vengeful god full of jealousy against other gods and his prophets steeped in intolerance and violent usurpation of other religions. We read about Yahweh asking his followers to attack pagans and to ‘tear down their altars, smash their standing stones, cut down their sacred poles and set fire to their idols’ (Exodus 34:13). The modern world is still reeling under the harmful effects of strict monotheism in the form of terrorism. But the author, writing before the onset of suicidal jihad, does not make this logical conclusion, which is apparent now. Armstrong also notes that the status of women went down as monotheistic religions having a male divinity gained ground. Gone were the days when pagan gods and goddesses shared their fortunes with their followers.

The book gives an enlightening discussion on the development of the concept and nature of divinity ascribed on Jesus in the first four centuries of the Common Era. He is described as a man without the trappings of being a god in the gospel according to Mark, which was the oldest. It is curious to note that as the further gospels came along, more miracles and deification had taken place on the person of the revolutionary carpenter of Galilee. Early Christian fathers found it difficult to sell the Jewish god to gentiles from across the Roman world. St. Paul took Christianity out of the confines of Judaism as a replacement to pagan beliefs of Rome. Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, adapted the Jewish god to Roman sensibilities by cloaking him with Greek philosophy. Concepts of trinity and divinity of Jesus seemed to contradict the fundamental precept of monotheism. In response to theological counter-arguments, Church developed its dogma. The first clash of belief systems occurred in 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea, when the heresy of Arrius was soundly defeated by Athanasius. With the conversion of Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the official religion. The philosophy of god in the religion was further enriched by Augustine, and after the end of the first four centuries, it had solidified beyond revision or redemption.

When it comes to Islam, we see the author shedding all traces of disinterested skepticism and approving its tenets wholeheartedly, at face value. The uncritical acceptance of Islamic ideas is in marked contrast to the attitude shown towards Judaic and Christian precepts. We see verbatim reproductions about the beauty of structure and poetic nature of the Arabic language expressed in the Koran, as seen in propaganda literature handed out by Islamic proselytes. She even goes to the extreme as saying that “Muhammad preached an ethic we might call socialist” (p.167). In a bid to stress on the universal acceptance of religious truth by Islam, Armstrong argues that if Muhammad had known about Hinduism and Buddhism, he’d have included their religious sages as prophets (p.178). This is far from convincing and may even be shown to be entirely false. Seventh-century Arabia had a flourishing trade with India, and Mecca was a prominent trading post in Hijaz. Even if he was not aware of these Indian religions, the Koran is not Muhammad’s word – it is the word of god revealed through the Prophet. Surely, god knew about the existence of these religions? Another outrageous suggestion is that the Koran grants women equal status! This is thrust into our throats with a pinch of salt in the assertion that veiling of women was a Persian custom adopted by their Muslim conquerors. Nobody was said to be forced into accepting Islam, but its rapid spread to North Africa is offhandedly explained away as the result of Arab imperialism. Why this hypocrisy is hard to imagine.

If the readers had any doubts about what is in religion in addition to an all-pervading god, an exhaustive discussion on what happened in philosophical discourses that run from dark ages to the present is given. Most of the readers would find this tedious and boring. This is definitely not due to any incompetence or lack of preparation on the part of the author. On the contrary, every effort has been made to condense the arguments in a few paragraphs and in lucid style. Salient points of the systems proposed by a lot of philosophers over the centuries are neatly catalogued. But lengthy narratives on god, transcendence and spirit are bound to elicit a yawn from most of us lay men. The failasufs (practitioners of Falsafah, from which the word philosophy came into vogue) made deep study on every aspect of Islam’s seemingly straightforward monotheism. Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi, a Spanish mystic in the Umayyad period, is noted for the tolerance advocated in his works. Sufism also tried to make Islam mellow. The physical success made possible by its armies made Islam accommodative and poised to conquer Europe when the axe fell in the form of Renaissance. The Reformation and Enlightenment that followed it, made Europe at the forefront of material development. Discovery and conquest of the New World made it vigorous. Islam suddenly found itself on the back foot. It succumbed to fundamentalist doctrines like Wahhabism propounded by Mohammed ibn al-Wahhab in Saudi Arabia. Exactly at this point, Europe turned to reason and secularism. Whereas the word ‘atheist’ was used disparagingly as a nasty slur even till the Middle Ages, it acquired the overtones of a badge of honour. It is curious to compare atheists of today with Christians and Jews who were called atheists by pagan Romans.

