Plagues

Title: Plagues – Their Origin, History and Future

Author: Christopher Wills

Publisher: Flamingo, 1997 (First published 1996)

ISBN: 0-00-654869-5

Pages: 303

Every one of us is susceptible to disease once in a while and has to seek medical care or resort to long recuperation which puts us to great inconvenience. However, that phase soon passes and as the normal chores are resumed, we tend to forget about it. Basking in the successes of technology, we are oblivious to the immense damage some of the diseases have caused to mankind over the centuries. Any illness which has afflicted a large proportion of people in the society is called a plague. The author presents their origin, historical occurrences and speculates on the possible vistas which they may occupy in the future. Christopher Wills is a Professor of Biology and his research ranges from the question of human origins to the nature of human genetic variation and the mechanisms by which we resist diseases. He is the author of three books for the general reader in biology: The Wisdom of the Genes, Exons, Introns and Talking Genes and The Runaway Brain.

It may seem counter initiative to us but the fact remains true that killing of a host (the afflicted animal) is not in the best interests of a pathogen attacking it. Evolution cries for survival of an individual by better adaptation but not necessary to exterminate a host which provides it with nourishment. This explains why exceptionally virulent pathogens fail to propagate further after a nasty bout of plague. The death of the infected organism closes down the way of progress for the plague-causing entity too. More benign cousins of such pathogens then continue to live happily in symbiosis with the host. The trillions of bacteria and viruses that reside in the human body, in guts, mouth or other body part are genetically only a step away from virulent strains of similar genre. But they don’t cause any ill effects on us and we have learned to live in harmony with them. History also supports this argument. Bubonic plague, which devastated London in 1665-66 in its greatest incarnation, has not returned even though no specific countermeasure was adopted by the inhabitants. Similarly malaria receded from Northern Europe by mid 19^th century, even before science established the connection between the disease and mosquitoes.

Whenever the term ‘plague’ is mentioned, we normally think of bubonic plague that devastated a great portion of humanity in 542 and 1348 CE, which may roughly thought to be the brackets of the medieval age. The disease is analysed in great detail in the book. The bacteria Yersinia pestis is the culprit which is in fact a genetically weakened cousin of the more deadly Yersinia pseudotuberculosis which affects animals. When it affects a human, the body goes into overdrive to produce phagocytes (white blood cells) to kill off the antigens, which causes the lymph nodes (buboes) to bulge extraordinarily in size, giving the disease its name. Mortality rate is usually high if untreated and when it transforms to pneumonic plague after it colonizes the lungs. Then it gets really virulent as the bacteria gets transferred between people through air by breath. The virus is vectored through rat fleas and the epidemic was thought to be extinct until it reappeared in Surat and Beed district of Maharashtra in 1994. Even though there is controversy regarding whether it was indeed the plague, the pestilence was stemmed with massive application of antibiotics and DDT.

In an amusing anecdote – if there can be anything which is even remotely amusing in the case of a deadly disease – Wills tells the case of a housemaid in New York who spread typhoid wherever she was employed and that caused many people to die. The bacteria which cause the disease, named Salmonella typhii takes a permanent residence in the gall bladders of some of the patients. While it does not result in any outward manifestation, the bacteria grow in their bladders and spill over to the environment through natural means. The maid in this case was christened ‘Typhoid Mary’ and she was arrested and quarantined. At first she escaped and found work elsewhere under an assumed name. Sudden appearances of the disease in the inhabitants of the house revealed the presence of Mary and she was again caught and incarcerated, this time for 28 years until her death. This case presents one of the gruesome aspects of man’s social life. Even though she has not committed any crime, and was being punished for no fault of hers, she suffered isolation for decades befitting a felon.

Wills goes on to describe many other diseases too like syphilis, tuberculosis and AIDS. We read of controversies among academicians over the origin of syphilis, which some of them believe to have originated in America and was introduced in Europe and elsewhere after the voyages of Columbus, who himself introduced many European diseases like smallpox and measles on the native populations in America. This is a good case of how societies often face unexpected challenges in its complex web of interactions with other people.

Wills confuses the historical provenance of some of the references he uses in the narrative. To establish the ancientness of plague, he quotes from Bhagvat Purana of India and arbitrarily assigns the date of 1500 BCE for it. This is certainly erroneous, as the Puranas are considered to be of much later origin by historians, sometimes placed around 500 CE. Similar tracing of the disease to central Asia or Africa is also unconvincing. Whatever may be the work’s advantages, historical accuracy is not one of them.

The book presents a disproportionately large mention of India and how the country is still home to a large number of deadly diseases. The narration is definitely unflattering but should serve a clear notice to clean up the house. Though often tinged with an air of condescension, Will’s description of the pathetic health infrastructure of the country is intended to open the eyes of impartial observers.

