1 comments about On Her Own Terms: Annie Montague Alexander and the Rise of Science in the American West.

1. I was unaware of Alexander until I encountered this book at the Smithsonian's gift shop. It is a well-written biography of an important figure in biology. Alexander was not merely the patron of two natural history museums at U.Cal Berkeley, she and her partner collected thousands of animal, plant, and fossil specimens for it over the course of decades.
   
   Worth reading for a portrait of turn-of-the-century collecting, science, and the role of an extraordinary woman at that time.
   
   The text does meander a bit at times in the time periods discussed in each chapter and it could use a few more maps, but it is otherwise well researched and well-written.

5 comments about Linnaeus: Nature and Nation.

1. A biography filled with wonderful detail, even though centering on Linnaeus' economic program. At times the author appears to be making fun of Linnaeus' odder ideas rather than attempting serious historical analysis, but in all a good job and an interesting argument.



2. A fascinating account of what a strange place the 18th century was. The age of confusion more than the age of reason. Who would have thought that Linnaeus had so much in common with today's new age cranks.



3. ‘Gazing at a flower by the grass-roofed cottage where he was born [...] Linnaeus was quintessentially a local man.’ (187). But as Lisbet Koerner explains, he also linked the ‘universal with the local [...] nature with nation.’ In this fascinating account, Koerner demonstrates that the father of modern taxonomy was also a political economist. Unlike Adam Smith, his interest was no so much in international trade or colonial conquest, but the substitution of imports (a cameralist program).

   Although Linnaeus had travelled in Holland, France, and Engalnd (1735-48) there were nineteen ‘first-generation’ students who undertook ‘voyages of discover’ between 1745 and 1792. Koerner asserts that their travels ‘were part of their larger strategy to create a miniature mercantile empire within a European state’ (114). Linnaeus sensed that ‘explorers fostered strategies of national improvement based on ecological diversification rather than on territoral expansion.’ (114).

   Linnaeus, it is argued was essentially a civil servant who turned his students into an efffective and efficient support staff. Chapter 3 deals with the Lapland journey. In line with economic and political priorities the area was to be colonized as a kind of Scandinavian “West Indies”. As a committed Lutheran, its is fascinating to deconstruct the theology at work in Linnaeus’s thought. Nature was a prelapsarian Paradise, but it must be exploited within each country. Accordingly, Linnaesus was concerned by the luxury and excess of products that trade supplied from the cornucopia of the New World. As this book notes, ‘He even urged Scandinavians to return to the old “Gothic foods,” such as acorns, pork, and mead.’ (95) At the same time he was keen to cultivate at home (to acclimatize) what was normally cultivated abroad. We even find him thinking, theorizing, and cultivating ‘an art to Make Mussles bring forth pearls.’ (141) He professed an an axiety that the pearl plantaions ‘could not long remain secret before our neighbours in Norway, Russia, and Siberia, who own more stores of Pearl mussels, could thus intirely triumph over us in quantity.’ (143)

   Yet as Linnaeus’s stock rose in Europe among the Romantics, at home it fell as he failed to deliver economic adavantage and superiority through import substitution. Ernst Moritz Arndt attacked Linnaeus’s cameralist projects in 1783, wondering how ‘On e was supposed to believe that Sweden suddenly had become Asia Minor and Sicily.’ (168) His enterprising schemes turned out to be ‘fantastic and chimerical’; it was left to his taxonomic system to enrich the world. Nonetheless, in light of recent global protests and persistent underdevelopment, the larger issues which the book eloquently discusses, seem to me as relevant now as then. ‘Linnaeus: Nature and Nation’ concludes by stating that it ‘memorializes a local attempt at a local modernity, a now-forgotten future of the past’ (193), but the other issue it raises is timely:

   ‘Or can native subjects, using only local means of production, build a complex and complete local economy, incorporating contemporary technologies, and functioning as a microcosm of the global economy.’ (192)




