5 comments about The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity.

1. Very interesting history of the development of mathematical ideas,especially the existence of irrational numbers,and the idea infinity can be approached and used but never reached.....



2. I started reading this book on the plane that took me to my new home in New Jersey. I finished it about a month later. I am a slow reader and I also was very busy getting settled into my new job. As I prepared to write my review for Amazon I looked at the many other reviews that had already been written and I found that they were quite mixed. Some raved about it and some hated it. There were many good points on both sides.
   I hope my review adds something new for potential readers to think about.
   
   I am a mathematician by training. I have a bachelor's degree in mathematics and also a masters degree. In my university education I learned about algebra and analysis and did have some acquaintance with the results of Cantor on transfinite numbers. I also knew some things about the axiom of choice, the continuum hypothesis and the Hahn-Banach theorem. I got this education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the mid 1970s I went on to Stanford where I studied Operations Research and Statistics eventually leading me to a career as a statistician. I had not given much thought to these mathematical ideas in a long time.
   
   While at Stanford, I did hear about Paul Cohen who was then considered to be a star in the Mathematics Department because of his great discoveries in set theory and logic at an early age.
   
   This book provided me with an interesting reminder of my past education and cleared up a few ideas in logic that had been puzzling to me.
   
   At first I thought I was going to hear about the life story of Georg Cantor, the father of transfinite numbers. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the book develops ideas about infinity and infinite numbers going back to the time of the Greeks and the discovery of irrational numbers by the Pythagorean school.
   
   Aczel also discusses the lives of Galileo and Bolzano and their contributions to mathematics. I was aware of the one-to-one correspondence between the integers and the square of the integers. The fact that the discovery goes back to Galileo was news to me. While I knew of Galileo for his invention of useful telescopes and his contributions to astronomy, I had no idea that he had made such a fundamental contribution to mathematics.
   
   As with some of the other reviewers, I find the discussion of the Kabbalah somewhat weak and perhaps misplaced. I also think there is a mathematical error in this chapter. Aczel states that there are 10 permutations of the arrangement of the Hebrew name for God, YHVH, and he places importance on the number 10. He enumerates the permutations to be YHVH, YVHH, VYHH, VHYH, HVYH, HYVH, HVHY, HYHV, HHYV AND HHVY. This puzzled me. As I thought about my combinatorial mathematics I thought the correct answer should be 12. I tried a complete enumeration myself and found 12. It seems that Aczel missed YHHV and VHHY.
   
   Aside from this, the discussion of mathematics is generally good. It is not detailed and is written in a popular style to be readible to a general audience. The heart of the book is the life of Georg Cantor. Cantor aided by the work of Galileo and Bolzano and his teacher Karl Weierstrass made the breakthroughs that led to the development of transfinite numbers and modern set theory. He worked mostly in isolation at Halle University and was frustrated by never being granted an appointment at University in Berlin where most of the famous mathematicians of the time resided. His conflict with Kronecker is discussed and the support he got from Mittag-Leffler is also covered.
   
   Aczel provides background to varying degrees on all the mathematicians that he discusses and we feel that we understand their personalities and the underlying reasons for the positions that they took. Cantor's bouts with insanity are also described. Although it could be simply that he was suffering from manic depression (a disorder that was not understood at the time), Aczel attributes Cantor's insanity to the frustration of his efforts to cope with infinity. Certainly there must have been frustration over his inability to prove the continuum hypothesis (later determined to be unprovable) and the lack of universal acceptance of his ideas in the mathematical community.
   
   However, I agree with some of the other reviewers who think that Aczel's thesis, that doing mathematical research on infinity might induce insanity, is a bit farfetched. In covering the life of Kurt Godel, a important successor to Cantor, Aczel points to Godel's bouts with insanity to try to reinforce this thesis. Godel did not have the same issues in his life history that Cantor had. Still, other mathematicians that worked in this area including Russell and Cohen never had similar bouts.
   
   Coverage of the work of Godel and Cohen brings the reader up to the current state of knowledge about transfinite numbers and set theory. For the mathematically inclined there is an appendix at the end that provides statements of Zermelo's axioms that are the basis of modern set theory. It is within this system that the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis are both consistent and independent and therefore can neither be proven to be true or false.
   
   If you like reading about the history of mathematics and the personalities of important mathematicians you will enjoy this book inspite of a few flaws.



3. First, the good news. Aczel's book -- part biography, part history of infinity, part primer of some of the more challenging concepts in mathematics -- is engaging and well written. Much better written, in fact, than many similar books on the history of or on topics in mathematics that I've read. He has a lively style that keeps you turning the pages, and he is generally very good at simplifying complex axioms and proofs for the layperson. The short précis of the concepts of infinity among the ancient Greeks and Jews is pretty captivating subject matter, too. And the short biographies of the key mathematicians chasing the infinite are all sound and worthwhile.
   
   Now, the bad news. Considering that the subtitle of the book invokes the Kabbalah, Aczel gives it rather short shrift. He endeavors to summarize the subject, particularly in relation to things infinite, but does so too carelessly. I wanted more elaboration on that. Then he attempts to bring the Kabbalah back from time to time, as with Cantor's debatably Jewish heritage and with the diaspora of the Jews during World War II, but these connections are only hinted at. They feel superficial and without the persuasive weight to justify their inclusion. Also, I feel Aczel is a bit too baldly assertive in blaming Cantor and Gödel's mental problems on their struggles with the Continuum Hypothesis. Might it not have been the other way around, latent mental instability leading these two men to that particular compulsive struggle? I understand that pointing a finger at Infinity and shouting "j'accuse!" makes for more dramatic nonfiction, but it comes at a cost in accracy, doesn't it?
   
   Still, despite these complaints, I can marginally recommend the book as an interesting read on the history of the notion of infinity. Or at least parts of that history.