The book’s extensive coverage is limited to the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Some traces of Buddhist philosophy is included, which is more of a comparative nature. It gives undue significance to medieval practices like mysticism by giving it a good press in assertions like “even though there are obvious differences between medieval mysticism and modern psychiatric therapy, both disciplines have evolved similar techniques to achieve healing and personal integration” (p.290). The book is adorned with an extensive index and a thorough bibliography.

The book is recommended only to serious readers.

Rating: 3 Star

Monday, December 14, 2015

India - A History




Title: India – A History
Author: John Keay
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2007 (First published 2000)
ISBN: 9780007259281
Pages: 576

In fables and legends we come across the story of a magic pill, having the size of a small pea but containing the nourishing potential of a hundred feasts. Such stories are not amenable to rational thinking, but this book is a real case in point, in which the entire history of the Indian subcontinent from the pre-Harappan age to the ascent of Prime Minister Vajpayee is condensed in a brilliant saga told over 534 pages of absorbing narrative. As can be expected when the history of five millennia is being told, the author has to be very careful in not venturing too deep into the historical waters. John Keay is immensely successful in achieving his objective without omitting any important event or personality even while presenting almost all there is to it, in a nutshell. With a heart deeply sympathetic to the Indian spirit, Keay sails through centuries of rule and misrule by Hindu kings and Muslim sultans to reach the British period. Astonishingly for an Indophile, the author inspects the pre-Independence politics with a distinctly skeptic viewpoint that is also critical of the nationalist perspective. Barring a few minor glitches like failing to distinguish between the various hues of right-wing politics like that of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS, the book is essentially free from factual errors. Wherever an event can be interpreted both ways, Keay’s locus is strictly anti-nationalist. Even though John Keay needs no introduction, it may be noted that he lives in Scotland and is the author of three acclaimed histories on India.

A delectably objective narrative of ancient India ending with the invasion of Alexander can be found in these pages. Keay’s work combines extensive research and wit, without losing sight of the relevance of incidents to present-day society. India always took pride in its culture, which was thought to be established on the soil from time immemorial. The realization came about during the British Raj and it is only natural to conceive a pride in one’s past in a bid to keep one’s head high above the high-tide line of oppression by foreign aggressors – both on the economical and cultural spheres. The remains of a great civilization were found in Harappa and Mohenjo Daro during the 20th century. This confirmed what was till then only a hope of establishing the country’s heritage with something tangible to show off. The remains of the exquisite urban settlements tell eloquently of a people whose achievement could well contend for the title of the ‘cradle of civilizations’. Early archeologists thought the Harappan culture to be one of the mere outposts of the Sumerian, but later excavations have proved that the civilization was homemade, with remains of intermediate stages unearthed in sufficient numbers. The coming of the Aryans eclipsed these urban dwellers. By invasion or assimilation, Aryans obtained hegemony in society and Vedic literature dawned on the world. All this time, migration to the east continued, bringing more and more of the Ganga plains under cultivation. For hunter-gatherers, land is of marginal importance that could be brought under communal control for enjoyment by all. When agriculture predominated, as seen in the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata and the Puranas, individual property rights became essential. Local republics like the Gana Sanghas gave way to kingdoms. Buddhist texts describe the events in the Ganga valley in more detail. Alexander’s invasion, though it did not bring in any immediate revolutionary change, was instrumental in opening up India’s minds and geography to outside influence.

