5 comments about Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg.

1. Great book. Read it in one go despite the technical vocabulary brain stretching. I've read similar minded books including Lauritsen's which gives a clear picture from the gay world's point of view during the first AIDS outbreak.
   
   What's most important is the reaction of the one star reviews. It's amazing the degree to which they make their scientific arguments entirely out of personal attacks. An example: "If HIV is not an infectious disease why don't [they] take a vial of infected blood and inject it in [their] body?" Of course this could in no way constitute an experiment, whatever the result might be, but it satisfies the true believer by focusing hatred on the perceived enemy.
   
   No one argues that AIDS sufferers have not died, but the HIV=AIDS folks have such a huge emotional attachment to the (as yet unclear) mechanism of the syndrome that they have stopped doing science, or even reason in favor of the championship crying jag. In many of these one star reviews we are beaten down with the reports of (reports of) thousands who have, or will suffer. Regarding each death as a vote for their "side" they heap abuse on the skeptical for not caring as much as they do.
   
   That there are people capable of objectivity in the study of diseases is a great thing. That this objectivity can be strained and tested is the running theme of this book. Reading of famous scientists (famous patent holders) who can't come up with real answers, (in a tough debate situation, maybe, but even months afterwards?), but launch into personal attacks is a warning about who these people are and how their objectivity is holding up.
   
   The parallel to Global Warming is identical. Again, the numbers of scientists belonging to the club rather than the value of any reasoned arguments, is used to beat down the opposition.



2. Shame on Harvey Bialy for not telling the entire story of this misguided man. Duesberg has caused many people to stop or not start medications that have been proven countless times to save lives. Who cares about the argument that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Does HIV do bad things to people's bodies? Yes. (This has been proven thousands of times.) Can HIV treatment, imperfect as it is, help? Yes. (This too has been proven thousands of times.) Where would you find this information out? The same place you would discover information about heart disease and diabetes and other diseases. Just read scientific medical journals, not this bio of a wasted scientific career.
   
   Scientists should look at study results. Scientists should not hold onto one theory from 1993 and not change their minds when the data change. Medical knowledge changed rapidly. Peter H. Duesberg has not changed his mind as most of us witnessed the world of HIV dramatically change from one where a great percentage of those infected with HIV died to one where the disease could be managed. So many lives have changed as a result of these developments in HIV care and treatment.
   
   I personally know a few people who bought into the Duesberg theory of HIV medicine and did not take medications. Guess what. They died. People like Harvey Bialy who write biographies of flawed men share the responsibility for these people's deaths.



3. First, this reviewer is a dyed-in-the-wool contrarian with no background in medicine.
   
   The book's main subjects are AIDS and the role of aneuploidy in oncogenesis. Its arguments are deeply flawed, but still very much worth reading.
   
   The current consensus on AIDS may be summed up as follows:
   1) AIDS is an infectious disease, deadly if untreated.
   2) The HIV virus causes AIDS.
   
   The book argues that both 1) and 2) are false. As far as 1) is concerned, the book's argument amounts to little more than handwaving. As for 2), the book may have a point, although the alternative explanations provided, such as recreational drug use, are as vague as they are unconvincing and scientifically untestable.
   
   Systematic omission seems to be an essential tool of the author's argument. Just to give an example, the spread of AIDS among hemophiliacs is barely mentioned. The AIDS epidemics among hemophiliacs in countries that did not tempestively adopt blood-screening for HIV is ignored.
   
   As for HIV causing AIDS, the story is somewhat different. Duesberg's critique may have played a role in pinpointing unwarranted hidden assumptions and flaws in the mainstream arguments. The HIV virus appears to be a very special one, its dynamics is still unclear and, since "in vivo" experimentation is problematic, no direct proof that it causes AIDS appears to be available, although circumstantial evidence is there.
   
   The book's chapters about aneuploidy effectively, albeit unwittingly, exemplify the role that explanations (i.e. rethorical models) play in scientific research. It also suggests that neither Duesberg, nor anyone else has a scientifically testable and convincing model for oncogenesis.
   
   The author laments the unfairness of mainstream scientists and provides a wealth of vivid and even entertaining examples. On the other hand, Duesberg and Bialy are hardly champions of civilised debate, resorting to double standards (e.g. concerning Koch's postulate), obfuscation and "ad hominem" attacks.
   
   The book paints a vivid picture of the inner workings of medical research and it raises important issues, a.o. about the role of the media and about the practical implementation of the scientific paradigm. The critical scrutiny it invokes may be fruitfilly applied to its arguments as well as to those it targets.



4. I was impressed. I invite you to read this fascinating book and decide for yourself whether Duesberg has a point or two. I took time from a busy schedule to see quickly how the saga would end, and came away enlightened by a rich body of information about issues of profound significance that cry out for resolution. The message is quite serious, but the presentation is buoyed by abundant humor and wit - a pleasure to read. This is one of those books that will inspire unending conversations with friends and colleagues. Rarely have I been as moved by a book as by this very scientific biography."
   
