Frank Books

Interestingly, the authors choose not to employ the famous "Kirby calculus" in the proofs of the main results, despite the fact that it was used extensively in their earlier works. They break the book into two parts, the first one emphasizing embedding theorems and the second one the structure of manifolds. Those readers interested in the proof of the 4-dimensional Poincare conjecture will find it in chapter 7, as a consequence of the authors proof of the h-cobordism theorem, the latter being nontrivial. It is the absence of a smooth structure on the h-cobordism that makes it so difficult in dimension four.

The existence of exotic structures on 4-manifolds is discussed in detail in chapter 8 and the authors endeavor to show why dimension 4 is unique compared to higher dimensions. The existence of exotic structures on 4-manifolds is definitely interesting, and has recently been shown to have importance in physics. But physicists who need an explicit example of one of these structures will not find one here, and I know of no such examples in the literature. Such an example would be interesting from the standpoint of the behavior of quantum field theories on such 4-manifolds, as one would like to know if this behavior would indeed be different than that on the manifold with the "standard structure".

A concrete construction of a fake 4-space can be found in the last section of Chapter 1 of Dan Freed and Karen Uhlenbeck's (1984, revised 1991) book, "Instantons and Four-Manifolds", a great compliment to Freedman and Quinn's book. Unfortunately, it's just as hard to find and about three times as costly as the reviewed book. Unless you really can't live without seeing how this is done, take it on faith (not much consolation to a physicist who wants to know if black holes behave differently in fake spacetime). A cheaper alternative: If you visit a major university math library and take a bunch of quarters for their copier, the relevant Ch.1, "Fake R^4", is fourteen pages long.

Specifically, "daryoush" from Seattle, in the course of commenting upon this book and expressing interest in a book about "recent Jewish history" in Lebanon, West bank and the Gaza strip, says the following:

"I like to better understand the Israeli massacres in the refugee camps."

He/she also goes on to make several other specious statements including usage of the term "concentration camps."

Daryoush's statement is a Big Lie masquerading as a review. I have serious reservations about his/her agenda, but setting that aside for a second, the deaths in the refugee camps (that I assume he refers to, related to the 1982 war in Lebanon) were not "Israeli massacres." They were carried out, by all credible accounts, by Lebanese militiamen arguably under Israel's influence. This is not to excuse the killings, nor even Sharon's alleged negligence or complicity, but even in the worst case terming them "Israeli massacres" is simply inaccurate.

One has to wonder about the mindset of someone who would use such a term.

The need to respond to such garbage is a sad commentary upon the state of discourse on Israel and our times generally.

- Ezra in Minnesota

For any child who is developing an interest in the marine life sciences this is the book for them.

"Under the Sea" is well structured and logically laid out. It starts with the physical environment of the oceans. The main part of the book is a systematic coverage of the various marine environments that are classified according to their depth and temperature. . The characteristic biotas that occupy each ecological niche are well described.

Some readers may find this approach formulaic but a rigorous scientific methodology is necessary if the information it contains is to be comprehensible and of real value.

The illustrations accompanying the text are bright, accurate but definitely not garish. The pictures and their captions provide good support to the text.

This book is an ideal companion to another book by the "Nature Company Discoveries" title "Mammals" which is edited by George McKay

This book provides an ideal launching pad for those children who are keen to learn about the natural world. This book is definitely out of the ordinary.

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In the 10/7/97 New Yorker, Cynthia Ozick's "Who Owns Anne Frank?" notes that the Anne Frank story has been "bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, traduced, reduced; ... infantilized, Americanized, homogenized, sentimentalized; falsified, kitchified, and ... arrogantly denied."

This book "Understanding Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl" balances some of the distortions weighing on the Anne Frank industry by presenting sources, settings, and historical documents which should go a long way toward smartening-up the discourse with true facts. It deserves a ten on the Amazon.com scale for content, readability, and responsible creativity.

The following text is from the back jacket of the book:

World War II changed everything. For a kid growing up in Kitsap County (Washington) it meant living at the focal point of the war. It was to Puget Sound Navy Yard that the ghosts of Pearl Harbor returned for repair and renovation. It was a time of astonishing unity and common purpose. For Frank Wetzel and his contemporaries, these years were formative. Look back with them as they recall . . . . Victory Gardens and Barrage Balloons. A history of Bremerton and Kitsap County during World War II.

Frank Wetzel was born in Bremerton, Washington in 1926, the grandson of Kitsap County pioneers. He graduated from Bremerton High in 1944 and the University of Washington in 1950. He was an infantryman in Europe in World War II and an infantry officer in the Korean War.

He worked as a newsman and executive for the Associated Press in Salt Lake City, Denver, and Portland, OR. He was editor of the Journal-American in Bellevue, Washington from 1977-1986 and was the ombudsman of the Seattle Times from 1987 to 1990. This is his first book.