Bradford Books

I was hoping for an overview of dozens of sensory systems in use in the world today. In that I was disappointed, because the book only covers something like 5 of them. By contrast my Encyclopedia Britannica has a better overview of sensoria under 'senses'.

On the other hand, those senses that are covered are covered in considerably more depth than I was expecting, and were an enjoyable read. Descriptions of the neurobiology of how the various senses process input were particularly welcome.

Good reading for those who loves animals,navigation,sensing,
biology,physics or nature.

how do bats find their way in the dark? how do fish and birds experience or sense the world around them? echolocation, bioelectricity and internal navigation systems are some of the sensory cabilities discussed in this interesting book

This book is about sensory modalities, like a bat's sonar, which humans do not have. Ever since I read Nagel's What is it like to be a Bat as a wee lad, I have wondered that very thing. So you would think I would have loved this book. You might think so, but you woul be wrong.

Though I am very interested in the subject this review covers (hence the 2-stars) I could not finish the book because of the chatty, faux-chummy style. I compleatly support the idea that science writing does not have to be dry and jargon-heavy but there is no need for a forced imitation of an informal discusion.

I may skim though the rest, but every time I open the book I want to send the author Strunk and White.

I will put forward my impression of SOtS, perhaps at the risk of appearing somewhat of a devils advocate. I am of two minds about this book - there can be no doubt about the sincerity of Keeney's experiences, the depth of his insights, or the beauty and magic of the life that he has chosen for himself and that he describes in SOtS. I will leave these to be pointed out by other reviewers. However, beyond the most mundane clichés, I see very little connection between Keeney's experiences and psychotherapy as we know it or ecology.

In this book Keeney describes his journeys around the world. Perhaps my greatest reservation with this book is that the man is like a butterfly - he constantly flits from one shaman to the next, never learning a tradition or a ceremony, never learning anything, really. His shamanic practice basically consists of a mediumship, where his body/mind is taken over by assorted "spirits", accompanied with shaking, speaking in tongues and total loss of conscious control. This, as one can imagine, can lead to humorous situation in a Native American sweat lodge, one of which Keeney was unceremoniously expelled following his antics, but is received with great affection and respect in different African traditions, including those of the Zulu, Bushmen and African-Americans. The descriptions of his meetings with Bushmen were particularly poignant and beautiful. The downside of mediumship is, I suppose, that one never really learns a technology of working with the alternate reality (whatever it is), or with energy. Moreover, this has nothing to do with psychotherapy, which strives for conscious control (rather, letting go) and understanding of subconscious complexes and contractions. The psychotherapeutic theory in the book is, at best, rather simplistic; K is simply not interested in it. Given his experiences, I can see why.

Although Keeney is very good at playing the humility game, he can't help mentioning throughout the book how assorted indigenous people called him "a very holy man, indeed". Heh... yeah! There are many photographs in the book of the medicine people he met and perhaps 70% include the humble holy man Keeney himself.

These comments notwithstanding, here is a man with the guts to meet all kinds of interesting people and to talk about his innermost sacred experiences to the whole world. This in itself, I believe, something worthy of respect.

I dislike giving a self-proclaimed "holy man" a bad review, but honestly, at times I couldn't stop laughing while reading of his experiences. A whole lotta shakin' goin' on does not a holy man make. I would never deny him his unique method of connecting to spirit. What I would perhaps question is the stature he gives himself. See, Keeney never met a holy man, guru, avatar, medicine woman, psychic, shaman or Spiritual Director he didn't like, or who didn't offer to make him their "heir apparent." From Black Elk to Buddha he is universally adored. And why shouldn't they? Keeney is so exalted that Jesus Christ himself is Keeney's "spirit guide." Yeah, that's what The Christ is involving Himself with these days. But somehow, no matter who blesses, embraces, or aids Keeney, it's never enough. He has a guru jones, each one needing to be "higher" and more enlightened than the last. Thing is, there are pages here and there in the book that have real truth in them, especially in the beginning. But one wonders if he simply mouths these truths or lives them. Of course, the book came out in 1994, and with all those "helpers," Keeney would have had no choice but to grow and learn -- and hopefully to develop some self-awareness and humility.

And then there's "Marion." Took awhile to figure out who she was -- for Keeney wasn't very forthcoming. Eventually, one realizes that it is Marion, his wife, who was often holding the whole show together while Keeney indulged in self-pity and doubt. But she gets little credit from him and often disappears from the book when she should be starring in it.

A lot of the book is boring -- a list of actions and suffering that are only interesting to the one it's happening to. His last prayer in the book is reminescent of Jesus' prayer in the Garden. Keeney writes that he "cried out to the Creator, 'I'm not sure I can live with this responsibility. . . You must help me endure and show you are with us.'" I'm thinking: Endure what? After all his travels, he still doubts that Great Spirit is with him? Then God answers by making a pot appear on his dresser. Nice.