   
   Gerald H. Pollack - Professor, Dept. of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle



5. Mr. Bialy's journeyman's prose never fails to bore. He creates a parallel universe in which the modern-day plague of AIDS is a fiction created by greedy and ambitious scientists, politicians, activists, Pharma executivies, and other assorted henchmen.
   
   Against this backdrop of evil, we are given a Christ figure, played by a scientist at a California university who would save the world from the great lie that is AIDS. Oddly, Mr. Bialy's descriptions of our hero smacks of a schoolgirl crush. Would that we had learned whether this curious realtionship was ever consummated.
   
   Mr. Bialy takes a halfway good science fiction story idea (what if HIV were harmless??) and beats it to death with excrutiating, ham-handed detail.
   
   Life is too short for this kind of drivel. Shame on me for wasting several hours of my life on this nonsense. Shame on YOU if you repeat my mistake.

1 comments about Galileo Observed: Science and the Politics of Belief.

1. William R. Shea (professor of History of Science, University of Padua) and Mariano Artigas (Dean of the Ecclesiastical Faculty, University of Navarra, Spain) present Galileo Observed: Science and the Politics of Belief, a history written to set the record straight about what really happened at Galileo's famous trial, unmuddled by propaganda or novelizations. Skeptically examining all available historical sources, from claims that Galileo was port in chains and subjected to torture or that a forged document was brought forth at his trial, to numerous comparisons between Galileo and the friar Giordano Bruno, Galileo Observed strives to uncover the truth or its most likely estimation. A scholarly work illustrated with a handful of black-and-white photographs, Galileo Observed is nevertheless thoroughly accessible to lay readers and is therefore recommended for public library collections as well as those of college libraries.

5 comments about Leonardo: The First Scientist.

1. This is a book which is not worthy of serious consideration. Author, tries to darken middle ages even rinascimento as possible for the sake of lighthen the star of Leonardo. There are many unconvincing and poor arguments(!). I do not mention its non-exist, bad bad bad bibliography scattered in notes. Throughout the book, the author shows his ignorance of renaissance, science, art, middle age, history of since etc.



2. Known as one of the most advanced thinkers of his time, Leonardo da Vinci explored technology, art and science much beyond that of his era and surroundings. This novel delves into Leonardo as a scientist, his struggles, accomplishments and overwhelming amount of knowledge in more fields than any one scientist should endeavor into. From a rough childhood to the center of Renaissance society, Leonardo's life isn't easy, whether he is dealing with societal pressures, or just pressures he puts on himself, there is always something occupying his mind. He defies popular belief in his works in anatomy, making over 30 successful dissections accompanied by thousands of detailed and nearly perfect diagrams and drawings of the human body and its systems. In exploring technology, he diagrams countless ideas for flying machines and military warfare, most of which were years ahead of the current technology and technology in centuries to come. From his struggles in homosexuality to his coded notebooks, Michael White explores the lasting influence that Leonardo da Vinci has had on his society and ours as well.
   Michael White wanted to make known the scientific side of da Vinci, emphasizing not only his artistic abilities, but his scientific knowledge as well. Many people disagree about Leonardo's role as the world's very first scientist, but White defines what he believes it to be: "...exploration, it is questioning, it is the application of imagination, it is analysis." As Leonardo fulfills all these requirements and more, White finds him to be the first true scientist. White's fascination with this man is understandable, stemming from Leonardo's knowledge, ambition and overall figure of humanity. If you enjoy thrilling stories about knights, thieves and princesses, don't read this book, but if you enjoy the thrill of discovery, passion and overwhelming genius of a man, jump right in. This book is a clue to why humanity and society is shaped the way it is today, and why science in the 21st century is advanced as it is, all influenced by one man: Leonardo da Vinci.



3. It is appropriate that Leonardo da Vinci painted the woman with the mysterious smile, the Mona Lisa, perhaps the most famous painting of all time. For just as there are many questions surrounding the subject matter, and why she is smiling (or is she), and whether her eyes follow you around the room, there are also many unknowns surrounding the artist. He is an enigma himself, so THAT is why he painted the Mona Lisa.
   
   Michael White gives a broad picture of the artist, and how he broke new ground, both within art, and also is his investigations. Da Vinci also managed to bridge science and art. He was able to see science from the perspective of an artist, to visualise art with the mindset of a scientist, and capture architecture from the viewpoint of the artist-scientist.
   
   White postulates that da Vinci was the first scientist. However, we have to remember that the 21st century of a `scientist' is very different to that in 15th century Florence, or Milan. There was still the scope for individuals to engage in an all-embracing approach, so the body of knowledge was sufficiently small as to be able to be grasped. Furthermore, this was so for about 250 years after da Vinci's time.
   
   Da Vinci was a very talented man, and it is tempting to question what he might have achieved if he had been more focussed. He tended to flit from one thing to another, leaving many incomplete projects, and ever two or three books-in-the-writing, not finished, or indeed, hardly started. White does bring out the breadth of the tasks that the Italian tackled, correctly giving emphasis to some achievements not generally known.
   
