No comments about Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749-1827.

5 comments about Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer.

1. It seems some people blindly grab books off shelves, expecting to discover epic literature by such methods. It may indicate something about someone who buys books before examining the first page. Stewart's objective here seems to be of biographical and circumstantial nature, and not too technical. But for those of the technical class, it'd seem that they might by default, look at the book a bit, before purchasing it. If I set out to buy a dictionary, but got instead some old discourse by Chomsky, I would be disappointed, though I certainly would not criticize Sir Noam for my mistake. For Stewart's intended purpose, this book is a success. I suppose if this is a children's book, then a whole lot of top-notch science fiction and other creative writings should have many o' men embarrassed. This book captures many of the fascinating aspects of Tesla's life, as well as the generally historically-neglected crimes of Edison. I may be a bit cynical, but I have my doubts that certain critics of this work would have been satisfied had they purchased technical writings of Tesla-Himself, and would have complained about the lack of style and tedious documentation. Yes, this work is in novel format, but it is the last thing the common child will understand on any significant level. As for many great fantasy works, we read them as children, then many years later read them again, only to discover new things we had never considered. Perhaps an appeal to the young and vibrant imagination is more a benefit than a deficiency. I highly recommend it to any open minded person who does not insist on wandering through infinite realms of technical data and references, and is not afraid of being entertained whilst learning.
   A great book! It will always have a place on my shelf.



2. I found this book on the "Physics" section of a Borders Bookstore, which led me to believe I was buying a biography of Nicola Tesla (as I was traveling abroad I didn't have much time to check on the author). What I found was a book full of made up dialogues (and of cuestionable quality at best), written by a guy whose other two books are about UFO's and aliens.
   
   I wished there was a direct way to contact Borders bookstores to ask why is a book that is OBVIOUSLY fiction placed on the physics section. I would steer away from this book unless I was in the mood to read pretty crappy fiction.



3. Tesla, The Modern Sorcerer, is not what I expected. I wanted an biography of the scientist, but the dialogue with his father at the start led me to believe that it was a children's book, assuming details of actual dialogue were not recorded for posterity. However, after a more careful inspection of the jacket, I found that although the book is labeled Science / Alternate Technology, it is none too clearly also identified as a novel. This is not bad in itself. However, the writing is terrible! Names, dates and place are given and dropped as quickly without having any kind of cohesion. It became apparant to me that the author had writen an outline to help him structure his story, but then he copied the outline and filled in nothing. Details and dialogue are stacatto and stilted. He references, at one point, a machine that runs at so many Webers, without defining what a Weber is or even mentioning it again. Details appear to be decently researched, but the "novel" concept allows these to be manufactured. The authors other works are novels about UFO abductions, and he uses this book to tout his UFO theories. A waste of time to read, but perhaps interesting to a child without previous knowledge of science.



4. Though what you may learn of the subject matter is facinating, the novelization approach and contrived dialogue sometimes borders on annoying.

   As well, the amount of background information (on Edison, J.P. Morgan, etc.) provided sometimes is more distracting than helpful.




5. I purchased this book wanting a good biographical account of Nikola Tesla. Though it is that, what I didn't realize was that it is really aimed at young readers (ages 9-12). Nothing on the cover or the introduction mentions that fact. The odd book size(wide format), the larger font size and the limited vocabulary give it away as a juvenile selection. I would recommend it highly for that age group. However it was not the adult biography I looking for. I think I will give my copy to my son. I believe he will enjoy it.

2 comments about Rocketman: My Rocket-Propelled Life and High-Octane Creations.

1. My husband received this book as a Christmas gift. I started reading the book, even though I'm not technical and know little about rockets. I couldn't put it down. It was exciting to read about the things that Ky and others have accomplished. This book was an inspiration. So much so, that I have contacted Ky and am having him speak to our entire school.
   
   Whether you understand rockets and race cars or not, you'll enjoy this book.
   
