Basic Sciences Books

The contributing editors, Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, again shine as "hubs" for blending diverse thinkers, including James Pinkerton of the right, and I believe they are completely correct when they say that the State of the Union address has become shallow, partisan, and trivialized. More substantively, they might have offered a piece on the ten reasons to impeach Bush-Cheney, and another on the failure of Congress, which has struck out with the American people: strike one is incumbents shaking down lobbyists for cash; strike two is the extremist leaderships (Democratic as well as Republican) forcing "party line" votes that are totally against the Constitutional intent of having Representatives represent their CONSTITUENCIES; and strike three is the extremist Republicans serving as foot soldiers to a mendacious White House, instead of, as the Constitution intended with Article 1, being the FIRST branch of government. The extremist Republicans (I am a moderate Republican) are nothing less than Constitutional perverts, and I use the term advisedly. (See my reviews on books about these two topics in last two months).

The book is ably summed up in the Preface, which states that neither party has proven capable of offering a coherent, honest, or forward-looking agenda to guide America. Peter Peterson, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It would certainly agree, as do I. It is my hope that this group might coalesce around someone like Senator Collins (R-MA) running with Governor Warner (D-VA), and announcing a coalition cabinet and one commitment: to electoral reform. Karl Rove knows how to steal close elections, the only way to beat him is to field a multi-party TEAM that can win by a LANDSLIDE. America is ready for that, and the ideas in this book are all implement able by such a team approach to what might be called "networked governance."

While I have six pages of notes on this excellent volume, still relevant to the future, I will touch on just a few highlights:

1) Mass middle class is vital, and Washington has destroyed that base for democracy.

2) American people are not as polarized as their extremist political leaders

3) Our humans are productive but our processes are not. I am reminded of the book in the 1980's on "Human Scale." The federal government has indeed become dysfunctional, running at 3-5 mph while the rest of us are going 100 mph.

4) Need a new social contract. Authors identify the first one as building a nation, the second as healing from the civil war, and the third as building a middle class. We need to re-build the middle class with governance that again represents the citizens and their communities rather than predatory corporations.

5) Private sector, not just government, needs reform.

6) Health care can shift from business to government, and in the process we can find $60 billion a year in savings by using information to create metrics to reduce waste and over-treatment. The author discussing this suggests that 20-30% of what we spend on health care is waste. They do not discuss medical tourism, which I find quite interesting as a trend.

7) We need a nation-wide industrial policy that restores the relationship between business, community, and family, while also restricting the mobility of capital unless it restores the social contract with labor.

8) Radical tax reform could yield $200 billion a year (the author's say this is a low estimate, I agree, import-export tax fraud alone is $50 billion a year, I think the number is closer to $500 billion a year).

9) Take back the airwaves in the public interest.

10) James Pinkerton is brilliant in explaining the three eras of education as agricultural (nine-month school year), industrial (rote learning) and experimental (nostrums at expense of basics). See also Derek Bok's piece on "Reinventing Education at Forbes.com. James missed the opportunity to discuss how free universal access to all knowledge, and using serious games to educate on a just enough, just in time basis, in all languages, could reconfigure education world-wide.

11) Matthew Miller (see my review of his superb book, The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love) outlines what $30 billion could buy in terms of moving teachers up the food chain. Just in passing, if we cut our grotesquely ineffective intelligence community back from $60 billion a year to $30 billion a year, we can create a truly smart nation (see my book coming out on 11 September, THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest and in passing get better secret intelligence in the context of a national Open Source (Intelligence) Network that feeds not only the spies and diplomats, but also the schoolhouses, statehouses, and social clubs.

12) A thread that I found interesting throughout the book is how we lack the information needed to make smart choices. We lack statistical information on medical treatments and results that might allow "evidence-based medicine." As I have pointed out elsewhere (Google for ), the U.S. Government is remarkably ignorant and uninformed across all these areas.

13) The rest of the book on aging productively, incentivizing exercise and penalizing fast food, on rebuilding the heartland with information infrastructure, on mixed races where third generations inter-marry at a 55% rate, on conflicted Muslims, on "opportunity lost" in foreign affairs and national security, all top notch.

The book ends brilliantly, as it began, with a commentary on the dysfunctional duopology of the extremist Republicans where dogma trumps honesty, and the divided Democrats trapped in the past. As the founder of a small non-rival party blog, Citizens-Party.org, I consider this book, and the New America Foundation, to be the people's voice at a time when the Congress and the White House most certainly are not.

This book is great at presenting problems and, perhaps more importantly, solutions facing our country today. Although it appears to be focused mainly on the last presidential election, the issues are still relevant today. It has been over a year since the 2004 presidential election and many of the concerns in this book have not been addressed by either side of the aisle. Each article is managable to the average fan of politics and yet it is detailed enough to make the most involved citizen think in different ways. Of particular note are the chapters on education. They are well written and offer very insightful solutions. This is an excellent book for you to read to get in touch with some of the real problems in America.

The title enticed me and I had high expectations to glean some insight into modern economic problems - or at least hear some different perspectives. The book is not a bad read, but it suffers from two continual errors that, as a scholar, I find really annoying. First, in many of the graphs presented, they are not numbered, cited in the text, associated with legends NOR are the axes labelled. The trends are obvious, of course, but I had no idea what the heck I was looking at. There is also a lot of jargon thrown at the reader without explanation.

Second, there are no references for many of the statements made in the book. It would be nice to know where they got their data or even IF they are making a claim based on real data (I assume they are, but without references, who knows?). You may like this book and, again, it's not a bad read, but I got so frustrated with the shoddy scholarship that I just set it down halfway through and gave up. I really don't care to listen to opinions as much as I enjoy examining positions and arguments... and those require some scholarship whereas anyone can throw out an opinion.

The Real State of the Union is an extensive discussion on the issues that currently face the United states. This book is no action packed thriler, yet it is a very thoughtful and well put together.Each issue is taken apart and thorougly evaluated. The out- of-the-box thinking gives readers something to think about while "they" analyze the situation. The clarity of this book is its greatest quality. There is a simple setup in each chapter in which; the author explains the problems with the issue, gives examples, and then provides a solution. Besides this, many chapters include graphs to visually help explain some of the complex issues, such as radical tax reform and public capital stock.