   However, whereever you look, there is the enigma that is da Vinci. He is a peculiar mix of old and new, showing in his studies of eyes that he was far ahead of his time. Da Vinci goes some of the way towards the notion of blood circulating, but not quite making the impossible leap that William Harvey was to make over 200 years later. What White does is show that da Vinci was one of the first to systematically investigate, to move from the cognitive to the experimental scientist.
   
   Da Vinci left a huge collection of notes, drawings and "scribblings", and these were firstly lost for over 200 years, and then dissipated into private collections and archives. It is always possible to show tenuous links with hindsight. Maybe there is some over eagerness on White's part, but da Vinci was a marvellous man.
   Geology, rain, water and clouds, anatomy, fortifications and machinery of war, canals, and the list goes on. He was forward looking, and many have claimed that da Vinci invented helicopters, and other diverse items of machinery. Yet he was steeped in the Aristotelian view of the four elements; earth, air, fire and water. He also did not spend large amounts of time investigating cosmology, as many of his age did.
   
   Da Vinci had feet of clay, yet a very freethinking mind. He used science to aid him, to help him as an artist. His only published work, a book on art gives views ahead of his time, on distance, perspective, light and shade. That in itself would have made the man worthy of praise. He also continued to study, to both aid his art, and for scientific discovery. The fact that he was a bridge between the old and the new is another facet of the enigma that is Leonardo.
   
   Peter Morgan, Bath, UK (morganp@supanet.com)



4. I find this book very aweinspiring. It reveals the
   unpublished works of this great artist, engineer
   and scientist.



5. Michael White does not seem to be a researcher in history of science. It seems he picks up some books written by historians and selects what he wants according to his own personal views and contemporary marketing needs (he wants to sell books). This is not serious. For me, reading this book was a waste of time and a waste of money.

5 comments about It's a Jungle Up There: More Tales from the Treetops.

1. Do you want you and your family to be inspired by the wonders science reveals to the world? This book can get you there. Dr Lowman and her children have made ecology and adventure part of their lives, traveling into the treetops to see how this delicate ecosystem works. They will make you understand the joys of adventure and the possibilities for discovery on a little understood planet.



2. I suppose it depends what you're expecting. I felt a little deceived having read 'It's a Jungle Up There', not that it's Lowman's fault. The packaging, press and quotes suggested it might be something more, say along the lines of E O Wilson. But this is not an original look at man's relationship to the world. It's more of a cheerleading exercise for the mixture of motherhood and biology. It's filled with enthusiasm for nature, but also with personal asides and exlamation marks. ("Happy Anniversary Michael!"). At the risk of sounding like a real grinch, the book is unforgivably padded by pages written by her two sons. All of these essays, of which there are many, read like college applications. It's a thin book, aimed perhaps at a younger generation. People looking for meatier stuff should keep on looking.



3. What a really terrific read! In this book Dr. Lowman has co-authored with her sons, we find a beautiful story of developing a conservation ethic for families. The tone is so positive and inviting, I felt like I was up in the canopy with them.
   
   One of the really captivating elements of this book is the wonderful journal notes and essays by her sons. Their authentic voices make this a great book to share with young people. For example, her son's last touching essay in the book summarizes their family quest to combine science and spirituality in efforts to expand scientific research into a more global sense of responsibility through conservation. This is a topic seldom touched in science writing. What wise thoughful teenagers!
   
   What I loved most about this book was that many parts of Lowman's story are the story of women in science, my story, about the challenges of balancing a career and the rest of our lives. Lowman's book is just the ticket for inspiration AND some reassurance that we can have a well-lived life that combines a passion for science with family and community. I am in awe of the courage it must have taken to share such a personal story, filled with adventure, challenge, adversity in the work place, loss, humor, and quite a few poisonous snakes. We could use an Earth of sons and daughters raised by her.
   
   Lowman really is a role model for parents to become stewards of all of Earth's creatures, and her passion and work efforts certainly have made inroads to this goal. Through this story, Dr. Lowman and her sons will inspire and mentor thousands of current and future naturalists, both boys and girls. As I finished the last pages of this book, I decided I need to find my copy of her earlier book "Life in the Treetops" and read it again. What a terrific adventure.
   
   I highly recommend "It's a Jungle Up There" and will be giving copies to all the young people I know for birthdays, graduations, and other celebrations. And I believe I will share it with a few adults who could use a great read, and a little vicarious adventure.



4. Notes on Margaret Lowman's book, "It's a Jungle Up There---More tales from the Treetops," with Edward and James Burgess. Yale University Press, 2006.
   
   
   Margaret Lowman is a remarkable woman scientist. I say this not only after reading this book and her first book, "Life in the Treetops," but because I had the rare opportunity to be her Executive Assistant for 8 months during 2002-2003 while employed at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida. Meg is an inimitable, intriguingly interesting scientist, enthusiastic about canopy research, ecology, and her family. This excitement exudes from within her into one's very own, and no matter what one does, it cannot be ignored.
   
   Likewise, "It's a Jungle Up There," is also enthralling. Her many scientific pursuits are entwined with her two boys' experiences in the field with her, into a wonderful and educational view of the world, its ecology and the workings of the world's ecosystems. For many single parents, Meg sets the stage as a fine example of "get up and go," and "leave no stone unturned." There appeared to be no obstacle that could not be overcome by personal persistence, with the end result of reaching the goal. Even small setbacks were used as stepping stones to move forward and to be used to a positive advantage.
   
   Her chapters on canopy research, canopy walkways, encounters with internationals, and environmental ethics for families, educate the novice in this comparatively new research area. Providing her children with an always new and exciting way to experience life through nature is certainly an example parents and teachers should emulate.
   
   The book is comfortable to read, has a glossary of terms and a selected bibliography for further reading on each chapter. An index of names and places referred to in the text also assists the reader for quick reference.
   
   Both Meg's books are fine examples demonstrating what a person can do if willing to accept the challenges offered. Do some self-promotion and be cognizant of an ever-increasing need to be a guardian of the world's biosphere. As her Executive Assistant for even a very brief time, I am proud to have shared some of the pages of "the padded chair" with her, and will always recall Meg as a fair, straight and honest supervisor.
   
   
   Susan A. Jarzen CPS
   Secretary, Florida Museum of Natural History
   February 27, 2006



5. This book is a great read. Written by a mom-scientist and her two sons, it offers a captivating look into some of the most interesting natural environments around the world-all viewed from the treetops. Armchair ecologists, parents, kids, teachers, and tree climbers interested in adventure, science, and/or world travel will thoroughly enjoy this book. It's the perfect follow-up to Life in the Treetops.
   
   Many of the anecdotes are laugh-out-loud funny (like hiding "the possible" in Samoa) while others are extremely touching. The photographs and drawings make this book feel like a family album of the most extraordinary kind.
   
   Although the author and her sons have spent much time high in the tree tops and in the stratosphere of world-famous scientists, they come across as extremely down-to-earth, likeable folks. Our kids especially enjoyed hearing what the author's sons have to say about their own experiences as well as their reflections on religion, their mom's career, and our imperiled environment. We all came away with a new respect for plant ecology and a greater love of science and scientists.

1 comments about Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life.

1. This amazing biography of crystallographer is even more interesting because it is the author's first book. Despite being a non-scientist, Ferry does a superb job of exploring the life of her subject. It is a joy to read, treating with equal respect Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin's personal and scientific life. The central role of crystallography (with excursions into biology, chemistry, and physics) is not minimized, but it would be easily understandable to the non-scientific reader. Besides being a woman scientist in Great Britain at a time when women were not even eligible for college-level degrees at some schools, Dorothy was a successful wife and mother, raising several children almost alone while her husband worked in faraway places. But rather than concentrate on the difficulties, Dorothy put all her efforts into pursuing science, and thus she became fantastically successful, eventually winning the Nobel Prize for her work on the structures of Vitamin B12 and penicillin. Everyone in her field respected her, no one suggested her proper place was anywhere else, and so she avoided many of the pitfalls women in science often face. As long as she lived, Dorothy worked for what she believed in, whether it was solving the structures of complicated bio-active molecules, peace, or international communication. She built friendships all over the world, and used her fame and personality to help people. This book will make you a Dorothy Hodgkin fan, which is a tribute to both the subject's worthiness and the author's skill.

3 comments about Constantine Samuel Rafinesque: A Voice in the American Wilderness.

1. Botanists will be surprised to learn from this book that "almost none" of the roughly 6,700 Latin plant names devised and published by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) "were listed in any botanical indices, including the comprehensive Index Kewensis" (p. 63). B. D. Jackson, the editor of that great compendium, did miss a few, but I occasionally take down the two folio volumes of my facsimile reprint of the 1895 Index and, as an exercise in bibliomancy, invite a skeptic to insert his finger at random between any two of its 1,299 pages. "I'll bet you money, marbles, or chalk," I challenge the doubter, "that somewhere among the six columns of tiny type on those two pages you will find a plant name attributed to Rafinesque." I have never lost the bet.
   
   Sadly, misinformation such as this about the Index Kewensis characterizes this long-awaited biography. Next to Audubon, Rafinesque has had more written about him than any other American naturalist of his time, but a competent book-length biography has not yet been published. Issued in parts, 1893-95, the two-volume Index Kewensis was completed in England the same year that the first life of Rafinesque was assembled by Richard Ellsworth Call in Kentucky. The product of Call's effort has been considered a book because its large type, wide line spacing, broad margins, and extra thick paper puffed it up to resemble a book. The author himself modestly called it a "brochure." In 1911, T. J. Fitzpatrick prefaced a 50-page "Sketch of his life" to the Rafinesque bibliography he had lovingly compiled, and the resulting book often was called a biography by reviewers who had little interest in bibliography. Finally, for Transylvania University's 1940 centennial commemoration of Rafinesque's death, Francis W. Pennell delivered a keynote address that, two years later, was published as a 60-page article, "The Life and Work of Rafinesque." Despite some inaccuracies corrected by the subsequent research of Pennell himself and by others, his article remains the most reliable single account of the remarkable career of America's most challenging naturalist.
   
   These three writers, as well as the author of the present book, all based their narratives on the slim autobiographical account published by their subject in 1836, A Life of Travels. Professional biographers assume all autobiography is self-serving to some extent and seek confirmation elsewhere for anything they take from it. But these biographers have been amateurs (in the non-pejorative sense of the term). Some of their resulting errors arise from a misunderstanding of the nature of Rafinesque's Life. Call considered it the equivalent of a private letter to let his family in France know what Constantine had been up to, a view that Warren unfortunately endorses (p. 183). Since 1987, however, it has been known that the little book was merely an outline prepared to whet interest at the Société de Géographie in Paris for the extensive narrative of his foreign adventures Rafinesque hoped to complete. The manuscript of that précis, sent to Bordeaux for his sister to transmit to Paris, never reached its destination. Three years later the author translated his file copy, and published it in Philadelphia at his own expense. Knowing this, and above all knowing there are 624 variants between the French and English texts, should give pause to biographers who use either version.
   
   Confirming what is stated in A Life of Travels requires, first, some wariness, and second, considerable investigation in primary sources. For instance, Rafinesque wrote there that when he and his brother returned to Europe in 1804 after 32 months in the United States, they "sailed in the Ship Two Sisters, Capt. Evans, going to Leghorn and thence to Calcut[t]a" (A Life of Travels, p. 25). All the biographers have remarked on the departure of the Two Sisters. The Lloyds Register lists more than 50 vessels named Two Sisters in 1804, but from records of the port of Philadelphia now at Philadelphia's Maritime Museum we can learn that departing on the date Rafinesque correctly stated, under command of Captain David Evans, was the good ship Sally & Hetty. After the passage of three decades, Rafinesque's usually reliable memory had failed him. Knowing this, a biographer ought to question other recollections. Rafinesque tells us also that in 1815 he returned to the United States from Sicily on "the Union of Malta." Only by consulting the Connecticut Gazette (8 Nov. 1815) will we discover that the ship wrecked outside the harbor of New London, Connecticut, carrying most of Rafinesque's worldly possessions to the bottom of the ocean, was an English vessel out of Malta named Union--not the Union of Malta, as Warren was led to believe.
   
   These are trivial errors, but representative of the hundreds of mistakes that mar this book. Consider the naturalist's mother, whose native language surely would have important biographical consequences for her children. Her son declared that she was "Grecian born, but of a German family from Saxony" (A Life of Travels, p. 5). Hence, we may reasonably ask, did the infant Constantine prattle at his mother's knee in demotic Greek or in Plattdeutsch? Warren is right that the woman actually "was born in Constantinople" but dead wrong about her having been "reared in Greece." From this error he infers that the naturalist "could probably speak his mother's Greek tongue" (p. 7). Actually, the woman never set foot in Greece. Since her merchant family had resided in Constantinople for several generations, it is likely that they had become Francophone, for French was the language of commerce in the Levant. Rafinesque had been disingenuous in his autobiography. He knew very well that Constantinople, his own birthplace and that of his mother, had not been a Greek city since the Ottomans made it their capital in 1453, but, as a Protestant Christian, he was determined to distance himself from all things Islamic. When he addressed the citizens of Lexington, Kentucky, to raise money for the Greek war of independence, he called himself "Constantine, of Byzantium." As an example of the ethnic prejudice he wanted to avoid, at the start of one of his many lawsuits, the opposing Philadelphia lawyer tried to rattle him by declaring that "This infidel" from a Muslim land "cannot swear on our Holy Bible. Let him swear on his own Koran!" (unpaginated, unsigned MS notes, Rafinesque's lawsuit against the estate of Zaccheus Collins, 1831; American Philosophical Society).
   
   Other writers, observing several titles in the Rafinesque bibliography in the German language, have concluded that at least he wrote the ancestral language of his mother's family, and Warren, who gullibly accepts the errors of his predecessors, also includes German among her son's linguistic accomplishments. Yet, careful inspection shows that all these articles were translated by others from their original French. Rafinesque had a talent for languages, but German was not one of them. Replying in French to a letter he had received from the paleontologist G. A. Goldfuss, he remarked (my translation): "Your letter of 3 November 1821 has reached me, but being unfortunately written in German, I could not read it" (Lexington, Mar. 1822; Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin).
   
