Kahn Books

Having just aquired this book after years of searching I felt I had to share my feelings with anyone contemplating buying it.
The title would lead the buyer into thinking that this book is only about the tragedies of the 55 race however I found it to be a fantastic read from a historical point of view as an insight into the wonderful world of the racing driver after the war. The book concentrates mostly on Lance Macklin one of the main and blameless participants in this tragic event however it makes a wonderful read I could not put it down once I opened the first page.

Kahn explores the issue of children's developing understanding of the environment and themselves as a part of it. That raises huge issues:

Are human children predisposed to "love" more "natural" settings than those more artificially developed?

Or, is a healthy sense of self-in-nature something that is acquired, learned? And do some cultures do a better job at educating children toward an environmental conscience?

And how do humans come to regard and value other creatures and their presence in the world? What is our ethical relationship to the land and life around us?

Good questions, but unfortunately, the premises so often restrict the findings here that Kahn, who must proceed scientifically from premises to research to conclusions, does not provide what the reader looks for: a more open-ended discussion of all the basic questions I listed above. The book seems a strange hybrid, something not quite a scientific book, but not quite a book open to the general public, either (who will find his chapter on methodology either a waste of time or something to pick apart at the premises).

Kahn keeps to his scientific surveys of children, and his findings are worth noticing. But these findings could have been summed up in a single journal article, and really do not show anything that common sense would not have predicted (children value nature). I found myself arguing with him about the findings, too; he seems to make conclusions that one could argue could easily go in other directions. At times he seems to have decided about the categories in which to fit the children's views. But this seems to be playing a game of squashing round pegs into squares. Wouldn't it be better to let the categories be determined by the answers rather than be established beforehand?

A good thing in this book that I hope to see more of: Kahn mentions "generational amnesia"--the tendency of people to think only in terms of their own experience. In short, everyone tends to value the environment they experienced as "good enough", and "forget" the fact that it has been deteriorating slowly across generations. The result is that we get people who grow up and don't dream of America the way it was, say, in 1800 or even earlier.

A final puzzlement: Kahn mentions George Lakoff's work in this book; yet I wondered why Kahn didn't pursue or explore that cognitive scientist's (and others') philosophical conclusions about "the human relationship with nature." In the end, I found Kahn's weddedness to "structural-developmental" theory a much cloudier way of thinking about these issues than Lakoff's theory of "embodied realism" and the assumption that all human meaning arises out of our embodied interaction with the environment. (A good look at Lakoff et. al. would also point out why one cannot assume that people's conceptual categories are stable or even consistent.)

ISBN: 8425213991 ONLY is an exclusively black & white, concise, and copiously illustrated paperback survey published by Gustavo Gili (GG) of Barcelona in English and Spanish (side by side). A short introductory part on several pages is followed by the main review part presenting each shortly described project in a combination of excellent B&W photos, plans, sections, elevations, hard line presentation drawings, sketches, etc. At the end, there are several pages with additional informations incl. biography. Most of hundreds of only B&W illustrations are technical, but all (incl. B&W photos) are of a good quality, well balanced, crisp and legible. Like all from the Works and Projects series, it is solid among architectural monographs, but slightly smaller than the Studio Paperback series published by Birkhäuser Verlag under ISBN: 37643* (Basel)/08176* (Boston) or Artemis Verlag under ISBN: 37608* (Zürich)/18740* (London).

LUCK AND CHUTZPAH: Against All Odds

by Hans G. Kahn: The Man Who Never Surrendered

"I suppose you could call me a Holocaust survivor, but I wasn't liberated from the Holocaust. The Holocaust liberated me." - H.G. Kahn

Hans Kahn is a fighter. It's in his mature. Fifty years ago, when millions of Jews were being shepherded to their deaths, Hans G. Kahn chose to fight back. After watching his family and friends submit unquestioningly to the laws of the Germans he decided that he would not allow himself to be powerless. He would never surrender or bend.

Nothing in his youth suggests such a remarkably tough character. Born in Berlin in 1922 to a well-to-do German Jewish family, Hans spent most of his life in Holland. Despite the protests of his educated father, Hans knew he wanted to be a Jewish sailor.

When the Germans carried out a house-to-house search looking for Jews to deport, Kahn stealthily fled to Belgium. Taking on the persona of a naval cadet from Belgium, Kahn even had a meal with a Nazi officer convinced by the disguise. Yet like so many others, Hans was eventually caught by the Nazis and deported to the Vernet Concentration camp in Vichy-France.