British historians first began the practice of dividing Indian history into the Hindu, Muslim and British periods, loosely based on chronology as the ancient, medieval and modern eras. Leftist historians take them to task for studying history on religious lines, but this book also follows this line. Keay has also followed the politically correct way; by employing delicate care not to aggrandize anything nationalist historians may find it worthwhile to cater to their constituency. Thus, Shivaji doesn’t get any credit for his strict policy not to desecrate mosques, the Koran and not to seize women (as conceded by Keay himself). But the hordes of sultans and bigoted Mughals who indulged in desecration and demolition of temples, rape and pillage of Hindu kingdoms and women and conversion as an instrument of state policy are condoned by construing such acts as ‘natural’ actions to collect booty from conquered territories, victor’s natural right to confiscate anything considered valuable by the vanquished and an attempt to swell the ranks of the minority who was ruling the land, respectively. In a clear reflection on the priorities of the Delhi sultans, Keay quotes Balban, who ruled from 1265 to 1287, regarding the circumstances which forced his hand in temporarily stopping the conquest of neighbouring Hindu kingdoms and to stay put in Delhi trying to ward off a likely Mongol raid. Balban says that, “if this anxiety as guardians and protectors of Mussulmans were removed, I would not stay one day in my capital, but would lead forth my army to capture treasures and valuables, elephants and horses and would never allow the Rais and Ranas [i.e., the rajputs and other Hindus] to repose in quiet at a distance” (p.248). We can’t expect modern-day ideals of equality or enlightenment from a bigotedly barbarous medieval sultan, but treating the vast majority of his subjects to a status not much above that of animals and never a moment of care about their welfare helps to explain the extreme backwardness of the country on all parameters of economic wellbeing when at last it stepped on to modernity. Vast amounts of treasure in gold, gems and jewelry were amassed as war booty and taken out of the country, impoverishing it for centuries to come. In fact, India has still not freed herself from the adverse impact of economic pillage that continued throughout the medieval era.

When he reaches the 20th century, the author gives a version of events that is considerably at variance with the Congress-centric narrative common in India. While Indian children learn in their classrooms that Curzon’s partition of Bengal in 1905 was a deliberate ploy of ‘Divide and Rule’, implying that the division of Bengal into Hindu and Muslim majority areas was designed to drive a wedge between the two communities, Keay argues that Curzon made a division which was already there in the minds of the adherents of India’s two most numerous religions. He quotes a League leader who remarked that “we divide and you rule”, and buttresses this argument with what happened when elections to provisional assemblies were conducted in accordance with the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935. In the meanwhile, bowing to extensive agitation by Congress, Britain had annulled the partition of Bengal. In the combined province, Muslims constituted the majority which became painfully evident to Congressmen in Bengal when their party faced a rout at the hustings. Demand then arose from them for a separate electorate for Hindus on the lines of those granted to minorities. Keay concludes that this incident was the real reason for the spar between Subhash Chandra Bose who hailed from Bengal and Nehru’s official faction within the Congress. In the end, Gandhi intervened against Bose, whose only option then was to get out of the party. He conspired against the government’s war effort. Arrested and charged for sedition, Bose escaped narrowly from house arrest and allied with Hitler and Japan’s Tojo. Finding an easy puppet for legitimising its already planned invasion of India, Japan placed him on the forefront of the war in the guise of a hastily constituted Indian National Army (INA). They occupied the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and declared India’s independence there. Keay notes with irony that Bose ended up in those islands – which contained a penal colony that housed people convicted and transported – exactly where he would have gone, had he not fled India. He also finds fault with Congress’ totally uncooperative stand towards the British when they proclaimed India’s participation in the Second World War without consultation or consent of Indians. The Muslim League freely collaborated with the government. This might have helped them gain advantage over the Congress when the issue of partition of the country heated up after the war’s conclusion.

