5 comments about The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

1. boring. Even if you're fascinated by the Wright brothers. That's because the author writes less about the Wrights (who are interesting) than about himself (unbelievably dull). Pretentious junk. Skip it.



2. I lived in Dayton, Ohio, for three years during the late 1960s. I appreciate the nostalgia and reverence Noah Adams captures in his description of Dayton and of the Wright Brothers' exploits.
   
   I remember the huge bombers taking off from Wright-Pat airbase, their somber mission and the fear of nuclear war always a palpable emotion in those years.
   
   Adams captures both the essence of the Wright family and its influence on the world. I never had a chance to see their Oakwood home, but Adams let me feel the ambiance each room in their house and the dynamics between the two brothers and their family.
   
   The visitation of Adams to Kitty Hawk and to Hawthorne Hill accentuates the intensity of those first flights. The added photographs of these historic moments intensifies their importance.
   
   What I would give to have been there in France or in New York harbor when that old-fashioned airplane swooped by.
   
   Larry Rochelle, author of DUST DEVILS, SIREN SORCERY, GULF GHOST and BLUE ICE.



3. This biography on the Wrights is a confused mess. Adams tells the story by visitng locations where the Wrights made history, but during these travels we learn more about his modern day random encounters than what the Wrights actually did there. Adams goes on for pages about capturing moths, a boy and his heroic dog, and other such tales which have nothing to do with the Wrights.
   
   This biography also neglects describe the Wrights childhood and what might have made them the brilliant engineers they became. The book really focuses on everything after the Kitty Hawk flight. This is its biggest strength in describing how they traveled the world to show everyone their flying machine, including moments of triumph and tragedy.
   
   The book finds down by focussing on the Wrights' sisters love affair. I got the feeling that the author felt their needed to be a romance somewhere in the book, and since the Wrights were more focussed on machines than women that he needed to waste our time with this barely relevant affair.



4. This is a great little book. You follow along as Adams revisits many of the places where the Wright Brothers went. Just like any such visitor, he revels in the little things he finds that match up with some bit of the legend, like finding a building where they stayed; or the hospital where Orville was laid up after the first fatal crash. He also finds evidence of the huge impact Wilbur made in France where he was hailed as a hero. Who'd have thought there was a "Wilbur Street" in France?

   No, this is no substitute for those blow-by-blow accounts of each innovation, but it fills in the gaps and adds some chronolgy that others lack. For example, he mentions how Orville's crash happened while Wilbur was in Europe, and how long it had been since Orville had last flown.

   This is a fine book, and if you've ever gone on your own trek to try and get a sense of history by "being there", you won't be able to put it down.




5. The problem with Noah Adams's book is an inability to decide what it wants to be. A Wright Brothers biography? No. A personal memoir? Not really. A Wright Brothers Greatest Hits visit to places intimately connected with their lives? Not that either, although The Flyers certainly has some characteristics of all those three possibilities. While well-written, the book fails to capture the brothers, not really a surprising flaw since they are long dead, their contemporaries are long dead and the Brothers didn't leave much in the way of a written account of their lives. The characters who come most back to life here are their father Bishop Wright and, especially, their lovely and patient sister Katharine. And they breathe on the page precisely because Adams draws frequently and well from their journals and letters. Adams is also good when writing of the places the Wright Brothers flew, such as the Outer Banks of North Carolina and New York. Each chapter starts with a title page photograph and many of them are rare treasures, at least as evocative as Adams's text. One minor annoyance -- the Wrights were famously solitary and family-centered, so the frequent interludes where Adams imagines himself exchanging small talk and daily observations with the Wilbur and Orville ring jarringly untrue.

1 comments about Making Genes, Making Waves: A Social Activist in Science.

1. An intelligent, clearly written book by Harvard microbiologist and social activist Jon Beckwith. He describes his eventful life in science and activism, and makes some interesting points about the nature of science: "the actual practice of science is a human endeavor with the flaws and virtues of any human activity." He emphasizes the importance of ethics in science, and says that scientists and non-scientists must work together for science to help mankind, and not be used unwisely. I knew Beckwith years ago when I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and wish him well with the book.

5 comments about Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (Living Philosophers Volume 7).

1. In spite of his lasting fame and eminence, Albert Einstein remains largely misunderstood by most of us to this day. Yet it's not for lack of trying. His presence is ubiquitous in high school math classrooms throughout the United States, where he is often depicted on glossy posters as an old man amid the stars with e=mc2 hovering nearby. Most children eventually learn that Einstein and his famous equation are the reason we have atomic bombs. Beyond that, they know next to nothing.
   
