5 comments about Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes.

1. When you think there isn't anything more to write about Apollo and the whole moon program, this book shows how much more there might be. I don't know how Watkins was able to cut down the list to 14 but the ones selected sure show how many people there were working behind the scenes so that a few could walk on the moon. A really good read, I highly recommend it!



2. It might be appropriate that nearly 35 years later after the last Apollo mission (1972) names like Armstrong, Aldrin, and Lovell immediately conjour up images of the first moonlanding and the near tragic mishap of Apollo 13, thanks to Ron Howard. But if it weren't for people like Bales, McCandless, Underwood and Hatleberg - and the countless scores like them - the American public might not have even remembered the men that flew on the Apollo missions in the first place.
   
   Watkins has done a great service to space history specifically, and this cultural experiment we call late 20th century America, by giving us fourteen glimpses into the lives of the unsung heroes behind the Apollo mission. One could only wish we had access to many more of the stories of people like Joseph Laitin, Joe Schmidt and Rodney Rose.
   
   Knowing what the average person does about the Apollo heroes (i.e., the astronauts) gives one a foundation to appreciate what the Apollo missions accomplished and what they meant to our country. But knowing the contributions of the behind-the-scenes support people, like the ones profiled in this book, will make your understanding and appreciation of the Apollo missions go from analog to high-def plasma in 186 short pages.
   
   Today in Space History (www.todayinspacehistory.com) gives it high marks and a must-read.



3. "The Unsung Heroes" is an easy read. Fourteen chapters of fourteen different people behind the scenes. From the "frogman" who was the first person to see the Apollo 11 crew after splashdown to the wife of an Apollo 14 astronaut, Billy Watkins covers a variety of backgrounds. Each 10-15 page chapter is a story unto itself, allowing a person to read a chapter at a sitting without being in suspense until the next time you pick up the book.



4. The Apollo program that took Americans to the Moon in the latter 1960s and early 1970s literally involved a cast of thousands. At the height of Apollo NASA's civil servants numbered 36,000 people and its contractor workforce had 376,700. One estimate of the people associated with the program was one of twenty in the United States, when counting all aspects of the Moon landing program. That is a lot of unsung heroes. The astronauts who went there acknowledged as much, always remembering to thank the thousands of unnamed people who made it possible for them to journey to the lunar surface and return safely to Earth.
   
   Billy Watkins seeks in this book to recount the story of a few individuals who made it possible to reach the Moon. He profiles fourteen different people who worked in the program in some manner. They include Bruce McCandless, an astronaut who did not get to fly on the program; public affairs official par excellence Julian Scheer; launch controller Joann Morgan; Navy frogman Clancy Hatteberg; mission control engineer Gerry Griffin, and others. These profiles are just a few of the thousands that could be offered about people who ensured the success of the Apollo program. They rescue from obscurity the contributions of these unique and unsung heroes.
   
   Billy Watkins's book is celebration of the devotion of those who worked on the Apollo program. It is a welcome reminder of a single-minded devotion to duty. Our thanks are due to all those who took America to the Moon. This book helps to spotlight some of their stories.



5. In Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes, author Billy Watkins delivers 14 fascinating stories of little known people from the Apollo program. For those of us who read a lot about Apollo, this book adds some well-needed alternative views of the program. I've read most of the astronaut biographies and many of the histories of Apollo-after a while I'm looking for some nook or cranny of information that I did not know already.
   
   The chapters in Apollo Moon Missions are similar to the wonderful 12 page riff in Stages to Saturn about the Super Guppy aircraft that was used to transport the Saturn S-IVB stage. In Stages to Saturn, this story is told partly by profiling flamboyant entrepreneur John M. Conroy and his company Aero Spacelines that built the Super Guppy. I like this kind of story because it personalizes the Apollo program. The accounts in Apollo Moon Missions of people like Sonny Morea, the lead designer of the Lunar Rover, Julian Scheer, the NASA publicist who got TV cameras onto Apollo 11, and Joe Schmitt, suit technician, who was often the last person the astronauts saw before the hatch was closed on the launch pad are fun and unusual.

5 comments about Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons.

1. The history of rocketry is filled with colorful characters, and in that pantheon Jack Parsons may be the most unusual of the lot. A brilliant self-taught chemist, in the 1930s Parsons joined with Caltech graduate students Frank Malina, Martin Summerfield, Apollo Smith, H.S. Tsien, and others to form what they called the "suicide squad" of rocketeers. Testing rocket engines in the Arroyo Seco, where the Rose Bowl is now located, this group pioneered rocket propulsion and found fame in World War II as the developers of JATO rockets attached to aircraft for short-field take-offs and the WAC Corporal short-range ballistic missile. He went on to co-found the Aerojet Corporation, one of the first major rocket companies in the U.S., but what makes Parsons so intriguing it not his rocketry but rather his interest in black magic. A follower of famed British occultist Alastair Crowley, Parsons indulged all of his passions: high-explosives, rocketry, science fantasy and fiction, and the occult. It proved a fascinating attraction, too much to ignore for journalist George Pendle. This interesting biography is the result.
   
   No one thought he would ever amount to much when Parsons dropped out of the University of Southern California but it turned out to be a major turn in his career, for it enabled him to begin work with Malina's group at Caltech. Moreover, it allowed him the time to practice black magic, and in 1939 Parsons ascended to wizard-in-chief of the Los Angeles Agape Chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis, where he presided over bizarre rights that included a ceremony where naked pregnant women jumped through hoops of fire. Meeting pulp science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1945, Parsons invited him into his cult and the two practiced the black arts and shared a mistress together. Hubbard became the public face of what evolved into a new religion with the publication of "Dianetics" in 1950, but Parsons did not live to see the organization flourish. He went out with a really big bang in 1952 when he dropped a container of fulminate of mercury on the floor of his makeshift laboratory in his mother's carriage house on South Orange Avenue, the so-called "millionaire's row" in Pasadena.
   
   As George Pendle makes clear, the two seemingly disparate worlds of rocketry and black magic intertwined seamlessly in the life of Jack Parsons. One did not depend on the other, but each satisfied different aspects of his psyche, one side that was rational and technological and the other expressing his metaphysical leanings. It would be easy to write Parsons off as a madman, but his contributions to rocketry were very real, as "Strange Angel" makes clear.
   
   Pendle brings to life not only Jack Parsons, but also the other members of the "Suicide Squad" and their enablers, Caltech president Clark Millikan, and aerodynamist extraordinaire Theodore von Karman. Using oral history, contemporary reports, technical memoranda, FBI files, and archival records in both private and public collections, Pendle offers a rich and varied portrait of an unusual individual and his cultural milieu. Unfortunately, the author fails to bring into the discussion the most recent, pathbreaking work on the Caltech rocketeers, Frank Malina, and early experimentation. Additionally, the referencing systems seems to be haphazard, some quote referenced and others not.
   
   "Strange Angel" is an interesting humanization of early American rocketry. It successfully demonstrates the linkage of humanity and technology, although it should be used with some caution. For example, the broad effort parasitically to attach to Parsons the occult story and somehow extend it as the norm for all of the rocketeers is troubling. Parsons, in Pendle's account, is an individual who spent much of his time "playing to the void" (p. 285) and as intriguing as that idea might be to investigate, it represents at best a narrow path of exploration for the history of rocketry.



2. an electrically charged and elegantly written journey through the early days of Southern California and the unlikely but highly interesting marriage between rocketry and magic.
   
   The author deftly fleshes out all the right details that make for a substantial and rich story. Nuances of dynamic relationships and interconnections of bizarre events are thoroughly explained. Of particular interest was the relationship between Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard! Check it out, fans of Scientology!
   