The book is somewhat dated as it was released 16 years ago and much work has been done in some areas like AIDS prevention declared to be of grave concern by Wills. Of course it is still grave, but the projected mortality figures are way of the mark, with the advantage of hindsight. A revised edition appears to be long due. One aspect the author should concern himself about is to include a primer on diseases, its methods of spread and ways of causing havoc and the essential differences between various agents of diseases. Readers like me who are confused about the differences between a bacteria and a virus remain as puzzled as ever after completing reading of the book. The glossary given at the end really is a positive point for the work and equally commendable is the conscious effort not to dabble too much with medical terms. A lengthy treatment given near the end of the book on how the species diversity of a rain forest helps to keep pathogens at bay is simply yawn-inspiring though many of the observations were collected by the author during his own academic research.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The World Until Yesterday

Title: The World Until Yesterday – What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?

Author: Jared Diamond

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2012 (First)

ISBN: 978-1-846-14758-6

Pages: 466

This is Jared Diamond’s latest book, but no, it doesn’t come anywhere near Guns, Germs and Steel, which is his magnum opus and given a 5-star rating. This book explores traditional societies which still exist in mountain and island fastnesses from whom we get a glimpse of our own ancestors before they entered the agricultural stage in the slow progress towards modernity. The author is a noted polymath and his work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, biology, ornithology, ecology, and history, among others. Many ways are available to have a peek into the past of modern societies. Archeology is one of them, but imposes severe restrictions on its applicability since the available objects are lifeless. As humans progressed from hunter gatherer lifestyle to farming around 11000 years ago, it would be a good idea to look at tribal societies existing at various locations in various stages of development. It gives us a snapshot of the phases of societal development during the last 11000 years or so. Experts categorize societies into four stages in increasing order of organization as band, tribe, chiefdom and state. Our modern societies stand at the extreme end of this classification and the author has made detailed studies of human societies still occupying the other three divisions. Diamond states that we have to learn from the traditional societies if we want to study the present one in any depth. There is much we need to emulate from past societies and much more that we need to be thankful about because of their absences.

Jared Diamond has extensively studied tribal societies and the Papua New Guinean societies in particular. An aspect that he finds disturbing in such societies is the constant state of warfare between rival groups and the resultant blood feuds. These soon escalate into all out wars and the loss in terms of men inflicted on the societies is much more in proportion to the deaths suffered by modern societies during the Second World War, which was the most horrific in the history of mankind. The dispute resolution mechanisms are tenuous in tribal communities and people who had grown up on a diet of honour and obligations take up arms to attack real or perceived aggressors. In an exclusive illustration of the belligerent Dani community in New Guinea that appears to be a true representation of traditional societies elsewhere, the author concludes that the modern state offers a viable and welcome alternative. Here, use of force is monopolized by the state and individual disputes are mediated by professionals in law courts which decide on the right or wrong of the issue at hand. This never happens in a tribal setup where aggressions are always retaliated with like measures irrespective of the merit in them. The disconnection of justice from individual hands results in peaceful life for the members in a state community.

Readers get to know of the widely varying standards of treatment meted out to elders along the whole spectrum of primitive peoples. While some keep the elders absorbed in the main stream, some hunter gatherer societies tend to ignore them and thereby contrive in their deaths if they are weak and hence unable to move or hunt along with the group. Modern societies are no better by general appearance as old people are increasingly finding themselves ending up in retirement homes. Such wide variation exists in the case of children too. Some hunter gatherer groups pay great attention to their little ones, even allowing them to walk on their own feet only around the age of four, while some sedentary communities practice a laissez faire approach where young children are not at all restrained, even if they happen to be playing with fire or sharp weapons.

A great disappointment to any skeptical observer is to watch the educated and enlightened people in society pitching for the irrational and superstitious religious beliefs. One of the reasons for this sorry state of affairs is the lack of exposure to rational thought in their formative years. Authors of popular science books must structure their works in a way as not simply to elucidate the scientific outlook, but also to implant it on the readers’ minds. Diamond presents an exemplary illustration of how the irrational could be explained in a rational way in his discourse on the origin and role of religion which are defined as, supernatural explanation of things, defusing anxiety through rituals, providing comfort against pain and death, standardized organization, preaching political obedience, moral codes of behaviour towards strangers and justification of wars. With growth of science, religions’ function as an explanatory mechanism is fast losing ground, but still it thrives on supposing to provide a ‘meaning’ to life. Such notions of ‘meaning’ to life are meaningless in a rational point of view which regards life as a biochemical entity being propagated through DNA. Even though this point is only too evident to thinking people, man finds it impossible to accept the sobering principle that there is no meaning to his own existence except for the concepts codified by the society for its wellbeing.

