No comments about Isaac Newton.

1 comments about Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary.

1. This is a very good book, not only informative, but it kept me interested where so many other books on the subjects of math or women mathematicians could be real yawners. It includes lots of information, the biographies are short and don't drag on, and books like this could be very inspirational to young women interested in pursuing careers in math. The book introduces all sorts of women in math, most of whom I was not familiar with before reading it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about math-related careers, the growing importance of women in the field, or is just looking for some good non-fiction to read. It's worth it!

2 comments about Galileo Galilei - When the World Stood Still.

1. I actually enjoyed reading this text on who I consider, and deserves the title of, "the first scientist," He not only applied what is essentially the modern scientific method to his work, but fully understood what he was doing and laid down the ground rules clearly for others to follow. In addition, the work he did following those ground rules was of immense importance. In the late 16th century, there were others who met some of these critieria-but the ones who devoted their lives to what we now call science were often still stuck with a medieval mindset about the relevance of all or part of their work, philosophical significance of the new way of looking at the world were usually only part-time scientists and had little influence on the way others approached the investigagion of the world. It was Galileo who first wrapped everything up in one package. This text seems to wrap up everything quite nicely too in one package.
   Highly recommended.



2. Strikes a great balance between detail and readability,
   unlike so many biographies whose goal seems to be to
   impress the reader with the biographer's mastery of
   arcane contemporary details rather than to communicate
   knowledge about the principal subject.
   Much better than the bio by Reston.

No comments about Latinos in Science, Math, and Professions (A to Z of Latino Americans).

No comments about John Dee: 1527-1608 (Ibis Western Mystery Tradition).

No comments about From Bouncing Bombs to Concorde: The Authorised Biography of Aviation Pioneer Sir George Edwards OM.

3 comments about The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives.

1. Muir's style is incredibly striking and her characters and stories are interesting and unique as is the way she weaves everything together. Not only is book relevant historically, but touching as father/daughter relationship is described. Pulls at the heart of anyone who has loved and lost her daddy. This is a great book to read and discuss with friends.



2. 
   
   With rockets attacking Israel, there's no better book to read than
   this lovely, fascinating memoir/history, recently rave-reviewed in the
   "Times Literary Supplement" and "The Jerusalem Post." There is so much
   to think about in this rich book, and the prose stands up to many
   readings. It's billed as a memoir but is so much more than that.
   Muir, the only child of an enigmatic, divorced father who kept her a
   secret from his friends, discovered after his death that he had
   invented Israel's first rocket, in a top-secret group of weaspons
   scientists during Israel's '48 war. These scientists later became rthe
   creators of everything from Israel's nukes to her national water
   system, but their '48 story was untold. By contrast, Muir's father,
   Itzhak Bentov, left Israel for the US where, as a freelance inventor in
   the basement of his house, he created the world's first remote-operated
   cardiac catheter, still in use. Bentov also gained acclaim as the
   author of the New Age bestseller Stalking The Wild Pendulum: On the
   Mechanics of Consciousness. Muir's book weaves together her memories
   of a "mad scientist" father, who was her inspiration and her
   heartbreak, as well as the wartime stories of his comrades, and her
   personal search for the meanings of these histories. A family tale in
   its personal complexity, the book is also timely because of the image
   of the rocket: you can't help comparing Hezbollah's 10,000-odd rockets
   with Israel's first rocket (Bentov's brainchild) which was 15 inches
   long and improvised out of a water-pipe. It symbolized a newly-born
   Israel's desperate creativity. Bentov's assistant on the rocket
   project tells us: "It was like, sort of, a miniature Manhattan
   Project. True, we didn't have the time or the resources to develop
   anything new. We barely had the time to copy what already existed to
   save ourselves. But that rocket, I can't tell you how exciting it
   was. Because it meant we had a future." The group's executive
   commander, a refugee from Russia, revealed that the scientists'
   creativity began within, by having to invent new selves after their
   roots were erased by the Holocaust. In his words: "I had no past, no
   family. I was no one. I could do anything." The former head of
   Israel's missile programme sums it up: "Instead of tradition, we had
   improvisation." Beyond the timeliness of the book, however, is a
   universal and timeless theme: the nature of invention itself. A poet
   who loves science, Muir lovingly and brilliantly depicts the passion of
   inventors and gives each of their inventions poetic resonance. The
   "invisible mine," produced by one Israeli scientist, becomes a metaphor
   for the destructive potential of scientific creativity when applied to
   military uses. The recoilless cannon, which seemingly violates Newton'
   s law of action and reaction, accompanies her father's, and Israel's,
   urge to move forward without reacting to the devastation of the past.
   In a brilliant and touching chapter near the end, Muir, reading her
   father's laboratory notebooks, stumbles across gynecological devices
   intended to keep women from pain and injury - and discovers a
   tenderness and love in her father that had been hidden from her during
   his lifetime. As Muir tells her story, the "Telling" itself changes
   her, teaching us that a story is also an invention, and, like others,
   has the power to change its inventor.



