No comments about The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1733 to 1773.

No comments about The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought.

1 comments about In War and Peace: My Life in Science and Technology.

1. Guy Stever has been one of the most significant science policy makers of the latter third of the twentieth century. In a variety of government positions, Stever played an important and generally respected--although he has been criticized at times--role in the shaping of the nation's scientific and technical policy. He rose to prominence in the scientific and engineering community because of his aeronautical research in the development of guided missiles and spacecraft as well as in flight aerodynamics. He gained the reputation as an able administrator and a thoughtful advocate for technical expertise applied to the problems of the nation. As a result he served in several key advisory positions in the 1960s and 1970s, especially as head of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science Advisor to Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.
   
   This book describes Stever's career in his various roles. It is a useful recollection of a significant individual. The most interesting part of this memoir deals with Stever's role in furthering science and technology during the cold war era. Always interested in advancing the linkage between science/technology and government, he served on several government and military advisory committees. For example, in 1947, he became a member of the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In 1955-1956 Stever took a leave of absence from MIT to serve as Chief Scientist with the Air Force. He also served on advisory committees with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA, NSF, and Congress in the 1950s and 1960s. Stever was also a technical advisor to several private corporations such as Goodyear Tire and United Aircraft, helping them mostly with military issues.
   
   Beginning in 1970 Stever served on two key advisory committees for Richard Nixon, the Ad Hoc Science Panel and the Task Force on Science Policy. At the same time Nixon, who was impressed with his capabilities, appointed him to the National Science Board, the policy-making arm of NSF. These positions gave him greater visibility inside the Nixon administration, and opened the way for his appointment as NSF director in February 1972. This appointment was hardly surprising to those interested in the twists of science policy. Journalist Deborah Shapley wrote in "Science" magazine that Stever was clearly "the favorite-son candidate of both the Administration and the science-government advisory system through which he has risen for twenty years." She added that Stever was "one of the few good Republican scientist-administrators" and that Nixon liked him because he would support administration initiatives.
   
   Stever suffered intense pressure in 1973 when Nixon abolished the office of Science Advisor to the President as being without real value and sent the responsibilities to Stever at NSF. This move, according to "Space Daily," a publication specializing in these issues in Washington, represented "a reversal of the emphasis on science and technology generated 15 years ago." To many, Stever's dual role as head of NSF and Science Advisor to the President represented a conflict of interest. Moreover, Stever was thought--rightly as it turned out--to have little access to Nixon and would be ineffective as an advocate for important scientific and technical programs. Stever now admits that he did not have the ear of the president, but insists he did the best he could.
   
   When Nixon resigned in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal in August 1974, Stever remained at the National Science Foundation and continued to help the Ford administration with science policy. As a result, when Ford reestablished the position of Science Advisor to the President in August 1976 he asked Stever to take the position. He served in that capacity until the change in administrations in January 1977. Upon leaving government service, Stever continued to be very active as an advisor on several commissions, panels, and other task forces.
   
   This book is an able reflection of a career as a public scientist and policy-maker. It is especially useful for understanding developments in science policy during the 1960s and 1970s. I recommend it as an important first person account of the role of science policy during one of the most tumultuous periods in modern American history.

No comments about JOHN MUIR: APOSTLE OF NATURE (The Oklahoma Western Biographies , Vol 8).

No comments about Letters of Roy Bedichek.

No comments about Marie Curie: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies).

5 comments about The Brave: A Story of New York City's Firefighters.

1. I finished "The Brave" this weekend; I closed the book with a tear in my eye and a lump on my throat. I was deeply moved by the story and it was sad to see a 20 year chapter of your life end on such a sour note with the inappropriate accusations from that Chief. The book did a wonderful job of revealing all of the different emotions, triumphs and defeats that you and many others were faced with on a day-to-day basis. It showed the deep compassion that the fire fighters have for those they could and could not save while enduring the jeers and lack of respect from the very people they were charged to protect.
   
   I, and I am sure the public in general, was truly unaware of how little rest these men really get and how often they are hurt, only to rush back into the fight and be chastised at any point when they failed to be absolutely perfect. I can see where you, the fire fighters would truly be a "Band of Brothers".
   
   "The Brave" would make an excellent movie; in fact you could make a movie out 1/3 rd of the material in the book.
   