Our urbanized societies anywhere in the world are beset with non-communicable diseases afflicting an unacceptably large percentage of the population. Two of them – hypertension and type 2 diabetes – are subjected to a thought provoking analysis by the author who exposes the pitfalls hidden in the transition to a westernized life style adopted by traditional societies and poor developing countries.  Salt intake is directly related to hypertension. The more salt we ingest from the salt shakers on the table, the more we are prone to high blood pressure. Such a direct correlation exists in the case of sugar intake and type 2 diabetes too. Consumption of sugar has increased many times over the last few centuries, from 2 kg per person per year in 1700 to 75 kg per person per year at present. Genes causing diabetes may help a tribal group to tide over bouts of starvation better, by sequestering fat effectively, but fail when subjected to food abundance offered by modernity. This is a case of a genetically selected feature turning on its heels to become a bane under changed environmental conditions. Out of the many contrasts between traditional and modern communities, the attitude to health can easily be practiced by modern people. Exercising, avoiding too much salt or sugar, inclusion of more fibrous foods on the menu, eating slowly, and even talking while eating so as to reduce intake may be some of the aspects which could be employed by the urban dwellers too.

The book is a must read for any category of readers. It envelops the entire spectrum of the life of a society, from its political organization, social relations, linguistic traits, medical concerns and cultural implications. So much is packed within the 466 pages of coverage resembling an encyclopedia on traditional societies that people in any walks of life may find something particularly suitable for their own field of interest. There is a big section recommending books for further reading for those inclined to follow up on the discussed points. It is also gifted with a nice collection of colour plates which add enriching visual detail to the text. The only drawback that can be raised is the author’s predilection to New Guinea in which country he had spent years of work over about five decades. He doesn’t appear to have firsthand knowledge of any other traditional group in the world. However, he more than compensates for this lack of exposure with references from other scholarly works.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Prisoner of the State

Title: Prisoner of the State – The Secret Journal of Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang

Author: Zhao Ziyang

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2009 (First)

ISBN: 978-1-84737-697-8

Pages: 287

China possesses a great cultural and scientific heritage spanning thousands of years which is the world’s envy. Unfortunately, the country now reels under an autocratic regime in which a bunch of hardened geriatrics control the fate of a billion people like what they should do, what they should buy and even what they should think. This is no exaggeration, but only the candid assessment one gets from this book written by a former premier of the state and general secretary of the all powerful Chinese Communist Party. Zhao Ziyang’s rise to prominence was quick, like in an autocracy when you happen to have powerful backers. Ziyang was elevated to the post of Prime Minister and then the party’s general secretary by Deng Xiaoping, the man who ruled China singlehandedly after the death of the tyrannical leader, Mao Zedong. The author paved the way for economic reforms in the country, but the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 ended up in a tussle between him and Deng Xiaoping who was not prepared to concede even an iota of democratic freedom to the people. He was removed from all official positions, placed under house arrest till his death in 2005, without any judicial procedure. This book is his journal under incarceration in which he audiotaped his experiences and thoughts and cleverly concealed them among his children’s toys. It came to light only after his death, waking up the world to a ringside view of the power politics and the farce that is going on in China in the name of socialism. Rule of Law is unheard of, and the party goes by the maxim of Rule by (a few) Men. The book is translated by Bao Pu, Renee Chiang and Adi Ignatius with a foreward by Roderick MacFarquhar.

The end of 1980s had been a bad time for China. Half-hearted reform measures initiated earlier ended up in inflation and widespread corruption. But the hardliners in the party were opposed to any suggestion of giving more freedom to the masses. Hu Yaobang, who was the party general secretary and an ardent reformer, but was later removed from office as he had ruffled some feathers of the coterie of elders in the party on whom all power was concentrated, died on April 15, 1989. His memorial services, attended by a large number of students suddenly turned into mass demonstrations attended even by people in other sectors like government departments and industry. China’s autocratic leaders panicked and issued a strongly worded condemnation in a People’s Daily editorial on April 26 with the approval of Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader, accusing the students of indulging in anti-party, anti-socialist activities. This infuriated the students who managed to stage hunger strikes in Tiananmen Square on May 15 onwards in connection with the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet reformist leader. Against Ziyang’s opposition, Deng and others imposed martial law in Beijing. However, the army found it difficult to move in, as they were blocked at many places by old women and children. Ziyang’s opposition to tow the official line resulted in his ouster as the party’s general secretary. As the world watched in horror, tanks rolled into the square on June 4, pulverizing the protesting students under its wheels, thereby brutally crushing a popular revolt that threatened to shake the communist regime to the core.

