4 comments about Bold Science: Seven Scientists Who Are Changing Our World.

1. I picked up this book based on Ted Anton's reputation, but concerned that it might be one of those "great people in science" type books that are foisted on junior high students as Bar Mitzvah presents. I needn't have worried. Anton makes the personal details vivid (cold winter hours in the observatory, the struggles to write computer code) but spends equal time making sure we understand the science involved. I just wish there were an update so I could find out how these discoveries have held up.



2. Bold Science, a hegegraphy of profiles about seven famous scientists and how they work,reads like vinettes from a Coppola film. I am surprised that Hollywood has missed this riveting view into the world of the technical, political, and social worlds of the sciences. After all, they made a film of Susan Orlean's The Orchard Thief. Anton, a professor who has taught me much about writing at DePaul University, builds a strong narrative by weaving character details with facts about hard core scientific discovery and tales of the political struggle to obtain grant funding in the latter part of the 20th Century. This should be a must read on every intro to science course list. Anton interviews Craig Venter, the geneticist, Susan Greenfield, the neuroscientist, Geoff Marcy, the astronomer, Polly Matzinger, the immunologist, Saul Perlmutter, the cosmologist, Gretchen Daily, and Carl Woese. Like Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Hunter Thompson before him, Anton follows these seven characters until he is able to weave a compelling narrative around the science they do. The result: he shows seven people who love science and defy the mysterious nature of the scientist documenting their humanity.



3. The seven scientists profiled here are

   Craig Venter in genomics

   Susan Greenfield in neuroscience

   Geoffrey Marcy in astronomy

   Polly Matzinger in immunology

   Saul Perlmutter in cosmology

   Gretchen Daily in ecology

   Carl Woese in mircobiology.

   Ted Anton, who is a professor of English at DePaul, interviewed all the subjects with the possible exception of Carl Woese--at least his name alone is conspicuously absent from the acknowledgments pages. (Perhaps they had a falling out.) The result is a somewhat breezy, understandably limited, People-like introduction to their work, personalities and lifestyle. There is an introduction and a concluding chapter.

   What we can learn from this book is that science as it is practiced today is a highly social and political enterprise where those who would make it big must learn to toot their horn. Indeed, what these seven scientists have in common, aside from their great energy, is a gift for public relations. Some, like Susan Greenfield and Gretchen Daily, have a brash, aggressive style more often seen in the world of business than in the world of science. Venter, the founder of Celera, a company with a lot of venture capital behind it as it sequences the human genome, has meshed the two worlds so completely that he is as much an entrepreneur as he is a scientist. We see here too that success in science today requires an inter- and multi-disciplinary approach as envisioned by E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, a book twice cited by Anton. We can also see that a successful scientist has to be an effective communicator, almost an administrator, in this age of surplus information.

   Anton's style is occasionally vivid, sometimes careless and all too quickly done. It appears that he had some sort of deadline to meet along with length restrictions. In some cases he may not have followed up properly. I was annoyed at some points with partial information. For example, on page 84 he is telling the story of Polly Matzinger's accidental involvement with a Private or Sergeant Duffy, a police officer who borrows her car to do some police work. But Anton never makes it clear what happened to Duffy or whether he was a detective or not. Or, on page 85 where Matzinger, in her cocktail waitressing days, tells UC animal behaviorist Robert Schwab that she "never understood why a raccoon did not impersonate a skunk to scare off predators." I didn't get that one. (How?) And Anton doesn't explain. Also, on page 136 Anton recalls a bet between Paul Ehrlich of The Population Bomb fame and economist Julian Simon, Simon betting that the prices of five commodities would not rise over a ten year period. Simon wins the bet, but Anton does not tell us what the commodities were!