   Rafinesque's Protestantism has caused additional confusion, partly because he never mentioned in print his brand of Christianity. In his so-called autobiography he never alluded to his domestic life in Sicily either, nor to the two children he fathered there. Only in his last will and testament did he remark that he "deemed" himself "lawfully married" to his children's mother, probably hoping that his honorable intention would enable his illegitimate daughter to inherit from his estate. He felt obliged, however, to explain that such a marriage was still prohibited in Sicily by the decrees of the 16th-century Council of Trent. One needs to know that those decrees forbade the marriage of Roman Catholics with Protestants. Nevertheless, Warren refers throughout to Josephine Vaccaro as the naturalist's wife, and adds that she later married a man named "Pizzalour." The naturalist's only surviving child, his daughter Emilia, was in the best position to know. She called her stepfather "Mr. Pinzarroni"; and Rafinesque thought the man's name was spelled "Pizzarrone." The puzzling "Pizzalour" is a signal to be on guard for other bungled names, which abound in Warren's book: Richard Harlan, a well-known Philadelphia zoologist, is here called "George Harlan"; Rafinesque's friend Dr. James Mease is sometimes called "John Mease"; James A. Spencer, who tried to exhume the bones of Rafinesque in 1924, is confused with his son Robert Spencer. Elsewhere, thorny proper nouns such as Heckewelder, Brongniart, and Chillicothe are misspelled. When not misspelled, Chillicothe is located in the wrong state (p. 139).
   
   Some of these errors may be typos (which also abound, and include among them the eponymous genus of Compositae plants that honors Rafinesque); in the biography of a botanist, such errors as "cryptogram" for "cryptogam" seriously erode a reader's confidence in the book's reliability. Rafinesque's own incomplete mastery of English also has caused misconceptions. Warren took the naturalist's word for it that in Palermo he "lived in a palace," but Rafinesque was unaware that "apartment house" would be a more apt translation for palazzo than its English cognate. A more serious blunder concerns Rafinesque's much criticized Florula Ludoviciana (1817), a book based on the travel account of the amateur botanist C. C. Robin describing plants from coastal Louisiana. During the last year of his life (1840), in answer to critics who had roundly condemned him for naming plants he himself had not examined, Rafinesque wrote (The Good Book, p. 42) that "I have seen some plants of Robin," presumably subsequent to the publication of his book. Warren inflates this simple declaration into "he claimed that while in France he had seen Robin's collection of Louisiana plants" (p. 61). Impossible! After he left Marseilles in 1800, at age 17, Rafinesque never again visited France; and Robin only began his tour of Louisiana in 1802, the same year Rafinesque arrived in Philadelphia. Warren concludes from his own misconception that "Rafinesque was caught in a lie" (p. 61). Since Rafinesque's veracity has been questioned elsewhere, this gratuitous and erroneous accusation is all the more regrettable.
   
   The index of this book is incredibly shoddy. The title of a magazine Rafinesque published in Sicily is first listed as "Mirror of Science," then again as "Specchia [sic] delle Scienze," followed immediately by "Specchio delle Science" [sic]. The naturalist's father is entered twice, once with the cedilla on his name François and once without it, as though these were two different persons. Constantine Rafinesque, who published under the name Rafinesque-Schmaltz in Sicily, gets listed also as "Schmaltz, Rafinesque." And there is no explaining why this wholly imaginary branch of the Rafinesque family tree appears at all: "Lanthois, Emily Louisa."
   
   Nor are the book's endnotes any more reliable. They seldom reveal whether the author is quoting from a document printed by somebody else or from the manuscript itself, and when the latter they sometimes locate it in the wrong repository. In the notes there are citations to authors by last name only who are never identified in the bibliography. The abbreviation of ibidem is used with such abandon that it loses entirely the meaning of "in the same place." Additional gaffes are introduced when Warren misapprehends secondary sources. An example appears in the treatment of Rafinesque's compensation at Transylvania University. Instead of being paid a salary to teach there, he had the privilege, like the medical faculty, of selling tickets to his lectures. In the 1820s, professors were compensated that way at other American medical schools as well, since it was expected that, unlike the other teachers, they also would enjoy a lucrative medical practice. I was surprised to read here, however, that the Transylvania medical professors "were . . . on a real salary" (p. 83), and chagrined to see that the related endnote attributes this revelation to one of my own publications. Well, no! In 1824, when Kentucky's General Assembly published a Report, on the Transylvania University, and Lunatic Asylum (separate enterprises but, to the legislative mind, both custodial institutions), the university's budget showed no salary costs for any of the six medical professors, who, moreover, complained that they had to pay the rent for their own lecture hall.
   