4. Aczel offers an interesting book on Georg Cantor, the "father" of set theory (a branch of mathematics). The book covers a number of interesting topics, including a unique overview of infinity, a description of the inception of a new branch of mathematics and a mini-biography of Georg Cantor.
   
   I recommend this book to readers interested in mathematics and mathematicians.



5. Have already a lot of books on popular mathematics in my book-case. Never bothered too much about infinity. However, when you study topics like series for instance, it is infinity all over the place. I always took it for granted, something ending in nothing and being a long, long distance away.
   
   Till I started to read this book from Amir Aczel. This is mathematics in another way. Not too much equations, formulas, integrals, etc. No, this is mathematics one may do by just sitting in a comfortable chair and playing with the thoughts bubbling up inside the brain.
   
   This is almost about what Georg Cantor did. Besides describing many great scientist of his time, as Weierstrass, Riemann, Dedekind and others, the book describes thoroughly the life and work of Cantor. His successes and the serious problems he encountered. From what I read in the book I started really to admire Cantor. Most people would have given up with the severe opposition he faced during his life. But not Cantor, each time he went down, he stood up to fight for his ideas again.
   
   Besides interesting mathematical topics, going back to the ancient Greeks, the book describes very well the atmosphere of the end of the nineteenth century. It also gives us an idea of life in the town of Halle in the eastern part of Germany, where Cantor lived and worked most of his life. I once had to stay a few days there. Taking the exit Halle I suddenly found myself in the middle of the nineteenth century. Rainy cobble stoned streets, apartment buildings from Cantor's time, it all was still there. That may change, lots of new roads and buildings are under construction.
   
   The book not only describes the work done by Cantor on infinity, but it also continues with the scientists building further on the foundations laid by Cantor, as for instance, Kurt Gödel. So, the book provides the reader with a general and thorough view on all what was found, stated and developed on infinity up to the second half of the twentieth century.
   
   Now I have read Aczel's book, do I know what infinity is? No, not really. But sometimes, when I sit in my comfortable chair, with Aczel's book close by, playing a little with this topic in my mind, I am sure I almost get it ...

5 comments about American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace.

1. Doesn't anyone here know how pathetically naive this man was? I mean, he wanted to pursue a policy of appeasement with mass-murderer Joseph Stalin - much as Neville Chamberlain had done not a decade earlier with Hitler. Thank God Roosevelt had the sense to remove him from the Vice Presidency; a very scary situation indeed was thus avoided.
   
   Don't waste your time - the man, however "idealistic" (meaning he didn't listen to anyone else), is a historical nonentity.



2. There are many lessons to be learned from the one-of-a-kind individual Henry A. Wallace. Because of his varied interests, people of all walks of life can find aspects of his life and personality they can relate to. This book provides insight into one of the driving forces behind modern agricultural, economic, political and social thought.



3. Henry A Wallace was surely one of the most fascinating men in American Politics in 20th Century--even tho he was, in a sense, only half-in politics. He was too naive and too much in sympathy with the poor of his own world and with the aspirations of other people to fit the American mainstream---FDR managed to achieve a lot of what Wallace dreamed of by being more politically astute.



4. This is a proverbial "long overdue" biography of Henry A. Wallace and his brilliant yet eccentric Scottish-American family. I did a Web search of Wallace a few years ago and was amazed at the scant result. This rectifies that.
   
   Beyond the coverage of his political innocence there is a good recounting of his actual science work. Few politicians actually "do" things beyond speechifying, getting reelected and becoming millionaires at the public trough. Henry, Henry C. and Henry A. Wallace were exceptions. Their philosophic designs for the farmer and state policy were important and Henry A.'s genetic work truly revolutionary.
   
   The world would be a different place without it.
   
   Not much popular press has been written about American agriculture, I guess because building cars, fighting Hitler, dropping atomic bombs and oral sex in the oval office are more exciting.
   
   This book is a good primer in America's great farming history of triumph. To simplify, the American farmer through hard work, good soil and some science grew too much product for his own good...prices essentially fell from 1890 into the 1930's. (World War I was a boom period, but wild fluctuations don't lend themselves to good planning. Under such conditions, planning was about as effective as mule husbandry.) Naturally this hurt most farmers and destroyed more then a few of them. Through government intervention theorized by the Wallace family's agricultural journal and then championed to be public law in Washington by Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. under Harding, then Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. under FDR, this anomaly was reformed.
   
   An obvious and wonderful irony is that Henry A. during this fight for state policy, was genetically engineering hybrid corns (and other crops) which hugely increased acre yield! In other words, American farmers were destroying themselves by being too successful and Wallace made them more successful...and viable.
   
   I was thrilled too with the description of Henry C.'s Washington sojourn in the 1920's. Historians breeze by that period, summarizing it as: womanizer, feckless Warren G. Harding; indolent, pickle puss Calvin Coolidge; and Depression maker, Let-Them-Eat-Cake Herbert C. Hoover. Obviously no administration sets its goal as venality, so it refreshing to see Harding to be portrayed as a sympathetic proponent of Henry C.'s policy goals and Coolidge to be an activist opponent of them. Hoover simply comes off as a lunk-headed player who was wrong and enamored with his personal successes.
   
   Historians have wrongly treated conservative governments as do-nothing when in fact doing nothing often takes as much effort as signing every bill regurgitated by Congress.
   
   And Roosevelt was duplicitous, Henry A. believed in mysticism and was a parlor red who would have ruined the country had FDR croaked a year earlier...but that I knew before I read this book.
   
   This is a good book about a classic American type.



5. I enjoyed this detailed account of the life of Henry Wallace. The book does read like a work by David McCullough, but is enhanced by a deep understanding of the culture of Washington. The book gives valuable insights into the practical political forces that shaped the New Deal and the beginning of the Cold War.