We get a clear perception of the pitfalls centralized planning entails in any country by the examples illustrated by Ziyang. When he led a delegation to England and France, he was baffled by the clever transformation of adversities to advantages designed by those Western economies. The south of France had poor rainfall and hence not fit for grain cultivation. In such circumstances, Mao’s China would have gone for ‘changing the conditions defined by heaven and earth’ by investing in huge irrigation projects, but nevertheless ending up with poor yield. The French farmers cultivated grapes in the region and the wine industry made them very rich. Similarly, England employed animal husbandry on its western coast, doing wheat in the east. Ziyang did his homework and encouraged planting cotton in Shandong province of China where large scale irrigation programs had wiped out a large chunk of investment in a vain bid to produce more grain. Shandong developed a lucrative cotton trade as a result and excess cotton seed was converted to fertilizer to augment wheat production in other parts of the country.

The author presents in chilling detail how the notions of collective responsibility and accountability had collapsed in China’s communist regime. We read about the Polit Bureau feigning impotence in overturning the decision of the supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping in denouncing the student demonstrations. Had the Polit Bureau taken the decision to go forward, ignoring Deng’s stature, the situation would have eased. The supreme leader’s decisions also were sometimes taken by his children as we see occasions when his daughter Maomao dictating to party bosses how to word official resolutions without seeming to appear that Deng was against the youth.

Even with many years of experience of working in the party in various positions, the readers note with sympathetic amusement at Ziyang’s naïve assumption that the Communist Party would respect rules and regulations while removing one of the highest leaders like him. Here, we discover the scant regard to law exhibited by the party’s clique of functionaries who stick around Deng. If an official falls foul of the great man, he is doomed – summarily. Ziyang alleges that Deng allowed people who were not members of the polit bureau standing committee to vote on a resolution to oust Ziyang  who himself was not invited for the meeting. The party’s judicial process is also upside down as the author was first ousted from his post and then an investigation was called for. After three years of such a travesty of justice, it was abandoned, but he was not reinstated.

The book, even though noted for its impromptu narration of political events, is not interesting to read. It is riddled with dull diction, and unimaginative account of experiences. Sincerety and honesty of objective does not always translate to appealing style of writing. Long lists of committees appearing in the book and administrative mechanisms that plague Chinese society is a torture for the general reader.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

A History of Jerusalem

Title: A History of Jerusalem

Author: Karen Armstrong

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2005 (First published 1996)

ISBN: 0-00-638347-5

Pages: 431

The city of Jerusalem is the keystone of the mythological edifice of three great religions in the world, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Even though outwardly professing noble ideals like love, charity and tolerance, there have been rivers of blood that flowed through the streets of Jerusalem, Zion or al-Quds as the city is known to people with various perceptions of God. Religion is such a fount of evil that even normal people turn to bloodthirsty monsters and kill their neighbours in cold blood simply because that person happens to believe in another mythological story quite different from ours. This book is a great description of the vicissitudes the city had undergone in the last 4000 years. And Karen Armstrong is quite fit for narrating the story as she is a former Roman Catholic nun who has devoted her life to writing, lecturing and broadcasting on religious affairs. With a balanced outlook, the author analyses the events which shaped up the modern city of Jerusalem in a systematic and structured manner.

Jerusalem was founded in the 18^th century BCE as a temple to the ancient Syrian god Shalem. We find mention of the city and the Jebusite tribe ruling there from Egyptian clay tablets. The Israelites who would later claim the city in modern times was still a tribe from Babylon held in captivity in Egypt. Moses liberated them and after 40 years of wanderings in the desert, settled them in Canaan. David assumed kingship of Judah in 10^th century BCE and conquered Jerusalem. It was only around 1000 BCE that David and his descendants would establish their hold on the sacred city for the first time in history. Solomon built a temple to Yahweh on Mount Zion and transported the Ark of the Covenant, the most sacred Jewish relic there which provided a fountain of piety and holiness to the united kingdom of Israel and Judah.

After David and his son Solomon, the dynasty didn’t produce strong leaders. Powerful empires were growing in the east – Assyria and then Babylon. Nebuchadnessar, the Babylonian king invaded Jerusalem, sacked the city and its temple and moved the cream of the inhabitants to Babylon as captives. But the prisoners were not constrained in any way and they were allowed to pursue any economic activity they chose, while fully allowing religious freedom. After about 50 years, most of them were allowed to go home. The returnees, however, followed a very rigorous form of religion bent on strict observance of Torah and segregation of the inhabitants to outer quarters. The isolationist policies were incompatible with the tempest of Hellenization brought in the wake of Alexander’s invasion. Many of the Jews themselves found the syncretism of Greeks far more conducive to intellectualism than the blind following of Torah. Strife between conservatives and hellenists among the Jews resulted in the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes sacking the temple in 170 BCE.

