I was a highly impressed freshman meteorology student when I first met the dean of Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Charles Hosler. He regaled us with stories from when he was a professor of meteorology in the 1950s and 60s, conducting then-cutting-edge experiments in weather modification. He confessed that if it rained after an experiment, it was tremendously difficult to tell if was due to the experiment, or it would have rained anyway! So the experiments were abandoned, but not before he had aroused fierce opposition from local farmers who attributed everything they didn’t like about the weather to him and Penn State—even accusing the university of flying a black airplane at night to seed the clouds when no one would notice. Once he was even shot at.
Dean Hosler, as I knew him, died last November at the age of 99. Today, I attended the Celebration of Charles Hosler’s Penn State Life and Legacy on campus, in the building that used to house the weather tower on the eighth floor when I was a student (and which is connected to what is now named the Hosler Building).
In the college’s announcement of his passing, it noted that “Hosler was one of the early titans of weather forecasting. He created one of the first television weather shows when he started broadcasting weather forecasts from Penn State in 1957, with a goal of providing more accurate weather forecasts for Pennsylvanians.”
Dr. Hosler received many awards for his research and administrative excellence over his long career. After serving 20 years as dean of the Earth and Mineral Sciences College, he became Penn State’s senior vice president for research and the dean of the Graduate School, and acting executive vice president and provost before retiring in 1992. I was glad to have been inspired by his example and earn my degree under his leadership in the atmospheric sciences.
The most impactful book to me in 2023 was one I wrote with my wife Carol and our youngest son. Stepping Stones: our pathfinding adventures with Asperger’s is our growth journey from accepting “that’s just Philip,” to obtaining a diagnosis on the autism spectrum, to learning how to cope and still succeed. From the distinct advantage of countless wayfinding steps more than 20 years in the making, we offer pragmatic guidance, self-help encouragement, and real reason for hope to all parents and caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder. tinyurl.com/4c6bxw4s
I try to read widely, for both intellectual development and entertainment. Not all my choices pertain directly to my work, or even my personal interests. Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, recommended to me by my physicist son, wasn’t one I’d have chosen on my own, but it did augment what I learned from the Oppenheimer film this year. Even fiction, when it represents a divergent point of view, can add to my useful stores of knowledge. Ilana’s Love, a book by my friend (which, despite the inference from its title is not a romance novel—a genre I usually do ignore!), furnished a thought-provoking perspective on relationships.
I re-read all 4,100 pages of the 7-volume Harry Potter series, (the first published 26 years ago!) enjoying many details and nuances not found in the films. J.K. Rowling is a master of originality, dialog, character development, and plot complexities.
Is it just me, or are subtitles are getting longer all the time? But then there’s John Grisham, whose obviously successful title formula is: “The __.” Nonetheless, the subtitles do help me better remember the content afterward.
The complete list of those I’ve read last year follows, but here are my personal citations for those I’ve found most captivating, memorable, or practical in the following categories:
Work-related:Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need Biography:Leonardo da Vinci History: The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush Science:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Nonfiction: Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home Business:Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry’s Spiritual:Experiencing God Day by Day Fiction: What Rose Forgot, and The Man Who Died Twice
Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?, Philip Yancy
Storytizing: What’s Next After Advertising? Bob Pearson
The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush, Pierre Berton
The Freedom of Self-Forgiveness: The Path to True Christian Joy, Timothy Keller
A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks, Brad Edmundson
Black Ice, Brad Thor
The Case For Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection, Lee Strobel
The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Seeing Red, Sandra Brown
Jerks at Work: How to Deal with People Problems and Problem People, Ken Lloyd
Born a Yankee, Grace Carstens
Missing Witness, Gordon Campbell
Ilana’s Love, Laurel West
Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, Piers Paul Read
Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado with Vince Rause
The Book of Lies, Brad Meltzner
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World, Ken Alder
Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel
Reliquary, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
What Rose Forgot, Nevada Barr
Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry’s, Brad Edmundson
The Book of Fate, Brad Meltzner
Once Upon a Wardrobe, Patti Callahan
Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Patti Callahan
What’s Wrong With Me? A Journal of Emotional Healing in a Broken World, Royce Alan Alford
Leonardo da Vinci, Wallter Isaacson
Stepping Stones: Our pathfinding adventure with Asperger’s, Tim and Carol Herd with Philip Herd
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, Henry Beston
13½, Nevada Barr
Love Me, Garrison Keillor
Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, Alex Wellerstein
Address Unknown, Katherine Kressman Taylor
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer
The Judge’s List, John Grisham
The Troop, Nick Cutter
The Whistler, John Grisham
The Reckoning, John Grisham
What Was Rescued, Jane Bailey
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
Molly’s Pilgrim, Barba Cohen
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
The Bullet That Missed, Richard Osman
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
Getting Through the Tough Stuff: It’s Always Something, Charles Swindoll
Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need, Todd Henry
The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman
Experiencing God Day by Day, Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby
I recently learned quite a bit about the self-taught polymath and world-renown genius Leonardo da Vinci, in an excellent biography by Walter Isaacson.
