5 comments about Einstein: The Life and Times.

1. Albert Einstein found his place among philosophies and equations in mathematical and scientific areas he had grown up around. He hated his strict school at the gymnasium when he was young and the army when he was older. These two deep dislikes caused him to be freer in his work and mind set, and to never be brought down by structure or criticism. His imagination and pure genius made him one of the world's most impressive thinkers, ever. Einstein was the fore-runner of his new, "illogical" physics and took much of the heat, as did Galileo when he first discovered his laws. He traveled all over the world and experienced much of the times. He finally settled in America and helped the government create a bomb to stop the fighting of World War II, the atomic bomb. As a friend, Phillip Frank knew the man personally and wrote his story because of his mysterious genius and major accomplishments. Einstein's as important as Galileo, Newton, or Kepler, and his story might even be more interesting. This book was a good read and definitely a good reference for anything to do with the genius and his discoveries.



2. This is a well- written account of the life of Einstein. It also provides explanations for the general reader of Einstein's great and revolutionary contributions to mankind's understanding of the physical world.
   It gives the picture of how one person from relatively humble origins rose to become the very symbol of human genius, and a cultural hero of mankind.
   It presents a picture of a more complicated human being by far than is contained by the popular image. It is the picture of a person of enormous dedication, of a startling power to devise in his own mind ' thought- experiments' that would lead to changing completely mankind's conceptions not only of the world but of its own powers.
   It is the the story of Einstein's reluctant political involvements, his devotion to peace, his great humanism, his Zionism and contribution to the building of Hebrew University, his opposition to Fascism, his famous letter to President Roosevelt that pushed the Chicago project for building the Atom bomb, his torments of conscience over his discoveries having been used in war.
   Most importantly it traces the scientific career of Einstein including the legendary moment of great triumph in 1919 when his general theory of Relativity was experimentally confirmed, and Einstein transformed overnight into a world- famous figure.
   It also tells the story of Einstein's struggle for over thirty- five years throughout the whole latter part of his life to devise a unified field theory . This is the story of a great man's frustration, and too his isolation from the great majority of his colleagues in regard to his position on quantum theory, (The famous," God does not play dice with the world")
   Clark describes Einstein's fundamental attitude toward Nature and God, his closeness to Spinoza in seeing in an impersonal eternal order of nature the source of Beauty and objective scientific truth.
   This is a wonderful book about one of mankind's greatest creative giants.



3. Whenever they compile the list of the best biographies of the 20th Century, this book will definitely be on the short list. It's a masterpiece. Clark presents a thorough, erudite, and accessible account of Einstein's life and work. He begins by relating Einstein's early struggles and his years at the Swiss Patent Office, where he read and analyzed technical reports. Then came the great relativity theory and the subsequent success and reknown. The flight from Nazi Germany to Princeton, the building of the atomic bomb during WW II (he regretted this association the most in his life), and the myths that developed around his life with the public (he hated the public adulation; when he died he didn't want his house on Mercer Street in Princeton to become a shrine) also get their fair and judicious treatment. Einstein was a great scientist who had developed some of the most complicated theories in physics, and Clark is excellent in trying to explain them for the general reader. But he is best when capturing Einstein the man. Clark writes with the confidence of a master, even majestically. It's a long book and not a fast read, but the time spent with Clark and his magnificent subject is time very well spent. One even wishes for more at the end. A brilliant work.



4. Prepare to feel time slow down if you approach this black hole of a book.
   
   The thesis of Einstein: The Life and Times is that Albert Einstein was both the preeminent physicist of our age and a saint.
   
   The first claim - Einstein's genius - is manifestly true. Einstein single-handedly established four of the foundational principles of modern physics (statistical mechanics, space-time equivalence, photon quantization, and the covariant formulation of gravitation). But Ronald Clark fails to make the case for genius, preferring in every case to document contemporary opinions rather than share the scientific excitement of the discoveries themselves. In this sense, Clark was intellectually incompetent to be Einstein's biographer.
   
   The second claim, sainthood, is manifestly false. Einstein is consistently described by his friends as inconsiderate, socially inept, and self-centered. His life after 1920 was a scientific wasteland - because of his self-imposed isolation. Outside of physics, his opinions were inconsistent, shallow, and readily manipulated. This biographer, with his frequent Socialist and anti-American embellishments, is just another in a long line of Einstein manipulators.
   
   In spite of Clark's incessant emphasis on Einstein as sui generis, the most consistent theme that emerges from the documentation of his life is the saintliness of other scientists. His fellow physicists deserve credit for recognizing, promulgating, proving, developing, and rewarding Einstein's ideas - and protecting him personally - in spite of the impediments of his personality. It's no wonder that Einstein could maintain such rose-colored pacifism when he lived off of the emotional and financial largess of the international scientific community.



5. As a biography, this book is almost perfect. Every aspect of Einstein's life is covered with marvelous proportion and balance. If you want to understand the best-known scientist of modern times, you must read this book.
   
   Perhaps most important of all, Clark does not write as if he were describing a saint. He recognizes that brilliance in one field doesn't always translate into brilliance in others. Politically, Einstein was often naive and sometimes silly. G. K. Chesterton noted that in May of 1931, shortly after Einstein had claimed, "If you can get two per cent of the population to assert in times of peace that they will not fight, you can end war." Chesterton replied, "But here the theorist asks us to believe, not merely that two men could fight a hundred men, but that a hundred men could not fight at all because two men were not fighting."
   
   As the 1930s progressed, Einstein moved closer to Chesterton's views about war and particularly about the danger Germany posed to European peace. In the 1920s Einstein was one of the most famous pacifists in the world. In the 1930s, disturbed by Nazism, he abandoned his pacifism to advocate containment. The reason for his change was quite human. His loyalty to his own people, the Jews, triumphed over his intellectual dalliance with pacifism. Chesterton was no doubt delighted. He believe that healthy patriotism was the surest road to peace. Each people living on its own land and willing to defend it while respecting similar feelings among their neighbors recognized the human desire for attachments without avoiding the reality of evil. That's why the pacifist/internationalist solution, the League of Nations, failed to stop Nazism, while Chesterton's solution, a NATO-like military alliance, worked quite well to contain the even greater menace of Communism.
   
   Unfortunately, while Chesterton, a popular English writer, would sometimes comment on the much better known Einstein, and somewhere Einstein may have mentioned Chesterton, a fellow Zionist, I can find no evidence the two every met. Given that both had a marvelous, self-effacing sense of humor, that's unfortunate.
   
   --Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

3 comments about Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard.

1. 
   The hardback version of this book was an extremely entertaining read, but was unfortunately marred by many basic factual errors. It is good to see that the author took the time to fix the major ones for this paperback edition - it is a much better read for it.



2. I found this bio to be well written, and informative on not only Shepard, but also the Mercury Seven and the beginnings of NASA. It charts the mans abilities, and also his shortcomings, and well evokes the period of the space race. I thoroughly enjoyed it, highly recommend it and recommend the From Earth to the Moon miniseries as a good companion piece.



3. If you are one of the older generation who lived through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, this is a well written, well researched book on Alan Shephard. Shephard and Grissom are two of my all-time heroes. It was a good read, as this talented author's always are!

5 comments about The Honors Class: Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers.

1. Due to rapid development of mathemtics in the last century, now one cannot master all subfects of mathematics. This is also true for those historians. Most of the boods of " History of Mathematics " end in the beginning of 20th century. So we know very little about the conteporary mathematicians. This book can be described as a gap for it. After readiming this book, not only you have a knowledge about the life of the great mathemaitcians, you also get the period in World War II how Nazis forced those mathematicians out of Germany and the reason why U. S. A. is now the leading centre of mathematics.



2. First, my background: I am not a mathematician, but an academic with fair knowledge of college math and even some advanced materials. I do greatly enjoy reading books about mathematics and mathematicians.
   
   This book is obviously a work of great effort by the author. My difficulty probably came from the work's ambitious premise: offering mathematical and biographical history of Hilbert's problems. There are simply too many ideas and persons (some well known, others a bit obscure to lay reader like myself) to cover in one book. The author dutifully and honestly gives references to his sources. My impression is that the author collected as much material as he could about each problem and solvers, and tried to squeeze the information as compactly as possible into the pages.
   
   The result: the narrative is very methodically told - explanation of the problem, some necessary ideas introduced, who the major solvers were, then a short biography of each solver, when and where they were born, who their parents were, where they went to school, who they married and so on; then another cycle begins. Halfway into the book, I began to get bored.
   
   I can imagine mathematicians enjoying a quick review of and glimpses into their discipline and heroes, but lay readers much beware. I recommend lay readers to check out a few pages carefully online or at your local library to see whether you like it. I certainly didn't hate it but did not like it as much as I expected.



3. As a career scientist for over 50 years, I am versed in mathematics but not exactly a mathematician. I bought it to become familiar with Hilbert's problems. I quickly realized that Yandell's book was more about the attempters and solvers than about the problems. Yet the problems are described too, in considerable and certainly sufficient detail.
   
   What was ultimately fascinating was the web Yandell weaves throughout the book. Those famous mathematicians and their colleagues, their personal lives, those famous problems, and all integrated so cohesively.
   