Instead of blaming the right or the left for the country's problems, this book offers solutions.

In the past couple of years I've gotten more interested in politics. I've read books on how different parties and people are dragging this country down, but nothing on how things could be turned around. Our country has change drastically since the New Deal. The old Republican/Democrat political vision is outdated. This book offers new thinking and ideas to get this country on track.

This Real State Of The Union makes sense. I'd like to buy a copy for every government official in Washington if I could.

Frankly, I don't think its worth the money. Some decent facts in here but not too interesting- but it might put you to sleep.

Sizing Up a Start-Up is a great read for anyone considering a career move. Rippy uses quotes from start-up veterans along with his own experiences to accurately describe the work environment, management expectations and life cycle of a start-up. He ties these subjects together by asking the reader "What is your risk tolerance?" and "What do you value in a career?".

After determining if a start-up is right for you, you can then read on to gain important interviewing and salary negotiating tips. Rippy stresses the value of researching a company before an interview and gives heads-up and specific advice about what types of questions you should and should not ask in an interview. Next, Dan discusses what one could expect from a typical compensation package at a start-up. Unlike other books, Rippy takes this subject one step further and outlines strategies to not only maximize, but also value your compensation package.

As a recent graduate from a leading MBA program, I personally found this book to be insightful and helpful during my job selection process. It helped me prepare better and more though provoking questions during the interviews, negotiate better compensation packages, and more importantly, make a decision that I will be happy with in the next few years.

Sizing Up A Start-Up: Decoding The New Frontier Of Career Opportunities offer the reader invaluable, practical methods for making sound employment and career decisions in the new high-tech communications industries, with particular reference to the so called "dot.com" companies. Daniel Rippy shows how to distinguish a company poised to succeed from one doomed to collapse. Sizing Up A Start-Up is "must" reading for job seekers, and has a wealth of useful information and insight for entrepreneurs and investors considering the commercial viability of high-tech industries.

From the eyes and experiencial background of a "headhunter" engaged in executive search and a banker in my former life, I found the book a facinating exercise not only for one who is considering whether to take the leap with a START-UP or anyone uncertain with their own career choice. The process developed by Mr. Rippy allows the reader to evaluate and measure their own entrepreneurial instincts and risk tollerance which is applicable in many walks of business both "new" economy and old.

Interviewing is more of an art and than a science, however, the process the author has outined removes the happenstance and should assure a good "fit".

This book is going into my office library for reference to definitions as well as the investment banking terminlogy often confussed. Hats off to Rippey ... Well done!

Let me preface this by saying that I'm about as "non-techie" as it gets, and I still found this book extremely readable and interesting. Rippy is an acknowledged expert in the field of tech. start ups and takes both the experienced and the lay business person on a step by step process of the birth (and sometimes death)of these burgeoning companies. Sure, there is always the chance that your IPO will make you a billionaire, but Rippy makes it clear that in more than 90% of all start ups, that is usually far from the case. He does not try to discourage anyone from entering the field, but he does provide realistic tools and methods for evaluating a company's viability at every differrent stage. Like children, these tech. start ups have an organizational birth stage, adolescence, adulthood and death. If you understand the financial implications at every phase, you will be much better equipped to make a decision in this tremendous marketplace. Even for people like me who are just small business oriented, this book provides dozens of insights into the business world, stocks, IPO's, that go beyond the scope of start up companies. In order to keep up with the technological revolution, this book should be required reading for anyone with even an eye towards the business world. The chapters on venture capitalists and the companies they fund make for particularly interesting reading. Mr. Rippy's engaging and knowledgeable style throughout make this book a winner.

It's difficult to 'grade' a book that refused to stay on what the intended topic (as presented to the reader). When I ordered the book, I thought the picture of Mendeleev was a rather haunting one, that looked like so many of the great minds like Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and other minds from the slightly earlier time of the Enlightenment. This was a man who started his life in the time of horse and carriage, of gas lights, of sloppy science in Russia, and ended in the next century when his country was beset by revolution...one of the very things this authoritarian abhored.

Grodin wrote a fascinating and difficult book to read. He starts out with the information Mendeleev is most known for...the periodic table. Yet, a lot of the information here in this part of the book is almost 'circumstantial' and did not add much more than what I already knew.

However, the following chapters demonstrated that Mendeleev applied his organizational skills to many other areas in both science and social life in Russia, and though it was not expected by the reader, the information is emmensely interesting. Russia was the backwards part of Europe, just as the South was the backwards part of the United States. Mendeleev worked to bring that same organization used in chemistry to make sense of the elements to such diverse areas of need in Russia such as her economic life and the deeply engrained superstition that became so fashionable in both Russia and the U.S. and Britain at the turn of the century. All thesee countries dabbled in seances or otherworldly things in the guest to understand one of the least knowable things: death and the afterlife. Mendeleev had not patience with this kind of chicanery and strenously tried to disprove it's existence with science.

Grodin's choice for a title could only be determined through reading the book as a whole. The greatest achievement of Mendeleev shadowed his much larger life as a diplomat, as a world-class scientist trying to bring his country into a new century. Not an easy book to read, but definitely a worth-while one!

Karen Sadler
Chemistry

When young Dmitrii Mendeleev drafted the Periodic Table of Elements as a guide for his chemistry students, he was already dreaming of building a scientific empire in his home of Russia - with himself at its center. His Periodic Table predicted the existence of three unknown elements and helped foster the entire science of chemistry, so it's sad to learn the name of Dmitrii Mendeleev himself has been relatively lost in relation to his creation. Micahel D. Gordon's A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev And The Shadow Of The Periodic Table resolves this neglect, providing an excellent review of both the Table's importance and Mendeleev's stormy relationship with his Russian background. An exciting, enlightening survey evolves.