The growth of Rome across the Mediterranean was a good time for Jews. Herod sided with the powers that be in Rome and erected a string of magnificent buildings in the city. However, the alliance was bound to be a fragile one as the Jews were fiercely fanatical when their temple was even approached by the gentiles which included their Roman masters too. Shortsighted zealots who whipped up frenzy against the Romans were instrumental in bringing about the ruinous destruction of the temple and the city in 70 CE, out of which there was no resurrection for the ill-fated temple.

Though we have no historical evidence to the life of Jesus other than the Bible, it is true that the Christian faith circulated in Palestine among Jews and gentiles alike due to the encompassing spirit of early Christianity and its stress on spirituality rather than physical or geographical icons like Jerusalem or the temple. Christians kept a low profile until Emperor Constantine lifted sanctions against them in 313 CE and declared it to be one of the empire’s official religions. Soon, the persecuted turned into persecutors and blood-curdling cruelty were inflicted on the Jews who were bundled out of the holy city and more and more Christian churches and monasteries were built in the 4^th and 5^th centuries. All the relics and holy places which we now see scattered in and around the city were conjured up from naught in those two centuries. At this time, Byzantium and Persia, the two great contemporary empires were locked in a mutually destructive war, effectively wiping out their superiority. Out of this power vacuum emerged the warriors of a new religion from Arabia.

Muhammad established Islam and instilled vitality to it. Though he died in 632, his followers continued his banner forward and in 637, Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem. The patriarch of the city, Sophronius, handed it over to the conquerors in a peaceful transition. Omar built the mosque of al-Aqsa on the Temple Mount. Caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock in 688 to mark the site of the original qiblah (the direction to which Muslims turn to, in prayer). Muhammad began with Jerusalem, but later changed it to Mecca. Gradullay, the city became holy to Muslims as well, since stories about the Prophet’s ascension to heaven from Jerusalem were established as received wisdom.

The crusades in the 11^th and 12^th centuries saw rivers of blood flowing in the city, which created lasting emotions of enmity between the Muslims and Christians. Jerusalem could avail some peace only when the Ottoman empire rose to power in the 16^th century, when it was felt for a brief time that they would overrun Europe too. But as is common with dynastic rule, the empire began to unravel after a few generations of powerful emperors like Suleyman the Magnificent. Christian power that was curtailed since the crusades again became ascendant when Europe made great strides in economic and technological fronts. Middle East often fell to the status of European colonies and the state of Israel was formed in 1948. The city is now in Jewish hands though bloody violence breaks the peace more often than ever.

The narrative is well referenced and delivered with a clear outlook and a message of harmony and tolerance. However, Armstrong treats Jesus as a historical figure with sole references from the New Testament to support the argument. This is confusing and really amounts to mixing fact with fiction which is not to be expected in a book with a strong root in history. The author’s narration is impartial and objective on most issues except on a few occasions, but there is a subtle thread of pampering Islamic claims on the city as against those of Jews or Christians. This may be due to a subconscious effort to appear neutral as the author was a nun in her earlier career and naturally wished to outlive her past.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

A History of the Arab Peoples

Title: A History of the Arab Peoples

Author: Albert Hourani

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2013 (First published 1991)

ISBN: 978-0-571-28801-4

Pages: 502

This is a comprehensive description of the Arab societies and their culture which is focussed to the outside world through the converging lens of Islam. The book is not just history. Those who look at it with the sole intention of reading a narrative of the sequence of events like wars and accessions of rulers till the present day would be greatly disappointed. The author goes deeper into the psyche of the societies on whom the study was based and brings out insights noted for their clarity and logic. Albert Habib Hourani is a Middle-eastern scholar based in Oxford, who was born in Manchester to Lebanese Christian parents. His authority on Arab concepts was well accepted in academic circles. The author presents a all-inclusive portrait of the societies which he sets out to describe. Religion, literature, art and culture are also explored by the adroit historian in a great effort to look at the developments in a wider and integrated perspective. At times, the readers may feel a little distracted at the lengthy discourses about religious philosophies in the first period of Islamic expansion, but with hindsight, we conceive of the elegant structure of narration employed by Hourani.

