Basic Sciences Books

<> Why? The reason is that western women prefer circumsized males, though they would never admit that this was the reason. Rather they always cite questionable and dated research indicating medical benifits. This is a misandrist act of mutilation done for the vain preference of mothers.

This is not an academic history text or a manual for parents who are trying to decide whether to circumcise their infant sons. But it will probably be of interest to both groups; after all, the list of books covering male circumcision is quite a short one, and Gollaher's book is a fascinating read.

David Gollaher provides a very readable cultural history of the practice of circumcision for the general public, explaining the orgins and prevalence of this custom in modern American medical practice. He succeeds in his goal of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. The strange is made familiar as Gollaher discusses the role that circumcision has played in a wide variety of cultures from aboriginal cultures to Judaism to Islam. And the familiar becomes more and more strange as Gollaher reviews the forces that caused circumcision to become adopted into the medical community in America. The more one reads about what the foreskin is and does, the odder it seems that this is such a routine procedure.

I'd recommend this to anyone interested in a fairly balanced historical account of circumcision and the forces that have made it such an entrenched practice in the West.

David Gollaher has delivered an effective synopsis of the history of circumcision, the first of which has been published since the late nineteenth century. Much has happened in the last 100 years. It is unclear what motivated Gollaher, a historian with his doctorate in history from Harvard University, but his conclusions are dead on: if circumcision were a new medical procedure it would never garner favor or approval. Other than a few minor factual errors, his account is accurate. By giving a factual representation of the actions of circumcision's current adovates, he portrays these individuals in a very negative way. For this reason, those who favor male circumcision will find his book unacceptably accurate. I felt the book barely scratched the surface of circumcision's rich history. Each chapter left me wanting more information. I also expected more historical analysis. Rather than just recounting the historical facts Gollaher, with the benefit of his expensive education, should have provided the reader with an understanding of how the facts fit into a historical context. The facts are interesting, but what do they mean? The book, perhaps to assure a certain number of sales, is aimed at the general public, who will not doubt find the topic and treatment of it interesting. For those interested in circumcision on an academic or activist level, the book does not offer much new information. Still, it is reassuring that a mainstream American publisher had the courage to put an accurate portrayal of circumcision in print.

You might think that the most common surgery in the United States would also be the least controversial-an operation whose medical necessity and benefits have proved beyond question. And you would be wrong. As this fascinating history of that procedure makes clear, circumcision is rooted not in medical science, but in the deepest recesses of religion and culture.

Circumcision is performed on more than one million infant and prepubescent boys around the world every year. In America, even though a growing number of physicians dispute its benefits, circumcision remains the most frequently performed elective surgical procedure. In 1995, 64.1% of US male newborns were circumcised-yet there is no proven medical benefit to this practice on normal infants. This book, by medical historian David L. Gollahar presents a fascinating history of this controversial practice and why it has persisted over time through vastly different social contexts.

As this book shows, the removal of genital foreskin has a long and varied history: from the extraordinarily painful initiation rite of the ancient Egyptians, through the Hebrew purification ritual, through its use by nineteen-century doctors as prevention for ailments including bedwetting, paralysis, syphilis, and epilepsy, to the present persistence of female circumcision in African cultures. Gollaher also addresses the current controversy over the procedure's continuance, and those opposing routine circumcision will find support here.

Gollaher concludes that "if male circumcision were confined to developing nations," similar to the status of female circumcision, "it would by now have emerged as an international cause célèbre."

David L. Gollaher (1949- ) is President and CEO of the California Healthcare Institute, a statewide public policy research and advocacy institute. He holds a PhD in History from Harvard and has served on the facilities of San Diego State University's Graduate School of Public Health and the University of California, San Diego.

I did not find this book to very relevant when trying to decide on circumcision for our son. Bottom line is that it is a preference issue and not black and white. I'm sure the book is excellent in it's scholarship, but did not help me sort through the RELEVANT, CURRENT reasons pro and against circumsizing.

There is lots of information about primitive circumcision rituals in many other countries and much comparison with female circumcision (?). There is also alot of information about wierd groups that are trying to restore men's foreskin.

I guess it is good to know some about the history of circumcusion and why we are doing it today.....but, I really wanted more current, relevant reasons not to circumsize.

I just pasted my math test. Partially because of this book however not only because of this book.

If you want to teach a second grader some basic math in half a year, this is a right book. We don't need three to five years to teach basic math. So skip the lengthy (and maybe even distracting) textbooks. Use this concise book as a guideline. This is achievable for bright kids. Maybe this is an unconventioal use of the book.

This book is excellent, full of good examples for review and also as a good reference for basic math concepts. It is much better than the similarly entitled book from Master Math.

As so often happens, if not used,... forgotten!! This book refreshed my memory of high school basic math and Pre-Algebra. As I am now in an industry that utilizes math on a day by day, project by project basis, I've found this book to instrumental in my ability to succeed in my work.

This book is awesome. I had to take a standardized test to graduate from University. The book covers all of those little math skills and tricks that you haven't seen since middle school. I passed with flying colors. If you're not a math whiz like me, please buy this. It makes life and tests much easier.

"Creation Regained:Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview" is not your typical worldview book. It comes at this issue from a particularly Reformational angle. What does that mean? He grounds his thesis in the way of looking at the world rediscovered during the Protestant Reformation: creation, fall, and redemption. When we consider life everything is considered from this biblical viewpoint. What Wolters presets is a great introduction to three points that can radically change the way we think and live. If you are looking for a worldview book that is heavy on applicable, biblical content rather than a rant about how the world is going to hell in a hand-basket this it the book for you.