+++++

When I studied chemistry in high school, I was taught that Mendeleev (pronounced Men-de-LAY-ev) was, due to his "Periodic Law," the inspiration behind the periodic table of chemical elements, perhaps "the most widely recognized talisman of modern science." And that was it! Nothing more was said. Thus, I thought that Mendeleev was only of importance due to his association with the periodic table. I thought this until I picked up this book and learned how wrong I was!

This extremely well researched book (that won the Basic Prize in the History of Science) by Assistant Professor of History Michael Gordin is about Dmitrii Mendeleev (1834 to 1907) and the Russian Empire.

This is not your typical (boring) biography that runs from Mendeleev's birth to his death. Gordin explains: "I concentrate on Mendeleev and the Russian Empire from [the] Emancipation [of the Serfs in 1861] to the [Russian] Revolution of 1905, the epoch of Mendeleev's greatest chemical achievements and of Russia's greatest hope for a reformed liberal state. I have selected seven major episodes from Mendeleev's life not because they were...the `most important'...but because each emphasizes a different feature of the cultural life of both Imperial [Russia] and nineteenth-century science."

You'll learn from this book that Mendeleev was more than just a chemist. His other credentials include father, author, economist, bureaucrat & public servant, meteorologist, and aviator to name just a few. Gordin elaborates: "[I]t is hard to conceive that one person occupied all the roles this man played." The author continues: "[H]is life illustrates what it was like to live and work in [Russia]." As a consequence the reader will learn much about Russia in general and about St. Petersburg (the city where Mendeleev worked) in particular during the period 1860 to 1905.

This book contains almost ten black and white illustrations and ten black and white frontispiece images. My favorite illustration is "Short-form periodic system from [an]...1870 article [written by Mendeleev]." A couple of the illustrations are too
dark.

Although not absolutely necessary, I would know some basics of general chemistry and a bit about the history of Russia during the time period concerned in order to fully enjoy this book. The author does do a good job in explaining basic chemical terms.

My only minor quibble with the book is that it gives the impression that Mendeleev was the only one that made a table of the elements. This is not quite true. However, his was the first one that was scientifically useful. Also, it would have been instructive to include in this book a modern periodic table to illustrate the modification that atomic numbers are now used instead of atomic weights (which Mendeleev used) to order the elements.

Finally, I was surprised that there was no mention of the chemical element named after Mendeleev. It's called Mendelevium (symbol Md).

In conclusion, until this book came out, Dmitrii Mendeleev's life was "shrouded in [a] historical fog." Read this book to learn why "he remains the most recognized Russian scientific name both at home and abroad!!"

(first published 2004; note to the reader; preface; introductory chapter; 7 chapters; concluding chapter; main narrative of 250 pages; acknowledgements; extensive notes; extensive bibliography; index)

+++++

I've heard a part of story of Mendeleev directly from Michael Gordin during the dinners in the Harvard Society of Fellows, and the discussions with Michael were always extremely insightful as well as entertaining.

One of the main reasons is that Michael knows a lot, and he is interested in everything. My feeling is that he knows more about Russian history than those who are specialized in humanities. Think about any two people whom you know and who lived in the 19th century or the early 20th century (two Russian writers, for example), and Michael will be able to tell you what was the relationship between these two people, when they met, and why it was important. What you read in this book about Mendeleev is just a fraction of what Michael could tell you about the 19th century.

Moreover, he also understands the important technical points of chemistry - in fact, not just chemistry: physics, mathematics, and other sciences are his cup of tea, too. Therefore his presentation is not superficial: you will learn the right things about the right ideas and their evolution, about the wrong ideas as well as about the influence of politics and ghosts.

Michael Gordin's Russian is very good and it helped him to understand all the relevant events and links between the contemporaries of Mendeleev as he studied the archives in St Petersburg (and perhaps also Moscow). Incidentally, he also learned Czech - which is my first language - because at some moment he decided that it is helpful to follow some old letters about chemistry.

Anyone who is interested in chemistry, history of science, or Russian history should immediately buy this book because Michael Gordin was the right person to write it, and you will certainly learn a lot about all these issues. Moreover, Mendeleev might be the most famous chemist ever and his life was rich enough to keep you excited as you read through these 300+ pages of a superb text.

Chapters 1-3 of this book were exactly what I expected with the history of Mendeleev and the periodic table. However, the author mentions at the end of chapter three that Medeleev did not work on the periodic table from that point on to the end of his life.

My primary reason for reading the book was to learn about the history of the periodic table. I stopped reading in the middle of chapter four when Mendeleev was pursuing other interests.

The first three chapters are excellent if you are interested in the periodic table, and the rest of the book may be of great interest to a reader interested in other facets of Mendeleev's life. I encourage anyone to buy this book, but I don't believe the last half of the book will be of interest to me.

I've used this book in my graduate seminar introducing students to the study of the social sciences, and they loved it. I've also used it in my 12th grade gender studies class, and its sections on boy culture and youthful romantic friendships helped students decide that the study of past lives was worthwhile.

Sorry I haven't read this book, but my name is John L. Rotundo (Author of Charlie Rangers) and with the last name being the same, I'd like to know if we're related.

To learn about the culture of manhood, a good place to begin is with a good, strong, well documented history. This is, indeed, a good place to begin. Positing male sociolization within a context that includes its affect on women and children and the family in general, Rotundo is able to place the history of work, virtue, romance and identity in a way that makes sense in terms of where we've been. Hopefully, this will give us a clear first step in terms of where we go from here. Any book that clarifies, from the very beginning, the difference between *gender* and *sex*, is a book that has a good chance of knowing what it is talking about.

I read this book because I am interested in pioneering a new "scouting" program for Christian young people. Rotundo's work has cut new ground; essentially there are few, if any, works available which have made the primary and secondary research connections made in his text. Because I have a greater understanding of previous manhood paradigms, I believe I will be better able to construct the pedogogical parameters of my program. Rotundo's text, incidently, should be read by feminists; it is likely they would develop a more sensitive approach to the objectives they would like to accomplish.

