Clayton Books

D. Clayton Brown's Globalization And America Since 1945 provides a book surveying the nature of the international world community since 1945. From the growth of networking and agricultural connections to world economic competition, Globalization And America Since 1945 provides surveys of many different facets of global expansion.

Philip Clayton has written an extensive study on how science and theology relate to each other. Not only is the book theologically sound, Clayton reviews a lot of contemporary scientific theories. Especially if you are interested in chaos theory, self-organization, emergence, and its relation to theological reflection about divine action, this book is a must read. It is not for nothing that the famous Templeton Foundation rewarded Clayton with an important prize!

I added this book to my travel kit alongside my razor and cell phone charger. The puzzles are challenging enough to hold my interest, yet not so obscure they cause me to throw in the towel. More often than not, I can finish the 3 and 4 ball rated puzzles using only the 30 year warehouse of baseball trivia in my head, but I'll admit to having to cheat a bit on the 5-ball rated puzzles. Of particular interest were the "journeyman" and "logic problem" puzzles which take a while to get the hang of, but are quite addicting. Anyway, the book makes for a great companion while spending nights alone on the road and would be a great gift for any baseball fan.

Rayford Clayton Reddell and Robert Galyean had a fine idea when they thought of this book: Growing Fragrant Plants. Reddell (owner of Garden Valley Ranch, a commercial flower ranch in the San Francisco area) and Galyean (head gardener of its fragrance garden) have devised a rich palette of fragrant plants.

They've assembled a marvelous list of fragrant trees and shrubs, vines and trailers, strongly scented roses, herbs, annuals, biennials and perennials, as well as bulbs, corms, rhizomes, tubers, ground covers, water plants, fragrant grasses and scented roots.

They tell how to distinguish between fragrances, predict the strength of a fragrance and separate scented flowers and leaves into fragrance groups based on the predominating chemical substance of their essential oils.

And of course they tell how to select fragrant plants, where to buy them, how to grow them, landscape with them and preserve them.

This book is a great introduction to the wonderfully addictive world of growing roses. The author slowly succumbed, starting out using every square inch of patio at his san francisco townhouse for roses, and now owns a large ranch in Petaluma which is an ARS test garden. The book deals matter-of-factly with planting, growing, and pruning, giving you options and alternatives based on your climate, attitudes towards pesticides, available time, etc. Naming one's favorite rose is a tough question; mr. reddell provides a dozen or so of his, with detailed observations that have helped me be more critical in selecting the roses I grow. His encouragement to show roses led me into my first rose shows - i enjoyed the experience hugely and have nearly a dozen ribbons now to show for it (no trophies yet...). I recommend this book as a starting point for anyone who is beginning to grow roses, and would like to be as effective as they can within the time they have available. It's been very valuable for me.

This is definitely not a book for the faint-of-mathematical-heart. As the title indicates, this is a user's manual for the GSLIB software (which is included on CD-ROM), and it includes discussions of all the supporting statistical mathematics. This makes the book invaluable to the user who is already well-grounded in statistics, and difficult to follow for the rest. There are very few lifelines to pull non-statisticians out of the jargon mire.

Nevertheless, if you're well-versed (and you probably are if you're considering purchasing this software), this is one heck of a powerful set of tools. The software includes a Kriging smorgasbord, simulation, variography, display tools, and is self-contained with few exceptions. The software is platform-independent, requiring only a Fortran compiler. All routines are written for Fortran77, and are uncompiled. I found the software user manual to be useful, well thought out, and complete.

A powerful tool at a bargain price!

This unique reference book is a readers guide in dictionary format, and is one of the most interesting works on the subject. Bix? You go to this book not for biography, but to find out what a "bix" is. It does cover some modern jazz, but deals mainly with traditional jazz and dixieland. It explains a great variety of terms and concepts in American jazz music to Martians and British music fans, and will be most useful to those other aliens, modern Americans. It contains a wealth of history, and has wonderful pictures from the early days, and maps of cities showing key points in history such as key clubs and ballrooms. Much on the British trad scene.

This book is easily one of the most useful books in regard to nuclear astrophysics. While the chapters have very repetitive structure and wording, this fits very well with the books namesake of a handbook, rather than a work which is meant to be read straight through.

While this book lacks many technical details, it is, to my knowledge, the only qualitative book on nuclear astrophysics, focusing on the connection of ideas in simple language. If you are interested in a technical book on the subject, these are widely available, from Clayton's 1968 Principles of Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis, to Rolf's Cauldrons in the Cosmos: Nuclear Astrophysics (Theoretical Astrophysics Series), Pagel's Nucleosynthesis and Chemical Evolution of Galaxies, Arnett's Supernovae and Nucleosynthesis (Princeton Series in Astrophysics) and Iliadis's Nuclear Physics of Stars.

In this regard, it is a unique book and extremely useful for preparing a talk to a general audience. One requires some background in the field to understand all the material, and so in that sense the book is not the best primer to the field.

I have two complaints, however. Clayton states in the preface, "Some may criticize my omission of reference to the research literature." This I do not mind, considering the book's goal of being non-technical. However, whenever Don Clayton has done the research in question, he is sure to point that out to the reader. But rarely does he name any other scientific researchers in nuclear astrophysics who have greatly contributed as well. In this way, one who reads the book may come away with the incorrect impression that Clayton is the main contributor to this sort of research, when in fact the conclusion that Clayton is a bit self-righteous is probably more accurate. At the very least, it's poor form and becomes annoying.

My second complaint is that when I asked Clayton if he was going to write the second volume, germanium to uranium, and he laughed and said no.

A friend of mine gave me a copy of this workbook because he knew my daughters were getting frequent migraine headaches. This book was so easy to use and understand. It seemed like it was written for me. My daughters really liked to use the color poster and the food deck as a reminder of foods they should limit portion sizes or avoid altogether. My youngest daughter still gets a headache from time to time but they frequency and level of pain of her existing headaches has decreased greatly. She is doing well in school and I can't say enough about how this book has helped both my daughters. I recommend it to everyone I come across who is helping their child cope with childhood headaches.

There are plenty of junk books on nutrition which try to sell you snake oil, half-digested gobbets of non-science and badly designed supplements. Health Defence is something else. It has become a course book for nutritionists and doctors in Britain. Although it covers the science like a good textbook should - it's an up to date overview of international nutritional science - it's a good read. You can use it like a reference book or just read it cover to cover. This has been a very helpful book for me and my family, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to take care of their own health.