The provenance of Arabia was clearly established only with the life and times of Muhammad, the Prophet. The vigour and charisma of the message he proclaimed and imparted to the people helped them achieve dominance of most of West Asia within half a century of the Prophet’s death. Byzantians and Sasanids, ruling the Eastern Roman and Persian empires were forced to vacate their claims on lands which the Arabs desired to possess. As can be expected, when the whole edifice of empire-building depended on one man, as soon as he is off the scene, it begins to crumble. Confusion reigned among the followers of the Prophet as to who should succeed him. Abu Bakr, his father-in-law became the Caliph, who had no divine authority, but entrusted with the duty of keeping peace and adjudicate on issues. Omar, Uthman and Ali followed him, but not without engendering fierce opposition to their rule. All three of them were assassinated subsequently. At this point, another potentate, Mu’awiyah seized power and ruled from Damascus as the founder of Umayyad dynasty. Medina, from which the first four caliphs ruled, was again relegated to the fringes of the empire, at least in administrative matters, if not religious. The Umayyads could hold the throne for only ninety years when Abu’l Abbas shifted the seat of power to Baghdad under the Abbasid caliphs. Islam spread to North Africa and reached Spain by this time. Another caliph ruled from Cordoba in Spain, meanwhile a Fatimid dynasty was established in Egypt.

After the tenth century, a subtle change came about in the Islamic world. Arabic, the language which assumed prominence over all languages in the regions its power predominated, began to lose ground to local languages again. The most important change was noticed in Iran, where its language, Pahlavi, borrowed the script and many words from Arabic and the Persian language was born. Temporal power also slipped away from Arabia proper and the caliphs. The Seljuk Turks, who were soldiers or slaves brought from Central Asia to serve in the armies of caliphs and who later converted to Islam, held the reins of power. After the last Abbasid caliph was slaughtered at Baghdad in the Mongol raids of 1258, Turks set up their seat of power in Anatolia and the Ottoman empire gradually came into being. Former military slaves in Egypt, called Mameluks established a kingdom there. So by the fifteenth century, we see the Middle East where the ancient seats of power re-established in a different guise and under a new religion.

The next phase was the point at which a Middle Eastern regime exerted the greatest influence ever. The Ottoman empire under Mahmud II captured Constantinople which traditionally marks the end of Dark Middle Ages. The Turkish Ottomans carried the banner of Islam wherever their armies reached. Greece, Balkan states, Bulgaria and even Hungary came under their hegemony. Though their rule was tolerant to minorities by the standards of the time, they were facing revolts and insurrections from their European subjects. The height of Ottoman occupation came in 1815 when they reached till Vienna, but thereafter, the collapse was even more dramatic. Industrial revolution and the changing economic conditions were undermining the viability of Ottoman regime. By 1900, all nationalities split away from their yoke, and those of North Africa fell to the level of colonies of France and Italy. The empire itself was torn down at the end of World War I. The second world war brought independence to Arab states which had become protectorates. The formation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948 with British and American support roused lasting suspicions about the intentions of western powers.

The author gives a threadbare account of the origins of various groups which share the Islamic heritage, but with different manifestations of guiding principles. Shiis, the most numerous and prominent minority gradually gained identity from twelfth century onwards. Shiis follow the path of Ali, the fourth caliph and the Prophet’s son-in-law and believe in Imams who are men of intellect but divinely guided and infallible. The twelfth imam, Muhammad was believed to have become invisible in 874 and is expected to return as Mehdi, before the Quranically inspired just society is established on earth. There were other minorities as well, like Ibadis, Zaydis and Druzes which lie on the fringes of Islamic society and deemed as such by Sunni jurisprudence in canonical law.

The last 100 years had been a period in which lasting and often violent changes took place in the Arab world. Though Hourani covers the period till 1991, occasioned by his demise, Malise Ruthwen provides a balanced Afterword to extend the arguments till 2012 when ordinary people took to the streets to demand removal of corrupt and oppressive regimes in an event known to us by the euphemism of Arab Spring. Even at the time of this writing, a violent conflagration is raging in Egypt and Syria and it is still premature to hazard a guess on the possible outcome of events. One thing is clear though. The concept of asabiyya loosely translated as the sense of belonging to a cohesive group and clannish spirit, which the author borrowed from ibn Khaldun, a medieval writer, is still alive and forms the prime factor which is poised to shape up the sociopolitical transformation.

Whenever the issue of Arab – Israeli conflict is discussed in secular media, there is often an argument about the current day ingratitude of the Jews towards the Muslims as the Jewish people were tolerated and allowed to live happily in the medieval period only in those countries where Islam was in force. While it is true that they were hunted out and denigrated in Christian lands, we should not read much into the profession of toleration claimed by Muslim sultans. The author says about minorities in Islamic regimes, “They paid a special tax; they were not supposed to wear certain colours; they could not marry Muslim women; their evidence was not accepted against that of Muslims in law courts; their houses or places of worship should not be ostentatious; they were excluded from positions of power. How seriously such rules were applied depended on local conditions, but even in the best circumstances the position of a minority was uneasy, and the inducement to convert existed” (p.67). So much for tolerance!