   The underlying premise of this book as that an idealistic dreamer can make a huge difference in the creating and shaping policy in the United States. The co-author of this work is a former Senator from Iowa named John C. Culver. He served one-term in the 1970's. Through Henry Wallace, the authors mount a formidable defense of the ideals of American liberalism.

3 comments about Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking.

1. This is an excellent book. Cropper must have put an enormous effort into researching and writing this 500 page, large format paperback, which has been nicely printed on white paper. At its current price of $12.97 an incredible bargain.
   
   At first glance this book appears to be sort of a strange hybrid of biography and science, but the combo works. Cropper generally starts a chapter on a scientist with a few page biographical sketch followed by a longer, clearly written, physics section. I would estimate that the book is about 70% physics and about 30% biographical. The biographical sections are well done and interesting, but the book really shines in its overview of the physics.
   
   Cropper covers 30 scientists with many of them in thermodynamics and atomic physics. Reading these sections you not only get a good overview of the science at a moderate technical level (a notch or two above the usual popular science writing level since Cropper is not afraid of using equations), but also you get an historical understanding of who did what and how their contributions fit together. Another plus is that Cropper will often describe in some detail how a key experiment has been done.
   
   As a technical person (like a previous reviewer, I am an engineer), not only did I learn a lot from this book about how many of the secrets of this world have been discovered, but some of the gaps in my physics knowledge were filled in. Cropper set himself a big task to write an overview of much of physics, but he has pulled it off with style.



2. This is the best book I have read about the human side of physicists. Although, I have a Masters degree in physics, you don't need to be a practicing scientist to throughly enjoy the contents of this wonderful work. Cropper did an outstanding writing job.



3. I've picked up many books over the years telling the stories of great scientists, but this is the only book of this type that I couldn't put down. I am a degreed engineer, now working in computers, with physics as a hobby. The coverage of Thermodynamics, which I have studied extensively, was fascinatingly rich and accessible. The complexity of other topics, such as nuclear physics, of which I know little, was surprizingly clear.

   My curiosity attracts me to picking up compilations such as this, but I usually find them disjunct and uninteresting. Mr. Cooper has done an amazing job of weaving a coherent story of the lives of these fascinating characters spanning a history of 400 years.

5 comments about Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary.

1. This is the story of Linus Benedict Torvalds, the creator of Linux OS in what seems like his own words (well 90% of the book is written as if Linus himself is narrating it). What interested me most and kept me reading the book was knowing how Linus pursued his self-learning of computer science. He started with writing games and toy programs in assembly language then taught himself C and kept doing projects to master his skills. One of the projects was a terminal emulator which he authored on Minix OS. He went on adding features to it and gradually ended up making an OS in a matter of months. He got started with Minix after reading Andy Tanenbaum's book on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (3rd Edition) (Prentice Hall Software Series) which was the book Linus says changed his life.
   
   A good reading for all programmers who like Linux. As Bertrand Russel says - There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge - so even if this book is not talking about any technical details of the OS but the knowing of how it came to be what it is is interesting and pleasure giving in itself. Highly recommended.



2. I bought this book for a presentation in class about Linux, and I got quite a bit of information out of it. The book goes into the personal history of Linus, his experience with computers, why he first started coding Linux, and it also mentions a few other topics closely associated with Linux, such as open source.
   If you're looking for a book that gives the technical ins and outs of Linux, this one will not do you much good, but it's a good book for those interested in the author of Linux, and the start of his project.



3. "Just for Fun" may just as well be the real-life version of "Spider Man" - a tale of how a computer geek went from a social recluse to an everyday celebrity. Now, don't get me wrong, my friends are the first to brand me as a 'computer geek' also, and I wouldn't change anything about it. "Just for Fun" is an interesting introspective into the story and the mind of Linus. You'll learn about the early day of Linux, the philosophy behind it, and how both the author and the creation burst onto the scene. With a good mix of historical introspective and narrative passages - everything from the birth of GPL to Linus's philosophy of life - it makes for an easy and an entertaining read. If you've ever been exposed to Linux, Unix, or open-source, this is a book you won't regret picking up.



4. Once you read this book you get a better idea of who Linus Torvalds is, what his background is, what led him to write an operating system, where the name Linux comes from, where Tux came from, and all kinds of other tidbits. The book portrays Torvalds as definitely a rare breed. but it also paints him as a real person with real interests - albeit mainly technical ones. Linus does have a family and this book does cover a little bit about his family. If you want to know both the common and uncommon pieces of information about the guy who wrote an operating system, "Just For Fun", this is the book to get; it is definitely teh definitive book about how Linux came into being and about the man who made it happen.



5. This is really eye opening stuff. If you are even remotely interested in Open Source Software, this will give you some insight into the mind of Linus Torvalds. On top of being informative it is a really fun read.

5 comments about Strange Brains and Genius: The Secret Lives Of Eccentric Scientists And Madmen.

1. This is a fun book.It is a worthy companion to the scores of books written about genius-eccentrics -- savants who listen to very different drummers. I don't recommend it as a cover-to-cover read unless your OC switch is on; it should be left somewhere like a night stand, bathroom shelf, or by the computer where one has a few free minutes. Judging from the many other books Pickover has written, this appears to be a syncretic collection of research notes assembled in a fairly logical collection of mini-biographies. And, contrary to other reviews, there are enough references and citations for further readings about a particular person. I also suspect he was researching information relating to himself -- as a multi-talented genius (and not a madman). If so, I would support that he qualifies for this distinction.
   Well worth the price.



