5 comments about The Impenetrable Forest: My Gorilla Years in Uganda, Revised Edition.

1. This book was an easy read but still packed with lots of information. Not only about all the gorillas, and their individual personalities, but also about what it was like living with the people in Uganda. It also touched on the history of African exploration and the study of gorillas. I really didn't know much about topic and I now have much more empathy for both the gorillas and also for the people who live near them. Even if like me you're not a "gorilla person" I think you'll find this book funny, compassionate and a good adventure story.



2. Excellent view of Uganda and the culture of both the people and wildlife in existence at the start of the eco-tourism movement in that part of the world. The ability to experience the world of Thor as he was experiencing the joys and hardships as he co-existed with the people and animals of Uganda was fascinating.
   
   I really "felt" as though I was right there with him as he became accustomed to the new way of life - intertwined with his new culture, gaining acceptance with the natives.
   
   An excellent read!
   
   Jim Sandler
   Vernon, N.J.



3. I chose this book after seeing recent television shows about mountain gorillas. This author is sensitive to the people of Bwindi and the mountain gorillas and the issues of ecotourism, conservation and the effects these programs have on the local communities. While I hope that the mountain gorillas survive and thrive it is just as important that prosperity does not destroy this corner of the world for the farmers and other people who live there.



4. I liked this one. I hope to travel to Bwindi in the next few years and this book is giving me the incentive to keep my dream alive. I can't wait to see in person the places the author describes. And I can't wait to see the gorillas in their native habitat. What a story.



5. Most Americans wouldn't be able to cut it in a small rural village in Africa. "The Impenetrable Forest: My Gorilla Years in Uganda" is Thor Hanson's reflections on his suffering for his craft as he stayed in such a village in order to further his studies on the endangered species of the Mountain Gorilla. A candid and vivid account about all the difficulties he had to face, "The Impenetrable Forest" is a riveting tale that will please primate lovers seeking a story of a man's dedication to science.

5 comments about Albert Einstein: Out of My Later Years Through His Own Words.

1. I found Einstein's desire to start a rock band at such an early age very surprising. A man before his time for sure. Singing about relativity while distancing himself from the groupies must have been difficult. The book reads like a good guitar riff, jolting one's mind from time to time. Excellent!



2. Out of my Later Years is a collection of Einstein's speeches and articles covering not just physics but his thoughts on the social condition of man, of Jews, and of war as well as several speeches about the likes of Max Planck, Mahatma Gandhi, and Marie Curie.

   As letters and speeches, these are written as the ordinary man that Einstein once was - very easy to read and understand. Even some of the physics lectures are understandable. Each is relatively short making this perfect for when you want to read something of substance but don't have much time.

   The sections on Public Affairs are especially haunting as Einstein presents his arguments for the "global village" and advocated someting akin to the current U.N. - things that began to come into their own after his passing. In particular, there is an interchange between him and a group of Communist scientists that underlines the Cold War tension in its height and is a chilling read now in the Post Soviet Union age.




3. This volume collects essays of the last fifteen years of his life. The work has sections on 'Convictions and Beliefs' 'Science and Life' ' Public Affairs' ' Personalities' and 'His own people: The Jews"
   The work features expositions of some of Einstein's major scientific work.
   Among the personalities written about are Gandhi who Einstein greatly admires, Newton, Kepler, Planck, Madame Curie, Langevin, and lesser known figures Paul Ehrenfest,Carl von Ossietsky.
   Einstein writes much about the terrible changes in Germany he saw in his own lifetime, the rise of Nazism and Anti- Semitism.
   He writes about the creation of a national homeland for the Jews, his own Zionism, and his own connection with the Jewish people.
   He writes too about his conception of world- peace, about the threat to the world brought about something he is no small part a contributor to, the harnessing of the atom.
   In writing about himself in the opening section of the work he says, "I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarassing to earn so much love and respect for it."
   He celebrates the life of thought , of the solitary individual .
   Einstein is the greatest modern example of Keynes dictum of how it is 'ideas' that change the world. He is the example of how one man alone , thinking, transformed our understanding of nature, and our power to change it.
   In these essays the main interests of Einstein's life are touched upon. He writes with clarity and modesty.
   An invaluable opportunity to be in touch with ' the Mind that defined an Age'.