A fantastic story about one person's journey into spirit! Bradford has been guided by his waking and sleeping dreams and visions, to journey to sacred teachers in the United States,North, South, and Central America,Africa, and Japan. The message is one of global healing and love, through shamanic and universal eyes. May your life be as magical and full. This book will be a catalyst to your spiritual journey. One of my top 10 favorite books. Inspiring, exciting,transformational. It knocked my socks off and knitted me another pair. :) In Spirit, Sakanta Running Wolf, Th'e Chupe ke ya ka Pah, Walks in Freedom

Dr. Keeney, a well-known author and teacher in psychotherapy, writes a moving story of his own journey in and through the shamanic circles. His lifetime of call to know the people, ideas, and experiences of the spiritual realm lead him from the sweat lodges of the Lakotah to the Kalahari Desert bushmen, from the healers of South America to the wisdom-keepers of Japan. This book will frighten some, enlighten most, and expand the possible for all -- I highly recommend you read this as both anthropology and autobiography. Frank Thomas, PhD

I am self-studying QFT and have bought several of the standard textbooks -- they are all tough going.

Stevens's book helped me greatly in understanding the path-integral approach: the section on functional calculus was very well presented, then applied in the two chapters on quantum mechanics (QM) and quantum field theory (QFT). I especially liked the connection made with classical probability theory, something I haven't seen in my QFT books.

You will not learn QM from this book. In fact, with a QM-101 background, you may find the QM chapter hard to follow. However, if you have started to learn QFT, it should add value.

The other chapters were of less interest to me personally, but I thought they nicely reviewed their topics from a fresh viewpoint, in particular special relativity and thermodynamics.

This is a concise and elegant summary of the fundamentals of the six core theories of physics. It even includes a convenient math review. Although the author might have the "beginning graduate student" in mind, now at the end of my Ph.D. training in applied physics at Harvard, I still had a great time reading it!.

While it's pleasant having an overview of physics in one place I am unhappy with the lack of care in writing the text. For example, the section on functional calculus frequently changes notation during an explanation. Also, much more emphasis should have been placed on the fact that the differentiation of functionals produces functional DENSITY derivatives. However, with some effort, I DID succeed in understanding this section. Needs greater clarity of presentation, perhaps with more diagrams.

I bought this for half price from a used bookstore (they had several copies) so I should've been warned. Within a few pages of starting this book, in a section of vector algebra, the author states that all vectors in an orthonormal basis are eigenvectors of all unitary operators. That's a ludicrous statement that is trivially wrong. Being a bit afraid that I might be led astray when reading sections on material I didn't already know, I checked the web for other mentions of this book. The only website I found (besides the publishers) was one hosting a lengthy errata for the book, full of corrections to sloppy mistakes in this book. Warning number two. Here it is (you'll need it):

w3.pppl.gov/~hammett/talks/ 2001/core-theories-errata.pdf

I think the idea behind this book is great, and I haven't found anything yet as aggregious as the mistatement about unitary transforms. But beware. This isn't a book by a physicist, and it shows.

This short story is not worth reading. It tries to cover a sci fi topic but doesn't do so believably. The author doesn't seem to know much of anything about sci fi whatsoever, and the story itself is really more like a cheesy kind of fantasy. This could pass for sci fi in perhaps the early 20th century, when the genre hadn't defined itself yet.

...a Ghost ship with a map, and one soul trying to reach the end of his journey

I like the way the storyline keeps unraveling, the allusion to mice in a maze..., mens habitual need to wander about without directions, the need to be in control of ones destiny

It's a great story. Hope to read more of Ms. Bradford's writing.The Writersnet Anthology of Prose: Fiction

Ms. Bradford has a fine imagination but I must admit re-reading this fine story and my understanding grew with the second reading. That's my limitation not hers. Thanks for your inspiration to make people think.
Charley
Legends of Nevermore County

This books talks about life in a way that much of the mechanized, individualistic Western World has abandoned. Keeney is not talking about New Age fads or chemically induced experiences. It is not a how to book nor is it an attempt to give insightful knowledge to the reader as many psychologically oriented books try to do. Rather, it acknowledges the great complexity and circularity and mystery innate in living and encourages embracing these in a way that expands human experience rather than reducing them into seemingly understandable explanations. Keeney demonstrates how healing comes through adding mystery to mystery, through play, improvisation and by dancing together.
I highly recommend this book to anyone; especially to professionals in psychiatry and psychology.