The book contains some assertions which may seem controversial. One is that the Pallavas of early Tamil Nadu were descendants of the Pahlavi/Parthian interlopers who reached India from Iran. It also clearly brings out the vast uncertainties in dates of kingdoms and societies as ancient India was not very enthusiastic in history writing. Even with this huge doubt on the chronology, we find a few Indians attributing impossibly antique time periods for the country’s earliest dynasties and origin of religious literature like the Vedas and epics. The book is a classic as far as its subject matter is concerned, and endowed with a large number of monochrome photographs, an extensive index, a comprehensive list of bibliography and enlightening footnotes collected at the end of the book. This book is written in an impeccable style celebrating the author’s extraordinary mastery over unlocking the beauty of English language. The size of letters is somewhat small, which may cause some difficulty to readers.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Friday, December 4, 2015

Killing Jesus




Title: Killing Jesus – A History
Author: Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
Publisher: Macmillan, 2013 (First)
ISBN: 9781447252665
Pages: 293

A dramatic rendering of the Biblical text, with a touch of historical characters in the background.

Killing Jesus is the third in the series put out by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. The first two are titled ‘Killing Kennedy’ and ‘Killing Lincoln’, the two American presidents who were assassinated. The intention is to put the event in the right historical perspective by narrating the background which led to the event, the prominent characters involved in the incident, its aftermath and the grim personal experiences of the deceased. Even though I have not read the first two, the historical honesty of them is not to be doubted, as the protagonists lived so near to us in time. But attempting the story of narrating the killing of Jesus Christ is a tremendous effort, judging from the vastness of time which separates Him from us and the wide divergence of cultural ethos that existed in ancient Palestine and today’s world. While there is no question of refuting the opening line of the book that ‘Jesus of Nazareth was the most influential man who ever lived’, it is equally true that no historical evidence exists that depicts him as a human being. The gospels are our only sources of information. All later works are simply borrowings from the Holy Book. Under such circumstances, we can only conclude that this book is just a feeble effort to present a few Bible stories under the guise of history. The Holy Bible is the world’s most read book, which is presented in numerous versions and all languages so as to appeal to all classes of people. This book is also one among them, which ascribes historical authenticity to stories in the New Testament.

The state of suppressed unrest that prevailed in Palestine at the time of Jesus is clearly brought out in the text. The land was under Roman occupation, but some form of autonomy was provided. Herod ruled as the governor of Rome with an iron hand, but being a Jew, he provided some semblance of local authority. After his death, the country was divided into Galilee in the north and Judaea in the south. The former was ruled by Herod Antipas, a Jew. The Romans couldn’t find any native worthy enough to administer Judea that also included Jerusalem. This area was then looked after by the Roman prelate himself – Pontius Pilate, who walked into history as the man who ceremonially washed his hands pure off the crime of crucifying Jesus. He was under strict orders from Emperor Tiberius not to meddle with Jewish religion. This gave a carte blanche to Caiaphas, the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem. He could accuse anybody of heresy or who tried to interfere with rituals and condemn them to death. As a mark of superiority of the occupying power, it was insisted that such sentences of death need to be corroborated by Pilate. Caiaphas and his entourage converted the temple into a centre of profit, by obtaining a cut on every cash transaction inside it, in the form of sale of sacrificial lambs, doves and money changers. Besides this, the ordinary people reeled under the yoke of excessive taxation. The expenses incurred by Rome in maintaining a garrison and Roman roads need to be defrayed in addition to grand tributes to the emperor. The Jewish governors themselves indulged in magnificent construction projects that drained the money out of the rural poor. The famished society of Galilee was thus ripe for a rebellion for economic causes alone. This was complemented on the religious side by unfulfilled prophecies in scriptures that trumpeted about a savior who would appear in their midst and shake off the immense burden from their shoulders. All these factors contributed to Jesus’ efforts to rally the people to his cause. What the people and the authorities didn’t understand was that his kingdom was of heaven and not of this world.

