3 comments about The Autobiography of Charles Darwin.

1. This book is definitely a really fun read for someone with some leisure time and an interest in Darwin. It's important to not take this book too seriously (perhaps) because Darwin doesn't really take it that seriously himself. The autobiography tells us a lot about Charles Darwin the man and the way that he felt about certain issues but it barely scratches the surface: he has a great sense of humor (like when he talks about his original plans for being in the clergy) and sometimes he talks about his own life seriously (like his regret for not reading more poetry), but when you come down to it, the book is sort of written in a really mechanical manner. He doesn't really share with us any of his deepest desires or secrets (nor do we really expect him to).
   
   Overall this autobiography is pretty fun to read and it's probably a good springboard from which we can then go and read his Origin of Species or Voyage of the Beagle.



2. Darwin's Autobiography serves as a good overview of his life and the major events that happened to him. While the actual autobiography itself is very short and lacks details, its a good starting point for someone wanting to learn more about Darwin. In this edition edited by his son Francis Darwin leaves out some passages about Darwin's family and married life, something one could argue as particularly telling or interesting information; if this bugs you, buy the later edition.
   
   One of the most interesting sections to me was Darwin's description of his boyhood and young adult years. It's comical to hear this scientist describe his obsession with the pastime of shooting things and his mediocre performance in school. A few things signal Darwin's observational powers or scientific inclination, such as his collection of beetles, but for the most part, he seems an ordinary young person.
   
   Also, the book continually references scientists and intellectuals of the time which Darwin comments on. Some of these people were close to Darwin, others he just mentions. Now knowing these people can be somewhat frustrating to the reading, as I can attest to. The book is very much written and directed at his children, who would be familiar with this social context.
   
   Even with these minor faults, Darwin does give insight into his own mind, something I'm sure anyone who's reading a book about Darwin is looking for. The introspection comes at the end of the book. Darwin speaks of his own reasoning capacities and ability to notice things which easily escape the observations of other men.
   
   This book is short and a I recommend it as a good place to start for getting a handle on the major events of Darwin's life and hearing Darwin's own perspective.



3. This reprint of Francis Darwin's edition of the Autobiography is not the full version, but is fascinating nonetheless. Francis omitted some passages in deference to his mother, Darwin's widow Emma, who marked passages that she did not want published. (Interested readers can go to Nora Barlow's 20th century edition of the Autobiography for the full text). Francis Darwin's reminiscences of his father's working habits and "everyday life" (chapter 4) are wonderful. Chapters 5-18 are largely chronologically arranged extracts from Darwin's letters with Francis's commentary.

5 comments about Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings,.

1. I must thoroughly agree with the Publisher's Weekly reviewer of this book. Although it promises to deliver sensational events such as hot love affairs and outrageous behavior in addition to enlightening us about the brilliance of Voltaire and the genius of Emilie du Chatelet, this writer cannot live up to his own book's expectations or his clear attempt to pen a bestseller. What I felt I was getting was the diary entries of a peeping Tom who was busy sticking his nose into the sordid soap opera that was the "great love affair of the Enlightenment." I never had a sense that I was in the presence of a brilliant woman. Rather, Emilie comes off as a hedonistic and conflicted female, fatally insecure, and overshadowed by the even more insecure and narcissistic Voltaire. Although lots of information is imparted between the covers of this book, it never seems to gel into a cohesive or gripping whole, and I was left feeling flat, not only about the featured on-again, off-again eighteenth-century rock-star couple, but about eighteenth-century France altogether. No one seemed worth reading about. The lot of these folks apparently were stuck in their petty, class conscious, foolish ways, fawning over the court, slapping around the general population who weren't upper class, and generally being idiots. Perhaps the best I can say about this work is that it redeems science and rational thinking as well as the integrity of the individual, but only in a backhanded way. I'm afraid most readers will give up on this endless recounting of flaming passions and pettifoggery before getting halfway through. Lucky would they be too because they would happily miss the glaring and unforgivable fragment on p. 163: "But not only was the water cleaner in Cirey. There was also something more to Emilie's innovation." Editor please!



2. This book gave me a fascinating piece of history that I was completly uninformed on. It is fascinating learning the details regarding life in a period that is completly foreign to our culture. It is also fascinating to find out the contributions that women made in science at a time when it was believed that women were completly ignorant, and every effort was made to keep them so.



3. This reader did not venture upon Passionate Minds with unreasonable expectations: a good yarn featuring an enlightened cast was all. Sadly, the effort was not worth the result. A middling tale, a tabloid history, and that most hideous of affectations, aspirations to wit on the part of the author. Claims to be liberating du Chatelet from the chauvinist past revealed less about her intellectual work than the descriptions of her appearance did of her [...]. Voltaire may well have been a hypochondriacal social climber, but he deserves better than lit crit 101 reviews of his work. The author seems extremely uncomfortable with the period: kings must be stupid & useless, aristocrats are not much better, merchants are hard working, peasants are earthy. When claiming that Voltaire's relationship with his niece was fine, because those things were more acceptable in such debauched times, Bodanis overlooks that minor inconvenience known as canon law. He also, presumably for reasons of humour, refers to Madame de Pompadour as Ms Poisson, combining historical innacuracy with silliness - this is not feminism, it is just plain wrong. The period and people covered by this book are fascinating in so many ways, yet the end result is shallow and dull.



4. If you are a physical science teacher, you absolutely must devour this extraordinary work. Not only is the work perfect for people who wish to read about the relevant historical figures, and the time of the enlightenment, but there were a few, very simple experimental aspects explored, which I have successfully used in the High School Physics classroom. Students certainly take to the historical background, and of course blending in the very human nature of Voltaire, and Emilie du Chatelet, and how exceptionally close they came to cracking some serious scientific nuts is beyond intriguing.
   
   If you have only a mild interest in science, I would heartily recommend the reading of this work - even if it sits on your nightstand, and is read 10 minutes an evening.
   
   CAVEAT !! You might become so enthralled, that you do NOT put down the book, and continue to read through the night. This might not be good for your next day efficiency at work, and so I have a solution. I suggest that you purchase the book on a Friday evening, and give yourself this two additional evening cushion.
   
   Bodanis is an excellent writer, and while I might sound like I am simply choosing words from my own lexicon of hyperbole, it simply read well. I believe that I have gained from this experience both as a teacher of Physics, but as well Philosophy.
   
   This experience has had me look up his previous work, E = mc^2 and I hope to write a favourable review on that work later this month too.