2. I liked this book in the beginning but some of the chapters were longer than others, and the facts were interesting but it was also very disturbing in some parts. I lost interest in it after awhile. Definitely a different book. I would rate it 2.5 to 3 stars. I think that each of the scientists deserved the same amount of recognition. There was only one madman in there Ted Kaczynski who shouldn't have been in there. The book would have been better if it was just about scientists.



3. Pickover's book is "stuffed" with fascinating facts and information regarding the bizzarre personal lives of history's most prominent intellectual thinkers. Like a modern day Mesmer, Pickover leaves the reader spellbound with his unique gift of captivating the mind by illuminating THE MIND itself. This book a gem, the Mona Lisa of mental profiles. What's more, Pickover reveals that OCD isn't a disability ITS A SUPERPOWER! As a certified Obsessive Compulsive myself, I found new life and strength in Pickover's work. Knowing that OCD has plagued the greatest thinkers in history makes the burden that much easier to bear. I recommend this book to all Obsessive Compulsives. It should be recommended reading for all "MONKISH PEOPLES" everywhere. I will forever be indebted to Dr. Pickover. For he has given me an exciting new angle on this dreadful disability.



4. Excellent book on the frailties of some great scientists and price paid for genius. I couldn't put this book down until its completion. This book will keep your interests from start to finish.



5. There is little reason beneath the popularity of reality as it is presented or portrayed to humans except that it is the concoction of the accumulation of data that has been filtered through the conscience of other humans in a position to use it for the benefit of themselves, or the institutions for whom they work. All of current perception is subject to this filtration mechanism that results from the tunnel vision of public and private protocols that created it. Every human is the ongoing creation of the information flow surrounding him or her, and the victim of it, as well as the creator of it.
   
   There is nothing written in stone that forms the human protocol of mankind except what humans are taught to preference - for its good effects, or occasionally, for its bad effects upon societies in which they reside during their lifetime. Interpretation is 100% of that ballgame.
   
   What humans make of alternate realities is tied to their willingness to both question and evaluate alternate realities, their significance and the manner in which they appreciate the introduction of such conflict, or whether their aim is to oppress it. Spiritual and intellectual freedom to examine alternate realities is the provine of freedom, itself, and serves to protect and preserve it, or to further encroach upon its potential to compromise the physical and pscyhological mobility that is the result of such entertainment. A public unwilling to entertain alternate realities is, therefore, a captive of its own purview, and strength lies only in the ability to examine alternate realities and come to logical and beneficial conclusions for the greater good, not to be hoarded for the benefit of a few fortunate souls. Mental capture is the equivalent of physical capture, and reveals much about the predators who would use the force and perception of tradition to deny not only the existence but the potential of human freedom by molding it into a sealed box like that of Pandora's, never to be opened for view or scrutiny. If humanity depends upon that process of capture and seal, it lives only a simulation of existence, not a real existence.

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

1. 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.



2. 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.



3. 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.



4. 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. I read the *The Devil's Doctor* in conjunction with *Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age: The Occult Tradition and Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare* by John S. Mebane. I read them to learn what magic meant to people in the sixteenth century - so that I could better appreciate Shakespeare's play, *The Tempest*.
   
   In the *The Devil's Doctor*, Philip Ball gives a fascinating portrait of a man who believed in both science and magic. In fact, in his medical practice he did not distinguish the two. Paracelsus used both in his attempts to cure diseases and to gain mastery over the external world - which, of course, includes other human beings.
   
   While I cannot judge the accuracy of Dr. Ball's historical and biographical claims about Paracelsus, his misunderstanding of fairly basic Christian teachings surprised me. Here are three examples:
   
   1) Ball states that it was not "his (Paracelsus') intention to say anything that ran contrary to the established position of the church - he was indeed intent on defending the divinity of the mother of Christ, against suggestions that she was mortal." Hello. The Catholic Church does not and did not teach the "divinity" of Mary. Nor does the Church teach that she was not mortal. (The doctrine of the Assumption does not mean she was immortal like a goddess.)
   
   2) In describing how people at that time viewed the spirit world, Ball asserts: "Christian dogma insisted that supernatural beings were universally evil." It did? What about St. Michael and the other angels, not to mention the Communion of Saints?
   
   3) Regarding demonic influences, Ball states: "Paracelsus briefly mentions the *Obsessi*, who are obsessed (possessed) by the devil." Paracelsus, like any sixteenth century Christian, would have known that obsession and possession refer to two very different conditions.
   
   I don't want to make a big deal out of these errors, as if there was something unique about Philip Ball. When reporters, university professors and others write about the Catholic Church, their IQ seems to drop 20 or 30 points. It's hard to know exactly why since today we have this great thing called the Internet. A simple Google search would have enabled Dr. Ball to avoid the above errors.

1 comments about Sigmund Freud.

1. I read this book many years ago. Good info about Frued . Read it and bought it because you cant go wrong with Ralph Steadman.Outstanding drawings asif I had to tell you that.

5 comments about The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever.

1. The story is compelling and unbelievable if it were not true. History as you never knew it to be and this needs to be made into a motion picture.



2. This book centers on the period of Charles Lindbergh's life when he was working with Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Carrel had won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1912 for his work on suturing blood vessels. He had also been lauded for his method of disinfecting wounds with chlorine (this was decades prior to the development and use of antibiotics). They were both famous men and, when introduced, they found they had many interests and views in common. Lindbergh's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Morrow, had a very weak heart that was going to shorten her lifespan and he felt medicine should have a way of replacing worn out organs just as he replaced parts in an airplane engine. Carrel was the leading authority in that field at that time and their work together is the central story of this book.
   
   During their years of working together, Lindbergh designed and developed the world's first perfusion pump that allowed entire organs to be kept alive for extended periods without becoming infected. Both Lindbergh and Carrel were interested in pursuing an extended lifespan and rejected the inevitability of death. Of course, the popular press misunderstood what they were after and what Lindbergh had developed. It was regularly called a glass heart or an artificial heart, but it wasn't.
   