4. Linnaeus : Nature and Nation
   by Lisbet Koerner
   Reviewed by Thomas Leo Ogren, author of Allergy-Free Gardening, Ten Speed Press.
   Honestly I have mixed feelings about this book. One, I love it and really did enjoy reading it. I learned quite a bit from it too.
   But I do wish it had been written in a more reader-friendly manner. It is a good bit too scholarly for my tastes, a trifle too text-bookishly written.
   One of the important things about Linnaeus himself is that he always tried to reach the common man, tried to make his work popular and easily understood. I feel this book could have emulated some of that flavor.
   But I don't mean to be too critical by any means because I did like this book very much. There is a real wealth of research here, many things about Linnaeus here that I'd never read before. Karl Linnaeus was THE botanist--of his time, and of our own time as well. His system of binomial nomenclature, Genus species, was pretty much right on the money. He was the first to realize that plants' sexual characteristics were what largely either grouped them together or set them apart. His system is often criticized today, but to me it still makes great sense.
   Linnaeus : Nature and Nation, is not for everyone, but serious gardeners will enjoy it, as will historians, especially those with an interest in botany, horticulture, science. Well worth reading.



5. It has become axiomatic that historians of science know little about either. This revisionist treatment of the foibles of 18th century Swedish life paints poor Linnaeus as a whacko. However, he really wasn't too far removed from the contemporary members of the Royal Society of London in credulity, self promotion and ignorance and was certainly typical of Swedish Professors of that and more recent times.
   This is really a silly book first produced under the tuterage of Simon Schama and reissued from HUP. The author does not acknowledge the intellectual ferment of the time when the Enlightenment was being crushed under the heels of van Herder and by the Romantic curse (that we still enjoy as political correctness). The greatest contribution of the Linne's systematics was the "taxonomic key" that allows some order out of biology, not his fatuous attempts to make booze out of lichens or grow pineapples in Bothnia.
   I suppose other historians of "science" will someday mock Aristotle for his ignorance of DNA and not knowing how many teeth women have, but really, this is a silly book.

2 comments about R.J. Mitchell: Schooldays to Spitfire.

1. What a pleasure to read a straight forward, well compiled book about a man and a time where integrity, loyalty and modesty mattered and self aggrandizement was not considered a virtue. So different from the situation today where, honours and plaudits are heaped upon those whose only claim to fame seems to be in the making of money.



2. Where would England be today without the work of Reginald Joseph Mitchell who designed the Spitfire and Dame Houston who paid for the development of the Merlin engine when the government could not or would not do it. She was a patriot before it was cool to be one.
   
   Mitchell despite his medical condition continued to work until the end. He even designed a 4 engine bomber that looked like a big spitfire and was faster that any other at the time. Unfortunately the prototype was damaged in a German bombing raid on the factory and the government would not fund another. There is no mention of him at the R.A.F. museum in London. An unknown hero. The Spitfire and radar in the UK and the radio proximity fuse in the US changed the outcome of the war.

1 comments about Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir.

1. Muir was a naturalist, a wanderer, making his home in the wilderness throughout much of the U.S. and parts of the world. He brought the need for conservation to a consensus, not only hear but around the world. When he was a boy his family moved from Scotland and settled in Wisconsin near the Fox River, a few miles from Portage. In his early years he built a number of ingenious inventions. His schooling came from the UW Madison, where finally his academics led to geology. His main interest was the study of glaciation. He also became a gifted writer. He was complex, and somewhat of a misanthrope.
   
   Well written, Wolfe makes it interesting, especially Muir's travel exploits. She uses quotes from him and information taken from his journals. Muir was an amazing man, a rugged individualist, a natural man of the wilderness, with a passion to save the great forests from destruction. He awakened the masses with his conservation methods. He also helped initiate the National Parks, and went beyond to be charitable. He played a strong role in starting the Sierra Club, but it was nothing like the political and radical organization it is today. This is the authors' conception of Muir in the Preface: "who with all his planes and contrasts was a strongly individualized, consistent human being.......far from being a effeminate plaster saint, all sweetness and light.......he was in truth red-blooded and intensely masculine; a mystic, yet a realist with his feet on the ground; frugal in supplying his own needs, but lavishly generous to others.......".
   
