BOOK REVIEW
Bradford Washburn, I'm Just Here for More Food and The Infinite Book
Christopher Brodie
BRADFORD WASHBURN: An Extraordinary Life. Bradford
Washburn and Lew Freedman. WestWinds Press. $27.95.
By the age of 18, Bradford Washburn had already written three books,
published several magazine articles and climbed two of Europe's most
famous mountains, Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. All this before his
freshman year at Harvard! He kept up this exhausting pace for many
decades, and now, at the age of 94, has published an autobiography,
Bradford Washburn: An Extraordinary Life.
During his 40 years as director of the Boston Museum of Science,
Washburn helped transform it from a small, poorly run facility into
a world-class museum. This, he says, was his life's work. But he
still managed to find time to pursue his other passion, exploration.
Washburn's mountaineering exploits include first ascents of several
Alaskan peaks and three trips to the summit of Mount McKinley.
During World War II, he served his country by testing cold-weather
gear for the Army. Whenever possible, he has incorporated scientific
work into his expeditions, as when he mapped the depths of the Grand
Canyon and helped measure the height of Mount Everest (finding in
1999 that it stands 29,035 feet above sea level, slightly higher
than a previous measurement had shown).
Perhaps because there are so many stories to tell, Washburn does not
spend much time reflecting on his accomplishments or offering what
he has learned from his many years of work and play. The underlying
message of his book might be summarized best by the observation of
another chronic overachiever, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, "It
is wonderful how much may be done if we are always
doing."—Amos Esty
I'M JUST HERE FOR MORE FOOD: Food x Mixing + Heat =
Baking. Alton Brown. Stewart, Tabori and Chang, $32.50.
Celebrity chef Alton Brown, host of the Food Network television show
Good Eats, is noted for his wit and the clear
scientific explanations he offers for his culinary mastery. His
latest book, I'm Just Here for More Food, which focuses on
baking and is a sequel to the award-winning I'm Just Here for
the Food, offers far more than just recipes: Brown provides
a down-to-earth, detailed tribute to the relevance of science to our
daily lives.
The opening chapter of the newer book sets the tone with a quotation
from Einstein and then launches into pithy explanations of the
fundamental concepts needed to understand the technical side of
baking, describing among other things the properties of components
such as proteins, fats, carbohydrates and water. Brown flits from
basic biochemistry to the similarities between eggs and wheat
berries to the workings of chemical leaveners and yeast, and along
the way he peppers the text with piquant one-liners ("I love
cooking with rhubarb because it's poison"). He groups the
recipes by the method used to combine their ingredients. Thus carrot
cake is filed under "the muffin method," but bran muffins
are listed with the cakes under "the creaming method."
Unapologetic for his unorthodox approach, Brown expresses a cool,
take-it-or-leave-it attitude, saying, "Maybe you're not the
kind of person who needs to know how things work, but if you have
your eyeballs on this page, I'm betting that you are." Spoken
like a scientist.—Chris Brodie
THE INFINITE BOOK: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless
and Endless. John D. Barrow. Pantheon Books, $26.
"In mathematics you don't understand things," wrote the
Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann. "You just get used to
them." That's especially true of infinity, a disorienting
concept whose properties have been fascinating and bedeviling
thinkers for millennia. (The ancient symbol of the Ouroboros shown
at right appeared as early as 1600 B.C.) The Infinite Book,
by Cambridge physicist John D. Barrow, makes an entertaining field
guide to this strange animal, spotting infinity and its attendant
conundrums as they pop up in physics, philosophy, theology,
literature and even ethics: How far should we expect to travel
before we find a duplicate Earth? Do positive interest rates prove
that time travelers do not exist? In an infinite universe, does a
good act still "count"?
The whole book is remarkably lucid and not the least mind-boggling.
Barrow, who has lectured at the Vatican about infinity and has even
staged a play about it, clearly loves his subject, and he unpacks
dense theories with the disarming enthusiasm of a learned uncle. He
leavens his discussions with references to Jorge Luis Borges, Johnny
Appleseed, Douglas Adams and Immanuel Kant, and his clear, engaging
style manages to illuminate abstruse matters without patronizing or
oversimplifying. This is a useful guide to an endlessly fascinating
subject.—Greg Ross