4. Considering this book offer insights into the mind of one of history's greatest thinkers, I was slightly disappointed to find Einstein's views outside of science to be somewhat thin. It is natural to not expect great revelation from outside one's specialty, but as a famous intellectual, Einstein's should be the exception.
   
   I do not rate this book poorly because it does offer a wide spectrum of topics which coming from Einstein is appealing. Some of the topics outside of science include politics, religion, and even racism; thus offering an ample range of thought. The section on science is sound as expected and perhaps on this portion alone the book is worthwhile; however, his thoughts on the other topics included offer little revelation or at least nothing new or profound. It is for this reason I do not rate this book highly.
   
   I offer three stars so as not to discount the enjoyable read one might find merely gaining access to Einstein's thoughts on a spectrum of topics. However, on the same account, I do not offer more as I do not feel this book presents the insight one would expect from Einstein and thus it is somewhat disappointing.



5. The book arrived in good condition on a timely manner. Haven't had time to read, ordered lots of books. thanks

5 comments about Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel (Great Discoveries).

1. The author, Rebecca Goldstein, appears to be one of those authors who feels it necessary to use obscure words, phrasing, and technical language to impress her readers. Although I am a well-read professional person, I found it necessary to refer to my dictionary far more than I ever have before, to the point that it was difficult to maintain a smooth flow of understanding. I was struck not only by the topical tangents used to fill space, but by the incredible overuse of fabricated terminology, much of it based on the prefix "meta-".
   Unfortunately the book's style obscures the story of Godel and his theorems. Perhaps time will heal my wounds and I'll be able to find a more coherent, lucid treatment of this mathematical icon's work.



2. Probably a better choice for most of us (including me) to read first, which I am glad I did. I was expecting a mathematical book about Goedel's incompleteness theorem, but this is really a biography of Kurt Goedel [Note: 'oe' is the standard substitute for an umlauted 'o' when one doesn't have the option of using the latter, which this text box doesn't provide.]
   
   Professor Goldstein does provide a simplified explanation of Goedel's incompleteness theorems (there are 2), and a reference to Godel's Proof, by Nagel, Newman, and Hofstadter, which she cites as a fuller presentation of the theorems themselves. Professor Goldstein's presentation of the theorems was, for me, a very helpful introduction which I am very glad to have read. It gives the reader a broad, but shallow overview of the forest, which should keep the reader from getting lost among the trees when tackling the actual proof, if s/he even chooses to do so, and it gives sufficient understanding to satisfy probably the great majority of us.
   
   Also, the biography of Goedel is interesting in itself and well worth reading.
   
   Read this enjoyable and well-written book first, then decide whether you want to tackle Nagel, Newman, and Hofstadter. If you do, you will be better prepared for it.
   
   watziznaym@gmail.com



3. Among the interesting byproducts of feminism and the admission, commencing in 1970, of women to places like Princeton are overall more interesting and "cultured" readings of analytic philosophy and mathematics, before that male ghettos.
   
   Goldstein, who studied logic and philosophy at Princeton (and who used vignettes from her experience in "The Mind-Body Problem", a novel) met Goedel, and understands the technical details of his work thoroughly. She does a better job, in fact, than Ernest Nagel did in 1968 because she makes emotional connections that exist in mathematical work but which mathematicians often don't like to talk about.
   
   Nagel did say something about Goedel's "intellectual symphony", but Goldstein, unlike Goedel, did deeper research into Goedel's biography, snooping for example around the Mercer County courthouse for records of his US citizenship application.
   
   She reveals the plight of the hyper-intelligent and why we have tenure, since guys like Kurt Goedel and John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash are snuffed out in the so-called "real world": once Einstein passed on, Goedel, we learn, had nobody to talk to.
   
   Interestingly, we get no Pop-feminist nonsense and boo-hoo-ing about Goedel's wife and her loneliness, having married a truly weird individual. Mature women know today what my Mom knew: you make your bed and you lie in it, and any marriage is a unique contract. Gretel Karplus, Adorno's wife, was far more intelligent than Mrs. Goedel but she buried the possibility of being an Arendt or a Weil in service to Teddy and was shattered by his unexpected death. Likewise, Goedel's wife seems to have gotten what she wanted and what many women would kill for: a quiet husband and a house on Linden Lane.
   
