Reviewsby Robert Abbott | ||
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Posted January 6, 2005: Two important histories of mazes have recently been published. One, Labyrinths & Mazes by Jeff Saward, is a thorough history with some stunning pictures (Saward reportedly has a huge private collection of labyrinth and maze pictures). At the right is the cover of the book’s American edition. It shows a replica of the Chartres labyrinth that was built on the riverwalk in Naperville, Illinois. The other book, The Unending Mystery by David Willis McCullough, has fewer pictures, but it has very entertaining writing. It is also a thorough history and McCullough presents all of the many (way too many) hypotheses that try to explain the origins of labyrinths. I recommend both books if you are interested in labyrinths, for whatever reason. I added “for whatever reason” because some like labyrinths for spiritual reasons, some like them for historic and archeological reasons, and some (like me) just find them enjoyable to walk through (and I can’t explain why this is enjoyable). McCullough has an amusing discussion of the different reasons why people like labyrinths and how labyrinth people differ from maze people. One problem I have with both books is that about 80% of Saward’s book and 90% of McCullough’s book are devoted to single-path labyrinths. Each book devotes only a small part to multi-path mazes, which I consider to be a much more interesting topic. However, both books are thorough in their treatment of mazes, and Saward has excellent maze pictures. In addition to that problem, I have one really big problem: neither book has much to say about multi-state mazes, also known as logic mazes, mazes-with-rules, or conditional- So far, not much has been written about multi-state mazes. Ed Pegg Jr. has a short on-line article on the subject on the web site of the Mathematical Association of America. My 1997 book, SuperMazes, has a short eight-page history of the subject. Adrian Fisher and Georg Gerster’s 1990 book, The Art of the Maze, is mostly about multi-path mazes but it includes some multi-state pavement and mat mazes. |
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Posted February 2, 2007: I just read an intriguing book. It has nothing to do with mazes, but I can’t help reviewing it here. It is Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by James Webb. If you yourself are Scots-Irish (or as I prefer Scotch-Irish), then drop everything and order this book immediately. If you aren’t Scotch-Irish, you still should find this book to be important. Actually, a lot of people are Scotch-Irish and don’t know it. I was one of them. I used to think I was a WASP (and an intellectual) until my sister started to do genealogy and found we were descended from Appalachian rednecks. There is some interesting word derivation here. Redneck is an old term for Scotch-Irish and it originally meant Presbyterian, their religion when they left Scotland. Another term is cracker, which comes from cracken, a Scots dialect word meaning to speak (as in “He cracked a joke”). Webb relates the history of this group starting in the Borderlands between Scotland and England, where they spent centuries fighting the English. Braveheart was one of the leaders during that time. The basic difference between the English and the Scots was the English were a feudal society, organized from the top down. The Scots had the basic Celtic bottom-up organization. One’s allegiance was to the family or to the clan, not to any lord. We left that miserable area of Scotland and went to Northern Ireland for a couple of generations. Unfortunately we didn’t get along with our fellow Celts, the Irish, because they were Catholic. And we didn’t get along with our fellow Protestants, the English, because they were Anglican—an entirely different form of Protestantism. So next we went to America. In America we didn’t get along with: the Puritans in Massachusetts with their established Congregational church, the Pennsylvanians with their established Quaker church, the English planters in tidewater Virginia with their established Anglican (Episcopal) church. Webb notes that a lot of groups went to America for freedom of religion, but what they really wanted was freedom for just their religion. So they all had established churches. Thomas Jefferson was one of the English planters, but he worked to get a bill through the Virginia legislature to end the establishment of their church. Today, we don’t realize what a radical move that was. The Scotch-Irish finally settled in Appalachia, where they thrived, and when the rest of the country opened up, they were mostly the ones who settled it. Because the Scotch-Irish wouldn’t take crap from anyone—English invaders, government officials, priests (both Catholic and Anglican)—they gave America its greatest characteristic: a love of freedom. Today we think everyone has a love of freedom, but it’s actually pretty rare. In spite of his focus on the Scotch-Irish, Webb’s book provides an excellent history of America and especially of the South. It also has interesting military history. He answers a question I’ve always had: Why are the Celts, who are fierce fighters, always getting their asses kicked by people like the Romans, the Germans, and the English? The book also has extensive political discussions. The hardcover edition of Born Fighting was published in 2004. In 2006, James Webb, running as a Democrat, won the election for U.S. Senator from Virginia. This was the last election settled that year and it tipped the Senate to the Democrats. In my opinion, Webb is now the best mind in the Senate (of course, that isn’t saying much). More importantly, from what I see in Born Fighting, Webb is an economic conservative. Most of us economic conservatives think that the two Bush presidents were a disaster for the country and for the Republican party. But there is a glimmer of hope for us because, in addition to Webb, there are other economic conservatives in the Democratic party (generally known as Blue Dog Democrats). We can only hope they will develop into a more effective force. (Or maybe not—Webb gave the Democrats’ response to the State of the Union and it was nothing you could call conservative.) Here are two other views of this book: one from the Weekly Standard (pretty funny) and one from Reason Magazine. Back to the home page |
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