For reasons best known to themselves, the authors deliberately paint a very debased picture of the Roman Empire and the men who ran it. Countless details of wanton cruelty, perverted sexual acts and extreme depths of immorality flood the pages whenever a historical discussion is presented in this book. The torture inflicted on Jesus by Roman soldiers just prior to crucifixion is described in excruciating detail bordering on revulsion from readers. It seems that the authors were carried away by extreme passion! Even though it claims to be a historical work on the title, the relationship between it and true history is a very tenuous one. It claims that a dove came to rest on Jesus’ person at the time of his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist. The historical source of this curious observation cited in the book is that this incident is vividly described in all four gospels! When there are differences among gospels, it is attributed to the separation in time between the compilation of the gospels. When they agree on a point, it is ‘overwhelming evidence’ of the ‘authenticity’ of that event. Such is the convoluted logic of this book. In order to put on a cloak of historicity, the book includes a few chapters on real Roman emperors, but of course, by demonizing them and their pagan ways. Blind assertions that are not at all anchored on fact abound in this book, such as “Jesus was born in the spring of either 6 or 5 BC is based on clear historical evidence” (p.21), “there is growing acceptance of the gospels’ overall historicity and authenticity” (p.22) and “women in Jesus’ time were considered equal to men” (p.147). The book assumes that the Magi made their journey from Persia to pay obeisance to new born Jesus, on the flimsy argument that some Chinese astronomers had recorded the sighting of a comet on the western sky around 5 BC. Josephus and Philo are the historians on whom O’Reilly and Dugard heavily leans on, but their dubious distinction as historians mar the narrative’s objectivity. The book is gifted with a good index and a brief description on the sources of reference material.

This book is a compilation of stories from the Bible. But they are told in an appealing way and hence this book is recommended as a work of fiction.

Rating: 3 Star

Sunday, November 29, 2015

The Island of the Colour-blind




Title: The Island of the Colour-blind
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Picador, 2012 (First published 1996)
ISBN: 9780330526104
Pages: 361

Islands are unique in many ways. The separation guaranteed by the vastness of the sea ensures subtle changes in the language and culture of the societies inhabiting them and the mainland, even though one is an offspring of the other. Not only in sociocultural mores, the isolation brings about genetic changes in the people, animals and plants. This was observed and characterized in great detail by none other than Charles Darwin himself, by his famous voyage around the globe in HMS Beagle. The rate of changes accumulated in the genome in response to natural selection against local conditions prevailing in an island will be far greater than that on the mainland. Darwin was amazed and encouraged by the sharp evolutionary changes he observed on the Galapagos Islands, which finally led to his theory of evolution. With this in the background, we turn to this book that showcases two remote islands in the Pacific Ocean, distant thousands of miles from the continents, in which two grotesque illnesses are widely prevalent in the indigenous populations. In Pingelap, total colour-blindness is fairly common, and in Guam, a neurological disease called lytico-bodig, that exhibits symptoms of Parkinsonism and paralysis affects a section of the populace born before 1945. The author visits these islands in turn, muses on them and the probable causes. Oliver Sacks is a physician and the author of many books. Born in London and educated at Oxford, he now lives in New York where he is Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University.