   Lindbergh and Carrel also shared similar views on the superiority of the European or White race and the necessity of preserving and defending it. They both saw the coming war in Europe as a disaster that might go far beyond the losses and devastation of the Great War (World War I, we call it). Yes, Lindbergh favored Germany over Britain, but not for the reasons usually ascribed to him. Yes, he and Carrel viewed Jews as a separate race and they talked of good and bad Jews. However, they also helped Jews including a former assistant who went on to a brilliant medical career. Carrel and his wife were also mystics and impressed the Lindberghs and many others in ways that would embarrass anyone of a scientific reputation today.
   
   While I don't want to be seen as defending Lindbergh's views at this time in his life, it does have to be noted that eugenics was in the air and various strains of it were advocated by many famous people. Many of these advocates of this now discredited movement still have a solid reputation today (even if their views on eugenics are kept hush hush in popular discussions). And one can still hear eugenics arguments made today, but it is never called by that name.
   
   Essentially, Lindbergh saw Germany's manufacturing efficiency, engineering supremacy, and military discipline as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. He did not want the United States drawn in to a war that would leave Europe vulnerable to an expansionist communist movement. Carrel shared his anti-war views. However, once war came, Carrel went back to France to help as best as he could with his medical abilities. His reputation was smeared and was called a collaborationist, but all evidence shows this was not true. Lindbergh wanted to enlist, but was blackballed by FDR, so he went to the Pacific theater and flew several dozens of combat missions as a uniformed civilian. He shot down enemy fighters, dropped bombs, engaged in air battles, and shot up Japanese military assets on the ground.
   
   After the war, Lindbergh's views on religion, science, and nature changed. He became a pioneering environmentalist and stirred up as much controversy supporting species preservation and natural habitat as he had when he was speaking against the United States entering World War II.
   
   This is a very interesting story and supplements Berg's famous biography of Lindbergh. The author, David Friedman, even quotes from Berg's "Lindbergh" a few times. This is a well-balanced book that shows the complications of these men without feeling the need to make simplistic judgments or justifications. I found it very much worth reading.
   
   Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, Michigan



3. Never having read a real biography of Lindberg, and never having heard of Alexis Carrel, this book introduced me to a new universe of thought. Friedman is empathetic and compassionate when he describes the tragic (as in Greek tragedy, a flaw that dooms greatness) shortcomings of men he obviously very much admires. Carrel and Lindberg thought of themselves, with some justification, as Olympians. Carrel didn't suffer fools gladly - or at all - but he comes across as a far more human being than the driven, dispassionate, aloof Lindberg. It's easy to understand Lindberg's fascination with Nazism - all that counts is getting the trains to run on time, no matter whose bodies lie across the tracks. Friedman paints two very complex pictures of 'great men', and great men they truly were, and their close personal and professional relationships. Friedman also portrays Ann Morrow Lindberg as a brilliant although self-doubting artist of great sensitivity. Reading of Lindberg's treatment of his wife reinforces the general portrait of a cold, humorless, obsessive tyrant. Finally, the author gives the reader enough detail to understand the what, how and why of the Carrel/Lindberg quest for immortality through organ replacement without ever losing me in a flood of technical minutia. One of the most fascinating tales I've ever read and extremely well told.



4. Charles Lindbergh's and Alexis Carrel's views on eugenics, democracy and race don't sound so unusual when you consider how many European, British and American writers in the early 20th Century professed similar beliefs. H.G. Wells, for example, would have agreed with much of what Carrel writes in "Man, the Unknown," especially about the need for a technocratic elite to make binding decisions (including reproductive ones) for the whole world. Nobel Prize winning geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller advocated eugenics like his fellow Nobelist Carrel (an enthusiasm Muller failed to convey to his student Carl Sagan). H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, now held in higher regard than during his lifetime, expresses a disgust with non-Anglo immigrants, race mixing and racial degeneration. And many American science fiction writers during the field's "golden age" in the 1930-1960 era professed similar racist, Social-Darwinist, elitist and anti-democratic sentiments.
   
   Today's elites at least have the sense not to promote such beliefs in public, even if they express them privately. The open avowal of racism has moved down the social scale, along with fighting duels to settle disputes over matters of "honor." The individual today who expresses racist beliefs, or regularly gets into street fights, signals himself as lower class.
   
   Ironically, Lindbergh's and Carrel's other ideas, about treating the human body as a machine with potentially replaceable parts and greatly extending human life thereby, make them seem remarkably visionary even by 21st Century standards. You have to wonder how far they could have gotten if Carrel had secured funding for his own lab after the Rockefeller Institute had forcibly retired him, and trained a scientist to carry on the work with Lindbergh after his death; and if Lindbergh's crushes on Goering and Hitler hadn't distracted him from helping Carrel with their joint project. Lindbergh and Carrel's experiments anticipated today's research into regenerative medicine, engineered negligible senescence and transhumanism.
   
   Other interesting aspects of the book: We think we have a celebrity-obsessed culture now, but Lindbergh and his family received a level of press harassment that looks extreme even by today's standards. And Carrel combined legitimate scientific accomplishments with some very crank-sounding ideas, especially about the paranormal; today he would make a plausible guest for "Coast to Coast AM."
   
   I would have given the book more stars, but Friedman really hadn't done enough homework to show how Lindbergh's and Carrel's less defensible beliefs (from our perspective) reflected the thinking of many early 20th Century intellectuals. These intellectuals' beliefs formed a continuum with what became official policy in Nazi Germany. They didn't arise in a vacuum, in other words.



5. I enjoyed this book a lot, having learned much more about Lindbergh than I ever knew, especially his apparent eventual repudiation of eugenics and the Nazis and his new-found commitment to environmentalism.
   