In it I discovered that Leonardo was the illegitimate firstborn son of Piero, in a long line of Florentine notaries. He lived with his birth mother and was apprenticed to the artist Verrocchio in Florence. He was a dandy dresser, favoring rose-colored robes. He was a disdaining contemporary of Michaelangelo (“He paints like a sculptor”), a friend of Nicolo Macchiavelli, and spent the better part of his life seeking patronage from provincial rulers to do the things he wanted to do. He earned a reputation for not finishing works, preferring instead to follow his interests, rather than his commissions.
As an artist, da Vinci is famous for his ability to convey lifelike motion with emotion in his subjects, and as the painter of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa masterpieces. But his insatiable curiosity and keen observations led to many innovative concepts in art, entertainment, nature, science, geometry, architecture, urban design, engineering, hydraulics, and anatomy, to name just several.
How many other artists do you know who dissect cadavers to learn first-hand what muscles control movements in their subjects? He studied the actual mechanisms that transmit emotions into facial expressions. On one sheet of the ever-present notebooks he clipped to his robes is an anatomical sketch of a pair of lips that seem to suggest a just a hint of a mysterious smile, which resurfaced in his most famous portrait.
But what fascinates me about his anatomical studies is his intuitive leap to connect what he observed in natural stream flow with the internal biological workings of the human heart. Informed by his love of hydraulic engineering, fluid dynamics, and his fascination with swirls and eddies, he made a discovery about the aortic valve that was not fully appreciated for centuries. In 1510, he correctly concluded in that eddies in the blood in the widened section of the aorta were responsible for closing the valve it just passed through.
The common view, which was held by most heart specialists for another 450 years, was that the valve was pushed shut from above once enough blood had rushed into the aorta and began to back up. Most other valves work that way, closing when the flow begins to reverse. But in the 1960s, a team of medical researchers at Oxford used dyes and radiography methods to observe blood flows. The experiments showed that the valve required “a fluid dynamic control mechanism which positions the cusps away from the wall of the aorta, so the slightest reversed flow will close the valve.” That mechanism, they realized, was the vortex of swirling blood that Leonardo had discovered in the aorta root.
In 1991, the Carolina Heart Institute showed how closely the Oxford experiments resembled the ones Leonardo had described in his notebooks. And in 2014, another Oxford team was able to study blood flow in a living human, using magnetic resonance techniques, to prove conclusively that Leonardo was right.
Despite his ground-breaking discoveries and insightful futuristic fancies, Leonardo seemed motivated to accumulate knowledge for its own sake, rather than to be recognized as a scholar or to influence history. He largely left his trove of treatises unpublished. Over the years, and even centuries, his discoveries had to be rediscovered by others. Isaacson concludes, “The fact that he didn’t publish served to diminish his impact on the history of science. But it didn’t diminish his genius.”
I highly recommend the book: you’ll be amazed at the scope of da Vinci’s work, and perhaps, like me, inspired to be more curious and observant.
