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Ups
and Downs A
MATTER OF DEGREES: What Temperature Reveals
A single word kept filtering through my mind as I curled up with Gino SegrĖs A Matter of Degrees, and that recurring word was companionable. Now Ill be the first to admit that companionable is not a word typically associated with scientific histories penned by theoretical physicists, but A Matter of Degrees is no ordinary history of science. It is a personable, entertaining, even chatty booka book that ponders all aspects of life through the prism of temperature, a novel and clever conceit. Fevers, thermodynamics, the greenhouse effect, underwater Smokers, neutrinos, the Big Bang, black holes, superconductivity, even Einsteins patent for a refrigeratorits all right here in these pages, strung along on a thread of inquiry that can always be traced back to temperature. Through it all SegrĖ is never less than a cheerful, mostly plainspoken guide. From the very outset he wants his readers to know who he is and why science as a discipline delights him. Im a physicist, he writes. When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them Im in the family business. My brother is a physicist, my nephew is one, lots of cousins are, my uncle received the Nobel Prize in physics, my wifes father was a well-known German physicist, and her sister is married to an even more famous Viennese physicist. Throughout the book, SegrĖ makes his presence knownmarveling at the mysteries of our planet, our bodies, and the greater universe; expressing genuine appreciation for the unanswerable questions that still confront us; taking small detours into the lives of such scientists as Galileo, Carnot, Cavendish, Bohr, and Gamow, whose personal histories unabashedly enchant him. He confides a sentimental fondness for how heat emanates from the Sun. He conveys the thrill of scientific method, dwelling, in many instances, on how the tools of the discovery process were intuited and fashioned, helping us see the marvelous contraptions that have been sent to the bottom of the sea or out beyond our stratosphere. SegrĖ, in other words, wants us to look upon the world the way he has learned to look upon it, to catch his contagious enthusiasm. He is a grand synthesizer, weaving together early John Updike poems, passages from E.O. Wilson, his own work in astronomy, textbook principles, personal biography, and humor. He can go pages without making real reference to temperature, but he always managesat times heroicallyto return to his narrative thread. SegrĖ does a particularly good job at explaining phenomena that have implications for the way we live now and the future of our planet. His pages on the greenhouse effect are especially illuminating. Weve all read about global warming, but I dont remember ever reading a passage that made so abundantly clear just how complicated the whole cause-and-effect equation is:
A Matter of Degrees is a book in which one discovers that birds get fevers, that 300 tons of extraterrestrial rock (mostly minimized to dust particles) fall upon the Earth each day, and that the hydrothermal vents called Smokers convey ore from deep inside the Earth to the ocean floor, among other things. It is a book that explains El NiŅo and the disappearance of dinosaurs, a book that paints a portrait of the beginning of life and suggests how this struggling but still oceanic planet might someday be returned to ashes. It is a book that is more conversational than poignant, more straight-shooting than poetic, more akin to settling in with Discover magazine than hunkering down with a ream of scientific data. And always, always, theres that no small issue of temperature, always SegrĖ returns to argue his point that temperature is not simply as important, in the pantheon of measures, as time and lengthit might indeed be the most defining player:
A temperature gradient shaped our solar systems eight planets: the
four inner ones are small, dense, and rocky and the outer four are large
and gaseous, he writes at one point. Temperature determined each planets
size and composition at birth and continues to influence their evolution.