The author uses scripture and examples to make the case for looking at creation from a reformational perspective to guide Christians in daily living.
The book is easy to understand, and presented in a logical format.
This book would be an excellent resource for small group study in a local church.

Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (143 pp & first published in 85') is a great intro to worldview studies, and in particular Neo-Calvinism (Kuyper et al). It is a great read. I would recommend reading this one, then beelinin' it to Pearcey's 'Total Truth.' Most Christians are ignorant of the fact that Scripture calls us to commitment to Christ in more aspects than our private faith. Christ's Lordship is much more comprehensive than your thirty minutes before work. As Kuyper famously put it, there is not a square inch of planet Earth over which Christ does not say, Mine! This has implications for how we live our life, how we engage culture, how we work, and how we think about virtually everything.
----Here are the contents:
I. What is a Worldview
II. Creation
III. Fall
IV. Redemption
V. Discerning Structure and Direction
Conclusion
Post-Script: Worldview between Story and Mission
----Wolters lays out the basic biblical worldview, examining creation, fall, and redemption. In the chapter on Redemption, there is a section called 'Salvation as Restoration' which is worth the price of the book! Christ comes as the Last Adam to restore our humanity and return us to the original state, the way it was supposed to be. The new humanity is to be about renewal. We are to renew and reform all aspects of life in obedience to Christ (societal, cultural, political, and personal). In chapter 5, Wolters analyzes the following themes as test cases on how to apply our worldview: aggression, spiritual gits, sexuality, and dance.
----The Post-Script was written by Michael Goheen, and was excellent. It was basically a chapter on Biblical Theology and Mission, following the missional ecclesiology of Newbigin. We are in the era of witness, between the two comings. In the overlapping of the ages, the new humanity is to be about being Christ's ambassadors. In many ways, this chapter is his book, 'The Drama of Scripture,' chopped down to 24 pages. I highly recommend this one to all believers.

I started reading Abraham Kuyper's "Lectures on Calvinism", but for some reason I purchased this book thinking I needed a primer first, even though I was enjoying Kuyper and finding him lucid and stimulating. Wolters does a decent job of laying out the fundamentals of a Reformed view of culture and the sacred/secular distinction (or lack thereof), but those already formally acquainted with this line of thinking from reading Francis Schaeffer, Hans Rookmaker,or any other Neo-Calvinst literature and desire something a bit more rigorous, should just dive right into Kuyper's "Lectures"; this purchase is superfluous except for those almost totally uninitiated with the Reformed worldview, or for the already-Reformed layman seeking to give better articulation to presently held beliefs.

This is a gem of a book. First published in 1985, it has been reissued several times since then, with the newest edition appearing in 2005.

The gist of the book can be stated this way: there are two major themes in biblical theology - creation and redemption. Unfortunately many believers today only consider the latter. Sometimes they have reduced Christianity to just one thing: getting souls into heaven. Now that of course is vital.

But Wolters reminds us that this is not the entire gospel. Redemption is important, but so too is creation. Recognising that one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth should remind us that this world is not just secondary to God's purposes. In fact the two-fold nature of the biblical worldview is really a threefold one: creation, fall/redemption, and re-creation.

God is not finished with this world, and has great plans for it. Indeed, argues Wolters, we need to have a more wholistic view of what biblical redemption in fact entails. He says that "the redemption in Jesus Christ means the restoration of an original good creation. . . . In other words, redemption is re-creation".

Everything that God created - be it social, relational, cultural or personal - is part of God's good creation and is meant to be redeemed, to be taken into the Lordship of Christ.

As Wolters says, "everything is creational". That is, every aspect of natural life is part of God's created order. As we are commanded in the so-called dominion mandate of Gen. 1: 27-31, we are to tend God's creation; we are to be his stewards on planet earth. "Almighty God has withdrawn from the work of creation," says Wolters, but "he has put an image of himself on the earth with a mandate to continue".

He explains, "Mankind, as God's representatives on earth, carry on where God left off". And our task is no less than the development of civilisation, and all which that entails. Thus a cultural order is to be developed and sustained by God's people. And a political order. And an economic order. And a social order, and so on. All these are aspects of the civilisation which God intended mankind to develop and propagate.

Thus in one sense there is to be no sacred-secular dichotomy. This whole world is God's world. Satan has sought to claim it as his own, but it is not. It does not belong to him. It belongs to God, and doubly so: by creation and by redemption. Again, the goal of the church is not just to get disembodied souls into some cloudy-like heaven, but to get whole embodied people into a new earth in the future, and remake them on this earth now.

So we are partakers with God in the creation/recreation theme that pervades all of Scripture. "Creation is not something that, once made, remains a static quantity," says Wolters. "There is ... an unfolding of creation. This takes place through the task that people have been given of bringing to fruition the possibilities of development implicit in the work of God's hands".

In other words, "We are called to participate in the ongoing creational work of God, to be God's helper in executing to the end the blueprint for his masterpiece". Seen in this light, the Christian life is far more than what happens on a Sunday morning, or in daily devotionals, or in "witnessing:. It takes on the whole of life.

Thus writing a novel, tending a garden, or singing in a choir can all be parts of God's creational and redemptive work. Doing the best job you can in a factory can be just as important as becoming an overseas missionary. As Paul reminds us, whatever we do, we should do all for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).