I have a standing personal rule: Always Bring a Book!
Whenever I break it, I’m inevitably sorry.
Books are important to me: in them I find distilled wisdom, practical instruction, and engrossing entertainment. They customize my intellectual, psychological, and spiritual development; they build my technical and relational capabilities; they expand my leadership and service; they refresh my mind and spirit.
In 2022, my wife, son and I wrote a book about the challenges, lessons and adventures in raising our youngest son with Asperger’s Syndrome, which will be published this coming year.
I try to read widely. Not all my choices pertain directly to my job, or my personal interests. Invisible Women opened my eyes and mind to systemic male-based data bias. Even fiction, when it represents a divergent point of view, can add to my useful stores of knowledge. Case in point for this year: The Personal Librarian, based on the true story of a black woman passing as a white woman in the employ of J.P. Morgan in the early 1900s.
The complete list follows, but here are my personal citations for those I’ve found most captivating, memorable, or practical in the following categories:
Work-related:CEO Excellence; Critical Thinking; Extreme Ownership Biography: Frederick Douglass; An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth History: The First Conspiracy: The Plot to Kill George Washington Iconic/Classic:Travels with Charley in Search of America Fiction:Where the Crawdads Sing; West With Giraffes; The Personal Librarian Science:Humble Pi; Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds Societal:Invisible Women; Untrustworthy Thriller:Boar Island Humor:The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach Spiritual: The Hole in Our Gospel by personal friends:Super Powers and Secrets; Crushed and Marred; Stand; People Connectors
Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull
Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World, Matt Parker
Super Powers and Secrets: A Year of Holidays, H. Kaeppel
Crushed and Marred: A Year of Milestones, H. Kaepple
Stand: A Year of Firsts, H. Kaeppel
The Itty Bitty Book of Nonprofit Fundraising, Jayme Dingler
The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected, Nik Ripken
Golden Girl, Elin Hilderbrand
Flashback, Nevada Barr
Trees & Forests of America, Tim Palmer
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, David W. Blight
Sold on a Monday, Kristina McMorris
The Hole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard P. Feynman
The Gift of Asperger’s: One Family’s Persevering Adventure of Hope, Humor, Insight and Inspiration, Tim Herd, Carol Herd, and Philip Herd
A Time for Mercy, John Grisham
Historic Acadia National Park: The Stories Behind One of America’s Great Treasures, Catherine Schmidt
Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World, Ian Wright
Girl Behind the Red Rope, Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker
Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, W. Bernard Carlson
The Escape Artist, Brad Melzner
People Connectors: Elevating Communication for Educators, Terry Sumerlin
The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, Brad Meltzner and Josh Mensch
We Seven, by the Astronauts Themselves, Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, Slayton
What Happened to the Bennetts, Lisa Scottoline
The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach, Professor Peter Schickele
Wait, What? And Life’s Other Essential Questions, James Ryan
High Country, Nevada Barr
Hard Truth, Nevada Barr
Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, Volker Ullrich
Endangered Species, Nevada Barr
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Everything, Col. Chris Hadfield
Blind Descent, Nevada Barr
Immanuel’s Veins, Ted Dekker
Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction – and Get it Published, Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez
The Lost Key, Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison
Burn, Ted Dekker and Erin Healy
The Whole Town’s Talking, Fannie Flagg
Acadia National Park, Bob Thayer
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders From the Rest, Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra
Burn, Nevada Barr
The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard
Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism, Temple Grandin
Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create Like and Inventor, Temple Grandin
The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, John Ortberg
Boar Island, Nevada Barr
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life, Richard Paul and Linda Elder
The Rope, Nevada Barr
A Man Called Ova, Fredrik Backman
The Personal Librarian, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community, Bonnie Kristian
Send: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus, Heather Holleman and Ashley Holleman
West With Giraffes, Lynda Rutledge
Dr. Rick Will See You Now: A Guide to Unbecoming Your Parents, Dr. Rick
Travels With Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck
