By DRIES BRUNT, ROB HOFMEYR & NIGEL WILLIS
Stories From The Touchline by Theuns Stofberg
Burning Angels by Bear Grylls
Get Up! Stand Up! by Mark Heywood
Are Numbers Real? The Uncanny Relationships Between Maths And The Physical World by Brian Clegg
Many of us have a mental Hall of Fame in which feature the great players of one of the other most cherished South African games – rugby. Mannetjies Roux has been eternalised by the song sung by Laurika Rauch, but all of us remember others that made us proud in provincial games and international contests. Theuns Stofberg, himself featuring in our memories, relates his story, on and off the field. Locker room stories, team talks, incidents, coaches, great players, great games, training, the glory of winning a game and the lessons learned from losing, cash payments, sacrifices, the honour of playing for a famous side, from schoolday rugby to the top – Theuns tells us all about rugby in the amateur days. Stories From The Touchline helps fans relive the past and shows how much personal sacrifice the players were willing to put into their game, earning our respect and thanks for the great times we’ve enjoyed as spectators. – DB
Burning Angels is an exciting version of an apocalypse threatening humanity. A WWII Nazi extermination plan is revitalised by a small but highly effective group of fanatics. Opposing them is an equally effective SWAT team moving in with a 007 ‘license to kill’ approach to save humanity from this atrocious murder plan. The soldiers are hunters and killers with a burning passion to fight evil wherever they encounter it – the ‘burning angels’. In passing, they eliminate a poacher gang in the African bush. The story swings from South America to Cuba, Germany, England and Africa. The plot is rich with dangerous and unusual exploits with uncertain outcomes. This is a fantasy tale with a large variety of situations that make it unusual and highly improbable, but very readable. I loved it. – DB
Mark Heywood is a well-known campaigner for social justice in a range of fields. Best known for the Treatment Action Campaign and the successful fight for ARVs, he has entered the lists in Section27, seeking justice inter alia in the schooling system, the Unite Against Corruption, the Zuma Must Fall, and the Save South Africa organisations. He is a formidable thinker, writer, speaker and organiser and what is remarkable is that he is British by birth and educated at Oxford University. Get Up! Stand Up! is his personal account of how he came to be who he is, involved in South African causes, dedicated to justice in this country. As the title suggests, he is calling on the apathetic and politically indolent to stand up and be counted. He puts South African-born citizens to shame, but also points to ways to think differently and to become involved in significant ways. The narrative of his childhood (partly in Botswana), his schooling and his early awakening to important political issues all make for fascinating reading. He is remarkably frank about himself – and insightful. A powerful intellect in a powerful personality, later enhanced by his academic career at Oxford: the reader senses a breadth of knowledge. Heywood became passionately involved in South African issues and he gives a detailed, highly readable account of the people he worked with, the people he confronted and the political and legal minefields he had to negotiate. There are wonderful case studies for any activist. The only part of the book that does not resonate with me is the section on obligation and involvement. There is no formula we can all follow. Management gurus write textbooks which propose formulae, but powerful personalities often do not understand how big a part their own charisma, in the broad sense of the word, plays in their successful careers. That is no excuse to not become more deeply aware of the challenges and the part that individuals can play in meeting those challenges. We need not look for causes which will make headlines. We can all become involved in alleviating social injustice and meeting the needs of the disempowered. – RH
Mathematicians and ordinary lay readers alike will enjoy Are Numbers Real? The Uncanny Relationships Between Maths and the Physical World. It is written by a Cambridge educated physicist and mathematician in the style of a motivational speaker, which the author, Brian Clegg, is. He points out that the numbers appearing on our bank statements are, for most practical purposes, real enough. Although the book could have been subtitled A Brief History of Maths, Clegg, without doing so directly, nevertheless poses a big question with which most students of theology have to deal: does mathematics have the quality of ‘discovery’ or rather ‘invention’? How one answers this question may be a good predictor of whether one believes in God or not. Does mathematics give access to the ‘mind of God’ or is it merely a tool of human invention that assists us in our manipulations of the material world? Clegg never quite answers the question, but he gives the reader much to think about. He makes it clear that there is more to mathematics than mere ‘stamp collecting’ – to use famous imagery that he repeats several times over. He reminds us that, without mathematics, trade, investment, pyramids, cathedrals, multi-storey buildings, dams, aqueducts, sewerage systems, musical compositions for symphonies and concertos, navigation, aviation, space travel, insurance and computers (and much else besides) would not be possible. He also makes it clear why education in mathematics is so important for all of us, even if we do not use it directly all that often: it trains the mind to think in terms of patterns that are indispensable in our world today. Mathematics, beyond arithmetic, demands huge quantum leaps in thinking that have required true genius before these were made accessible to us. Up to a certain level, ordinary people can, with training of the mind, learn how to use them. The mathematics of relativity and quantum theory are at a very different level. Even Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist, had to enlist the assistance of professional mathematicians to express his ideas of relativity in mathematical terms. Clegg suggests that mathematics in this realm is intelligible to about one percent of the population. This means that in the United Sates of Americas about 2.5 million people and, in South Africa, about 500 000 people, are intellectually ‘at home’ with these kind of equations. Here I must disagree with him. The figure is likely to be much lower. Clegg’s dealing with relativity is masterful. His account of Galileo’s conundrum concerning the spinning of a coin, or other valuable object, up in the air from a rowing boat is unforgettable. It took several hundred years before it could be explained why it would not land in the water behind the boat. Ever wondered why we counts seconds and minutes in increments of 60 or measure angles by reference to a base of 60? Read the book. Much of the information in it is not merely fun but also intellectually humbling. The book is written in a style that is easy to read. It can easily be finished during a long-haul flight. – NW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”default_sidebar”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
