Bradford Books

Just like the skilled behavior researchers try to study, being able to conduct a good Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) is a critical skill in itself. Up until now, it was also one that had to be developed by trial and error. This text breaks it all down and provides a wealth of details on the techniques used and challenges faced in conducting a CTA. It also provides some historical context on the study of cognition and the role of CTA in research and system design.

Highly recommended for anyone in the field - I only wish it had come out sooner.

This is an important book for the engineering of complex systems and information technology systems. Cognitive systems engineering methods described in this book can go a long way toward helping engineers overcome the pervasive problem of inadequate requirements in the development of these systems, unite human and technology concerns in system design, and produce systems that are usable and helpful.

The book makes cognitive systems engineering and its methods much more accessible and comprehensible than any resource I've previously encountered. The book makes the methods described accessible to the novice who has never used them, while also providing details of interest to people who have experience using the methods. For example, it includes a very practical, descriptive, and well-organized walk-through of the cognitive task analysis process that extends from preparation all the way through to its contributions to system design and evaluation.

The book also includes a primer on cognition geared toward the systems developer and which is arguably an important foundation for anyone involved in developing technology that interacts with people performing cognitive work (e.g., information processing, decision making, anomaly detection, troubleshooting,...). The book addresses cost factors associated with cognitive task analysis and other cognitive systems engineering methods (and describes what cognitive systems engineering is and is not - thank you!) throughout, and is full of examples used to demonstrate how cognitive systems engineering methods have been successfully used in the past.

Every systems, human factors, and software engineering student and practitioner needs to read this book!!

This is a really helpful book. I've read quite a bit about Naturalistic Decision Making and CTA's so I was already familiar with most of the concepts. As with any relatively complex subject there is often a large gap between what's in the textbooks and how things actually happen in the field. This book is much more of a "how-to-do-it" guide than any others I've read. It is a very easy read and an excellent introduction to the subject.

Gary Klein and his colleagues have been studying for many years what kinds of mind-sets different jobs need, and this book reports on how that field of study is shaping up. A methodology has been developed, wherein investigators study knowledgeable workers (experts) to get the skills baseline, then write up a (series of) template(s) on their findings, whereupon these templates become teaching guides for new recruits.

This book gives a number of case studies of all phases of CTA projects. Even before interviews begin, there is a Preparation phase, wherein the CTA practitioners learn enough about the job, profession, and field of work so that they can ask intelligent questions and recognize relevant answers. Then Knowledge Elicitation follows, through interviews, questionnaires, brain-storming sessions, etc., usually involving two analysts, one to lead the enquiry, the other to record the results.

In the Analysis phase the results are collated, correlated, and represented in some graphical or tabular form so that the pattern of cognitive capabilities and their inter-relations can be depicted and understood. The patterns that may emerge include Hierarchical Task Analysis (the task logic of entailment and subsumption), and Procedural Task Analysis (the linear and concurrent sequence of activities), and these may be represented with Skills Lists, Mind Maps, Dimensional Distributions, etc.

The motivation to engage in this type of analysis is often the need to train new recruits more proficiently or replace retirees more efficaciously. So Cognitive Training is a very important part of the exercise, and the findings must be interpreted in such a way as to facilitate this process. Instructional Analysis is therefore based on the previous findings, and both the content and the process of training are improved as a result. In the Knowledge Society this is by far the most sensible approach to training. How many of the Knowledge Working Skills are analyzed, formalized, and instructed in this way? Not nearly enough so far - not even in Learning Facilities or Knowledge Factories - but it is a waste of time, money, and effort to train in any other way, so we can hope that CTA is the wave of the future!

The authors described the What, Why, When, Where and How of Cognitive Task Analysis from multiple aspects. One aspect concerns analyzing the cognitive tasks of incumbents in a situated setting. Another aspect concerns analyzing the cognitive task content of an envisioned role in a foreseen situation. Another aspect concerns analyzing the cognitive tasks of those who research cognitive task analysis methods, aids and tools. Another is analyzing the cognitive tasks involved in reflecting on and improving oneself as a practitioner of cognitive task analysis. Yet another is the challenges that must be mastered by educators of cognitive task analysis practitioners. The versatility and value of Cognitive Task Analysis was thusly demonstrated without causing the reader undue confusion. A significant, complex task well done.