E. Anthony Rotundo has written the book, American Manhood, to show the historical development of the concept of manhood throughout the nineteenth century in order to understand, to a certain extent, the idea of manhood within our own historical time. He focuses on a very narrow group of men for this study: Northern, white Yankees of middle and upper class pretensions. This is an influential group for this period but it does feel that the entire picture of the changes evident in American manhood at the beginning of the twentienth century might have been better understood by including a knowledge of different forms of manhood that were emerging from the burgeoning immigrant population. That being said this study is an important and necessary one to begin the further work needed on this topic and Mr. Rotundo provides many unique and important insights on this topic. An interesting book and a good beginning for more work on the gender politics involved in changing ideas of masculinity.

American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World is a great find.

John Ledyard lived in interesting times: second half of the 18th century. His 37 years of life was capped by a manic two decade long roller coaster ride across the world. He came of age in pre-Revolutionary War America, then under sketchy circumstances began service in the British military. He served on Cook's third around the World voyage as part of a Marine Guard - their job to prevent mutinies - a unique position to observe the historic exploration, particularly the first contact in the Hawaiian Islands.

After the experience of the third Cook voyage Ledyard seemed to develop a vision of the world. His vision: the world is a benign place for the lone traveler. He believed that he could cross the North American continent so long as he went alone and carried nothing of value other than letters attesting to his good character. Was that possible? It would almost have to be easier then most of what he ended up doing by heading east, from France.

I'm left thinking what if? What if John Ledyard had listened to Jefferson and started in Kentucky. Could he have crossed to the Pacific on foot in the late 1780s? What if? There are many `what ifs' suggested by John Ledyard's story. What ifs about the man and what ifs about the times he lived.

I've been fascinated by Ledyard since I first encountered him, in 1989, at a University of Washington history lecture. At the time I was struck by the fact that I'd never heard of him before. How could this guy have been forgotten? Poking around the stacks in the library led me to Sparks' and Watrous' work, but I couldn't believe that somebody wasn't out there researching and writing about Ledyard. I've been poking around ever since. At last, Zug has delivered the biography I've been waiting for.

American Traveler serves as an outstanding introduction to one of the most fascinating figures in American history. Zug does a wonderful job describing Ledyard's relationships with movers and shakers of the late 18th century (particularly Jefferson), as well as his role as a catalyst behind the eventual expansion of American power. However, the real strength of the book is Zug's portrait of Ledyard the world traveler--a guy on the road who, though frustrated by the restrictions of time and petty bureaucracy, takes a genuine interest in the people he encounters. Yes--Ledyard was a spectacular failure as a businessman, but he understood something that many (apparently including P.J. O'Rourke) do not: traveling isn't about arriving at your destination--it's all about the road trip and the people you meet along the way. In this sense, there has never been a more spectacular success than John Ledyard.

When you think of the great American explorers, you pretty much start with Lews & Clark, throw in your Daniel Boone types and assorted mountain men, and then maybe close out with assorted ill-fated Arctic explorers. Few today know of one of the earliest and most widely traveled of this breed, John Ledyard, the American traveler of this book's title.

In his brief life, he dropped out of one of the first classes of the then-new Dartmouth College, sailed around the Caribbean and Atlantic, deserted merchant ships, joined the British army and then the navy, was a member of Cook's fatal third Pacific voyage, became the first American to see Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast, traveled across the bulk of Siberia in a quixotic attempt to walk around the world, and met and corresponded with such notables as Thomas Jefferson, James Cook, the Marquis de Lafayette, Joseph Banks the scientist, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris the financier, and many more.

He was an educated man who served as a marine corporal, a collector of vocabularies and handicrafts and tattoos, an amateur ethnologist with a tremendously sympathetic view of indigenous peoples, a theorizer who correctly deduced the connection between the Siberian peoples and the Native Americans, a sponger off wealthy acquaintances and a fancier of fine clothing, and a would-be fur mogul.

Besides his overwhelming wanderlust that drove him relentlessly forward, so that in the last seven years of his life, the longest he stayed in one place was six months, he was possessed of an erratic temper that could flare forth with regrettable consequences. Despite his scholarly gifts, he was not averse to bouts of pugilism or worse: "He got into fistfights in London, started a shoving match in Tonga and challenged a Siberian provincial governor to a duel."

Today he would be (probably correctly) diagnosed as a manic-depressive, but he channeled his energies well. He may also have had a touch of a death wish, as his last journey was singularly ill-advised under the conditions and he seemed to have a premonition of his own doom.

Zug tells Ledyard's story in a mostly unadorned fashion suitable for the layperson, not too heavily weighted down with jargon or digressions. He draws heavily upon primary sources, mostly letters to and from Ledyard, keeping their original idiosyncratic grammar, rhetorical flourishes, and spelling intact. His prose is sometimes a bit clumsy, but he also is capable of an amusing turn of phrase, as when he notes that "Thrashing and punching were not his only reactions to Londoners".

The book includes a couple of maps at the front, a selection of illustrations in the middle, and a section of notes at the end to which the reader should refer periodically.

Ledyard's is an interesting tale told competently, although I feel Zug slightly overstates his significance. But this is a good account nevertheless and certainly a valuable addition to the field of exploration literature.

I'd never heard of John Ledyard before ordering this book; I greatly enjoy travel and this story is incredible. Every once in awhile, I had to stop turning the pages to reflect upon what I'd just read. The adventure and tales were awesome. More than once, I had to remind myself that this is non-fiction. Ledyard really believed he could walk around the world? I'm not one to lightly label a books as must read, but this one should be on such a list.

Here's to you, John Ledyard.

John Ledyard has been mostly forgotten today, but this late eighteenth century New England Yankee dreamed of exporing an as-yet largely unknown world and, before his death while still in his thirties, he had accomplished part of that dream. Ledyard, a correspondent of Thomas Jefferson, was very much cast in the mold of an explorer and natural philosopher at the end of the Age of Reason. Russian bureaucracy and xenophobia cut short Ledyard's planned journey around the globe on foot (with water transportation when necessary) and he died on the eve of setting out on an expedition to explore central Africa, so his largest ambitions remained unfulfilled, but nonetheless he had been a companion and chronicler of Captain on his last, fatal voyage to the Pacific.