   When I started reading I knew I was in for a long adventure. In fact, it took me over a year to read - of course, only an hour or so every few days. What extended it was the temptation to go back and reread, again and again. Finally, a week ago, I turned the last page. With great reluctance I put it on my bookshelf. I had a strong urge to start all over again from the very beginning, and I knew if I succumbed I was in for another year with it.
   
   As I reflect, partly it was the subject - those difficult problems in such vastly different fields. Partly it was those mathematicians - many of them already heroes of mine. But mostly it was Yandell's skill in putting together this riveting accounting. His love of and fascination with mathematics, and his desire to share his romanticism with others, comes through so clearly. It is sad that he died, at the young age of 53, a scant two years after writing this book. Of a heart attack and multiple sclerosis. What a tragic loss. He was a gem.
   
   Even if you are only mildly interested in mathematics, its history and personalities, you will absolutely love this accounting of it.



4. I was hoping for something more like The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time, an explanation of the problems and how they were solved, at a reasonably accessible level. This book appears to be just chat about the funny people who become math professors. Sort of interesting, but not what I wanted.



5. The Honors Class is the collection of mathematicians that individually or in collaboration solved or partially solved at least one of Hilbert's 23 problems. Yandell does a great of gathering up the historical information so that we have an up-to-date account of the progress on each problem and even how some problems evolved because of their vague or incorrect original proposal.
   This is a popular math book and is accessible to the nonmathematician such as the fine books by Casti on mathematicians and mathematical developments. It is also similar to Singh's book on Fermat.
   
   I think the historical research and accounting of the mathematics deserves 5 stars. I am a little unsure about how well the technical mathematics is conveyed to the layperson however. Admittedly, this is a very difficult task as much of the mathematics is very abstract, especially the early chapters on the foundational questions. The number theory, geometry and even some of the abstract algebra problems are easier to explain and Yandell does a fine job with them.
   
   As a mathematician who studied algebra, analysis and even some symbolic logic as an undergraduate and graduate student, I still had a hard time feeling that I got the essence of the mathematics associated with some of these problems. Yandell's discussion is at times detailed but is necessarily sketchy on some of the mathematics. This works for me sometimes but not so well at other times. I think it would be much harder for a novice, but I guess it depends on the depth of understanding one is looking for.
   
   I have always found the work of Cantor mysterious and so the ealry chapters that cover Godel and Cohen's amazing results are not the most enlightening for me. I had learned about the axiom of choice in my real analysis classes and was told something about the undecidability of it and its equivalence to the continuum hypothesis but have never really seen the connection or gotten much insight. The material on Paul Cohen is interesting to me because I attended Stanford in the 1970s when he was the buzz of the campus. A younger and less accomplished mathematician compared to many of his famous colleagues in Stanford's prestigious mathematics department, he still was revered because he solved one of Hilbert's problems. Still I am no closer to understanding symbolic logic and the method of deciding whether or not a proposition can be deduced from a set of axioms or can exist independently of the axiom system.
   
   I got hooked on the book with the chapter on the tenth problem. This problem seemed more easily understandable and it was very interesting to see how the many players work together and separately to attack the problem including the very interesting Julia Robinson who was a key player in the middle of alll this.
   
   The lives of these mathematicians, in some cases their suffering and insanity (similar to Nash) is very interesting and entertaining. There is too much here to handle in one reading.
   
   I think this is a book I will go back to again and again. I am interested in reading more on Kolmogorov and want to try to understand some of the abstract algebra and number theory questions in more detail. There is a great deal of commonality in many of the stories. A large number of the members of the Honors Class were from Germany and fled during World War II. Many also traveled through or spent great portions of their career at Princeton University (some at the Institute for Advanced Study).
   
   The book is thorough and gives an account of all the unsolved problems as well providing the insights of the mathematicians who have made attempts at them.

5 comments about The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World.

1. Being American, I never really got a feel for how the industrial revolution came about. Unfortunately American schools tend to start with the beginning of time (a.k.a. Plymouth Rock) and muddle through history up to about the beginning of the Civil War, by which time the school year is over. The next year we just start over with Columbus. So I was never exposed to any of the facts of how we moved from an agricultural society to an industrialized one.
   
   Also being American, I always assumed that we invented the industrial processes that made it all possible. In my mind, sometime between the Boston Tea Party and WWI, Henry Ford just up and invented factories.
   
   Because of my lack of good history training I am very apt to read historical books such as this one. I am constantly surprised to find that what I always assumed as fact turns out to be completely false. This book opened my eyes not only to the scope of what these men brought about, but that industrialization was not an American invention. For this reason alone, I enjoyed the book and consider it time well invested.
   
