2 comments about An American Child Supreme: The Education of a Liberation Ecologist.

1. LA Times 7/22/01 "Nichols is a God-forsaken mountain of American conflict, spriritual doubt, political duality and gender confusion. Like a pioneer, he keeps lighting out the territory ahead of the rest, gets lost in the desert and comes up the hills....This memoir, this credo, reveals a tender, overprotected rich kid growing up on 600 Long Island acres that had been in his family since the 1700s....Some time after college, his best friends took off for Guatemala, dragged him down for a visit and politicized the hell out of him. That was 1964, and he was 24. It was the best thing and the worst thing that could have happened to John Nichols."

   Colorado Springs Independent 7/5/01 "Nichols is a masterful storyteller, full of the humor that springs from honesty, and this is one of those books you begin to wish would not end after you've read the first 10 pages."




2. The book delves into some very important issues, but skips over much of the biographical stuff and early memories I was hoping for. Over 50 pages of this already short book are just a listing of his previously published articles. In this case, the cover of the book is just a little bit misleading.

No comments about The Search for Christian Doppler.

1 comments about Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind (Cambridge Science Biographies).

1. A very distinguished female scientist, in whose long life of 92 years, she experienced and contributed to Victorian science. Neeley takes us back to that era. She shows how Somerville became well known to the educated via such books as "Mechanism of the Heavens" (1831) and "On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences" (1834). They were well received and helped popularise science, and also the (shocking!) concept that a woman could write such analytic prose. That such deeds were not a male preserve.

   To be sure, from our vantage point, some of Somerville's analyses may seem strained. Prior to James Maxwell's discoveries of his equations that unified electricity and magnetism, those effects could only be treated in a vague, qualitative fashion. Neeley's excerpts of Somerville's writings reveal this. Along with a florid, turgid style. But keep in mind that this was the accepted style of that era. And until Maxwell came along, her speculations were arguably the best any scientist could do.

5 comments about Stephen Hawking: A Quest For The Theory Of Everything.

1. 
   I felt that Ferguson achieved a nice balance by intermingling Hawking's biography with introduction to his theories. It allows your brain to alternate between working on science and returning "back to earth" to meet an interesting human being with all his problems and victories. The science part is very layman-friendly, and at the same time is not too slow for the scientifically-minded (just a bit too politically correct, but it's understandable). The biography part is tactful, and with just the right amount of detail. The book is clear and inspiring, and she convinced me to read Hawking's "A brief history of time".
   
   Strangely enough, Hawking's book turned out to be not as clear and inspiring as Ferguson's book. She painted him as the king of clarity, conciseness, and humor, but I don't get such an impression at all from reading his book. So now I have mixed feelings: I respect Ferguson for being good at writing and teaching (better than Hawking at both), but I'm annoyed with her for the false advertisement.



2. After reading A Brief History of Time I decided that I wanted to learn more about Stephen Hawkings himself and how he became who he is today. I picked up this book written by Kitty Ferguson, which is claimed to be a biography and started reading it. After about twenty pages she was done talking about his life and started talking about his theories. This was disappointing to me because I thought the book was a biography.
   
   As I continued reading I became somewhat confused while she told about Hawkings discoveries. The explanations were little or none in trying to get the reader to understand the ideas. It did not help that there were very few small illustrations that were in the book to go along with her explanations. If there were highly detailed color illustrations such as those in A Brief History In Time, it might have been much easier to understand.
   
   I did enjoy the beginning of the book where Kitty goes into detail about the beginning of Hawkings life but I feel like it was just an overview of how he became who he is today. I would not recommend this book, instead I would recommend A Brief History In Time because it is much easier to understand because it has great illustrations and is not so mathematical.



3. I really liked this book at times, but found Kitty tries to hard to explain Hawking's theories. If you are not one of the Mensa crowd then it gets a little meaningless like similar to reading Greek, can you speak or read Greek? not me! Some of Hawking's theories are explained well and are pretty straight forward, such as the singularity theory and how many believe the universe has expanded and then retracted back to a singularity and then expanded and retracted over and over. Also it goes into detail about his belief that particles can escape black holes, once it reaches the event horizon it splits the negative may fall directly into the black hole past the even horizon and the positive falls away from the event horizon freeing it.This aside what I really wanted to read more about was the man Hawking himself. I mean come on, I've already read "A brief history of time". In short this book is short on explaining much about Stephen and tries to hard to explain some of his many theories.



