No comments about Fritz Muller: A Naturalist in Brazil.

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

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



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

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




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

No comments about Darwin's Illness.

5 comments about "The End of All Diseases": An Obscure San Diego Genius Develops A Cure For Cancer In 1930.

1. Save you money on this turkey...I was looking for facts, not fiction. Of all the books I have read on Rife, this was close to being the worst of them all. Patric



2. This book combines a scanmag account of a persecuted man with an unintelligible description of his device that only a mad scientist could love or understand. There's only a small bit that I as a practitioner/patient might find actually useful.
   
   What makes Rife's life worth knowing about is just how significant his work was. It undermined the theories that Pasteur died defending--though ironically his journals told a different story. Its application was simple and practical, provided that a practitioner learn how to tweak his machine for each patient. Tragically, that is the knowledge that died a premature death with Rife.
   
   Happily others are now picking up its trail again. A quick search of this very site will also lead to many books from scientists who have been building on Rife's work; from these we can find tools for our own healing.
   
   In the meantime, for those interested in the life of a fascinating yet sad figure, there's a much more judicious account of Rife's life and work in the much better book "50 Years of Suppression: The Cancer Cure that Worked". That book also makes clear the scientific implications of his findings in the context of other scientists of his times. Look for it.



3. If one is interested in getting serious information on R. R Rife, avoid this book. This title is a bit misleading; it should probably be marketed as a chic novel and/or made into a movie as suggested in another review. The search for salient information on Dr. Rife is scant and literature involving sensuality and sexuality is rife (sorry for that), in my opionion when I want to read the latter I'll go to a place where other writers are much more facile with the erotic genre. I give this one star for the information implied within.



4. To much conspiracy to be beleivable. However, it is a fiction so it does not have to be believable. Not very well written in my opinion.



5. By the cover you would never know it is a ( VERY Poor) piece of fiction, written as if an adolescent was given a high school assignment and was just passed an article about Royal Rife the day before. I'd say someone owes me 10 bucks, but that old adage of a fool and his money soon being parted, keeps running through my mind.

1 comments about Thomas Huxley: Making the 'Man of Science' (Cambridge Science Biographies).

1. I will come back and give a more thorough review the next time I visit the site, but in the absence of any other commments I will quickly throw down some of my observations.
   
   First: This book is less of a pleasure read as it is an academic History of Science read. It feels as though this is White's dissertation papers (or perhaps his dissertation). To that extent, while it is a very thoughtful piece, it feels as though White is trying to bend history so as to create a problem that academic scrutiny can solve.
   
   Second: There is invaluable interpretation of Thomas Huxley as an idea (if not an ideologue) and as a visionary who intended to
   
   Third: This may sound like a repetition of the first point, but passages of this book feel forced. Believe me, I read this as part of honors coursework and even incorporated it into my final paper and I felt as though I was forcing things when I was referencing it (although the professor apparently did not think that my interpretation was forced and gave me an 'A' on that paper).
   
   
   That said, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in turning points in the History of Science.

5 comments about Carl Gustav Jung.

1. On the positive side, this book contains a lot of interesting information about Jung especially from a personal point of view. Contemporary accounts are presented and where there are conflicting stories the author at least mentioned all the possibilities. Almost the entire first half of the book deals with Jung's interaction with Freud. It is clear that the author prefers Freud. This is also the section of the book were the author allows himself to subjectively dismiss Jungian ideas. The rest of the book is more neutral in analysis though the picture painted is not an attractive one. But Jung may not have been the most likable person. To me the greatest flaw of the work was that I still did not have an appreciation of what made Jung as popular as he was and still is? The book is readable with some interesting information and views but it cannot be the only biography of Jung you read.



2. This book is an in-depth biography of Carl Gustav Jung, encompassing his private life as well as his scholarly work. It begins with the Jung's ancestors on both his father's and mother's sides, and continues through Jung's death in 1961. McLynn describes Jung's elementary school years, high school, university, and post-graduate training at the Burghoeltzli Mental Hospital. His relationships are treated in great detail, including those with his wife and mistresses, as well as with Freud and other colleagues. Each of his scholarly works is also treated to summary and analysis as it falls into the chronological record of Jung's life. Jung and his contacts left much material behind from which to draw details and anecdotes for this biography, everything from Jung's personal dreams to reactions of notables such as Freud to comments made at dinner parties.
   
   I had very little knowledge of Jung (or Freud) before reading this book, but I feel the book has given me a basic familiarity with the man, and with some of his work. McLynn does a decent job of explaining the complex ideas presented in Jung's scholarly works in a manner that is mostly accessible to those with no training in the field. Nevertheless, he does use some terminology (Jung's?) such as "number one" and "number two" when referring to parts of a single person's personality which remain completely unclear to me.
   