Hourani’s occasional philosophical remarks are quite captivating. See what he comments about defeat, “Defeat goes deeper into the human soul than victory. To be in someone else’s power is a conscious experience which induces doubts about the ordering of the universe, while those who have power can forget it, or can assume that it is part of the natural order of things and invent or adopt ideas which justify their possession of it” (p.300).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Unknown Quantity

Title: Unknown Quantity – A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra

Author: John Derbyshire

Publisher: Plume, 2006 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-452-28853-9

Pages: 320

Mathematics is one subject which is best avoided by most popular science writers. The apathy of the audience plays a large part in this conceivable reluctance. Stephen Hawking himself says that he could have sold double the number of copies of his magnum opus ‘A Brief History of Time’ if he had omitted the only equation E = mc² contained in the book. So much for the poor opinion science writers cultivate about the general readers. Presumably, John Derbyshire and the publisher Plume Books don’t share this misconception and the result is a thoroughly enjoyable and infotaining book on mathematics. Unfortunately, it deals only with a topic within the vast ocean of math, algebra. The author is a mathematician and linguist and the celebrated author of Prime Obsession, a mathematical biography of Bernhard Riemann. He traces the history of algebra from the mists of prehistory to ultramodern concepts which is just finding acceptance among scientific community.

Mathematical ability was possessed by mankind from prehistorical times. People used it to quantify game of prey, and to distribute it among the tribe in a fair manner. However, the sense of arithmetic became abstract much much later. When the concept of, say, threeness as in the case of three lambs got detached from bondage to the physical entity and ended up in a symbol representing threeness, the seed of mathematics was born. Every primitive society had concepts of their own, but we find formulae of sufficiently advanced level by 18^th century BCE Babylon. Ancient Babylonians were very good astronomers and clay tablets of computations have come down to our time. We must keep in mind that these computations have no resemblance to modern symbolism. In fact, they didn’t even use letter symbols to represent unknown quantities as algebra does today. The first stirrings of thought in this direction was made by Greek thinker Diophantus who used primitive symbols in computations and is considered to be the father of algebra.

After the flowering of classical Greek period, Europe relapsed into the darkness of Middle Ages. The spirit of scientific inquiry and reason were kept alive by Arab scholars who flourished during the early Islamic period in Baghdad and Isfahan. In fact, the term ‘algebra’ was derived from the title of the book, ’al-Kitab al-Mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa’l-muqabala’ written in the 9^th century. The scholar Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarismi, who was the author, also gave the term algorithm through a poor rendering of his own name to Latin. When Renaissance finally dawned, Europe caught up for the lost time and surpassed all others in ingenuity of thought. General solutions of cubic and quartic equations (of powers three and four of the unknown quantity) were found in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Descartes provided the basis for modern symbolism. Algebra really took off from solving equations to new realms in 19^th century when Niels Abel proved that there is no algebraic solution to the general quintic equation (of power 5) in 1826.

As the author himself admits, the handling and processing of numbers alone is quite dry and devoid of colour, which adds zest to life. Math is not without such flamboyant characters, the most notable being Evariste Galois, the French mathematician who was the proponent of group theory that went on to become the essence of many other fields. Galois was a rebel who lost his life in a duel with an opponent probably waged for an unrequited love. Anticipating his defeat and sure death the next morning, Galois was reported to have scribbled a few notes on a piece of paper which paved the way for the development of group theory. That century also saw the re-emergence of geometry in the guise of algebraic geometry. Derbyshire also lists the brand new areas that have grown up in math like category theory, motivitic cohomolgy and others which are still not understood by people who are not in the possession of a higher mathematical degree.

The book is superbly conceived and delightfully presented, at least in the first three quarters of the text. Considering the nature of the subject, Derbyshire has worked wonders in presenting the concepts in such a way as to be comprehensible to any class of readers and with the right mix of history which is equally important to do justice to the title of the book. The illustrations are ample and the brief mathematical prefaces which the author terms ‘primers’ serve their purpose well. He also ensures that the readers stay with him on the same page, literally! The biographical sketches add interest to the narrative.