5. A few years ago, Alan Palmer published a biography of Marie-Louise, Napoleon's second wife and Empress of France, arguing quite correctly that famous women of the 18-19th century are often ignored by biographers and seen only through the lens of the famous men in their lives. He then proceeded to write a book that was 90% about Napoleon, Metternich, and other famous men. David Bodanis hasn't been quite as egregious, but his book is essentially the same: Despite all the claims of placing the woman at the center of the narrative, it is in fact Voltaire, the famous man, who is still the focus. Whenever the narrative covers their time apart, Voltaire almost always gets more space.
   
   If that were the end of this book's problems, then it would be forgivable, for there is still much that Bodanis reveals about Emilie de Chatelet that makes for interesting reading. But in fact Bodanis is so woefully inadequate as a historian, and so out of his depth as a narrator of this period, that "Passionate Minds" becomes an almost non-stop howler.
   
   Bodanis has virtually no conception of the politics and wars of this conflict-ridden period; neither who was fighting whom, nor where nor how. So in a narrative whose characters are frequently in the midst of war, Bodanis makes innumerable embarrassing errors. He "compensates" (if that is the word) by trying to be very, very cute. So he reduces the French cavalry charge at Fontenoy to "pampered nobles" gallivanting for fun. He seems not to know what a regiment was, misunderstands the famous "Potsdam grenadiers" of Prussia's Frederick William I, and creates an "Austro-Hungarian Empire" more than a century and a half before such a state existed.
   
   Bodanis tends to invent liberally to cover the gaps in his understanding. He tells us that Voltaire left Prussia because Frederick the Great made homosexual advances upon him. (Not true.) He does not seem to know why the War of the Austrian Succession happened, nor all of the nations involved, and so he writes that fighting in the Low Countries in the 1740s was simply a French need for "revenge."
   
   His understanding of 18th-century economics is only marginally better. When describing Emilie's scheme to sell tax-farming futures, Bodanis doesn't appear to understand that the French government (along with many others) was already in the business of speculating on future revenues, as part of its increasingly wild schemes to raise revenues on borrowed time as the aforementioned War of the Austrian Succession wore on and threatened to bankrupt the state. Rather, Bodanis has this happening at the instigation of his protagonists, because Emilie was clever, and the tax-collectors were "dim." (218).
   
   In his attempts to explain class-privilege, Bodanis almost always indulges in contempt and sarcasm, ignoring even the evidence in his own narrative that demonstrates how 18th century aristocrats viewed service to the state and of course, patriotism. His is a bourgeois teleology in which all thinkers who proposed systems we nowadays consider normal, must have been martyred, forward-thinking heroes, morally superior to those "dim" "pampered nobility."
   
   I am not a scientist, so I don't know if Bodanis has mangled the descriptions of science as badly as he mangles politics, war, society, and economics. To a layman like myself, his descriptions of the scientific experiments - while redundant - were adequate. For this contribution alone, I give the book a second star, since one does not often think of Voltaire as a person who dabbled in science, with or without the help of his brilliant mistress.
   
   In fact, Bodanis' favorite themes are to extol the British and the middle class, at the expense of the French and the aristocracy - a sort of amateur history in which the good guys are pre-destined to win. His ignorance, however, prevents him from giving a balanced treatment even if he wanted to. For instance, Bodanis spends two pages trashing Louis XV (whom he describes as a "dolt"), for showing up to command the French army and doing a mediocre job of it... without any mention that Britain's King George II had done exactly the same thing - with equally poor results - two years earlier in the very same war.
   
   But that sort of balanced analysis wouldn't be as much fun to write. Bodanis prefers instead to Hollywoodize his protagonists and their era, talking down to his readers as if they couldn't understand concepts unless they were reduced to banal oversimplifications and then dressed-up in cheap-shot humor, embellished with fiction to glue the mess all together.
   
   Who knows. Maybe Voltaire would have loved it. But Voltaire would have at least done his homework.

5 comments about Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare.

1. I think the real dilemma in science comes when we insert "ego" in the place of morality and use the argument that "If I don't, then someone else will." But what we don't realize is that when we "do"...we ARE that someone else!! I guess in the end we can't be responsible for someone else's misuse of technology...can we?
   
   I'm not done reading the book but so far it's awesome!



2. Daniel Charles, otherwise a reporter with NPR, has written this relatively short biography of Fritz Haber, which I found to be a disappointment. Fritz Haber was by all accounts an extraordinary chemist, a Nobel Laureate, a German patriot, and a tragic figure in twentieth-century Germany's tragic history. One of Haber's greatest technical accomplishments was to devise a method of extracting nitrogen from the air, without which Germany would have folded within 6 months of entering the First World War for lack of gunpowder, though one wonders if Haber, Germany, and Europe wouldn't have fared better without his invention. On the other hand, today this invention allows more than a billion people have food to eat thanks to fertilizer made with the same method.
   
   This biography was a disappointment; some of the facts he offers are demonstrably incorrect, some of the facts he offers are, to be polite, wildly exaggerated, and informed voices that strongly dispute the opinions he cites go unmentioned.
   
   To wit: Charles writes that Lunge had a position, and Haber was offered a position at the University of Zurich. These positions were at Zurich's Polytechnic, a totally different institution and arguably the finest Polytech in the German-speaking world.
   
   Charles writes that "Haber was a founder of the military-industrial complex." This amazes me since the Krupp Steel Works, which made Germany's artillery, had for years been so important to Germany that the Kaiser himself busied himself with finding a suitable husband for Bertha Krupp.
   
   Charles writes: "John Dewey's prophecy of 1918 has been proven correct; the marriage of science and military power has endured. And its spiritual heritage leads back to Dahlem," (where Haber had his lab.) He wrote this more than two millenia after Archimedes, the precocious Greek physicist and mathematician, invented ingenious weapons with which his fellow Syracusans fended the Romans off during the Second Punic War...
   
   Charles quotes a source that "apparently it was a common view among scientists at Haber's Institute" that his wife committed suicide to protest his work developing chemical weapons, but omits to mention that one of Haber's other biographers, the son of friend of Haber's, has written that there were those who claim that her suicide was a political statement, but that the family rejects these theories as a politically convenient myths. Haber's son deemed this other biography as the best one yet. Charles himself writes that the family had a history of suicides and that Clara Haber had had serious emotional problems for a long time. Incidentally, the symptoms of her emotional problems are indistinguishable from those of a heavy metal intoxication; Clara Haber's doctoral thesis was on her experimental work with heavy metals and their salts. I believe that basic human decency would have obliged Charles to either mention all the relevant facts and extant opinions surrounding Clara Haber and her tragic death, or else leave her to her well-deserved rest. This is why I give this book one star, and not two.
   