   I was also displeased by some of the carelessness. Ernest Rutherford is "Earnest" Rutherford in the index and on page 150. Paul Ehrlich becomes Paul "Erlich" on page 137. On page 144 the bacterium tuberculosis is described as a virus! And on page 145 Anton is summing up Gretchen Daily's work in Costa Rica: "They were getting good results, finding that even a small amount of preserved forest...will preserve significantly greater species diversity that would have been expected. The possibility of maximizing tradeoffs was there, if only one knew where to look." After I got past the typo "that" for "than" I still did not know what "tradeoffs" Anton was talking about. Tradeoffs between what and what? I suspect some text was cut and the remaining wording not adjusted.

   On the plus side, Anton has the ability to bring his characters to life with concrete details about their habits and their struggles, Geoff Marcy seeing a therapist for depression, Susan Greenfield giving up smoking as a marriage agreement, Polly Matzinger as a Playboy bunny who amassed $500 in parking tickets while sporting a bumper sticker reading "Commit Random Acts of Kindness." He can also be effective with figures of speech, as on page 134 where he is talking about "the vagaries of global warming": "If done improperly, the simplest climate forecasts spaghettied into infinite complexity." Or on page 132 where he is making the point that most microbes don't culture well or easily, so that most "biological work concentrated on the few weeds, like Escherichia coli, that could be studied in pure culture." Occasionally, Anton is able to catch the essence of an idea in a short expression, as on page 173 where he sums up one of Gretchen Daily's ideas: "the predators of insects will count for you the number of insects in an ecosystem."

   I wonder if Anton had planned a larger book, perhaps one with photographs of the scientists in the field or in their lab, but for some reason a book that had to be abandoned. At any rate this book could have been outstanding had it been better edited and copyread, had it included photographs of the scientists (one picture here would indeed be worth a thousand words) and had Anton included short bibliographies of the published work of his seven scientists. As is, I think this might be valuable for those people thinking of starting a career in science, or for those just beginning their careers. Anton makes it clear that the talents required to rise to the top are often extraneous to the day-to-day work of the scientist, and that would be a good thing for someone just starting out to know.




4. This is the best collection of its kind I've ever read, and one of the 10 best non-fiction books I've ever read on any topic. I ran across this book as part of my research on creative organizations and people, and was stunned by the quality. The scientists are quirky and fascinating, and Anton's writing and editing is as good as it gets. Anton is the Red Smith of science writers.

2 comments about R.J. Mitchell: Schooldays to Spitfire.

1. Where would England be today without the work of Reginald Joseph Mitchell who designed the Spitfire and Dame Houston who paid for the development of the Merlin engine when the government could not or would not do it. She was a patriot before it was cool to be one.
   
   Mitchell despite his medical condition continued to work until the end. He even designed a 4 engine bomber that looked like a big spitfire and was faster that any other at the time. Unfortunately the prototype was damaged in a German bombing raid on the factory and the government would not fund another. There is no mention of him at the R.A.F. museum in London. An unknown hero. The Spitfire and radar in the UK and the radio proximity fuse in the US changed the outcome of the war.



2. What a pleasure to read a straight forward, well compiled book about a man and a time where integrity, loyalty and modesty mattered and self aggrandizement was not considered a virtue. So different from the situation today where, honours and plaudits are heaped upon those whose only claim to fame seems to be in the making of money.

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 Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology.