Even with all this, there is no denying that reading becomes tardy when the historical account reaches the 19^th century. From here onwards, the concepts become profound and turns unintelligible for those who have no background of higher mathematics. However, this is quite understandable and does not diminish the charm of the work.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Earth

Title: The Earth – An Intimate History

Author: Richard Fortey

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2005 (First published 2004)

ISBN: 0-00-655137-8

Pages: 477

Geology is a science which enters the imagination of the society typically after an earthquake, tsunami or a similar catastrophe against which the vulnerability and helplessness of human technology is so painfully evident. When the forces that lay concealed among the deep earth shakes up from slumber there is not much we can do except evacuating people from the surface. Richard Fortey is a research scientist at the Natural History Museum and a Fellow of the Royal Society. The Earth is a timely and relevant initiative from the geologist to make the public aware of geology in general and the earth itself in particular. We read about the great upheavals on the surface of earth occasioned due to deep movements at the plate level underneath, which are always moving about on top of the mantle, albeit very slowly – at the pace of your finger nails grow, as the author says. The book is quite impressive to read and has attracted appreciative review from many, including Bill Bryson who praised it as ”dazzling and the author was without peer among science writers”. The second part of the comment is a bit audacious, but there is no arguing about the first.

Volcanoes are the objects of curious attention of people of all ages, and tinged with a shade of awe at the tremendous magnitude of forces at work. Fortey begins his travels and investigations from Naples, Italy where the most notorious volcano in history is located, Mount Vesuvius. Its eruption in 79 CE had obliterated Herculaneum and Pompeii whose remains are still visible near the city. But Vesuvius is now dormant and the spectators are denied the glory of subterranean forces. So the author takes us to Hawaii Islands where volcanoes coexist with paradise-like beaches. Here, we can witness molten lava falling to the sea, which makes a fearful sight to behold. The author has succeeded in painting a true picture in words without losing the majesty of the next wonder of geology – plate tectonics. Hawaii is an archipelago containing a chain of volcanic islands. However, the active volcano exists in only one island at a time. Gradually, the volcanic activity ceases in one island and moves on to another point in the chain which have just become visible over the waves. Thus new islands are formed and volcanoes shift their positions to them. The reason behind this transfer of volcanism is explained by plate tectonics. The mantle plume, which transfers molten lava from the earth’s interior to the crust is stationary, but when the plate moves over the plume, a volcano is formed. The movement of the plate is very slow, at a rate of 2.5 to 15 cm in a year. But when aggregated over geological time, the movement is considerable and the volcanism seems to shift to other islands.

The mandate of geology runs supreme in alpine peaks and the rugged terrain of Newfoundland. Fortey explains the concepts behind the formation of the great mountain chain of Alps with several plates to illustrate and his extensive explorations in those areas act as a beacon to guide the readers. We read about a supercontinent, Pangaea which broke up to create the continents we see today. This breakup and agglomeration is not unique in geological annals. Even before the continent of Pangaea was formed, there were still ancient oceans which separated distinct land masses. When those continents came together to become a single one, a mountain generally originated where the sea has been. Fortey identifies such a vanished ocean as Iapetus whose remains are still seen as a rocky outcrop rich in minerals that run through Central Europe. The Ural Mountain in Russia is also a remnant of such a sea disappeared long ago. But not all mountains are derived from a subduction zone created when the oceanic plate slides under the thick continental plate. This turns our attention again to plate tectonics, the single most revolutionary idea that catalyzed the pace of research in geology. Though the idea came in the 1920s through the works of Alfred Wegener, it was considered an obscure one by prominent geologists in the field. In the 1960s, the theory was resurrected with incontrovertible evidence in its favour. We now know for sure that the Himalayan mountain chain is the product of the buckling of the crust as a result of Indian plate pushing on to the Asian plate.

The author does not leave out any feature of the earth’s surface without pausing to reflect on it. His in-depth experience of rocks makes itself astonishing to the readers. Not content with what he sees on the crust, we are invited for a tour to the innards of our home planet. We encounter a solid metallic core deep inside, surrounded by molten metals and alloys under unimaginably high pressure, followed by a mantle and finally, a crust. The wonders hidden inside the earth never for a moment fail to amaze us.

A lot of colour plates illustrating the geological backbone of the ideas discussed in text is a great help for lay readers to visualize. We have no option to appreciate the wide ranging travels undertaken by the author as part of his academic career and in preparation of this book. However, the language become terse at many points in proportion to the complexity of processes and events under discussion. Some of us may fail to appreciate the finer distinctions between various kinds of rocks of which the author is very excited about. Though Fortey has tried his best to illuminate a portion of the highly technical field of geology, we are still left with a sense of lost opportunity. Even with all those illustrations and photographs, general readers still struggle to follow the author at many points. This is definitely not a drawback on the author’s style, but due to the nature of the subject.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star