   Make no mistake about it, Fritz Haber was a brilliant scientist, whose life is profoundly interesting. The one motif in Haber's life that Charles largely does justice, and which is moving, is Haber's tragic quest to assimilate himself into German society, only to suffer persecution as a Jew at the hands of the parvenu filth that came to misgovern Germany.



3. The world would be a different place were it not for Fritz Haber. It is a must read for anyone that would like to get a feeling of what Germany and the pre-WWI world was like. We may not have had a WWI and consequently a WWII without great men like Alfred Nobel and Fritz Haber, and yet great scientists cure diseases in the pursuit of Nobel approval and the world eats by the grace of Fritz Haber.



4. It is often said the four people who had the most effect on the twentieth century were Einstein, Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Fritz Haber has to be close to number five.
   Mankind's food production, yield per acre, has always been limited to the amount of nitrogen that becomes "fixed" into the soil as nitrates. Historically crops were rotated; fields were alternately planted with nitrogen fixing plants to improve yields. In 1909, Fritz Haber's invention showed that man could fix nitrogen, and when teamed up with Carl Bosch, the process could yield ammonia on an industrial scale. Large quantities of nitrogen fertlizer and gunpowder was the result. Thus German manufacture of gunpowder extended Germany's resistance in World War I for years because of this crucial process.
   The Author shows the sad irony of war, ideology, and hate. Fritz Haber, a German Jew converted to Christianity to better blend in with the higher echelons of German industrialists as he became very wealthy. He Invented various gases used in gas attacks and one insecticide gas called Zyklon-B, which would be used in the death camps for the extermination of in-mates years later.
   A fun loving gregarious Nobel Prize winning industrialist that was a failure as a father and husband, also misread the significance of the Nazis coming to power in Germany. He could not comprehend being robbed on his possessions, business agreements, and professional positions and finally fleeing to Switzerland where he died a broken man in 1934. The book is well written and researched. The last few chapters after Haber's death are a nice touch to the book, It traces Fritz Haber's family after the war and some of the Haber-Bosch machinery used in World War I then again in WWII and finally to help the East German Government make ends meet as late as the 1980's.



5. In mid-March, while nearing the end of the writing of my Master's Thesis on Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Outbreak of World War I, perusing the shelves at a local Borders, the spine of this book caught my eye. After reading the dust jacket, and thinking that perhaps this could be interesting - I had not studied the beginnings of chemical weaponry before - I decided to buy the book and proceeded to sit a Starbucks, sip a mocha, and read the first pages.
   
   ...
   
   I could barely put this book down, and wound up sitting at said Starbucks for nearly two hours, nearly missing a movie showing I had intended to see (it may have been "The Counterfeiters" - a great movie if one has not seen it yet). Still recovering from the last Potter book (and Pottermania), I found that I was reading this biography as eagerly as I was reading the Deathly Hallows during the twilight hours of July 22nd.
   
   Daniel Charles has written a fascinating study of Fritz Haber. I have noted that another reviewer has not written so kindly of this book and I am inclined to reading another account (for another perspective), but no matter. That reviewer and I can agree on one thing: in Charles' work, Haber devotes his life to becoming as German as any other German, to live for his duty to country, and ultimately, his country spits back at him, he suffers, and he dies, his own creations becoming the tools of his own betrayal. At the end of the day, the book is a morality story, and a tragic one at that. But that is what lends it its vitality as a biography - it is a story, and not just pictures of a man as viewed from afar, somewhere in the not too distant past.
   
   The other intriguing part is its relevance to the modern day - the book questions progress, scientific and technical progress at that, and what it specifically asks are questions of conscience - just because we can do something does not necessarily mean that we should. Perhaps in the fictional world, Tolkien (having lived through World War I, the same world as Haber) can be seen as asking very similar questions. "I shall be great and powerful, and all will love me and despair," says Galadriel to Frodo when he attempts to give her the ring of power. Haber was great and powerful, he commanded the respect of all who knew him, even if those men did not like him, but they despaired. Einstein, a close friend, despaired.
   
   Charles makes a claim about two-thirds of the way through that if Haber had not opened the beast of gas warfare, the war may have ended in 1915, instead of 1918, preventing the Bolshevik Revolution and crises that plagued Germany at its conclusion, preventing thus the rises of men like Stalin and Hitler. The underlying assumption here is that gas warfare had such an effect in the war, that had this phase not begun, the war could have ended earlier. I am unsure as to whether this was the case, as when the first gas attack at Ypres in April 1915 was conducted, the trenches in Europe had already been dug out. Furthermore, I am unconvinced that revolution in Russia was not inevitable, as well as many other factors. Charles here moves through a series of "what if's..." that lead to an interesting conclusion - without Haber, could we have been without Stalin or Hitler? Objectively, history should not look at "what if" ideas, because then it wouldn't really be history, but it is interesting to consider Charles' ideas, as far-fetched this one really is, if only for a moment. Fortunately, he doesn't do this all the time.
   
   All in all, this is an excellent read, and should raise questions on mankind, science and technical progress in the minds of many. Remember - just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should do it. Perhaps this is the greatest warning in Charles' book - a book I have recommended and continue to recommend to many of my close friends.

5 comments about Beyond the Last Village: A Journey Of Discovery In Asia's Forbidden Wilderness.

1. Alan has a wonderful gift for expressing his expeditions and emotional journeys on paper. He can set you in the middle of his trails and make you feel his inner turmoils and exhilerations. Although Jaguar was by far his best book, this one should not be missed. I will be anxiouxly awaiting his next journey and book.