   But how does Friedman know about all the thoughts Lindbergh had as he reassesses his values in light of particular experiences? The notes at the back, which provide references for particular lines of many pages, in many cases do not present the evidence that Friedman learned all of this from Lindbergh's journals or other sources. Ths was a problem for me - a kind of imaginary mind-reading that I became somewhat skeptical of. So I considered giving the book just four stars, but, heck, it was a really good read!

5 comments about Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer (Helix Books).

1. I am about halfway through this book. I really appreciate the balanced way he presents Isaac Newton's life. The book is very well written, and presents both sides of Mr. Newton - the brilliant scientist that laid the foundation for modern science and engineering, as well as the alchemist - the mystic - and the flawed individual and his various feuds with some of his contemporaries. I also appreciate the time the author spends discussing the world Mr. Newton lived in - what were the dominant paradigms, and who were the people that contributed to them. As such, the book fulfills a secondary purpose of providing an overview of how we arrived at our current scientific paradigm. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about Sir Isaac Newton, and also learn about the evolution of the thinking behind modern science.



2. I was attracted to this book by a moronic blogger on another site who tried to rationalize the idiocy of "Intelligent Design" by arguing that Isaac Newton believed God created the universe! Another blogger recommended "The Last Sorcerer" as a rebutal to that comment.
   
   Michael White's scholarship is well-researched, incisive and thoughtful. He reveals the history of the awakening of scientific thought and inquiry of the 17th and 18th centuries in a readable and interesting manner.
   
   His descriptions of Newton, Hooke, Waterhouse, Huygens, et al, who opened the doors to the modern scientific method are easy to follow and carefully organized. Sir Isaac, indeed as much a man of God as he was a man of his time, was nonetheless largely responsible for the beginning of the end of superstition and ignorance and the awakening of inquiry and experiment.
   
   This is a good read for anyone interested in where we've been and how we got to where we are.



3. The Last Sorcerer begins with the theories of past philosophers and thinkers like Aristotle and Galileo. It also gives experts about Newton's life through out the entire novel. I found the book a little hard to follow and understand as it jumped from one chapter to the next without much connections between each. However, it is a good source of information on Newton's family, life, and how he grew up to be the great physist he became. Although hard to understand, it is easy reading because the novel is written in a story-book format. It is more engaging and interesting, while still presenting factual information than most biographies.



4. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer is a well-written, well-researched, and insightful account of the life of one of the (maybe THE) most influential and important scientists and mathematicians in history. Michael White, as implied by the title of his work, has an ambitious thesis to his study: that alchemy was key to Newton's ground-breaking discoveries. According to White, without his controversial pursuit of alchemical goals like the Philosopher's Stone, Newton would not have established his theory on gravity, etc. While the idea is intriguing and probably true (one's interests and studies in specific areas will often influence what one discovers and how one understands other areas), White provides very little evidence to support his thesis and relies mostly on speculation and guessing.
   
   As a biography, I found this book intellectually stimulating, yet very readable with many interesting details that help the reader understand Newton as a scientist and as a person. Although the author claims at the beginning to concentrate on Newton's alchemical research, the book is a thorough biographical account that covers his troubled youth, his autodidactic study at Cambridge, his most important findings (theory on light and colors, gravity, calculus), his religious views and study in prophesy, his work at the Mint (he was instrumental in England's recoinage), his Presidency in the Royal Society, and his relationships with fellow intellectuals including feuds with Robert Hooke, John Flamsteed, and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. White also devotes what I believe to be too many pages on Newton's niece and her affair/marriage with Lord Halifax.
   
   White examines many different areas of Newton's life and also provides background information to help the reader understand the intellectual and scientific foundation that led to Newton as well as the popular biographical accounts of Newton until the 1930s when John Maynard Keynes purchased some of Newton's documents on alchemy from Sotheby's. Newton claims that earlier biographers ignored or covered up Newton's interest in alchemy. White does an excellent job explaining how Plato and Aristotle's reliance on syllogistic logic rather than experimentation stifled the growth of knowledge for centuries (31). Newton was the first to apply fully the scientific method that is used today (182). As to Newton's findings, White is very adept in scientific principles, but does not bog down his work with too much esoteric jargon. He describes Newton's research (he experimented with light in dangerous ways that almost damaged his eye sight, pp. 58-61), his thoughts, ideas, and hypotheses found in his notebooks, documents, and correspondence.
   
   Where White's work becomes weak is when his branches off into alchemy (mostly in chapters 6 and 7). It is not that White does not explain alchemy well, or does not outline Newton's work in alchemy, or ignores the influence of alchemists like Michael Maier and Robert Boyle; it is that White makes the sweeping claim that alchemy was key to Newton's discoveries with little to back it up. He will introduce alchemy, its history, its disciples, and its influence on Newton and how Newton went about his alchemical studies with a furnace in his room at Cambridge, and then will throw in statements like "The creation of the Star Regulus was PROBABLY one step along this road [to a full-blown theory of gravity]" (146), "It is QUITE POSSIBLE that, by manipulating the tale [about documents Newton lost in a fire at Cambridge], they managed to neatly dismiss Newton's alchemical interests" (148). White maintains that the popular apple story was created by Newton to cover up alchemy's role in his theory on gravitation (no evidence provided). In examining Newton's biblical study, White makes a connection between Solomon's temple and Newton's concept on universal gravitation and then admits "There is no surviving record of an explicit reference to the Star Regulus or the Temple of Solomon to support the idea that they may have symbolized an attractive force" (pp. 159-62). Later in the book, White becomes preoccupied by Newton's relationship with upstart intellectual Fatio de Duillier and, while discussing their relatively intimate correspondence (White implies a possible homosexual relationship), suggests that the censored parts of the letters had to do with alchemy (238). White adds that Fatio "may have" spoken of alchemy in front of other intellectuals and that he possibly got Newton interested in the black arts (291-99). Of course, White seized on Newton burning his papers at the Mint weeks before his death: "the burning incident MAY have some bearing on the conclusion we reach about this. Did Newton venture along paths leading far from his study of alchemy-paths we would now consider those of pure magic, pure heresy?" (355).
   
