Bradford Books

Although insightful in some areas, Bradford's "Portraits" now, as well as when first published in the early 20th centery, is a product of Lost Cause idolatry. I was especially irritated by his portrait of General James Longstreet who, after spending many years in the South's doghouse, is now viewed as one of the very best generals produced by the South in the Civil War. Longstreet received his "Scarlet S" after the war because he joined the Republican party in an effort to help the Southern people---a move widely misunderstood for a long time. Bradford's psychographical comments in many of the sketches had their origin from his deep belief in the "Lost Cause" of the Civil War, therefore the comments about Longstreet and others should be understood in that context.

From the back cover:

Wanted: Husband
Position: Temporary
Terms: Negotiable--but must be willing to live in!

TO BUY A GROOM by Rita Clay Estrada
Sable LaCroix: Widowed, wealthy and in danger of losing custody of her three-year-old son.
Joe Lombardi: Confirmed bachelor, entrepreneur, and in danger of losing his racetrack--before he's even opened it. She needs a husband--fast! He needs a million dollards.... Solution: Marriage!

MEETING PLACE by Bobby Hutchinson
Yolanda Belan: A damsel in distress--not to mention danger!
Alex Caine: A knight whose armor's so tarnished it's downright rusty. She needs a husband with an American passport. He needs a mother for his rebellious child.... Solution: Marriage!

THE ARRANGEMENT by Sally Bradford
Juliet Cavanaugh: No-nonsense divorce lawyer with a ticking biological clock.
Brady Talcott: Victim of an outrageous trust and running out of time. She needs a man to father her baby--with no entanglements. He needs a temporary wife.... Solution: Marriage!

And my review:

This collection is of three previously published stories. They are all full-length Harlequin novels, not the shorter novellas you usually find in these kinds of collections. All the stories range from 160 - 200+ pages.

I didn't get very far into Rita Clay Estrada's TO BUY A GROOM because the hero was so obnoxious. I couldn't stand the guy! He was such a male chauvinist. Seriously, he actually says to the heroine that the next time she greets him at the door, she'd better have a beer in her hand. Ugh! I wanted to tell him just where he could shove that beer. I wished the heroine would, too, but she didn't. I just couldn't cheer for her to win the heroine, since I felt like he didn't deserve to even breathe the same air as she did. She was way too good for him. And really, considering that each was helping the other out, the instant, rather childish antagonism between the hero and heroine seemed rather out of place. One star.

Bobby Hutchinson's MEETING PLACE read more like a political intrigue story than a romance novel. It just couldn't do anything to keep my interest. If you're into "spy" novels, then this story might appeal to you. But I read romance for the relationship, not to read about political struggles in far-off lands. I was too bored to make myself keep reading. Two stars.

THE ARRANGEMENT by Sally Bradford was a bit better, but not wonderful. One drawback: this is a story written by two authors writing as one. I've yet to read a book written by two people that was worth finishing. I'm afraid this was no exception. While the writing style wasn't awkward the way I'd expected it to be, this story was very slow moving. There would be chapters and chapters where the hero and heroine wouldn't have any interaction. Then there would be a few brief pages of them together, and then another long wait before anything else happened between them. The relationship just never felt like it got going. Again, I read romance for romance. Also, it was a bit hard to like a woman who was actively choosing to deprive a child of its father, and to like a man who was going to purposely father a child, and then never see it again. Setting up a trust fund for the child is not enough. Every child needs a father figure, not just his monetary support. Two stars.

One nice thing with anthologies is that you get to try several different authors for the price of one book. One drawback is that the stories are rarely outstanding or memorable. These are your standard run-of-the-mill Harlequin romances, and while Harlequin has published some works by very good authors, that wasn't the case here. This is not a collection that I recommend.

In 1989, the PBS series NOVA had an hour-long conversation with the late physicist Richard Feynman, in which he extolled on his passion for the scientific enterprise. The interview was animated, enlightening, and entertaining. (Clips from this interview circulate the Internet.) I was hoping that this book would present similarly animated and passionate discussions. However, Gazzaniga explains in his introduction that these collected "interviews" were conducted by email. This changes the tone of the discussion entirely because the responses are, in a word, crafted. In addition, both the questions, and their responses, are highly technical. For example, on the subject of Brain Imaging, Gazzaniga asks: "PET was initially built to deal with medical issues, perhaps looking at cerebral stroke per se, or studying chemotherapeutic agents for brain tumor, or looking at neurotransmitters in psychiatric and degenerative disease. PET today seems mostly committed to the study of functional correlates of cognitive function. Is this true and, if so, why?" Such questions are not exactly "fascinating reading for both beginners and experts alike" as suggested by one back-cover reviewer. Perhaps experts in the field of cognitive neuroscience will find the book useful but this is not a book for the uninitiated. I can only hope that Gazzaniga's dinner parties that inspired the book are more fun.