   As far as the writing, I think the author did a good job overall. I am sure there was an overwhelming amount of material to go through and it has got to be difficult to weave a tale of so many people's intertwined lives and still get the facts right. Sure, Dickens can do it with ease, but he can make up things to make it work out. So given the task, I think Ms. Uglow did a very good job.
   
   That said, it is a fairly long book and it does sometimes become difficult to keep the lives of the different people straight. I found myself well into a chapter several times thinking I was reading about one person only to discover that it was someone else. Maybe a timeline with each person's roles would have been helpful at the beginning so that the reader could refer back to it periodically.
   
   So my rating is 5 stars. I considered 4 stars, but decided that may be unfair just because I was personally unable to keep the facts straight...after all, she did an excellent job of doing that. But a little more guidance on the "who's who" would have helped.
   
   I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in history and in industry.



2. This is an outstanding book. Yes, it can be difficult to keep track of all the characters, and yes, it takes some patience to work your way through the events of so many lives. But there are three big rewards here, each of which alone will fully justify the time and effort of your reading. First, these were wonderful men, full of curiosity and imagination, ambition, and very human failings as well, and a wonderful inspiration for our own lives. Second, the historical view of this part of the early industrial revolution is history at its best, both personal and contextual, and much richer than anything I encountered in school. The third reward is somewhat less developed, but equally profound and relevant for our own future: the description of the reaction and intolerance in England that set in in the 1790's, and which societies seem to go through periodically. Much to think about!



3. I'd never regarded 18th Century England as my likeliest destination for time travel until reading The Lunar Men. This is a gloriously detailed book about an amazing moment in scientific and cultural history. I'd give anything to walk across the moors by moonlight to sup splendidly with Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestly, Josiah Wedgewood, and the others at the cusp of transition from artisanry to technology, from agrarian tranquillity to urban energy. Those guys had the best of both, and you can have the pleasure of sharing their excitement in the pages of Ms. Uglow's vivid history.



4. Jenny Uglow took on a very ambtious project in writing, "The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiousity Changed the World." She showcases the ambition, innovative spirit, and willingness to take risks that drove the Industrial Revolution by examining the Lunar Society, focusing specifically on some of the more personable members. Although this book was interesting, it was also quite lengthy, and for someone who does not feel the same passion for the topic it may be a bit much. This work is a valuable source of information and I would recommend it as a fresh approach to a subject that is worth examining for someone who would like to read about the more human aspect of the Industiral Revolution.



5. I found this very long volume (around 600 pags with notes and index) extremely interesting. The focus is a group of talented amateurs who in Birmingham (and Glasgow) beginning in the 1760's, over the course of several decades, carried on a continuing dialogue, and research, in a number of scientific, literary and philosophic areas. Some familiar individuals pop up here: Erasmus Darwin; James Watt; Joseph Priestly; Josiah Wedgwood; and William Small to name just a few. These central characters are augmented by a large cast of less involved players, including a number from the Scottish Enlightment (Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, James Hutton, Dr. Black). Ample biographical information is provided, and the author is quite effective at explaining what these folks were up to, how they went about it, and why it was so significant.
   
   As a group, they believed in vigorous empirical validation of concepts, and that unrestricted access to knowledge was the best way to promote democracy and safeguard against tyranny. They developed close ties with the Royal Society and the Society of Arts, indicating the quality of their contributions. Whether the author is describing hydraullics or pottery, steam engines or the segregation of oxygen, fossils or canals, the narrative is clear and concise, and fairly easy to follow even in the more technical areas. It soon becomes obvious that a lot was going on in the British Enlightenment other than just in London. One of the major byproducts of the book is that one has a much better idea of the environment that shaped the young Charles Darwin as he grew up surrounded by all this scientific activity. Excellent notes; many helpful illustrations are included; and an extrememly useful chronology that ranges from 1704 until 1859 and the publication of "Origin of Species." A very important consideration is the book is just fun to read.

5 comments about Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic (Cambridge Concise Histories).

1. Here is an unlikely great read. An important slice of the intellectual history of the 20th century, a human tale of immigrant success in America, fascinating gossip about famous philosophers and logicians, and required reading for anybody seriously considering graduate work in mathematics or any other highly abstract discipline.
   
   This book creates a very realistic picture of academic life in which high intellectual achievement and ordinary human (mis) behavior are strangely intermixed. The way scholarly communities form and disperse around ideas, historical circumstances and personalities came across in a way I found to be very gripping.
   
   Tarski, a tiny Polish professor who meticulously fussed over precision and complete adherence to the rules of highly abstract "Formal Systems" was actually a boozer, abuser, drug user and schmoozer. He didn't live a Formal life. Married to a Polish Resistance fighter but even so himself a serial adulterer, he flourished and eventually died in Berkeley carried there by historical currents of violence and anti-Semitism.
   