What Wolters wants to remind us is that "human history and the unfolding of culture and society are integral to creation and its development". They are "not outside God's plan for the cosmos, despite the sinful aberrations".

Wolters argues that we must take sin and its effects seriously, but we must remember that the beauty and purposes of God's creation are not totally eradicated by sin. Believers are called to redeem the created order, bringing it under the Lordship of Christ. That means every area, not just what we consider to be "spiritual".

The view being put forth by Wolters (a view which has always been part of the Reformed biblical worldview) helps us to think outside of the box, and see our calling and mission as much larger than how we tend to view them. Wolters rightly says, "The scope of redemption is as great as that of the fall; it embraces creation as a whole".

Wolters deserves much credit for reminding us of these foundational truths that have in many ways been lost in much of the church.

I was given this book as a gift for my birthday by a friend of mine who said that it was one of the weirdest books that he has ever read. He was right. The story of Elmer McCurdy is definitely a weird and truly American one. This should make a great Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie, although it would be difficult to pull off the task of having the main character be a corpse for 70%-75% of the movie. Reading about how poor Elmer failed in his crimes made me LOL as the 21st Century cliche goes and reading about his strange afterlife and how he was exploited by generations of hucksters was interesting to say the least. Even though Elmer (or his corpse) had a minor part, it was facinating to read about the Bunion Derby, the only cross-country foot race. All in all, a very good read.

What a crazy mixed up pile of stuff! I like Westerns,Ripley's Believe it or Not!,truth is stranger than fiction stuff,unusual characters,history,oddities,greatly miss the old freak shows that travelled with the carnivals,real life outlaws,and you name it.History is full of this stuff and to me much more fun to delve into than fiction.While the author didn't seem to come up with too much on old Elmer;probably because his short and non-illustrious produced very little;he sure found enough to spin around what he did have to create a good interresting read.I believe the period after the Civil War until the start of the 2WW produced some of the most interresting characters and times in American history.That was all before the do gooders, politically correct,boring and otherwise anal-retentive got everything under control.But then again, they probably prefer reading about some corporate business scam to the gangster days of Capone and all. Since this was the first thing I've read by the author I'll be looking to find something else from him.From what he did with this story I am sure he'll be giving us some more good stuff in the future.

Poor Elmer! This is one of the most fascinating books I have read in a long time. If you are interested in the history of the amusement business; old west; mummies; trains; outlaws;
this book is a must have! This book is easy to read and has quite a lot of photograhs.

Svenvold's book adds little, if anything, to the body of facts surrounding McCurdy's brief criminal career, and his much-longer postmortem career as a sideshow attraction. Early on in the book, the writer admits this.
Nevertheless, it is entertaining reading, as Svenvold retraces McCurdy's pre- and post-mortem travels in the manner of a New Journalist.
His reportage about the world of the carny and sideshow makes the book worth reading, but if you are seeking anything NEW about McCurdy, this is not the place to find it. Some readers may find Svenvold's writing a bit too self-conscious, and indeed there are passages in which it appears that Mark Svenvold, not Elmer McCurdy, is the subject of the book.
Buy it anyway.

It's not often that one sees a biography written in such a literate, even poetic manner. Mr. Svenvold has taken the tale of the hapless outlaw, Elmer McCurdy, in a new and interesting direction: rather than reporting his life and times (and ignominious post-mortem "career") in a cut-and-dried manner, Mr. Svenvold has woven an incisive, at times deadpan-hilarious commentary on the fading Wild West, the rise of sideshows and exploitation flicks, theme tourism and other illustrations of just how low the entertainment taste of the American public can go. Notwithstanding Mr. Svenvold's concerns that he was just another in the long line of the day-glow corpse's "exploiters," he has written the equivalent of a decent burial for poor dead Elmer. Highly recommended.

Phenomenal! McDougall covers the full breadth of the most influential factors, giving insight to the obvious, and depth to the obscure but important forces moving the space age forward.

This book is fantastic. The book studies, in depth, the the reasons and processes that led to and the decisions that were made during that time. This author does a terrific job of holding the readers attention while explaining the detailed history. I highly recommend this book to anyone.

I purchased this book when it first came out 20 years ago. At the time, it was very controversial. Author McDougall suggested that President Eisenhower actually wanted the Soviet Union to be the first to launch an earth satellite because that would establish the legal principle of "freedom of space." This principle was vital for the interests of the United States, which at the time was moving full speed ahead to develop reconnaissance satellites. Allowing the Soviets to go first would solidify the idea that one nation's satellites could freely pass through the skies of another nation. If the Soviets established such a principle, they would be unlikely to protest when OUR satellites began to overfly their territory. As later books based on newly declassified sources have confirmed, McDougall's analysis of Eisenhower's motives turned out to be right on target. The only thing the President underestimated was the intensity of the American public's reaction to the Soviet's "Sputnik I." Detailed and comprehensive, this book remains one of the best single-volume histories of the early years of the Space Age.

Being a so-called 'Child of Apollo.' I read this book expecting few new insights to the space program's formulative period. Gee, was I ever wrong! This book is filled with nuggests of historic information that provides the reader with greater context and historic analysis than any other book on the topic I have yet to read. Any student of history, political science, or space advocate should read this book carefully to be well-grounded in the Apollo Era. McDougall did an outstanding job in relating to the reader details of the context of the American and Soviet space programs throughout the 50's and 60's. Knowledge of the space age would be totally incomplete without having read this book! I highly recommend it. It is no wonder that this book won McDougall the 1986 Pulitzer Prize.