   Thanks for enlightening me,
   
   Joey Lee



2. The Brave takes you right into the Heart of Firefighting in 70's New York. As a fellow Firefighter who loves to put pen to paper I am always keen to read the experiences of other Firefighters in this vastly underrepresented market.
   
   Every book shelf these days seems to be full of Celebrities, Politicians, Soldiers or sports personalities telling us their stories. It make a refreshing change when a Firefighter, Medic or Policemen puts pen to paper, these people are fighting a never ending war every day on the Streets of our Countries.
   
   The Brave tells the story of Life in a Firehouse on the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1970's, a period now remembered by the Veterans of those days as 'The War Years'. Recession, social unrest, poverty and crime were the catalyst for may Fires in many run down cities in the World. Very Few Cites saw the Fires that New York saw in that period and fewer Still Firemen saw the Fire Duty that the Men of the FDNY saw at this time.
   
   George Pickett has an ability to drag the reader down the stinking burning hallways of the tenements. You can feel the heat searing your skin and the smoke choking your lungs. Time and again you follow page after page wondering will the heroes of the FDNY reach the victim before the room erupts all around them, more often than not they do...frequently with seconds to spare.
   
   I finished this book in 24 hours, such was the draw of the story unfolding before me. I found every possible excuse to pick the book up and start reading again. If action is what you want then give the jungles of South America or the Desert of the Middle East a rest..opt instead for the action in the Blazing sweatshops, tenements and flop houses of New York City in the 70's.



3. WOW!! The Brave is full of action from start to finish and would make a great movie! The Brave keeps your attention and makes it hard to set the book down. It gives a great picture to how challenging life is as a NYFD firefighter. The storey is compelling and truthful and I'm sure will be around for a long time. Congratulations to George Pickett on this GREAT book!



4. Few books have captivated my attention as much as George Pickett's "The Brave: A Story of New York City Firefighters". Both as a native New Yorker growing up in the 60's and 70's in the Bronx, and a volunteer firefighter in Westchester County, NY, I can rerlate to the many references in this action packed book.
   Pickett brings the reader into every fire call, every dark smokey hallway and heat searing room. The reader is there, holding the irons, the nozzle or climbing the ladder.
   Above all the book is truthful. Clearly, the author;s integrity and honest is eveident during each story-both the flattering and humiliating. George Pickett should be proud of his career, family and work on the compelling effort to document the life of a New York City Firefighter. Bravo!!!
   -Michael J. Deegan



5. A page turning account of life as a New York City firefighter. A little slow at the start, but captivating and exciting by the second chapter. George Pickett does a great job of taking you along on the big red trucks, down the burning halls and into the mindset of the men, who New Yorkers call The Brave. Not only a great story but an important history lesson for anyone who wants a better tomorrow for us all. A Great read! 5 Stars!!! Thanks George!!

3 comments about The Transit of Venus: The Brief, Brilliant Life of Jeremiah Horrocks, Father of British Astronomy.

1. The accomplishments of Jeremiah Horrocks, as depicted in this book, are truly astounding. The author carefully reconstructs Horrocks' genealogy, his brief life and his ground-breaking work in astronomy, amidst the backdrop of seventeenth century England. The book is well-written, clear and engaging. Less appealing to me was that the book contains many passages reproduced in the original old English. This slowed me down a bit since I found them cumbersome due to the different spelling and sentence structure characteristic of the period. On the other hand, this may be inevitable, at least to some degree, because of the book's subject matter. Overall, this is an interesting read that would likely be particularly appealing to astronomers at all levels.



2. Since the dawn of history, every civilization has seen men who studied the skies. In Europe and Asia, astronomers existed in Babylon, Egypt, India and China. In America, the Incas and Aztecs built pyramids and temples which showed knowledge and fascination with the sun, moon, and stars in the night sky. England had Stonehenge.
   
   There's not much factual knowledge about Jeremiah Horrocks short
   life; there has been only one other biography to surface, published in 1859 by A. B. Whatton. Photographs show the area and places he lived as he moved about. Born in May, 1618, he was only fourteen years old when he entered Cambridge on July 5, 1632. Just seven years later (1639), he was knowledgeable about the solar system and his observation of the primitive set-up he used in Carr House to view a rare celestial event, the "transit of Venus" was documented. It is similar to the way we are encouraged to watch the eclipse of the sun so as not to be blinded by the strong rays. He died in 1641.
   