   The book introduces us to most of his colleagues and PhD students, a rare collection of brilliant eccentrics for the most part. Consider his PhD student Richard Montague: a respected Mathematician and Philosophy Professor, but also a real estate speculator, epicure, fixture in the Gay LA Noir scene and, ultimately, murder victim. A common theme in all this is that in logic the character of the work and the character of the workers do not harmonize in a way that most people would find to be intuitive or even plausible. These logicians are not logical. Bertrand Russell is another case in point. Godel, who appears in the book in cameo, is perhaps the exception. An alternative way to say the same thing: these scholars display perfect intellectual integrity and only average human moral and social integrity. So much for the heroic Attic view of philosophers. Nevertheless, they all come off as admirable in the sympathetic but still somewhat ambivalent treatment by the authors, who were social and professional associates of Tarski's.
   
   Their kind of mathematical work seems to have been a kind of creative art conducted in a difficult and technically demanding medium. By people with "artistic" temperaments. Several anecdotes and characters in the Polish part of the story seem to reinforce this impression. The handsome and seemingly idealized painted portraits on the dust jacket painted by a contemporary Polish logician-artist emphasize this aspect of the tale.
   
   Their subject, mathematical logic, may seem recondite and obscure, of no interest to the general reader. In fact, its development by such men as Godel, Turing and Tarski may well be one of the great intellectual triumphs of the last century. Among other things it was essential to the development of computers. And perhaps to the systems of control and thought which keep the current huge social and economic system intact. This is an ironic legacy for such a wonderful collection of mathematical bohemians (should I say Warsovians?) and free spirits.



2. Feferman made a great work in this book to show another facet of Tarski's logic. Usually, Tarski is associated with set theory, notwithstanding his main interest was algebraic. He didn't trust to the set-theoretic concept of individual; as a matter of fact, in boolean algebras where's no individuals at all. It's a mereological point of view, according to which what it's given aren't the parts, but the whole. An atom is what we obtain, as a limit concept, dividing endlessy a corp. One of the first papers by Tarski was on the foundation of geometry assuming as a primitive entity that of sphere (i.e. the whole). And his latest book was again on the relational algebra. We must thank the polish logician for his research on this aresa: relational algebras, boolean algebras with operators, cylindric algebras, etc.
   
   I don't agree with Feferman only on a point: this way to approach logic come to Tarski from Lesniewski and not from Kotarbinski. This is not the place, unfortunately, to discuss this matter.
   
   At any rate, the book is delightful, precise but very easy to read.



3. unlike all the previous praises this book seems to have gotten, i was not impressed by it. the book is an account of tarski the academician as seen/experienced by his phd students one of whom is the co-author himself.
   
   the book is an account of tarski's academic life which is apparently believed to be best reflected through his students' eyes. this account fails to put in anything else. even what his son and daughter have to say is missing for the most part. there are many things which go unexplained or unquestioned:
   1. why was tarski so much into nature?
   2. why was he obsessed with rigor and formality? just stating an observation and looking for the reasons of that observation makes the difference between a fact telling book on the verge of being a mere factoid and an intriguing/enriching one. this book is unfortunately as shallow as can be when it comes to some psychological assessments.
   3. why was tarski a womanizer? was he really that or did he like portraying himself as one?
   4. was he a tyrant and if so, why?
   
   the authors make a huge deal out of the fact that he was a jew. can it be that this whole emphasis on his religious and ethnic origin is anachronic in nature? maybe he just did not care, really. why did he choose catholicism? just because? or was he so ambitious that he did not really have any ground rules at all? in the end, these questions all go unanswered.
   
   giving 5 stars for such a shallow book is unwarranted and is an unjust blow to some successful biographies such as the enigma (about alan turing) crafted by andrew hodges.



4. To be honest, I started reading this book with some suspicion. In the first place, I was neither a fan of Tarski nor of S.Feferman. Though I did regard Tarski as one of the intellectual giants in the 20th century, I still frowned at the book's opening description of him as one of the "greatest" logicians of all time - on a par with my own hero Godel. My feeling towards S.Feferman was similarly ambivalent. In spite of his substantial contribution as the editor-in-chief of Godel's Collected Works and the universal praise he has received for that project, its end-result (the project was abandoned for running out of supports in 2005) is seriously lacking. For one thing, after almost 30 years' work the huge bulk of Godel's Nachlass in Gabelsberger (an almost extinct German shorthand) has been left unpublished (although approximately half of it has already been transcripted). It seems that more emphasis had been given by the editors and their colleague commentators on INTERPRETING Godel rather than making the inaccessible original material available to the wider public. I have always doubted the wisdom of Feferman's chief-editorship on this and other issues
   
   Nevertheless, Feferman turns out to be a much more successful co-biographer of Tarski than an editor of Godel. The Tarski book goes far beyond my expectation. I simply couldn't put it down and went without sleeps for several nights until my eyes could no longer tolerate my indulgence. The reading has made Tarski an immensely more interesting figure to me - almost as interesting and intriguing as the enigmatic Godel. This aftermath is something which I could never have anticipated in my wildest dreams beforehand.
   