There are many places in the world where first cousin marriage is common. In many parts of India itself, this was the norm before education and better living standards threw open the door to the outside world to those languishing in fetid superstition. Science has categorically outlined the dangers of inbreeding including widespread prevalence of genetic disorders, to mention nothing about the eventual impoverishment of the gene pool. Genetic diseases are marked often by recessive genes. Since every person possesses two sets of genes inherited from the father and mother, if one copy of the gene is healthy, the recessive gene stays dormant, without causing its harmful effects. The person with one faulty gene acts as a carrier of the disease, but the ailment itself will not be expressed in his body. When too much breeding occurs between people who are closely related, the chances of an offspring getting two copies of the recessive gene heightens. The higher than normal incidence of lunacy and other genetic defects observed in Kerala’s matrilineal society of the previous centuries may be taken note of. Pingelap Atoll’s people had to pass through a natural catastrophe that forced them to resort to inbreeding as a case of necessity. This paradise-like atoll in the middle of the Pacific vastness was hit by a huge typhoon in 1775. Most of the inhabitants perished. Out of the thousand or so dwellers, around twenty, mainly from the chief’s family, survived. The population slowly picked up over the decades, but the harmful effects of inbreeding began to tell heavily on the society’s well being. The loss of colour vision, called achromatopsia, spread among the descendants. The patients lacked all sense of colour, losing the cone cells in the retina which distinguishes colour. They depend only on the rod cells, which normal people use to see in darkness. As a result, people suffering from the disorder find it difficult to fully open their eyes in bright sunlight. This is accompanied by squint. Some semblance to normal human eyes can be generated by the liberal use of dark sunglasses. There is no cure for the disease as yet. Among the general population in other parts of the world, the rate of incidence is 1 in 30,000 whereas it is an astounding 1 in 12 in Pingelap.

Sacks presents another startling phenomenon from Guam Island in the Pacific, which falls under U.S. administration. It is a U.S. military base, with a large area of the island out of bounds for ordinary citizens. The indigenous people in this lovely tropical island is afflicted with a paralyzing sickness called lytico-bodig, somewhat related to encephalitis lethargica. The sufferers show symptoms of Parkinson’s disease or display extreme inability to move muscles or speak. The disease worsens progressively, and finally kills the patient. This disease affects only the indigenous people of the island. The cause of this ailment is still shrouded in mystery. The chapter offers an absorbing discussion on the probable causes of the disease. A strong contender is the cycad plant found in large numbers on the island, whose seeds are eaten by the people as a source of protein during droughts or famines. This was widely used during the Second World War when the island was under Japanese occupation and the local people were mercilessly starved. The highest incidence of the malady was on the people born during the war years when all they had to eat was the cycad seeds. After the island was retaken by American troops, matters returned to normalcy. There has not been a single case of lytico-bodig on the people born after the event. The cycad plant contains a neurotoxin that may be responsible for the deleterious effects, but elaborate preparation of the seed before consumption takes care of removing most of the toxin. Scientists posit that genetic predisposition and deficiency of minerals rich in calcium and aluminium may also explain the phenomenon. The last word has not been said yet.

The book is not just about diseases and cycads alone. It narrates a really adventurous travel to the beautiful Pacific islands. To reach Pohnpei, Sacks had to undergo some anxious hours in the form of a damaged plane tyre. Many of the islands in the Pacific are controlled by U.S. military. Repairs to the plane were carried out in a military base and the passengers were grudgingly allowed to stay on the island under the watchful eyes of the soldiers – a prospect equally disliked by both parties. The author gives a thrilling description of his journeys on the islands and the heaven-like beaches ideal for swimming or snorkeling. His revulsion to military bureaucracy is evident in more than one place in the book. Guam is a pretty island, but most of the prettiest beaches are under military control. Access is granted after thorough interrogation and that too, after forcing the visitors to wait for hours. But the author has not proposed exposure to radioactivity or other military-related causes for the spread of lytico-bodig.

An illuminating discussion on ancient plants like ferns and cycads that still exist in the world is also presented as a bonus. Apparently, this was facilitated by his visit to Rota Island, near Guam. This book includes a huge section of Notes that runs to about a third of the book. But they are very informative and readers don’t feel interrupted from the main story even though they have to frequently refer to these elaborate pieces of information. Nice sketches of the trees and plants are very apt to the theme. An expansive bibliography and index add to the attraction of the book. The book was first published nearly twenty years ago, and that may be why he has not included the names of those genes that cause the diseases. Not that the readers get any wiser by a cryptic acronym, but it contributes to a feeling that the malady is being studied in detail by the academia and pharma.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star