Nicholson Books

I read this book and spoke with Janet before buying my RR and consider it completely prepared me for ownership. Dog training I learned elsewhere as this is common to all breeds rather than specific to the RR or this book.

The book is written by a very experienced RR breeder in the UK and is a pleasure to read. I recommend it to anyone considering an RR who wants to gain a broad background description of character traits, requirements and history of the breed.

As the owner of two Ridgebacks, I read this book awhile ago. I reread it recently and there are many out of date subjects. It explains that puppies born with Dermoids or Ridgeless should be put to sleep. I bought a puppy to discover that he had 3 large Dermoids. Many vets do this operation now. Dermoids surgery is anywhere from $150-500. What is the matter with a Ridgeless puppy? Nothing. At least find a good home for the puppy. Many people dont mind a ridgeless. Out dated vaccination info. I recommend Natural Health for Dogs and Cats by DR Pitcairn.

Not the best choice for someone researching the breed or living with their first ridgeback. The entire text needs expansion and updating; sections on training and health matters were completely lacking in any meaningful content.

Very good book if you are geared toward showing your dog. Or if you were really interested in the the lineage of the breed in three countries. For the novice recipient of such an awesome
dog, I found it completely lacking in real world advice, save for one chapter. I guess I should have bought " ridgebacks for dummies" because this book mostly went over my head. The content was well written, though. The Authors know the breed.

Ridgebacks are not easy dogs, and this book helps you understand that. Little things like explaining why your Ridgeback will retrieve a ball once or twice, but then get board unlike many popular canines is very helpful. This is a great book to help a person get to know the breed, but if you already have a Ridgeback I hope and pray that there is nothing in here that you don't already know. I have raised, trained, and have shown two Ridgebacks and I love the breed more than many other breeds I have worked with. As always the best place to learn about a dog is talking to a respected breeders, trainers, and handlers, but this book is helpful with understanding the important background of this great breed.

This is a great read about Doris Day - you see many of the trials that she has endured - and get to understand
some of the things that helped shape her. Doris has to be one of the most inspirational people of our time - one who never seemed to get sucked in to the shallow world of movie stars. Her work with animals, and the Doris Day Animal League is so inspiring, and just like Doris. There is nothing like a animal to let you know that you are not a star because you are on tv - or make a million bucks - you are a star if you hold them right, help them, feed them - play with them!
You also learn about the tv show that Doris never knew she was supposed to star in - until after the sudden
death of her husband - which left her broke. But the show did go on - and through one of the apparently toughest periods in her life - she gave a great performance, as always. My only regret regarding her tv show was not keeping the concept she started with - the farm, and especially the kids. My favorite episodes are the first few years - heartwarming, charming, funny, and intelligent!

...but that's where this one went. I've never read a more poorly written, sycophantic, piece of embarrassing drivel than this "biography" of Doris Day. The archaic, obseqious style is neauseating and could never have been authorized by Ms. Day, I surmise, if the sweet little octegenarian weren't a little dotty herself, making her and this "author" very compatible. If you are the least bit literate and hate wasting money, move on.

I have to agree with the other readers who have given low ratings for this book. Eric Braun's biography of Doris Day is perhaps the most poorly written book I have read in years. The sentences (which are more like paragraphs) are extremely long and packed with a lot of parenthetical, somewhat disconnected information. When you come to the end of a long sentence, you are not sure if the final words refer to what just preceded, or the middle, or the beginning of the sentence. Quoted information is not well punctuated--passing between quotes and author's comments without much clarity. Bad writing aside, we learn little of Ms. Day's early training and experience, the basis for her success as a fine singer and actress, her feelings about the "Hollywood scene", the underlying motivation for her retreat to the Carmel area, and other aspects which the reader would like to know in order to have some impression of just who this remarkable women really is. Perhaps with a person as special as Doris Day, we can never expect to have a comprehensive understanding of her.

I enjoyed this book immensely. I bought Doris Day "Her Own Story" by A.E.Hotchner back in the 1970`s, but this book has quite a bit of new news, stories and photo`s. It tells you all about her early days in the band and the trials and tribulations of her personal life. It includes a lot of other actors and producers opinions of Doris that she has worked with over the years. The book also talks about her home in Carmel, which offers a glance at the beautiful surroundings in which she lives. All in all I thought the book was well researched and gives an interesting insight into a much loved and respected Lady of the Silver Screen. I would definitely recommend buying it if you are a film buff or a fan of Doris Day. From Meryl Heasman (songwriter) CATFLAP MUSIC England.

Hoping for more insight on one of my favorite talents and finding nothing new except for Mr. Braun's relentless stream of consciosness on everyone from Vera Lynn to Gladys George and anyone in between. Some times, because of these tangents it was hard to keep straight just who he was talking about. Possibly the worst written and least researched book I've ever read. let's hope the next bio on this gal is better. Would love to hear more about the making of her best film "Love Me Or Leave Me." she deserves more scrutiny as an artist.

Given that this book is intended for travellers, not for old China hands or Chinese scholars, I thought it did a great job. The ground it covers is immense, leaving no aspect untouched and describing key events in a balanced way. There's no histrionics or name calling. Careful readers would be able to have conversations with Chinese people in their own country without making too many faux pas or appearing either ignorant or full of propaganda--Western or otherwise. It was much more readable than J.A.G. Roberts' 'A Concise History of China,' and in fact tied up several loose ends left for me by that book. And by the way, I was born in China.

There is not much positive that I can say about this compilation of dates, names and places. I found it uninspired and dull. After the enjoyable volume about India in the same series, this contribution was a real letdown.

For the most part, Mr. Haw wrote a political history of China with the obligatory excursions into Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism (and, I have to say, a very apt comparison of Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism on page 87). Chinese literature is not mentioned in a single line - not even the world-class poetry of the Tang era. Apparently, the author wrote a "cultural history" of China before this book and incorporated part of it here. How can that be?

The condensation of about 3,600 years of Chinese civilization into 250 pages does not serve the subject well. Generalizations and vapid statements abound. Causes of developments are rarely explained, and more questions arise than are answered. For example when Haw writes about the south of China during the Song dynasty around AD 1000: "The south of China, formerly sparsely populated and poorly developed, had by this time advanced to a much higher economic level, largely as a result of considerable settlement by Chinese from the north."(113) Advanced, by what means? A much higher economic level, what is that exactly? What is "considerable"? Why does settlement advance an economy and how?

Economics are not the strength of Mr. Haw. Sometimes he misses obvious links - for example the interrelated economics of tea and opium in the Opium Wars, so well explained in Simon Winchester's "The River at the Center of the World." At other times he rehashes the babble of local Chinese newspapers, like the assertion that "China will almost certainly become the world's largest economy during the next decade."(248) I did the math when I heard this fairy tale for the first time while I worked in Shanghai. If China grows by 7% every year, and the US by 2.5%, China's GDP will reach 19% of the US GDP in 2010. In 2032, China will have reached 50% of the US GDP. Please send me an email to get the calculation on an EXCEL sheet if you don't believe the numbers.

The author seems a bit infatuated with Communist propaganda, too. The Tian An Men massacre is the "Tianan Men Incident" - it does not get any more politically correct in the PRC than this. Even more embarrassing is the fact that he trumpets the party line by saying that soldiers killed in self-defense ("it seems likely that troops were attacked with petrol bombs and possibly other weapons before they opened fire"(199)) and then sets off 400 killed civilians against "some 600 military fatalities" (199).

Another favorite idea of the Communist regime in China, which Mr. Haw parrots, is that "the general level of education in China is probably still too low for any genuinely democratic system to be successful: as many as a quarter of the population remain illiterate or semi-literate."(199) In reply to that I can say that there are democracies that continue to function even if more than HALF of the population do not participate in the process of voting, i.e. remain politically illiterate or semi-literate.

Finally, Mr. Haw is one awful storyteller. How can anyone NOT elaborate on a summary description like this: "In 1870 there was a dreadful incident in Tianjin, sparked off by the stupid behaviour of the French consul, as a result of which he and his assistant were murdered by a mob..."(170)? Give me the details, pleeeease!

To illustrate my point, here is the bland version of the Silk Road's impact on Rome (Stephen G. Haw, China, 2002: page 84): "The Silk Road, along which Chinese silks reached Rome, was the major channel of communication between the Far East and the West throughout the Han dynasty."

Here comes the spicy version: "The story of the western world's fascination with China dates back more than 2,000 years and it began with a product that still symbolizes the relationship - silk. The Chinese fabric spun into sensual, thin gauze first became familiar in Rome around 50 BC. Cleopatra, mistress of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and queen of Egypt, was among the first to promote a fashion for transparent dresses in the exotic fabric. Despite the outrage of sartorial conservatives - the writer Seneca railed against the wearing of such dresses in the Roman capital, 'clad in which no woman could honestly swear she is not naked' - by the end of the fourth century, silk was a universal accoutrement in civilized society throughout the empire." (Joe Studwell, The China Dream, 2003: page 3).

I have simply placed my copy in the recycling bin.
Stephen Haw writes as if he is a college student intent on presenting a complete outline, but never quite fills in the body of work.
He is very confused and confusing about questions of minority peoples vs. Han. The Han are frequently referred to as "Chinese", which makes it pretty clear that he sees Han as the true indigenous people of china, and everybody else as mere immigrants. This would make more sense if he regarded china as that country east and south od the great wall, but he also manages to somehow include all of the present political borders as true china. One can only wonder why he dosen't also take chunks of Burma, Laos, and Vietnam where the Han population is at least equal to that of Yunnan.
On the tibet question, he referrs to the chinese military invasion of 1951 as a "re-occupation". The cultural revolution Haw summarizes on a couple of pages as some kind of weak political idea gone badly astray. A bit odd, when most scholars today recognize it as a period of genocide where at least a million completely innocent men women and children were put to death, with millions more tortured and maimed for life.
One can only conclude that the author's history is little more than a warmed over apologia for the present market-driven caipitalist dictatorship currently still running China proper and the "occupied" territories of its Himalayan and Mongolian neighbors.

You can't honestly learn a lot about a nation with an ancient civilization and a vast land area in 250 pages. Thus, Haw's small book, A Traveller's History of China, must be approached with caution. It can't replace a larger volume, nor can it do justice to China.

For that, you could read many Chinese classics themselves, Needham's 6-volume "Science and Civilization in China" or the works of John King Fairbank. You could go to Jasper Becker's 'The Chinese' or Winchester's 'River at the Center of the World' to read up on modern China.

But, before you do any of this, you might want some context; a little basic information on the dynasties, the land, and the languages. Haw's little book isn't a bad jumping off place for such an effort. Start with it, just don't stop with it.

Based on the title I was expecting a book organized around travel destinations with historical info on each destination. Now that I've read the book from cover to cover I've found it wasn't organized the way I expected, but I am very impressed with what the book delivers. It's essentially an excellent history of China, with various other items added on. Here's how I would describe the book now:

* A concise history of China from prehistoric times up to 2002, in 170 exceptionally well-written pages.

* 45 pages covering certain isolated topics (geography, minority peoples, status of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the Chinese language). Good basic stuff.

* A 30 page Historical Gazetteer that lists some 44 destinations (important cities, mountains, historical districts, etc.), with a brief description of each along with keys to the main text.

* A few helpful pages on timelines and dynasty dates.

The real gem is the history section. If you want one book that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Chinese history in a single comprehensive and well-balanced volume, this is your book.

This is a brilliant book by one of the greatest pilots of all time. His experience, especially in the field of naval aviation, is quite unequalled.One needs to ration oneself, otherwise you won't put the book down.

Royal Navy pilot Eric Brown may well have been the best test pilot of his generation, and his memoir covers World War II and the years afterward, when the Royal Navy (RN) pioneered the introduction of jet aircraft on carriers. The RN was the first navy to see that the use of jets on carriers would require a redesign of carriers themselves, and Brown was in the middle of a process that provided this understanding to the US Navy and thereby led to the development of the modern angled-deck carrier. Brown had a front-row seat to a new age, and his writing will keep you turning the pages.

I am extremely dissatisified with this product. When I opened the book the pages fell out like a snowfall. It could not be read - I threw it away.

The content is about 4 stars, interesting and well written, my beef is the binding of this paper back edition. As soon as started reading the pages started coming out of the book. I would strongly recommend trying the regular binding if you plan to keep the book or plan to pass it on.

Having spent the last 30 years living and working next door to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, I've heard a LOT of flying stories. "You can always tell a fighter pilot...but you can't tell him much".

Eric Winkle Brown's memoir is the best compilation of flying stories that I've ever heard. Imagine getting your very first flight with none other than Ernst Udet. Imagine flying F4F's off a converted banana boat during the darkest hours of WW2. Imagine flying captured Luftwaffe jets right out of Germany.

Most ironic was the idea for the angled deck on aircraft carriers. Purely by accident the idea was sketched out in a board meeting for another reason when someone said "What a great idea for launching and recovering aircraft simultaneously".

Great book. I'm ordering another one for a gift to a good friend and test pilot who flew in the same era.

The revised edition of this survey of jazz lady Ella Fitzgerald will appeal to any who haven't already gotten too many jazz biographies of Ella under their belts. Ella Fitzgerald defined the female voice in jazz, and Stuart Nicholson's biography was considered a classic in the genre. This updated edition includes further research of original documents, photos, and interviews to expand upon Ella's life.

I can only write about my few years with her - but I certainly have more insight about the woman not so much the singer than this whole dumb book.

Lots about recording - of course he was not there - and nothing about her other than "and then she did"...

Overall this book collects most of the facts of ELLA's life and career in nice perspective.However i must say this:Mister NICHOLSON while preparing the biography has not met his subject and has included some totally out of place remarks that makes his book a shameful attempt to collect royalties he does not deserve.Mister NICHOLSON who i beleive never conducted an orchestra try to demonstrate that BUDDY BREGMAN the conductor of the PORTER and RODGERS songbooks failed to deliver the goods,allthough millions of fans throughout the world consider them to be the best of the series.Mister NICHOLSON sad to say has caught a severe case we should call the RIDDLE syndrome.Still,you can buy that book and still get to know ELLA if you can read between the lines.

This is the best of the Ella bios. Authoritative, well-written, and insightful with a helpful discography. Avoid the much inferior "First Lady of Song" by Fidelman. THIS is the bio to buy.

I read this book in for the first time in 1996. and now, second time around, still have the same feeling - Stuart Nicholson had obviously find easier to trace every step Ella Fitzgerald ever made in recording studio,than what she thought,felt and reasons behind her behaviour."A model in research and musical insight?" There is a year-by-year recording dates discography but not one single interview or even quotte!!Yes,Ella was a wonderful,gifted singer,but what eventually came out of this book (between the lines,if you bother to read) is that she was easily and ruthlessly pushed around by Norman Granz (manager) and made him a millionaire,toured 365 days in the year so Granz could collect Picasso paintings & move to Switzerland and that same Granz didnt have understanding for her,making a scene when she couldnt perform as her sister had just died (Duke Ellington stepped to protect her and got a slap on HIS nose instead).If Stuart Nicholson didnt have acces to do interview with Fitzgerald herself or at least some of her close friends,I wonder why did he bother to writte a book at all (just to dig some dirt & discover that she was - maybe?- a victim a child abuse,something that she kept behind her and didnt want to discuss,which we should understand and respect).No matter how appealing singer Ella was,I find repulsive idea of this big woman being lead around by her manager as beast of burden.And they said Billie Holiday was a tragic figure - hey, Billie at least had a good time! At the end of 245 pages,I find this book simply overrated - you can easily find Fitzgerald's discography in every jazz dictionary and perhaps as a subject of his book Nicholson should have consider Norman Granz instead.

I am an alum of the small college "Groves" is based on. I am also an academic and great fan of McCarthy's novel "The Group". I should have found "The Groves of Academe" engaging on these three facts alone. Sadly, the book left me cold. As a satire the novel is dissatisfying on several levels -- where we spot the familiar, the recognition is only sad, not humourous; and the plot, even for an academic who can be expected to find campus politics interesting, is deadly dull. If you aren't familiar with McCarthy, start with her far more interesting and accessible "The Group" instead. If you are new to academic satire, start with "The Lecturer's Tale" for a far more entertaining and cunning critique of academic culture.

With my interest in the academic genre -- David Lodge is good, light humor, Richard Russo's "Straight Man" was a wonderful, comedic treat -- Amazon directed me to "Groves", where I quickly proceeded to become lost among the trees.

Like Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim", a book I found to be absent much appeal, McCarthy offers a highly literate analysis of the travails of a male professor struggling at university after World War II. McCarthy's Henry Mulcahy is strapped by poverty, with a sickly wife and four children, in a temporary teaching position offered, in part, out of a sense of guilt by the college president. Then Mulcahy gets the dreaded and unexpected "non-renewal" letter.

Some aspects of academic life have not changed in fifty years: petty squabbles and politics, the longing for job security, the poor wages of some professors, the need for intrinsic interest in teaching, the complaints about students' habits. But the focus on communism and loyalty oaths as a basis for job insecurity is a distant memory to most people. And Mulcahy's own dishonesty (or grasp of reality) left me confused rather than sympathetic. Rather I found myself attuned to Mulcahy's nemesis, the president.

The story is simple yet the tone of the book put me off. There was more philosophy than conversation, and when academics did speak, they spoke in a fashion most would find hard to expect in conversation. I grew bored. The characters weren't that interesting despite their intelligence, and I found myself speed reading the last thirty pages. And I found myself as displeased with "Groves" as I had been with "Lucky Jim".