   I hasten to conclude this dreary recital by listing only the most egregious of the many remaining errors: on page 13, the epigraph attributed to Rafinesque is, rather, a sarcastic comment about him by an anonymous author, whose essay is further discussed (pp. 143-144), where its satiric thrust is naively overlooked; on page 60 the Annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural History is confused with Rafinesque's own Annals of Nature; an eyewitness description of Rafinesque's appearance (p. 85) seems to be attributed to W. D. Funkhouser, who was born 41 years after Rafinesque's death; Transylvania's president, Horace Holley, never "fought to permit Rafinesque to teach science" (p. 110), but instead Holley's attempt to discharge him was thwarted by the university's trustees; it was the Owenite community at Valley Forge that offered to pay the costs of Rafinesque's removal from Kentucky, not William Maclure at New Harmony, Indiana (p. 112); the portrait (facing p. 130) is not "of Rafinesque" nor is it "by Mat[t]hew Jouett"; though it is still an open question whether the Walam Olum, an alleged masterpiece of Amerindian poetry, was a hoax by Rafinesque or a hoax on him, he assuredly did not offer it "for a prize of twelve hundred francs" and he made only one attempt, not "several unsuccessful attempts to obtain a pension from King Louis Philippe" (p. 154). We are told (p. 174) that from Rafinesque's "pen came the works of poetry The Universe and the Stars," etc. However, one needs to go no farther than the title page of The Universe and the Stars (1837) to learn that this book--prosaic in both senses of the word--is a reprint of an 18th-century treatise on astronomy for which Rafinesque merely supplied explanatory notes. It does help to examine a book before pronouncing on its content.
   
   Though this book contains more thoughtful analysis of significant events in Rafinesque's life than do the studies of earlier biographers, when the analysis is based on inadequate or inaccurate factual matter it is bound to arrive at untenable conclusions. Warren believes that "one can only conclude that as his Kentucky days drew to a close and he could not find a [new academic] position anywhere, Rafinesque suffered serious mental derangement" (p. 108). I, for one, do not conclude that, because I have read the manuscript evidence of his many extensive farewell visits to a wide circle of friends on the eve of his departure, including the recorded sentiment of a teenage girl who wrote that "Dr. Rafinesque is packing his goods & chattels for Philadelphia.... He leaves us forever. Lamentable thought!" (Margaret Leavy in Lexington writing to her father in Philadelphia, 29 March 1826; University of Kentucky Library). Hardly documentation for a nut case.
   
   This book's chronology, patterned on A Life of Travels, is interrupted from time to time for these discussions. A really fine analysis of Rafinesque's views on classification, and the distinctions between the French-inspired "natural system" of botanical classification that he espoused in opposition to the Linnaean "sexual system" of most American botanists, occupies all but about six pages of chapter 2, a chapter treating the period 1802 to 1805. Warren identifies this dispute as one reason Rafinesque was ostracized by his colleagues. The problem is, however, that this conflict did not arise until more than a decade later, when Rafinesque made himself the principal reviewer of botanical books in America and castigated their authors for not sharing his views about classification. I suppose the subject was dragged into chapter 2 because the secondary sources Warren relied on so heavily have little to say about that earlier period. Yet, right in his own home town, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, there is an untouched cache of Rafinesque's 1803 letters to Henry Muhlenberg that reveal a very different person from the cocksure book reviewer of 1818. In these 1803 letters, Rafinesque was respectful and deferential to the correspondent 30 years his senior. Without any qualms about it, he discussed with Muhlenberg the identification and classification of plants purely in Linnaean terms.
   
   Surviving letters such as these are a valuable supplement to the scanty biographical information in A Life of Travels, which, among its many limitations, ends while its author had four more years to live. Sixty years ago, in his address at Transylvania's centennial symposium, Francis Pennell made good use of letters by Emilia Rafinesque to give some human dimensions to her father's story, as well as good use of the detailed letters Rafinesque wrote during his western travels to apprise Zaccheus Collins about his discoveries. Once back in Collins's Philadelphia in 1826, Rafinesque had no further need to write to him, so this source of biography dried up. Neither Pennell nor Warren took the next step beyond the Collins letters--that of fleshing out the last 14 years of the Rafinesque story through the major collection of Rafinesque-Torrey letters at the New York Botanical Garden Library. John Torrey outlived both Collins and Rafinesque. Warren does make some use of Rafinesque's letters to William Swainson (Linnean Society of London), of which there has been a microfilm at the American Philosophical Society since 1959, but he appears to be unaware of the equally large collection of Rafinesque-Candolle letters at the Conservatoire Botanique de Genève, which are not available in this country. Nor are the personal letters that remain with the Rafinesque family in France. Warren considers that an article published 60 years ago by E. M. Betts "contains all of the correspondence of Jefferson and Rafinesque" (p. 216). It does not, and moreover, errs in the identification of some of the people mentioned in those letters.
   
   Finally, though I cannot recommend this book to anyone seeking to know the factual details of Rafinesque's life, I do find of interest its author's explanation for why we continue to be fascinated by that life, even if I am not wholly persuaded by it. Warren surmises that Rafinesque "remains memorable, and perhaps unique, not so much for his scientific contributions, which tended not to have a lasting impact, but for the fantastical person that he was" (p. 210). The book may be worth reading for the author's analysis of the nature of that personality. Warren is the first to see a connection between the subject's spiritual life and his performance as a field naturalist, and he offers the surprising explanation for Rafinesque's "creative genius" as the consequence of "a kind of insanity" (p. 210).
   