The Cold War between the US and USSR was fought on multiple fronts. One of the most exciting was the Space Race; first to space, first man in space, first woman in space, and of course, the race to the moon. This is the subject of this book. Unlike other books on the similar topic, the emphasis here is on the internal politics within each nation that occurred as a result of this competition. Due to the lack of availability of data from the USSR, this book focuses on the US side, and examines the politics of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and later administrations.

The book examines the various facets of the US space program, touching on subjects such as the formation of NASA, the space shuttle program, the battle between those who wanted to spend money on NASA and those who did not, the doling out of pork-barrel projects as part of funding for NASA, and the dichotomy between military and civilian control and influence. Overall, a great story book and a great textbook for use in history classes.

This is an introduction into investigating the "Neanderthal". The prologue is a speculative story of the final days of the last family. Their appearance as presented is complete conjecture. The book contains a selection of fossils, tools and jewelry photos with detailed descriptions of each. Tattersall lists a few apologetic references for further reading. Obviously a fascinating subject, but fleeting, why?

Were they oddities in the rise to humans? Were they just old men as the bible tells us, or possibly early humans with rickets?--please check out the book "Buried Alive". They had the same brain capacity as us. He donates a brief chapter on evolution; this could have been left out, instead Ian should have focused on the hard science of the so called "Neanderthal" man. The chapter on "Before the Neanderthals" is very much in doubt and some has been proven false, such as: Australopithecus, "Java Man", and "Peking Man". A lot of soft science; light weight, even for evolutionists.

Wish you well
Scott

This book was my entry into current theory on neanderthal man and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very well written, it covered most if not all of my basic questions. The author's biases are clear yet he is seemingly forthwright about opposing views. The language he uses betrays the complexities of conjecture and theory behind many finds, rather than simply laying things out as 'fact'. Many excellent photographs, paintings, etc...

Tattersall's book is a must have. It covers all the basics in a compelling style and with particular focus on site locations. The photos and illustrations are as good as those of any "coffee table" book. It is too light on some particular aspects concerning extinction, e.g. hybridization, pelvic ring size, birth/death ratios, and exotic disease resistance, but is superior in descriptions of Neanderthal morphology and environment.

No, this is not an unauthorized biography of my mother-in-law, or a memoir of my own tattersalled career. It's a coffee table book, really - large format with full page polychromatic photos of fractured crania, gap-toothed jaw bones, and Chatelperronian stone scrapers. It would be a perfect solstice present for your Uncle Gottlieb, who believes that the world was created 6,000 years ago, or your Cousin Euphemisia, who maintains that evolution took place, but under guidance.

Enough smart-alecking! The photographs of most of the known Neanderthal fossil skulls and of other skeletal fossils of Homo neanderthalis are fascinating, and well worth the price of the book. Included also are pictures of tools and other evidence of Neaderthal technology, plus graphs of climate change and maps of fossil sites in Europe and the Near East. The text by Ian Tattersall, one of the foremost expounders of human evolution to the general public, is intended to be comprehensible and entertaining for anyone who can read at all. A list of chapter titles will give you a pretty good idea of the book's contents:

1 - Who were the Neanderthals?
2 - How Evolution works
3 - Fossils, Dates, and Tools
4 - Before the Neanderthals
5 - Discovery and Interpretation of the Neanderthals
6 - The Neanderthals' World
7 - Evolution of the Neanderthals
8 - Neanderthal Lifestyles
9 - The Origin of Modern Humans
10- The Last Neanderthal

Chapter 2 - How Evolution Works - presents some ideas about evolutionary divergence and speciation which may be new to readers who learned their science decades ago, especially the important concept of allopatric evolution. Tattersall does a fine job of keeping such challenging vocabulary to a minimum and of making concepts both clear and convincing. Readers who want more sophisticated marshalling of evidence and more elaborate ramification of current neo-Darwinian evolutionary theories should look to one of Tattersall's other books. I would urge you also to examine Sean Carroll's excellent books outlining the concept of evo-devo (evolutionary development), which unites the evidence of fossils with genetic discoveries.

Caveat lector: In this field of knowledge of ancient processes, the more recent the book the better!

I'm not a reader who usually pays too much attention to photos and illustrations, but I could recommend "The Last Neanderthal" on that basis alone. There are nearly 150 of them in this 200-page book, some covering an entire page in my oversized edition. Almost all of them are superb. The illustrations are mostly of various fossilized bones and reconstructions. They are not haphazardly thrown throughout the book or tightly grouped in the middle, but introduced when appropriate for the text.

Ian Tattersall's set-up of what is known about Neanderthals is masterful. Most of the first third of the book is about evolution, how fossilization works, and a brief description about what is known of the precursors to both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. Tattersall is clearly at home with this material and confident in his presentation of it. He takes his time in this area - even though it has little to directly do with the topic of his book - because one cannot understand Neanderthals unless one has some understanding of other pre-modern humans and the scientific techniques used to understand them.

The set-up is not wasted on a flat ending. When Tattersall finally gets to the Neanderthals, he maintains a high level of interest for the reader by first showing how the scholarly views on Neanderthals have changed so much over the last hundred-fifty years (much more fascinating than it sounds) and then by moving into areas about its evolution and what is known about its lifestyle. He appears to be a fair partisan, pointing out evidence both for and against different sides of the numerous controversial topics on Neanderthals.

