The Bomb. The Weapon that changed the world by Didier Alcatel-Lucent, LF Bollée and Denis Rodier

This book is about "The incredible story of the most disastrous weapon ever invented." This is a non-fiction French comic. Superbly written and drawn. The story, seems to me, structured as a supply chain of intellectual and material contributions that delivered the first atomic bomb. It presents many of the involved scientists, politicians, the military, and more. However, I'd say there is a strong focus on Leo Szilard, a Hungarian American scientist, who developed the concept of nuclear chain reaction. The story is told mainly via a graphic narrative and dialogue but bits of it is narrated by (Mr) Uranium himself. Enjoyed its sarcastic humour. It isn't dense with data but I think it covers the most relevant issues and events.

The Blank Slate. The Modern denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

I admire people who can write books like the Blank Slate. Dense with knowledge, from a variety of disciplines, written and explained so people like me (with no science background) can understand. This book took me a few weeks to read. Yeah. 

The book explains the concept of the Blank Slate, basically the believe (coming from the 17th century more or less) that human beings are born with no knowledge, no innate skills, no mental framework, nothing in our minds. Everything we learn and become is acquired throughout our interactions with the environment: society, culture, etc. Pinker goes to explain all the philosophical, societal, economic implications of that belief. 

After that Pinker goes to explain, biology, evolution, psychology, and other areas of scientific knowledge to dissect tiny bit by tiny bit our brains, our minds, our behaviour how and to what extent we could be “programmed” to survive in this world. Human Nature actually exists. How come can we learn a language (any language depending on where we are born), its basic rules and vocabulary just by listening to adults? Our brains must have evolved to master a language. Brains must have some sort of mechanism that makes us learn languages. But we are not born knowing them. There are dozens of examples better than the language one in the book which explain how we are not born empty. 

The book ends with discussions on 5 Moral Debates which are rooted on the Blank Slate – Human Nature debate: Politics, Violence Gender, Children and The Arts. This last one with a critique of Postmodernism and references to 1984, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and more. A nice quote: "education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn how to walk, talk, recognise objects or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding or remembering dates in history." 

Great Read. Long but great!