Sometimes very literate and well-educated authors don't translate well to my level, to meet my self-admittedly need for a clearer, more linear story and engaging characters.

This book gave me the same desire I sometimes have at an art gallery, to touch up someone else's painting; not that it's not a good painting, but if I were painting it...Anyway, this work will amuse those deep in the belly of the academic beast, but knowing that they would be her audience, why did the author spend so much time explaining the minutiae of life at a small college? A reference here and there would have been sharper. If you haven't yet read Kingsley Amis's _Lucky Jim_, start there, and leave this for later.

This ambitious little novel uses a story of a small progressive college in the early 1950¡¯s to make some rather weighty inquiries. It begins when professor Mulcahy receives his letter of dismissal. From this point on, Mulcahy schemes to keep his place. In the process, the reader is treated to many a stimulating dialogue between the learned members of the faculty. The message is one of tolerance and a resigned acceptance of the often contradictory nature of experience. When the book was written, the era of Eugene McCarthy¡¯s ascendancy, this was exactly the message the public needed to hear. Observe the argument against a tyranny of the masses and in favor of something that sounds vaguely like syndicalism.
Quote:

¡°Teaching, like all the arts, can¡¯t be democratic or subject to referendum; it must be run from within, by an autonomous guild, according to guild standards.¡±¡­Now what are these standards to be? Are they to be administrative or internal? Like the standards of a poem? Within certain limits, isn¡¯t it possible for each teacher to make his own, as a poem makes its own laws?...¡±But a poem¡­justifies itself in the long run by referring back to life¡­.¡± ¡­ ¡°Somebody¡ªI believe Orwell¡ª¡­says that you can¡¯t prove that a poem is good. A piece of news we must keep from the students at all cost or we should all be out of a job.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t prove that a poem is good, but you can know it,¡± said Domna, suddenly, with conviction¡­ ¡°In general, we submit ourselves to the judgment of the poets in these matters; we allow our poets to tell us that Donne is superior to Milton, and here perhaps we are wrong, but we cannot know that we are wrong until we also become poets. Tolstoy was wrong, in my belief, about Shakespeare, but his wrongness has a certain authority; we pause to listen to him because he was a poet. In the same way, it is only we teachers who have earned the right to be listened to on the question of another teacher¡¯s competence, who have earned,¡± she finished, somewhat defiantly, ¡°the right, if you want, to be wrong.¡±

The argument can be read as a comment on the blacklisting of artists & intellectuals by Senator McCarthy. McCarthy (the author) however, is too much of an artist to present her indictment in simple terms. You see, Mulcahy, the hero/victim, is a thoroughly unwholesome character. A reader is hard pressed to sympathize with him as he goes about manipulating his colleagues to secure his stated goal of ¡° ¡®Justice for myself as a superior individual.¡¯¡± When Mulcahy voices this appraisal, the reader has seen enough of his disregard for other people to doubt his sanity. Even so, Mulcahy has his virtues. And in professor Bentkoop¡¯s view, they make him a valuable asset to the faculty.
Quote:

¡°There¡¯s a good deal to be said for Hen on the plus side¡­He¡¯s interested in ontological questions, which are the great binders of diverse humanity¡­What¡¯s needed at Jocelyn or any college is a mind concerned with universals and first principles; the students take to them like catnip if they¡¯re given half a chance¡­A student reads an author for his ideas, for his personal metaphysic, what he calls, till you people teach him not to say it, his ¡®philosophy of life.¡¯ He wants to detach from an author a portable philosophy.¡±

I don't think McCarthy would write that if she didn't want a reader to approach her book from that angle. And for that matter, take the following:
Quote:
His talk was, in fact, so clear that the best disposal the Literature faculty could make of it was to assume that they had not understood it, that of the proverbial four levels of meaning that they so stringently enforced on their classes they themselves had seized only on the literal and had failed of the moral, the allegorical, and the anagogical.

There's a whole scene, in chiaroscuro, where Bentkoop & Domna work out the philosophical ramifications of Mulcahy's behavior. Here¡¯s the tail end of the conversation, throughout which, Domna attacks Mulcahy & Bentkoop apologizes for him.

Quote:
¡°This abrogation of judgment you practice is an insult to man¡¯s dignity. Everybody has the right to be judged and to judge in his turn. This ¡®understanding you accord Henry is dangerous, both to him and to you. God is our judge, you will tell me. But there is no God. God is man.¡± The blasphemous words rang out; the windows rattled; but John seemed unaffected. ¡°God is man, Domna, if you wish,¡± he said gravely. ¡°But He is not men.¡±
Domna suddenly looked tired. ¡°No,¡± she admitted. ¡°I suppose in a certain way I am on your side. If I presume to judge Henry, I don¡¯t presume to punish him. That is not my affair. She sighed. ¡°And yet I can¡¯t help but feel that I¡¯m implicated in a frightful swindle.¡±

This passage can be interpreted from a variety of angles. Morally, a middle ground between condemnation & forgiveness is reached. The ethical heart of the matter is located in the individual¡ªnot in any institutions, dogmas, or formulas. Any human being can judge another, precisely because of their shared humanity. The ¡°first principles¡± mentioned before are the basis for such judgments, not the formulations--political, intellectual, or religious¡ªof ¡°men.¡± The foremost of these principles is dignity. It¡¯s beneath the dignity of man (forgive the gender bias) to surrender the power of judgment to any outside force. But it is also beneath the dignity of man to punish the accused. The allegorical angle can be extracted painlessly. Between the McCarthyites on the one side & the Communists on the other, the dignity of the common man was hard pressed in the 1950¡¯s (as it is nowadays between the neocons & the fundamentalists) As for the anagogical angle, just replace the ¡°dignity of man¡± with ¡°God in man¡± and there you have it.

As an academic, I anticipated liking this book very much. I find the day-to-day petty politics of the university amusing in real life and thought such a satire would be enjoyable. The Groves of Academe, however, proved to be lifeless and long-winded. The protagonist is so entirely unlikeable that I found myself wishing he'd just leave and get it over. None of the other characters were particularly engaging either; they tended to be rather flat stereotypes (e.g. the dried-up spinster), which usually work in a satire, but really needed to be more human to counteract the distaste inspired by Mulcahy.

