The Physics of Superheroes: The Spectacular Second Edition

If the University of Minnesota knew what it was in for in 1988 when the decision was made to hire Dr. James Kakalios to its School of Physics and Astronomy, things may have turned out differently.  Luckily for us, they didn't, and the university recieved even more national attention than usual only decades later when Dr. Kakalios developed a lecture program entitled Everything I Know About Physics I Learned By Reading Comic Books.  This program offered freshmen students a fresh way of looking at physics, and the program has been in place since.
This program led Kakalios to wonder if there were an audience for the cross-genre that is physics and comic books outside of the borders of Minnesota.  This led him to write one of the most complete physics books of all time, The Physics of Superheroes, which is an amazingly entertaining crash coarse of about three simesters worth of physics jam-packed into one of the fastest reads you'll ever make it through.  And I might add, it looks fantastic on my bookshelf next to my comic book character action figures.  Though my Flash action figure refuses to look directly at it, probably because of chapters Four and Twenty-Three.  I won't spoil it for you - I have morals.

The Physics of Superheroes: The Spectacular Second Edition is a follow-up to the book that Discover called one of the best physics books of 2005.  This edition features even more investigations into superheroes and villains, and the physics of their alleged superpowers.  From The Flash's ability to retain traction, no matter his speed, while running up a wall, to Spiderman's most practical, yet sudden, application Newton's second law of motion.

Kakalios makes physics even more entertaining than they already were, and even for those of you without a physics interest, or nerdology, you'll surely find it both entertaining and incredibly educational.  It is also true that, much like The Atom, Dr. James Kakalios is indeed capable of lifting upwards of 5,000 metric tons, so I would suggest you read it or he may be coming for you.

Dr. Kakalios' The Physics of Superheroes: The Spectacular Second Edition gains an easy Five Stars in Nerd Factor and a slightly less easy Five Stars in General Reading.

Undisputed: How to Become a World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps

Non-Fiction Review by C. Allen Thompson

What can I say about Chris Jericho, or his work, that hasn’t already been said?  For that matter, what can I say about Chris Jericho that I haven’t already said?

In Undisputed: How to Become a World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps, Jericho starts exactly where he left off in his previous memoir A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex, which is another book I strongly recommend.  Jericho guides us through the journey of his first run in the World Wrestling Federation, now known as World Wrestling Entertainment, to the kick-start of his music career with his band Fozzy (Jericho playing the character of Moongoose McQueen alongside members of the cult favorite Stuck Mojo) all the way back to his return to WWE, which many argue was as triumphant and entertaining as the first.

One thing I must stress is that you do not have to be a wrestling fan to enjoy Chris Jericho’s books.  In fact, it almost helps if you’re not, because of you were to start off as a wrestling fan, by the end of the book, you may question why you enjoy such a cold-hearted and brutal business.  This is a business that is so cut-throat that it is still run almost exactly as it was in the 1920’s when professional wrestling was nothing more than a carnival act.  Now, sports entertainment is Hollywood, it is mainstream, and it is everywhere, but behind the glitz and glamour, the bright lights and pyrotechnics, it is still, at its heart, a business that will chew you up and spit you out even faster than Hollywood.  That is something from which no amount of in-ring choreography, safety precautions, or wellness policies can save you.  But I digress.

Jericho’s writing style is extremely entertaining, as it ought to be.  Chris is a man with a long history of comedy, not only in wrestling, but also in more mainstream entertainment systems, including being a member of the world famous Groundlings comedy troupe.  His way with words really tends to transcend any wrestlers before him, including a personal favorite of mine, Mick Foley.  A man that Jericho reminds us again and again, throughout both of his books, has never beaten him.  Although, keep in mind, this is purely in jest, as Jericho is also one of the only pro-wrestling authors I’ve read who actually goes out of his way not to bury others.  I cannot say the same for such other vindictive and bury-happy authors as Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan.

This book will have you laughing, sighing, crying, then laughing again, and this cycle repeats itself throughout just about every chapter.  If you are weak of heart, I may suggest you skip any page that reads the name Chris Benoit.  I’m not weak of heart in the slightest, but Chris Jericho brought tears to my eyes three times in this book, as Chris experienced the death of his mother and several of his best friends over the course of the couple of years that are covered in this book.  One of those was, indeed, Chris Benoit, who I’m sure most of you are familiar with, unless you spent all of 2008 under a rock.

Final summation: Chris Jericho is one of two authors to actually leave me in a very uncomfortable position.  This was the fact that I picked his book up one morning, and before I knew it, I was flipping the last page the following morning.  I hadn’t showered, shaved, or eaten in 20 hours, and I swear I had bed sores.  Only one other author has done this to me, and that is Aldous Huxley, who Chris actually mentions in this book.  Huxley did it once, and Jericho has now done it twice.  I look forward to round three of the Chris Jericho memoirs, as well as treating the bed sores that I already know it’s going to inflict upon me.

This is a very, very easy five-star book in Nerd Factor and a four-star book for General Reading.

Nature's Blueprint by Dan Hooper

Non-Fiction Review by C. Allen

“Beauty can be a difficult thing to understand, and an even more difficult thing to define.  Although we all have some idea of what it means for something to be beautiful, it is very hard to put our fingers on the appeal of a beautiful sound, image, or idea.”  This is just a snippet of a long and beautiful passage that acts as a forerunner to a book written by a man whose passion for physics and love for science transcends that of most science authors.

Dan Hooper captures so beautifully not only the wonder of physics, but its incredibly rich history.  Covering such scientific innovators as Heisenberg, Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, Niels Bohr, and many more, Hooper unfolds the amazing history of quantum field theory and particle physics over the last 100+ years.  A slow and grueling process all aimed at defining the built in and unseen mosaic of subatomic particles, energies and vacuums around us all of the time, whether we know about it and understand it or not.

His descriptions and analogies of how these particles work, interact with one another, makeup many other necessary particles and even make up the building blocks of every fermion piece of matter around us, is legible, articulate, and seems, at many times, to transcend a science book, and more resemble a personal autobiography. 

The book mainly revolves around supersymmetry (SUSY), which is a theory of physics relating to masons and baryons (bosons) in the context of hadronic physics.  In essence, supersymmetry relates to elementary particles and their superpartners which differ by one-half unit of spin.  This original theory was the forerunner of our understanding of quarks, antimatter, the resolution of quantum gravity and Einstein’s special theory of relativity, as well as a possible future understanding of dark matter.

Dan Hooper provides analogies, interpretations of all kinds, diagrams, and much more to help the reader better understand these quantum particles which encompass the book, and these devices also make this book a very light read that would be very easy to pick up by anyone unfamiliar with quantum physics, physics, theoretical physics, or even basic science.  I, for one, though I’ve always had a fondness for physics, have always struggled with the concept of antimatter, how it’s created, and quite frankly, where it all is, as our universe consists of mainly matter.  If matter cannot exist without a partnering antimatter, then where is all of it?  Why is our universe almost entirely made up of matter?  Well, now I know the answer, simply because of the way this book is written.

Honestly, I would have to give this book an easy 5-star Nerd Factor, and because of the way it’s written, an easy 5-stars in general.  While Dan Hooper is also the author of Dark Cosmos, this book makes me wish I could master warp drive, allowing me to fly at 99% the speed of light for a couple of years, and return to earth (40 actual years having passed) so that I could read future pieces by this brilliant physicist and beyond-brilliant author.

Critic’s Note:  Dan Hooper is from my home state, but I assure you that this review holds no bias because of this.  While he was born in Cold Spring, Minnesota, he attended college at the University of Wisconsin, which, for further note, actually brought my review down a couple of pegs.