   Perhaps it is because they see us naked that physicians, like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen's tale about the emperor, often are keen judges of character. Leonard Warren is a physician. Should we heed his conclusions about Rafinesque's character? Warren is not the first to attempt a psychiatric diagnosis of Rafinesque, whose contemporaries more bluntly declared him crazy. William Baldwin said Rafinesque was a "literary madman"; "crackbrained," sneered L. D. von Schweinitz; and Edward Barton pronounced him a "maniac." It remained for a later generation's Leon Croizat to pontificate that Rafinesque "wrote botany because he was of unsound mind," the same generation that also, in the person of the psychiatrist J. M. Woodall, decided he was a "paranoid neurotic," who had an "enlarged and hypertrophied" ego; yet for all that "was a genius" nonetheless.
   
   Siding with the odd judgment of Louis Agassiz that Rafinesque "was a better man than he appeared," Dr. Warren wrote this diagnosis (pp. 206-207) for our generation:
   
   "At the end of the twentieth century, Rafinesque might have been diagnosed as suffering from a bipolar, predominately manic disorder--chronic hypomania (mild mania), not violent, and therefore fully capable of functioning outside a mental institution, but becoming highly irritable and aggressive when challenged. Further, there were times when he seemed to manifest schizoid and paranoid tendencies. . . . Rafinesque's complex behavior, puzzling to all, may not only be ascribed to a manic disorder but also to a condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. . . . He could operate effectively with incredible energy and persistence within a rational, scientifically accepted framework, and only occasionally did he reveal underlying psychopathology when he ignored or grossly violated the accepted values of society and the bounds of reason."
   
   Perhaps so. However, Warren's posthumous diagnosis of Rafinesque's "bipolar disorder" is not the discovery he thinks it is, because it was anticipated nearly two decades ago by Joe D. Pratt, whose name is never mentioned in Warren's book.
   
   Four years before his death, Rafinesque himself granted with surprisingly little rancor that "I have been . . .laughed at as a mad Botanist by scornful ignorance" (New Flora of North America, p. 11). As those who scorned him slip one by one into oblivion, his own last laugh--crazed or not--does continue to command attention. His life deserves a more reliable biography than it has so far received.



2. This biography is of great interest to anyone interested in famous Kentuckians. Rafinesque was among the earliest scientists in the Commonwealth, and he was interested in nearly everything. Perhaps his major interest was botany, but he collected fossils, Indian artifacts, and shells. He wrote a huge number of books and articles, including a most interesting one on the fish of the Ohio River. He wrote on planting vineyards in America, and a Materia Medica of American plants. He was particularly interested in languages, and held theories linking the American tribes with other linguistic groups in Europe and Asia. He began the first botanical garden in Kentucky at Lexington, which was chartered by the state legislature. He left a memoirs of his travels and scientific work in Europe and North America.
   
   He was a professor at Transylvania University and was influential in the professional lives of a number of its alumni, though many of them considered him an odd fish, as did Audubon when he met him. The author of this book also considered him, for all his genius and originality, to be a psychologically unstable individual. His tomb is found today in the crypt at Transylvania, though he left a curse upon the university because the president fired him after an argument.



3. This is the best book ever. Rafinesque is cool. He is cool and named plants. I love Rafinesque. (...).

No comments about The Green Trees Beyond: A Memoir.

No comments about Champions of Invention (Champions of Discovery).

1 comments about The Wright Brothers: The Remarkable Story of the Aviation Pioneers Who Changed the World.

1. This is a great book on the Wright Brothers. It is very detailed and well written. It takes you from their births to deaths and even discusses their father and siblings. If you want a comprehensive book on the birth of flight, this is it. It is a long book, 500+ pages but reads fast like a novel. The only negatives are, it needs more pictures and the writter is from New Zealand (which means he uses some funny words). This is a GREAT BOOK.

1 comments about In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing (Cornell Paperbacks).

1. This book was originally intended to be a TV drama, I believe. I don't remember if it got made, but it doesn't change the fact that the written work is excellent.
   
   The drama follows the security clearance hearing. Kipphart took the official transcripts and melded some people together into one, rearranged the order, shortened the list of witnesses to produce one work that showed both sides of the argument. Because of the way it was pieced together, I myself couldn't decide if I sympathised with Oppenheimer or believed he was wrongfully accused. The moment one side got the upper hand, it would be the other side's turn to state its case.
   
   Perhaps one negative point is that it's hard to say Kipphart truly "wrote" this, as so much is taken from historical fact. His artistic touch is visible through what exactly is shown, not the content. He chooses to show these arguments, the ones he believes are the most important.
   
   My favorite part is Oppenheimer's monologue at the end, although that was freely invented by Kipphart. It's one of the few things that can be easily attributed to him.
   
   I enjoyed this work, and I would recommend it to everybody.