   But "Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist" edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp can change all that, provided one makes the effort. After the introduction and preface the book opens with Einstein's "Autobiographical Notes," written in German at the age of 67. We may read both the German text and English translation on the facing pages, and compare the two, which I often did, especially with difficult passages. And there are some "difficult passages" to be sure.
   
   The next section contains a series of essays by Einstein's esteemed colleagues and contemporaries. Among them are Wolfgang Pauli, Max Born, Niels Bohr, Kurt Godel, Gaston Bachelard and others of equal stature. Some contributors disagree with Einstein's position on statistical quantum theory, Max Born in particular. Others tackle the epistemological issues of their time, illuminating subtle philosophical considerations that quickened the numerous advances in theoretical physics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. One essay: Philipp G. Frank's "Einstein, Mach, and Logical Positivism" reveals an astounding fact. "Because of the close connection, which obviously exists between Einstein's theory of relativity and Mach's philosophy, Lenin feared that Einstein's theories might become a Trojan horse for the infiltration of idealistic currents among Russian scientists and among educated classes in general."
   
   I find this appalling. Apparently, even devout atheists can lack an open mind.
   
   Happily, Einstein answers each contributor at the end of the book in his "Remarks to the Essays Appearing in this Collective Volume." He begins with Pauli and Born, primarily because of their position on statistical quantum theory, whereupon Einstein launches into a fascinating defense of his own position. But as with all the contributors, the tone throughout was gentle and respectful. And one comes away with the impression that Einstein was beloved by his contemporaries because he returned that love in kind. The result was a mighty collusion of powerful minds that changed the world. Now, if only politicians and preachers could do the same!



2. Albert Einstein lived the last thirty years of his life in the United States and passed away in 1955 in New Jersey. He wrote three great papers in 1905 at the age of 26.

   This book is the only thing ever coming close to an autobiography that Einstein ever wrote. Needless to say, offers of money and prizes were offered to him, unlike the millions offered to ex-U.S. presidents to write a book. He never accepted any of these offers. The only offer he accepted was from Professor Schilpp to write an intellectual autobiography of himself.

   Incredible and Timeless is only ways to describe this book. Einstein labels as his "obituary", for a man who was considered the "Person of the Century" by Time Magazine.

   Friends, his own "obituary" in his own hand is a worthy read and cost of the book. It is not a "personal" life but his "thinking" on science and of course on physics. We all know the two great theories of physical was created in the early 20th. century: the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein alone created relativity and was also one of the founders of the quantum theory. We also know now that Einstein never accepted quantum theory till the end.

   Here, Einstein fully describes the failure of classical mechanics and the rise of the electromagnetic field, the theory of relativity and of the quanta.

   Of note, Einstein's "Evolution of Physics" is a general lay discussion of the same issues. This is Einstein's technical discussion of the evolution of physics.

   "When I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my consciousness with considerable vitality" This comment alone is worth price of the book.

   The essays sections includes writing of the great scientist of the 20th century. We only read about them in textbook but here they are in their own words: Niels Bohr, Louis De Broglie, Arnold Sommerfeld, Max Born, Kurt Godel, Hans Reichenbach and Wolfgang Pauli. One only sees their picture in physics textbooks.

   This book really belongs in all who are professional scientists or are interested in science. Unlike Newton "Principia" or Darwin's "The Origin of Species" Einstein papers are scattered everyone. This is the only definitive book on Einstein by Einstein himself.

   Moreover, it is a scholarly and scientific book, so it should last for a long time and of value to all future generations.




3. Albert Einstein lived the last thirty years of his life in the United States and passed away in 1955 in New Jersey. He wrote three great papers in 1905 at the age of 26.

   This book is the only thing ever coming close to an autobiography that Einstein ever wrote. Needless to say, offers of money and prizes were offered to him, unlike the millions offered to ex-U.S. presidents to write a book. He never accepted any of these offers. The only offer he accepted was from Professor Schilpp to write an intellectual autobiography of himself.

   Incredible and Timeless is only ways to describe this book. Einstein labels as his "obituary", for a man who was considered the "Person of the Century" by Time Magazine.

   Friends, his own "obituary" in his own hand is a worthy read and cost of the book. It is not a "personal" life but his "thinking" on science and of course on physics. We all know the two great theories of physical was created in the early 20th. century: the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein alone created relativity and was also one of the founders of the quantum theory. We also know now that Einstein never accepted quantum theory till the end.

   Here, Einstein fully describes the failure of classical mechanics and the rise of the electromagnetic field, the theory of relativity and of the quanta.

   Of note, Einstein's "Evolution of Physics" is a general lay discussion of the same issues. This is Einstein's technical discussion of the evolution of physics.

   "When I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my consciousness with considerable vitality" This comment alone is worth price of the book.

   The essays sections includes writing of the great scientist of the 20th century. We only read about them in textbook but here they are in their own words: Niels Bohr, Louis De Broglie, Arnold Sommerfeld, Max Born, Kurt Godel, Hans Reichenbach and Wolfgang Pauli. One only sees their picture in physics textbooks.

   This book really belongs in all who are professional scientists or are interested in science. Unlike Newton "Principia" or Darwin's "The Origin of Species" Einstein papers are scattered everyone. This is the only definitive book on Einstein by Einstein himself.

   Moreover, it is a scholarly and scientific book, so it should last for a long time and of value to all future generations.




4. Here, Einstein clearly shows the world that he was a first-class intellectual and scientist.

   --Lonnie R. Gardner (Math Teacher)




5. The philosopher Paul Schilpp directed, for many years, a series of books like this one, each around an eminent scholar. I recall, for instance, those on Russell and Popper. They started with an intellectual autobiography, followed by articles by specialists both pro and against the protagonist. They all had, it seems, a very high quality. No one surpassed,though, or even equalled, the volume on Einstein. And that because of the absolutely extraordinary quality of his intellectual autobiography, which he insisted in naming his "obituary". This is one of the great moments of written expression, rivalling Augustine's "Confessions". Is is written in German, and faced, page by page, with a translation by Schilpp. At a certain point, Einstein engages himself in answering the question he just proposed: "What, precisely, is thinking". The defense rests.

4 comments about John Muir: Rediscovering America.

1. This book, like most biographies, is shallow. Turner paints a stilted, idealized portrait of John Muir that at best can only satisfy readers who aren't that hungry to look into the depths of themselves.
   
   Turner wrongly portrays Muir as a grand philosopher. Although in his youth Muir was a passionate seeker spurred forward by his deep dissatisfaction, he never remotely succeeded on the quest to know his own inner perfection. Thus his philosophy is limited. The closest he came to finding perfection was in the beauty of Nature, and while he was quite right about the perfection he found there - and of our need to conserve it! - it only represented the true beauty that lay buried and smothered in his depths. Muir never figured out that his love for Nature was but a metaphor for the love he couldn't feel for himself.
   
   Muir spent his early manhood trying to heal the inner wounds of the horrendous aspects of his childhood. He grew up with a monster for a father and with a mother who offered little protection, much as Turner portrayed her as an ideal parent. Unable from the beginning to find his true peace through inner connection, Muir became a master at finding temporary peace in external dissociation - first with his inventions and then with his disappearances into the wilderness.
   
   Muir wrote, "I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. My own special self is nothing." He truly meant this. He put little or no value on his own true self - just as his abusive, neglectful childhood taught him. Had he found his true connection within he would never have been so repeatedly suicidal with his life, as exhibited by his countless dangerous and largely purposeless acts which nearly killed him several times. Although he defended his insane behavior as educational, this was clearly rationalization. In reality he was acting out - and his searches were poisoned with compulsive, unconscious motivations.
   
   Muir's immaturity and lack of spiritual development is further evidence by the fact that after he'd done most of his intense ramblings and journeying he simply married into a new family - his wife's - and disappeared into their conventional family system. He gave up his quest for truth and settled instead for becoming a wealthy farmer, an enmeshed family man, a semi-present father, and an ardent conservationist.
   
   This shines the light on the main error of Muir's life, in spite of all the good he might have done with his conservation: he never realized that he himself and all we humans are a part of Nature. We are Human Nature. We may be destroying our world around us, but the deepest answer lies within our hearts, not in the woods.



2. I've often been fascinated by John Muir, ever since I started visiting many different national parks out west and seeing his name cited everywhere as an inspiration. If you are interested in environmental ethics and theory (as opposed to simplistic tree-hugging and other poorly-considered theories), and if you have a primal love for the outdoors, then John Muir is your man. Here Frederick Turner has written a solid biography of the man, with all the research and articulation that should be expected. Turner also includes a large dose of Muir's opinions and theories, as well as the historical and political background behind Muir's actions and thought processes. Therefore, what we have here is not just an informative biography on the public person, but an enlightening treatise on environmental ethics and theory, as defined by the brilliant mind of Muir himself.