The setting in the post-war, commie witch-hunt days really turns out to be less important than anticipated. While it provides some interesting strategies for our anti-hero, it could be replaced with any number of "isms" without changing the essential effect.

McCarthy's style is excruciatingly dry and her dialogue is stilted to the point of being stylized. The sheer boredom of plowing through her prose deadens the mind to the point that any satirical effect is largely lost.

The jabs at "progressive" education were mildly entertaining, thus two stars rather than a mere one.

There's an interesting book waiting to be written for the educated lay audience about how computer systems using artificial intelligence and neural network architectures are being used to study and help understand the processes of the human brain. Such a book will help readers like myself to better grasp the workings of the mind and certain aspects of phenomenal consciousness, and will nicely complement the myriad of speculative works regarding consciousness that have been written over the past two decades by a bevy of psychologists, philosophers and neuroscientists.

Unfortunately, "How to Build a Mind" is not that book. Igor Aleksander tries to cover too many topics in too few pages, and in the end can't bring together his meanderings; he doesn't leave the reader feeling, "hey, I understand it better now". Dr. Aleksander tries to interweave an historical review of philosophical thought regarding the human mind with his own life story, and sprinkle in some details about the connectionist computer tools that he has devised to mimic certain brain functions. But he doesn't tell you enough about the philosophers and their thoughts to trigger any "ah ha" sensations. He offers some tantalizing details about what he tries to do with his computers and how they attempt to do it; but just as you start getting interested in, say, iconic learning processes, he jumps to another line on his vita, discussing another assignment at another university, somewhere in another English town.

The overall effect is, well, jumpy; he doesn't stay long enough with any one topic to leave enough "flavor" to blend with the next discussion. In the end, it's an uncooked stew; the carrots, potatoes and meat chunks are floating apart in luke-warm water. Dr. Aleksander does make one point that almost serves as a leitmotif: the power of feedback and looping processes in understanding and simulating the workings of the mind. It's a point that has been emphasized by many consciousness researchers and thinkers, e.g. Gerald Edelman and Richard Hofstadler. Instead of imagining himself having unfocused conversations with long-dead philosophers, Dr. Aleksander should have spent his writing energies considering and comparing his own work with theirs. Instead of taking Aristotle on, he might have addressed the criticism of one of his lectures by a living philosopher (Dr. Margaret Boden), in lieu of congratulating himself for being taken seriously by someone in today's "consciousness club".

Another annoying thing is Dr. Aleksander's perceived need to present his own opinions regarding what human consciousness is. His views basically amount to simplistic functionalism; but unsophisticated or not, they are really quite unnecessary. As Susan Greenfield points out in her "Private Life of the Brain", Aleksander's work, however useful, is nowhere near mimicing the extremely complex dynamics of the conscious human brain. And yet he keeps hinting that his machines are already transcending the spooky threshold between working brain tissue and subjective feelings and self-awareness, and are on the verge of answering the questions of the ages. Face it, Dr. Aleksander: you chose to be an engineer, and engineers do their best work toiling in the shadows. You are perhaps not destined to be another consciousness "rock star" like David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Sue Blackmore and V. S. Ramachandran. But if you keep your nose to the grindstone, it may contribute to eventual conceptual advancements that will make their present debates seem like 18th Century discussions of phrenology and cosmic ether.

I will admit, finally, that Dr. Aleksander's dream sequence regarding a shared stage discussion with the likes of Pinker, Dennett and Crick does give a very compact and incisive summary of the basic issues in the modern consciousness debate. Despite their being quite removed from the immediate import of his own (underexplained) work.

The book is a parallel presentation of the evolution and struggles of AI on one hand, and the author's personal evolution and struggles on the other. It tells the story of an experimentally-minded academic who has to balance his thirst for knowledge with personal, political and bureaucratical considerations.
I think anyone involved in so controversial a field as AI is prone to "err" into philosophy, and Aleksander's imaginary dialogues with philosophers from Aristotle to Dennett are entertaining and to the point. I'm puzzled why he seems to favor Searle over Dennett, when Searle's vague points about "aboutness" are a pale reflection of Dennett's extensive explorations of intentionality. (For those who label Dennett's approach "materialist", the paper "Real patterns" could be an eye opener.) For the non-technical level of the book, the intuitive explanations of neural networks in terms of dimples or attractors are as good as they can be. Given the author's "hardware" background (Sophia, Minerva etc.), his anti-software bias is understandable, but by the time we get to MAGNUS a strange position emerges (pun intended): On one hand he honestly accepts that MAGNUS is a software simulation, and clearly recognizes the advantage of doing it this way. On the other he completely muddles the waters when answering the question if a machine can be conscious: my impression is that he's saying that the software-MAGNUS is just a simulation we use to figure things out (and not capable of consciousness), but once we got it down we'll build a neuron-based hardware-MAGNUS which will be conscious. Huh?
The references are a good selection for those who want to study further. Just one correction: Rosenblat's book is titled "Principles of neurodynamics; perceptrons and the theory of brain mechanisms", not "Introduction ..."

Igor's passion for artificial consciousness is well known. This book talks more of philosophy than the engineering behind his passion. It has some intersting imaginary dialogues with some of the pioneers in the theory of consciousness. It stirs more questions than it answers. Nevertheless its a good read.

This book treats consciousness with a disturbing kind of ease. While Mr. Aleksander brings out the issues surrounding consciousness (if one can even do that!). All too often the issues are either one sided to too simplified to the point it makes the author look like he has his mind made up before he asks the question.

Another serious issue I have is the ratio of philosophers to text used. I haven't seen this blatant use of names since I read Bart Kosko's book on fuzzy logic. While Aleksander tries to model a "mind" on silicon he eludes defining consciousness while raising the ability of machines. From his book; "The key difference between the machine and the person is that the machine would be conscious of being a machine, whereas the person is conscious of being a living human." How are we even to guess when a machine is conscious of being a machine? Does my toaster "believe" it's a toaster?