   Goldstein's "philosophy of mathematics" is nuanced. Unlike some feminist philosophers she makes no attempt to reduce the subject-matter to some sort of Freudianism. At the same time, she knows that "what we think about when we think about math" comes as do other inputs: by way of meat.
   
   This is an *aufhebung* worthy in its own workyday way of an Aristotle or an Aquinas, because a sharper bifurcation and reification renders lifeless the terms on either side of the cut. Just as Aristotle realized that there are Forms but always instantiated, and just as Aquinas applied this insight to religion, Goldstein manages to hold together the apparently opposing thoughts, that mathematical realities are independent of our thought...but have no existence *that we know of* outside our embodied thought. They are the closest thing we have to noumena manifesting as phenomena.
   
   As a dialectical thinker, Rebecca Goldstein knows how negation works in embodied space. By trying to make themselves over into things, "thinking machines", the Positivists transformed themselves, as she shows, from a sought objectivity into its reverse; this was also C. S. Lewis' insight, in his novel That Hideous Strength, in which the Logical Positivists of Belbury turn out to be merely Satanists, of a sort, in a word, chumps who bow down to wood and stone, having emptied themselves of the capacity for thought through a nihilistic metaphysics.
   
   The problem with this gesture is that (as Adorno pointed out), the categories themselves are in motion so that at the end all we "know" is that:
   
   (1) Logical Positivism imprisoned the scientific subject within a barrage of sense-data, without explaining how sense data organizes itself.
   
   (2) Formalism in mathematics simply denies that anything exists outside a formal system in a relationship of containing. Fearful of either benign or else vicious circles, it refuses to do mathematical philosophy.
   
   (2) First rate minds (Goedel and Wittgenstein) wanted no part of this malarkey.
   
   As the Austrian philosopher Gustav Bergmann pointed out, Logical Postivism's denial was a perverse sort of metaphysics. In the middle of its denial, Goedel upped the ante by discovering that the paradox of the Liar has a metaphysical implication as regards the capacities of formal systems, versus that of human beings. Goedel stood outside the machine (the formal system) and derived an indirect existence proof of truths unprovable within the machine, such that if they were incorporated as axioms, new unprovable truths would appear, and this is why today we almost never anthropomorphise computers: whereas the pronoun for a ship was she, the pronoun for computer is it (and, the adjectives are not printable).
   
   Parenthetically, I was glad to see Goldstein mention Gustav Bergmann, a relatively minor member of the Vienna Circle, since he'd self-marginalized by moving to the Midwest, that black hole, and teaching at the University of Iowa. Bergmann gave a talk at my university in which he pronounced a Goedelian commitment to the continued existence of ontology and its truth, saying he'd die in a ditch to defend it. At this time, in 1970, Goedel was invisible and people were unaware that he felt and thought pretty much the same as Bergmann.
   
   Does Goedel's proof have metaphysical import? Goldstein rejects what she calls the postmodern interpretation, which she re-presents as the argument that (1) mathematics is undecidable ergo (or, as First Gravedigger says in Hamlet, argal) (2) there is no "truth", only "stories".
   
   Of course, neither Derrida nor my fat pal Adorno make this argument. Indeed, there's quite a lot of metaphysical speculation and conviction in Derrida; for example, arche-writing is an ontological analysis of meaning which, ontologically and Kantian-metaphysically rejects doing ontology with received categories of writing and speech. Derrida was merely unconvinced that the only reine vernunft on tap is mathematically expressible as opposed to using natural language.
   
   But this is a minor aporia on Goldstein's part, caused I think by the fact that during her studies at Princeton, "deconstruction" was fashionable and usable in a sloppy way unlike mathematics.
   
   There are many popular books on mathematics that overstress fascinating and sexy details about the biological mathematicians. While the current rage for this, sparked by the movie A Beautiful Mind, might help to get math geeks laid, a mathematical biography should balance the math and the meat, and even more than Sylvia Nasar's book eponymous to the movie, Incompleteness does this.



4. Goldstein, does a masterful job describing the life and the work of the greatest logician to ever live. Ironically the genius and logical perfection exuded by Gödel is in the end matched by the equilibrium of the universe- he becomes completely illogical and insane.
   