   Muir was raised Christian by an overly strict father, only later to rebel. We discover Muir mixed spiritualism and naturalism. He developed a tension----a dilemma----where his philosophy of the world is actually irrational. I believe he was a true conservationist, though a bit of an anti-capitalist. I don't believe he would have accepted the environmentalism of today. I also find it interesting: Muir described the thinning out of glaciers as early as the late 19th century. I don't think government owned and run land is the answer; what starts out as a good thing ends in mismanagement, and making certain areas off limits to the populace.
   
   Wish you well
   Scott

No comments about The Green Trees Beyond: A Memoir.

4 comments about Remarkable Mathematicians: From Euler to von Neumann (The Spectrum Series).

1. Don't miss these captivating tales of the life and the times of mathematicians starting from the period of Tsar Peter the Great of Russia, and right up to recent times, at least up to and including the Cold War. Even if you aren't in math, I think you are likely to be caught up in the drama of the various lives, times, and events. The writing is fast paced and engaging, much like that of Constance Reid's books: "Hilbert", or "Courant"... Over the tumultous historical periods, it has been said that mathematicians have been more likely than others to have been uprooted in the upheavals of history, perhaps because they are concerned with theories and ideas that are more universal. But their lives are still much affected by the times and the events of history: The French Revolution(Galois, Poisson, Fourier...), the Napolionic Wars(Cauchy, Abel...), the period of Bismarck and Nationalism in Europe(Weierstrass, Cantor, Lie...), the Russian Revolution(Alexander, Kolmogorov...), the two World Wars, and the crisis period between WWI and WWII(Banach, Hadamard, Courant, Hilbert...), and the Cold War(von Neumann, Wiener...). The pictures on the cover give you a sample of the profiles in the book: G. Polya, K. Weierstrass, A. N. Kolmogorov, N. Wiener, S. Kovalevskaya, and S.-D. Poisson. Even if you won't get to meet them in person (I was a guest at George Polya's ninetieth birthday!), this book is the next best thing.



2. When reading about the great ones of mathematics, I always enjoy short biographies rather than long ones. If the biographer is required to fill a large section of a book, then they tend to cover more detail than I really care for. While I do enjoy some details about the personal life of a mathematician, anything more than just a few morsels tends to detract from their accomplishments in mathematics.
   James strikes the perfect balance in describing the lives of these great historical figures. Each biographical sketch is less than ten pages and he covers their life from birth to death. One valuable thing that he does is give their complete names, which is often omitted from biographies. In fact, despite all of my reading about the people of mathematics, there were some whose full names I had not known until I read this book.
   The emphasis is on the lives of the people, and the general concepts of the mathematics that they created, rather than the specifics. No formulas are used in the explanations. Personal and professional interactions are a large part of the life of nearly all mathematicians, and from these biographies, we learn many of the specifics of how contemporaries reacted to each other. As is always the case, the full range of human foibles are displayed as the lives of the mathematicians unfold.
   The lives of these sixty mathematicians are described in chronological order according to their birth years. Given that they all began their mathematically productive lives at different ages, this leads to some degree of overlap in both directions. Nevertheless, it is possible to easily trace the development of the major mathematical ideas as they are nurtured from early germs to towering oaks.
   Mathematicians are people who find themselves in a social and political environment that they must cope with and sometimes just survive in. In this book, you will learn about sixty of them who made a major contribution, sometimes starting from a point of privilege, and other times only after great struggle. It is well worth reading for pleasure and can also be used as a resource for a course in mathematical history.

   Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, reprinted with permission.




3. The only reason that this book doesn't get 5 stars is because of the fact that not enough emphasis is placed on the achievements of the mathematicians in terms of their mathematics.

   However, this does not take away from the fact that is is exteremely well researched, laid out and presented. We get a meaningful insight into how these geniuses (genii?) lived and that fact that they were quite ordinary people with the same levels of hardship (and in some cases even more) as the rest of us. Perhaps an improvement could be made on further mathematicians, both past and present.