   This is certainly the least sympathetic biography of any person I have ever read. From McLynn's descriptions, Jung was a self-centered bully and polygamist, to just begin a list of his character flaws. From McLynn's account, I thought these aspects of his character were well-known, but when I tried discussing them with psychologist friends, they were disturbed by my repeating such terms, found frequently in the book. Is it because McLynn overplays negative aspects of Jung's personality, or because there are certain generations of American psychologists who continue to deny that Jung was not an unpleasant man? With nothing else to go on besides this book, I have no way to judge the veracity of the claims myself. But to the uninformed reader, the book seems extremely well-researched, and will give an in-depth introduction into the life of one of the most important academic figures of the Twentieth Century.



3. McLynn doesn't like Jung ideas. Not a problem, really, but then why write a book about him? So the book crawls slowly, unhappily amassing all negative gossip about Jung, leaving the reader ( as probably also it did to the writer), miserable, exhausted, untill, at last the book ends, and a sigh of relief is impossible to avoid. Was this really necessary? Was this a paid, imposed job? This is really a pathography, a subgenre of our sick postmodern times, and I hope that these kind of people never go so far as the write a new life of Christ.



4. Exhibits little, if any, understanding of the immensity of Jung's work. Try Wehr's biography instead.



5. Wanting an introductory overview to C. G. Jung and his work, and reading the editorial reviews that Mr. McLynn has presented an objective and clear account of them, I eagerly picked up this biography, but was disappointed to find it a tendentious polemic relentlessly and repetitively attacking Jung (and, by the way, I am not a "Jungian"), dwelling at unnecessary length on the Freud-Jung relationship and insufficiently on Jung's influence as an original thinker of the XXc, and most signally, failing to present any sort of precis of Jung's seminal ideas that would be helpful to the general reader. Don't bother with this one: wait for a better biography, something on the lines of Peter Gay's Freud: a Life for Our Time.

1 comments about Hugh Miller: Stonemason, Geologist, Writer.

1. Well written, well illustrated and well worth the price. Hugh Miller is a major figure in paleontology and this book is a fitting tribute to him.
   This man proved that anyone can make great observations in science if they put their mind to it!

2 comments about The Feynman Tapes, Volume 1 (Chief Research Chemist and other stories) (The Feynman Tapes (Recorded By Ralph Leighton).).

1. "Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is based on these tape recordings. Given his particular style of giving out ideas, it is always a better idea to listen to him 'in action' than just to read books. Included in a ``secret track'' is his unique experience with carbon tet. This story has never been published before.



2. Though Feynman died a pretty long time ago, an interesting phenomena, may be unique to him, is that he is constantly writing and publishing new books! That's because Feynman's bestsellers--the set of lectures given at Caltech, "Surely you're Joking", "What do you care?", "QED", and some others--were not written by him, though he is recognised being the author by everybody, including himself for those books published before he died. Actually as you certainly know, these books were edited by other peoples from audio tapes, which tapes were recorded for such or such occasion, lectures, TV, or for private use. That means Feynman told something that has been recorded, and somebody else rearranged it, added, cut, modified the grammar and the speech, moved the text around, to make a book out of it.

   For that matter, no one feels peculiarly wrong when editing books signed Richard P. Feynman, books he never knew he had written. It may seems fair as long as the editor stays close enough to Feynman's ideas, and most often it's okay in this regard... but some will always feel uneasy with somehow translated text.

   Feynman encouraged it when he was alive, and as an author of much success, they're keeping up the good work, till exhaustion of lost lectures it seems. Whether one feels this is morally good or wrong, there remains these original unarguable sources of this sounding fake literature. It happens you can get some of theses tapes! For those who have enjoyed the books, for you all, this is incredibly enough _better_ stuff.

   This one record, Feynman Volume 1, has been home recorded by Ralph Leighton after sessions of drumming with Feynman, pieces of which are incidentally included. In this first volume, we hear Feynman telling theses four stories that are entitled in "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman" as "The Chief Research Chemist of the Metaplast Corporation", "I Want My Dollar!", "Thirteen Times" and "Judging Books by Their Covers". Stories as they're told sometime differ radically from stories as they're written. Those episodes that are hundred of pages separated in the book are actually recounted in an uninterrupted one hour and a minute delightful story, of a true Feynman _unedited_.

   Praise that audio sources from Feynman will keep on being released. If peoples feel the need for a book coming with them, they're welcome (and most often when it's technical, yes, it's necessary). But books without their actual source, and even though it's the way Feynman was "writing". should be disregarded.

No comments about The Ingenious Dr. Franklin: Selected Scientific Letters of Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania Paperbacks).

1 comments about The Feynman Tapes, Volume 2 (At Cornell and The Draft).

1. These audio CD's are much more convenient and durable than the lectures on tape. It's wonderful to be able to hear the master's voice just as if you were there in the lecture hall. Just thankful that these lectures are available on CD. I have transferred my CD's to my iPod so that I can listen whenever I have time - very convenient.