Basic and Clinical Endocrinology provides the basics needed for a medical school endocrinology unit. By purchasing this book, a medical student is able to focus on the endocrine system in great detail.

I first found this book at our local university medical library, then bought a copy for myself. I used it to study the possible causes of infertility. I'm not in the medical profession or a medical student (other than as a hobby) but this book was easy for me to comprehend.

this book is the book you want to have when you're doing your endocrinology rotation. It goes step by step from the basics and it doesn't loose itself into minor not important detales

Likely a little too dense for just general residency, but still a great reference book for the general internist...great information for further endocrine training....well organized with the latest therapy recommendations

Not a bad book per se but I found info easier to find and more readable in the smaller general pathophys book made by lange.

This book contains everything that you need to learn the subject. However, IT HAS MANY ERRORS IN EQUATIONS AND ANSWERS TO SAMPLE PROBLEMS! The author or publisher just didn't take the time to check for mistakes as well as you would expect from this type of book. Also, I feel that the book is a little disorganized, and jumps around a bit too much for my taste. Also, the formating could be updated as well. Not many terms are defined in bold, nor equations seperated from the text very well. It kinda all blends together. Again, I think that the book teaches and contains all that you would expect it too, I just think it needs some modern touces to bring it into the same class as most "modern" textbooks. (It seems like the appearance and formating are the same as they were in the first edition, except any errors and typos have been fixed in the following editions.)

The best book of electronics in the world

SOME CONTENTS OF THE BOOK ARE:
Topics include Mathematics: (hereafter "M"), a language, a tool, a teacher; Calculators and Computers to help you study M; Algebra- General numbers; Algebra- Addition and Subtraction; Polynomials; Signs of Grouping; Equations; Powers of 10; Units and dimensions; Ohm's Law- Series Circuits; Resistance- Wire Sizes; Special Product and Factoring; Algebraic Fractions; Fractional Equations; Ohm's Law- Parallel Circuits; Meter Circuits; Divider Circuits and Wheatstone Bridges; Graphs; Simultaneous Equations; Determinants; Batteries; Exponents and Radicals; Quadratic Equations; Network Simplification; Angles; Trigonometric Functions; Trigonometric Values; Solution of Right Triangles; Trigonometric Identities and Equations; Elementary Plane Vectors; Periodic Functions; Alternating Currents- Fundamental Ideas; Phasor Algebra; Alternating Currents- Series Circuits; Alternating Currents- Parallel Circuits; Logarithms; Applications of Logarithms; Number Systems for Computers; Boolean Algebra; Karnaugh Maps; and much more! This book is geared towards the students of electricity, radio, electronics, and computers, whose need is to have an understanding of M principles directly applicable to electrical and electronic circuits. Just as a carpenter that build a building with a tape measure and skilsaw, the engineer employs M as their primary tool. Maybe this book is for you. Depending on competition, you may be able to get it at a price that's right for you.

This is the book for you if you are struggling to understand how to apply the basic laws of electronics: Ohm's, Thevenin's, Norton's, Kirchhoff's, etc. This book starts from basic arithmetic, works slowly up through fractions, and only winds up at school algebra about halfway through the book. By the end of the book they've touched on vectors, trigonometry, AC power, and Boolean algebra. These more advanced subjects are all treated at a very basic level: the algebra is simple school algebra, the trig is no more than is necessary to understand vectors, the vector math is only there to make phasor diagrams useful, phasors are only covered to make 3-phase power understandable, etc.

The book's has a tilt towards the world of the industrial electrician, rather than that of the electronics technician. A symptom of this is that inductance is covered before capacitance -- motors are more visible than capacitors -- the opposite of the usual way in teaching electronics.

This book will not teach you electronics, per se. You need to be reading this book along with an electronics text.

This is a text book, not a narrative. It's all here as you remember from your grade school math books: word problems, partial lists of answers in the back of the book, worked example problems, etc.

If you've already read _The Art of Electronics_ by Horowitz and Hill and didn't find the first chapter particularly hard going, this book is way too elementary for you.

This is without a doubt one of thee most detaild but easiest books to follow in the field of elecronics. It gives detailed information on everything from the very basic resistors, and Ohm's Law, to Thevenin's Theorum. I can't say enough about this book, it is my bible for everything I do. I use it as a study guide and as a referance for those awkward times when I get confused. I love this book.

Good Transaction, Thank you.

This book is ideal for both undergrad and grad students in the fields of neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychology. The information is arranged neatly with the authors introducing concepts at the cellular level (anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry), then moving on to intercellular signaling. From here, the neurochemical factors are introduced, outlining their functional significance at the molecular level. The last few chapters of this book expands on the role of several neurochemical interactions in the context of diseases like Alzheimer's and Creutzfeld-Jakob (Mad cow-like disorder), Huntington's (and other related basal ganglia disorders), and several Psychiatric disorders (anxiety, mood disorders, addiction, etc). The figures are excellent, and succintly explained. Several color plates are also included. Note that the book I bought has textual addenda/errata located at the back, in order to correct factual/typographical errors. Nevertheless, these corrections don't affect the whole integrity of the contents, but rather they strengthened it.

This book also includes a CD-ROM which constitutes the book's contents, and provides nice figures that you can use as a reference. Overall, I recommend this book if you think you will embark on a career in the medical sciences, or if you are an undergrad that would like to go to grad schools.

For anyone interested in neuroscience, it is a must read. Basic Neuroscience gives a snapshot of where neuroscientists are currently doing research, including the edge of what is known and not known. Much of this knowledge has only been discovered in the last few years.

Some fresh angles on the memory problem can be pieced together from distinct bits and pieces included in this book on the brain's catabolic habits, on starvation and diabetes, and on the effects of alcohol and other drugs on the chemistry of the brain.

Alcoholism offers us clues to how the memory works and fails. In both chronic and acute alcoholism, it appears the pen of memory stops writing quite suddenly. In the extreme chronic condition, an alcoholic who has progressed to Wernicke-Korsakoff's syndrome can be trapped forever in a particular day - the day the pen of memory lifted.

