No comments about E = Einstein: His Life, His Thought, and His Influence on Our Culture.

No comments about Richard Archbold and the Archbold Biological Station.

5 comments about North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life.

1. I like the writing style of Bob Buck better than that of Ernest K. Gann, but the two tell similar stories covering approximately the same time period. Bob Buck's career with TWA was longer than Erenest K. Gann's career with American and the short-lived Matson, so Bob's stories extend into the jet age, but it's the stories from the 30s, 40s and 50s that I find to be the most interesting.
   
   Bob flew a specially-equipped B-17 during WW-II, looking for lightning and other severe weather. It was funny that he literally flew all over the world looking for bad weather, only to learn that there's no better place in the world to find it than at his home base of Kansas City.
   
   Ernest K. Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" is the gold standard by which all other aviation books are judged, but, well, I like "North Star Over My Shoulder" better.
   
   It would be heresy to suggest that you not read Ernest K. Gann's "Fate is the Hunter," but it would be a severe omission if you were not to also read "North Star Over My Shoulder."



2. This is one of the finest books, about an aviator's life, that you will ever read.



3. I am a professional pilot who has done the freight, airline and corporate thing and now calls instructing corporate pilots his gig. (It's my wife who has the sign in so F off!) This has been been my mecca of aviation history. I was born 30 or so years late and I missed the glory years so I found the fountain of youth, wanna fight about it!? This book is THE penultimate tome of written aviatory (Bush said it so it's a word!!) history and I read it many times a year!



4. Highly engaging. A chronicle of amazing change and progress in aviation in one man's career.



5. I found the book to be excellent. My father spent a career in what became TWA starting with TAT a few years before Bob Buck was hired into the merged airline. In fact, my father accompanied Bob Buck on the historic Rockwell polar flight. The book was so well written that I felt like I was getting a close up look at my father's environment over the years.

No comments about Darwin on Love.

1 comments about Francis Bacon (Princeton Paperbacks).

1. Zagorin has not added much to the great mystery of Francis Bacon. He has written a superficial understanding of the life and as a result left out many salient aspects that would have provided greater insight into Bacon's motivations and philosophy. Save your money on this one and buy a copy of Alfred Dodd's:"Francis Bacon's Personal Life Story"instead.

2 comments about Robert Burns Woodward : Architect and Artist in the World of.

1. Nobel Prize winner Robert Burns Woodward (called 'R B' by his colleagues and students) was the greatest organic chemist of the twentieth century, a legend in his own lifetime. By the time he entered high school, he had already digested college chemistry, and his professors at MIT realised they had an exceptional person in their classes. Before he was 25, Woodward became an instructor at Harvard, and before he was 35, became a full professor. Woodward won a Nobel Prize, and would have almost certainly won another one if it were not for his untimely death. Without him, organic chemistry may have been quite different today. Even in the exalted world of Harvard faculty, he stood out as being exceptional.
   Woodward was an unparalleled master in the synthesis of complex organic molecules, of the kind that have given rise to many of the necessities of modern life, including plastics and pharmaceuticals. But he looked at them as much more than practically useful entities; he synthesized them the way a Michelangelo would sculpt a David, or the way a Mozart would tie together a symphony. For him organic molecules were great architectures, and he was the greatest architect and artist in the world of molecules, whose achievements probably will never be paralleled. More than anyone else, he elevated their synthesis to the stature of an art.
   This book is a testament to his astonishing skills and achievements. It contains facsimilies of all his important papers, transcripts of interviews and speeches, and rare photos of the man not seen elsewhere. These items are enlivened with rare reproductions of his handwritten notes. The interviews feature many of his colleagues and students who worked with him. They talk about his singular habits, his prodigious energy, unbelievable memory, and an attention to detail that would leave fellow chemists with their mouths wide open. For chemists, it will provide a window into the mind of a genius, who achieved feats that those before him had thought impossible. For non-chemists, the non-chemical parts of the book will give an insight into what kind of a man and scientist he was, the Einstein of his field. It should be on the shelves of every chemist who wants to know about the best that his field can produce. I am glad that a book of this quality and size is available at a reasonable price.



2. this book is jam-packed with primary sources concerning the life and works of r.b. woodward: journal articles, unpublished speeches, photographs of the man, drafts of his papers bearing hand-written corrections. it also includes some commentary from colleagues and family. an excellent resource for anyone interested in the history and process of organic chemical (and scientific, in general) research.

No comments about Dictionary Scientific Biography Vol 18: Vol. 18 (Dictionary of Scientific Biography (8 Vols)).

No comments about Memoir of John Dalton, and History of the Atomic Theory up to His Time.

No comments about Birds, Beasts and a Bike Under the Southern Cross: Two Canadian Naturalists Camping Rough in New Zealand and Australia in the 1950s.

1 comments about Billy's Halo: Love, Science and My Father's Death.

1. Ruth McKernan has written a moving book on the death of her father. She does this both as someone who sees what is happening as a clear-eyed scientist and as a devoted daughter. She has produced a remarkably fine book, we are all in her debt.