4. Kitty Ferguson gives a lot of info on Stephen Hawking's life and works, being a small book in size it is full of interesting theories on Universe and Black Holes. It is purely scientific book thus it tries to explain everything scientifically, eventhough Stephen Hawking sometimes accepts that science cannot prove some things that are beyond our reach, nevertheless he does not accept that the whole universe is a God's creation.

   "The Creation of the Universe" by Hârun Yahya is an excellent book which explains scientifically how God has created the Universe.




5. After reading "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking, I was absolutely taken with astrophysics. Now, I'm no professional, but I could understand Hawking's book even if I had to learn to concentrate on what I was reading completely and reread some places. Hawking attempted to explain even the most complicated things - and succeeded. I thought I could pick up Kitty Ferguson's book for some easy reading on Hawking's discoveries - boy, was I wrong!

   Kitty Ferguson makes absolutely no attempt to explain the things she's talking about. None! She simply gives you facts that are impossible to accept without explanations. For the most part, I did know what she was talking about - and even then I was astounded by how confusing she had managed to make it all seem, and how imprecise a few of her facts and analogies were.

   If you understand the things she's talking about (and you probably do understand most of the things if you know at least something about Hawking's discoveries), you have no need to read this book. It's not even that good of a biography. If you don't know a thing about astrophysics, but would like to learn and, what's much more important, understand these things, pick up another book - and I myself would suggest the aforementioned "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking.

No comments about Banneker: The Afro-American Astronomer.

No comments about "Almost a Man of Genius": Clemence Royer, Feminism, and Nineteenth-Century Science (Lives of Women in Science).

5 comments about Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer.

1. It seems some people blindly grab books off shelves, expecting to discover epic literature by such methods. It may indicate something about someone who buys books before examining the first page. Stewart's objective here seems to be of biographical and circumstantial nature, and not too technical. But for those of the technical class, it'd seem that they might by default, look at the book a bit, before purchasing it. If I set out to buy a dictionary, but got instead some old discourse by Chomsky, I would be disappointed, though I certainly would not criticize Sir Noam for my mistake. For Stewart's intended purpose, this book is a success. I suppose if this is a children's book, then a whole lot of top-notch science fiction and other creative writings should have many o' men embarrassed. This book captures many of the fascinating aspects of Tesla's life, as well as the generally historically-neglected crimes of Edison. I may be a bit cynical, but I have my doubts that certain critics of this work would have been satisfied had they purchased technical writings of Tesla-Himself, and would have complained about the lack of style and tedious documentation. Yes, this work is in novel format, but it is the last thing the common child will understand on any significant level. As for many great fantasy works, we read them as children, then many years later read them again, only to discover new things we had never considered. Perhaps an appeal to the young and vibrant imagination is more a benefit than a deficiency. I highly recommend it to any open minded person who does not insist on wandering through infinite realms of technical data and references, and is not afraid of being entertained whilst learning.
   A great book! It will always have a place on my shelf.



2. I found this book on the "Physics" section of a Borders Bookstore, which led me to believe I was buying a biography of Nicola Tesla (as I was traveling abroad I didn't have much time to check on the author). What I found was a book full of made up dialogues (and of cuestionable quality at best), written by a guy whose other two books are about UFO's and aliens.
   
   I wished there was a direct way to contact Borders bookstores to ask why is a book that is OBVIOUSLY fiction placed on the physics section. I would steer away from this book unless I was in the mood to read pretty crappy fiction.



3. Tesla, The Modern Sorcerer, is not what I expected. I wanted an biography of the scientist, but the dialogue with his father at the start led me to believe that it was a children's book, assuming details of actual dialogue were not recorded for posterity. However, after a more careful inspection of the jacket, I found that although the book is labeled Science / Alternate Technology, it is none too clearly also identified as a novel. This is not bad in itself. However, the writing is terrible! Names, dates and place are given and dropped as quickly without having any kind of cohesion. It became apparant to me that the author had writen an outline to help him structure his story, but then he copied the outline and filled in nothing. Details and dialogue are stacatto and stilted. He references, at one point, a machine that runs at so many Webers, without defining what a Weber is or even mentioning it again. Details appear to be decently researched, but the "novel" concept allows these to be manufactured. The authors other works are novels about UFO abductions, and he uses this book to tout his UFO theories. A waste of time to read, but perhaps interesting to a child without previous knowledge of science.



4. Though what you may learn of the subject matter is facinating, the novelization approach and contrived dialogue sometimes borders on annoying.

   As well, the amount of background information (on Edison, J.P. Morgan, etc.) provided sometimes is more distracting than helpful.




5. I purchased this book wanting a good biographical account of Nikola Tesla. Though it is that, what I didn't realize was that it is really aimed at young readers (ages 9-12). Nothing on the cover or the introduction mentions that fact. The odd book size(wide format), the larger font size and the limited vocabulary give it away as a juvenile selection. I would recommend it highly for that age group. However it was not the adult biography I looking for. I think I will give my copy to my son. I believe he will enjoy it.

1 comments about Jerry Wiesner, Scientist, Statesman, Humanist: Memories and Memoirs.

1. Jerome B. Wiesner is far from being a household name, but he was arguably one of the most significant figures in science and technology in the middle part of the twentieth century. He was the President's Science Advisor during the term of John F. Kennedy, and president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), between 1966 and 1975. He was an outspoken advocate of nuclear arms control, believing it the only way to prevent nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, and was a founding member of the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity. During his tenure as presidential science advisor he was involved in the build-up of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to accomplish Project Apollo, the commitment to land Americans on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.
   
   A longstanding faculty member at MIT, Wiesner first made a name for himself in the immediate post-World War II era by assisting national leaders in setting science and technology policy. Two areas, especially, sparked his involvement. The first was nuclear weapons and the deterrence theory then current during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Wiesner favored a strong military capability for the United States, but always argued for efforts limiting the number of nuclear warheads available to both sides. Accordingly, Wiesner participated in the Geneva summit of 1958 and the Pugwash conference of 1960, in both cases making arguments in favor of strategic arms limitations.
   
   The second area where Wiesner played an especially important role was in the Cold War rivalry concerning space flight. At the time of Sputnik in October 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked him to serve on a special science advisory committee charged with revamping the federal government's oversight of critical science and technology development efforts. He advocated the creation of NASA in 1958 and the consolidation of non-military space flight activities under its leadership. When John F. Kennedy was preparing to take office in late 1960, he appointed an ad hoc committee headed by Wiesner to offer suggestions for American efforts in space. Wiesner concluded that the issue of "national prestige" was too great to allow the Soviet Union leadership in space efforts, and therefore the U.S. had to enter the field in a substantive way. Wiesner also emphasized the importance of practical non-military applications of space technology--communications, mapping, and weather satellites among others--and the necessity of keeping up the effort to exploit space for national security through such technologies as ICBMs and reconnaissance satellites. He tended to de-emphasize the human space flight initiative.
   
   After the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Wiesner resigned from government service and returned to MIT. He spent the rest of his career there in senior positions, much of it as its president.
   
   This work is a collection of documents and reminiscences by and about Jerry Wiesner and well worth the time to read. Some of the pieces were written by such luminaries as Theodore C. Sorensen, Edward M. Kennedy, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Others are by Wiesner and relate his passion for myriad aspects of science and technology in modern American life.

No comments about The Hidden Structure: A Scientific Biography of Camillo Golgi.

1 comments about John Maynard Keynes: The Economist As Saviour, 1920-1937.

1. This is vol. 2 of Skidelsky's Keynes biography (any sign of vol. 3?). It is a very enjoyable (and exhaustive) account of the most productive professional years (Bretton Woods aside) of one of the great figures of the 20th century. Keynes was the son of Victorian intellectual academic bougiousie; a star of the public school system; trained in mathematics and economics (student of Marshall); student of philosophy, then a bureaucrat in academia and government, becoming an expert in public finance as a high-ranking Treasury official during WWI; a traveller in artistic circles (later a benefactor), part of the Bloomsbury group (intimate with Duncan Grant, Virginia Woolf, etc. (to differing degrees, of course)); statistician/philosopher (his first major published work was "A Treatise on Probability"); pamphleteer ("Economic Consequences of the Peace," etc.); publisher/editor for both the popular and academic press; institutional investor; currency speculator; husband to a Russian ballet dancer; and most influential economist of the 20th century. Keynes would not be possible today.

   The one drawback to the Skidelsky book is that it can be slow going. Those with no background in economics should be prepared to skim sections (or work hard). If you're already familiar with the difference between Ricardo and Malthus, and how their thinking carried through Jevons, Marshall, and Marx, and can follow arguments on gold standard vs. floating exchange rates, then you should be able to breeze through.