For a few fortunate alcoholics the brain's working memory can be restored with early injections of Vitamin B1, which is thiamine. Thiamine is a very common co-factor. It operates in a great many different biochemical pathways. But look: One among those many pathways is quite possibly the biochemical pathway that is essential for -- and could thus lead us straight to -- the human memory machine. The grand prize. This helpful hint has never been followed up exhaustively, although there are lots of takes on what might be going on.

This book holds a second hint. Perhaps the same crucial biochemical pathway to memory can be interrupted at a different point, in a different way -temporarily -- in the brain of a drinker experiencing an acute alcoholic memory blackout. See pages 659-660 for a summary discussion of ethanol, glucose and ketone body catabolism in the brain.

Notice sometime, in the spirit of science, the horrible, noxious, acetone like odor on the breath of a heavy drinker. It is very evident on the morning after. Ketone bodies are still so plentiful in the blood that an observer can smell them, and the brain (perhaps thinking the body is starving) may have shifted gears to protect itself. Instead of glucose, which the brain almost invariably prefers to eat, the brain can in a starvation emergency burn ketone bodies instead. Whenever they turn up, as for example on the occasion of a drinking binge, the brain will sense an emergency and make the changeover from glucose passively and automatically. So perhaps this emergency shift away from glucose is another pointer to the biochemical pathway that leads to human memory.

Maybe sugar synthesis, via the phosphogluconate shunt, is an important part of the memory pathway. It we are talking about ribose synthesis, which is certainly one possibility, this would imply an interruption or a shift, within the programmable phosphogluconate shunt, to the production of sugars other than ribose. Downstream, the pinch on ribose production would also constrain the synthesis of nucleotides and nucleic acids. It is an in interesting possibility because some people are examining anew the long despised notion that nucleic acids might constitute a human memory store. See Steven Rose's The Making of Memory for this longshot idea.

The basic notion is that to make a memory machine, you could simply run the equations describing the Central Dogma in reverse. (The first step, from Protein back to RNA, is thought to be impossible. However, the cell essentially takes notes on its protein manufacturing activity, leaving behind discarded introns like a dressmaker leaving shards of cloth on the floor. From the cutout cloth, you can determine the pattern of the dress. An intron uniquely marks a gene, and an intron can be written all the way back to DNA. A sequence of introns, or some sort of intronic shorthand, would essentially tape record a sequence of protein synthesis - a program.)

Another possible memory storage medium is a sprigged together sugar or glycoprotein molecule, perhaps assembled in the manner of a ganglioside.

There are lots of other avenues of action for ethanol upon memory. For examples, Ethanol is directly toxic to the nerves of the hippocampus, it affects LTP there and it also bombs the daylights out of the liver, suggesting that alcoholic memory loss is not a biochemistry problem to be pursued in the brain alone. If you are interested in the memory problem, Basic Neurochemistry is a major resource and great hunting ground for fresh ideas.

As with any other text in neuroscience, you should first read Spikes (Rieke et al. 1996) as an essential preface. It will help you parse out which assumptions in this science can still be believed, post 1993, and which assumptions should now be sharply questioned or instantly discarded.

The topics in the book are arranged well. It is suitable for both junior and senior students. The concepts are explained clearly. This must be the most excellent book in this field for introductory courses.

It is often said that Descartes is the father of modern philosophy; but much of modern philosophy would be unthinkable without the writings of Rousseau. While Descartes put epistemology at the center of philosophy, and used reflections on subjectivity as a means to knowing, Rousseau put the historical human being at the center of his thinking, and thus paved the way not only for Kant but for Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard.

These texts are the ones to look to for the core of his thinking. Read the first and second discourses first -- of which the second is the most critical, but the first gives an easy orientation to his general strategy. The Social Contract is extremely relevant today, when words like "democracy" are bandied about unthinkingly. Rousseau identifies there what a genuine democracy requires: that individuals become prepared through education to cast their vote for what they think is the general good. The conditions for this cannot be established overnight, and cannot be imposed by war or by political pressure.

This is another fine edition by Hackett, who cannot be commended enough for their excellent series of inexpensive philosophical texts. After reading this, take a look at Rousseau's two other brilliant pieces (among many more): Emile, and his Autobiography.

Jean Jacques Rousseau born (1712-1778), in Geneva mother dies in childbirth, he was an engravers apprentice. Stayed out too late one night and locked out of the city, knew he would get in trouble for it so he takes off for France, and meets Madame De Warrens becomes his lover and she converts him to Roman Catholicism. He had a lifelong mistress had 5 kids which he left with an orphanage, which is amazing considering he wrote the book "Emile," which was a guide to raising and educating young children. He neglected the opportunity to put theory into practice. To begin at the beginning, famous lines of book "The Social Contract," "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

The question he asks, how do we find a way to get people to live together in groups? To live together in society and yet still make it true that each person only obeys himself that leaves us as free as when we were in the state of nature. He thinks he has the answer, he thinks he can legitimate, a kind of society, where people have this much freedom. There are certain things that he thinks are necessary for this, first, it has to be a society with general laws. It can't be that whoever is in charge of the government gets to do whatever they feel like doing. There has to of been laws made that authorize this. Second, there has to be universal consent to the laws, everybody has to accept the laws. Now this may be a little unclear, because there is a point that Rousseau talks about majority rule. It does make sense though there is a sense that he believes that the people have to consent to all of the laws, it has to be unanimous, it is just going to take a little while to get to that point. We will see how he reconciles these ideas. Third, there has to be unlimited Sovereignty, people have no rights against the laws you can't say the laws are illegitimate because they violate your rights the way that Locke would say for example people completely give up their rights to the collective. Therefore, there is no worry that a law might trespass on somebody's rights. For Rousseau, be sure to understand that this idea of sovereignty means the power to make laws. Therefore, it is a little bit different say than what you got out of Hobbes were he talks about the sovereign's power. For Hobbes, sovereign power is the power to say what goes. There is no real distinction between what we would call legislative power and executive power. You know the power to make the law and the power to enforce the laws. For Rousseau, sovereignty means the power to make the laws. Therefore, that's the power that is unlimited. Everything the state does has to be done in accordance to the laws. However, there is no limit on what the laws can be. At least no limits coming from the idea of violating individual rights. The only limit on the power of the state is the laws. There is this kind of notion that periodically there would be an assembly of people to come together to decide on the laws and make new ones. The power like a monarchy or oligarchy has power to enforce the laws and they do what ever the assembly tells them to do. The general laws are there and then the executive power is in charge of applying those general laws to specific cases. However, all they can do is apply those general laws. They cannot freelance and do stuff on there own.