   Deb Holmes



2. If you're a race fan or a just love rockets you HAVE to buy this book. It's an easy and fun read. The many pictures make this book an historical archive of rocket powered racing.
   
   If you're not a rocket fanatic you will still want to buy this book. Ky's story of perserverance is both uplifting and inspiring. It's a testament to what an impact one person can make by using their raw god-given abilities.

No comments about Models of a Man: Essays in Memory of Herbert A. Simon.

5 comments about Charles Darwin: A New Life.

1. This bio does a fine job in analyzing and comparing the great scientist's personal and family life, with his famous scientific research, writing, and early Beagle Explorations. Apparently, he had serious health problems, most in the digestive system, but overcame this adversity, among others, to write some of the greatest scientific documents ever. Of his ten children, three died young, including two as infants. His financial independence certainly helped matters, but the long and involved writing and research would probably have discouraged a lesser man. Truly well done thruout, and not overbearingly difficult for the scientific and biological layman, like this reviewer!



2. This biography gives a new slant to the study of Darwin. It is by no means a new slant, but the author has certainly presented it in a much better fashion, more through, than any previous biographicals on Darwin. The author's style is easy and interesting. I Would highly recommend the additon of this one to your collection. Well worth the read. Hope we get to see more from this author.



3. Most biographies are geared towards illustrating the life of a famous figure for the purpose of presenting or revisiting the accomplishments. This biography, however, does not give the central focus to the writings and finds of Charles Darwin; the thesis deals more with Darwin being a possible hypochondriac.

   The preface and appendix discuss recent research regarding Darwin's being an invalid during parts of his life. Some research deals with a disease that he may have picked up in South America while on the voyage of the HMS Beagle; some research says that Darwin was merely obsessed with being sick and therefore created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

   This brings us to the text. Although Darwin's life is shown to us, as well as some additional information on family and colleagues, the life is covered in regards to his worst periods of sickness. By plotting this out for us, Bowlby shows us that many of these periods are preceded by deaths of family members close to Darwin and by fierce scrutiny of his discoveries and writings.

   Another idea is the family's way of dealing with intense emotion. Rather than express this emotion by crying or mourning, it was internalized. This internalization led to depression, which led to sickness.

   This biography is written less as a narrative of Darwin's life, but more as a proof for the author's thoughts on Darwin's sickness. As a result, there are many points where the author becomes more noticeable.

   This is still an intriguing book, and I would recommend reading it.




4. The life and times of Darwin are masterfully brought to our attention by child emotional development expert and pioneer John Bowlby. Darwin's biography and upbringing are masterfully revealed and how they relate to his lifelong behavior, health, choices, and decisions in life. A most interesting aspect of this book is how evolution unknowingly affected Darwin's behavior as he himself is formulating and writing his famous theories on evolution. Because of the voluminous and extremely revealing written personal and professional correspondence by Darwin and his acquaintances a very good record of his health can be deduced from it. A must for those interested in more details on Darwin's life and how evolution affected the emotions and behavior of the main founder of evolution himself; and written by child emotional development pioneer Bowlby. It is a very detailed and well written book. For a complete definitive traditional biography of Darwin you may want to go to a plethora of other books available on the subject.



5. My title probably says it all, but I will elaborate. I still think that janet Browne has made the best START to a biography, I just wish she would finish by giving us Vol. 2! In the meantime we have Bowlby and that isn't half bad. Full of interesting background material and written with a lively pace A NEW LIFE manages to steer through some of the perils of "psychohistory" that have damaged other authors and gives us an interesting and at times provocative look at Darwin and Darwin's time. Well worth the read.

No comments about Monkeys, Men and Missiles: An Autobiography, 1946-1988.

5 comments about Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Great Discoveries).

1. 
   
   I completely understand the negative reviews this book has received. But I would like to defend this book, which I believe is worth the time and effort.
   