Yes, I think you can teach the theory of computation from this book. And you can learn it from this book. Some of the material isn't all that recent, but much of it doesn't need to be.

35 years ago, if one were teaching a course on the theory of computation, I'd have recommended Minsky's book (it came out in 1967). That was a great text. Nowadays, there are numerous choices. But one could still use books that originally came out well before Feynman's notes, such as Lewis & Papadimitriou or Hopcroft, Motwani, and Ullman.

The question boils down to the quality of what is in the book, as well as what material it has that other books do not, and what material it is missing that most other texts have.

This book is quite readable and preserves much of Feynman's teaching style. So let's look at what it is missing. First, it doesn't talk much about real neurons. Of course, even Minsky doesn't dwell much on that, and other computation books avoid that topic too. But now, there's a more serious omission. Feynman spends something like two pages on grammars! If you were using Lewis and Papadimitriou (first edition) there would be a chapter of over 70 pages on context-free languages alone. As a teacher or a student, would you really want to miss all that?

No, as a student, you would have to read up on all that material elsewhere. And as a teacher, you would have to use another book or write your own notes. That material is too much a part of most required curricula.

But that doesn't take away from the value of the book when it comes to the rest of the material. And the final four chapters, which discuss coding and information theory, reversible computation and the thermodynamics of computing, quantum mechanical computers, and some physical aspects of computation, are all useful material that you often won't see in other computation texts.

As a student, I'd read the book. As a teacher, I'd recommend it to my students. But as either, I wouldn't expect to use it as the only textbook.

This series of lectures, Like Feynmans physics lectures, start from the very beginning and proceed quickly. Read each chapter several times before moving on to the next.

This is not a quasi coffee table "physics for poets" text. Feyman assumes you will actually work out the problems he presents, follow the logical flow of how a computer circuit works, etc.

However, if you do work through each chapter, the insights are astounding. The subject matter of this books touches on information theory (Shannon et al), quantum computing, infophysics, etc. If you have a passing interest in these subjects, read this book. It will make all of these subjects much more clear.

There is an amazing amount of material in this small volume, and it is presented in Feynman's
very clear style. It covers to some depth many of the topics of a computer science education,
but also includes a lot of material from physics and engineering related to how semiconductor
chips of the early eightys operate.

The early chapters explain how a computer does a few simple operations, and how longer and longer
sequences of simple operations accomplish more complex tasks. Feynman continues with a look at
the details of the operations, as implemented in gates, decoders, flip flops, and other bits of
hardware. He continues with several topics from computer science, such as finite state machines,
Turing machines, computability, and a little bit about computer languages. Then he jumps back to
bits and the representation of information, including data compression, error detection and error
correction.

The last sections deal with physics, such as the thermodynamics of computation, and quantum mechanics
of computation.

I suspect most readers will find some sections much more interesting than others. Some places I
wished there was a way to give six or seven stars. A few times I wondered if I should skim the
remainder of the chapter or just skip it entirely. I read on and found a section I was glad I
had not missed.

Of course, 'brilliant' is what you'd expect from Feynman. These lectures, originally presented in 1983-6, capture a number of the most fundamental, esoteric concepts in computing. Since Feynman is doing the explaining, however, the ideas come across clear and strong.

Chapter 3, on the basic theory of computation, introduces not only the Turing machine, but also the basic idea of what things can and can not possibly be computed and why. He also explains the "universal" machine, and the meaning of universality that mathematically steps up from any one machine to all machines. The next chapters discuss coding theory. That has body of knowledge has since become pervasive in our every-day lives, even if it's never visible. After that two chapters present the physical limits to computation, and how computation can approach those limits using quantum mechanics.

This includes the superfically odd idea of reversible computation. I say odd because, for example, knowing that two numbers add up to six doesn't tell you whether the two were five and one, zero and six, or some other combination. You normally can't run addition backwards from the sum to the summands, so standard addition is said to be irreversible. Reversibility gives amazing properties to a system, however, and things like the Toffoli gates show how it can be implemented.

The only disappointments in this book come from the very beginning and very end. The beginning describes what a computer is, as if the reader had never heard of computers before. I guess that basic level is still needed, but is no longer needed at the college level. The very end describes silicon technology, as it was known in the early 1980s. Despite some fascinating bits of device physics and some heavy editing, that discussion has aged with the rapidity you'd expect from Moore's law. And in a few places, the older discussions of biological systems have aged poorly.

Still, his explorations of the physical limits to computation as just as fresh and salient as ever. I recommend this to anyone with a beginner's interest in the foundations of coding, computing, and quantum computation.

//wiredweird

We physicists want a readable book on computability, degrees of computational complexity, and the like. Feynman would have been the writer to provide us with that. We're fortunate to have anything at all of what Feynman thought about the subject, but this book (taken from Feynman's rough lecture notes) does not do the job. E.g., in the first chapter we're presented with a description of RPF's joy in discovery and corresponding philosophy of how to understand anything: don't read about it, just work it out by yourself in umpteen different ways (nothing new about Feynman there!), but the examples provided of how Feynman actullally worked it out can be compared with some of Arnol'd's presentations of how he worked out mechanics problems in his text on Classical Mechanics (state the problem, then state the final result). So we still need a SYSTEMATIC 'written-for physicists' text on computability. Neverthless, we can be grateful to Hey and Allen for putting together these stimulating Feynman fragments for us, especially since they stem from his last days of life as a physicist.