Although I'd never before read anything about Shamanism or healing of any kind, this book inspired me to do so. Bradford Keeney sounds like a really incredible person and Jon Carlson and Jeff Kottler end up feeling like old friends by the end of the book. I was absolutely engrossed in this book and it wasn't at all dry or overly academic. It fits with real life as well as for phsychologists and other healers.

I know that a lot of well informed people respect this book and have learned non-western approaches to disease and emotional dis-ease. As someone who has spent quite a few years working with Navajo healers, this book felt false and pretentious. For me, it had the critical flaw of being organized around the concept of the "very special" person with the simplistic notion that conventional western approaches are lacking in wisdom, while traditional/tribal approaches to "life out of balance" are consistently more powerful, if elusive. First off, the white iconoclast should not be the center of a book of this type. At best, he can only be the "messenger". But the bigger problem for me was in how these materials were conveyed to the reader lacking any element of scientific hesitation to make extreme claims for radically different approaches to human health problems. It could be true that we have much to learn from non-western/tribal sources of health care, but they are not a universal panacea. Not all "healers" are wise and not all tribal healing practices are effective. To place modern science on a pedestal far above traditional people is an error, as well as its opposite.
This is a very difficult area to find reliable information, but there are better sources than American Shaman.

For derivations of the cable equation and single-channel models, this book is unmatched. On the down-side, the coverage of related experimental neurobiology is quite dated.

This is a mathematical cell neurophysiology tour de force which gives the most up to date information on the cable equations. Anyone doing research on that small area will find an enormous wealth of information here. It is good as a reference text on cable equation derivations. The book is based on lectures given by Thomas Weiss at MIT in Biophysics. It was a tough course I am sure. This book is for serious mathematical neuroscientists.

Many books claim to be self-contained. A typical self-contained book usually has an appendix and breifly discusses some mathematical preliminaries, etc. that seldom helps a genuine beginner. A typical ``self-contained book'' is also somewhat thin to incorporate all the necessary background.

This is a THICK volume.

And, wow, this book shows you step-by-step how to get a solution of the cable equation. To be quite honest the approach was not entirely satisfactory nor is there any attempt to go beyond the passive membrane. However, I found many precious pieces that you cannot find in any other books. The only drawback is, I believe, this book is too thorough for a beginner. Nonetheless it makes a good reference book.

This book is really great. Let's say that you fell on a rock and your kne cracked open and it's bloody, well this book will tell you plnts that you kneed to put on it. If you have to mix some plants or liquify them to a certain point it tells you exactly how to prepare it so that it will have effect. I highly recomend this book for anybody who goes into the woods and has a chance of getting hurt.

A full page is dedicated to each plant, showing in color, a detailed drawing of the leaves and flower, fruit or other identifying characteristic. The text is at least a page and covers: Family, Common Names, Characteristics, Area and Uses. The text is easy to read and offers interesting notes about the plant's uses, primarily from American Indians and pioneers. This is not a field identification book, but it provides additional information to a known plant. The guide is alphabetical by common name.

If you think that you're going to hike into the wilderness and learn to identify medicinal plants with this book, you may be in for a surprise. There is no index except for the list of common names in the front. An index with the Latin names as well as the pathological conditions the plants are useful for would have been helpful. There also seems to be no logic (except maybe to the author)to the order of the plants presented. It would be quite difficult for you to identify a plant with this book unless you already had some guess as to what you were looking at, and then look THAT up. A more descriptive title would have been just plain "Medicinal Wild Plants of North America."(i.e. nix the "Field Guide" part because, that it certainly ain't!) Having said that, I think the book is worth reading just for the information you get from it. I certainly learned a lot about how the plants were used from a historical perspective (lots of anecdotes about the native Americans and their herbal medicines).

An intimate look at what it is like to spend your life chasing fish. Matsen's experience inside the industry gives a hard look at the reality of long hours, tight quarters and the gamble of the catch. Tight prose pack a lot of information.

Ill keep this brief. The book has many sections ranging from basic trips out on the grounds, to harrowing tales of lost life and salvation. Also, to those who are very interested in the innerworkings of the industry, there are some gray areas that are cleared up in a rather dry but informative chapter.

I reccomend it to fans of Spike Walker's books

E

This book has a board view of fishing in Alaska. Unlike other books I have read on crabbing in Alaska this book tells about crabbing, salmon fishing, dragging and how the fishing in Alaska has changed over the years. It is a good overview of the fishing industry, but lacks the exciting tales told in Spike Walkers books on the Alaskan crab boom of the late seventies.

more illustrations would have helped this out a lot. All in all, a bit wordy.

