No comments about Benjamin Franklin's Science.

5 comments about Tales of the Himalaya: Adventures of a Naturalist.

1. Hello...I'm a 13 year old girl, and I knew Dr. Swan quite well. He was a great, full of energy, brilliant person. This book is wonderful, and the life of him is very interesting, even to me. I would definately something i would recommend to anyone and everyone. I will prolly read this a million times, and I will never get sick of it, ever.



2. Written in a casual, funny and lively style, this book is chock full of fascinating nuggets about the critters and people that populate the Himalayas. Lawrence Swan was an excellent writer and a renowned authority on Himalayan wildlife. A must read for anyone interested in wildlife, The Himalayas, and/or the rigors of field work.



3. I am one of the lucky ones who actually knew Prof. Larry Swan, the author of this remarkable book, and I was privileged to have heard all of these stories recounted by the man himself in the classroom and at his home. Although I miss his voice and grand gestures, I am delighted to report that the stories in his book, from his boyhood in Darjeeling, to high altitude spiders, Yetis and the great Indian monsoon, are as engrossing on the printed page as they were to hear! Professor Swan was a remarkable biologist, a master teacher and a creative, gifted man who lived a full and amazing life. This excellent volume of his adventures and thoughts is a reminder to us that great lives can be led, and great mentors can be found. It is a must for all inquiring minds and adventurous spirits!!



4. I am currently a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in the Northwestern corner of Bangladesh. Although my job keeps me busy I still seem to have large amounts of free time for reading. As there are not many outlets for books in English where we are, my fellow PCV's and I have learned to read almost anything. In a rare and exciting care package from home, my father sent me this fantastic book. Dr.Swan's adventures are so full of excitment and humor that you wish they were your own. They can compel even the most diehard homebody to think of packing a bag and heading to the mountians. Dr.Swan writes of the Himalaya and it's people with respect and admiration that could only come from someone who knew and loved them well. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a little adventure or some very truthful information. As soon as i finished it I sent it off to a friend in the neighboring town. I have yet to see it show up back at the Peace Corps library, which means it is still floating around somewhere amongst the PCV's of Bangladesh.



5. Larry Swan was a born naturalist, an original thinker, and an inspiring teacher. He was also a fascinating character and a raconteur of the first order. When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, his courses at San Francisco State College were legendary. His lectures were like savory curries. He served up meaty ideas in a rich masala of entertaining and sometimes bawdy stories. "Tales of the Himalaya" is a collection of Swan's adventures and the discoveries and ideas that emanated from them. The chapters stand by themselves. There are chapters on debunking the yeti, his discovery of the Aeolian Biome, a theory of high altitude bird migration, an amusing exploration of leeches and lice, and a wonderful chapter about his beloved Sherpas. (All who took his course in Zoogeography ended up loving Sherpas.) And there is much more. Like Doc Ricketts of Cannery Row, Larry Swan was the kind of person who turned John Steinbeck on to biologists, and made his students want to climb mountains. This is a book about science, exploration and travel, imbued with an infectious personality. If you have ever looked up at a lofty range of mountains and wondered, then this is a book worth reading.

3 comments about Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!.

1. Todd, who sounds nothing like Feynman, brings easy to listen to enthusiam and wonderment to this magnificent story.
   
   Feynman, just the single name carries the legend of this Nobel winning genius. However, the real story is the breadth of his interests and adventures. Independent thinker, he could probably have done the Challenger study alone and delivered a more useful product. His insights are priceless.
   
   The other side is his unscientific pursuit of women. The romantic vs the reality. He studies the few single ladies available in the area of the remote nuclear labs with the same approach he took to training the ants in his room to march in a semi-circle and out the door. However, his heart and his science seem to be in eternal conflict in the romantic arean.
   
   Feynman travels to Brazil and ends up learning to make music with one of the hundreds of ghetto bands. Later he sits on the board that selects textbooks for California students where he is a solo voice for quality books and integrity in the acquisition process.
   
   The story is told in a manner that is ageless and suitable for listeners of all ages. A wonderful gift for a young student wondering if scientists have any fun. For all ages the book is positive, inspirational without preaching and a joy. Highly recommended



2. While the first four or five CDs are engaging and (as Feynman would say) very interesting, I found the second half somewhat tedious. His comments on physics decrease steadily throughout the book and the last half is taken up with his adventures in nightclubs and playing music in Brazil.
   
   The voice talent is great -- he may not sound like Feynman but he reads the words like a highly intelligent 12-year-old boy, which captures Feynman perfectly.



3. Feynman is a true American genius with a wit and charm that sets him apart from the rest of us pedestrians. A hilarious adventure into the mind of a "Curious Character"... thank God he walked among us.

No comments about Galileo His Life And Work.

No comments about Muller's Lab.

No comments about George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books).

3 comments about The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives.

1. This memoir traces the secret life of the author's father in Israel (in its early days), the coming to terms with her father's past, and the background of the founding of Israel and all it entailed. She enjoyed hearing her father's 'stories' of his life in Israel, where he had been a member of scientists and idealists, summoned by David Ben-Gurion to develop weapons for defense.
   
