No comments about Too Close for Comfort.

3 comments about Percival Lowell: The Culture and Science of a Boston Brahmin.

1. The first fully satisfying biography of a man who helped to change astronomy, sustained its popularity and mystery, and tested the wills of mainstream astronomers.



2. Strauss is not content with telling us the story of Lowell's fascinating life--he portrays each milieu in which Lowell worked and lived with a complexity that gives us the tools to understand Lowell in context. For example, he gives us piquant details about life in the upper reaches of Boston Brahmin culture. One of the more interesting stories is Lowell's move from prominence in academia to the position of crank and critic of the increasing professionalization of astronomy.

   This is the portrait of a restless mind, worth delving into.




3. Strauss' historical look at Lowell is extremely engaging and I found this book hard to put down. Some great historical context about Boston and Japan really give you the feeling of what is was like to be there back in the 1800's. I recommend this to all.

1 comments about Leading Personalities in Statistical Sciences: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics).

1. I highly recommend this book for the general interest reader.It contains a number of short,but informative,essays,each covering ,on average,2-10 pages.Each essay gives a short biography of an individual scholar who has made a relevant contribution to either theoretical or applied statistics or probability.The contribution is assessed and discussed.Those covered include Sir Ronald Fisher,de Finetti,Ramsey,Savage,Galton,Yule,Karl and Egon Pearson, Harold Jeffreys,and W. Lexis,to name just a few.Surprisingly,the contributions of John Maynard Keynes,George Boole and Benoit Mandelbrot to applied probability and statistics are not covered although each is briefly mentioned in essays covering others.Thus,for instance,Keynes is mentioned in the essay on Frank Ramsey,but no clue is provided the reader about Keynes's original contribution to probability,which was the first systematic exposition of an interval estimate approach to probability analysis based on the work of George Boole.Keynes's contribution is contained in chapters 5,10,15,17 and Part III of his 1921 masterpiece,A Treatise on Probability.Mandelbrot's work,demonstating that there is little,if any, support for the overwhelming use of the normal probability distribution in the study of price movements in financial,stock and commodity markets by financial analysts and economists,calls into question the entire foundation of financial theory that has been built upon the Capital Asset Pricing Model(CAPM)and the Black-Scholes equation.This reviewer feels that the editors could of at least devoted three pages to each of the above mentioned scholars.

No comments about Julia Robinson and Hilbert's Tenth Problem.

No comments about Nature's Alchemist: John Parkinson, Herbalist to Charles I.

1 comments about The Mathematician Sophus Lie.

1. Stubhaug/Daly contribution is welcome indeed. Here is information for finding the other book that Mathematical Reviews review of Stubhaug/Daly calls a "definitive history of the mathematical theory" and like Stubhaug/Daly "(a blessing to) the study of the history of Lie groups":
   
   Thomas Hawkins, "Emergence of The Theory of Lie Groups: An Essay in the History of Mathematics 1869-1926", ISBN 0-387-98963-3, Springer, 2000.
   
   Hawkins' history has sections on the contributions of Sophus Lie, Wilhelm Killing, Elie Cartan, and Hermann Weyl.

No comments about This Man's Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill (Popular Science).

No comments about Henry More and the Scientific Revolution.

2 comments about First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane.

1. This was a very interesting book concerning the early history of man's efforts to conquor the sky. Unfortunately for the lay reader, of which I am one, there was a lot of technical writing involved, and it lost me a lot of the time, particularly when the author was speaking about dihedrals and things of that ilk. When it came to the straight history of the flight efforts, and the Wright brothers, the story really moved along, but it did bog down for me in the scientific aspects. I don't want to take anything away from the expertise of the author, which is extensive, so I do encourage folks to read this book. Just be warned about the technical aspects of it. Gloss over them, and there is still a good read.



2. By Bill Marsano. The centennial of flight has given us a spate of Wrighteous books this year, but few can match this one for expert knowledge and for pleasurable reading. Heppenheimer is an aviation expert and writer who has covered the ground exceedingly well. Most important, he avoids the folkloric view of the Wrights as a couple of plucky, red-cheeked mechanics who somehow kicked an airplane into being for a lark. They were, in fact, a pair of solid and serious young Midwestern businessmen who looked the part: Even in the workshop they customarily wore jacket and tie. They flew with their hats on. Generally they resembled a couple of bankers who are about to turn down a loan application. Beyond that, they were not merely mechanics but natural-born engineers and self-taught scientists who observed, studied, tested--and learned from their mistakes as well as their successes. Most of us have heard the 'story' of the Wright Brothers--this book helps us comprehend the astonishing magnitude of their achievement, which took them less than five years, working part-time and paying their own way.

   Heppenheimer brings a lot of color into his story--the Wrights and others are revealed to us as human beings rather than icons--and he goes far afield, too, bringing us the stories of those others who preceded and competed with the Wrights. The result is a nicely rounded saga of man's long struggle to progress from wishes to wings. He also answers a question people often forget to ask: The Wrights produced the first man-carrying powered airplane in 1903; they set the world on its heels when, in 1908, they went to France for their first large-scale public demonstrations (before an extremely skeptical audience)--so how was it that they faded so quickly from the scene? I won't reveal the answer here (though I will suggest that the facts seem to pre-figure the later struggle between the Apple and the PC). And I will strongly urge you to read this book.

2 comments about The Art of Running.

1. I'm moved to add my positive review after noticing the negative one by S Hadley.
   I found this book full of insight on the nuts and bolts of the running process as opposed to most of the other books I've read that take form as a given and instead focus on training regimes. I see it as a primer, a well thought out and very useful one: you can read it cover to cover or just open it and pick up some technical point to practice on your next run. It does mention the like of Haile Gebrselassie, Sebastian Coe and Merlene Ottey as role models but I found this inspiring and their form something to aspire to rather than the glib comment S Hadley alludes to.
   One last thing. I bought the book 2 months ago and although my times have not come down noticably, my recovery rate and overall fatigue after a long run has diminished remarkably. I look forward to a largely injury free running future.



2. The message of this book is simple: if you want to run better, simply run like Haile Gebr. Of course, there's no hint as to how to run like Gebr, but there are pretty pictures and oodles of "ideas" which totally lack any sort of flesh. The book is sporadic, repetitive and offers no useful examples. The concept of a new, almost holistic approach to running is interesting, but almost completely unexplored after the introduction.
   
   I've attempted many of the techniques and found my running to quickly become less enjoyable, more labored and a lot slower. I'm an advanced runner and found only a handful of quotes to be useful. I see almost no purpose at all for a novice runner to read between these covers.