1. This very readable and forthright autobiography covers the first 26 years of life of one of the leading American molecular biologists. The rich fabric of its story is told in part in beautiful letters. His recollections reflect both, a lifetime of incisive analysis and the mellow philosophical perspective of a septuagenarian. This multifaceted memoir can be read at varying levels of depth, reaching from the unencumbered experience of a middleschool student to the sophistication of a postgraduate, and it adresses a multitude of aspects of social and intellectual life. Though chockful with historical detail, it presents common and personal occurrences and opinions with humor, irony, even satire, and it is at least in parts breathtakingly thrilling. The first part of the book describes the author's upbringing in a partially assimilated, reform Jewish family. Starting out as an unexpected and spoiled addition to two older siblings, Stent evokes the social and cultural life enjoyed by well-to-do femilies in the German capital Berlin during the 1920s Weimar regime. Bereft by the tragic illness and death of his doting mother, the boy is increasingly consternated, isolated and frightened by the rapidly unfolding official anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany, and he is imprinted with the terror of the Nuremberg progromes and the 1938 Kristallnacht. With father and siblings already abroad, the 14-year-old and his stepmother embark on a dangerous, illegal escape that leads them to safety. Having finally reached Chicago, the adolescent, essentially on his own and pitifully poor, completes his schooling and strives for a college education. The cultural change left him totally unprepared for dealing with coeds, in whom he is now greatly interested. He starts out more or less undetermined in his search for a woman and a career, and he learns to grab and eventually finagle opportunities. As member of a government technical branch, he returns in 1947 to Germany and his beloved , now war-torn Berlin, but having the power of both an American uniform and American cigarettes. Back home in the US, he struggles with the excitement and intellectual challenge of reseaarch, its potential fame, and the parternalistic sociality inherent in a research career. The latter's cost is deferment of a mature sex and love life. This dilemma and his racial victimization affirm his self-perception as a "lucky self-hater." Despite his passionate sexuality, he is in his relationships with women enotionally unresponsive, undecided, or at times (he says) a cad. Unwittingly, he victimizes the "other" but, in the final analysis, again himself. The last part of the book sets forth the beginnings of molecular biology, in which Stent participated as an early member of Max Delbrueck's groupon bacteriphage research. Though lacking literature references, the book's historical data appear to have been verified during the author's 1985-1991 research fellowships. Stent's autobiography is more thoughtful than James Watson's "The Double Helix," of which Stent has been a renown critic. Stent perceives science as a sociocultural activity and addresses both its lofty ideals and its flaws. A major topic is anti-Semitism and the arrogance that feeds into it. Stent conveys to his readers an understanding of its many faces and of the sociocultural evil of any racism. By pointing out the splinter in his own, the victim's, eye, he proves that it is humanly almost impossible to be totally free from racism. Biophysicist Stent does not embrace the reductionism prevailing in molecular biology. He seems to warn of its dangers to the emotional development and humanization of budding scientists. Knowing that modern physics contradicts the subject-object separation time-honored in biological thinking, he commits himself in his memoir to being both. My favorite piquantery among the many in his recollections is a play with an allusion of his first name with Wagner's Gunther. It leads to a summary, rather self-deprecating evaluation of his scientific merits (pp.15-16). Scientific papers begin customarily with a summary of the salient points: here, the image of the great "hero" scientist will be rejected. Rather, Stent wants to be perceived, warts and all, as the protagonist of his bittersweet story.

No comments about Life and Works of Luther Burbank.

2 comments about The Scientific 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Scientists, Past and Present.

1. I had to put off reading this book until the summer because under normal conditions a person would pick this book up and look for a specific scientist, or science, and then get the wanted information on those specifics. This is not one of those books that you just pick up and read straight through. Most scientists are interested in a limited area of science. For example, Marie Curie was a chemist, a physicist, and interested in other sciences and the math that were involved in those sciences. Very rarely, if ever, did she wander into the domain of biological sciences (if she had, she may have been a bit more careful with the radium she and her husband were 'pocketing' on a daily basis)!
   
   There are always a few men and women out there who remain curious about the entire world. Men like Leonardo de Vinci, Linus Pauling, even those outside of the world of science such as Thomas Jefferson. But the fact remains that this book would be used as a starting point or a reference by teachers and students to gain information about specific scientists and the fields they investigated; whether it be chemistry, physics, biology, or linguistics.
   