   I am not criticizing White for asking these questions or for speculating about Newton's secret endeavors. My problem is that White makes the claim that alchemy was key to Newton's discoveries and makes it the thesis of this book and not only doesn't cover alchemy throughout the book (mainly only in 2 chapters and sporadically sprinkled through the rest of the work) but his proof is only speculation and rumor. He doesn't, for example, draw connections between Newton's alchemical documents and his theories. Near the end of his book, White throws in this puzzling paragraph: "Unlike the central theme of this biography-that Newton arrived at his theory of gravity PARTLY [he backs off a little from his thesis here] through his exploration of alchemy and early biblical theory---the notion that he crossed the line into black magic is not supported by any hard evidence, but the circumstantial evidence available offers an intriguing possibility" (358). This sentence applies to his central thesis as well. I almost gave this book 3 stars but decided to compromise as it would be head and shoulders above other books I've given 3 stars. Actually, I would have given this book 5 stars, as it shows excellent care and scholarship, if he wasn't so adamant in claiming to prove a thesis he did not support with information provided in The Last Sorcerer.



5. I start in confessional mode - Newton has long been one of my heroes. Some time ago, I read significant parts of his major works; both Opticks and Principia [or The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy]. The King's School, Grantham, was also my place of secondary education, so I have seen the statue of `Ike' in the centre of Grantham in rain and sunshine. This book takes the statue off its pedestal, but still leaves readers in awe at the colossal figure in history that was Isaac Newton.
   
   There is much more to Newton than the three laws of motion. White fills in some background, and gives interesting details about not only Newton's life, but that of those around him. It leaves a story of a man obsessed - with proving himself, with secrecy, and with power. Not everyone would agree with the broad tenets of the book (e.g. that to understand Newton, you need to understand his alchemical work, or that Newton laid the ground work for the Industrial Revolution), but it give pause for thought. Newton has been much written about, and White gives some fresh insights on what has not, after all, already been done to death. The slant upon `standing upon the shoulders of Giants', being a reference to Robert Hooke's physical deformity, means that this phrase is usually quoted out of context. Newton had a vitriolic turn of phrase!
   
   One of the major themes of Newton's life is his singular fondness of picking quarrels with people; amongst others Robert Hooke, Flamsteed, and Leibnitz. Oh, the extreme politeness of professional animosity, damning with faint praise rather than going for the jugular vein. Was Newton ever wrong? Yes, but White argues that he admitted to making `a silly mistake' rather than being found fundamentally in error. There are good insights into the character of the man, and why he thought that he was right, but perhaps Michael White is too hard on Newton's antagonists, particularly Hooke. Newton says that he does not want to be someone who merely proposes hypotheses; that may have driven him to prove himself. White also declares that Newton viewed life as a riddle to be understood, a code to be cracked, as a duty to the divine. Newton saw there only being one man in any era who could unlock these secrets; himself in his lifetime. As he saw it, the ancients had known things that Newton spent a life-time discovering, or re-discovering.
   
   Beyond his major pieces of work, Isaac Newton posed some very tough questions. He spent significant parts of his last 40 years searching for the Holy Grail of physics, a so called `Unified Theory' (and indeed, whole teams have spent large parts of the 20th Century doing the same). The Queries at the end of the Opticks asks the penetrating "Does not light get bent by `gravity'?" (This was also a question that Einstein implied 200 years later.) Is there a possible pre-cursor of Quantum Mechanics is another Query, or is that just hind-sight? Hind-sight is a wonderful tool; it is never wrong. And that can sum up Newton - never wrong, at least in his own eyes.
   
   No reference whatsoever has been made of Dr Samuel Clarke's correspondence with Leibnitz, where Clarke was speaking for his master. This is a massive omission; in these letters, Leibnitz pointed out that the calculus of Newton worked, but was flawed (because of two compensating errors), which led the German to say of Newton's disciples that they were `men more accustomed to calculate rather than think'. The two clashed over the place of God in the Universe. For Newton, God was a central part of his life, even if his views were rather unorthodox. God was the eternal watchmaker, who wound the watch up and set it going (and thereafter he rested). However, Leibnitz sees God as having a different role in continually sustaining His creation. Without God's active participation, the universe would fall apart.
   
   Alchemy can help to explain Newton's reliance upon the unexplainable triplet of Action at a Distance, Absolute Space and Absolute Time, and it is hard for the modern mind to comprehend the influence of items that verge on occult. White raises questions about Newton's active involvement in more sinister elements, and touches upon possible reasons for the fire that destroyed some of his papers. What does come through is that Newton was both a very able administrator, and a manipulative, almost Machiavellian figure who used his position as President of the Royal Society for his own ends. He left the Royal Society and the Royal Mint in much better shape than when he took the lead of them, but over con trolled.
   
   He came, he saw, he measured, he conquered. but Newton was a very flawed human being. Why is it that some of the finest minds have large amounts personal baggage? THAT is probably why they achieve what they do. Newton had a view that `second inventors count for nothing', although the History of Science is able to provide ample evidence of dual independent discovery (as in Newton and Leibnitz with differential calculus). This partly explains Newton's obsessive and secretive nature, and confrontational approach to some of his fellows. He was a genius and a very difficult man, and these two themes are very evident in the book.
   
   In the end I am left liking Newton less, but admiring him more.
   
   [...]

5 comments about The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2.