   The Royal Greenwith Observatory was founded in 1675; John Flamsteed was appointed as the first Astronomer Royal. However, Jeremiah Horrock is known as the "Father of British Astronomy. This book was released to coincide with the June, 2004, viewing of Venus moving across the face of the sun (for only the fifth time since the 1639 occurrence: about every 73 years or so).
   
   My son Geoffrey earned his PhD in Astronomy at the University of Chicago and learned how to handle the monster telescopes at Kitt Peak as a grad student way out there in Arizona.
   
   Peter Aughton has written ENDEAVOR, RESOLUTION, and NEWTON'S APPLE. He teaches at the University of the West of England and a Fellow of the Institute for Math. In 1970s he was involved with the Concorde supersonic airliner. He certainly knows his astronomy from primitive times.



3. Isaac Newton famously said, "If I have seen further than others before me, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Newton was not always so quick to acknowledge his debt to his fellow scientists, but everyone knows the remark could apply to indisputable giants like Galileo and Kepler. However, he also would have meant a giant who has, almost three centuries later, become almost an unknown within the history of astronomy. In _The Transit of Venus: The Brief, Brilliant Life of Jeremiah Horrocks, Father of British Astronomy_ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), Peter Aughton, who has written before on the voyages of Captain Cook and on Newton, puts Horrocks into his rightful place. It would be too much to say that he gives us a full picture of Horrocks and his work, for the mass of materials about the astronomer is just too meager. However, Horrocks was a brilliant astronomical observer and theoretician, and Newton knew it then as we should now.
   
   There was in June 2004 a transit of Venus, only the fifth since Horrocks watched his in 1639. A transit occurs when Venus seems to cross the face of the Sun, and was important in those days because it could be used to calculate how far the Sun was from the Earth. He studied Kepler's work at college in Cambridge, and trusted Kepler, but not blindly; he discovered that Kepler, who had correctly predicted a 1631 transit of Venus, had mistakenly missed a transit that was coming in 1639. Horrocks only realized this with a month to spare, but he was ready to trace the planet crossing the Sun; he did so by training his telescope on the Sun and projecting the picture upon a screen within a darkened room. It was his mathematical analysis of the movements and timing of what he had seen that enabled him to confirm that Venus was moving in an elliptical orbit around the Sun, just as Kepler's laws had implied. However, a clear view of the planet crossing the solar disk showed it to be much smaller than Kepler had thought, and the calculated distance between the Earth and the Sun was far larger than any previous astronomer had come close to considering. Copernicus had estimated the distance to be 7.5 million kilometers, Kepler 22.1, and Horrocks weighed in with 95.4. Even then, he was well below the real figure of 149, but it can be said without exaggeration that he was the first man who had an inkling of how big the solar system really was.
   
   Horrocks wrote up his account of the transit, and also went on to show that the Moon tracked an elliptical, not circular, path around the Earth, although the path of the Moon wobbled irregularly due to the gravity of the Sun. He also showed that Saturn and Jupiter were vastly larger than the Earth. Astonishingly, he made these discoveries when he was only twenty-two; only a year later in 1641 he was dead. There is no evidence about the cause of his death. His account of his researches was not published until 1662, and he was belatedly recognized as a genius by the new Royal Society. His work was revolutionary at the time he did it, but was not as influential as it could have been, if he had been within the mainstream of British science rather than observing and theorizing near Liverpool, if he had lived longer, and if Britain were not torn by its Civil War. Newton, in his monumental _Principia_, gave special credit to Horrocks for divining the elliptical orbit of the Moon. His influence might be small, but his importance as an observer and as a theoretician (those qualities are not often so well combined in one person) is clear. As much as can be known about him is in Aughton's necessarily brief but admiring review, from which readers will get a good idea of how astronomy was done at the time, and a welcome introduction to an original thinker.

No comments about Hermann Weyl's Raum - Zeit - Materie and a General Introduction to his Scientific Work (Oberwolfach Seminars).

No comments about Nationalism and Internationalism in Science, 1880-1939: Four Studies of the Nobel Population.