   This is an excellent reference book. I can highly recommend it for use by teachers in gathering information about these famous men without going into so much detail about their scientific interests that the teachers who have not been trained in these areas, get lost. I especially recommend it for highschool and college level reference. If teachers of lower grades plan to use this book, I highly suggest they read carefully the information on specific scientists first rather than just handing the book over to a student. I am a little leery of recommending books that I have not read, or of teachers who recommend books that they have not read. The reason for this hesitation is that Simmons puts a small amount of personal information concerning these men and their families, especially their wives, in the chapters...and some of this information is not only not pertinent to their lives in science, but is actually slightly more detailed about their sex lives than a seventh grader needs to know. This is the only reason I gave the book a 4 star rating rather than a 5 star rating.
   
   Otherwise, I enjoyed reading about so many interesting men and women (again, there is a limit on the amount of women and minorities in the book but that is in large part due to historical prejudices which were not overcome until the last century). There are definitely several scientists I am going to read more information on because of this book raising my interest in them.
   
   Again, a highly informative reference book for science, math, and libraries.
   
   Karen Sadler,
   Science Education



2. The Scientific 100: A Racnking of the Most Influential Scientists is an interesting book that provided many life facts about 100 interesting scientists. Anyone interested in science should definitely buy this book. It is packed with facts about the 100 most influential scientists in Science.

5 comments about North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life.

1. I am a professional pilot who has done the freight, airline and corporate thing and now calls instructing corporate pilots his gig. (It's my wife who has the sign in so F off!) This has been been my mecca of aviation history. I was born 30 or so years late and I missed the glory years so I found the fountain of youth, wanna fight about it!? This book is THE penultimate tome of written aviatory (Bush said it so it's a word!!) history and I read it many times a year!



2. Highly engaging. A chronicle of amazing change and progress in aviation in one man's career.



3. I found the book to be excellent. My father spent a career in what became TWA starting with TAT a few years before Bob Buck was hired into the merged airline. In fact, my father accompanied Bob Buck on the historic Rockwell polar flight. The book was so well written that I felt like I was getting a close up look at my father's environment over the years.



4. As an "old" TWA hostess, I was interested in Bob Buck's experience with the airline - and was treated to some very satisfying mutual memories. I loved knowing about what it was truly like to fly the DC-2's and 3's and the differences. I always thought they were a piece of cake - not so. My first plane ride was on a DC-3 - so I was enthralled with stories about the goings-on in the cockpit. Funny, we had no fear of flying at all - just figured we'd always get there safely. Little did we know that old Bob was up in the cockpit trying to figure out whether to try to go under the storm, over it or around it - and was planning possible landing sites other than our destination! I especially loved Bob's love affair with the 707 - as I felt exactly as he did - that we were so lucky to be a part of a life-changing experience - for ourselves and every airline passenger. If you love planes, and love to fly, you'll love the story of this extraordinary man's life. I just don't believe that people today will have the opportunity to live anything like the length and breadth of this man's life.



5. My pilot friends are giving copies to their friends. Bob Buck tells an always fascinating, personal story covering most of the history of commercial aviation -- celebrities, people, planes, procedures, and WEATHER. Numerous photographs support the stories of this teen-age-record-holder-turned-airline-chief-pilot.

No comments about Henry More: and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge Science Biographies).

5 comments about Long March to Freedom: Tom Hargrove's Own Story of His Kidnapping by Colombian Narco-Guerrillas.

1. The author's year-long kidnap experience in hands of the FARC, Latin America's most prolific kidnap group/army, accurately portrays how one is held and treated by this particular terrorist organization. The movie, Proof of Life, with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan, is based upon Tom's kidnap but the movie obviously took literary license with the sex and shoot'um up. Tom kept a secret diary and was able to recount with great accuracy the typical daily life of a kidnap victim when taken by the FARC. I consider it a must-read if one wants to understand the psychological challenge of surviving such an event.