2. Massachusetts Sierran, March 2002
   Diana Muir

   Alan Rabinowitz has the best day job in America. The Bronx Zoo pays him to fly to parts of the world that have been off-limits to western scientists for generations. He assembles a team and walks into the forest where he treks beyond the point at which effective government ends, beyond the last road negotiable by Land Rover, beyond the last village. He comes back to report the existence of new species of large mammals previously unknown to science. Then he arranges to have vast tracks of wild land set off as protected nature reserves.
   Rabinowitz works for the organization that runs the Bronx Zoo, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and he doesn't actually find an entirely new species of large mammal every time he steps into the bush. But the delicate Burmese leaf deer he discovered for science in 1997 is flourishing in forests that his Burmese scientific and administrative collaborators are working to conserve. Their efforts have resulted in the protection of 3.2% of the land area of Myanmar as national parkland or wildlife refuge. And the adventures in Myanmar recounted in Beyond the Last Village are merely the latest exploits in a career spent mapping the last refuges of the nearly extinct Sumatran rhino, tracking tigers in Thailand, and determining how large a jaguar preserve need be to succeed in preserving jaguar.
   No one is perfect. Rabinowitz has a great story to tell, but he attempts to combine a sensitve exploration of his inner self with real-life adventures that play like an Indiana Jones movie. The outcome can be bad enough to make you wince. Here is Rabinowitz, the sensitive male, awaiting the birth of his child.
   "The due date came and went, and I was surprised at how rattled I was. I had helped deliver a Mayan baby in the back of a pickup truck on a bumpy dirt road in southern Belize. I had sewn up my dog, Cleo, after his neck was ripped open by a jaguar. I had ridden for help on a motorcycle in Thailand with a broken leg and a bamboo stake through my foot. I had had to find my way out of the jungle with a subdural hematoma after a plane crash. But nothing compared to this. This was my child."
   When Rabinowitz discovers a species unknown to science, he takes evidence to the Director of Genetics at the Bronx Zoo for expert confirmation. If he had taken the account of his trip to a professional writer for similarly expert help he would have a best seller on his hands. Make no mistake, Rabinowitz has a first-rate story to tell. The sort of story that might have reached millions of readers around the world and persuaded them of the importance of saving the world's last wild places. Instead we have a book that is almost wonderful.
   This is a great read nevertheless because Rabinowitz is the real deal. He goes to places where we cannot go and sees things that we would never see. Had I somehow gotten permission to hike into upland forests of Myanmar off limits to outsiders, I would have seen some pretty little deer. Rabinowitz saw an undescribed species. And while the writing may be clunky, the adventure is real.
   E. O. Wilson's new book, The Future of Life, is an elegant statement of the importance of preserving the biodiversity of this planet by protecting large, intact ecosystems from exploitation. Rabinowitz takes the problem down to cases.
   His new species of leaf dear, along with bear, tiger, rhino and a bevy of southeast Asian species whose names I failed even to recognize, are endangered by poverty, and by a voracious Chinese appetite for bogus medicine and chimerical aphrodisiacs. Sometimes it can take surprisingly little to save them.
   In the remote highlands of Myanmar Rabinowitz and his Burmese colleague, Dr. U Saw Tun Khaing, discovered villages with no access to salt. The only way that they could obtain this vital commodity was by hunting and selling wildlife parts to Chinese traders. Rhino, the species most prized by credulous Chinese men, were extirpated in the area decades ago.
   Dr. Khaing has now set up a system in which payment in salt and other goods is made to villages that preserve the wildlife around them. Erstwhile hunters are employed as game monitors with the cost picked up by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Salt and self-interest will surely do more to induce local people to preserve game than any number of wardens could.
   The pity is that poachers serving the Chinese market continue to hunt Asian rhino elsewhere. My son, the college student, suggests that the only way to protect the last wild Asian rhinos from poachers is to provide free Viagra to every middle-aged man in China. He just might be right. Meanwhile, I'm glad that Alan Rabinowitz is on the job.




3. This was a good book, I think Jaguar was his best book but I liked this one. It must have been amazing to have trekked across such unknown wilderness and interact with the local villagers and see a part of the world that virtually no western eyes have seen. It must have been extremely difficult to deal with the reality of overexploitation of wildlife to trade for something as mundane as salt. Rabinowitz doesn't paint the local people as uncaring monsters. They are just trying to make a life for themselves and their families.

   I would have like a few photographs of the animals, but this isn't a field guide. Overall the book was very good. I liked the way the Dr. Rabinowitz made the point that if any conservation effort is going to have even the smallest chance of being successful the local government and more importantly the local people need to be involved from day one.




4. I really enjoyed this book. The way Mr. Rabinowitz intertwined his experiences in Myanamar with his own internal conflicts really personalized the story and captivated me as a reader. I also found his experiences with the Taron amazing - imagine seeing and interacting with the last of a group of humans before their extinction. One of the important ideas which I gained from this book is the idea that animals need to come first when a National Park is created. He showed what happens when the needs of the people living the area come first - extinction! At the same time he is careful to note that if the people living in the area are not given an alternative to their current way of life - no park will suceed. The world needs more Alan Rabinowitz's.



5. This is really an inspiring book. While some people debate whether any environmental work in Burma is worth it, Rabinowitz shows how through perseverance and dedication one can make a positive difference in Burma. I appreciate how open and honest he is. Rabinowitz does not emerge as a hero or saint (as some of his emotions may belie), but he does come across as an true and decent person.
   
   I only wish he updated the book to include his more recent adventures in Burma.

1 comments about Max Perutz and the Secret of Life.

1. Max Perutz used to say that he was famous, but that few people knew what it was he was famous for. His name may not resonate with household familiarity, but he was a Nobel laureate for his work on the structure of hemoglobin and was enormously influential in organizing other scientists working in what was then a new field of molecular biology. He died in 2002, working up until his last days, and although he was an accomplished writer, he didn't get around to writing an autobiography because he consciously decided that his time was best spent researching instead. Now there is a fine biography that will help readers appreciate what he was famous for, _Max Perutz and the Secret of Life_ (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press) by Georgina Ferry. Ferry is one of our best science writers, and this admiring but unfawning biography not only tells the story of its protagonist, but also illustrates how science gets done as a cooperative and competitive enterprise.
   
   When he was 22 in 1936, Perutz and his family left his native Austria, but in Cambridge during the war he was arrested and shipped with Nazis to Canada merely because of his national origin. His work resumed upon his release and oath of allegiance to the King. It was ever after would based on x-ray crystallography, a field drawing from mathematics, chemistry, biology, and physics. The crystals Perutz used were not geologic samples, but crystallized versions of proteins, and he latched on to hemoglobin because it really was involved in the secrets of life; it was known that it carried oxygen throughout the body (he called it the "molecular lung"), but no one knew how it did so. Over decades of research he showed not only the structure, but how it flexed and turned in order to take on oxygen or give it off. Perutz was not the sort of brilliant scientist who had flashes of eureka moments. He got to his lab and worked hard until answers came. His answers were often wrong, shot down by others, and it is perhaps because he understood the nature of scientific research as a group endeavor that Perutz was brilliant in organizing others. He established the research unit in which Watson and Crick found DNA's structure, and as chairman of the Laboratory for Molecular Biology, he fostered an environment that on its own has produced more Nobel prizes than many developed countries.
   