   Since I agree with much of the praises from the Amazon Editorial and Customer Reviews of the book, I don't think it desirable to re-enumerate the book's various merits which others have already done. Needless to say, the book is not perfect and leaves much that is desired unaccounted. For one thing, although the book does present an interesting picture of the development of logic in the last century, it is presented from the Fefermans' highly personalized viewpoint and very one-sided. For example, from the book the reader will only get a very uninformed idea of the development of set theory which happens to be both Tarski's lifelong "hobby" and a source of intellectual uneasiness since he had a certain (though ambivalent perhaps, for he sometimes spoke in a Platonist tone) nominalist temperament while set theory is prima facie concerned with highly transfinite objects and often pursued by pronounced "realists" like Cantor, Zermelo, Godel (who was in effect described insane when Tarski declared himself as "the greatest living sane logician" ) et al. It is arguable that similar tension should also occur in Model Theory where Tarski reigned. But there is no discussion on this issue. It will also be interesting to know how Tarski reacted towards the epoch-making invention of forcing by P.Cohen in 1963, when the former was still an active researcher. The Fefermans say almost nothing on this either, although S.Feferman himself was one of the earliest developers of forcing immediately after Cohen. My own conjecture is that, like Godel, Tarski did not take forcing to be FUNDAMENTAL. Godel almost had a proof of the independence of the axiom of choice in the 1940s, but he abandoned the project partly because he did not want to encourage other logicians to plunge into a pursuit of independence proofs instead of trying to discover and develop new, further TRUE axioms of mathematics. Presumably the nominalist (by lips?) Tarski will perceive the issue very differently from the Platonist Godel. Yet the book gives us little clues about such and various other issues.
   
   Paradoxically, it is precisely from the frankly personalized and unsystematic viewpoints of the Fefermans and other intimates of Tarski that we find much that is valuable. Moreover, unlike the Godel case, the authors did not forget to let the protagonist to present himself. And in spite of its moderate length and lack of comprehensiveness the book does manage to weave abundant insights into their captivating story of this intriguing man who is, given all his unconventional acts and deeds notwithstanding, first and foremost "powered by his ideas" (as Peter Hoffman puts it) with an extraordinary self-confidence throughout his life. It is amidst this web of insights that we are granted some of those very rare glimpses into the mind of a genius that so few biographers have ever accomplished.



5. Fabulous! Alfred Tarski was one of the two greatest mathematical logicians of the twentieth century. (The other was Kurt Gödel.) Solomon Feferman, a student of Tarki's in the early fifties and a friend for over twenty years throughout the rest of Tarski's life, is himself one of most outstanding logicians of our day. Anita Feferman, Solomon Feferman's wife, is the author of the tremendously exciting biography of the logician and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky, Jean van Heijenoort: "From Trotsky to Gödel". (I know it's difficult to believe that a logician could also have been Trotsky's bodyguard; her book must be read to be believed!)
   Clearly, this Tarski biography is a labor of love. I completely agree with those reviewers who have explained in detail why this book reads in places more like an exciting novel than a mere biography. What I found very impressive was the beautiful, delicate balance of the book between Tarski's mathematical accomplishments on the one hand and the daily features of his personal life on the other. He was not just a mathematician but rather a force of nature, a tornado, who swept everyone around him in his wake. Students, other mathematicians, university administrators, friends, colleagues, and especially women were all pulled into his mathematical and personal whirlwind.
   No praise would be excessive for this outstanding book!

No comments about Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (Urban and Industrial Environments).

5 comments about Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad's Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond.

1. I've read way too many space books, so I love the subject matter, but the style of this one was too breezy, lacking in important detail. Each chapter is about 12 words long, so you get the impression this was either rushed through or intended for young adults. I learned little about the man, whom I wholly admire. Did he alienate anybody? Were there any character flaws? Also, I was looking to learn more of an insider's view of Gemini and Apollo, but it was all very superficial, heard-it-before material. I'd read a bit about Conrad, like his attempt to smuggle onto the moon a huge cowboy hat to fit over his space helmet, or his attempt at trick photography on the lunar surface, hoping to befuddle the photo analysts later. Neither of these gems were in the book. He's a great guy, a pilot's pilot, a problem-solving magician with a live-for-the-moment spirit. But the book is really junk food, even for a space nut like myself. Sorry, Pete. They done ya wrong.



