No comments about The Beauty of Physics.

No comments about Daily Except Sundays: The Diaries of a Nineteenth Century Locomotive Engineer.

2 comments about Jungle Paradise, Almost: Our Adventures in Costa Rica.

1. Skip & Chippers verdant description of Costa Rica leaves one yearning for more. As a former resident I can attest that their personal observations are accurate and correct. It's a great book!



2. Jungle Paradise, Almost by Skip and Chipper Carey took me on a wonderful visit to Costa Rica without leaving my living room. Their vivid descriptions of daily living; methods of transportation, the citizens, flora and fauna of the jungle, wildlife, and the ocean and tidepools transported me into their home away from home. Their personable narrative of exciting adventures, and refreshingly honest descriptions of interactions with friends and neighbors showed the authors' delightful outlook on life. Jungle Paradise, Almost made me want to visit this beautiful country. Read this book and let's go there!

No comments about Copernicus and His Successors.

No comments about Michael Owens And the Glass Industry.

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.

1 comments about Zworykin, Pioneer of Television.

1. This is a technological biography of the man who came to be known as the "father" of the technology he worked on for much of his life -- television. In many places Zworykin the man is displaced by the work he was engaged in. However, those are actually the most interesting and best-written parts of the book, sometimes becoming almost exciting reading. The chapters on Zworykin's early life in Russia tend to plod, even when recounting his adventures during the Russian Revolution.

   Abramson is the principal television history researcher in the US , and his work is exceptionally detailed and as even-handed as any human can make it. He comes down on the side of Zworykin in the "who invented television" question, and has compelling data to back it up, but is careful to give credit where it's due to each of the many inventors who contributed to the technology. Abramson's biggest fault as a writer is that he loves his research too much, and includes EVERYTHING, to the detriment of narrative flow. The footnotes section is well over 10% of the book, and is interesting in its own right.

   Despite the sometimes-clumsy prose, this is a fine book that illuminates the life of Zworykin and the history of early television technology.

1 comments about Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail (Creating the North American Landscape).

1. Perhaps you're familiar with the name Benton MacKaye (1879-1975); at the very least, you've heard of the Appalachian Trail. You might see the title of this book and say, "Oh, OK, he was the guy who thought up the idea for a footpath from Maine to Georgia. Big deal. I've never stepped on it, so why should I care about him?" Well, without Benton MacKaye, we probably wouldn't have the Trail. We might not have a Wilderness Society, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the National Trail Systems Act of 1968, or the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. We might not have Shenandoah National Park in Virginia or the Great Smoky Mountains National Park straddling the Tennessee-North Carolina border. We could instead have just interstate highways crowning the entire length of the eastern mountain range. We could conceivably have uninterrupted suburbia from the Atlantic coastline to the Midwest, with little consideration given to the mountains or any natural area in between. Benton MacKaye might very well be one of the most influential 20th-century American environmentalists you've never heard of.

   A New Englander with a Harvard graduate degree in forestry, MacKaye spent most of his professional life taking a variety of short-term government or association jobs that dealt with conservation issues. Eventually he carved a niche for himself as an outspoken regional planner. He was adept at writing articles and proposing legislation that included catchy words or concepts: geotechnics, new exploration, townless highways, highwayless towns, watershed democracies, wildland belts, and habitability. For MacKaye was at heart a boy who loved to wander through the natural landscape of central Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. In the early 1900s, he was already worried about increasing numbers of motorists invading those wild spaces, particularly into the region's mountainous areas. He spent the majority of his life fighting to keep those places "sound-proof as well as sight-proof" from the intrusion of contemporary civilization. In some ways, he was the Thoreau of his day.

   The formal publication of "The Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning" (included here as an appendix) came to fruition in 1921, and it laid the foundation for the rest of his articles and essays. We who consider ourselves environmentalists today find his words still striking an inner chord. MacKaye wrote in the 1950s: "Verily, the first and simplest rule on earth: Give back to the earth that which we take from her. Return the good we have borrowed; in short, pay our ecological bills. Pay them in dirt, not dollars. It's the only currency the good earth accepts. Too long have we lived on dollar ecology." (p. 336) Yes, Mr. MacKaye, yes. Let's shout that one from the mountaintops, if we can still find them.

   Anderson is admirably neutral in presenting the facts and interpreting MacKaye's connections with and influences on more "famous" individuals like Lewis Mumford, Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, and Olaus Murie. That must have been a tough job indeed, since the author obviously spent a huge amount of time with his subject. The resulting details are valuable to have compiled into one volume but might limit readership to scholars of the AT or of the environmental movement. With every turn of a page, though, his chronicle of MacKaye's endeavors brings home a basic truth that still holds today: that every environmental debate is a political one. We can be either encouraged or chagrined by that knowledge.

No comments about Nikola Tesla - Electric Genius (Biography).

5 comments about Incidental Findings: Lessons from My Patients in the Art of Medicine.

1. This supposedly tolerant and very proudly liberal woman has very little respect for the moral views and standards espoused by the very institutions for which she has worked. It is staggering to read how she gushes over the sonogram images of her unborn daughter and then read the effort she goes to assure the one her patients, a well-educated, career-established woman has the opportunity to have her own unborn child dismembered. The good doctor then finishes her chapter trying to evoke more sympathy from her readers rationalizing her own choice to kill her own child conceived when she was an undergraduate. She is so very blind to the meaning of the very words she uses to describe her support of her patient. Her patient isn't sick, her patient's concerns are summed up in 5 short sentences all centered around the word "I". This self-described "scientist" is blind to the fact that providing medical care for her patient is in reality paying someone else to rip the arms, legs, head, guts of another totally innocent person to pieces----all for the sake of convenience and selfishness!



2. Dr. Ofri provides the reader with an engaging, well-articulated,easy to read book that helps us experience a little of what it is like to walk in the shoes of a physician. Her use of language is highly impressive.



3. self absorbed, self centered book, hopefully useful for young md's. myself, at end of career, found little of interest.



4. I rarely review books on Amazon because my writing always seems so abysmal in comparison to the work I'm reviewing. However, I really want to tell everyone what a wonderful book this is. I was deeply touched and found myself crying over several essays, wondering how my husband (a physician) manages. Ofri is a very good writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. My only complaint was that it ended too soon, so I'm off to go buy "Singular Intimacies."



5. Bought the book a month ago. I am very sensitive leaving comments and reviews about the books. This one, I recommend it. This book is for everyone in any field. It's just not about just a simple Doctor's story. I have read many Doctor's story but this is quite different. Just buy it and read it. You'll understand. Please email me if you have any question about the book. I'll be more than willing to help you. (For the buyers who had horrible experience purchasing books online as myself)