   Perutz had more than his share of foibles. He had a passion for climbing mountains and skiing that could eclipse his interest in research or even in his family. Nonetheless, he was sickly most of his life, and had a peculiar diet that required him to eat bananas that had ripened to black. He had a naïve belief that scientific reasoning would overcome the flaws within politics and religion. His life as Ferry tells it, however, is full of wonderful lessons, like the one that a good brain is a boon, but hard work and perseverance are what make success. Another one is that scientific researchers work best in a chaotic environment with only partial controls upon it. Another one is that the best way to understand any physical object is to understand its internal structure. And finally, a maxim that was one of Perutz's favorites, "In science, truth always wins." Perutz left a legacy of his own research, and more importantly of effective organization of scientific teams, that will continue to foster the scientific victories he knew were coming.

4 comments about Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention.

1. It is common knowledge that Bell invented the telephone. (Although as many times as I got called during this last election I'm not so sure it was a good idea.) But it was a time when great advances were being made in such devices. There were other inventors such as Meucci in Europe and Oki in Japan who were doing the same thing.
   
   What is less known is that Bell was an inventor in many areas, rather like Edison or Tesla, he worked in many areas: sonar, ultra sound, iron lung, electric heating, and many more.
   
   Perhaps as outstanding was his subsequent creation of The Bell Telephone Company. He had the ability to make the fundamental invention and then to capitalize on it to create a giant company where there had been nothing before, rather like Bill Gates was able to do in our time.
   
   This is a major biography, it contains original research and understanding into his life combined with an excellent writing style that brings his life to life.



2. Both general-interest libraries strong in biographical representation and college-level science collections where inventor biographies are strong will want Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention. It represents the first major biography on Bell in thirty years and probes the life of a man whose inventions changed the world. Born of a deaf mother, Bell developed a passion for sound at an early age, investigating the science of sound and joining the race to invent the first 'speaking telegraph'. While he's best known for inventing the telephone, he also participated in the race to develop the airplane, and invented the hydrofoil - as well as investigated a president's murder. A complex individual emerges from these pages, making for a satisfying read indeed.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



3. This was a great read and a finely illustrated history of Alec Bell's life. I appreciated the author's weaving in of Alec's wife, Mabel, throughout the book and how she was an integral part of his life in many ways.
   
   The book occasionally repeats itself and gets a little tedious, mainly in the way it paints Alec as the constant tinkerer and you as a reader get frustrated in the way he wastes so much time on certain pursuits (the sheep raising being one), but this really in no way detracts from the enjoyment of reading this book.
   
   Wonderfully detailed and very entertaining, this is a terrific read and comes highly recommended.



4. A very well written book about Alexander Graham Bell from early years to adulthood and the inventions in between. I wish more of the inventions were shown in this book though.

2 comments about Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography (Mildred Wyatt-Wold Series in Ornithology).

1. Roger Tory Peterson devoted his life to the study of birds. In a 1996 speech delivered in Houston shortly before his death, he said, "Birds have occupied my daily thoughts, filled my dreams, dominated my reading."
   
   He traced his love for birds to his boyhood and a day when he came upon a flicker with its head tucked under one wing. It was exhausted from migration, but Peterson thought the bird was dead and reached out to stroke its back. The bird exploded with life, and took off with a golden flash of wing, leaving the boy filled with wonder at its resurrection, its freedom and ability to fly.
   
   Peterson began as an artist and by his early twenties had added his love of birds and nature to his art. A close associate suggested he write a field guide. Peterson took the idea a step further, incorporating his trademark identification arrows and descriptive text describing song, flight patterns, and nesting habits.
   
   The first Peterson's guide almost didn't find a publisher. The country was in the grip of the Depression; publishers thought people had more to worry about than learning how to identify birds. Finally Houghton Mifflin took a chance with a small first printing, and in 1934 "A Field Guide to the Birds" was published. To everyone's amazement, the book sold out almost immediately. The Field Guides have continued to be a bestsellers ever since.
   
   Peterson was one of the first to recognize the importance of environmental awareness, and was instrumental in getting the 1972 ban on DDT implemented. Additionally, he brought the world's attention to the decimation of the penguin from oil spills, and to the destruction of the bird-rich rain forests of Central America.
   
   Painter, educator, photographer, writer, and environmentalist, Peterson lived to the age of 88. He chose as the epitaph on his tombstone: "Birds are the most vivid expression of life."
   
   Douglas Carlson's skillful and absorbing biography brings this passionate, energetic man back to life, and celebrates his great gifts to the world of nature.



2. Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography (Mildred Wyatt-Wold Series in Ornithology) (Hardcover)by Douglas Carlson, University of Texas Press, October 1, 2007, ISBN-10: 029271680X, # ISBN-13: 978-0292716803 is a surprisingly enjoyable read for someone like myself whose knowledge of the natural flying world is limited to appreciating that birds have feathers and bugs do not. Carlson's subject, that of a famous ornithologist's life's work, is not for birders only. No, Carlson's biography of the field guide guru is an especially enlightening read for those of an awakening mind, for shining through Carlson's study of the professional Peterson are the universal themes, love, genius, art, joy, freedom and peace. Carlson's studied account of Peterson's life makes articulate for the philosophically-inclined what these abstractions mean, and for this naming treasure Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography is a treat to read. To articulate, love is the movement toward knowing what is, which is to say love is infinite. Genius is the acute awareness of what is. Art is the representation of what is. Joy is the surrender to what is. Freedom is the expression of what is. Peace is the reflection of what is.
   
   Roger Tory Peterson loved birds because, he imagined as a boy full of romantic notions, birds were the ultimate expression of freedom (Carlson, 8). Peterson's idealization recalls the famous claim by the Christian guru of freedom, Jesus of Nazareth: "Behold the fowls of the air" who do not sow nor reap; neither do they store for tomorrow and yet they have enough food to eat, Matthew 6:26. Peterson, who as a child was brought up, baptized and confirmed Lutheran, his mother a Sunday school teacher, (Carlson, 4) was no doubt influenced by this of all lies. This of all lies: birds are not carefree. Birds are bound, rather, by their need to gather the resources to live, theirs being a subsistence existence. And yet for young Peterson birds represented "the physical freedom to go anywhere they wanted" (Carlson, 260).
   
