'The Numerati'

"The Numerati," by Stephen Banks, sounds like a DaVinci-code-like story about a powerful, menacing, secret society that manipulates people and circumstances from behind the scenes to achieve its nefarious ends.

In some respects, this is true. Banks has coined the named Numerati to indicate mathematicians and computer scientists who numerically model human behavior, using your online credit card purchases, your supermarket discount cards, your telephone and Internet signatures and your patterns of behavior at work to sell you more products, garner your vote or decide whether you should get a promotion or get fired. Big Brother is not only watching but counting, and you will know that he knows who you are by the popup advertising on your screen as you shop Amazon.com or from the types of coupons the register spits out for you at the grocery store.

But, as Baker points out, knowledge is power on both sides of the one-way mirror: knowing that we are being watched and nudged to do one thing gives us the power to use that knowledge against the Numerati, or in our own favor. Also, mathematical modeling is extremely useful in good causes. For instance, electronic monitoring in the homes of the elderly can keep much better track of fluctuations in oxygen levels, mental acuity and even the water weight gain associated with congestive heart failure (although on at least one occasion the shocking 8-pound weight gain of one woman each night turned out to be her cat on the bed.)

The National Security Administration uses mathematical modeling to track and thwart terrorists, though the computers may be flummoxed by something as small as a name variation common in other cultures but unknown in ours.

In any case, "The Numerati" is fascinating and a bit frightening -- a well-written consideration of why you might want to drive a different way to work every now and then, or buy ginger ale rather than Coke, just to throw "them" off a little.

'Last Days of Old Beijing'

Many Westerners were no doubt bowled over by the power and virtuosity of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, but Michael Meyer gives us an even more beautiful vision of the Olympic city in "The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed."

Meyer first went to China in the '90s as a member of the Peace Corps, and returned as a volunteer ("Teacher Peachblossom") at Coal Lane Elementary. Though Meyer does not think poverty should be perpetuated for the sake of picturesqueness, he mourns the loss of the ancient city's "hutongs," or lanes.

In the Dazhalan neighborhood and at school, Meyer comes to know (as does the reader) The Widow (who worries about his health and well-being); recycler Wang, who would rather be a farmer but can't make a living in his village; and Little Liu, whose hair is pulled up into scrunchies so she "looks like an exclamation point," and who is horrified at the prospect of ghosts taking her away.

Meyer's heartfelt, understated, readable prose gives us a priceless window into a vanishing world, more beautiful in its way than all the spectacle of any Olympic games.

• Laura Wadley is a librarian with the Provo City Library. E-mail her at lauraw@provo.lib.ut.us.