2. The book arrived within the scheduled delivery time in excellent condition.
   
   Thank you,
   
   Mark & Francine Keehnel



3. I enjoy reading about this time in American History and consider myself a student of the early space program. In that regard, in a brief perusal of the book, I have already noticed some factual errors that should have been caught by the editor or by Mr. Klausner. First, in the picture section, it shows a picture of Pete on the ladder about to board an F4 Phantom, yet the label says that he is posing in front of a T-38. Another error is related to the issue with "Max Peck". Max Peck was the Mgr of the Rice Hotel in 1962. After the 2nd group of astronauts was chosen, including, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, Ed White and Neil Armstrong they were asked to check in under the Mgr's name to avoid their names reaching the press prior to their formal introduction. However, this book states that this happened back in 1959 when the first 32 candidates for the Mercury program checked into a a non-disclosed hotel in Washington. Not only is that fact wrong, but they didn't check into a hotel in 1959 for that first meeting but the Dolly Madison house in Washington.



4. Pete Conrad had a fairly colorful style about him, part cowboy - part engineer - full time iconoclast. However, these traits do not come thru in this book. The writing does not convey the dynamics of the man, so ultimately it becomes little more than a 'just the facts' biography.
   
   While I doubt any astronaut book came come close to capturing the human story of space Michael Collins' "Carrying The Fire", this book had a chance since it focused upon one of the truly unique characters in the space program. So am immensely dissapointed at the final product.



5. I have read a lot of material on the Mecury, Gemini, and Apollo missions and found this book to be a nice easy read. There were a couple of items that were mis-quoted, but other than that, I enjoyed reading it. I would suggest for readers of this type of material to be sure to read "Failure is not an option" by Gene Krantz, he was the flight director who was envolved with Mecury all the way to Apollo 17. With the knowledge of his book, it helps to understand a lot of what's going on. I did however, seem to notice a lack of writting about Pete Conrad's family. I have done business with Pete Conrad Jr. and he's a great guy. I was suprised to see so little mention of his family in the book. There was just a small part about them in the book. I guess perhaps written by is present wife would explalin it. But I enjoyed reading the book. Long may you rise above the earth Pete Conrad.
   
   KLD

4 comments about Hacker Cracker: A Journey from the Mean Streets of Brooklyn to the Frontiers of Cyberspace.

1. This is an amazing story of a young man who goes from nothing to something, using technology. After reading this I was inspired to do something with my life!

   If you like hacking, if you like feel good stories, if you like excitement, this book has all of that!




2. Ejovi Nuwere is from Bedford Stuyvesant a neighborhood in brooklyn he comes from somewhat of a brokenhome doesnot really know his father and has a mother who does just about anything in the world for her children but she is a drug addict and has Aids he lives with his grandmother uncle and brother and numerous others that hang out at his grandmothers apartment were something is always going on.

   He faces the struggles most other intercity kids face with the gangs,drugs poverty and violence but he seems to pick up on the fact that the gangs and drugs are a losing way to go.In one part of the book while he attend a school for the performing arts he ends up joining a gang just for his own protection but it seem a somewhat differant type of gang besides the violence they where teaching the members. While in school he had a few brushes with some basic IBM computer but when he hooked up with the principal and asst. principal who had apple mac he started to develop a real interest in computer and this interest was fed by the uncle who also lived with who had a computer and would let Ejovi many 10-14 hour days on.
   Along with another computer hacker he had met in school they begin getting into hacker chat rooms and learning and developing their skills and trying to make a name as is the thing to do in the hacker community.With his knowledge and desire to succede he ends starting to get jobs while still a teenager and as time goes on decides that full time may not be the way to go one thing for sure it does not pay the bills
   Alot of the computer hacking involves stolen credit cards and manufactured cards one story when Ejovi couldnot stand it and decided to buy his own computer with a stolen number and has the computer delivered to a run down building nextdoor and the FBI ends up coming was pretty funny story.

   This is a pretty good book about somebody having the drive and desire to succcede even living in tough and living through tough conditions and making it along the way he also takes up a form of kung fu.It was a little difficult at times understanding some of the computer stuff for a novice like me but there are definitions in the back of the book and he describes thing pretty good.