By the way, Feynman certainly would not have agreed with S. Weinberg's extreme reductionist philisophy that asserts that once we've understood quantum theory and quarks then we've understood physics/nature, that 'the rest is mere detail'. On the other hand, he surely would have horselaughed the holists who proclaim that reductionism is dead, that physics will become more like 'poetry'. The lie in the latter nonsense is exposed by the entire field of genetics and cell biology, which is where the 'real' complexity in nature is to be found. Every physics student should be required to take a good class in molecular biolgy these days, a subject that's a lot more important and a lot more interesting than string theory (which, as Feynman more or less said, has degenerated into mere philosophy in the absence of experiments to test the ideas) .

Much as our dreams seem to give us a brief glimpse into our subconscious, The Mind at Night gives the reader a glimpse into the science of dreaming. From psychology to neurophysiology, the book chronicles the various movements of dream research and the numerous fields of science involved with brain function in the past 50 years or so. There seems to be many conflicts, many still not completely resolved, in trying to ascertain the true nature of dreaming. Many in the psychology field tend to stick to the Freudian theories of dream interpretation, while many neurologists and research scientists seem convinced dreams arise, quite simply, from various chemicals produced by our brain during different periods of sleep. Regardless of which is actually correct, The Mind at Night does an excellent job of chronicling the advances in research for both theories, providing a very thorough description of the basis for both. Discussion of dream research is so detailed in The Mind at Night that several of the chapters include the often odd accounts of dreams from the test subjects of the various studies conducted all across the globe. The book does an impressive job of providing a fairly intelligent scientific commentary on dream research while not going too far over the readers head with complex verbiage or description. In one of the earlier chapters, a diagram of the brain is even offered to help explain which parts of the brain expel which chemicals and therefore which parts are responsible for various aspects of dreaming. Drawing on a number of different scientific disciplines and mediums, ranging from studies of schizophrenics to mentioning of chaos theory, The Mind at Night does a wonderful job of reporting on the broad spectrum of dream research that comprises all of the past and present knowledge and theories on what causes us to dream.

This book is one of the most interesting non-fiction books that I have read in the last few years. The subject matter (dreaming) is inherently interesting, but some of the science is complicated and theoretical. On some level, Ms. Rock has to assist the reader in understanding various parts of the brain (limbic, brain stem, pre-fontal lobe, etc.) as well as psychology (Freud and others). Much of the research that she is using is very recent, so many open issues remain. Despite these hurdles, she makes the book understandable to an interested layperson without dumbing it down too much.

I particularly enjoyed the way that she presented one approach to the study of dreams per chapter. Each chapter builds and explains the previous ones, as the research becomes more and more recent. Ms. Rock also introduces the reader to the personalities behind these cutting-edge scientists.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand the dream stage (as well as consciousness generally). It is not, however, a self-help book. Other than a few tips on lucid dreaming, it is a 'why' and 'what' book, not a 'how' book.

I discovered this book through reading another review, while researching journal articles on dream research. It is not only extremely informative, but well-written and includes several amusing anecdotes about the research itself. If you want a handy and readable guide to most of what is known about sleep and dreaming, then this is your book.

The book is exactly what its title says it is. History and facts from sleep research and related fields brought together, elaborated and articulated in the language comprehensible to educated layman. I didn't find the book dry at all, it was hard to put down, quite accessible and fascinating.

"We are the stuff that dreams are made of and our little lives are rounded by a sleep." William Shakespeare

In her 200 page study, Rock has done an admirable job tracing out the history and findings of cognitive sleep research. In the process, she's endeavored to tell the story of a phenomenon that followed evolutionarily about a 140 million years ago on the phenomenon of sleep itself.

In this way, the articulated complexities of human dreams track the articulated complexities of the human brain itself. So dreams reflect the fears, anxieties, cares and hopes that are part of our daily lives. In her book, we see healthy sleep as part of a healthy psyche where our day to wounds are healed into our long standing visions of ourselves. Conversely, we also learn how unhealthy dream process can retard emotional recovery from trauma.

Thought provokingly, Rock also addresses the phenomenon of lucid dreaming wherein the dreamer takes advantage of being in a self aware dream state for creative and recreational purposes. Likewise, she discusses some great advances made by the creative thinking and boundry removal possible while one is in a dream state.

Though other reviewer comments about the turgid nature of Rock's writing are well placed, it remains true that even a poorly written book about a fascinating topic nonetheless remains fascinating particularly here wherein the writer has managed to cover a lot of ground in a relatively small space.

Nanotechnology is one of the most rapidly evolving fields in science, after a long period of gestation from 1950s on.

The applications of nanotech to medicine promise to be astonishing: better and longer lives, organ replacement without any immunogenicity, cancer defeating; and even a new type of human being, built up by biological and non-biological parts, in what is called singularity.

The field is so complex and has so many and widespread implications that, in the very latest period, a number of publication at different levels of depth is appearing.

This one is the first of an ambitious project dedicated to nanomedical applications. The volume is preceded by a skyhigh introduction, in which the possibilities of nanomedicine are depicted, and a sort of working plan traced.

What follows is an overwhelmingly quantity of data, which can be only appreciated and understood by readers with a deep background in sciences (MSc or PhD levels), owed to the great emphasis on chemistry, physics and physical chemistry.

The start is good and I sincerely hope that next volumes are at the same level.

For specialists only.