I am not a philosopher but an engineer and I've studied neural networks and I do agree with his suggestion that emergent properties can arise from complex systems. While others see consciousness an emergent property of a neural network - I have yet to see evidence of this or... even an indication of this. If you haven't had any exposure to neural networks or philosophy AND you want to see a snapshot of the controversy surrounding the issues of consciousness THEN you might want to read this book.

The author's goal is to answer the question as to whether a (non-human) machine can imagine. Clearly he believes that machines can, and throughout the book he gives his reasons for believing so. Early on, he emphasizes to the reader that he is an engineer, but given the view by most that engineering is a practical profession, he also wants the reader to know that it is philosophy that permits a true understanding of the nature of machine intelligence and forms the proper context for addressing questions regarding the ability of machines to have an imagination. Indeed, research into machine imagination is considered to be a combination of engineering and philosophy. Those readers, including this reviewer, who find philosophical speculation a distraction to the actual construction of intelligent machines might not want to read further. However, there is enough discussion on the history of the author's involvement in the development of intelligent machines to make the book worthwhile to read. This is especially true for the author's discussion on the MAGNUS machine, which he considers to be a machine "driven by inner states." In addition, the author is very aware of the pitfalls of philosophical musings on the nature of consciousness and machine intelligence. One of these concerns the conflict between the use of mathematics and physics to promote true understanding, versus the insistence that such understanding can only be reached from the use of thought experiments and argumentation. Another problem, says the author, is the predilection of philosophers to deny or negate the thoughts of their predecessors, which stymies progress to true understanding and is to be contrasted with the more effective approach in scientific circles, where consensus can be reached based on available evidence. Lastly, the author believes, the drive to understand consciousness has driven philosophers to the embrace of mysticism, with a consequent rejection of quantitative approaches.

The design of non-biological machines with imagination is not only driven by curiosity, but also by the desire to shed light on the nature of consciousness itself, says the author. The actual implementation of conscious imagination in non-biological machines can assist in the understanding of how it is done in biological machines, or at least how they are to be contrasted. The mechanisms giving rise to imaginative consciousness may have common elements in biological and non-biological machines. The author wants to find what aspects of "artificial" imagination are in fact true for "real" imagination.

At various places in the book, the author includes hypothetical discussions and debates with various philosophers and notable persons in history. These are interesting for sure, but they distract the reader from the discussion on the actual engineering of conscious and imaginative machines. Philosophers who find machine consciousness an elusive or impossible goal will never be convinced by any arguments supporting this goal. It would be better if researchers in machine intelligence would declare a moratorium on philosophical debate and speculation, and instead get busy with the real goal of designing and constructing intelligent machines.

The author characterizes consciousness in a machine as being the ability to know where it is situated, as being an understanding of its origins, and having its own motivations for the making of decisions. These criteria don't really that seem to difficult to implement in non-biological machines, and as one reads the book it becomes more apparent with each passing page that the author does not consider the implementation of non-biological machine consciousness as being a problem of overwhelming difficulty. His optimism in this regard is very characteristic of those who work in the field of machine intelligence. Their efforts are admirable, and even though the engineering of consciousness in a non-biological machine may remain elusive in years to come, there is no doubt that various types of machine intelligence have been realized in some of the machines of today. We can only expect further advances, and the rise of new types of intelligent machines. Whether these machines meet our expectations is another matter, but they have already exceeded expectations in many cases. Conscious or not, the machines of the future will certainly be fascinating entities with which to interact.

Like many artists, Jack Nicholson has done some hideous things. Like some, he has insisted that they be kept quiet.

After reading this book it will be hard to enjoy him as an actor, but not impossible. One thing which does come through is his absolute devotion to his craft.

And then there's his eyebrows.

He has a natural demonic appearach because he has arched eyebrows. They make him look Satanic and maybe worse...

Enjoy the book!

Not much more to be said. Very intelligent, charismatic, immaculate performer. Thanks Jack. Thanks for your inspiration.

I designed the interior of this book, and did the 16 page inserts. I think Jack is great, and felt honored working on this project. I haven't read the book, though. I have too much respect for him as an actor and don't want to know what he's like offscreen.

I designed the interior of this book, and did the 16 page inserts. I think Jack is great, and felt honored working on this project. I haven't read the book, though. I have too much respect for him as an actor and don't want to know what he's like offscreen.

In this book the author states that he interviewed me, included quotes as well. I never met nor talked with Mr. Thompson, even though he writes that he interviewed me in my "Palm Beach home". I've never lived in Palm Beach. He claims to have talked with my father. That meeting never took place. Alas, if this part of the book was fiction, where's the credibility to prove that the rest is true? Too many "confidential sources". Using that as a crutch you can say anything about anyone. I know the many truths in Jack Nicholsons real story and from what I can tell, Peter Thompson has fallen short on uncovering and perhaps even knowing what the truth is. By the way, biologically speaking, I am Mr. Nicholson's half sister.

Im not going to pretend that I read a lot because I dont, every once and a while Im browsing in a book store and something calls out to me READ ME. This is what the Society Of Others did to me. I dont want to tell you much about the book, I want to surprise you. The end will either shock you or go over your head. Its a book that you will have to read in between the lines. If you want a laid out obvious plot then read Tom Clancy but if you like books to effect you then read this. Its a heart racing hypnotic book of wisdom

This book is engagingly written and contains some delightful set pieces. But I'm underwhelmed. It's difficult to shake the impression that the author lost interest in the project about two thirds of the way through. The narrator's character is deftly established at the outset, but his passivity and memory lapses quickly become irksome, and his later mental development is not altogether convincing. The last few chapters degenerate into an uninformative muddle through which one can hear the author faintly screaming, "I want to stop writing this book RIGHT NOW!" On the other hand, it's a quick read and worth dipping a toe into.