   Peterson eventually discovered that birds did not satisfy as a symbol of freedom because they are "captives of environmental factors and genetically encoded behaviors" (Carlson, 18), which is ironic because so was Peterson bound--bound by cultural expectations of man as provider. Like the birds he studied, thought about, wrote about, and painted, Peterson himself was confined first to earn a living for the clothing, feeding and nesting of his family, and finally to establish his legacy. Publishing revised editions of what became for him his "dreaded" Field Guide, Peterson was not free. Freedom to him was to luxuriate in his studio with paint brush and bird subject (Carlson, 233), but he had little time to let loose the floodgates of his vision with the demands of his life's work, the work that brought him fame and a modest fortune, pressing down upon him. He was, to put it bluntly, no more free than the fowls of the air. Carlson's biography of Roger Tory Peterson builds brilliantly the tragic irony of Peterson's life. And for this too, a cautionary tale equal to the opening scenes of The Bhagavad Gita in which the warrior, Arjuna, because of his attachment, cannot see reality, Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography is an eye-opening read.

4 comments about Charles Darwin: The Man and his Influence (Cambridge Science Biographies).

1. While you may not come away from this book feeling you would've called him Charlie, you will have derived a more than nodding acquaintance with an exceptional person. In the beginning -of the book- there seems to be an overemphasis on theological & philosophical issues but that is a clever construction that skillfully leads you to a profound grasp of Darwin's iconoclastic interpretations of mundane phenomena from which his theories grew. In the end, you regret even more never having met the man.



2. Peter Bowler presents a synopsis of Charles Darwin's contributions to science, history, and culture. This book tries to provide a quick summary of the important periods in Darwin's life, touching briefly on each significant aspect.

   Much of the book is written in a somewhat technical way and is a bit too wordy. I had a difficult time maintaining my interest while I was reading some of the chapters. Certain areas deserved more coverage, like the reaction when Darwin went public with his theories.

   On the positive side, this book does give some good insight on Darwin's relationships with the other prominent scientists of his time and there are some moments where the slowness of the book becomes more interesting, like the section that covers Darwin's voyage of discovery aboard the Beagle. Overall, however, Bowler does not really present anything new or profound that we haven't heard before.




3. In his biography of Charles Darwin, Peter Bowler dispels many of the misconceptions surrounding Darwin's immediate influence on the scientific world. Bowler argues that Darwin's theory did not spark a scientific revolution which caused a majority of scientists to abandon their former views on natural history. Bowler explains that Darwin was not the first naturalist to advance a theory of evolution. Most importantly, Bowler reveals that Darwin's theory was not accepted blindly by the scientific community. In fact, many of Darwin's most faithful supporters found scientific weaknesses in his theory. As Bowler states, "Darwin's greatest achievement was to force the majority of his contemporaries to reconsider their attitudes towards the basic idea of evolution" (p. 128).
   
   Bowler's book was the first biography I have read of Darwin, and I found it very enjoyable. It is one of the college books that I have kept. I definitely recommend it to any reader interested in Darwin's work and influence.



4. Charles Darwin obviously played a major role in the development of modern scientific thought and has become a multi-faceted mythical figure in terms of modern culture, competing with Christopher Columbus in the minds of many for the title of Dead White European Male who most contributed to the decline of Western Civilization in general and the American continent in particular. In "Charles Darwin: The Man and His Influence," Peter J. Bowler, who has written several books on the history of evolutionary theory including "Theories of Human Evolution" and "The Victorians and the Past," makes it clear that Darwin was not the first person to publish evolutionary ideas (not even in his own family) and emphasizes that his theory of natural selection was not generally accepted by his contemporaries. The publication of "The Origin of Species" not only stirred controversy and debate among both the scientific community and the general public, but it also reinforced the Victorian concept of progress. When Darwin died in 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey as a national hero of scientific discovery Victorian culture had undergone a major transformation.

   Bowler's look at Darwin's life and influence tries to explain how his contemporaries were unable to appreciate those aspects of this theories that are the ones we consider most important today. Ultimately, Darwin is seen as not only a product of his time but a person who transcended it by creating an idea that is still being explored by 21st-century scientists and intellectuals with beliefs and values very different from his own. Bowler shows us not only how Darwin reacted to contemporary ideas, at a time when science and the humanities were not seen as "two cultures," as well as how his ideas were received and adapated. Consequently, in addition to being a biography of a great man of science, it is also an examation of cultural history, which is perhaps the more important part of the effort. I had no problem following the scientific aspects and I never even took biology in high school, so I would think pretty much anybody can understand the arguments as well.

   The contents of "Charles Darwin: The Man and his Influence" is as follows: (1) The Problem of Interpretation, which looks at both the man and the myths that has arisen about him as well as the new perspectives on the rise of evolutionism; (2) Evolution before the "Origin of Species" looks at both radical evolutionism and the opponents of transmutation that defined the scientific debate at that time; (3) The Young Darwin covers his family and university life; (4) The Voyage of the "Beagle" details his famous trip to South America and across teh Pacific; (5) The Crucial Years: London, 1837-1842 is when Darwin developed his theory of natural selection; (6) The Years of Development at Down House is when Darwin was able to develop his theory in relative security; (7) Going Public presents the argument of the "Origin of Species"; (8) The Emergence of Darwinism deals less with Darwin than those that picked up his cause such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Thomas Henry Huxley; (9) The Opponents of Darwinism covers the response of those who espoused theistic evolutionism and the rise of Lamarckism; (10) Human Origins is about the "Descent of Man" and the idea of social evolutionism; and (11) Darwin and the Modern World looks at the death of Darwin and the rebirth of Darwinism after that point. The book is illustrated with photograph, cartoons and caricatures, and diagrams from Darwin's notebooks.

   The Cambridge Science Biographies are written by prominent international authorities in the history of science and are intended to be readily accessible to the general reader and student. While society depends upon science what scientists actually do remains a mystery to many people. Despite science usually being presetned dispassionately and impersonally, editor David Knight points out that "science is a human activity, and the personalities of those who practice it are integral to its process." Other volumes in this series are devoted to Galileo, Isaac Newton, Humphry Davy, Henry More, Antoine Lavoisier, and Andre-Marie Ampere. These scientists were chosen for their eminence and these biographies are intended to both illuminate the scientific process and to place the scientists in the social and intellectual context of their age.

5 comments about Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science).