True to his credo, Hans did not surrender, nor bend to authority. After killing a German guard, he took refuge in a church in Toulouse, where he was hidden in a French brothel that serviced German officers. Finally, Hans was taken to a farm where he remained for four months, until resistance fighters guided him to Britain. There he enlisted in the Dutch Navy-in-Exile.

After the war, Kahn helped establish and train the new Israeli navy which fought in Israel's War of Independence. He returned to Holland to go into business for himself, eventually founding Jumbo Navigation, the world's first shipping company to conceive, build and operate special ships for the transport of large, heavy units.

These days, Kahn spends his time aboard his yacht with his family or in his house Ceasaria. Still a fighter - loyal to his friends and hard on his enemies - he continues to rage at the Jews who went timidly to their deaths. Even so, he welcomes the Sabbath every Friday night, and will proudly tell you of the happiness he derived from sitting in synagogue with his grandson on Saturday mornings. The writing is absorbing and the story presented shows how one man was not willing to be caught by the Nazis or be made a victim. His daring story shows how it was possible to fight back as long as you had luck and chutzpah.

Sunday Mirror writer Kahn joined rallyists Peter Jopp and Willy Cave for the 16,000 mile 1970 World Cup Rally, a.k.a London-to-Mexico City. He details the construction of their car, a BLMC Morris 1800, and how it fared. There are many details of the route and the hardships faced, especially in South America where the roads were quite rough, poorly marked, and where they traveled above 11,000 feet through the Andes.

It falls short in that it does not give details of the finish nor the finishers, as the Jopp/Cave/Kahn car fell short of being classified as a finisher by a mere 600 miles.

Despite that lack of overall info, it is an interesting tale for those who have yearned to experience the famed Marathon rallies of the 1970s.

A wealth of futurist writing appeared from the 1950s to the 1970s, and Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the Hudson Institute were prominent contributors. I picked up this book because I've been studying what the futurists of that era were saying, and assessing what they got right and wrong (so far). I believe there may be value in analyzing why they got certain things wrong: Was it mainly due to faulty interpretation of available data, or to the impossibility of predicting the timing and consequences of disruptive events and technologies?
If your interest in futurism includes learning from its checkered past, this is a good read. If you're looking for something that's still valid today, this isn't it. Most of what's presented in this 1976 book turned out to be wrong. (The biggest exception is that they accurately pegged the evolution of computers and the information society.) That may seem like a rash judgment since the book's 200-year time horizon stretches to 2176. But much of the book dwells on what will come to pass by 1985, by 2000, or by early in the 21st century.
Kahn & Co. wrote this book specifically to counter the so-called "neo-Malthusian" perspective of the 1972 Limits to Growth study and similar efforts of that era. But the authors go to the opposite extreme, purporting to show that there will be abundant energy, raw materials, food, and living space; no unacceptable effects on the environment; and increasing affluence worldwide even if the population grows to 30 billion (almost five times today's population) and global economic activity reaches 60 times the level of the 1970s. This scenario, we are told, holds true even without considering any significant inputs of energy, materials, or manufactured products from beyond Earth.
The authors ignore, dispute, or oversimplify basic concepts of international economics and trade relations. They believe that the more consumption there is in developed countries, the better it is for developing countries because it provides them with markets and jobs. They are unaware of a well-known phenomenon called the "resource curse" and assume every country with natural resources will end up as rich as Middle East countries with oil. They seem to wish away inequitable trade policies, such as subsidies and protectionist measures that close off markets. They assume that new technologies will be easily and quickly transferred to and absorbed by those who need them.
The authors are big believers in the technological fix. Whether it's extraction of raw materials, the production of energy or goods, the harvesting and distribution of food, or the worldwide improvement of health, they assume the right technology will be available in plenty of time. There are many examples of this, but I'll just mention one: they foresee practical fusion energy by the 1990s.
The authors find it hard to conceal their contempt for environmentalists, who they clearly see as mostly wrong-headed obstructionists. Some of the authors' ideas on the environment would be considered strange today. For example, they see the Amazon basin (among other locations) as a "relatively unused area" that should be converted to food production. Also, they acknowledge the possibility of global warming, but believe it could be a good thing - growing seasons in high latitudes would be longer, and even if the polar ice caps melted, it would only inconvenience a few coastal cities. (!)
I consider myself an optimist. The authors, however, go far beyond anything that could stand up to modern scrutiny. It would be nice to believe that conservation is not necessary and global solutions will come when needed if we just keep cruising on autopilot. But that's an irresponsible approach. The future is what we make it.