Working Minds brings the `intuitive' aspect of decision into focus with the `rational' aspect. This is one, very large contribution. A small disappointment was the absence of teleonomics and its relationship with cognitive task analysis. Also, perhaps a sequel will say more about principles and rules for selecting human vs. automatons during a system design activity.

As computers in general and process formalization in particular encroach further into our lives and as litigation looms larger over those who cannot show that they exercised due process in their work, cognitive task analysis becomes basic, foundational, in business, government and academia. Working Minds helps discover how to lay such foundation.

I just received this book in the mail and can't put it down. The chapter on finding a sales rep is worth purchasing the book. Valuable information for all artists, not just jewelry makers. I hand dye silk fabric full time ([...] ) and am finding many of the principles in the book to be applicable towards many types of crafts. Highly recommended if you are a crafter and you are interested in selling your product.

This is a book for someone wanting to get a birds eye view of the business side of the Jewelry biz. Right off the bat she brings you in and leads you down the "yellow brick road". Not a flashy book cover wise, but super great direct, honest info. Her connections to the "fashion" industry, via her website are outstanding. She has business contracts already formulated for you, such as "Sample Catalog and Source Sheet," "Consignment Agreement", "Cost Calculator Worksheet", "Custom Work Statement", Labor & Materials Sheet", "Sample Commission Statement From Artist To Company", "Sample Commission Payment From Artist To Rep",
"Sample Sales Rep Agreement". Just click on and print up. I have been creating jewelry since I was 13. This book is setting me straight and making me a much more serious business woman. Soooo glad I bought this book and you will be too. Thanks Susie!
www.mermaidstale59@yahoo.com

You Made It, Now You Sell It (The Ultimate Guide To Selling You Handmade Jewelry) I bought this book so I could be better at prsenting my jewelry and marketing my product. I enjoy making my jewelry but selling it to people is my other reason to make it. The more I sell my jewelry the more I can creat new and exciting new jewelry. This is the reason for this book. It has what I need, now all I have to do is put it all to work.

Having received and read this book, the principles and forms in the book are applicable to a wide range of selling besides jewelry. Could be a good textbook in a business administration course.

This great little book is jam-packed with infomation! Obviously, Ms. Edwards knows the ins-and-outs of starting a small business, and she is very generous in sharing her knowledge. The pages are full of ideas and encouragement. The chapters about selling online alone are worth the price of this book. She also includes several pages of online resources for where to go for additional information, and even includes sample business forms. And her writing style makes you feel that she is with you every step of the way on your journey to success. This little book is a real "gem!"

In this curious autobiiography, Anthony Trollope sketches in the outlines of his life. He relates the misery of his childhood, the heroism of his mother, the tragedy and ultimate failure of his father. If not banal, at least typical material for an autobiography, and makes for good reading. The second two-thirds of the book summarizes his writings, and relate his ideas on everything from literary criticism to suggestions for young writers. Perhaps most interesting are his assessments of his own work, praising or condemning them with little emotion. Of course there is the famous analysis of his working methods, where he counts words and disciplines himself to an astonishingly regular routine of writing. He produced 47 novels, edited and wrote for magazines, all the while working full time for the post office. One distressing feature of this work is the almost complete lack of intormation about his wife and family....It is clear that he lived with and loved his fictional characters more than his corporeal family. Also, the grammar and punctuation are often awkward but this is still a highly readable and fascinating book.

If one has read a number of Trollope's novels, one would expect that Trollope would have written precisely this sort of autobiography. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine it having taken any other form.

Trollope writes not so much of his life (though he does touch upon the major events), as of his occupation. Although employed most of his adult life by the postal service, Trollope decided to engage in a second and parallel career as a writer. He is forthright about his motives: the satisfaction of writing, but also fame, financial reward, and social standing. Looking back on his career, Trollope is proud of a job well done. The oddity is that he seems quite as happy telling us about how much he sold each work for, and the financial dealings with his publishers, as he does about his books and characters. In fact, near the end of the book he gives a complete list of his novels and how much he managed to sell each one for (with very few exceptions, he preferred to sell the rights to a novel, rather than getting a percentage of sales). What emerges is a portrait of the novelist not as an artist so much as a dedicated, disciplined craftsman. He explicitly denigrates the value of genius and creativity in a novelist in favor of hard work and keeping to a schedule of writing.

The early sections of the book dealing with his childhood are fascinating. By all measures, Trollope had a bad childhood. His discussions of his father are full of pathos and sadness. What is especially shocking is the lack of credit he gives to his mother, who, in early middle age, realizing that her husband was a perpetual financial failure, decided to salvage the family's fortunes by becoming a novelist. He notes that while nursing several children dying from consumption, she wrote a huge succession of books, enabling the family to live a greatly improved mode of existence. Her achievement must strike an outside observer as an incredibly heroic undertaking. Trollope seems scarcely impressed.

Some of the more interesting parts of the book are his evaluation of the work of many of his contemporaries. History has not agreed completely with all of his assessments. For instance, he rates Thackery as the greatest novelist of his generation, and HENRY ESMOND as the greatest novel in the language. HENRY ESMOND is still somewhat read, but it hardly receives the kind of regard that Trollope heaped on it, and it is certainly not as highly regarded as VANITY FAIR. Trollope's remarks on George Eliot are, however, far closer to general opinion. His remarks concerning Dickens, are, however, bizarre. It is obvious that Trollope really dislikes him, even while grudgingly offering some compliments. Quite perceptively, Trollope remarks that Dickens's famous characters are not lifelike or human (anticipating E. M. Forster's assessment that Dickens's characters are "flat" rather than "round" like those of Tolstoy or Austen) and that Dickens's famous pathos is artificial and inhuman (anticipating Oscar Wilde's wonderful witticism that "It would take a man with a heart of stone to cry at the death of Little Nell"). Even the most avid fan of Dickens would admit that his characters, while enormously vivid and well drawn, are nonetheless a bit cartoonish, and that much of the pathos is a tad over the top. But Trollope goes on to attack Dickens's prose: "Of Dickens's style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules . . . . To readers who have taught themselves to regard language, it must therefore be unpleasant." If one had not read Dickens, after reading Trollope on Dickens, one would wonder why anyone bothered to read him at all. One wonders if some of Trollope's problems with Dickens was professional jealousy. For whatever reason, he clearly believes that Dickens receives far more than his due.

Favorite moment: Trollope recounts being in a club working on the novel that turned into THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET, when he overheard two clergymen discussing his novels, unaware that he was sitting near them. One of them complained of the continual reappearance of several characters in the Barsetshire series, in particular Mrs. Proudie. Trollope then introduces himself, apologizes for the reappearing Mrs. Proudie, and promises, "I will go home and kill her before the week is over." Which, he says, he proceeded to do.

you should consider reading this too! Trollope writes candidly about his education (and about being a poor, mostly overlooked student), his lack of professional ambition (and how he finally got around to witing his first novel),and the ups and downs of his literary career (and his early rejections). He does all of this in the same conversational tone employed in his novels, making this autobiography feel more like a chat with an older, experienced friend than a learned, classic autobiography

Redolent of the Victorian Age, and beautifully written. Some of the amusement comes precisely from his occasional pedantic preaching of Victorian virtues. He is capable of being self-critical. If elsewhere he is self-satisfied, he has much to be self-satisfied about. A man who from the most unpromising beginning came to live life to the full.

For those dissatisfied with both dualism and West Coast eliminative materialism, Andy Clark's philosophy of mind offers readers an alternative: an embodied mind. Here's a philosophy that embeds the human mind in its environment, its culture, and its history. And and author who writes like a dream! For a revitalized philosophy of mind, read it together with Alicia Juarrero's Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System and Merlin Donald's Origins of the Modern Mind!Enjoy!

When read in tandem with Paul Cilliers Complexity and Postmodernism, and Alicia Juarrero's Dynamics in Action, Andy Clark's Being There articulates the outline of a new philosophical framework: one which takes complexity, embodiment, history and context seriously. Kudos!

Clark develops in a very clear way the main threads of contemporary mind-body research. He argues for a non-dogmatic approach to the very difficult questions that epistemology, brain research and artificial life have put in the last twenty years. His position is with those who are not trying to explain everything from a single source or with single set of tools. Not reductionism, not holism or not only emergence or cognitivism or connectionism. Still, he sees the advantages of each theory and he gives a very subtle and insightful overview of what each strand has to contribute. I have read maybe twenty books on the subject in the past few months, from Varela to Jackendorf and from Minsky to Harré, but only Clark seems to be able to make the field transparent and coherent. If he sometimes loses in boldness, he certainly wins in promise. A book that should become a compulsary reading for anyone who wants to be introduced in the field.

Andy Clark provides us with a new framework for thinking about the mind. Gone are the old notions of a clean boundary between the thinker and the world. Clark does a great job of making the point that our brains are essentially embodied agents that profit profoundly from the local environmental structure. He introduces this new movement in cognitive science to study the brain, body, and world together as a complex system of interactions and dependencies and calls for a cognitive science of the embodied mind.
Clark is not proposing a radical idea. In fact, he defends at some length that his work is in fact a solution to the radical ideas that currently dominate the field. Clark suggests refining the tools of study used, and finding a middle ground between competing theories. I personally question whether a middle ground is appropriate in science. When anomalies exist in current models, does it serve us well to take the best of all available theories and smooth them together as Clark does? Perhaps in the case of the brain, this is a good idea, even though many other sciences (like physics) fair better with simpler one-size-fits-all solutions. Due to the brain's complexity unmatched anywhere in the known universe, maybe a simple (radical) way of studying it isn't possible (or at least within human capabilities).
Clark certainly builds a strong case, particularly by applying examples and comparisons throughout the book. His ideas are well thought out, his writing is clear (though perhaps a little repetitive), and the book as a whole is well worth reading.
Being There definitely gets you thinking.

Prof Gallese estuvo en Tenerife, y conocía bien su trabajo gracias al compendium de Gazzaniga. Es una buena compilación, al día.

Michael Gazzaniga has edited a magisterial volume, "The Cognitive Neurosciences III," on the relationship between the human brain and cognition. This monumental 1300 page volume covers a large territory.

The table of contents lays out the ambitious agenda in its listing of sections in this book: evolution and development, plasticity, sensory systems, motor systems, attention, memory, language, higher cognitive functions, emotion and social neuroscience, consciousness, and directions for future research.

The various chapter authors lay out what we know about the brain and how it affects our thinking. This is the third edition of this enterprise, and each new edition provides us with the knowledge of what advances in the neurosciences are telling us.

For me, some of the most important elements of this book are what we are learning about what makes us uniquely human, whether the neurological bases of mathematical thinking, the science of consciousness, the neurological bases of language, the brain's construction of memory processes, or the nature of attention.

This is not a book for the faint of heart in terms of the sciences. It is written for brain scientists and allied academics. Many potential readers will be put off by its rigorous, scientific style and its stunning price tag. But for those readers who want to know what current research tells us about the brain and how is affects human thinking, this is a book that cannot be ignored.

It's taken me two years off and on of steadily plugging away at this, but I've finally finished reading all the articles in this massive book. It contains all new articles, as did the first two "editions" which are really works in their own right, but is similarly structured. The work contains elaborated proceedings of what must have been one heck of a three week meeting in June 2003 of the invited expert contributors. This volume contains 94 review articles, each 10-20 pages in length, divided into 11 sections, with each section introduced by a leading researcher. Sections include evolution and development, plasticity, sensory and motor systems, attention, memory, language, higher cognitive functions, emotion and social neuroscience, consciousness, and a concluding section of a potpourri of perspectives and new directions. There is an extensive color section of 82 plates; I expect in future editions they will be integrated into the text instead of having black and white versions that refer to them. Each article contains remarkable work and for the most part I should think it will be accessible to advanced undergraduate (with at least one neuroscience course under their belt) and graduate students. To take just one example, an article I saved until towards the end because I didn't think would be especially interesting to me turned out to be fascinating--Haxby et al, "Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Face and Object Representation in the Human Brain." Here they used fMRI to study what brain regions are involved, but instead of stopping, as so many studies of this type do, at saying that e.g. the fusiform gyrus is active in representations of faces, they also analyze the contributions of other brain areas that are submaximally activated when faces are viewed. It turns out that these areas are quite important, and that the combinatorial pattern of which brain regions are activated, even if submaximally, provides important information. The article gives a glimpse of how the brain might represent information more generally.
All in all, this book, like its predecessors, is essential reading for anybody interested in the explosively expanding field of cognitive neurosciences.

This (sizable) book is the third in a series of updates that are published every five years and whose goal is to delineate in as much detail as possible the status of research in cognitive neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience has become an exciting field in the last fifteen years, this due in large part to the experimental techniques available to researchers. In addition, researchers in cognitive neuroscience have been more willing in recent years to take on research topics that were viewed as marginal from a scientific viewpoint. One of these concerns the scientific study of consciousness, and a large portion of this book discusses the latest results in this area. The book is definitely directed towards experts, but non-experts (such as this reviewer) with a good general background in brain science can still gain a lot from the perusal of the articles. Due to constraints of space, only a few of the articles (of the fourteen that this reviewer read) will be reviewed here.

In their article "From Number Neurons to Mental Arithmetic: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Number Sense," the authors investigate how the brain represents and manipulates numbers. Their investigation covers both human and primate abilities in mathematics, and they use both behavioral data and data obtained from functional imaging to make their case that an elementary number system is present very early in the life in both humans and animals. Preverbal human infants in particular are able to discriminate sets on the basis of their cardinality. Using the method of habituation and recovery of looking time, the authors point out that researchers have shown that both newborns and preverbal infants have the ability to discriminate between sets of visual objects, along with tones or words that differ in the number of syllables, on the basis of their numerosity. The authors though point out the difficulties in studying experimentally the performance of humans and nonhumans in number estimation. The accuracy of these experiments decreases as the numbers increase, and the variability increases with the size of the number, following what is called `Weber's law.' The authors include several graphs that illustrate evidence for Weber's law in both animal and human numerical behavior. As to the actual part of the brain where numerical processing takes place, the authors hold that data from neuroimaging points to the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus in the parietal lobes (HIPS). This data shows that the HIPS becomes more active when subjects estimate the approximate result of an addition problem, rather than compute the exact solution. In addition, HIPS is active when a comparative operation that requires access to a numerical scale is needed. The HIPS can also show strong category specificity for numbers when contrasted with different categories of objects of concepts. In addition, the activation of HIPS is not dependent on the modality of the input used to present numbers, and exists even when subjects were unaware of the presence of a numerical symbol. Lastly, the authors quote neuropsychological studies that indicate that HIPS plays a central role in numerical quantity representation.

An intense debate that has taken place in both cognitive neuroscience and in philosophical circles concerns the domain specificity of cognitive systems. In the article "Domain Specificity in Cognitive Systems," the authors present the electrophysiological, and neuropsychological evidence, as well as evidence from neuroimaging for the thesis of a domain specific organization of the prefrontal cortex. Of particular interest in the discussions in this article is the discovery that neuronal-firing is location-specific and directly associated with accurate recall. In addition, studies of small lesions in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex have indicated that these lesions have resulted in memory loss for some hemifields or visual field locations. Prefrontal neurons, the authors assert, are adapted to and defined by the type of data they retain. Even more fascinating is the assertion that single neurons store single spatial locations, and that memory operations are performed by a dedicated group of prefrontal neurons. If these assertions are true, they have enormous consequences not only for drug design but also for the field of artificial intelligence.

In the article "A Framework for Consciousness," the authors discuss their ideas on the problem of consciousness and the experimental techniques that could possibly support these ideas. Being more theoretical than the rest of the articles in the book, this article is one of the many that have only appeared in recent years due to the change in attitude regarding scientific investigations of consciousness. Indeed, such studies have become respectable in many neuroscientific circles, and this is fortunate given that the study of consciousness has been historically delegated mostly to philosophers, with consequently very few results that shed light on the origin and nature of consciousness. The authors define a `framework' as a "point of view" for approaching a scientific problem, and not a collection of hypotheses as is normally the practice in scientific research. A framework they say is likely to be incorrect in all the details, and holds unstated assumptions, but it is appropriate to use at a time when a field is still in its infancy. The goal of the authors is to explain the problem of qualia, i.e. the connection between subjective sensations and the physical interactions in the brain. They do not attack this problem directly, but instead they use the `neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs)', and outline the framework in which NCC is to be studied. This framework consists of the assumption of a nonconscious homunculus, the existence of "zombie" modes as nonconscious cortical reflexes, the existence of transient coalitions of neurons, explicit representations, and essential nodes, the `higher levels first' assumption, the existence of driving and modulation connections, the assertion that conscious awareness involves a series of "static snapshots", the assumption that attention and consciousness are separate processes, the role of "synchronized firing", and the existence of a "penumbra" or collection of neurons not part of the NCC, that are responsible for the "meaning" behind the neuronal firing.

If i could i would rate this 6 stars. It is simply extraordinary, i am at a loss for superlatives to describe it. Thanks to both of the authors for a very pleasant and challenging week spent reading this book.

That is the bad news, it is a very hard read. More than once i wanted to get out a large sheet of paper and begin to diagram the book's information rich structure. Who studied where and with whom? what set of principles did he have? what principles did he invent or significantly modify? what ideas was he principly interested in saving, which was he fighting with? on with words like: transmutation, preformationism, aristotelian embryology etc and names like: democritus, empedocles, von Faer, kant, newton etc etc and that is just 2 paragraphs of a random page. Information dense, detailed, insightful, principled ... again i am at a loss for words.

First, this is obviously not a book for beginners into the field of evolutionary biology, or for that matter, philosophy, history or even math. It presupposes a graduate level vocabulary, and an undergrad smattering of the sciences. Even then it is a joy to discover new words and new worlds, new friends and old acquaintances in new clothing. Simply one of the best books i've read. Or more precisely, the best 3 books i've read. For it is divided into 3 parts, with the common theme the treatment of the history of Darwinian thought and the separation is roughly something like but not quite as broad as a Kuhnian paradigm revolution.

So to reflect that division, i thought of writing 3 reviews. But figured that only those with the desire to read the book would finish even one. So to them i address the rest of this review, an unabased desire to encourage you to get and read this book.

The book is a historical analysis of Darwinian evolutionary biology's(EB) THEORY. "this book is about the intellectual constructs by which discoveries about evolution are guided, assembled, and justified as contributions to knowledge." 1st page introduction.

What is the big picture?
Darwinism as (metaphysical) research program.
It begins with the idea of natural selection(NS) as the core concept of a research tradition that is to be judged on its explanatory power, fruitfulness, and dynamics. The secondary big issue is common descent, which doesnt play nearly as big a role as NS. Its history is to be understood in the scientific context of the day, and the changes that occur over the 150 years between us and Darwin. In particular what was the model science of Newtonian physics and its philosophic principles, to be emulated in EB, that was Darwin's big contribution, he built a system that was seen by the various factions in biology as a biology in the manner of Newton.

From there the authors take off running. A very complex but terribly interesting story emerges from Darwin's education, his family, his Voyage of the Beagle, his social and cultural milieu. Not in general hand-waving platitudes but in detailed, closely watched, carefully argued specifics. Something like the division of labor in Adam Smith and the relationship of it to adaptions of creatures into biological niches in the midst of a general construction of adaption and transformation takes 4 pages.With a whole chapter 5 "The newton of a blade of grass: darwin and the political economists", my initial reason for picking up the book.

The three parts represent a watershed change(paradigm revolution?) in the way math fed into physics and then into EB. Newton and calculus for part 1, Boltzmann, and statistics for part 2, and chaos theory/non linear dynamics for part 3. (deterministic, probabilistic, chaotic)

The nicest thing about the book is to see the effect of the world on EB theory. Not just things like the analogy of capitalist competition compared to biological competition. But things like fruit flies to Russia, then Russia becoming a huge outdoors genetics lab contributor to the world and sending people back to the US to carry on the insights and feed them back into biology theory. Just neat stuff, insightful, a human story of science that you don't often get from a textbook.

So get the book. just leave a week to read it....worth every minute. i ended up wishing i had diagrammed the book, or was a fraction as smart or as clever as these authors.

This book will certainly challenge the non-scientist. It is not an ideal introduction to evolutionary thought. However, this book is filled with interesting insights that make it worth the effort. While their core metaphor, the contention that evolutionary science has appropriated developments in the physical sciences, does not always work, their analysis of historical developments in science and the philosophy of science is inevitably thought provoking and worth the effort to grasp. If you are looking for a straight-forward explanation of developments in Darwinian evolutionary theory, I am sure that there are better places to start than this book. If you are looking for a thoughtful examination of how and why those developments happened the way that they did, this book will serve you quite well.

An excellent and articulate summary/commentary of the history of natural selection. Complexity theory is covered with taste and intelligence, and not with the silliness that dominates many popular science books. Highly recommended.

This overlooked book is by far the best book in science I have read in a very long time and is as important as Kuhn. I urge readers interested in the major ideas of science - from Plato to nonlinear dynamics - to buy this book. It is beautifully written, elegant in its thought, embracing of the reader, and enormously suggestive.

This book was very easy to read. The story lines stay with the characters. There is just enough detail about the story to know that the setting takes place in Kansas City without going into a lot of detail about the city itself. The author has done a wonderful job of developing the character of Brenda without interjecting a lot of her personality traits into Brenda.
I look forward to the author's next book.

I just finished "The Father's Voice." Being from Kansas, I can relate to the characters and the environment in which the book took place. The character, Brenda (reminds me of my wife in a lot of ways.)I also envy the patients of Russell. I will recommend the book to all of my friends and relatives.

I really loved this book. It's a real page turner. The author was so descriptive in her writing that I could identify with the characters. I completed the book in two days because I just couldn't put it down.

I just finished The Father's Voice and absolutely loved it. I found the characters interesting and realistic. I enjoyed the plot and the relationship the develops between a high up lawyer (a woman) and a a janitor who owns his own cleaning company and how society sometimes views this as not good for a woman to "step down" to marry someone "below" her. Yet, the main character Branda sees beyond the label to the heart and that's the theme of the book. The hero also works and runs The Father's House, a place where inner city youth find hope and help. I'm looking forward for the next book from this author and hope she doesn't make me wait too long!

I find that it would be inpossible to play an instrument and have children, but not own this book. I used this book while I was learning to play piano growing up and just recently found it in an old box of books. This is an excellent compilation of Folk Songs!

I love this book. I have had it forever. It sat on my grandparents piano when I went to visit my grandmother's house in the early 1970s. It sat on my parents piano when I was growing up. I managed to obtain a copy of the revised edition with guitar chords and it has not left my side. When I moved west and had to give up some of my music, I brought it and a binder of other music. At one point I ended up with both my parents tattered copy and my newer edition so I gave my tattered, well-loved copy to my sister.

I got this book from my mother when I was 16, that's more than 40 years ago, and it has been with me and my children ever since. I played the songs on the piano, on the guitar, and with the accordion, and I know them all by heart, including the lively and colorful illustrations !
The arrangements are really good and easy to play.
Every year with Christmas I play the songs, and I wouldn't miss this book for the world. If you like singing and playing, order this book, you and your kids will love it !!

I have had this book forever! I know almost every song in the book. I love the old pictures! The songs vary from old ballads like Barbra Allen to the American national anthem. I strongly recomend this book. It will always be part of my childhood memories.

This is the finest coming of age novel in the known and unknown universe. It has everything..philosophy, memoirs of a world gone by, lots of quirkiness, and a great sense of heart. The best thing of all..is to have a copy of the 1936 edition. The yellowed pages of the edition are a perfect touch for a book written about time gone by.GREAT

Our hero has everything - intelligence, beauty, wealth, education, wisdom, steadfastness, imagination, an athlete's grace and strength - but somehow that is not enough and this is the story of his unfolding consciousness and gradual recognition of fatal spiritual strengths and weaknesses. This sounds very dull, but one is wonderfully swept along from an overprotected childhood in New England, to his father's yacht and to English student life at Oxford. Oliver cannot be called a wit, a social lion or a womanizer; but he admires those who are, and two of his close friends are merry, sophisticated men of the world. A thoughtful, well-endowed young man with time on his hands, he seeks the meaning of life from a certain distance, and we explore this theme with him from many fascinating angles. He does suffer. His father considers him weak and indecisive and his mother thinks him heartless and inconsiderate; he fights to gain his independence from them both and succeeds. He despairs and agonizes over his course of action, scrutinizes his motives for hypocrisy, dishonesty and self-delusion. Aesthetic beauty, ethics, the spiritual life and poetry are centrally recurring themes. Love also is explored. Our poor hero who has everything turns out to be the most awkward, ungainly, pathetic wooer imaginable. But Oliver is worth it all, and you emerge heartened and profoundly enriched by having known him and survived the various turns of his exacting life.

One of the finest books of the 20th century, The Last Puritan was a sensation when published in the 1930's. It tells the triumph and tragedy of Oliver Alden, a youth born into a strict, "Progressive" Unitarian family in late 19th Century Boston. As his life progesses, he struggles to reconcile the harsh idealism in which he was raised with the beautifully chaotic nature of the real world. This conflict gives Santayana the ability to discuss God, love, morality, politics and the permanence of human nature all without ever losing sight of one man's heroic and tragic attempt to find his place in a world not meant for him. The Last Puritan remains the only book that has ever driven me to tears, and the only novel that has ever truly changed my life. If you've ever counted yourself a "lost soul" in the world, this book will hit home like nothing you've ever read.

THE LAST PURITAN is a sort of education of Oliver Alden. The atmosphere of the work is that of a Henry James novel. Initially the chief subject is Nathaniel Alden. Unitarianism has replaced prayers at breakfast with wholesome food. The book is cool and funny. Nathaniel Alden is an awful snob and is supernaturally quiet and unengaged. He has vowed to abstain from carriage travel and so must walk. He lives in Boston in the Back Bay.