1. People already interested in this book because of its topic may well be under the misapprehension that Kuhn marked a progressive moment in the history of our understanding of science. This is completely wrong, says Fuller. If anything, Kuhn legitimized the idea that science should be subject to one dominant paradigm, excluding all alternatives. From that standpoint, it's easy to see why he testified for the intelligent design people since Darwinism is a closed shop in biology -- and isn't even treated as falsifiable (which is Popper's point). Make no mistake: This book isn't a simple Dummy's Guide to Kuhn and Popper like some of the other books mentioned by the commentators here. No, it's a thinly disguised polemic against the state of science today -- and it succeeds very well in that conscious-raising exercise.



2. Polemics are fun, and this one is no exception. Fuller is an excellent, energetic writer, and he seems to have read everything. If the result is more sizzle than steak, it's still a very interesting view of the divergence between two of the giants of 20th-century philosophy of science. Recommended.
   
   Karl Popper is about my favorite modern philosopher. His view of what science should be like, and the kind of liberating cultural role it should play, is inspiring. Thomas Kuhn, on the other hand, provided a very different, and much less exhilarating, picture of how science does, in fact, operate. In my experience, Kuhn's description is largely accurate, something Popper himself did not deny. If that is so, then this "debate" is between a normative theorist of how science should function (Popper) and an observer/analyst of how science does function (Kuhn). In a debate like that, the queston of "Who's right?" is not destined to lead much of anywhere.
   
   Fuller is critical of Kuhn for being a repesentative of, or even an apologist for, establishment "big science" that tends to operate beyond democratic political controls; Fuller's sympathies are all with Popper's refusal to countenance orthodoxies or establishments of any kind, with science properly serving as an integral part of and support for the rational and critical Open Society. As much as I would like Popperian ideals to guide scientific practice, Fuller's attack on Kuhn seems to me a case of killing the messenger for delivering an unwelcome message about how science actually goes about its business. Science is like it is for reasons that have nothing to do with Thomas Kuhn, and it would be this way even if Kuhn had never been born.
   
   If the problem is the gap between Kuhnian reality and Popperian ideal, then the important question is how to get from the one to the other. Fuller's suggestions about that are pathetically weak. For example, he notes that "Paul Feyerabend advocated the devolution of science funding from nation-states to local communities as the surest way to increase science's capacity for good and lower its capacity for evil." When Fuller refers to the voicing of this fantasy as a "public intervention by a philosopher of science," you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Even if you accept Fuller's ideological commitments, he fails to describe any credible scenario by which modern science, with its vast funding requirements, its national security role, and its industrial entanglements, could conceivably be transformed into the kind of enterprise that he, and Popper, would approve of.



3. Steven Fuller's Kuhn versus Popper is a short work published by Icon Books. Fuller is a sociology professor at the University of Warwick in Great Britain.
   
   Fuller uses the contrasting views of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn as an avenue to discuss broad social and political implications of modern approaches to science. Although I think that the differences between these two thinkers can be overstated (i.e. Kuhn can be seen as a realist and Popper an idealist), it could nonetheless be an interesting approach in the hands of a capable writer. Unfortunately Fuller is not such a writer.
   
   I think Fuller may have some interesting, if unconventional, thoughts in regard to how scientists should interact with broader society, however, they are lost in this self-righteous rant. His comments are rambling, blustering and totally unreferenced. It is evident that Fuller has many axes to grind; he rails against Kuhn, philosophers in general, American academics, etc. His rant against philosophers as being failed scientists supporting failed ideas is particularly ironic coming from a sociologist.
   
   Overall, it is a true stinker- angry and incoherent. If this is indicative of the quality of books published by Icon, I would advise readers to steer clear of them. This text came to me by way of the "bargain bin" and it has left me by way of another "bin".



4. Fuller's "Kuhn vs. Popper" tells of the authoritarian Kuhn and the libertarian Popper, and their separate ideals of science indicated below:
   
   (1) Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Science, related science to the fallibility of scientists, and this made science into a progression of phase changes (Kuhn's paradigm transitions). Science could not be separated from either scientist or from history. The ruling paradigm was an opiate, a habitual application of the one induction that gave its support to an authoritarian class; breaking the paradigm required something special.
   
   (2) Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery departed significantly from Kuhn's view. Popper was a deductivist, and he wanted to bring scientific theories to the test of falsification, mere verification of the ever-go-lucky induction would not do. Popper's deduction was meant to eliminate induction by refutation, bringing science closer to an ideal that is independent of the fallibility of scientists. Popper wanted to liberate science from the dictates of the ruling paradigm.
   
   Fuller (page 31) writes: "While neither Kuhn nor Popper would care to deny that a specific paradigm may dominate the understanding of a particular slice of reality at a particular time, they differ over whether it should be treated as a source of stability (Kuhn) or a problem to be overcome (Popper)."
   
   Fuller's book in interesting (worth four stars) because of the contrast made between Kuhn and Popper found in the first half of the book. The confusion comes later, but Fuller (page viii) shows little affection for Kuhn from the get-go, and writes: "The more I have tired to make sense of Kuhn's words and deeds, the more I have come to regard him as an intellectual coward who benefitted from his elite institutional status in what remains the world's dominant society." Fuller tells us that Kuhn won the class struggle, and Fuller's own emotionality betrays his affection for Popper's libertarianism. From about chapter 13 on, Fuller stops comparing Kuhn and Popper directly, and Theodor Adorno and Martin Heidegger are noted. Fuller's views become more political as the reader approaches the end of the book.
   
   Politics can only be confusing. Despite Heidegger's Nazi past, despite the cold war and the Vietnam war, Fuller fails to discredit Kuhn's privileged professional life. Fuller's criticism of Kuhn's silence on moral issues goes nowhere, in my view. My impressions aside, Fuller has made a stronger case for his criticism in "Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times." Nevertheless, there is no Popperian deduction that I know of that will remove the confusion from Fuller's politics. What Fuller is doing is not deduction, rather it is an exploration of history and it is dialectical. Fuller's dialectical path to truth is closer to Kuhn's history-knows-best-approach than it is to Popper's call-for-empirical-refutation, at least in my opinion.
   
   Yet if Popper's science was so wonderful in Fuller view why then did it fail? The highly irrate Stove, in "Anything Goes", tells us why: Popper fell for Hume's inductive skepticism. Popper, like Fuller, gives to deduction a perfection that cannot be given to any logic independent of the emotions of the logician. Induction cannot be reduces by deduction, the two must stand independent yet one logic cannot eliminate the other. Therefore, there must be something important that is dialectical, something missing from Fuller's account even as Fuller relies much on dialectical logic.
   
