from amazon;

In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.

Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect murder.

With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.

the problem with this book is that the two stories are barely connected. the inventor who's invention changed communication & the first fugitive that was caught using the invention.

i think this format of different stories that share a connection worked better in larson's the devil in the white city, because it all related to the chicago world's fair in 1893. and in isaac's storm, where it all connected to the galveston hurricane of 1900.

i think this book would've been better if it was just about the crippen murder or marconi's life and work on his wireless telegraph system.

BTW the name crippen sounded familiar. i remembered this show i watched (back when we had netflix) called murder maps. i looked it up & they did an episode on that case.

This is an adorable book I finished recently, the title is self explanatory.
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The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature By Daniel J. Levitin.

I read the previous book of his, This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and enjoyed it so much it has a permanent place on my shelf. Most of the insights weren't new because of arts school but the writing was great with examples ranging from Classical to Elvis.

( This one is not nearly as good )

TITLE: OPENING SKINNER'S BOX AUTHOR: Lauren Slater LENGTH: 254 pgs SUMMARY: Through ten examples of ingenious experiments by some of psychology's most innovative thinkers, Lauren Slater traces the evolution of the century's most pressing concerns -- free will, authoritarianism, conformity and morality. Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, she takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgrim's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric disorders. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality and theme.

Below the cut is an indepth review including quotes and a biased opinion of Opening Skinner's Box. I hesitate to say "spoilers" as the book's intent is not to shock and awe but offer a different perspective of ten famous psychological experiments.

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Title: The Abstinence Teacher

Author: Tom Perrotta

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Title: Cold Granite.

Author: Stuart MacBride.

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Title: Rethinking Thin: The new science of weight loss - and the myths and realities of dieting.

Author: Gina Kolata.

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