   This is a disappointing book if you are reading it for the wrong reason. The wrong reason is if you are reading this book as an astronomy buff who wants to learn more about Copernicus. Again, that is a very understandable mistake to make. By all appearances, it looks to be a serious academic discussion of the work of Copernicus and its role in the scientific paradigm shift.
   
   The right reason to read this book is not as an astronomy buff but as a William T. Vollman buff. I can't get enough of Vollman's writing. And he can't seem to stop writing so it's a good match (this is a writer, for example, who has completed an over 3,000 page essay on the nature of violence). Vollman has the gift of being able to encompass the full depth of the human experience in every sentence he writes. When he writes of ecstatic happiness, he manages to imbed it with hints of cruelty and suffering. When he writes about tragedy and death, there are twisted traces of sweetness and cathartic joy.
   
   I'm a fan of the history of science and good science writing too. And while this book might not be the most straightforward way to learn about Copernicus, there is factual information here about Copernicus' "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres." We are also given Vollman's meditations on the nature of scientific revolutions and the way science as a process will always be hampered by human imperfection, by our individual investments in our beliefs, and by the stubborn drag of institutional momentum. "'Revolutions' was profoundly dangerous in its epoch, and hence profoundly necessary."
   
   Why would Vollman take on this task? He tells us this book is the result of an "exercise in explicating a subject slightly beyond my intellectual competence." But, when he marvels at the effort, "the immensity of the force required" and the "solitary years" behind Copernicus' work, we get a sense of the parallel process driving Vollman's own desires to nudge the universe.



2. I bought this book with high hopes of finding an interesting and illuminating look at how Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. I was so disappointed that I did something I virtually never do: after about 90 pages, I put the book away with no intention of finishing it. Vollmann is a writer of note, but in this case his writing is so mannered and his exposition seemingly so convoluted that the reader quickly grows fatigued. At least, this reader did.



3. This is the most uninteresting book on science or a scientific personality that I have read in recent times. I was looking forward to reading about the middle ages, the environment in which Copernicus grew up, the scientific world view at the time, the social mileu, what Copernicus himself was like, what his religious beliefs were, how he arrived at his conclusions, and what his book meant in terms of courage and conviction in that time. And, of course, a lot of actual science.
   
   Instead we get such hard to read, boring, insipid prose dissecting the text of his work that it's a real effort to turn each page. I felt like giving up at every turn till I was half-way through but only sheer will and expectation that it would get better kept me going. But I gave up at the half-way mark.
   
   I had learned very little that stayed with me and I had hardly enjoyed it. For those interested, Bill Bryson's "A short history of nearly everything" is one that succeeds quite well at this attempt to dispense science to the laymen.



4. If you are interested in what Copernicus did, save your money and time and don't buy this book. Instead, get ahold of Thomas Kuhn's masterful account "The Copernican Revolution".
   
   This book is one of a series in which non-scientists present popular accounts of mostly great episodes in science. I say mostly great because there seems to be a certain amount of political correctness in the choice of scientists to write about in the series. But I digress.
   
   Some of the books in this series are successful, for example the one by Madison Smartt Bell on Priestley, Lavoisier, and the chemical revolution. But when you have fiction writers expounding technical subjects, there is potential for trouble, and that is what we get with Vollmann's book on Copernicus.
   
   Vollmann's explanations of the technical aspects of Copernicus' work are superficial and hard to grasp. Kuhn is much better. Vollmann also has a complusion to say snotty things about everyone involved, about their thoughts, motives, habits of mind. One would think that the ancients who constructed early science and astronomy were a bunch of idiots who had to wait for Copernicus to come along, who of course was a dolt because he was "obedient" to Aristotle for the most part, and was incapable of writing clearly to boot. Kuhn is incomparably better at explaining the philsophical, religious, scientific, and historical contexts in which the ancients, Copernicus, and the other early moderns worked. For example, you get a real sense of why the ancient earth-centered system was the reasonable system, that the ancient heliocentric precursors of Copernicus didn't have much in the way of evidence or reason on their side. You get a sense from Kuhn of just what it was that made the heliocentric theory attractive to Copernicus -- the changing context of observational astronomy, and above all the clarity which the heliocentric view gave to the matter of the oddities of the motion of certain of the planets.
   