   Goldstein writes with a piercing passion and pointed savvy that I envy. He deep appreciation for the mind of the great logician bleeds all the way through the entire read. Gödel's incompleteness theorem took formalistic logic and arithmetic in a time when it was getting ready to announce its supreme dominance and perfection to the world and turned it on its head. Gödel proved that logic and arithmetic will forever be incomplete within themselves. In other words, logic and arithmetic will never take the place of human reasoning or mathematical truth. Man is not machine.
   
   This all started with Russell's paradox which is the proposition
   
   This sentence is false.
   
   Known as the liar's paradox, Russell's paradox has a very strange quality about it. The "false" part applies to the whole sentence and its subject simultaneously. Thus if you seek to give the sentence a true or false value we run into immediate problems.
   
   Is the proposition is false then it cant be false within itself and so it isn't false it must be true. This means that it is self contradictory.
   
   But then again if the proposition is true then it isn't' false; another contradiction. Russell's paradox wins no matter what. There is something very special about negations indeed.
   
   
   This book is monumental not simply because Goldstein can write like a demon on a mission but because Gödel's life and accomplishment is timeless. His theorem is crystal clear and logically flawless-- one of it's, if not "the" strangest and most ironically paradoxical qualities.
   
   If you have any interest in philosophy at all- read this book. Its a must. Not.



5. This book centers on the irony that Gödel's own philosophical interpretation of his work (which indeed may have driven his efforts to begin with) was in complete opposition to how it was most commonly interpreted by others.
   
   Gödel was a Platonist, believing that the mind was able to make contact with absolute mathematical reality. Given that he was an attending member of the Vienna circle in the 1920's, which was the locus of logical positivism, many assumed he was of like mind, believing there was no truth beyond what man could empirically discover. Gödel's extreme reluctance to speak or write on his views helped make this misunderstanding possible. Indeed, the incompleteness theorems have often been co-opted by sloppy post-modernists (along with relativity theory and the uncertainty principle) in making the case for truth relativism. They would focus on the conclusion that we can't construct formal systems (large enough to at least encompass arithmetic) which are both complete and provably consistent and treat this as revealing a limitation in our ability to reach absolute truth. Gödel believed the actual lesson was that the human mind can and does perceive truth beyond the capability of formal systems (equivalently, algorithmic computing machines).
   
   This book does a nice job in the treatment of the ideas as well as the biography.

5 comments about Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (California Studies in the History of Science).

1. Ruth Sime's, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, is a tribute to one of the most outstanding women physicists in the world's history. Sime's includes a detailed account of Meitners childhood, career, trials, tribulations, misfortunes, and fulfilling accomplishments through a collection of Meitner's personal papers, correspondences, and interviews with her contemporaries and friends. The reader enjoy's learning about the young girl in Vienna, who travels to Germany with only the ambition to learn and breathe physics. The reader enjoys Meitner's accomplishments, as she is promoted to being Max Planck's assistant in Prussia, despite her gender, and feels the betrayal when she is not credited with Otto Hahn for the Nobel Peace Prize.
   All in all, Sime's does an excellent job of telling Meitner's story and providing insight on the historical and scientific contexts. The scientific explanations of both Meitner's research and of her contemporaries is hard to understand for those who are amateur physicists and are not cognizant of many basic principles of chemistry and physics. However, for a woman who was not given her credit where it was due, Sime's biography is truly telling of her life and just how remarkable this physicist of humanity really was.



2. This is the story, well told, of one of the world's most important achievements by one of its finest scientific heroes who was forced to suffer the indignities of both racism and sexism.
   
   Against improbably long odds, beginning with her family who did not want her to become a Physicist, to Nazi persecution for being a Jew, to her eventual need to flee Nazi Germany to exile in Sweden, Lise Meitner's career progression led her to be among the logical choices to discover how to split the atom and to infer that it could lead to a chain reaction, and eventually to the development of the fissional atomic bomb.
   
   This gripping story tells of how her less able male colleague, Otto Hahn, a Nazi Chemist, rather than a Physicist, effectively stole her ideas and went on to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1944) for an achievement that should justly have gone to a Physcist, and Meitner in particular.
   
   In fact Hahn had no idea how to interpret the experimental data in his hand until Meitner, through correspondence from exile in Sweden interpreted it for him. Based on her continuous advice via mail, Hahn was eventually able to take credit for her ideas. And although this egregious error was never formally corrected, Meitner, with great dignity and strength remains larger than life and stands as a towering monument to what the human spirit can accomplish in the face of racism and chauvinism. Five stars.