Rousseau really praised Sparta as a model democracy. So, here's the kind of society that Rousseau thinks that makes it possible for us to enjoy freedom and social life. We give up all power to the state; we claim no individual rights to ourselves against the government. We give up complete power to the state we do not think we have any individual rights that can limit what the state can do but we insist that the state only act in accordance with general laws and these be laws everybody consents and agrees to. Now you ask, how in the world can we have unanimous consent to the law? With any size or group, how do you get unanimous consent? Rousseau's answer is that in a proper society, one where everyone has been brought up properly and so on, they think of them selves as a community there will be two different choices that people can make about the laws that they want. Two different standpoints, for which they will choose what the laws should be. 1. Their individual wills, which will be a choice about what is best for each persons point of view, 2. However, each citizen will also possess a "General Will." There will as a citizen. The general will of every citizen will be the same. Their general will, will from each of them will be in favor of the laws that will be best for the community. Even if it is not best for them as an individual, sometimes it will be. Just like Kant thinks that everybody's Numinal self is in favor of the same law, Rousseau thinks that in a proper political community every bodies general will is in favor of the same laws each citizens general will, will be the same. Even if from your own perspective, you do not like some of the laws that are passed, if in fact they are laws that are best for the community, you will consent to them from the standpoint of your general will. Therefore, everybody does consent to whatever laws there are that are best for the community. Now ideally, people will think of themselves as citizens first and individuals second that they will have no hesitation in obeying the laws that the general will is in favor of, but people being what they are sometimes people will not obey the laws even when their general will has consented to the laws. Rousseau says people will be acting in accordance with their general will as a citizen rather than their private or individual will. That if one should be tempted or inclined to act on the basis of their individual will in a way that is contrary to their and everybody else's general will, then they ought to be forced to obey the general will and the laws it endorses. Not just be forced to obey, but in being forced to obey you are actually being made more free than you would be if you did in a sense what you think you want to do. You can call this Rousseau's "paradigm of positive freedom."

Rousseau does not think that any group of people can form this kind of society. Before a society can form a government under this kind of basis, it will already be a society that exists under illegitimate rule. Therefore, even though Rousseau talks about the state of nature the way Hobbes and Locke does, he does not really have the expectation that groups of people are going to go from the state of nature straight into a legitimate society. They are going to start out with some kind of illegitimate rule, and that is going to give them enough cohesion, this kind of shared experience they have had, that then they are going to be able to form a legitimate government. They are going to be similar enough in outlook and have enough of a bond to the society, that they have the general will. This can only happen in a relatively small community. They must have shared values and experience. He thought that the only place in his time in Europe that could do this was the island state of Corsica. Once the laws are already in place you are agreeing to them, it is tacit consent. He believes that when the society is first formed legitimately, people have to give expressed consent.

There is not some kind of disconnect that you would get in say some kind of fascist political philosophy like what is good for the community and what is good for the people. There is almost no connection between those things. Somehow for Rousseau there seems to be some kind of connection that what's good for the community is some kind of function of what is good for the individual people in the community. But, the nature of that function to me is just opaque, he doesn't get whatever he is trying to say across there.

In practice obviously this is hard to do. Because Rousseau is hostile to the idea that you could have just a select group of people to make the laws, this means he has to be against representative democracy. The only societies that are this democratic that have worked are societies that have had slaves (Greek and Roman). Because how much time does citizenship take without representatives, we have to be in assembly all the time so you need slaves to cook and raise crops. So, you should have this picture in mind that every so often the citizens get together to develop laws, what they should be doing of course is trying to vote in a way that the general will tells them to vote, whatever is best for the community. Rousseau is not so naïve to think that they are all going to unanimously and spontaneously put their hands up at the same time. People are going to disagree, abut what the law is. Majority rule he says in that case. However, it is not the majority rule in the spirit that we think of it, where the side with the most votes wins and the losers are disappointed because their way didn't prevail. No, what Rousseau says is the minority should look at this as they were wrong about what the general will was in that case, and so they should be happy that what they wanted didn't get adopted because that would have been a mistake. The majority essentially knows best. It is as if they are all trying to get to the same place, some will get there some will be misled and they should be grateful to be straightened out. One can see how totalitarian's can embrace some of Rousseau's writings.

I read this book for a graduate class in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, history and, psychology.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "The Basic Political Writings," have a two part effect. Rousseau uses the first portion of the book, the discourses on science and the arts, the origin of inequality, and political economy, to describe the basic policies of then modern society. Rousseau describes the creation of society as a threat against the laws of nature. Rousseau also explains that the origin of society coincides with the concept of personal property. From there society develops by who controls whom into a political system. Rousseau comments on several points in "The Social Contract." In the first book of "The Social Contract" Rousseau explains the limiting of the human spirit by the bonds of society. This is the origin of the infamous line, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Books two and three describe the attitudes of a nation and its responsibilities to both other nations and its own people. The final book of "The Social Contract" affirms the point that a nation cannot destroy the general will of the people. "The Basic Political Writings" are considered an excellent resource on society simply for its commentary on the general will. Rousseau's writings are amazing when coupled with the later thoughts of Karl Marx in "The Communist Manifesto." Obvious correlation's can be made between Rousseau's commentary and Marx's ideals of the creation of a communist society. Although these writings may not be for the average reader, the points they make extremely thought provoking.