   Still recommended reading.




4. This book is a collection of short biographies of notable mathematicians from Euler to von Neumann. It does a good job of explaining both a mathematicians background and the significance of their contributions to mathematics. Great to read through or as a reference to have on the shelf.

4 comments about The Meinertzhagen Mystery: The Life and Legend of a Colossal Fraud.

1. Brian Garfield is a supurb writer. It doesn't matter if he is writing fiction (Death Wish, the book behind the Charles Bronson movie), military history (The Thousand-Mile War about the part of World War II in the Aleutians), or a non-fiction book like The Meinertzhagen Mystery. His writing style is captivating and even otherwise dull subjects come alive. Any book is highly recommended.
   
   Col. Richard Meinertzhagen left a history of heroic deeds so dramatic that he was used as the model for Ian Fleming's 'James Bond.' Or at least it is so rumored. His diaries are full of stories so outrageous that you'd think they have to be made up.
   
   It turns out that most of them now appear to have been made up indeed. The difficulty is to split out what is true from what is false. And then we need look at what historians have reported as fact based on what is now seen to be false. It's enough to make you wonder about all of history.



2. Col. Richard Meinertzhagen's exploits are those of either the greatest and most daring man ever to wear a British Military Uniform, or that of the most whopping fraud to walk the earth. Excellent research and a great read.



3. Richard Meinertzhagen was a military hero, explorer, spy, friend of Israel, diarist, world renown Ornithologist and prevaricator. Unlike most people, he reveled in the lies that he told and the reactions of those he told them to. He left an 82 volume library of his 'life', much of which was wishful thinking or down right false, but like Dr.Goebbels he believed that if you tell "The Big Lie" forceful enough and long enough, people will begin to believe.
   
   Why would a man who was respected as a world class ornithologist, get himself barred from the British Museum for stealing? Was it for the notoriety? Having re-written his diaries (in some cases many times) and destroying all the previous versions, did he want to be caught after his death? Like publicity, being remembered, whether for good or bad, is still being remembered.
   
   Garfield, who admits the man was one of his heroes as a child, spends a lot of time trying to find back-up information to prove RMs tales. But the more his digs, the more his finds that it like digging a hole in the dessert, it buries you. When RM writes that he did so-and-so, Garfield is able to find that not only wasn't he involved, but that RM might not have even been anywhere in the area (much less on the same continent) when the event occurred.
   
   Ian Fleming had written that RM was the archetype for "James Bond". He could not have known how right he was in basing his fictional spy on a real-life falsified spy. The sad part is, had RM just written about his real accomplishments, his story would still be one of an outstanding personality; it just wasn't outstanding enough for him.



4. This is not so much a biography of Richard Meinertzhagen as it is an attempt to destroy his reputation. Meinertzhagen was a warrior, a famous collector of rare bird specimens, supporter of Zionism, African hunter and war hero from the First World War. Most of all he was an adventurer. He had a keen sense for history and felt sympathy for the Jews and deep hatred for Hitler.
   
   But all this has been stolen from him because of a number of allegations of impropriety. There are the stuffed birds that he is alleged to have stolen and re-labeled. There is the fact that no one recalls him being in Haifa in 1948 (although who would have?). Most of all there is the controversy over his diary and his meetings with T.E Lawrence. Meinertzhagen was sure that people would 'find out' about Lawrence and his having made things up and it seems that Meinertzhagen may have fabricated a number of diary entries including meetings with Lawrence.
   
   This book attacks Meinertzhagen even for the exploits that are widely known to have been his most brave and audacious. He once dropped fake plans behind Turkish lines in order to deceive them in the battles for Beersheba and Gaza in 1917. He is attacked here for having not come up with the original idea. But the proof for this is that other people claimed to have had the same idea. But why believe their claims and not Meinertzhagen's?
   