3. I first learned of Lise Meitner from a book on atomic energy when I was a kid. I remember the illustration of her and her lab partner Otto Hahn staring at an apparatus in which they discovered the tell-tale signs of radioactive fission. But when I went through science courses in high school and college, she was hardly mentioned. This book has put her in her rightful place in the history of the atomic age. While it is always easy for a biographer to skew the importance of the individual being chronicled, that is certainly not the case here. Given the obstacles placed in her path by her gender, her religious affiliations, and her citizenship, her story is all that more remarkable for a view of our world which has been papered over in the last half-century.
   
   That she would persevere despite everything is a testament to will and the desire for knowledge. Girls growing up in this day and age are not encouraged to pursue the scientific disciplines, but I think if a young girl today were to read Lise Meitner's story, she might just be inspired. I fully intend to give my copy to my daughter some day, in the hope of stirring a passion for science and the knowledge that if she applies herself, no matter the obstacles, she can become someone great.



4. Lise Meitner may not be particularly well known outside of scientific circles today, but the same could be said of a lot of other great scientists, mathematicians, etc...Anyway, she is one of my favorite scientists of all time. This book helped cement that for me...
   
   One of the reasons for her fame (or slight lack thereof) is that she never recieved the Nobel Prize for her nuclear work. It went to Otto Hahn. Had Lise shared in the prize, as many think she should have, she would almost certainly be better known today. I mean, the Nobel Prize sort of separates "known scientists" from "unknowns" as far as the general population is concerned (not counting popularizers like the late Carl Sagan and Stephen J. Gould). She was however, briefly famous in the US after WW2 as the "mother of the atom bomb" or some such - a title she rather disliked...In the late 1990s, the element 109 was named "Meitnerium" in her honor. And I beleive the element named for Hahn ("Hahnium"?) has been renamed something else.
   
   I won't go into the plot of the book since its a biography and we know about whom. I will say she faced huge obstacles in her life, most notably being a young female who desired a high education at the turn of the century (1800s-1900s I mean) and who managed to obtain it; also being a Jewess scientist during the Nazi takeover of Germany and Austria - this time as a middle-aged woman (almost 60), forced to rebuild her life. She perservered ! These obstacles are well documented and discussed in this excellent book.
   
   There is a brief but fascinating look into Vienna in the late 1800s that really enjoyed. It showed how the Meitners came to be in Vienna and what their world was like. I would have liked to have known more about her siblings, where they went and what they became (particularly her little brother Walter, who is tantalizingly mentioned several times as Lise's favorite - but no details are given. The two are buried near each other in Bramley, England).
   
   If there is a negative to the book, it is that there's a certain amount of strict science (numbers, math, sci-jargon, and calculations) in the book. BUT - don't let that turn you off ! I just skipped past those parts that were over my head, and focused on the "biographical" part - the parts about Lise herself, which in fact, make up the majority of the book. Author Sime made it easy to do that in the way she wrote the book.
   
   I highly recommend this work. I believe this will be the definitive Bio on Meitner, barring any unknown letters, secret love-child, or other stuff coming to light....Kudos to author Dr. Ruth Sime for the great work!



5. It is well known that in the fields of both science and math, women are less visible than men. Ruth Lewin Sime, a woman of science herself, wrote this excellent book about a tiny Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis after World War II and was deprived of the Nobel Prize she clearly deserved. Meitner never married but physics gave meaning to her life, she was responsible for nuclear fission. This is a book that should be part of the reading lists in women's studies and in all high schools. It can serve as a magnet in attracting females to study science. Lise Meitner broke the patterns of women denied equitable access to education. This book is not only well written but it is also rich in fotos with an appendix full of interesting scientific data. You don't have to be in the field of science to understand this historical biography of an incredible woman.

5 comments about Men of Mathematics (Touchstone Book).

1. Apart from the glaring historical inaccuracies (mathematically speaking) with which E. T. Bell embellished his book, I must say that I found the pervasive anti-Christian sarcasm to be very offensive and tiresome. E. T. Bell seems to reserve a special disliking for Blaise Pascal and Augustin-Louis Cauchy... Pascal is made out to be a mentally ill religious lunatic and Cauchy to be an eccentric and bigoted religious fanatic. Bell sacrifices truth on the altar of propaganda especially in the section on Evariste Galois - here he takes particular pains to portay the great mathematician Cauchy to be a fool and a religious bigot while Galois (a very unstable, self-destructive character if there ever was one) is made out to be the martyred hero!