One feels silly writing such a poor review on the work of someone with a resume like Nicholson, but it's hard to find much positive to say about the Society of Others, the first adult novel written by someone known for his screenplays, stage plays, and young adult. Though perhaps that's the problem, for Society reads very much like a screenplay or young adult novel, despite being otherwise intended.
The book's unnamed protagonist is a sullen, cynical young man, recently graduated from college who sits in his room all day and tries to ignore the world, whether it come in the form of his family, his girlfriend, or his economic future. The first quarter of the book introduces the character, puts him through his "world-weary" paces, and then has him use the thousand pounds gift from his writer father to "get away from it all" by hitching a ride with a trucker to an unknown destination.
The problems begin almost immediately. Though he is supposed to have graduated from college, in his speech, his sullen tone, and his cliched version of cynicism, the narrator sounds much more like a 13 year old boy brooding in his room than a 21 or 22-yr-old. His character is way over the top and while he occasionally hits some perceptive notes, they're surrounded by so much cliched and over-the-top noise that the few good notes get drowned out. And none of the dialogue in this section, mostly between the narrator and his family or his girlfriend, sounds like authentic speech. One can argue that Society has a "fable" feel to it, so perhaps it isn't intended to, but the thing about most fables is they're short; it's hard to pull off the style and tone over long periods of time--it just gets too wearying on the reader. In either case, the first 40-50 pages are a struggle to get through. The trucker whose hobby is philosophy and manages to sum up then skewer most philosophers in a single conversation can be seen as part of the fable mode or as highly contrived; in either case it didn't work for me.
The middle section of the book picks up when the trucker is let into a country that has the look and feel of the old Eastern Europe police states. Turns out the trucker is smuggling copies of an illegal book into the country. When he is discovered and violence occurs, the narrator manages to escape, left on his own in an unfamiliar, unknown country whose language he does not speak. The narrator then hooks up with a violent resistance movement, a non-violent poetry-loving resistance, a simple peasant couple trying to get by while caught between the state police and the terrorists, the state police, an absurdist television talk show host, a strange cello-playing monk with a secret identity, and a man in a grey Mercedes whom the narrator is sure has been hunting him. While the pace and sense of tension, suspense all pick up in this section, it's marred by some hard-to-believe scenes, some triteness (the peasant couple for instance), and the sense that the characters we meet are just props rather than characters. Again, one has the sense of fable here with the simplistic viewpoints, the shallow characters, the sense-of-disbelief, but it's far too extended and just doesn't seem to work.
The end focuses on his attempts to disentangle himself from the politics he's become enmeshed in and to escape the country, as he realizes that all his earlier cynicism was horribly wrong: his country, his family, his life wasn't so bad; his family loved him and he didn't do enough to return that love; life is for living; and other nice but trite sentiments. The end itself returns to fable form.
The whole book reads much more like a young adult novel (not a particularly good one) in its simplicity and obviousness of message and its mostly shallow characterization. The speedy shifts from scene to scene with little description and the changes in character that are propelled by external events (sometimes too contrived) and occur far too quickly make it feel like a screenplay. The side characters as props, the lack of names for the main character or main setting, the simplistic notions, and the close make it read like a fable, but one that should have been at most a novella, at best a long short story, rather than a 200 page book. In short, while it had a few good moments- a few times when the narrator sounded like an original, modern Holden; a few incisive comments on people or society-they were far too few and far between. Not recommended.

No need to worry that I might give away the ending. I can't figure out what happened.

The story is too loose to be literal, too realistic to be allegorical, and too arrhythmic to be poetry.

What if Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, and Tom Clancy decided to write a movie together - then they changed their minds and published it as a novel.

Yes. It has some problems. But at least it has interesting problems.

That's why I enjoyed it. This is proof that a book doesn't have to be well plotted to be fun. It broke some of the more formulaic story-writing conventions, it explored a setting that you seldom see in novels, and it had an engaging philosophical angle. Most important of all it was fast-paced and short.

For all the flaws, it was entertaining and challenging. The story and the philosophies will stick with me.

If you find that after reading this book the subject matter, setting, style, and characters leave you wanting more (and better), try to find a copy of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

He recently graduated college, but has no goals and speculates that life is meaningless. Why bother? However, tired of parental nagging, he decides on a coming of age grand adventure on the continent. He hitches a ride from the English side of the Chunnel with a philosophical truck driver on a three day trek across Europe.

However, once they leave the land of the Euro into the heavily guarded East, thugs using a roadblock stop the truck, torture and kill the trucker, but his passenger escapes. They burn the books inside the truck, but the hitchhiker rescues one along with an envelope that the driver gave him. The hiker reaches a nearby town where he meets Petra, who informs him that the burned books were targeted to go to those names listed in the envelop. He joins Petra's revolutionary band, but when her group torture the enemy at another roadblock, he flees into the woods in despair. By himself he ponders the meaning of life.

The first half of this novel is a great coming of age tales as the unnamed narrator (apropos label for the disenchanted) finds his grand tour turn into a nightmare. Nameless struggles with both sides in the dispute who use any means to achieve their end. Once he flees from Petra, the story line turns much more introspective as the lead character begins to analyze his relationships especially with his parents even while he dodges the police and to a lesser degree the revolutionaries. This is a strong thriller worth reading due to the despairing antihero but the latter half though superbly well written cannot match the incredible levels of excitement and suspense of the first part.

Harriet Klausner

"People use a conventional metaphor for falling in love at first sight. They say, "I was struck by lightning." I am in the position of a man who wishes to be struck by lightning and so walks about hatless in storms."

At age 30 Bron is a man, as they say, "in-between relationships." Living with his best friend Anna, who also happens to be his former girlfriend, he's working on a book on the topic of first love, and whether or not love at first sight truly does exist.