   The story is infused with poetry, science, and romance. We are taken into a rarefied and high-drama universe that holds our interest throughout the book.
   
   This is one of the more fascinating, illuminating and well-written biographies I have ever read.



3. If you ever read about John Dee, Leonardo DaVinci, Sir Issac Newton and many others, then you will recognize their 20th century counterpart in the genius, Jack Whiteside Parsons. The key factor in his life that drove him to the top of the scientific world for a brief period, from the late thirties to mid forties of the last century, was his Vision of space travel and the medium of the rocket as a means to get to space. In my mind, he was a supreme innovator using the trial and error process to attain more and more positive results. He was also not college educated which left his mind uncluttered with theorems and accepted truths of academia. He was above all a cultist. In the beginning of the story rocketry is a cult and a sub-genre of science fiction. In religion he was a Satanist, although the word in never mentioned in the book and a follower and devotee of the Great Beast, Alistair Crowley. In the nineteen thirties in Los Angeles, these various cult worlds overlapped with fellow science fiction writers (and religion founder)such as L. Ron Hubbard playing a role in Parson's life - he also stole the love of his life in the process. It is a very interesting read for anyone interested in the genesis of the USA space program. This book shows that it started in the teenage dreams of Jack Parsons. I finished the book realizing that the author had only touched upon briefly the many aspects of his life story. Given the excesses of the OTO cult, it can be still be read by adults and teenagers without any qualms. There is no detail given about the various sexual rituals and in that respect it is PG rated. There are many famous individuals who die young - Alexander the Great, Elvis, James Dean, Mozart and a host of rock stars. I would place Jack Parsons as a compatriot of young geniuses who flame out because of other obsessions whether it be drugs, alcohol or other addictions. In many ways I liked the person of Jack Parsons, especially his friendly nature and his scientific accomplishments but I was frankly repulsed by his personal life. This is a tale of a rich,pampered Mommy's boy who never really grew up emotionally. The lack of childhood discipline and his self love led him to become a leader of a cult whose creed was the Supremacy of the Self. In the end his lack of an education allowed him the birth the field of rocketry but at the same time blinded him the dangers of the occult.



4. The story of the odd life of John Parsons, self-educated powder expert and Satanist. The biography of a man who taught himself about explosive chemicals and how he dreamed of launching his own rockets. Simultaneously, Parsons lived in a world that existed only in his weird and self-aggrandizing thoughts. Parsons dreamed of magic and other dimensions. When he lost control of the world around him, he withdrew to the world that he tried to control through magic. Parsons knew Theodore Karman and Alister Crowley, studying from one world to its polar opposite. Unfortunately, the author is so amazed with Parsons that he cannot be objective about the man's contributions and what they truly meant to rocketry. The author romanticizes Parson's dangerous nature and demonizes those who tried to help re-route Parsons from the danger to more safety aware experimentation. Some of the author's historical facts are wrong as well. An interesting attempt, but a discredited book. NOT a book I would recommend to anyone. A book written more from the POV of history rather than playing up the strangeness of Parsons would be more helpful.



5. This is a fascinating read on jack Parsons and a group of his friends and fellow rocket experimenters. Sadly, these men who were at the foundation of rocketry, are now "cut out of the picture". The entire picture is included, giving all the background of the community and times. The book reads easily, even though it is about a facet of science. I highly recommend it to anyone whose interests fall within the scope of Jack Pasons!

5 comments about The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.

1. Everybody loves to learn about secrets, dark projects and the exciting things that went on during the age of nuclear tests and strange and promising science experiments. We get quite a bit of that in The Jasons, but Finkbeiner somehow manages to write about this subject so dryly that the fun of reading it is soon leached out. She focuses on things she finds to be of interest with great detail and serious attempts of storytelling like with the Trinity Test and subsequent development of the thermonuclear device, the Argus Shot, the ultra low frequency antennae for communications with submarines and attacks on the Jasons by rabid activists during the Vietnam War. But when the topic comes to something she obviously finds less exciting, the book begins to drag on and takes the form of a college essay on a topic the author really couldn't care less about but has to have finished by the end of the week.
   
   The result of these abbreviated and dry patches is the loss of detail or useful information about the projects the Jasons were undertaking. For example, there is a lot that remains to be said about Wither Jason. Why was Jason undertaking climate studies? Why were there requestors in need of knowing if the climate was changing and how? Who were these requestors? Were there any military application to climate studies? The military has attempted to seed clouds to control hurricanes and tropical storms. Yet Finkbeiner makes no mention of these experiments or try to find out if Jason had anything to do with this whether it was encouraging the experiments or doing lemon detection studies that they're so famous for.
   
   There are a lot of quotes interwoven throughout the narrative, so much so that in some places the book begins to take on the feeling of a 250 page article rather than... well... a book. It becomes hard to know who's telling the story, her or the quoted Jason and it's easy to loose track who is talking about what. Overall this is an interesting work, but be ready to sift through a lot of dry reading to get to the interesting parts and be aware that some things which may seem like fertile grounds for more exploration are never really discussed in any depth.



2. This is a pretty impressive history of the Jasons, an advisory group to the US government on largely defense matters composed of elite scientists that has operated since 1960. Considering the highly classified nature of their work, the exclusiveness of this club, and tight-lipped attitude of many of their members, it's quite an accomplishment simply to write a readable, cohesive history of the Jasons. Many Jasons themselves told Finkbeiner they doubted anyone would want to read her book.
   
   Thankfully, these incredibly brilliant minds were wrong on that count. The early chapters of this book are quite fascinating. Finkbeiner has a skill for clearly describing the various scientific projects, and more importantly, explaining why the Jasons would be consulted on them. It was fascinating to read that the Jasons actually considered using nuclear weapons in the Vietnam war, and concluded that it was unpracticle for the United States to use tactical nuclear weapons with any effect without basically incinerating all of Northern Vietnam. More importantly from the US point of view, the US forces were quite vulnerable to nuclear retaliation, so using tactical nuclear weapons could very easily backfire in a terrible defeat for the US. The Jason authors of this report also had a hidden agenda, to discourage the use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War, and while held themselves to rigorous scientific analysis and let the facts speak for themselves, hoped their report would discourage the use of nuclear weapons that some military leaders were contemplating at the time.
   
   And this leads to the second triumph of the book, in that many of the Jasons are not the Dr. Strangeloves one might expect, but a very diverse and complicated group of people that cannot be easily type-casted. We learn how the various members became Jasons, the unwritten rules within the group, and what they think about their work. Finkbeiner has done a good job of earning the trust of many of the Jason members to speak rather candidly about their work and their motivations for being Jasons.
   
   The latter chapters delve more into issues of scientific policy and the role of scientific advisory groups, and therefore, are of less general interest. Not to say they aren't interesting to read, but just don't hold the appeal of the earlier chapters.



3. Although this book sticks fairly steadily to the Jasons and their work, it offers the best characterization I have ever seen of the choices and dilemmas faced by those who work with the Defense Department on topics everyone would rather not think about. As the book indicates, these days a profusion of outside experts advise the government on all sorts of technical matters, and the Defense Department is notable for the extent to which it seeks outside advice. I have never been a Jason, although I do know a few of the folks mentioned or quoted in this book, but I was involved off and on for more than 40 years working with and for the Defense Department as a techie and scientist. It isn't easy, and that is perhaps the most important message conveyed by this book. The objectivity required to give good technical advice is often at odds with one's personal feelings as a citizen. And it can be discouraging to be one of a group that's asked to advise on something, and puts a lot of effort into coming up with a clear, well-reasoned answer, to see it completely ignored, which does happen. So why do it? And here I would make two points that the book doesn't make clear.
   