A more immediate influence of Rousseau's political thought was on the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, sometimes called "the philosopher of the French Revolution." Kant took over Rousseau's emphasis on the faculty of will and incorporated it into his political philosophy, especially in Part II of "The Metaphysics of Morals," "The Metaphysical Elements of Justice." There Kant, unlike Rousseau, favored a constitutional government rather than a direct democracy. But he utilized Rousseau's notion of the social contract in the form of a hypothetical agreement among autonomous individuals. Kant's conception of a hypothetical contract was in turn applied by John Rawls in his "A Theory of Justice," so it may be argued that Kant is in some respects a precursor of liberal representive democracy. Rousseau's idea of democracy has more application to contemporary theorists of participatory democracy than it does to Marx, whose "dictatorship of the proletariat" was largely undeveloped. And Mill's "On Liberty" is in many ways a critique of Rousseau's General Will, in that Mill asserted, among other things, that "if all of mankind except one were of one opinion, and that one were of another, all of mankind would be no more justified in silencing that man that would he in silencing all of mankind." So Rousseau's conception of positive freedom (i.e., "freedom to. . ."), encapsulated in his notorious remark that it may be necessary to "force men to be free," has no place in Mill's "On Liberty," which advances the more Anglo-American notion of negative freedom (i.e., "freedom from. . ."). Furthermore, Mill favored a form of representative government (as put forth in his treatise of the same name), so he differs from Rousseau on that point as well.

This book contains 4 of Rousseau's works: Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, Discource on the Origin of Inequlality, Discource on Political Economy, and On the Social Contract. In his writings, Rousseau theorizes about the state of nature of man before civilization, a time before any societal influences governed his actions. He then explains how man left this initial state of nature to form society's. According to Rousseau, reason and cooperation, which led to the sciences and arts, are what forced us to leave our happy state of nature. Based on the state of nature, Rousseau then goes on to relate how man is in a society and what an ideal society should be. Enjoy your reading...

I thought the first 4 chapters were boring, but in fact the idea was to build your skill before you code the application! This book was written in a way that readers should already be familiar with OOP terminologies because it does not go into detailed explanation like those for dummies books do.Instead, it shows you how to analyze a problem, draw the diagrams and design the application! This is so far the best book i've read about object-oriented programming using VB, toppling Deb Kurata's or Alistaire Mcmonnies' books on my list. This book will teach you how to do UML/USE CASE so you can design a robust application. This is not a beginner's book on object oriented VB. I've had some knowledge in Java object programming and I know a little of object programming, but reading this book the first time has confused me as the author seemed to have tried to squeeze the discussions in short chapters and programming codes are not explained well, delving right into OOP design and techniques. As the author mentioned in the book, he doesn't know the skill level of a 'beginner', so he added some short intro to programming at the back of the book (Appendix A), so I believe the audience of this book are those 'beginners' to OOP but not to programming. I applaud Dan Clark for the way he laid out the teaching concept of this book, and how I wish he would follow this up with an advanced book with lots of case studies and applications starting from analysis to coding again. Highly recommended!

This book is in very good condition. Shipping very fast. Overall I'm very satisfied with my purchase.

I have to admit, has some interesting stuff and information on how to make the theory of Classes to Programs, but I can not agree that is novice to professional, in my opinion I would say just novice.

Leaves many un-answered questions.

But can work as a reference.

I performed some programming in Visual Basic 6 a few years ago and then my job was changed so that I was maintaining a Unix program for a few years, which entailed putting fires out each day and very little programming of any type. A few months ago I was fortunate enough to get transferred to a great job programming web sites and some Windows applications. I've been able to write some fairly complex programs, but I knew I was missing some large piece of the puzzle. I'm really a novice programmer. I wasn't creating classes and I wasn't doing a lot of things that were efficient. If my programs needed to do more or scale, they were very difficult to adjust. During these months I've purchased a lot of books, and they had good stuff in them, but I still wasn't able to put things together. I would see things like "WithEvents" and ask what was that for. I had to do some threading and succeeded, but only by trial and error and I didn't understand the "why" of why it worked. For that matter, there was a lot that I didn't understand the "why" about.

I then thought that, even though I was using objects, that I didn't really understand object-orientated programming enough. I looked on some User Group sites and saw this book listed as a good one.

I held high hopes for this book. It's my first book from Apress. I started reading the first 4 chapters, which were on how to design and plan an OOP program. I'm convinced his information is important but ugh! It was horribly boring! I was mostly through the 2nd chapter when I thought I'd committ suicide . I had to quit reading chapters 2-4 and tell myself I'll get back to that later. Yes, it's that boring. It's worse than hearing your girlfriend talk for hours about makeup and dresses! So I skipped to Chapter 5 which gave basic instructions on using Visual Studio. I thought, "Why put this beginner's crap in this book". If you need to know the basics of VS, then get a beginner's book on VS. It shouldn't have been here.
By this time I'm thinking I bought a book of garbage. But I went on to Chapter 6, and I'm glad I did. It finally got to the point and started talking about OOP and classes, constructors, overloading - and I was getting some of the elusive "why" explained! Chapter 7 got into inheritance, derived classes, overriding and overloading, etc with more of the "why". Chapter 8 got into the stuff like "WithEvents" and delegates, and how delegates work with threading. You will need to use threading and you will see "why". In geekspeak, threading is cool! Chapter 9 shows how to work with Collections (arrays, dictionaries, etc). This chapter didn't explain much "why" but when I need Collections there is enough to be able to implement them. Chapter 10 starts explaining some "why" regarding databases, such as connected versus disconnected data access. The examples use SQL Server. Chapter 11 looks at forms in a different light from other books, looking at them as objects instead of just sticking controls on them, and works with using databases more.

Now I feel better about going back to the first 4 boring chapters as I will now have something to build with.

To a complete beginner, I would say to first get a basic VB.NET beginner's book and get familair with VB and Visual Studio. If this is your very first book you will be very lost. The book is made for a novice.

This book is one of the most important I have read. I am making progress very quickly over the last week or two, while previously I sputtered for several months. I've tried to convey how I felt, and if you feel similar, you must get this book.

This book is an excellent resource for anyone new to vb.net, or anyone transitioning from vb6 to vb.net. It covers the foundation of object oriented programming neccessary to successfully code in the .net environment.

There are samples and a case study, which help cement the concepts covered.

I recommend using this book as a foundation before moving on to more advanced material.