This is an extremely comprehensive and scholarly work (of which there are 2 more volumes)on the subject of nanotechnology, especially as it can be applied to medicine. It is not however, an easy read. I am nothing intellectually close to the audience that this is written for, yet I have an expanded understanding of not only current technology, but also what the possiblities are. For the curious jr. scientist, or the real deal, this is an amazing book that can begin your journey into what I believe is the next great wave of technology of the 21st century.

I am uncertain of the wisdom of writing such a detailed book on technologies that mostly seem a couple of decades away.
But this book is a bargain even if you ignore the parts of it that deal with medicine.
Chapter 2 is by far the best survey I've seen of research that might constitute important steps toward a molecular assembler.
Section 6.5.7 takes only one page to present a strong argument which implies that almost all other discussions of global warming are asking the wrong questions.

Readers should be aware that this is not a textbook of current technology. As with most nanotechnology "textbooks", most of the presentation is speculative vision backed up with some fundamental theory. If you want a textbook that would actually help you get anywhere with nanomedicine, buy a physical chemistry textbook, an anatomy and physiology textbook, and a biomaterials textbook. I would guess that most of the five star reviews come from people wowwed by the possibilities of nanoscience. As someone involved in the reality of it, I recommend not buying this if you are trying to learn anything practical.

I'm a research engineer with a major U.S. corporation, and I think that Nanomedicine is an awesome book - Freitas obviously did a huge amount of work in writing this book. It isn't light reading - you need a college-level scientific education to really understand it, but even those without a technical background will appreciate the solid foundation that this provides for the tremendous advances that advanced nanotechnology will make possible. At any rate, if you want to understand the coming nanotechnology revolution in medicine, you must read this book.

I was very surprised by two recent reviewers who gave this excellent book an unfavorable rating. They obviously grossly misunderstood this book, apparently confining their long-term view of nanotechnology's contribution to 21st century medicine to the self-assembly of cleverly functionalized nanoparticles, such as the dendrimers being developed at UofM. Such nanoparticles will undoubtedly be very useful over the next few years, but for those of us who plan to predict to future by making it happen, we welcome Freitas' intricately detailed book. This book (and the series) is a vitally necessary foundation for ongoing research into active nanoscale devices that will incorporate nanoscale sensors, molecule-by-molecule reagent separations, molecular electronics, etc. One critic's comment about the left-handed DNA image on the cover reveals that this "reviewer" has not even opened the book. Freitas' use of the "wrong" DNA image was as purposeful as the humans pictured with seven fingers on the spine. He laments at the "left handed DNA" website (www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/Leftyear2004.html) that "apparently these artistic subtleties have been lost on some readers."

This book is concise and spot on with it's predictions thus far --and it was written in 2000. Regardless of one's political standpoint, it is irrefutable that Mr. Cherny has a solid epistemology when writing in a political genre.

I had to read this book for one of my classes at Seattle University, and in hindsight, I'm really glad. It opened my eyes to a lot of things that were going on in the world of politics that I would plead ignorance to normally. I devoured this book in two sessions.

Also, if you liked this book, you might like "The Power Elite" by C. Wright Mills

This book is concise, well-written, and contains ideas that could potentially change the face of government in the near future. Cherny's thesis is that we need to give the government back to people. He notes that the big government that dominated so much of the nineteenth century was necessary to effectively create change in Americans' lives at that time. But today, the government has not responded to the needs of the "Choice Generation" - the younger generation today that has a broad range of choices, from ipod colors to salad dressings. Consequently, the government is less effective than it could be. To remedy the situation, he proposes some ideas ,some radical and some pratical, that, if implemented, would improve the situation of my generation and give the government more credibility. Personally, I think some of the ideas were great and would significantly alter the face of this country (the idea of requiring one year of public service for all young people when they turn 18, for example, is a great idea). Agree with them or not, the ideas included in this book are worth a read, and though it may be awhile, I think many of them will eventually come to pass.

At a mere 21 years of age, Andrei Cherny became the youngest White House speechwriter in history, eventually becoming Vice President Gore's senior speechwriter.

But how he got the job I'll never understand.

Yes, Mr. Cherny and the Vice President share a passionate interest in the revolutionary changes being wrought by the dawn of the Information Age.

But the Vice President's 2000 campaign demonstrated a passionate interest in resisting the very changes that would make government more responsive to the new expectations and new choices of the American people. The Vice President waged a vehement campaign against giving workers the freedom to choose personal retirement accounts to complement their basic Social Security contract...against the freedom to choose from a wide variety of private health insurance options via Medicare...against the freedom to choose schools that work, be they public, private or parochial...against the very Choice Revolution about which Mr. Cherny is so refreshingly passionate.

Indeed, at times it seemed Vice President Gore was building a bridge back to the 19th century with its class warfare and big machine politics.

Mr. Cherny, by contrast, is a young man in a hurry to see our central government decentralize...to see the federal government devolve to more individual and state control...and to see the Democratic Party shift from the party of Big Government welfare to Smart Government wealth creation. And how sweet it is.

He simultaneously blasts "Blockhead Conservatism" and "Treadmill Liberalism" as old slices of a stale political pie.

Nowhere are Mr. Cherny's ideas more revolutionary than in the area of wealth creation and Social Security. "Americans should -- for the first time -- be guaranteed a minimum Social Security benefit, come what may. This should be coupled witht he freedom to choose to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes as they see fit. In the 1990s bull run on Wall Street, the wealthiest 10 percent of American households received nearly 90 percent of the profits. All Americans should have a greater chance to share this prosperity -- and a greater choice in how to receive it."