Temperatures ups and downs have shaped and reshaped Earths surface,
often destroying life and just as often stimulating its rebirth. Beth Kepharts work appears in The New York Times, Washington Post Book World, Chicago Tribune, Book magazine, and elsewhere. Flowing
Earth CANT
BE SATISFIED:
This was the blues, this was rock n roll. Stylistic mutations werent passed on in genealogical succession, but flowed into and against each other, folded upon themselves, like the delta tributaries after which Waters himself was named. Gordon is acutely aware of this process, and Cant Be Satisfied churns along with buoyancy and swiftness; prow to stern, its a very tight ship. But aquatic metaphors seem, appropriately, less solid than those of the earth. Watersborn into cotton, with the name McKinley Morganfieldwas rooted in it, even when rambling like the rolling stone of his song. His was a youth at the plow. In a letter to Lomax after their homegrown recording session, Waters inquired about his cuts: Want to know did they take. He was, as Gordon observes, using the language he knewhis songs were like a seed taking to the ground. Its no indulgence to say that without Waters, what we know of Chicago bluesand much of rockwould never have come to pass. Gordon refers to him early on as a perfect crux, an embodiment of the sharecroppers rural past and the migrants urban future, and with all the pliancy of a man in deep transition. In the seven years between recordings of I Cant Be Satisfied, Waters had left the Stovall Plantation in Coahoma County and moved to fathomless Chicagowhere he had quickly found a home, formed a band, and brought a country touch to the newfangled electric guitar. But as Gordon gracefully reminds us, Waters never divested himself of the sharecroppers slouch. He left the Stovalls only to indenture himself to the Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, who ran a record label on the South Side. Their business relationship was by no means purely exploitative, but neither was it fair. What it was, was familiar. Gordon explains: Muddy had made a life in the plantation South. He played guitar, ran a bar, drove a car. His pockets jingle-jangled with silver and scrip. Muddy not only sought a relationship with the boss man, but was sheltered by it. It was how he lived. In short, Waters had found not only a label but a family. Ill be with Chess as long as theres a Chess in the company, he said, when the organization changed hands in the late-1960s. His good faith would ultimately lead to financial abuse and, once Waters finally acquired a manager, legal recourse. Gordon outlines these developments with a sharp stylus, combining an eye for detail with an ear for compelling language. The former gives this book its heft; the latter, its heart. Both qualities are evident as Gordon examines the grainy particulars of Waters life that have, for many years, deferred to the powers of myth. A prominent example occurs on the books first page. Throughout his life, Waters maintained that his story began in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, on April 4, 1915; here we learn that he actually came into the world in the next county, at the more obscure Jugs Corner, two years prior. Gordon coyly notes: He thus became a man born in a year he wasnt born in, from a town where he wasnt born, carrying a name he wasnt born with. Given the fact that Muddy was a name bestowed by his grandmother, theres no compelling reason to believe that any of these inventions was Waters idea. (Waters was also imparted rather than chosen, by friends and bandmates.) Still, the urge to peg McKinley Morganfield as a shadow image, one degree away from himself, is irresistible. Gordon does resist this urge, in most instances, by filling in the blanks. The portrait that emerges is complex and flesh-toned. And when Gordon occasionally drives too far afieldimagining an undocumented conversation, or resorting to excessively colorful language to describe a songthe results are less harmful than distracting, and his narrative rolls on with just the slightest of bumps. Waters, as Gordon describes him, was no saint. And it turns out that nobody would argue this point. The bluesman left behind a trail of outside women, illegitimate children, and bruised and broken hearts; one of his offspring, the blues guitarist Big Bill Morganfield, comes across in these pages as still emotionally raw. Waters true granddaughter Cookie, who raised several of his other grandchildren from an extramarital affair, sounds hardened when she says: I always think about Muddys song, Im a Man. When hed sing that song, he really meant it. (She goes on to opine that he was not a nice person.) More forgivingly, Waters cousin Elve Morganfield remarks: Muddy was a good guy, but he was a man. He said that in his song. Muddy loved women. Just like any other man, you supposed to love a woman. But you aint supposed to try to have all of em.
The objective nature of Gordons reportage collides happily with his
enthusiasm for the music, and devotees of the blues will be happy to
see that his appendices and end notes comprise a dense but breezy 120
pages. Within the main body of the text, he provides just the right
amount of information about Waters influences (Robert Johnson, Son
House), family members (and mistresses), bandmates (some of whom, like
Otis Spann, were closer than family), and stylistic descendants (like
Keith Richards, who contributes a brief foreword). Gordon is unflinching
about Waters aesthetic as well as personal shortcomingshis work ethic,
it seems, pales in comparison to chief rival Howlin Wolf. The biographer
puts much stock in the notion of a personality forged in the Delta;
theres a reason the book is prefaced by a Cormac McCarthy inscription
which suggests, in part, that weathers and seasons that form a land
form also the inner fortunes of men. But against this pretense of predestination,
Gordon argues that through Muddy, the blues became a music of hopenot
just escape. What had been the music of oppression became the music
of liberation. Nate Chinen C97 lives in New York. His writing appears regularly in Philadelphia City Paper, JazzTimes, and Downbeat. He profiled avant-garde pianist-composer Uri Caine C81 in the January/February 2001 Gazette. Briefly
Noted
MOTHERING
DAUGHTERS: Novels and the Politics of Family Romance, Frances Burney
to Jane Austen
INDEPENDENCE HALL IN AMERICAN MEMORY
TO THE DIGITAL AGE:
BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN:
GUIDE TO THE ETRUSCAN AND ROMAN WORLDS:
READING THE LINES:
THE HYDRANGEA PEOPLE
WRITING FOR REAL:
FAITH IN POLITICS
THE COMPLETE IDIOTS GUIDE TO DANGEROUS DISEASES AND EPIDEMICS
STOWE:
Classic New England
MEDICINE UNDER SAIL
HUMAN ECOLOGY: Following Natures Lead
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