   Bentov had jokingly called himself "Invention-a-Minute Ben" but she had no idea how important his invention of the first rocket launcher was to the war of Independence, and why he left that new state and came to United States of America. During the Arab-Israeli conflict, there were five invading armies, and the team of men and women who had to come up with the alternative to death worked around the clock. It was her father, in fact, who came up with the weapon called Loretta; another was developed with a two-inch-bore, but Ben's had only a one-inch-bore.
   
   "While challenging the David-and-Goliath myth, historians agree on the hardships of the first round of the invasion, before the truce on June 11, 1948. A movie was made, 'Exodus,' and Pat Boone wrote the words to the song used in that docudrama. She looks on the photograph of this group of the brightest and bravest, many of them refugees from Europe, she seems to have a jaded eye on the group which was called Hemmed.
   
   For the book, she traveled to Israel and interview many of the scientists. All admired and liked her jolly father, he was at the center of the picture, as he must have been in all of the plans to save his people. I wonder who that is pretending to be Hitler on the left with mustache, hat and raincoat. No one else was dressed in that fashion. It reminds me of the way Mrs. Keys described Julius Rosenberg when she might accidentally run into him on the elevator of the apartment house where they both lived in New York. He always wore a trench coat and hat as if he had something to hide, she'd related.
   
   She began her search for the truth about her father in his basement laboratory. The 'telling' is to tell the truth as she lived it, later discovered it, and believes it to be. This was a self-discovery voyage into the past and the future of Israel.
   Happy New Year, Rabbi.



2. 
   
   With rockets attacking Israel, there's no better book to read than
   this lovely, fascinating memoir/history, recently rave-reviewed in the
   "Times Literary Supplement" and "The Jerusalem Post." There is so much
   to think about in this rich book, and the prose stands up to many
   readings. It's billed as a memoir but is so much more than that.
   Muir, the only child of an enigmatic, divorced father who kept her a
   secret from his friends, discovered after his death that he had
   invented Israel's first rocket, in a top-secret group of weaspons
   scientists during Israel's '48 war. These scientists later became rthe
   creators of everything from Israel's nukes to her national water
   system, but their '48 story was untold. By contrast, Muir's father,
   Itzhak Bentov, left Israel for the US where, as a freelance inventor in
   the basement of his house, he created the world's first remote-operated
   cardiac catheter, still in use. Bentov also gained acclaim as the
   author of the New Age bestseller Stalking The Wild Pendulum: On the
   Mechanics of Consciousness. Muir's book weaves together her memories
   of a "mad scientist" father, who was her inspiration and her
   heartbreak, as well as the wartime stories of his comrades, and her
   personal search for the meanings of these histories. A family tale in
   its personal complexity, the book is also timely because of the image
   of the rocket: you can't help comparing Hezbollah's 10,000-odd rockets
   with Israel's first rocket (Bentov's brainchild) which was 15 inches
   long and improvised out of a water-pipe. It symbolized a newly-born
   Israel's desperate creativity. Bentov's assistant on the rocket
   project tells us: "It was like, sort of, a miniature Manhattan
   Project. True, we didn't have the time or the resources to develop
   anything new. We barely had the time to copy what already existed to
   save ourselves. But that rocket, I can't tell you how exciting it
   was. Because it meant we had a future." The group's executive
   commander, a refugee from Russia, revealed that the scientists'
   creativity began within, by having to invent new selves after their
   roots were erased by the Holocaust. In his words: "I had no past, no
   family. I was no one. I could do anything." The former head of
   Israel's missile programme sums it up: "Instead of tradition, we had
   improvisation." Beyond the timeliness of the book, however, is a
   universal and timeless theme: the nature of invention itself. A poet
   who loves science, Muir lovingly and brilliantly depicts the passion of
   inventors and gives each of their inventions poetic resonance. The
   "invisible mine," produced by one Israeli scientist, becomes a metaphor
   for the destructive potential of scientific creativity when applied to
   military uses. The recoilless cannon, which seemingly violates Newton'
   s law of action and reaction, accompanies her father's, and Israel's,
   urge to move forward without reacting to the devastation of the past.
   In a brilliant and touching chapter near the end, Muir, reading her
   father's laboratory notebooks, stumbles across gynecological devices
   intended to keep women from pain and injury - and discovers a
   tenderness and love in her father that had been hidden from her during
   his lifetime. As Muir tells her story, the "Telling" itself changes
   her, teaching us that a story is also an invention, and, like others,
   has the power to change its inventor.



3. Muir's style is incredibly striking and her characters and stories are interesting and unique as is the way she weaves everything together. Not only is book relevant historically, but touching as father/daughter relationship is described. Pulls at the heart of anyone who has loved and lost her daddy. This is a great book to read and discuss with friends.

No comments about Veedor the Condor.

No comments about Engine Revolutions: The Autobiography of Dr. Max Bentele (Sae Historical Series).

No comments about Internal Fire: The Internal-Combustion Engine 1673-1900.