2. My family has produced several mathematicians, but I am not one of them. However, this book is extremely interesting- just do as I did and skim right over the math.



3. From page 86 of the Touchstone edition: "The PENSEES and the PROVICINCIAL LETTERS, apart from their literary excellences, appeal principally to a type of mind that is rapidly becoming extinct." Even though I am here reading that my mind is rapidly becoming extinct, I still got a huge kick out of Bell's literary caricature of Pascal. Bell treats Pascal and his proponents with a kind of highlander tough love: giving us a dose of what bootcamp with kilts is probably like. lol. So anyway, I don't find Bell's writing in his literary portrait of Pascal at all anti-Christian. On the contrary, I find Bell a breath of fresh air. He obviously far more than means well. For he provides a more or less impartial commentary on Pascal in his curmudgeonly, jocular, celtic way.



4. Its a very good book on review of mathematics. It deals with evolution of mathematics as a whole. It is definitely not for general public.



5. This is a book containing biographies of great mathematicians. It starts with Zeno and ends with Cantor. This was the book that I read when I was a small boy and it whetted my appetite for wanting to know more about mathematics and mathematicians. It is written in Bell's inimitable flippant, humorous and engaging style. You may not agree with everything he says but what he says is certainly interesting and even fascinating. Want to get someone interested in math? Don't give him a dense math text-you turn him off-but introduce him to this book.

5 comments about They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators.

1. This book is a number of short stories about successful business people, everyone from Robert Fulton (Steamboat Services), Isaac Singer (sewing machines), Charles Goodyear (rubber), Levi Strauss through to modern day people like Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Pierre Omidyar (eBay). The book is perfect for my personality type - it is a number of short stories so it didn't take long to read. There is a summary on page 465 of the book that gives 10 lessons that can be learned from history's innovators:
   
   
   1. Make no assumptions.
   
   
   2. First isn't always best.
   
   
   3. It is okay to steal. (They don't really mean steal; they mean that more innovations come from borrowing in combination than simple invention. Henry Ford said, "I invented nothing new, I simple assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were century of work."
   
   
   4. Diffidence would do it. An idea may only work when pushed to the limits.
   
   
   5. Nothing works the first time. In an impatient society we expect instant results and quarterly earnings make things worse. It takes a strong person to persist and think long term.
   
   
   6. New ideas disturb.
   
   
   7. Cross pollination works. Taking ideas from other industries and applying them to a different industry is often a great way to cross-pollinate.
   
   
   8. Success is risky. We all know that entrepreneurs take risks and we all know this is all part of the greatness of our system.
   
   
   9. When one plus one equals three, this talks about innovations flourishing in partnerships provided the psychology is right.
   
   
   10. Plaguing into networks. Isolated innovators may be successful but most of them are well connected and network well.
   
   
   Overall I found this book to be highly inspirational and a must read for any business person.



2. very interesting - everyone will find something inspiring - whether you are an entrepreneur, a manager, an inventor or just looking to be inspired.



3. I rented the audiotape version from my local library and was hooked. I gave this book to my father for Christmas. Excellent insight into the influential Americans, and a great dose of our country's history at the same time.



4. This is an excellent book for gaining general information on the lifes and times of America's inventors. Suprisingly, a good deal of information about each subject is tightly packed and woven into each chapter. It is by no means, however, an indepth and intricate look into each innovator. You will need to do more research for that.
   
   Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone trying to gain some knowledge on a particular person, or about a particular invention. It is a great starter book for history enthusiasts as well.



5. 
   Harold Evans who wrote They Made America seems to have left out a very important person, Nicola Tesla. I believe he was the inventor of AC electricity, the alternating current. Edison was only interested in DC, and was adamant that direct current was the right way to go. It turned out that he was wrong. DC is very limited. Without AC electricity could not be moved over long distances.
   
   I think I understand the reason why Tesla is omitted from this and other lists of the greats. In his elder years he got a little crazy. He was also considered somewhat of an egotist in general, which he probably was. He challenged Einstein's theory of relativity, and other modern theories, and claimed that you could not produce energy from matter. "Atomic power is an illusion" he frequently declared. He also claimed to have a "dynamic theory of gravity" which was never published.
   