You won't hear talk like this from Al Gore.

It took a speechwriter leaving the Clinton-Gore Administration and striking out on his own to match Gore's passion for technology and the Internet Age with a intellectually and morally consistent view of how to apply such marketplace changes to the functions of government.

Better yet, Mr. Cherny is not alone. If one looks closely, a trend is beginning to develop among the mavericks, the renegades within the Democratic Party.

To this end, I highly recommend a book by another lifelong Democrat -- this one a Baby Boomer, not a Gen-Xer -- named Wade Dokken, a book called "New Century, New Deal: How To Turn Your Wages Into Wealth Through Social Security Choice." Mr. Dokken is passionate about his party, the "party of the people." But as a "New Investor Class Democrat," he pleads with his party to "wake up and smell the Starbucks" -- to realize the dramatic social and demographic changes that are washing over the electorate...and not let President Bush and the GOP capture the 80-million strong New Investor Class who embrace the Choice Revolution. Instead, go after them with passion and persistence.

Mr. Dokken has more real world experience than Mr. Cherny, and it shows in their books. As the CEO of American Skandia, a $30 billion company, Mr. Dokken understands how money is made, how money is managed, how wealth is created. He's also got a sense of humor -- a sense of revolutionary spirit -- a willingness to needle his party more than his younger ally.

"As a life-long Democrat, it pains me to say this, but I feel obligated to warn my party," writes Mr. Dokken. "When it comes to saving Social Security, building upon FDR's legacy, and helping working families create real wealth through personal retirement accounts, the leadership of the Democratic Party is dangerously out of touch with the American people. It's as though Al Gore is from Mars and Hillary Clinton's from Venus. They just don't get it. And if they don't start getting it fast, they're going to get left behind in a cloud of dust, with a mighty 'Heigh ho, Silver, away!' echoing in their ears as millions of working families stampede to a political party that does get it, that promises to fight for their right to enter the New Investor Class and turn wages into wealth."

Mr. Dokken adds: "As I see it, the leadership of the Democratic Party is stricken with a historic case of Attention Demographics Disorder. They seem inexplicably inattentive to the financial aspirations of some 80 million Baby Boomers and 46 million Gen-Xers who are America's future. Thus, as a I write this in the summer of the year 2000, the Republican Party seems poised over the next several election cycles to reshape dramatically the political landscape. It's poised to transform itself from the the 'party of the rich' to the 'party of people who want to become rich.'...Just as a generation of working class social conservatives fled from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the 1970s and 1980s, I believe that a new generation of savings and investment minded fiscal conservatives -- 'New Democrats' who are part of the emerging 'New Investor Class' -- are now also poised to flee to the GOP."

And that, Mr. Dokken writes, spells trouble for the party of FDR, Kennedy and Clinton.

Still, taken together, Mr. Cherny's fascinating treatise and Mr. Dokken's marvelous manifesto are MUST READING. These two aren't famous -- yet. But they will be. Anyone who wants to understand the revolution about to occur within the party should start with "THE NEXT DEAL" and "NEW CENTURY, NEW DEAL." They are a dynamic duo for a party in the doledrums.

Building on the work of "Reinventing Government" by Osborne and Gaebler, former Gore speechwriter Andrei Cherny makes the case for a federal government that drops the old "New Deal" bureaucracy in favor of a new guiding and enabling role. In the course of doing so, Cherny presents American history through the lens of Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian philosophies of government and weaves it together with a demographic portrayal of what he calls "The Choice Generation".

The result is readable and interesting, but left me (admittedly, a Republican) with the feeling that Cherny is in the wrong party. He believes Americans want the ability to control their lives more than anything else, but doesn't grapple with the notion that lower taxes and control over one's financial resources are probably the single greatest enablers of personal choice. I'd like to see him deal with the question of financial freedom instead of just blowing past it.

Cherny's prose style has speechwriter written all over it. He clearly enjoys putting together words and phrases that would snap when spoken to an audience.

If you're interested in what the future of public policy looks like to a well-informed young writer of the center-left, give The Next Deal a try.

To have a 21-year-old Gore speechwriter mature into a 25-year-old public policy book writer and then have that book enthusiastically trumpeted by a conservative former Speaker of the House is a moment of unique achievement. Let me be clear. While Andrei Cherny is a liberal, he has written one of the most thoughtful books about public policy in the information age to be produced by anyone of any ideological background or from any partisan belief. Cherny does a stunning job of placing the progressive movement in the context of the rise of the industrial corporation and makes a profound case that the rise of information technology that moves from mass production to intense personalization and choice that will profoundly change the relationship between government and citizens.

At one level these are not new ideas. Alvin and Heidi Toffler explained the general principles in 1979 in The Third wave. What makes Cherny's contribution so impressive is the degree to which he embeds the technological changes of today in the parallel ideas and experiences of 100 years ago. Just as the rise of the industrial corporation created the systems and the structures that could be translated into professional bureaucracy and into systems such as the city manager form of government, so the development of the automatic teller machine, the self serve gas station, the internet based personal reservation system for airlines and the personally directed 401k all spell the rise of a personally directed citizen process that will transform the process of governance.

I disagree deeply with some of Cherny's ideas, but I am in awe of his ability to take big concepts and embed them in American political history in a manner which will give them context and meaning for any citizen who wishes to study them.

I unequivocally recommend this book to any citizen who wants to know how we can improve our country.