Aldrich Books

I like the drawings. Georgia Marsh and Danica Phelps offer sensitive sketches of couples coupled, Gina Magrid explores the boundary between clinical and erotic, Ruth Marten baffles, Scott Martin amuses, and Kim McCarty disturbs. Juan Gomez evokes something of complex plumbing and Popeye's Olive Oyl in his almost-legible connections. As a whole, the collection displays a high level of artistry. End notes add to the reader's knowledge of each artist, but a few essays at the start will remind some readers of why they avoid art commentary. The book as an art book disappoints me, though.

As a book of drawings, it's beautifully designed, and I mean that in the least complimentary way. Each page is a jewel of layout and composition: light, airy, and infused with importance by its broad margins. Captions feature tiny, pale print that might not suit older eyes. My gripe, though, is that the book layout fails in its role as vehicle for the art. It pushes itself too much to the front, like a butler that intrudes into every family photo. This should have been about the art itself. Instead, layout squeezes the artworks into shrunken boxes, so small that crucial details become illegible (e.g. p.72, 44, 64, 76). Even when an image's details are called out, they sometimes take only postage stamp space in a near-blank page (p.36-7, 43). These tiny reproductions become especially frustrating when I see the original image's dimensions - 32x32", reproduced about 3x3", in a page over 8x11" (p.61).

It galls me to say that Marshall McLuhan was right in this case. The medium is the message. The art should have been the message and is quite enjoyable, when it's legible. Mostly, though, it's a book about book design, and not a book about the subjects on its pages.

-- wiredweird

Four stars for the art, one star for book design, and I'm rounding up to give it three stars.

Beginning in 1908, Aldrich served as assistant to Charles Greeley Abbot, director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. When Abbot also became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1928, Aldrich was made assistant director of the SAO. In 1944 he became director when Abbot retired and served until 1955 when the SAO moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

During those years, the SAO maintained several permanent outposts in high-elevation, desert regions to determine the solar constant -- the radiation intensity reaching the "edge" of earth's atmosphere from the sun. This fundamental physical measurement is one of the bases for accurate weather forecasts and climate change predictions, and this report on the effect of a solar eclipse on such radiation measurements is an early piece of that research program.

"I have travelled a good deal in Concord ..." reads the opening chapter of "Walden." And during his lifetime, Henry David Thoreau was most comfortable staying in his hometown, which he knew intimately from his daily walks and wanderings. He did manage to journey a bit throughout Massachusetts and New England. He once lectured in Philadelphia and even lived for a time on Staten Island. He made a Canadian excursion to Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, and he visited Maine three times. His longest trip occurred in 1861, when he took two months to travel to Minnesota and back via train and steamship, in the hopes of curing his consumption. But compared to the other Transcendentalists, Henry was generally a stay-at-home man.

While sitting in Concord, he could travel a good deal through books. The travel narrative was a thriving genre for 19th-century readers. Thoreau not only pored through such volumes, he even wrote one or two of his own. He was first enamored by the travel writings of Goethe, Alexander Henry, and Charles Darwin. Those men set the stage for the narratives Thoreau would read later in life -- books that would take him to every corner of the earth without having to leave his beloved Concord.

The intent of "Thoreau as World Traveler" is to chronicle both methods of travel for Thoreau: the real and the vicarious. Map the paths of his actual journeys, then turn to those made by the authors he traveled with on the printed page. This worthy endeavor required a lot of research for author Christie, as he duplicated Thoreau's reading habits. While he begins with details of the real excursions, the meat of this work comes in
the second half of the book. There he dissects Thoreau's readings and shows how the 19th-century naturalist's writings and philosophies reflected those of the authors and places he was reading about at the time. Christie's analysis and interpretations are intricate, thoughtful, and fascinating.

And yet, flaws in the first half of the book have me wondering about the veracity of the interpretations presented in the second. The map of "Thoreau's Own Excursions" that appears on page 9 includes travel routes that are simply wrong. Christie himself shows inconsistencies. For example, he cites a quote from Thoreau about what he saw in Brattleboro, Vermont -- but no path even runs through that state on the page 9 map. The mapmaker mistakenly moved that northbound route into New York state instead.

Even more errors show up in references to Thoreau's Minnesota trip of 1861. Again, the route shown in the page 9 map is wrong. Then in two separate instances, Christie refers to that trip as having occurred in 1862. On another page, he says it was in 1860. On yet another, he says that after the Montreal trip, Thoreau "never made another trip of his own to Canada." (p. 101) In reality, Thoreau's return route from Minnesota
took him through Canada with a stop in Toronto. While Christie's map is wrong, it does show a return trip through part of Canada. Inconsistency again.

Perhaps we can forgive the author. When Christie wrote this book in the 1960s, he didn't have access to some of the basic Thoreau references that are now available, like Walter Harding's "The Days of Henry Thoreau" and Robert F. Stowell's "Thoreau Gazetteer." But he cites and must have consulted the important sources of his time: Canby's biography, Sanborn's "First and Last Journeys," and Thoreau's own published journals and original notebooks. Relying on those sources and doing some fact-checking should have prevented those errors mentioned above. How many more are there?