3. The first part of the book deals entirely with the authors plight of growing up in a very rough area of town and the struggles that he faces with on a day to day basis. Apart from the first 4 or 5 pages, which contained a fast moving account of what happens when a rogue Chief Technology Officer gets sacked, for the first 71 pages I was wondering whether a differnet book had been slipped inside the jacket of hacker cracker as there was no mention of computers at all. The story was still pretty interesting though. Eventually he gets round to his first experience with computers and his encounters with hacking and the addictiveness of it all. Eventually the story ends up with a moving account of being at the site of the twin towers on 9/11 and a very touching part about a strange whistling noise (which I won't explain as it is a bit of a spoiler). An easy read and not really the usual hacker biography type book. I think this is partly due to the fact that the author is assuming his readers are not technical as some of the explanations (IRC for example) are very basic and some are almost "media stereotypical assumptions" of what really goes on.
   As the theme of the book is the struggle to overcome and make life a lot better for his family, the target audience for this book is increased beyond the geek and I think even my mother would like this book!



4. Hacker Cracker is a technological thriller for all us geeks, hackers, and security students/professionals in the world. Ejovi details his rise from a dangerous neighborhood where drugs, murder, and gangs ran rampent tothe discovery of a whole new world where it didn`t matter what color you were, only how smart you were. At times I felt as though I was reading parts of my past, the beauty of the baud, discovering warez chatrooms on AOL, and doing things to explore and find more out about this world of cyberspace. Definitly a great read for anyone who has seen the underside of the computer world.

No comments about Strange Blooms: The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants.

5 comments about Marie Curie: A Life (Radcliffe Biography Series).

1. Susan Quinn does a wonderful job of describing the hurdles that Curie's family had to overcome during the occupation of Poland by Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The interesting fact is that all of her siblings were bright and well educated despite the denial of public education. Reading this book has been a delightful experience.



2. Marie Curie A Life by Susan Quinn takes you on a journey as you discover the life of Marie Curie. From her difficult days under the Russian repression in Poland, to the sexism she faced in Paris, her two Nobel Peace Prizes, and the scandal that almost lost her everything. I especially liked this biography because it was to the point and it did not over glorify Marie's life. The fact of the matter is that Marie's life was full of hardships and this book depicts all of them. I think the author wanted to write this story because she wanted to depict the life of Marie Curie who was an inspiration to several women, and who contributed a great deal to the scientific community. I believe that the author however, wanted to portray her in a real light, so while other biographies might be a little bit more glamorous this one is more realistic. This is an extremely fascinating biography and you should read it because it shows how Marie's life was filled with obstacles, and how she overcame them all.



3. This book has excellent historical information about Poland and Marie Curie's family before she was born and after. It gives a very good description of her life growing up and her family, as well as personal experiences gleaned from unpublished letters. It brings information hitherto unpublished about her personal life, and it presents her career in a fascinating way. I cannot rate the book highly enough.



4. I had mixed emotions on this book and so did many of the numerous reviews I read. While trying to celebrate Marie Curie in light of our feminist times - a motivating factor in the book's writing, I'm sure - the author spends far too little time on the actual physics of Curie's accomplishments and instead dwells on her love affair with a married collegue, on household matters, trivial matters of her everyday life that may make her seem more approachable to the book's readers, but do nothing to clarify her position in historical physics or her winning, jointly, the Nobel Prize, admittedly then in its infancy. I felt Curie to be an extremely passionate woman, both in her work and in her bed. But I wanted much more detail of the physics than was given.



5. I've admired Marie Curie (born Maria Sklowdowska in Russian-occupied Poland) longer than I can remember, quite literally. I first read her biography in a "written for children" edition while I was in grade school - Grade 5, perhaps? When I sat in my first day of Laboratory Chemistry class, as a high school junior, I bit my tongue half off as the teacher included this gem of wisdom in his opening remarks: "I know you girls are only taking this class because you need it to get into college. I'll go easy on you. After all, there are very few Marie Curies in the world!" I still wish I'd had the guts to be sent to the office for saying the words that rose up without my bidding them: "And just as few Pierre Curies, Mr. ****."
   
   Anyway, perhaps that anecdote offers a clue as to how much Madame Curie's biographies have meant to me as I've read them over the years. This most recently published one draws on materials not available to previous biographers, letters and journals that were sealed until 1990. While it's hard to beat Eve Curie's 1937 biography of her mother (after all, who knew the woman better?), Susan Quinn's scholarly work adds illumination in plenty because of those additional resources.
   
   This biography tries to be all things to all readers, and that may be cited as a flaw although it's also clearly a virtue. Readers who are primarily or entirely interested in Marie Curie, the individual human being, are likely to slog through the lengthy and detailed descriptions of scientific work while yawning. Readers who want to know about Marie Curie, the scientist, are apt to be bored or even annoyed by the passages that concern her relationships with parents, siblings, husband, children, and (once, during her widowhood) lover. For me, though, it all fit together beautifully. Madame Curie was all of those things, after all. Scientist, daughter, sister, wife, mother, and friend. I'm interested now, just as I was at age 10, in all those aspects of her life.