2. Given the topic I bought this book with much anticipation. I felt sorely let down. The author and the editor missed an opportunity to make this a truly fascinating account of what happened. Instead, after the opening of the book detailing his background and his capture, until the end detailing Mr Hargrove's release, it was a dull detailed account of not much happening. Nothing was mentioned of what his family were enduring, or of the efforts to secure his release and any negotiations going on behind the scenes. Whilst the approach taken accurately describes and conveys what Mr Hargrove was going through and how he got through each day, it made the book feel like it was lacking the balance of what was going on with his family. What would have made this book far more interesting is if it had also included details of the efforts made on his behalf to release him interspersed with the account of his captivity.



3. "Long March to Freedom: Tom Hargrove's Own Story of His Kidnapping by Colombian Narco-Guerrilla," is a harsh account of a long ordeal. Hargrove is a a nice guy. He's in Colombia as an expert agronomist to improve agricultural output. Prior to Colombia, Hargrove worked in Vietnam and the Philippines...hence he knew of the many dangers of working in foreign countries. Moreover, he was well aware of the wave of kidnappings in Colombia but nevertheless chose to continue his work.

   Parts of Hargrove's diary are heartbreaking while other sections are pathetically boring. Consequently, this book lacks the backbone of a true narrative. One is subjected to the day to day ordeal of over 300 days of captivity. If anything, this book is glaring evidence of the brutality of this guerrilla captors. Fortunately, Hargrove does march to freedom and he is able to publish his diary in captivity. I would love to see a follow-up book with Hargrove's inner thoughts and reflections apart from his diary.




4. Thomas Hargrove's "Long March to Freedom" was the primary source of inspiration for the blockbuster hit, "Proof of Life," that starred Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe and David Morse. The movie is a spinoff of his book. However, don't expect the book to discuss anything other than his experiences as a hostage. The book is mostly comprised of the journals he kept while kept hostage for the 11 + months.

   I've had the opportunity to view Dr. Hargrove's journals first hand. The writings are almost impossible to comprehend unless you are an ant as he wrote small words and sentences to maximize his limited ability to write. Needless to say, I can't begin to fathom what it must have been like. Yet, his words give me all the imagination I could ever want. It is a sad tale, but a real one that is packed with his very real experiences. His strength, wit and personality saved him.

   As others have stated in other reviews, his journal gives you the feeling that you are right there with him. You can mentally picture where he is with his descriptions. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't focus enough on him as it does with a ficticious love affair, but it does capture some of what I imagine by reading his book.

   Today, he continues to better humanity and we should all be greatful for his humanitarian efforts. Unfortunately, there are those that aren't as greatful as they should be. If you are lucky enough to meet Dr. Hargrove as I have been, you'll be simply amazed by the man and his lifetime of experiences around the world!

   I HIGHLY recommend this read. It is one you'll not soon forget!




5. This book is the diary kept by Thomas Hargrove during his 300+ days in captivity after being kidnapped by Guerrillas in Columbia.

   While I believe that the book contains exactly what was in Dr. Hargrove's diaries, the way it comes together in the book is ingenious. The way the book came together, you can feel emotionally everything Dr. Hargrove goes through. In the beginning, the diary entries seem slightly upbeat as it seems the ordeal will not last long. As you read on, boredom and sickness set in. As the days drag by, there are many highs and moments of hope as well as many lows and letdowns that could crush a person's will to live. This book has it all!

   This book gives the reader a sense of what it is like to be kidnapped and held against your will. As you read, when Dr. Hargrove is happy, the reader is happy. When Dr. Hargrove is bored, the diary entries are boring and the reader gets kind of bored. When crushing blows are dealt to Dr. Hargrove, it makes you feel sick inside.

   The only thing I would have liked to see in the book is a little more detail on the ransom negotiations. It would have been great to read from the point of his wife and children, what happened during negotiations, how it happened, and what they were feeling.

   If you want to read about the story of a captive who was held for 300+ days, this is a tremendous book. However, just as I said before, when days get long in captivity, the diary entries are not that interesting. Even so, it was well worth reading the book from cover to cover.

No comments about A Hombros De Gigantes: Las Grandes Obras.