This book is thought-provoking, in general. But researchers should beware. If you use this book as a springboard for your own work, check the facts with against original documentation or known authorities. Above all, dismiss the page 9 map entirely.

The article is far far far ... far away from the truth. So far, that this article is complete non-sense. By the way, the reality is much more excited than the article.
The biggest crime of the former FBI Director Freeh is that he lies the society. The uninformed society does not have the possibility to protect itself. This is big crime. An excellent example is the killing of the CIA Director William Colby. Freeh preferred to kill Colby, instead to charge him officially. The FBI stories of Ames and Colby are far far... far away form the truth. (If you are interested to read the real story, read the memoirs of Dekov at the Web, Google Groups, Search, "Dekov, Colby".) The society is the loser. The society will pay big money. The society will give victims. This is very dangerous criminal activity against the American people. The persons who praise the Director Freeh will pay the price, too. Their children will die, as the whole nation. The USA Senate must accept a special law, forcing the FBI to say the truth. The truth is the only chance for salvation of the American nation. And the most important - Freeh must go into the jail, as killer of the American nation.

The report is far far far ... far away from the truth. So far, that this report is complete non-sense. By the way, the reality is much more excited than the book.
The biggest crime of the former FBI Director Freeh is that he lies the society. The uninformed society does not have the possibility to protect itself. This is big crime. An excellent example is the killing of the CIA Director William Colby. Freeh preferred to kill Colby, instead to charge him officially. The FBI stories of Ames and Colby are far far... far away form the truth. (If you are interested to read the real story, read the memoirs of Dekov at the Web, Google Groups, Search, "Dekov, Colby".) The society is the loser. The society will pay big money. The society will give victims. This is very dangerous criminal activity against the American people. The persons who praise the Director Freeh will pay the price, too. Their children will die, as the whole nation. The USA Senate must accept a special law, forcing the FBI to say the truth. The truth is the only chance for salvation of the American nation. And the most important - Freeh must go into the jail, as killer of the American nation.

Avoid this book at all cost -- including the $$$ the publisher is asking for it. It is one of the poorly written textbooks I have ever encountered. I gave up after reading the first 60 pages. They were enough to convince me that the book is dated (published in 2002 but no citations dated after 1990). But much worse is the terrible stream-of-consciousness writing "style."

Evidently, the principal authors recognized that they needed help, so they list an editorial assitant on the title page. But that assistant must not have seen the manuscript, or he would not have let through such howlers as "... it carry's (sic) with it the probability ...". Or how about the list of criteria for causal inference (pages 54-56). It consists of one non sequitur after another.

And if all of this isn't bad enough, the brief discussion of statistical methods in Chapter 3 should demonstrate that the authors are clueless about basic biostatistics.

So, save your money.

The book is far far far ... far away from the truth. So far, that this book is complete non-sense. By the way, the reality is much more excited than the book.
The biggest crime of the former FBI Director Freeh is that he lies the society. The uninformed society does not have the possibility to protect itself. This is big crime. An excellent example is the killing of the CIA Director William Colby. Freeh preferred to kill Colby, instead to charge him officially. The FBI stories of Ames and Colby are far far... far away form the truth. (If you are interested to read the real story, read the memoirs of Dekov at the Web, Google Groups, Search, "Dekov, Colby".) The society is the loser. The society will pay big money. The society will give victims. This is very dangerous criminal activity against the American people. The persons who praise the Director Freeh will pay the price, too. Their children will die, as the whole nation. The USA Senate must accept a special law, forcing the FBI to say the truth. The truth is the only chance for salvation of the American nation. And the most important - Freeh must go into the jail, as killer of the American nation.

The biggest crime of Director Freeh is that he lies the society. The uninformed society does not have the possibility to protect itself. This is big crime. An excellent example is the killing of the CIA Director William Colby. Freeh preferred to kill Colby, instead to charge him officially. The FBI stories of Ames and Colby are far far... far away form the truth. (If you are interested to read the real story, read the memoirs of Dekov at the Web, Google Groups, Search, "Dekov, Colby".) The society is the loser. The society will pay big money. The society will give victims. This is very dangerous criminal activity against the American people. The persons who praise the Director Freeh (see the other opinions at this page) will pay the price, too. Their children will die, as the whole nation. The USA Senate must accept a special law, forcing the FBI to say the truth. The truth is the only chance for salvation of the American nation. And the most important - Freeh must go into the jail, as killer of the American nation.

The book is far far far ... far away from the truth. So far, that this book is complete non-sense.
The biggest crime of the former FBI Director Freeh is that he lies the society. The uninformed society does not have the possibility to protect itself. This is big crime. An excellent example is the killing of the CIA Director William Colby. Freeh preferred to kill Colby, instead to charge him officially. The FBI stories of Ames and Colby are far far... far away form the truth. (If you are interested to read the real story, read the memoirs of Dekov at the Web, Google Groups, Search, "Dekov, Colby".) The society is the loser. The society will pay big money. The society will give victims. This is very dangerous criminal activity against the American people. The persons who praise the Director Freeh will pay the price, too. Their children will die, as the whole nation. The USA Senate must accept a special law, forcing the FBI to say the truth. The truth is the only chance for salvation of the American nation. And the most important - Freeh must go into the jail, as killer of the American nation.