Little did he realize, love was about to come to him. Love came in the form of a beautiful, blonde, willowy and very mysterious woman, who also happened to be married, though unhappily. Her name, appropriately enough, is Flora. Bron comes upon her unexpectedly, while out walking near the summer home of a friend at whose home the two of them were both staying. Bron sees her, through the mist:

"And I, I fell in love at first sight. At the age of almost thirty, never having known since adolescence an unqualified desire, I dropped like an amateur skydiver from a plane, turning over into the helpless equilibrium of free fall."

Love is seldom simple, and this is even more the case when one of the two parties is already married. Add to that the fact one of the two, in this case Flora, remains aloof, unwilling to commit to any romantic feeling, despite sending out signals she's very interested, indeed. Bron finds himself in pursuit of his love, yet, at the same time, frustrated by her apparent rejection of him. The mixed signals drive him nearly mad, but despite it all he never doubts he's completely in love with Flora.

In the course of researching the French artist Paul Marotte, a man who'd experienced a rather spectular story of love at first sight, Bron finds himself in the city where Flora and her husband live. A local expert on Marotte also happens to be acquainted with Flora, and agrees to pass along a message to her, begging her to see Bron before he runs out of money and must return to England. But beneath all her vacillations, Flora hides a devastating secret, one that may, in the end, threaten the love that Bron feels for her.

Truly a lovely book, so well written. This is a such a deeply thought out book on the subject of the nature of true and lasting love, and love at first sight, written in extremely graceful, assured prose. The story, like the course of love itself, careens from twist to twist. Ultimately the reader may still not be positive on the topic of love at first sight, but the potential for love to conquer all will be made very clear.

Thirty-year-old Bron decides to write a book about love at first sight, a topic he knows nothing about (love and relationships are not Bron's strong point). How lucky it is then that he meets Flora, a gorgeous but troubled girl. Of course, he falls in love with her--at first sight. The relationship does not flourish, though. On the contrary. And the end that Nicholson chooses to give his book is both sappy and clichéd, although it might please those readers who need a happy ending, no matter how improbable.

It's a love story. It's a philosophy discussion. You'll like this book if either of those interest you. If you're looking for action, or even much activity, you'll hate it. My book club selected this book, and everyone had extreme opinions. Except me.

Nicely written, it intriuged me so much I started looking up details to see if they were true. That might be why I rather liked this book. But -- fair warning -- doing this will kinda spoil the biggest twist in the plot.

At age thirty, Bron, a London writer, remains commitment phobic, on the verge of what he hopes will be a successful career, with a contract to compose a book about love at first sight. Bron throws himself into this task with a vengeance, his premise based primarily on the life and love of Artist Paul Marotte. The young author, who has despaired of ever experiencing his topic first hand, moves to a cottage on the estate of his friend, where (viola!) Bron meets the beautiful and mysterious Flora. Casting aside the task at hand for more personal pursuits, Bron follows Flora to Amsterdam, suddenly embroiled in the confusion and angst of his own "love at first sight".

Captivated by Flora, Bron questions his own presumptions of romance and fidelity, the loving self closely tied to the true self. He is on the chase of his life, pursuing Flora, who is not only married but cynical, believing all men who desire her are only after one thing. She isn't sure how to assess Bron, who enjoys more success with her by posing theories on the nature of love than bringing his affections to fruition. For his part, Bron is so consumed with the ideal of Flora that he fails to analyze the attraction beyond her beauty and resistance, but Bron is eventually stimulated in his writing endeavors in this strange dance, forced to reassess his own assumptions. It is difficult to have sympathy for Flora, burdened with her beauty, resenting the covert stares of men. Flora's response to all and sundry is petulant, much like those who agonize over their burden, "don't hate me because I'm beautiful".

While in Amsterdam, Bron meets Freddy Christensen, an art collector who enjoys discussing the Nazi Occupation's usurpation of Jewish art collections during the war, as allowed by Regulation 58/42. The Germans saved the paintings, while exterminating their owners. Freddy gleefully attacks Bron's theories of true love, asking, "Is it possible that what a man wants to give is not what a woman wants to receive?" Bron believes that love can be given, while Freddy suggests it can only be taken. The quandary for Bron is in determining the right approach to Flora, but much of his enchantment is predicated on fantasy. The formerly commitment-phobic is in new territory, unsure and dangerously romantic.

The Trial of True Love is a departure for Nicholson, whose previous novel, The Society of Others, was of an entirely different nature. This more romantically-inclined novel woven around the fictitious painter, Paul Marotte and Bron's own amorous adventures, Nicholson uses fragments of letters from the artist to his beloved, a governess; he also mines literature for sentiments from like-mined poets and authors, all building a case that Bron is forced to prove to himself. After all the hyperbole, Bron must test his assumptions in real life, with himself as the guinea pig. The elusive Flora leads Bron on a lively chase, as does her Marotte-collecting friend, Freddy Christiansen. Bron's personal lesson in love and self-deception is the most difficult of all, yet ultimately the most rewarding. Luan Gaines/2005.

In 1977 Anna kicks out her former boyfriend thirty years old John "Bron" Dearborn from her London flat. With no place to stay he moves to the country to live in the home of his friend Bernard. While rusticating, Bron decides to write a book about true love, using the real life of renowned French postimpressionist artist Paul Marotte as his case study to prove its' existence; the painter fell in love at first sight with the woman who became his muse, English governess Kate Summer.

To his shock, Bron falls in love with Bernard's cousin, Flora, but when he confesses how he feels to her; Flora Freeman flees for the continent. He follows her to Amsterdam where he meets art dealer Freddy Christiansen, owner of some of Marotte letters and paintings and a friend of Flora. Freddy offers to help Bron win Flora's heart because of their mutual regard for Marotte.

This novel is an intriguing look at true love through the quest of Bron to find such. He chooses legendary couples predominately Marotte and Summer though clever references to other renowned couples like Bacall and Bogart show up to add spice to the tale. Though the ending seems too schmaltzy and simplistic for the complex THE TRIAL OF TRUE LOVE, the delightful somewhat naive Bron and his co-conspirator Freddy make for a fine look into whether true love exists and if it does how and when will you know?

Harriet Klausner