   If you really want a sense of the greatness of ancient scientific thought, of ancient astronomy, of the magnificence of the accomplishment of Copernicus and his followers in the modern scientific revolution, get ahold of Kuhn's book.



5. It's interesting that so many of the defining moments in history involved Uncentering something from something else. For instance, Thomas Willis realized that the seat of reason and intelligence was neither the heart nor the soul, but a lump of jelly in the skull. Darwin first figured out that the homo sapiens is just one twig in the tree of life. And before Willis and Darwin there was Copernicus, who is credited with discovering that the Earth, far from being the center of the universe, revolves around the sun along with all the other planets.
   
   There's something about human psychology that resists Uncentering, and back then the gecocentrists had mountains of religious and philosophical text to back them up. Needless to say heliocentrism was an unpopular idea, and in 16th century Europe people with unpopular ideas were burned along with their books. Copernicus was spared this fate, partly because of an apologetic (and unauthorized) preface, and partly by the fact that he died of natural causes shortly after the publication of his book in 1543. Copernicus's successors, Bruno and Galileo, ended up taking a lot of the flak.
   
   William T. Vollmann is an excellent writer, and he does a fabulous job of summarizing Revolutions. Using limited astro-jargon and a few figures, Vollmann explains how Copernicus calculated the positions and trajectories of the planets, often arriving quite close to modern estimates without the benefit of a telescope or even binoculars. He also describes how Copernicus had to grapple with the prevalent Ptolemaic system and its philosophical roots. Remarkably, Copernicus, despite his revolutionary worldview, could never bring himself to abandon the philosophical tradition that valued circles for their asthetic appeal. His heliocentric system thus featured circular orbits, and was consequently almost as complicated as Ptolemy's geocentric model. It would be another 50 years before Kepler cleaned up the mess by introducing elliptical orbits to the heliocentric model.
   
   In the end Copernicus was successful in uncentering the Earth. This was a real breakthrough, and not just because he was right about heliocentrism. The Uncentered viewpoint is just the idea that things in the universe can be studied objectively and empirically, without recourse to mysticism. Today we just call it science.

No comments about Siebold and Japan. His Life and Work..

1 comments about Notable Mathematicians: From Ancient Times to the Present.

1. This book is everything the Booklist review states: excellent selection of individuals, a number of appendicies that provide valuable cross-tabulation information, and the most thorough time-line of mathematics I have seen (35 pages). It is a respectable reference book for students and the general public with reading skills of grade 9 or higher. The mathematics content is accessible to persons with intermediate algebra or higher.
   
   The unfortunate drawback of this book is that the biographies are in alphabetical order. The publishing company missed a valuable opportunity: if instead published in order of mathematical developments (semi-chronological) with some bridging material, the book could be both an "armchair" reading book for the general public and a textbook for courses in liberal arts mathematics, mathematics history, etc. Given the excellent cross-tabulations in the appendices, an electronic edition would also be highly valuable.
   
   A minor issue with the book is that the biographies have been slightly sanitized so as to be palatable with high school libraries in the U.S. At the same time, the authors struck a balance by being very forthcoming about the lives and fates of persons. For example, the entry on Pythagorous is excellent for a high-school reference book.
   
   This book can be found in public libraries throughout the U.S. and at many high-school and college libraries as well.
   
   Other books to consider:
   
   Victor Katz has published A History of Mathematics: An Introduction (2nd Edition) which is suitable for an upper-division mathematics-major course in math history. Highly recommended to teachers and students researching the development of mathematics.
   
   Tobias Dantzig's Number: The Language of Science which would be better subtitled "the vocabulary of measurement", is accessible to any successful college sophomore. It gives a somewhat chronological account of the human development of number concepts. Highly recommended to anyone interested in number concepts.

No comments about Education of a Physicist.