   First, occasionally one can make a big difference. Not often, but occasionally. I've had that happen. But for it to happen, one must "pay one's dues"; one has to have earned the respect of the policy-makers by putting in lots of effort over the years to help them make decisions. One person who has that respect can make more difference in certain cases than any number of noisy demonstrators, and this is as true of Congress as it is of Administration officials. That makes the disappointments worth while.
   
   Second, the book fails to note that a large fraction of senior US military officers are themselves brilliant and technically well-educated, with advanced degrees in engineering or science, so they are good people to work with, as interesting to work with as one's colleagues in the civilian community. For example, Gen. Alfred Dodd Starbird, mentioned in this book, was among the most impressive people I have ever met, hard-driving, utterly tireless, and with a strong enough technical background so that I never had to tell him anything more than once, or go into elaborate detail; he soaked up technical information like a sponge.
   
   This book isn't exciting, but I consider it mandatory reading for anyone with a technical or scientific background who is asked to advise the Defense Department on anything. Before saying yes or no, one should use this book as a collection of "case studies", and ask, "Am I willing to go through that". If you are, you can make a big difference.



4. I do not regret buying or reading this book, but I am greatly disappointed by both the lack of detail and the lack of visualization that I was hoping for.
   
   The JASONS (according to the author, this stands for the months from July through November when individual stars did most of their consulting) were a spin-off from the Manhattan Project. There were two branches: the JASONS were hired by government sparked by the Sputnik scare and funded by the Advanced Projects Research Agency of DoD (the same one that funded the Internet); and those that feared nuclear power founded the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) which exists to this day to expose unnecessary secrecy.
   
   The original group met in 1958, 22 scientists meeting for 2 weeks at the National Defense University. On page 33, early on, the author denotes the importance of this group with the phrase "distinterested advice comes best from independent scientists."
   
   There was a major financial incentive: the summer consulting could double their 9-month academic salaries.
   
   JASON became official on 1 January 1960, at first housed under the Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA), then under the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and finally under MITRE, all in theory Federally Funded Research & Development Centers, but in the case of MITRE, often in real competition with legitimate businesses.
   
   Missile defense is not new to the Bush-Cheney regime. It has been a mainstay of ARPA and the JASONS going back to Sputnik days, and generally consumed 50% of ARPA's budget (elsewhere we have speculated on the gains for mankind of having an ARPA for peace).
   
   Early on the JASONS are described as "slightly flakey and almost bizarre," but supremely intelligent with the arrogance to match it. Their task was partly to shoot down stupid ideas with high-ranking supporters, and partly to think out of the box on really touch problems, almost always, but not always, at a classified level.
   
   DARPA fired the JASONS in 2000 when they refused to take on some of the lame scientists that DARPA recommended, but the happy result was their promotion to work directly for DARPA's boss, the Director of Defense Research & Development.
   
   The author discusses throughout the book the conflict between the scientific imperative to discuss hypotheses and findings opening, and the demands for secrecy imposed on these brilliant minds.
   
   Among the projects credited to the JASONS, with all too little detail, are missile defense, directed energy weapons, extremely low frequency (ELF) communications to reach submerged submarines, nuclear event detection, sensors and night vision for Viet-Nam.
   
   The JASONS could not handle the sociology of insurgency. I find this fascinating. Technocrats simply cannot "compute" real world anger.
   
   The Pentagon Papers outed the JASONS. Over time they added the Navy, Department of Energy, and the Intelligence Community as clients, but the also changed in fundamental ways, moving from an elite of physicists to a melange of all disciplines, including many members without clearances.
   
   The JASONS did well with adaptive optics and STAR WARS.
   
   Putting down the book I thought to myself:
   
   1) The Defense Science Board (DSB) is probably the public adaptation of the JASON concept, and does very very good work that is also capable of being shared with the public on most occasions (see for instance, their superb reports on "Strategic Communication" and on "Transition to and from Hostilities").
   
   2) Is this all there is? I give the author good marks for investigation and diplomacy and elicitation, but very candidly, I could have done better with simple citation analysis from the Science Citation Index, and some dramatic visualizations of how the JASONs did or did not stand out from the crowd. It is possible today to detect secret programs as they black out, and overall I felt that what this book provided was one person's good efforts, without ANY of the modern tools of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).



5. It took about a week for me to read The Jasons. Maybe less. I enjoyed the book, especially the details about the individual scientists and their quirky personalities. In fact, the author seemed a bit overly attentive to this stereotype: an ivory tower academic out of place in the "real world" but too arrogant to notice. That got kind of old after a while, especially when there seemed to be notable exceptions (MacDonald and Drell spring to mind).
   
   I think another reviewer at amazon mentioned the overly familiar writing style. I agree with that statement. I was hoping for something a bit more...objective sounding. Perhaps this could just be the authors chosen style. And it wasn't bad. It was light and quick paced. Just not very objective sounding, which, of course, should always be heavy and slow.
   
   Overall, I would recommend this book to those with an interest in the relationship between scientists and the government (particularly DOD), as well as those looking for an easy read.

5 comments about The Snoring Bird: My Family's Journey Through a Century of Biology (P.S.).

1. The Snoring Bird is a terrible title for a wonderful book like this! I can promise that it is anything but a snore. It made me laugh, learn, think, remember history and I had to blow my nose at the end and wipe my eyes too.
   Anyone who enjoyed Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance will go wild reading a science family's history as refugees. What it means to be passionate about science. This book will become a classic even if it is not published in different colors.
   What do I do now that I finished reading this great story?



2. I returned the book after reading perhaps 50 pages. The author and I are about the same age and I found the book terribly depressing because it reminded me of the horrible time after WWII in Germany (I was there as a child, also). I have other books by the author; some more enjoyable than others. This one was not!



3. Have been a fan of many of Heinrich's works. While I found this interesting from a curiosity perspective, it was a grind for me to get through some of it. Skipped the last 50 pages about his father (war stories)and then skipped another 30 or so pages about BH's career. Tighter editting and a tighter focus on father/son relationship would have made this a winner.



4. Bernd Heinrich is a very well known scientist, one whose work spans the fields of natural history, ecology, physiology and animal behavior. He is also a fine nature writer with a multitude of well-received books to his credit. As such, he is uniquely qualified to have written a book about the major changes in biology that have occurred over the last century.
   
   However, there is much more that makes this book fascinating. The history of biology that serves as a major theme in this book also parallels the history of his family, and it is through weaving the story of 20th century biology with his family story and modern world history that Heinrich has produced an excellent book well worth reading for the multiple strands that are woven into it.
   
   His father, Gerd, an old style systematic biologist/naturalist, is a collector and expert on the taxonomy of parasitic wasps. He combines his passion for this type of biology with his role as the head of a German family living on their ancestral estate in an area that had become a region of Poland following WWI.
   
   Gerd is in many ways typical of his generation. He is formed by the old Prussian values, honor, duty, doing things right, with a tendency of being rigid. Socially, he seems quite at home in his role as master of the estate and pater familias. In addition to his adventures as a WWI aviator, he has a history of being quite the ladies man. He can be selfish, or sometimes quite humane or even noble.
   
   Most importantly, he is a collector of nature who really has a passion for the subject. He is an accomplished traveler, whose collecting for major museums has taken him to places far away from the European world of his family and upbringing. He is rigid and duty bound, but also a free spirit in a way, for good and for bad.
   
   The first part of the book provides this essential background for the reader. Both from the comments that Heinrich makes and the sleuthing that he did into family history, the book makes an interesting read for those interested in a world now long gone.
   