His younger brother Peter is being sent to camp in the west prior to beginning preparation for Harvard at Exeter. The camp life in Wyoming is to Peter a godsend after living under the dictates of Nathaniel. Genuine cowboys would sometimes ride into the camp. Peter grows up to attend Harvard and to acquire a medical degree. He never practices medicine. His son Oliver is born. His wife is from Great Falls, Connecticut. Oliver manages to escape almost all the ills of childhood. He has a foreign governess, a German woman.

While boating with his father, Oliver is given THE LEAVES OF GRASSS to read. Oliver and his father visit an old kinsman, Caleb Wetherbee. During the winter Caleb resides on Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill. He is a cripple and has adopted the Catholic religion and has become highly knowledgeable about European matters. He invites Oliver to to participate in his Sunday evening parties when Oliver attends Harvard. Observers find Caleb's deep religious interests to be a clear case of sublimation.

Olivers's mother is apt to take no notice of genius or style, she is concerned with social propriety. Oliver, invited by his father to spend a year abroad, makes a decision to stay at his day school in Connecticut and live with his mother for the final year before college. He also decides that Williams College is good enough for him. He fears that universities are filled with snobs. Football more than anything else restores Oliver's conventional tone after spending time with his father and his father's companion Jim.

Oliver does spend the summer with his father and learns that his will has been ripped up and that the older man fears he is dying. Oliver promises Jim he will take care of him notwithstanding the fact that some of Jim's conduct shocks him. Oliver learns to punt. He meets his cousin Mario at Eton. Mario's grandmother is Peter Alden's sister. Oliver and Peter are detained at Eton when Peter falls ill. Peter is pleased to see that his son is so wide awake intellectually. Oliver feels a need to justify his natural sympathies theoretically. Peter dies.

Two years later Mario and Oliver see each other in Manhattan and in Cambridge. Both of the cousins are attending Harvard. Oliver, spending three years at Williams, suffers a football injury and decides to rededicate himself to his studies in the wider academic setting of Harvard. Oliver never flinches in his determination to pursue higher things. At Harvard through chance Oliver occupies the room occupied previously by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Santayana himself is a character in this tale, a member of the philosophy department at Harvard. Oliver joins in the fighting of World War I. He is described as an ascetic without faith. When Oliver dies, Mario is the executor of Oliver's will. Mario tells the supposed biographer of Oliver in the epilogue that he idealizes Oliver and makes him too complex.

The book is very satisfying. It raises issues that are still pertinent. It is scarcely dated at all.

All of us pet lovers have loved and lost. The world is starting to catch up with us by giving us the tools we need to grieve, heal and live lovingly in their memory as we move forward. Bradford has given us another tool to do that. This book is a must read for anyone who has loved and lost- or who wants to help a loved one who is grieving. Thank you Bradford. We all needed Rocky.

The love that the author had for his little dog shines through every page of this book. Lessons From Rocky will melt the heart of anyone who has ever had a beloved pet. Mr. Miller shows how a person's relationship with a pet brings more than just joy. Rocky, as so many of our furry little friends, was naturally filled with a simple wisdom that human beings so often have to strive for. Our human lives are often too complex, too hurried, and too goal-oriented. Rocky, of course, would have none of that, and Mr. Miller shows how Rocky's innate friendship, patience, joy, trust, and unconditional love were a constant inspiration to celebrate and appreciate every moment.

This makes a great gift for anyone who has ever loved or lost a pet.

Brad Miller turns sorrow into inspiration for all of us in his memoir of his life with his little dog. Instead of focusing on training the dog, Miller reminds us of the things pets can teach us, about ourselves and others. A heartwarming book.

"Lessons From Rocky" contains things the author learned from his dog such as: live in the moment, celebrate everything, be patient, be courageous--hang in there, be happy, trusting, loyal, curious, grateful, appreciative, listen well, and be a good friend. It's well written and was a delight to read!

I read the whole book in only an hour, but enjoyed it all. It's short and to the point without any rambling. Each lesson also has a quote that applies. It's definitely a book that helps one appreciate their pet. I am giving it to my brother whose dog died earlier this year because I think he'll enjoy it too. I especially found the forward interesting that tells why Bradford Miller wrote this book. It was for the same reason why I wrote "My Funny Dad, Harry." After our loved ones pass on, we realize just how amazing and wonderful they were and want to share them with others.

Karen Arlettaz Zemek, author of "My Funny Dad, Harry"