The very first item one of my readers ever purchased off of my wish list for me was the penultimate geek book The Physics of Christmas. That was over two years ago and I promised to write a review of it once I had finished reading it, but somehow never got around to it. Still, better late than never so here we are.

Despite my being an atheist I still enjoy the secular aspects and pagan rituals that make up the holiday commonly known as Christmas and being a major geek myself the natural appeal a book like this one holds for me should be pretty obvious. It’s written by scientist Roger Highfield who may be familiar to folks in the United Kingdom as the science editor for The Daily Telegraph and he manages to take some rather complex ideas and apply them to various aspects of Christmas using language that most folks should be able to understand. Despite the title, Highfield touches on a number of different scientific fields and how they apply to Christmas with discussions on such things as Santa And Those Reindeer (history and psychology) in chapter 2 where he discusses the origins of Santa and why we continue to embrace him to Christmas Spirit (biology and chemistry) in chapter 9 which deals with alcoholic drinks, their relation to the holiday, and how they affect you when you drink them.

You’ll probably be surprised at how much mileage you can get out of taking a scientific look at various aspects of this holiday—I know I was—though in retrospect that’s mainly because we apply science in our day-to-day lives all the time without really thinking about it. A good example would be Highfield’s discussion on the thermodynamics involved in cooking a holiday meal of turkey and plum pudding. Approximate cooking times in a cookbook are based in part on an understanding of thermodynamics and chemistry, but instead of just being a lesson in these two topics Highfield manages to work in the history on what makes up a traditional meal depending on what part of the world you live in and how things such as turkey came to be associated with the holiday. In fact, he manages to bring all manner of aspects from different sciences to bear on the topics he’s examining and it makes for quite a fascinating read if you’re a science junky like I tend to be.

Of course the chapter a lot of folks will find the most enjoyable will be chapter 11: Santa’s Science. Here Highfield turns his sights to one of the figureheads of the holiday and just how it is that he manages to accomplish his astonishing feats all in a single evening’s time. With a tongue planted firmly in his cheek he examines the challenges Santa faces in visiting so many households within such a short time period, how he manages to avoid generating sonic booms when traveling at such high speeds (which would surely wake the children), how he overcomes the G forces that would be generated as he flew, etcetera and he does so by applying plausible, though largely hypothetical, science to the issues. Not that travel alone is Santa’s only hurdle as he must have some means of knowing where the children he’s delivering to live and whether they’ve been good or bad. The chapter doesn’t answer all of these questions—in fact it serves as a great lesson on how huge an accomplishment Santa’s yearly undertaking really is—but it does make for an entertaining read and is a great introduction into some of the more esoteric fields of study.

Whether you’ll enjoy this book will depend largely on how much interest you have in science and/or history as well as the holiday itself. If you’re not a fan of Christmas or you’re not particularly excited by scientific explanations for things you might take for granted then chances are you won’t find this a particularly compelling read. If you’re anything like me and find such things to really get your geek mojo working then you’ll probably enjoy this book as much as I did. It may not help you cook your turkey perfectly at the next holiday, but at least you’ll have a better understanding of why it turned out as dry as the Sahara desert.

Special thanks to The Laughing Muse for purchasing this book for me so long ago. I promise to be more timely with reviews of any items you might purchase for me in the future.

I regard Mark Twain as one of my personal heroes mainly due to the many amazing talks and essays he penned throughout his career in addition to the novels he’s most famous for. A lot of my views on life, people, and what it means to be a good man have been influenced by Twain’s writings. He’s definitely someone I’d travel back in time for the opportunity to meet and chat with if it were possible, and with this DVD it kind of is possible.

Actor Hal Holbrook has been portraying Mark Twain since his college days taking his show on the road at the age of 29 and then continuing to perform the show throughout a long and busy career in both film and TV. At one point he even performed for President Eisenhower and he still tours the country performing his one man show as Twain to this day.

This DVD was particularly interesting to me for several reasons: First, I had never seen Hal Holbrook’s show in its entirety, though I’ve long known that it’s probably what he’s best known for. Second, this particular CBS special was performed and recorded a mere five months before I was born in 1967 so watching it was, as I said, kind of like going back in time in more ways than one. Third, I’ve long heard of how convincing Holbrook is in his portrayal of Twain due to his years of study and research on what Twain was like and what he wrote. Indeed, watching this DVD it was very easy to forget that the man I was watching was not Twain himself and the illusion was only broken during the occasional extreme closeups where you could recognize Holbrook’s face underneath the makeup. Holbrook is said to have memorized upwards of 14 hours of Twain’s original writings and the show he puts on consists entirely of Twain’s words, though Holbrook modifies his selections based on the times and the issues of the day making each show seem different. One of the more amazing things about this DVD is the fact that everything in it holds up well 37 years later and still feels as relevant and insightful today as it probably did back in 1967, or back when Twain originally wrote the words himself.

The quality of the recording does vary throughout the show, but considering the age and the media of the time period it’s been cleaned up remarkably well. The audio can get a little fuzzy in some segments, but overall it’s probably better than should be expected all things considered. The DVD doesn’t have much in the way of extras and launches straight into the show without pausing at a menu. The only extras included are a small text-only bio on Hal Holbrook and a list of all the awards he’s received over the years for his portrayal of Twain. It would have been nice to see more supplemental material. Perhaps something involving Hal speaking on his many years of performing as Twain could have been done.

Still, the show itself is amazing and is a must see for any fan of Mark Twain who wonders what it might have been like to see him during his time touring the country as an orator. The next time Holbrook brings his act to town I’m going to have to make arrangements to see it.