   Bernd, born into a world that is being irrevocably altered by the rise of totalitarianism, is the heir to his father and a long tradition. As a small child he is torn away from his ancestral home by events beyond the family control. These include not just the arrival of the Nazis, but also of the Red Army from which the family flees and eventually settles in a forest cabin in the northwest of Germany, just as the Iron Curtain falls on Europe.
   
   The portion of the book dealing with the flight from the Red Army and the years spent trying to survive famine and a war-torn Germany is gripping, and in a way sets the stage for the rest of the book. Particularly interesting are the events of history and their effects on the family, as well as Bernd's experiences living in the forest. Here he first forms his attachment to the world of plants and animals by absorbing the world around him and the knowledge passed on from his father.
   
   Eventually the family moves to Maine and lives on a old farm. The father, now totally out of his cultural and scientific element, struggles to provide for his family and to continue with his passion for his style of biology. Bernd grows into an odd German-Polish-Maine-woodsman with a passion and talent for not only modern physiological ecology but also for distance running. As he matures in his own life and career, he sometimes comes into conflict with his father, personally and professionally, as their worlds move apart.
   
   Toward the close of the book, Bernd begins to come full circle. He matures and has his own life experiences. He is better able to understand his own roots, scientifically and family-wise, and to come to a mature understanding of his father, both as a scientist and a person.
   
   I found the final chapters where he revisits the old estate in Poland and his father's scientific work to be very interesting. He also has a touching closing, where he looks at his father as a person and talks of his habits, virtues and foibles. One gets the sense that he is able to both admire the virtues and forgive the vices of the man who was his father and a major influence on his life.
   
   One might be critical of the author, or of various members of the Heinrich family, but one does come away with a picture of them as real human beings, with virtues and vices. This is not a tell-all or some sort of feel-good confessional story.
   
   Instead, it is a view of trends in 20th century biology and a family who have been intimately involved with nature during an historically turbulent period. I found it to be a fascinating read, and highly recommend it.



5. The Snoring Bird is immediately and continuously absorbing, amusing, fascinating and satisfying from the first page to the last. I often shook my head in astonishment at the amazing series of events that kept the Heinrichs alive through two wars, and dangerous expeditions. Bernd has a light touch with his writing that guides the reader painlessly through minefields of insect taxonomy, family stories and epic journeys. Clearly he doesn't know what to think about his father, who nourished him, neglected him, saved him, damaged him--it's an incomprehensible mix that can't ever be sorted out. His mother is not as difficult for him to sort out, somehow. She didn't have the central role to play in his life. My only gripe comes fairly early on, with Bernd's seemingly off-hand discussion of Wallace and Darwin, and the priority for discovering the mechanism of evolution. Experts on both have devoted many pages of much more nuanced discussion than he gives it. I took it as a possible clue to his personality, and it caused me to lose some confidence in him. But it was mostly restored by his wonderful account, which only flags near the end, which is typical of people too. As his father reaches old age there is just not a lot of excitement like when he was a WWI pilot, or doing crazy things with bears and panthers. Bernd's understated way of writing about very painful events may not be very good for one's psychological health, but it makes the text much less of a harrowing experience for the reader, who can only guess at the incredible pain he went through with parents like this. So, this is one of the best books I have ever read. It's phenomenal in its scope across two generations, wealth of how life was in Germany during the two wars, what science is, how naturalist think, what life was like for a child immigrant, what it's like to live with a narcissist--or whatever he was, I'm not sure.

5 comments about The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science.

1. The world that Paracelsus knew is thankfully long gone. In its place is a world that takes its lead from modern science which is based largely on experience, experiment, criticism and empiricism and science itself moves forward upon the basis of the scientific method. But it was not always like that and this book does a remarkably good job of trying to bring to life a time in the late middle ages that modern science has forgotten, or perhaps more accurately, would like to forget.
   
   Modern science has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy, 4th century writings, Roman theories, natural magic, Christian theology, astrology, folk tales, alchemy and all manner of mediaeval claptrap and mumbo-jumbo that mostly would have us in hysterics today. When Paracelsus was alive though it was believed and largely taken as true. To stand up and say such and such was not true, or worse still to write it down and publish it was not generally taken as excepted modes of behaviour. In fact it would often put your well being in jeopardy as Paracelsus found out all too often. Rather confirming what was already understood underpinned the thinking of the time. Modern science emerged over several centuries from this mishmash and Ball manages to give a real flavour of what Paracelsus must have encountered. This is a book that should be enjoyed as much as it informs.
   
   Paracelsus himself was a remarkable character of contradictions who can best be described as a failure. Paracelsus' writings are not particularly important either to the history of medicine or to science but it is the spirit in which they were written, the rants as well as the more lucid bits. It is not hard to see Paracelsus as a Till Eulenspeigel type figure or even as a Pierrot, and a good deal of this comes over in Ball's portrait. But it was as a failure who managed to ignite in those who came after him the wish to enquire and not be put off by those who would suppress enquiry that Paracelsus deserves to be remembered.
   
   The life and work of Paracelsus could be written and appraised in a book one quarter the size of this, but that is not what makes this book worth the effort. The background to modern science is in short supply and it is worth getting to know more about it. In the process you will realise that our modern comforts should not be taken for granted and it is not hard to find areas of the world even today some things are not much further advanced than those encountered in this book.
   
   A good read on what could be a difficult subject.



2. My interest in this book was predicated more on the World of Renaissance Magic and Science than an interest in Paracelsus, who I had no awareness of prior to reading The Devil's Doctor. I wasn't at all disappointed. Philip Ball recreates the exotic beliefs of the medieval world in depth and with great precision. It was much more this social exploration of common beliefs and mystical influences that I was interested in than our esoteric subject. For me, the details on Paracelsus and the early steps toward modernization of medical doctrine were more of peripheral interest. I've read Demon Haunted World, A World Lit Only By Firelight, and Sleepwalkers, among others, but found richer detail and a more visceral illustration in the mindset of individuals presented here. My fascination with the Renaissance is the process by which humankind emerged from the world of supernatural mysticism to the discovery of rational thought and critical observation. Ball does a wonderful job of detailing the all-encompassing and powerful grip of mysticism in an era evolving toward rational explanations of nature. Readers interested in Paracelsus may find this material intrusive, but I found it of primary interest. As for Paracelsus himself, I came away with mixed feelings.
   
   On one hand, his beliefs represent very much the spiritual environment in which Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Leibniz, Newton and all those who broke the shackles of mysticism were immersed as they tried to understand the workings of the supernatural. Rationalism seems to have been an unintended derivative of this effort. On the other, I found Paracelsus to be something less than a significant character in this evolutionary process. The subsequent challenges to the primitive and brutal medical practices of antiquity carried out under his banner seem expunged of his irrational ranting and alchemical nonsense. I don't believe, for example, that a procedure for incubating horse manure with human blood and sperm while supplicating the spiritus mundi to create life while in a drunken stupor was a powerful prescience to in vitro laboratory experimentation or modern biochemistry. It is more a case that if you throw enough at a wall, something is bound to stick. Yet, we know the early founders of science who discovered the laws of nature we understand today operated within this same cloud of mysticism. That's what makes their achievements all the more impressive.



3. I very much looked forward to reading this book, as I have been interested in Paracelsus for many years. But it does not strike me that Ball is interested in Paracelsus. Quite the contrary--throughout the book, he evidences his disdain for Paracelsus. As I read along, I found myself wondering why he had chosen to write the book at all.
   
   Important ideas that Paracelsus is credited with developing or originating are missing in Ball's treatment. For example, the Doctrine of Signatures, which Paracelsus developed and which was taken up by later medical Paracelsians and became widespread, gets hardly any attention. In fact, I learned more about Paracelsian ideas from Principe's recent book on Boyle as alchemist, which I happened to read at the same time. Principe did not feel obliged to sneer at Paracelsus at every turn.
   