3. I finished this book about a week ago. Despite moving on to subsequent reading material, I find that there are parts of Turner's book that I simply can't stop thinking on. For me, they are what makes John Muir's life and legacy so important.

   There is about a three or four page segment at the end of the chapter entitled "Civilization and Its Discontents," in which Turner presents what appears to be a sea change in America's conception of itself. The change is fundamental in that it consists of a shift from the intellectual and human promise of America as seen through the eyes of Emerson and Thoreau, to the promise of power, wealth, and machines. That is, at one point, people, and their potential for growth and good, were at the center of the American dream. Yet, at some point in the Nineteenth century (possibly at the time of the Civil War) money and wealth became the American dream.

   Turner is the not the first person to present this argument, as he himself notes. Nor am I certain that his take on this cultural shift is entirely accurate. However, I do think it points out the value that Muir had, and his intellectual descendants have, in directing the national attention back in the direction from which it came--not so much that we should live for nature, but that we should live for people.

   As for the rest of the book, I found it enjoyable if not without problems. Turner's presentation of Muir's life, including the emotions and conceptualizations that he imagines for him, is thoroughly engaging and seems quite complete. The only problems I encountered are that Turner seems to run out of steam at the end, seeming to skip years of Muir's life at a time, and that Turner has an interesting use of commas in that he doesn't use them very often.

   If you read this, and I think you should, you'll probably be as interested in reading Muir's own writings as I am.




4. I enjoyed this book very much. Until now I've only read short articles about Muir, so I am not qualified to comment on Turner's accuracy or how comprehensive his book is. But I can tell you it is beautifully written, evoking the world that Muir inhabited... or better yet, the worlds. Because Turner follows the boy John Muir from Scotland to Wisconsin, and then takes us along on all the adult John Muir's extensive travels. We learn about this majestic life that's as full of crags and crannies as the mountains he so loved. And we are left with no doubt about his genius and his incalculable importance to the America we live in today.

1 comments about Mathematical Apocrypha Redux: More Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical (Spectrum) (Spectrum).

1. Mathematics is one of the oldest, perhaps even the oldest, areas of scholarly endeavor. While it provides the core of much of the functioning of human society, one area that is often neglected is the mythology of the discipline. In this book, his second about the unsubstantiated lore of mathematics, Steven Krantz demonstrates that while mathematicians are somewhat different than the rest of humanity, they are still human.
   Mathematicians demonstrate arrogance, humility, insecurity, jealousy, pettiness, conceit, eccentricities, fear, insanity, incompetence and genius, just like all other people. However, some of these traits are more common and more pronounced in mathematicians than in other groups.
   Krantz captures all of this in this set of stories about mathematicians as people, there is only a rare mention of actual mathematical formulas or principles. As the title implies, these stories are not necessarily true, although in most cases, only mathematical historians will be able to refute any of them. For they all possess the one trait that an apocryphal story must have, plausibility.

No comments about Making Medicine Scientific: John Burdon Sanderson and the Culture of Victorian Science.

No comments about The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer.

5 comments about Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man.

1. As biographer Robert Norris himself concedes, there have been many accounts of the Manhattan Project since World War II, several biographies of Leslie Groves, and even Paul Newman's memorable depiction of Groves in the film "Fat Man and Little Boy." Norris hoped to achieve the academically definitive biography, and no one can accuse him of failing at that. He is thorough. In fact, there is unintended humor in the "racing" title: as late as page 214 the search for real estate for Hanford and Oak Ridge is just getting underway. Groves's bomb has a long fuse.

   Leslie R. Groves entered West Point on the eve of World War I. When the United States entered the war, the Academy's curriculum was compressed into a two year matriculation in the belief that many new officers would be needed quickly on the European front. As timing would have it, neither Groves nor many of his fellow cadets saw action. What resulted, however, was a glut of peacetime officers, an undesirable situation for ambitious career officers like Groves. Eventually Groves's accomplishments would outrun his rank, a major political liability. In the end, however, Groves himself was his own worst enemy. Intelligent and self-motivated, Groves became an accomplished engineer at the Academy, though it would seem that as a cadet he acquired the skills without the polish. As an officer in the Corps of Engineers he was brusque and dogged, except with those who could advance his career. Superiors tolerated his rudeness and obesity because he could kick behinds and deliver the goods. In peacetime he might have been shuffled out; but as the Nazi shadow extended closer to home, a man of Groves's productivity would be annually disciplined for his interpersonal shortcomings and "punished" with greater responsibilities. It was thus that Groves became a major force in the construction of the Pentagon, and ultimately a secret weapons project based in the New York District of the Army Corps of Engineers, the so-called Manhattan Project.