3. This memoir traces the secret life of the author's father in Israel (in its early days), the coming to terms with her father's past, and the background of the founding of Israel and all it entailed. She enjoyed hearing her father's 'stories' of his life in Israel, where he had been a member of scientists and idealists, summoned by David Ben-Gurion to develop weapons for defense.
   
   Bentov had jokingly called himself "Invention-a-Minute Ben" but she had no idea how important his invention of the first rocket launcher was to the war of Independence, and why he left that new state and came to United States of America. During the Arab-Israeli conflict, there were five invading armies, and the team of men and women who had to come up with the alternative to death worked around the clock. It was her father, in fact, who came up with the weapon called Loretta; another was developed with a two-inch-bore, but Ben's had only a one-inch-bore.
   
   "While challenging the David-and-Goliath myth, historians agree on the hardships of the first round of the invasion, before the truce on June 11, 1948. A movie was made, 'Exodus,' and Pat Boone wrote the words to the song used in that docudrama. She looks on the photograph of this group of the brightest and bravest, many of them refugees from Europe, she seems to have a jaded eye on the group which was called Hemmed.
   
   For the book, she traveled to Israel and interview many of the scientists. All admired and liked her jolly father, he was at the center of the picture, as he must have been in all of the plans to save his people. I wonder who that is pretending to be Hitler on the left with mustache, hat and raincoat. No one else was dressed in that fashion. It reminds me of the way Mrs. Keys described Julius Rosenberg when she might accidentally run into him on the elevator of the apartment house where they both lived in New York. He always wore a trench coat and hat as if he had something to hide, she'd related.
   
   She began her search for the truth about her father in his basement laboratory. The 'telling' is to tell the truth as she lived it, later discovered it, and believes it to be. This was a self-discovery voyage into the past and the future of Israel.
   Happy New Year, Rabbi.

No comments about American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries (American Biographies).

No comments about Franklin on Franklin.

1 comments about In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club.

1. Michael McCloskey has had a huge influence on conservation and environmentalism in America, and he's truly eligible to be the subject of an informative biography. Unfortunately, he should have had someone else write it. I am a volunteer officer with Sierra Club, active at both the local and state levels, with an interest in the organization's history. For that reason I was attracted to this autobiography of the man who served faithfully with Sierra Club and other important groups for some 40 years, and was one of the Club's most influential Executive Directors. However, even I had trouble keeping up my interest as this book dragged along, and I can't imagine any general reader (who may very well crave knowledge about conservationist history) being able to hold more than a polite semi-interest. This is because McCloskey's story, as told by himself, becomes an interminable list of brief reports, presented strictly in chronological order. Milestones and achievements are presented monotonously with an unchanging focus toward their importance and influence, or lack thereof, and there are very few deeper insights or analyses of historically important trends in conservation.
   
   Granted, there are a few useful tidbits here and there, especially in Chapter 13 in which McCloskey discusses how environmentalists can build alliances with labor, minorities, the poor, and business interests; while in a few other places he has some good advice on the specific financial and tax challenges face by non-profit advocacy groups. But on the other hand, most of the book dwells on minutiae of dubious usefulness, most notably the tedious coverage of several decades of internal power struggles within the Sierra Club leadership - passing strife that now means little to current Sierra Club members and even less to the interested layperson. McCloskey is also regularly prone to an underlying, yet subtle, self-righteousness. Once again, McCloskey is immensely influential in American conservationism, he was a strong leader of an important organization, and his lifetime of accomplishments is ripe material for a biography. But in the form of a self-aggrandizing autobiography, his story does not receive the insight and analysis that could be delivered by a professional biographer or historian. [~doomsdayer520~]