   I also found that the organization of the book was problematic. For instance, a chapter might be named for the time Paracelsus spent in Ingolstadt, but that chapter does not actually discuss it.
   
   If you are interested in Paracelsus, this is not the book for you. If, in contrast, you are interested in snickering at the past from what you imagine to be the exalted heights of scientific rationalism, this book will very much gratify your sense of self-importance.



4. The voluminous study written by P. Ball bears evident mark of his profession, that is of his being physicist. One has to appreciat how many historical topics he was able to cover in his book, less impressive is, nevertheless, his ability to discover the most important ones and to explain Paracelsus thought on the ground of the historical context so carefully described. Author's basic despise -- at least that's what I feel in his book -- for questions of theology and religion that, according to him, have at best a historical importance seems to prevent him from better understanding of real problems of Paracelsus, and even of real meaning of his "magic". Well, according to the title, Ball wanted to describe Paracelsus in the context of the "renaissance magic and science", yet this picture would be, and is, distorted if the effort is not made to understand the complex of his thought from his perspective, to find out what for him is important.
   Another thing is that Ball works only with english anthologies and even, if I'm not mistaken, only with english written sources in general. Sure, it's not very easy to read Paracelsus in the original Swiss German dialect, yet to me it seems inevitable if one wants to get out of beaten tracks of long rooted, sometimes superficial opinions, and to get inside the text and thoughts.
   So, if you want to read a reliable and better balanced study on Paracelsus' natural philosophy as well as on his theology (and you are not craving for an "esoteric" interpretation) read rather Andrew Weeks' nicely short monograph on Paracelsus and keep reservation about Ball's book: historically he seems to have found the proper sources to use, but systematically he's then not going deep enough to discover the "real" Paracelsus. If you read in German check the brand new and very valuable, although a little difficult-to-read, book by M. Bergengruen (Meiner 2007). Or just reach for the old, eventhough also partly one-sided "Introduction" by W. Pagel to add some more insights in the paracelsian thought.



5. The Devil's Doctor is a remarkably well written biography of Paracelsus as well as social history of his life time, that period in European History when the Scholastic mindset of the Medieval was being challenged by the coming Enlightenment. Ball, who writes with great clarity and skillful organization shows Paracelsus as a unique individual in the middle of this social revolution, not seeing the whole picture, but living on both sides of the split.
   
   An alchemist who grew up in a mining region of Switzerland where the manipulation of metals was prevelant he received a scolastic education in medicine. He left early because he realized that the medicine of the Greeks no longer served. He sought out the best teachers and herbalists to educate himself and was recognized as one of the best doctors of his time. He grew up in the Roman church, but thought, wrote, and preached independently his own brand of spirituality barely escaping condemnation for heresy.
   
   I had read bits and pieces about Paracelsus over the years, but gathered almost nothing about the man. By putting Paracelsus in his time and many places (the man traveled a get deal for the times), Ball has made him real and his significance to European, and so world, history understandable.
   
   I can't say I disliked anything about this book. Except, maybe, the fact that Paracelsus was associated with so many interesting characters who deserved books of their own, which I'll probably never find. I highly recommend this book to those interested in this period of history even if they scoff at alchemy. If they scoff, Ball will give them a better understanding of its significance to the period.

5 comments about Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel (Great Discoveries).

1. This book centers on the irony that Gödel's own philosophical interpretation of his work (which indeed may have driven his efforts to begin with) was in complete opposition to how it was most commonly interpreted by others.
   
   Gödel was a Platonist, believing that the mind was able to make contact with absolute mathematical reality. Given that he was an attending member of the Vienna circle in the 1920's, which was the locus of logical positivism, many assumed he was of like mind, believing there was no truth beyond what man could empirically discover. Gödel's extreme reluctance to speak or write on his views helped make this misunderstanding possible. Indeed, the incompleteness theorems have often been co-opted by sloppy post-modernists (along with relativity theory and the uncertainty principle) in making the case for truth relativism. They would focus on the conclusion that we can't construct formal systems (large enough to at least encompass arithmetic) which are both complete and provably consistent and treat this as revealing a limitation in our ability to reach absolute truth. Gödel believed the actual lesson was that the human mind can and does perceive truth beyond the capability of formal systems (equivalently, algorithmic computing machines).
   
   This book does a nice job in the treatment of the ideas as well as the biography.



2. Goldstein, does a masterful job describing the life and the work of the greatest logician to ever live. Ironically the genius and logical perfection exuded by Gödel is in the end matched by the equilibrium of the universe- he becomes completely illogical and insane.
   
   Goldstein writes with a piercing passion and pointed savvy that I envy. He deep appreciation for the mind of the great logician bleeds all the way through the entire read. Gödel's incompleteness theorem took formalistic logic and arithmetic in a time when it was getting ready to announce its supreme dominance and perfection to the world and turned it on its head. Gödel proved that logic and arithmetic will forever be incomplete within themselves. In other words, logic and arithmetic will never take the place of human reasoning or mathematical truth. Man is not machine.
   
   This all started with Russell's paradox which is the proposition
   
   This sentence is false.
   
   Known as the liar's paradox, Russell's paradox has a very strange quality about it. The "false" part applies to the whole sentence and its subject simultaneously. Thus if you seek to give the sentence a true or false value we run into immediate problems.
   
   Is the proposition is false then it cant be false within itself and so it isn't false it must be true. This means that it is self contradictory.
   
   But then again if the proposition is true then it isn't' false; another contradiction. Russell's paradox wins no matter what. There is something very special about negations indeed.
   
   
   This book is monumental not simply because Goldstein can write like a demon on a mission but because Gödel's life and accomplishment is timeless. His theorem is crystal clear and logically flawless-- one of it's, if not "the" strangest and most ironically paradoxical qualities.
   
   If you have any interest in philosophy at all- read this book. Its a must. Not.



3. Among the interesting byproducts of feminism and the admission, commencing in 1970, of women to places like Princeton are overall more interesting and "cultured" readings of analytic philosophy and mathematics, before that male ghettos.
   
   Goldstein, who studied logic and philosophy at Princeton (and who used vignettes from her experience in "The Mind-Body Problem", a novel) met Goedel, and understands the technical details of his work thoroughly. She does a better job, in fact, than Ernest Nagel did in 1968 because she makes emotional connections that exist in mathematical work but which mathematicians often don't like to talk about.
   
   Nagel did say something about Goedel's "intellectual symphony", but Goldstein, unlike Goedel, did deeper research into Goedel's biography, snooping for example around the Mercer County courthouse for records of his US citizenship application.
   
   She reveals the plight of the hyper-intelligent and why we have tenure, since guys like Kurt Goedel and John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash are snuffed out in the so-called "real world": once Einstein passed on, Goedel, we learn, had nobody to talk to.
   
   Interestingly, we get no Pop-feminist nonsense and boo-hoo-ing about Goedel's wife and her loneliness, having married a truly weird individual. Mature women know today what my Mom knew: you make your bed and you lie in it, and any marriage is a unique contract. Gretel Karplus, Adorno's wife, was far more intelligent than Mrs. Goedel but she buried the possibility of being an Arendt or a Weil in service to Teddy and was shattered by his unexpected death. Likewise, Goedel's wife seems to have gotten what she wanted and what many women would kill for: a quiet husband and a house on Linden Lane.
   
   Goldstein's "philosophy of mathematics" is nuanced. Unlike some feminist philosophers she makes no attempt to reduce the subject-matter to some sort of Freudianism. At the same time, she knows that "what we think about when we think about math" comes as do other inputs: by way of meat.
   