Thulani Davis is a sensitive, talented writer with an artistic sense that leaves the reader (or theatre audience member) with a sense of awe and wonder. Yet, here, she really misses the mark. Reducing the story of Ruby McCollum to a series of shallow stereotypes, she forwards her political statement, yet fails to capture the more sinister, subtle aspects of racism involved in this case.

From 1889 to 1909, C S Peirce devised three systems of graphical logic:
* alpha, isormophic to sentential logic. Alpha also suffices for syllogisms and elementary Boolean algebra.
* beta, isomorphic to first order logic.
* gamma, isomorphic to a peculiar modal logic easily transformable to S4 and S5.

The alpha graphs are well-understood, but have yet to attract the intellectual and pedagogic respect they deserve. Shin chose to exclude gamma from her book; fair call.

Shin claims her book is necessary in substantial part because the 1973 book by Don Roberts makes major errors in interpreting the beta graphs, and Jay Zeman's 1964 Ph.D. thesis makes lesser errors. She may be right, although Roberts (1973) is a good deal easier to read than Shin's book. But I have found a number of errors and misprints in Shin. Moreover, I largely agree with Dale Jacquette's highly critical review of Shin in the Transactions of the CS Peirce Society.

The main difficulty I have with this book is that it fails to clarify the beta graphs. No one will come away from her book thinking "this is neater than the refutation tree or natural deduction approach to the quantifiers." I know that the alpha graphs have been taught to middle school students in pilot programs, and suspect that they could be taught as part of 11th grade algebra. There is a possibility that a simplification of the beta graphs could be taught in high school as well, and to undergrads who are not logicians. But Shin's book does nothing to make Peirce's graphical logic more popular and more teachable.

Shin also uses the graphical logic to whip the standard approach to logic using algebraic notation. She ignores a very real problem with graphical logic, namely that it is wasteful of the printed page. I see Peirce's graphical logic not so much as something we should actually practice, but as a source of insights by which to improve standard logic.
For instance, the alpha graphs suggest that the natural deduction approach to truth functors can be considerably simplified. I think that the beta graphs could likewise inspire major simplifications of extant ways of handling quantified formulae. (On the other hand, it is possible that the beta graphs cannot improve on Quine's Main Method, which simply works UI and EI hard.) But I doubt that Shin's book will inspire anyone to find such simplifications.

Shin includes more than 50pp on Peirce's philosophy of logic, including his semeiotic approach. This is a fascinating subject, and Shin does a fair job of summarizing some well-understood parts of the Peirce scholarship. But she does not add all that much to our understanding of these topics.

Shin was a student of the late Jon Barwise and a product of Stanford's interdisciplinary group on visual systems. So her book chatters on about "multimodal," "iconic," etc. I agree that we need careful empirical and philosophical reasoning about visual representation of knowledge, data, and reasoning, if only to design more effective web sites, but prefer the approaches of Edward Tufte and John Sowa.

I bought this book as a journeyman commercial electrician to gain a little more in-depth detail to bonding requirements. It's a terrible book. It goes into detail about all the stuff you learn as a first year apprentice and does nothing but quote the Code anywhere that actually needs a better explanation. I only read a few pages and reallized it's nothing more than a beginers guide to electrical.

River of Hands is good for the deaf audience. I think it is ok for non-deaf people to read that book in order to understand what deaf people can do in their life. I applaud that book anyway because in our deaf world we really need more deaf literature which can be helpful to deaf children.

Sally Bradford is a terrible women who teaches me at school. Ban this book.

This book was a disappointment. Although familiar with modern linguistics, I was looking for a basic introductory book for a review of the current state of the art. This book is not it. While the content does cover all of the basic elements of linguistics, it is poorly written. It suffers mostly from jumps in its reasoning and explanations; at frist going very slowly over a topic, then leaping to a conclusion. The boxes with "pros and cons" of an issue seem forced and at times struggle to be "politically correct". I was disappointed and would not recommend this book either as a text or as a review.

As Brent Slife and I noted regarding this book in our review in _Contemporary Psychology_, with psychologists finding themselves weighing the merits of prescription privileges-a traditionally biological intervention-and viewing what were once distinctly psychological diagnoses (e.g., depression) as fundamentally biological in nature, books such as this are increasingly more warranted. Relatively new specialties, such as evolutionary psychology and cognitive science, have sprouted and apparently flourished through essentially biological explanations of traditionally psychological phenomena. However, this book is recommended to only a very limited audience in psychology. First, the book is incredibly dense, seemingly written with philosophers in mind. So, if you regularly read the work of professional philosophers, particularly when they write to other philosophers as their primary audience, then by all means dive into this work. Furthermore, I am disappointed to say that those in psychology with the most to gain from this book--neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists, cognitive scientists, psychopharmacologists--will likely have the most difficult time discerning its messages. Indeed, without professional help (i.e., another philosopher), I fear that critical issues in the biologization of psychology will be misinterpreted or missed entirely. Finally, it is apparent that the perspective of the authors of the various chapters in this book is quite singular: offering only biological explanations of psychological phenomena (biologization of psychology). I certainly hope another biology/psychology edited book will explore more holistic understandings of psychological phenomena.