During The Cold War the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute were associated with work on nuclear warfare and the conduct of the Vietnam War. Herman Kahn produced a number of books on the subject in the 1960's including: "On Thermonuclear War", "Thinking About the Unthinkable" and "On Escalation". Kahn was also concerned to document the process of escalation of conflict and to establish common metaphors and language, which could be understood by both sides. Kahn stressed the essential role of communications between opposing sides. He pointed to the cultural problems which made it difficult for the US and North Vietnam to understand the way in which the other side would react to new developments during the Vietnam War.

In "On Escalation" Kahn pointed out the problems that arose between the British and the Germans in World War II because German propaganda failed to clearly communicate German intentions.

The same problem currently bedevils the relationship between Israel and the Arabs. At worst we have a "dialogue of the deaf". Normally even during War there will be a dialogue based on mutually agreed rules, for example the rights of civilians will be honored. Where one side fails to honor the implicit agreement not to behave in a particular manner then the other side will normally feel free to retaliate in ways that it has previously forsworn. The reaction to September 11th is a classic example. Where communication breaks down, as appears to have occurred in Israel, this can result in action and reaction, leading to a spiral of violence and alienation, which can only be resolved by the total collapse of one side, or an understanding by both sides that the mutual interest requires a stepping-back from such actions. In the US the public protests effectively ended US involvement in the Vietnam War.

In short Kahn deals with important issues that are if anything more relevant today than they were in the 1960's. Not the easiest of reads, pick something lighter for your next flight, but if you are interested in the process of negotiation, rather than the headline news then you should look at Kahn's ideas.

I was looking for some fun unique Passover craft ideas for my 3 1/2 year old. Unfortunatley I was a bit disappointed. (Maybe I had my hopes set to high) This book is overly simple and not very creative. It suggests making an eggshell mosaic to color in a picture of a seder plate and gluing sand on a pyramids on a picture of slaves in Eqypt.It also includes a few other pictures that you can color or cut out. Plus some lightweight cardboard activity cards with pictures on them top play "Old Maid" or "Concentration" with. All in all, you get what you pay for with this one. Not a waste but certainly not a big time winner-

Barclay briefly describes the various sorts of stateless societies that have been studied by anthropologists, and goes on to describe the relevance of this study for those attempting to create a stateless society. The book is rather mediocre, I think, but since there is no other significant treatment of this topic it is an essential item for anyone interested in the subject.

Not a lot of new info and worst of all, the photos chosen to illustrate the points are not at all impressive.

There are two different approaches authors take to photography instruction. In the first, which I call narrative, the author tells you about the topic and provides pictures to illustrate the teaching points. In the second, which I call exemplary, the author provides a picture and then tells you what considerations went into the choices that he made in taking the picture.

When I first read this book, I thought that I was dissatisfied with it because it followed the exemplary style. Then I looked at two of my favorite books that use the exemplary style: Art Wolfe's "The Art of Photographing Nature" and Tony Sweet's "Fine Art Nature Photography." Wolfe's book uses examples but presents them in a well developed, logical order, from fundamental to complex issues. Sweet's book, on the other hand, does not provide this structure but is aimed at photographers who know how take pictures but want to go further in their art; his pictures are truly magnificent and his explanations of his goals in taking the pictures are insightful.

Kahn on the other hand appears to have taken whatever photographs he had in his files on water, without regard to quality, mixed them up so there was no logical order of presentation, and then written inane comments.

As I read the book, I felt that it was aimed at inexperienced photographers, but failed to develop the subject logically. For example, in photographing moving water one of the first choices to be made is whether to shoot at a fast or a slow shutter speed. Fast speeds freeze the water while slow speeds create a silken blur. This isn't even mentioned by Kahn until late in the book.

But there are many more weaknesses. For example, he has several pictures where the sky is overexposed because the water he was photographing was in a dark area. One way to deal with this is by using a graduated neutral density filter. Kahn doesn't mention this anywhere in his book. He also excludes any reference to full neutral density filters which are used by water photographers to lengthen exposure time to achieve water blur.

People interested in photographing water would be better served by Heather Angel's book, "How to Photograph Water." Aside from a more logical, comprehensive presentation and better photographs, Angel also deals with water in all its forms, like fog and snow, which Kahn ignores. Neither book mentions digital photography, but I believe that a competent digital photographer will be able to apply the material presented in either book.

This book is a good reference for beginers, with some helpful hints for the advanced. The photgraphs used to illistrate the text are good and he gives the reasoning behind why the shoot was taken. I will probably glance through this book from tome to time just to get general ideas durning those times when I start going stale looking for shots.