   To the uninformed, Groves's contribution to the production of the atomic bomb was as scoutmaster for a collection of scientific mad monk geniuses in the desert of New Mexico. In fact, Norris leaves the impression that Groves was more of an absentee landlord at Los Alamos. The real action was going on elsewhere, primarily in massive industrial complexes at Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In some respects the building of these two industrial facilities was as impressive as the making of the bomb. That Groves was able to build not one but two mammoth atomic factories in roughly eighteen months is staggering.

   As Norris tells the story, Groves enjoyed a decent relationship with Robert Oppenheimer and most of the scientists working for him. He did not totally understand the intricacies of atomic physics; in truth, the entire project was a foray into the unknown. Where he excelled was in translating theoretical problems into practical management components which he executed against incredible odds: shortages of rare substances and wartime civilian labor, secrecy and security, political and military infighting, and concern over the German nuclear program, to cite a few. When his scientists were divided over opposing theories and techniques, Groves's favorite stratagem was simply to test both possibilities in laboratory situations and select the one that worked.

   Which raises the question of costs and accountability. The funding of this massive secret project is probably a good subject for a separate work. Suffice to say that Groves drew his funding from an extraordinarily large but innocuously named account, and that funding was one problem he did not have to face, at least until after the war. Conveniently, there was in fact no one-certainly not his [many] senior officers-who could question the wisdom of Groves's expenditures and management techniques. He answered, nominally at least, to a civilian board appointed by Roosevelt, which included James Conant, President of Harvard. But from this narrative the board's primary relationship with Groves appeared to be running interference.

   After Japan's surrender, Groves exercised a proprietorship over the newly confirmed nuclear technology, and he would parcel it out sparingly and reluctantly. He advocated an American hegemony of nuclear weaponry-no international control of atomic bombs, no sharing of technology with allies-and even within America he embargoed information to most government agencies, including the White House. Groves protected the stockpile, and since the weapons were stored as component parts, Groves could obfuscate the true strategic strength of the American arsenal as political needs dictated. Norris contends that Groves forged much of this nation's current nuclear philosophy during and immediately after the Manhattan Project.

   New technology notwithstanding, the old politics would eventually derail Groves. In 1948, during his annual fitness review, Groves was told by Dwight Eisenhower to his face that his maverick days were over and that he would not be appointed chief of engineers. Eisenhower, who regarded Groves as a loose cannon, made it clear that too many officers had been rubbed the wrong way by his arrogance. No fool, Groves submitted his resignation and spent several years with Remington Rand in the early years of computer development.

   Norris depicts Groves's role in the atomic espionage trials of the 1950's in a benign light, [Gregg Herken's new work depicts the General's involvement in a darker light] and I suspect that the author's closeness to his subject made him somewhat less critical of Groves's tactics and style. Overall, this is an extremely valuable work for several reasons. "Racing for the Bomb" is a commentary on the pros and cons of national crisis management, the dilemma of giving someone enough power to get the job done without creating a dictator. There is also a message here about contemporary nuclear proliferation. Have India, Pakistan, Iraq, and North Korea mastered their own Manhattan Projects, or is nuclear proliferation simply a matter of espionage and horse-trading? One can almost hear Groves saying, "I told you so."




2. This biography fills a significant gap in the historical record: behind the incredible scientific and engineering triumph of the Manhattan Project, there was a master administrator. Leslie Groves is that administrator, the take-charge guy who knew how to inspire, find competent people to whom he delegated tasks, cajole and bully his way into the historical achievement of the first working atomic bomb. In this bio, you get to know who he was, how he operated, and what he did. There is no doubt he was a great and talented, if somewhat unsung, man.

   Nonetheless, Groves' life and methods are not exactly something that would inspire a lay reader about the epoch. There are far better books for that, such as Rhodes' Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is the most readable and best reported and researched of the whole shelf of books on the subject in my opinion. No, this is a book of value principally for specialists in scientific and military history and for atom-bomb buffs. There was info I needed in it and could only find there, so it was most useful for a scholarly purpose. But it was not a fun read about a rich time.