   This is an *aufhebung* worthy in its own workyday way of an Aristotle or an Aquinas, because a sharper bifurcation and reification renders lifeless the terms on either side of the cut. Just as Aristotle realized that there are Forms but always instantiated, and just as Aquinas applied this insight to religion, Goldstein manages to hold together the apparently opposing thoughts, that mathematical realities are independent of our thought...but have no existence *that we know of* outside our embodied thought. They are the closest thing we have to noumena manifesting as phenomena.
   
   As a dialectical thinker, Rebecca Goldstein knows how negation works in embodied space. By trying to make themselves over into things, "thinking machines", the Positivists transformed themselves, as she shows, from a sought objectivity into its reverse; this was also C. S. Lewis' insight, in his novel That Hideous Strength, in which the Logical Positivists of Belbury turn out to be merely Satanists, of a sort, in a word, chumps who bow down to wood and stone, having emptied themselves of the capacity for thought through a nihilistic metaphysics.
   
   The problem with this gesture is that (as Adorno pointed out), the categories themselves are in motion so that at the end all we "know" is that:
   
   (1) Logical Positivism imprisoned the scientific subject within a barrage of sense-data, without explaining how sense data organizes itself.
   
   (2) Formalism in mathematics simply denies that anything exists outside a formal system in a relationship of containing. Fearful of either benign or else vicious circles, it refuses to do mathematical philosophy.
   
   (2) First rate minds (Goedel and Wittgenstein) wanted no part of this malarkey.
   
   As the Austrian philosopher Gustav Bergmann pointed out, Logical Postivism's denial was a perverse sort of metaphysics. In the middle of its denial, Goedel upped the ante by discovering that the paradox of the Liar has a metaphysical implication as regards the capacities of formal systems, versus that of human beings. Goedel stood outside the machine (the formal system) and derived an indirect existence proof of truths unprovable within the machine, such that if they were incorporated as axioms, new unprovable truths would appear, and this is why today we almost never anthropomorphise computers: whereas the pronoun for a ship was she, the pronoun for computer is it (and, the adjectives are not printable).
   
   Parenthetically, I was glad to see Goldstein mention Gustav Bergmann, a relatively minor member of the Vienna Circle, since he'd self-marginalized by moving to the Midwest, that black hole, and teaching at the University of Iowa. Bergmann gave a talk at my university in which he pronounced a Goedelian commitment to the continued existence of ontology and its truth, saying he'd die in a ditch to defend it. At this time, in 1970, Goedel was invisible and people were unaware that he felt and thought pretty much the same as Bergmann.
   
   Does Goedel's proof have metaphysical import? Goldstein rejects what she calls the postmodern interpretation, which she re-presents as the argument that (1) mathematics is undecidable ergo (or, as First Gravedigger says in Hamlet, argal) (2) there is no "truth", only "stories".
   
   Of course, neither Derrida nor my fat pal Adorno make this argument. Indeed, there's quite a lot of metaphysical speculation and conviction in Derrida; for example, arche-writing is an ontological analysis of meaning which, ontologically and Kantian-metaphysically rejects doing ontology with received categories of writing and speech. Derrida was merely unconvinced that the only reine vernunft on tap is mathematically expressible as opposed to using natural language.
   
   But this is a minor aporia on Goldstein's part, caused I think by the fact that during her studies at Princeton, "deconstruction" was fashionable and usable in a sloppy way unlike mathematics.
   
   There are many popular books on mathematics that overstress fascinating and sexy details about the biological mathematicians. While the current rage for this, sparked by the movie A Beautiful Mind, might help to get math geeks laid, a mathematical biography should balance the math and the meat, and even more than Sylvia Nasar's book eponymous to the movie, Incompleteness does this.



4. Probably a better choice for most of us (including me) to read first, which I am glad I did. I was expecting a mathematical book about Goedel's incompleteness theorem, but this is really a biography of Kurt Goedel [Note: 'oe' is the standard substitute for an umlauted 'o' when one doesn't have the option of using the latter, which this text box doesn't provide.]
   
   Professor Goldstein does provide a simplified explanation of Goedel's incompleteness theorems (there are 2), and a reference to Godel's Proof, by Nagel, Newman, and Hofstadter, which she cites as a fuller presentation of the theorems themselves. Professor Goldstein's presentation of the theorems was, for me, a very helpful introduction which I am very glad to have read. It gives the reader a broad, but shallow overview of the forest, which should keep the reader from getting lost among the trees when tackling the actual proof, if s/he even chooses to do so, and it gives sufficient understanding to satisfy probably the great majority of us.
   
   Also, the biography of Goedel is interesting in itself and well worth reading.
   
   Read this enjoyable and well-written book first, then decide whether you want to tackle Nagel, Newman, and Hofstadter. If you do, you will be better prepared for it.
   
   watziznaym@gmail.com



5. The author, Rebecca Goldstein, appears to be one of those authors who feels it necessary to use obscure words, phrasing, and technical language to impress her readers. Although I am a well-read professional person, I found it necessary to refer to my dictionary far more than I ever have before, to the point that it was difficult to maintain a smooth flow of understanding. I was struck not only by the topical tangents used to fill space, but by the incredible overuse of fabricated terminology, much of it based on the prefix "meta-".
   Unfortunately the book's style obscures the story of Godel and his theorems. Perhaps time will heal my wounds and I'll be able to find a more coherent, lucid treatment of this mathematical icon's work.

5 comments about Disturbing The Universe (Sloan Foundation Science Series).

1. XXXXX
   
   "I have collected in this book memories extending over fifty years...I am trying in this book to describe to people who are not scientists the way the human situation looks to somebody who is a scientist. Partly I shall be describing how science looks from the inside. Partly I shall be discussing the future of technology. Partly I shall be struggling with the ethical problems of war and peace, freedom and responsibility, hope and despair, as these are affected by science...
   
   The methodology of this book is literary rather than analytical. For insight into human affairs I turn to stories and poems. [In fact, the title of this book comes from a poem by T.S. Eliot]...A substantial part of this book is autobiographical...It is not that I consider my own life particularly significant or interesting to anybody besides myself. I write about my own experiences because I do not know much about anyone else's...To understand the nature of science and its interaction with science, one must examine the individual scientist and how he confronts the world around him."
   
   The above comes from the beginning of this fascinating book by theoretical physicist (encompassing pure mathematics, nuclear engineering, space technology, and astronomy), author, and professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Freeman Dyson (born 1923). He has also been awarded a number of distinguished prizes in science.
   
   Dyson is involved in a field of pure science, but this book clearly shows that he is a man of conscience and compassion concerned with humanity's well being.
   
   The first two parts of this book traces his years of growing up between two world wars and his early working years. Soon thereafter, while pursuing with great success--first with scientist Hans Bethe at Cornell University and then with scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer at Princeton University (and others such as scientists Richard Feynman and Edward Teller)--his own vocation of perceiving and describing the laws that run the universe, from sub-atomic particles to galaxies, he has also been continuously involved in the moral issues affecting all of us--from disarmament to the control of recombinant DNA research.
   
   The third and last part is concerned with Dyson's "obsession with the future" and in fact, he tells the reader that "the future is my third home." It is (at least to me) an interesting section where we get to see a glimpse of the far future through the eyes of a prominent scientist.
   
   Finally, there is only one problem I had with this book: it has no illustrations (diagrams, sketches, and pictures)! I think these would have enhanced the book's readability. (The original hardcover version of this book has a picture of Dyson on its back cover.)
   
