While traveling through Turkey recently, one of the more frequent questions I encountered was about books, both as smalltalk in the “What have you been reading lately?” or the “What are your favorite books?” context, or at times with the much more interesting context of, “What books best describe the essence of your American experience?” [...]

The best book I’ve read this year is Maps of Time, An Introduction to Big History, by David Christian, published by the University of California Press. I was trained as a chemist, and taught chemistry at the University while in graduate school. Recently though, it’s history that has really intrigued me. Maps of Time has [...]

I love to read, much in the same way I love music. I’ve been reading through one of the classics of ancient China, The Analects of Confucius. There’s lots of versions of these writings, and I bought a copy of The Analects of Confucius – A Philosophical Translation by Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont [...]