   Afterall, when contrasted to great politicians or scientists or adventurers, there is a reason why very, very few bureaucrats find a narrative niche: they are simply not as interesting or as comprehensible. Norris even says as much, when he admits there were not many layers to Grove: he was a competent and arrogant man, who when given extraordinary authority during the war was capable of achieving extraordinary things. At the end of the war, he refused to change along with the army and instead retired to a corporate position and as a curmugeon who corrected in excruciating detail the innumerable accounts that kept appearing.

   I do not mean to diminish Norris' achievement here, only to put it into perspective for prospective readers. The prose is clear, if a bit lackluster. But this is very good scholarship and a useful addition.

   Recommended for specialists only.




3. The book is definitive, scholarly, yet dramatic and exciting. Indispensable for understanding how the atomic bomb came about. A necessary counterpoise to the prevailing scientist-based story of the development. Additionally Norris's description (meticulously documented by a vast quantity of letters and interviews) of Grove's childhood and professional years before WWII recreates a lost era when society's leaders and doers were on a higher plane than they are today.



4. This has to be the definitive biography of General Groves. The research is meticulous. The book reads more like a suspense story than a biography

   I really enjoyed the book.




5. For those interested in the development of the atomic bomb, this book fills a gap, telling who made the American program succeeded where other nations failed or followed later. General Groves drove the project relentlessly to timely success with immense resources, personal determination, project management skills, and effective delegation. Without Groves, the world would have changed more slowly. A good read, if a bit slow on Groves' life before the bomb.

1 comments about Alexander Graham Bell: The Spirit of Invention (Amazing Stories) (Amazing Stories).

1. I have always been curious about the preposterous stories of the Klondike gold rush. This wild period in history features gold fever lunacy -- a desperate stampede -- boom-town lawlessness -- wilderness hardships -- gambling -- hard work -- hard drinking -- hard women -- and shattered dreams -- all the ingredients for some light adventure reading.
   
   You will be introduced to colorful gang members: Old Man Triplett, Fatty Gray, Canada Bill, Doc Baggs, Slim Jim Foster, Reverend Bowers, and Red Gibbs. Of all the determined characters of that frantic period, their leader, Soapy Smith is the most engrossing.
   
   Stan Sauerwein is the author of Amazing Stories' "Soapy Smith: Skagway's Scourge of the Klondike", the entertaining biography of this legendary boomtown crime boss.
   
   Jefferson Randolph Smith Jr. as a teenager tried his hand in a cattle drive to Abilene, Kansas, where he acquired a life long taste for cards, liquor, and loose women.
   
   Once back in San Antonio, Smith was soon cleaned out by Clubfoot Hall, playing the shell game. Smith was hooked and begged Hall to teach him all he knew. Smith was sent to Leadville, Colorado to learn under the master: V. Bullock "Old Man" Taylor. It was in Leadville, Smith first saw the infamous soap bar game, and fell in love with it.
   
   Soapy moved through the west, building his gang and adding new scams.
   
   Hearing about the gold strikes in the Klondike, Soapy and six members of his gang sailed to Skagway, Alaska -- the jumping off point to the gold fields. Here, Soapy quickly set about fleecing the thousands of stampeders pouring into Skagway.
   
   He first opened a high class bar with gambling in the cozy back room -- customers routinely were robbed on their way to the outhouse, behind the building.
   
   Soapy's gang operated numerous phony businesses such as barber shops, information booths, map sales, a freight line, phony US Army recruiting center, and weather forecasting, all with one purpose -- size up the suckers and rob them blind.
   
   At the height of the gold rush, Soapy hit upon the idea of a phony telegraph station in Skagway. "For only five dollars for 10 words, every stampeder could send home news of this safe arrival." Often the miners received urgent pleas from the miner's families back home for money (actually sent by Soapy's gang). "Soapy's men, of course, accepted the miner's money for transfer -- not back home, but directly to Soapy's strongbox", relates Mr. Sauerwein.
   
   Soapy had always limited his targets to new comers -- never preying on the locals. Soapy explained that robbing newcomers was really a community service by preventing amateurs from being stranded in the wilderness. Soapy sometimes paid their passage back home -- mainly to get rid of complaining victims and to make room for new suckers.
   
   In "One Poke Too Many", the reader will find out the ultimate fate of Soapy Smith.
   
   Mr. Sauerwein tells his story in a clear, informal, entertaining style complete with dialog that brings a stage play feel to his tale.
   
   The book contains ten chapters covering 131 pages and four interesting pictures.

No comments about Alexander Graham Bell.