   In conclusion, this is a unique book that's beautifully written giving us a snapshot into the life and mind of one of the world's greatest thinkers!!
   
   (first published 1979; author's preface; 3 parts or 24 chapters; main narrative 260 pages; bibliographical notes; index)
   
   <>
   
   XXXXX



2. "We are scientists second and human beings first. We become politically involved because knowledge implies responsibility." -Freeman Dyson-
   This phrase struck me years ago when I read Dr. Dyson's book. Then, as a new graduate student in physics, I enjoyed the collection of poetry and personal thoughts, and the anecdotes of famous physicists whom I worshipped. Then, it inspired me to continue with my work. Now, with PhD in hand, I'm combing the country for a physics job and I find DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE to be an enormously comforting companion. Freeman Dyson is a complex and highly evolved man who pondered both physical law and the higher moralities binding those who wield this knowledge. I use this book as a roadmap, giving a context in which to think about research and life. I highly recommend this book.



3. Excelente libro, es sorprendente simpre deleitarse con las ideas y la forma magistral de Freeman Dyson, para contranos y aconsejarnos sobre ciencia y futuro



4. I was first introduced to Freeman Dyson as a colleague and sometimes other half of Richard Feynman. I regret that during our brief meetings I never got to know him for being more than a physicist. Therefore, when I started reading this book I was expecting something akin to the biographical material on Feynman. Instead, I found not only a more richly multidimensional book, but a glimpse into the soul of a thinker for the ages and a new window into timeless issues that world news thrusts upon us every day. Dyson explores topics as diverse as his early work in physics, to his work in the nuclear disarmament programs of the Kennedy-Kruschev era, to the politics of the McCarthyist efforts against Oppenheimer, to his thoughts on what it means for a one-time Brit to become an American, to gedanken experiments about colonization of the universe. Beneath each of these topics lies a set of fundamental moral imperatives. This book is an inspiration for professionals to look beyond their profession, and beyond science, to grapple with the great human questions.
   
   The open pages of Dyson's life, as recalled here, take the concept of "laws of nature" far beyond the realm of subatomic particle physics into the space of everyday social experience. This is a book about the development of social conscience, fueled by the ethical questions of nuclear weapons development. It is perhaps predictable that the book dwells on the questions of the morality of war, but the fresh perspectives and depth of thought on this topic kept me engaged. Reaching far beyond the role of science in war, the book extrapolates this discourse into the broader question of technology's role in a conscionable future of humanity. It is one of those uncommon writings from a "science" author that we dare call literature, both in terms of its rhetoric and in terms of its universality.
   
   There is a small bit at the end where Dyson describes what I believe to be an overly ambitious attempt to create a unifying metaphysic of subatomic behavior and human psychology, that seemed out of character with the rest of his book. But I can forgive the author that small distraction in light. And even as strange as it is, it bounces around in my head and--as is true of many ideas from this book--has been the source of numerous thoughtful discussions with colleagues.



5. some reviewers say this book is a masterpiece,and the greatest book written by Freeman.Dyson, I really can't agree with them.
   I read the book twice, I find it is an interesting book. Dyson is undoubted a successful scientist, this book ,I think it as autobiography of Dyson. of course, it is very interesting and full of stories. But just like other autobiographies, it is just a story book, not a masterpiece. for these resons, I give it four stars.
   F.Dyson wrote some popular book, they are all excellent, but the greater work of Dyson is about scientific research, such as QED.
   I also like his "infinite in all directions", because it give me a special viewpoint about science, society and universe.anyway, The book,and others by dyson is worth of reading.

5 comments about Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, Second Edition.

1. McGrayne chronicles the discrimination faced by female scientists in the 20th century. Even by those who would eventually achieve the highest prize of the Nobel. She also includes biographies of a few women who never won the Nobel, but were acknowledged later by many to have merited it. Lise Meitner, of course. She was doubly disadvantaged. Being female and Jewish in Germany during the 1920s and 30s. The story of how Otto Hahn won the Physics Nobel shortly after World War 2 for work that he did jointly with her is well known to physicists.
   
   Jocelyn Bell's work on pulsars is also described. Bell's advisor would later garner the Nobel for this, though Bell made the crucial observations and deductions from those.
   
   Both these chapters can be exercises in frustration to a reader. Injustices that were never remedied. Though Bell is still alive, and so there is a chance that the Nobel committe might redress this oversight.



2. I found this book really excellent--I was coming at it from being a female scientist (chemist) myself. Good from beginning to end....no complaints!



3. Why so few? This is the question which the author put on the first page of the book. More than 300 scientists have won the Nobel Prize since its establishment,however, only 10 of them are women. Why? Why have so few women won the Nobel Prize in science? Some people might say this small number could be evidence for old prejudices. But the author tried to find a different answer through this book. This book contains stories of 15 women scientists who won the Nobel Prize or had a critical role in Nobel Prize winning works. Although this book takes the style of a biography and also describes all the scientific details quite well, it is neither just a biography nor just a science book for general readers. It is more than both of them. These women scientists had gone through lots of difficulties. All of them had experiences of being rejected from the opportunity of receiving a higher education. Most of them had more than once been mistreated and disregarded of their abilities as well as their works. And some of them, such as Rosalind Franklin, still have not received the full credit which she deserves. One might say that all the scientists who did remarkable works had faced and overcome many kinds of difficulties. But these women had to carry the added burden of being "women scientists". So, as the author pointed, another question should arise when the book is finished. Why so many? Why have so many women challenged themselves with such difficult works in spite of all the obstacles? The answer is simple. They loved science. And, through this book, the readers will find a love and a understanding for these fearless women as well as their lover,science.



4. Nobel Prize Women in Science is a superb collection of hour-long biographies of women who either won a Nobel Prize or worked on a project that won a Nobel Prize in science. The biographies are full of memorable vignettes and quotes and lucid explanations of the scientific discoveries. This reader found the book liberating because it debunked so many myths she had had about good scientists. This book makes great bedtime reading and excellent gifts for both men and women.



5. I was enthralled by this delightful, healing, and eye opening crediting over the wonder works of scientific endeavor made by woman--unsung heroines who did not flinch one bit from their true calling, what for all the drowning out and dumbing down of class ostracism inundating them and their sisters in their times. These Ladies are the truest measure of what is called a benchmark in the progress of humanity to wake up and rise to The Greatest Challenge: to free the mind, the spirit, the yoke of history's circumstance, to unite us in peace, recognition, respect, and unqualified defference to all who carry forth the Light. From my heart, Thank You Sharon Bertsch McGrayne! And for those for whom it is easier to quip, 'a woman's place is in the home, raising children and so forth....' I'll just add, we got BILLIONS of 'em.

5 comments about Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond.

1. Gene Kranz does an amazing job of showing what people can do if they have the right leadership, teamwork, commitment and passion.
   
   The book allows us to see Kranz's perspective as flight controller, (and later flight director) during his tenure on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs and beyond.
   
   From the tremendous successes, to the gut wrenching failures, to the heroism, to the practical jokes, this book has it all. Gene Kranz was a key player in helping to create a culture of Tough and Competent flight controllers who had discipline and morale. They knew the true meaning of teamwork.
   
   One of the stories that impressed me most was after the devastating tragedy of the Apollo 1. A fire on the pad killed Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffe while they were training in the capsule. Afterwards Kranz got in front of his flight controllers and said:
   
   "Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been the design, build, or test. Whatever it was we should have caught it."
   
   Kranz and his people (as well as everyone else on the space program) took responsibility for their actions and went on to amazing successes. We crawled out the cradle of this home we call earth and explored another world. Twelve men in all walked on the moon. Also, three astronauts were brought back home safely from the brink of disaster in Apollo 13. We had truly gone where no man had gone before.
   