   This is a very poor reason to ignore his genius but I can't think of any other reason for it. At least the unit of magnetic flux density was named after him so some people thought he was great!
   
   Ronald Fischer
   3050 Beckley Dr
   San Jose, CA 95135
   (408)238-6296

5 comments about The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin.

1. Gordon Wood's biography of Benjamin Franklin doesn't give you any earth shattering new details, but the book is concise and well written. Wood takes you from Franklin's early life and loyalty to England through his transformation and realization that the American Colonies were going to rebel. Franklin's love for France (and for the women of France) are clear in this book as the author clearly argues that Franklin loved living in Paris and everything about that city. The author also argues that Franklin seemed to have a "love hate" relationship with the colonies as he saw opportunities, but he also saw the refined world of France and its cities such as Paris as something he was drawn to and preferred.
   
   It is a good read and I have grown to understand Benjamin Franklin a bit more. He was a diplomat, a scientist, an inventor and a more complex man than we sometimes like to admit and the author brings these points out in the book.



2. This is a well written story about Franklin with interesting insights on How Franklin evolved from being a lover of England, to becoming "American." The process evolved over Franklin's lifetime. Franklin had to undergo embarassment by England's political elite til he realized that England was not so benevolent to the colonies. There were moments I was wondering if Franklin was a Tory. But like a magician, Franklin changed his tune and became so radicalized that it ended up being an inspiration to others to bring the colonies together and declare independence from England. This was a well balanced biography that pointed out Franklin's warts along with his good points. I was impressed how fast the book read and how packed with info. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking at insights during the early formation of the United States.



3. When I saw Gordon Wood on Ben Franklin I thought look out! It's going to be like Ann Coulter on Bill Clinton. I was almost afraid to read because I adore Franklin so much. Alas, nothing new, nothing. (Spoiler!!!!!) Yes Ben cheated on his wife with numerous women, seduced wives, and may have even sold secrets to the British (that last one cannot necessarily be proven). But all Gordon did was write a GREAT little summary about the life of a great man. So why did I only give him only three stars? Well, when you see Mike Tyson you want to see a Pitbull off its leash. When I read Gordon Wood.... I want history off its leash. Now you know what to expect. Enjoy



4. The author does an excellent job of placing Franklin in the context of his time, and explaining his motives. There is an interesting account of what it meant to be a gentleman in the eighteenth century, and its significance to Franklin. The book is highly readable and not overly long.



5. I, like most, know the ideolized stories of Ben Franklin and use many of his quotes in my email messages, but it was the recent HBO miniseries of John Adams that got me more interested in the man himself. Gordon Wood is one of my favorite historians when it comes to the Revolution and it was a no brainer for me to pick up this book.
   
   Though it lacked with depth in many areas, it was a good starting point for further reading on the man. Where Wood fails is where he actually succeeds. His analysis of certain events did lack depth (his failure), but his use of events as they pertain to Franklin were very good (his success). It gave me a better understanding of the connections Franklin had with England (the working man attempting to become a gentleman in a British world that in many ways refused to accept him as such), his love of France (that truly embraced him), and his at best questionable memory in the American mind throughout the 19th Century. It is the final few chapters of the book that are by far the most interesting aspects of the book. The discussion of the strained relationship Franklin had in the nation he helped to create, his confrontations with Adams, and most importantly the struggles America had in its recognition of Franklin.
   
   Though Wood does lack depth in many areas, this book is well written and should be the starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about a man who has so much myth and legend surrounding him.

1 comments about Rebel Giants: The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln & Charles Darwin.

1. Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, although both famous, would not be said by many to have a lot in common. David R. Contosta disagrees, and "Rebel Giants: The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln & Charles Darwin" is his reasoning why. The two figures, hugely impactful in history, were born on the same day, disliked their fathers, lost their mothers at a young age, suffered from depression, and other eerie similarities. Hoping to give readers a more comprehensive understanding of both men by examining their similarities and differences, "Rebel Giants: The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln & Charles Darwin" is an excellent pick for any community library collection dedicated to history.

5 comments about Making the Mummies Dance : Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1. This lively look at the life and work of a director of a world-class art museum not only educates and entertains, it shocks. The mummies do, indeed, dance as Thomas Hoving takes on the Park Service to expand the museum, wiggles around UNESCO and fights a host of governments for his favorite works of art, plays one collection against another, trades, deals and bluffs his way toward making the Metropolitan Museum of Art what it is today.