This book is expensive, and it is immense.That is no exxageration-I've been reading it in bed, and each time is like a bench press session in the gym. However, if the price and size don't bother you, this is an unparalleled investment.
Thoreau was brilliant, but he was also sincere and unpretentious. How often do you encounter that combination? He was an incredible man, and this book offers you unlimited access to his thoughts and his life. Thoreau was bound by nothing but the dictates of truth as he perceived it at the moment. He would tell the truth one day. He'd tell it again the next day.....even if he had changed his mind overnight.He refused to be limited by the expectations or conventions of other people.
If you love his major works, then this journal is for you. If you are unfamiliar with him, I'd ask you a question-Have you ever been beside yourself with anger and disgust at the superficial quality of our society? Of all the people who will not deviate from the script, even if their lives depended on it? At all the mindless conformity and empty competition? Have you ever considered how nice it would be to encounter an actual individual? How profound it would be to find a person who lived from the inside out, rather than the reverse.
If any of these ideas sound familiar to you, you will find a kindred spirit in Thoreau.I would prefer his company over just about anyone else, literary or otherwise. Let there be no mistake-this is far more than a book.
Please note-When I initially wrote this, I had only read about one third of the way through the journal. Now that I have finished it, I would add one additional statement.This book contains an incredible number of accounts from Thoreau's nature walks. In fact, incredible might be an understatement. He catalogs one excursion after another, from any season, and from any time of the day or night.The detail and breadth of these accounts is sometimes astonishing. Of course, I'm not talking about 'Robinson Crusoe' type adventure in the outdoors. Those of you who are familiar with Thoreau's works will know what to expect. Lots and lots of day to day experiences in the area where he lived. He must have known the place like the back of his hand. At any rate, I thought this was worth mentioning. If you are drawn to Thoreau primarily because of his observations in the natural world, you will probably get more out of this volume than anyone else.

(born July 12,1817,Concord,Mass,U.S.-died May 6,1862,Concord)
-thinker,essayist,and naturalist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson recognized Thoreau's talent early on and Thoreau was strongly influenced by Emerson's ideas,and observations on human nature
In a manner of speaking
Emerson 'took him under his wing'.'Walden' his most recognized work,was based on his experience living in a cabin beside Concord's Walden Pond between the years 1845-1847.During this period he set out to demonstrate how satisfying a simple life could be.Essays recording his daily life were assembled for his masterwork (Walden-1854).However,we see the authentic writing of Thoreau,bona fide,so to speak in this collection. These two massive volumes of journals span, collectively ,from 1837- 1861.We see the unguarded and genuine thoughts and writings of one of the giants in natural history.We can thank
Emerson for suggesting early on to Thoureau, the idea of keeping a daily journal.There are an amazing
scope of ideas,and observations of nature,thoughts on life,and fascinating reads of the characters he stumbles upon throughout this work, and his unique descriptions of human behaviour in this 'Magnum Opus' on the daily life of one man. Here are 7 examples from the Journals

-"it is astonishing how much information is to be got out of very unpromising witnesses..."


-"When a man tells me that he likes anything that I have said or written or done-it aquires immediately a value in my eyes+I consider it with my new eyes to discover what is it that's good in it. I think however that no mans praise can cheat me into thinking what is good in fact is really bad..."

-"I am glad to have drunk water so long,as I prefer the natural sky to an opium eaters heaven-would keep sober always,and lead a sane life,and not be one indebted to stimulants..."

-"...All I can say,is that I live,I breath,and have my thoughts..."

-"...There is a sweet wild world which lies along the strain of the wood thrush-the rich intervals which border the stream of it's song-is more thoroughly genial to my nature than any other..."

"...There is always danger of losing sight of what a friend is absolutely
,while considering what is he to us alone..."

"...What sort of fruit comes of living as if you were going to die? Live rather as if you were coming to life.How can the end of living be death?
The end of living is life.Life is an active transitive state to life--Life is the green state..."

The journals are full of observations similar to those mentioned above.Great for your collection. Enjoy

The book is a very inspiring introduction to artificial neural computing. It explains the intutive motivation behind the design of almost all major artificial neural models. It explains insight in simple english. This book along with a mathematical rigourous book can provide a very good understanding on the modern neural network research.

This book walks through practical examples of various neural network designs and their relationships among eachother.

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, this book chose the thousand-word route in most cases. Neural nets are ideal candidates for illustrations. So, why they decided to use endless descriptions is beyond me. It is like giving directions over the phone when a map would get to the point much faster.

It also needed to explain more conceptually how neural nets actually work, not just how they are arranged. Examples where the net matches one-to-one with an actual image or pattern are easy to follow, but how they recognize different variations of patterns (variety) I never got a good feel for from this book. However, the description of an Adeline node was pretty good.