   Most of the rumors and stories about Meinertzhagen cannot be proved and neither can most of the allegations. For those such as T.E Lawrence the legend has remained, why there is so much interest in dismantling the reputation of a minor player such as Meinertzhagen is not clear, if anything he deserves more mention in history books on the Middle East, not less. The best place to start is to read his diary, Middle East Diary, 1917-1956 and then Warrior: The Legend Of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen.
   
   Seth J. Frantzman

2 comments about Pocahontas.

1. We've been taking this book out the library for years. We finally bought it. As with all of the books by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'aulaire, the illustrations are beautiful, the stories full of information and the facts true. They are very easy to read but still not wishy-washy. We all learn something everytime we read them. You want to read them over and over. Our children read these for fun. Wonderful.



2. I think this was an okay book for kids. It was funny when the animals played around and it was sad when the indians took john smith away.

1 comments about Rider of the Pale Horse: A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond.

1. McAllister Hull had a distinguished career as a nuclear physicist and university administrator but in the fall of 1944 he arrived at Los Alamos to work as an explosives technician. His story of how that happened gives a view of the Manhattan project different from the well told histories of the eminent scientists and military leaders. Hull knew who Oppenheimer and Groves were but his role was a niche producing critical chemical explosive components at the more isolated S-site. For that matter he knew Klaus Fuchs with out any idea of the Soviet connection.
   
   That Hull was a scientist to the depths of his psyche is apparent when he describes his thoughts while careening down a hill driving a truck with failed breaks: "I knew that if even a slight misalignment occurred, the truck would translate its forward momentum into a rotation about an axis across the road."
   
   The book is tantalizing in its brevity as when he alludes to Edward Teller during the Oppenheimer hearings: "He helped a petty man, Lewis Strauss, to harass a man better than either of them." The memoir is a quick summary by someone who had a view of the birth of atomic weaponry from the nuts and bolts up through a thorough comprehension of the underlying theory. It adds to the understanding of how the great wealth of technical talent was put together in the remote New Mexican country side and managed to achieve the unimaginable.
   
   Illustrations by the author's son round out the mid-century feel of the narrative and the bibliography has Hull's comments on nine of the more important accounts of the development of atomic and hydrogen bombs.

5 comments about My Family and Other Animals.

1. My Family and Other Animals is a bare-bones story in terms of plot. The Durrell family goes to Corfu, lives through what could be termed as a soap opera, and leaves. It's humourous, but not particularly challenging.

   However, the older Gerald Durrell utilises vivid vocabulary over and over when describing the setting and people of Corfu. Fifteen-letter words that paint a crystalline picture are used frequently, relieving the never-ending roller coaster that is the life of the Durrells.

   Overall, this is a highly entertaining book that will keep you engaged for the week or so that you will spend reading it every spare second you have.




2. In todays day and age of Steve Erwin and Jeff Corbin who go around hunting for animals, it is easy to forget where it all started. With people like Gerald, and the London zoo. In this book, he collects animals, deals with his demented siblings and his long suffering mother who has to raise four kids and fend off the advances of a really persistent Colonel who gets increasingly vulgar and `grabby' when he drinks. This is a rare story that combines a humorous story with humorous writing and I once caused passengers in a flight to turn around and give me strange looks, so hard was I laughing.



3. Gerald Durrell was not only a naturalist and a gifted writer about his beloved animals, but a loving brother and son whose descriptions of his family and their foibles will keep you laughing all the way through. This is one of those books which I've reread so many times I've lost count, and which I've given to many friends who needed cheering up. Always works, too!



4. This book is absolutely, brilliantly funny. The wit and unique characterizations are woven with great descriptions of the animals and plants of Corfu. That Durrell can hold the attention of readers who have no interest in biology simply demonstrates what a fine work this is. Gerald's depiction of a larger-than-life expatriate family on a larger-than-life Greek island is a tremendous celebration of life. The variety of different Greek characters parading through this book rivals the variety of Corfu's flora and fauna. Absolute great read!



5. I must say this is one of the most light-hearted, hilarious books I have ever read. The story is of a world that one really may not get to see these days.. Go ahead and buy it..