   Hoving has a steam-roller personality, the energy of nuclear fission and no small amount of self-confidence. His educational background -- Princeton and an archeological expedition or two in Europe -- isn't as impressive as you'd expect, but he makes up any shortcomings with old-fashioned chutzpah.

   After some experience in minor jobs and a city job with the Parks Department, he's told he may be selected as director of the Metropolitan so he looks the place over and makes some notes: "The museum needs reform. Sprucing up. Dynamics. Electricity. The place is moribund. Gray. It's dying. The morale of staff is low. The energy seems to have vanished. You've been missing all the fine exhibits...."

   This book shows how MOMA gets from where it was then to what it is now -- the politics, infighting, backbiting, sneaking, smuggling and downright stealing it takes to make a museum one of the finest in the world. It's also a fairly realistic look at the glittering personalities and the haute monde of the New York City of a few decades ago.

   This is a rousing tale that should hold the interest of any reader, art lover or no. Never mind that Hoving doesn't hesitate to toot his own horn. This is, after all, his book. Even taking the stories with a massive grain of salt, they're always riveting and vastly amusing. No one will ever say of Thomas Hoving that he has no opinion on the people and the issues of the art world or that he hesitates to express them.

   I can't imagine anyone not being fascinated by this marvelous picture of the fabulous and often sham world of art museums and the people who support them and run them.




2. This is a refreshing book, about the author's personal quest to transform the Metropolitan Museum of Art of N.Y., during his tenure as director of the museum (1967-1977).
   When Hoving arrived as Director, he assessed the Met as a disorganized institution, a collection of collections, located in a mixture of buildings and architectures that gave "the impression of something worse than incomplete; it seemed forgotten and forlorn...." At the time Hoving was offered the post, he was commissioner of Parks, under the tenure of Mayor John Lindsay, whose mayoral campaign the author had joined with a leave of absence from... the Met, where, after receiving his Ph.D. in Art from Princeton University, he went from assistant curator to curator of the Medieval Department and the Cloisters. And indeed, it was Lindsay, when told the news about the directorship, who said: "...have you considered the boredom? Seems to me the place is dead. But, Hoving, you'll make the mummies dance." Hence the title of the book.
   The story is a fascinating, at times egotistical and gossipy account of what it took to revolutionize an institution like the Met. From the seduction of the patrons and trustees, such as Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Annenberg, Brooke Astor, Robert Lehman, to the development of a network of experts, smugglers and famous collectors, Hoving takes us on a journey that reveals a lot about the inner workings of power, expertise and glamour, in the art world.
   At the end, we are led to believe Hoving's final insight about his tenure:
   "With the creative energy of the Trustees who had been on my side and the stuff who supported me, the most sweeping revolution in the history of art museums had taken place. The Met, once an elitist, stiff, gray, and slightly moribund entity, came alive. THE MUMMIES DID DANCE......"



3. This is a great book for reading and as a resource guide book. Makes you feel like your there



4. This book appeals to a select audience. Those who enjoy reading about the great chase for the treasures of the world. Treasures that wars have been fought over. Those who enjoy reading about the super-rich and their foibles. Those who enjoy reading about the intrigues and back stabbings in elite organizations (this book makes The Apprentice look like a pillow fight). And finally those who enjoy reading about a man's all consuming ambition to succeed and yet through it all remain passionate about great art. If any of the above is your cub of tea then you are going to love this. I absolutely recommend his later book 'False Impressions'. And yes, the author spares no punches in his analysis of alot of famous people.



5. Hoving dishes the dirt as only he can, in this totally addictive romp through the world of collectors, dealers, and socialites. Hoving is clearly in love with his subject-himself!-but he gives such a rare and fascinating look at what goes on behind the scenes in the lives of the movers and shakers that his self-involvement doesn't really detract much from what is just a great read. Highly recommend this book!

1 comments about Passionate Minds: Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaire, and the Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment.

1. If you want something to read that's more improbable and exciting than most fiction, this is an excellent choice. Steeped in history, lovingly researched and with strong scientific underpinnings, this is a book that will make you feel like you almost know Voltaire and wish you knew (and you will weep for) the amazing Emilie du Chatelet.