   These were human beings, and they are the best of the best. Not an Astronaut was lost during any of the following Apollo missions. The tragedy on the pad drove the commitment of everyone on the space program to an entirely new level. As a matter of fact, not a man was lost once they left earth on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
   
   Gene Kranz sums up how he gained his skills to be a top flight director when he said:
   
   "The flight director's ultimate training comes at the console, working real problems, facing the risks, making irrevocable decisions."
   
   This book belongs on any bookshelf, but not to be looked at, but to be read and understood. We all have the makings of greatness, we just have to take responsibility for our actions and do the very best we know how. What other amazing things can we accomplish as a species if we have the right leadership, teamwork, commitment, and passion?
   
   The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking



2. Gene's memories from the first halting attempts to launch rockets into space through the successfull Apollo moon program paint vivid pictures of what happened inside the space agency on a non-technical level in building the space program. Good review of challenging and motivating people to envision the what-if and do it step by step. Small references to lack of vision in senior leadership of space program after the Kennedy moon goal was achieved.



3. My teenage interest in rocketry, launching about 1000 tiny rockets in all, my dreams of extraterrestrial voyages from reading science fiction, and being involved in real countdowns for liquid propellant rocket motors in the MIT Rocket Research Society all came back from reading this book. This is the perfect follow-on to Chris Kraft's "Flight: My Life in Mission Control" which came out a year later. Both are excellent. Kraft and Kranz were the guys we saw most of on TV during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Programs -- more than could be seen of any single astronaut.
   
   The first major Flight Directors of Mission Control of NASA were much more than masters of ceremonies. They had to make decisions on continuing or aborting or modifying missions, and any decision could have led to deaths. Because of the short times in which some decisions had to be made, Kraft (yes, Kraft) wrote the job description for his own position as Flight Director that said he had the final say, knowing that a mistake would be the end of his career at NASA, but also knowing that delayed decisions could kill the astronauts or the program. This necessitated building a team of specialists for each of the many aspects of the missions (communications, computing, engine status, crew status, etc., etc.) and trusting their decisions.
   
   Kranz was deeply affected by the deaths of three astronauts by fire on the ground in the Apollo 1 capsule. He was point man in the Apollo 13 explosion (as in the movie), and safe return to Earth of 3 astronauts. The details of how thorough simulations of missions were was a revelation to me. It all paid off, because almost no missions ran without failures. On-board computers were too slow or had too little memory, thrusters failed to turn off, all kinds of failure indicators would give false readings, hatches or seals would leak.
   
   Much that was kept from the public during the missions came out. The enthusiasm for the projects was incredibly high among the early birds in NASA, including the first administrators, who had to fight often for continuation of funding, especially after the USSR lost momentum, even to get the first mission to the moon. NASA pay was low, so the committment of so many on the team was not financial. The cooperation of contractors, notwithstanding some lapses in quality, was excellent, and included turning over copies of engineering drawings of all parts of a capsule or component. The willingness to take risks by NASA personnel and others during the Moon progrtam is awe-inspring, especially compared with today's timidity. Fom p383: "Lacking a clear goal, the team that placed an American on the Moon, NASA, has become just another federal bureaucracy beset by competing agendas, and unable to establish discipline within its structure. Although NASA has an amazing array of technology and the most talented workforce in history, it lacks top-level vision."
   
   Kranz was aware that he was making history. While he was steady and decisive (like Kraft) while on duty, Kranz revealed his extreme emotions at many points. While you should read books by astronauts, such as "Off the Planet" by Jerry M. Linenger, 2000, and "Last Man on the Moon" by Gene Cernan, the best overview for me has been through the eyes of the Flight Directors.



4. While I confess to being a lifelong space buff, this book is the first of many memoirs I have had the pleasure of reading from the actual men and women who participated in one of the greatest adventures in human history. I read it nonstop from the moment I brought it home, and have reread many sections of it numerous times. I believe it is a useful historical record of the golden era of the space program, but also holds many lessons for those who find themselves in formal or de facto positions of technical leadership in all types of organizations - churches, consulting firms, technical contractors, manufacturers, and probably many others with which I am not personally familiar. Thank you Mr. Kranz for all you have shared!



5. I highly recommend this book to all the poor men who already believe today that APOLLO is a whole fake
   KRANZ tell the truth it is obvious when you read him

5 comments about Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden.

1. When you can't think of a thing to give your outdoor guys, this is it. I was introduced to Terry Grosz on the docudrama on Animal Planet Network and wanted to give the DVD as a gift. I could not find it; I wish it were for sale. The stories in this book are primarily the basis for the TV show. He is an excellent story teller who has a profound regard for our wildlife and game. He nails the humour in serious situations. Just a great read.



2. I first picked up this book not knowing what to expect, I thought if it was bad, I would throw it in the corner. Little did I know, how much I'd love this book and actually all of them in the series. From the first page, I was not able to put the book down. I think I read Wildlife Wars in about 3 days and quickly started ordering all the books. Mr. Grosz is a bear of a man with a heart as big as he is! He spent 25+ years defending wildlife so that the next generation would have something left. Some of the stories are exciting, others comical and some just amazing, but in the end I was sad finish the book. When reading his adventures, its easy to close your eyes and picture what he saw so many years ago. If you are looking for an adventurous book that leaves an impression on you, then this is book for you.



3. I bought this book back when I was a junior in high school, in 2002. At the time I was considering where I wanted to go to school and what I wanted to major in. This book, and others by Terry, helped me decide that wildlife conservation was my path. I've since graduated from Humboldt State with my BS in Wildlife Management and Conservation and will be applying this fall as a Conservation Officer in Idaho. Wildlife management takes many forms, from academia to habitat management, but I've decided I can best protect "America's wildlife heritage" by being part of the first line of defense against their destruction thanks in large part to getting a idea of the field from Terry's first hand experiences. Terry also stresses the importance of community support and education if we are to have a hope of winning the wildlife wars. The field of wildlife is my passion, and Terry's books helped put me on that path.



4. This is a fun, easy to read book. I hate to think that all of the incidents of this book occured, but at least there are some out there willing to fight for those who can't fight for themselves. Love the way Grosz lays down the law.



5. Game wardens go out alone into the wilderness at night to arrest groups of people carrying guns. If you think about that, it's amazing that any of them survive, much less arrest people. It's not surprising that they suffer much higher injury and death rates than any other kind of law enforcement officer. Grosz gets shot once in this book, and has several more close calls.
   
   The book consists of a a bunch of stories from Grosz's early days as a game warden in California in the late 1960s. Grosz is a born story-teller, and each chapter is engaging. However, each story seems to have been written to stand alone, so that some facts are repeated pointlessly (especially his size but also the names of his partners, the fact that his wife is a schoolteacher).
   
   Gross is also an old-school law enforcement officer. You won't find him reading anyone their Miranda rights. In several cases he and some partners take the law into their own hands, harassing "lads" who might otherwise be difficult to prosecute.
   
   You can read this book as the memoirs of a cop who happens to be on the poacher beat. But I suspect that most people who pick it up will be interested in wildlife more than law enforcement per se. You won't be disappointed, and you're likely to be shocked by how many people violate every wildlife law in the book. In one chapter, Grosz performs routine checks on two dozen people during deer season, and every single one of them ends up with a citation for one thing or another.
   
   The most memorable chapter tells the story of a lifelong duck "dragger," who might kill hundreds of ducks a night for sale to the market in San Francisco. This poacher has decided that his profession is no longer sustainable, and he decides to teach Grosz the ways of duck dragging so that he will be a more effective game warden. It's a nice story of an unlikely friendship during the passing of an era.