   The confident induction and the doubting deduction as emotions are made obvious by a read of Stove, or Fuller. Popper's deduction works to break free of the overbearing induction, while Kuhn's induction works to return us to a blissful automatic polite. It can only be that deduction and induction are one in the same emotion, only coming at us from a different point of view. Schelling's transcendental idealism gives support to this view, as a sensation must come that is found breaking away from itself if only to return later to get a better look of itself. Error recognition is required for induction (as Popper demanded), but it is also needed for deduction (something Popper and Fuller forgot), and it is also needed on something that has to do with emotionality (what Charles S. Peirce calls abduction). The three levels of error recognition returns us to science again, but this cannot be a confused dialectical science that Marx would have us follow. This science would integrate both Kuhn and Popper, something that Fuller's bitterness missed.
   
   Disclosure: My agenda is declared in my profile.



5. At least two successful books have been written to elucidate modern philosophy using the dramatic device of the confrontation of two powerful minds: The Courtier and the Heretic (Gottfried Leibnitz and Benedictus de Spinoza) and Wittgenstein's Poker (Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper). Unfortunately, Kuhn vs. Popper does not rise to the level of these books. Steve Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick in England, focuses on the sociological and historical context of the major ideas of Kuhn and Popper. The political context of the evolution and application of these ideas dominates most chapters. I feel the chapters which discuss the similarities and differences between the ideas of Popper and Theodor Adorno (coauthor of The Authoritarian Personality) are the best chapters. Fortunately for the philosophy of science, Kuhn's central idea of paradigm shift and Popper's central idea of falsification have measures of validity which do not overlap and therefore cannot be compared and can only be attacked at the edges.

3 comments about The Forgotten Genius: Biography of Robert Hooke 1635-1703.

1. As a physics teacher, I had been well aware of Robert Hooke. Every year I teach Hooke's Law of elasticity to my students. Additionally, I had been aware of the importance of his book Micrographia and, since I consider myself a bit of a student on Isaac Newton, I had known something of his conflict with Newton over the Principia. However, I admit my knowledge of Hooke was sketchy. As a student of scientific history, I wanted that rectified so I turned to this book. It was certainly a rewarding experience.
   
   Without a doubt, I learned much more than I ever knew about Robert Hooke and I gained a new respect for the man. Hooke's areas of interest were wide and his curiosity unbounded. I was completely unaware of his work with Christopher Wren and his own contributions to architecture and the reconstruction of London after the Great Fire. Additionally, I came to admire his willingness to stand behind the virtues of science (as in his prescient speculations on evolution) in the face of religious prejudice. And, apart from learning about Hooke, this book gives a deeper understanding of what it was like to be a working scientist in the early years of scientific exploration. It is certainly an excellent example of scientific biography.
   
   There are a couple weaknesses with the book that kept coming back to me as I read, however. The first has to do with style; particularly, the style that I've noticed most often in British histories of science. Namely, the overabundance of information. This book is packed with detail. Much more detail than is really necessary in telling Hooke's story. Inwood often used Hooke's diary to make excellent points about the man often with respect to his day-to-day life, relationships and personalities but he also used it to excess in describing the myriad details of Hooke's work and investigations. Fortunately, I'm used to this style of writing and even enjoy it to an extent but even I found some of the lists of Hooke's doings and travels tedious going.
   
   Still, it is the second flaw I find to be much more serious. One of Inwood's main goals seems to be to rehabilitate Hooke and give him his rightful place among history's great scientists. In this, I feel Inwood failed. In England this book was published as The Man Who Knew Too Much and this seems to me to be about right. But in America we say "a jack of all trades and a master of none." Hooke never comes across to me as a genius. Extraordinarily energetic and technically brilliant, he didn't seem to me to have the kind of mind that Newton and Huygens had. Perhaps if he had focused his abilities more he would have had their kind of triumphs but I doubt it.
   
   And Inwood did nothing to dispel the image of Hooke as a bitter man who tried to claim the better work of others as his own. The repetition of Hooke's own claims to priority in his diary, letters and in the Royal Society records are probably only a fraction of the claims he made in his life and these alone are tedious. Inwood tries to make the point that the bitter man history describes could not have maintained the kind of friendships Hooke did in his life but I find that to be an argument without merit. Even the worst men have friends and Hooke was by no means a bad man. Inwood's book gives a picture of a lower class man trying throughout his life to gain the respect of the upper class and basically failing. We can sympathize with Hooke's struggles but that does not change the fact that, though often unfairly treated, many of his problems were of his own making.
   
   In the final analysis, however, this is a very worthwhile book for anyone interested in the history of science. Hooke was, in his own way, an amazing man and it is fascinating to see this revolutionary time in science through the eyes of one of its most important supporters. In Hooke we see the forerunner of every man and woman who puts their all into science and tries tirelessly to make great discoveries. He may not be at the pinnacle but he deserves his place in scientific history.



2. This book provides a great deal of information about Robert Hooke not only as a contributor to modern science, but as a person during his lifetime. The issue of Newton being an antagonistic force in Hooke's life is emphasized greatly, and helps the reader understand how much power Hooke had to exert in order to make his ideas and discoveries known.
   
   The book is enjoyable due to the fact that it does not solely focus on the science related aspect of Hooke's career. Having known little about him before I opened the book, I was surprised to find that he had a great deal of influence on structural architecture during the seventeenth century. The book provided me with a substantial amount of knowledge regarding Hooke's inventions and discoveries, as well as his personal feelings and reactions to certain people or occurrences, through the many quotations of his present throughout the reading.
   
   This book is a fantastic source for one who is interested in learning about every aspect of Hooke's life, from the contributions to science as a general subject to his contributions to architecture and his involvement in technology during his time period. Not only was I able to gain a better understanding of the scientist and inventor within Hooke, but I was also able to understand him as a person and his life as well.



3. A thoroughly readable and enjoyable book about the intellectual colleague and contemporary of Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton in 17th century London. The writing is witty and engaging and provides a vivid look at the social, scientific and physical structure of London after the Great Fire. I especially enjoyed the author's humorous descriptions of the machinations behind the scenes of the Royal Society and the often dangerous and bizarre experiments that Hooke and others would perform for the Society. A great peep into the development of many engineering, physics, astronomical chemistry and architectural discoveries.