1. Perfect condition. Written extremely well. After actually visiting Biosphere 2, this was a must read!



2. This book is a well-written and entertaining look at the Biosphere 2 project from a former insider (literally as well as figuratively). The author does a good job of setting the broader stage for BIO2 as well as dissecting why it is widely regarded as a failure by the public and scientific community. Recommended!



3. I found the Jayne Poynter's book to be very interesting both for her personal "lead up" to how she came to be on the Biosphere crew, as well as the drama of the 2 years inside -- all the problems they had, both technically and psychologically.
   
   It's too bad the media spent so much time trying to find out why something might be a "fake" (for lack of a better term) with Biosphere II rather than trying to appreciate the enormous magnitude of the project and it's intent.
   
   As I understand it, Biosphere II sits largely unused today. I certainly hope that a university or two will get involved to keep the facility operating. There's a lot to be learned, and I suspect the majority of the cost is already spent.



4. Many people in 1991 were fascinated by the idea of Biosphere 2, a closed, hermetically sealed, self-sustaining, man-made ecosystem with a desert, an ocean, a rainforest, a savannah, a marsh, a habitat and an intensive farm, all in three acres. On September 26 eight people entered the structure for a two-year stint living "as if on Mars, farming all our food, recycling our water, our waste and even the oxygen we breathed..."
   
   But bad publicity dogged the project even before the team went in. The public grew skeptical, as the Biospherians were dismissed as frauds, cult figures, publicity hounds and charlatans. None of which, strictly speaking, was completely false. Or completely true.
   
   Jane Poynter, who celebrated her 30th birthday in Biosphere 2, and went on to found an aerospace firm with fellow Biospherian (and later husband) Taber MacCallum, attempts to set the record straight with this emotional and wide ranging account.
   
   Poynter was an upper-class English girl who joined the Institute of Ecotechnics at age 20 for travel and adventure - and, no doubt, to escape her parents' conventional expectations. The IE group, headed by charismatic and authoritarian John Allen, were Synergists who believed in a "strict adherence " to three avocations - theater, philosophy and business - to keep themselves in intellectual, emotional and economic balance. This was the group that went on to conceive and build Biosphere 2.
   
   Poynter was an early candidate for the team. Her training included stints on a Ferro-cement research vessel built by IE staffers and an outback ranch in remote Australia populated primarily by large meat-eating ants, plagues of flies, and termites who ate the tires off cars. Lessons in resourcefulness, difficult physical conditions and close, isolated living may have been useful as Poynter says, but nothing could really prepare any of them for the Biosphere experience.
   
   "After thirteen months in Biosphere 2, we were starving, suffocating and going quite mad."
   
   Inadequate food had plagued them from the start. In part this goes back to the cult-like group dynamic.
   
   The Biospherian candidates worked on design and construction of Biosphere 2 (earth being Biosphere 1), and were shifted to different tasks in order to have well-rounded experience. In practice, shifts were sometimes made to punish a staffer for disloyalty, i.e., criticism. Criticism was also dealt with in less subtle ways.
   
   Poynter, as agriculture manager, was asked to draw up a report showing that Biosphere 2 could produce all of the food they would need. When she could only arrive at a total of 80 percent she, and two others who sided with her, were fired from the team. Poynter and another woman were taken back three days later without explanation - the third was shunted to some other aspect of the program.
   
   This type of behavior was common and served to keep all of them cowed, off balance, and unwilling to point out snags. When a certain root fungus was cited as a potential problem, John Allen's response was to make the scientist "jump up and down, screaming `pythium, pythium.' " The fungus was indeed a persistent rice-crop killer.
   
   Their second big problem was a steady, unexpected drop in oxygen. For months they did intensive experiments, but the debilitating riddle remained unsolved until an outsider provided a clue in a casual phone call. Serendipity and science working together would seem to give the Synergists' creed of balance a lift.
   
   But the "going mad" part never really got better. Much of Poynter's book focuses on the interpersonal acrimony, which eventually divided them into two groups of four. Difficulties were exacerbated by backbreaking work on inadequate diets in low oxygen, but even when these problems were somewhat alleviated relations stayed poor.
   
   Of course, the manipulation by outside management never got better and it was that that separated them into loyalists and non-loyalists. Poynter was a non-loyalist. When she walked out of Biosphere 2 her time as a Synergist was done too.
   
   But her book seems balanced and open - something of a catharsis. She celebrates the science, such as it was, and laments that more was not done later to study closed-ecosystem reactions. There was one more 6-month group sojourn inside, but the project was too expensive to continue.
   
   Though the two years were arduous she counts them a success - "we had proven that a man-made biosphere can successfully sustain life, including human life, for an extended period of time without inexplicably crashing, or devolving rapidly into green slime." True, but they did need two infusions of oxygen, which would not have been possible in space, and for all their psychological problems they always knew they could walk out at any time.
   
   Naturally many questions remain, particularly about the environmental science. Though the environment was carefully engineered and controlled they still had ceaseless problems with insect pests (including ant intruders from outside) and plant diseases.
   
   Poynter is at her best describing daily life; the "dysfunctional family" they became, the feasts and famines, and the daily grind of work, though you get the feeling she's leaving a lot out to avoid pressing on old wounds. An absorbing, varied and often suspenseful read.
   
   -- Portsmouth Herald



5. It's the 15th anniversary of the Biosphere 2 experiment, when eight individuals sealed themselves into a 2-acre desert building to survive without any help from the outside world - and here one crewmember shares what life was like behind the glass. It was designed to be a mini version of Biosphere 1, and was a self-contained ecosystem which could be viewed either as a prototype for a space habitat or a small version of Planet Earth experiences. The author helped design the experiment, lived it, and walked away from it in the end: her account holds insights for us all.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch