Pacific University Books

It's nice to see this book has been reprinted. It was written by my grandfather in 1901, and published by Ginn & Company of Boston, MA. He was professor of Astronomy at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.
I have a copy of the original publication; the cover has illustrations of the twelve signs of the zodiac, and has 129 pages, including the index. Hopefully, the reprinted edition has some biographical material on J.G. Porter.

With all the political to-do about stem cell research in the US, this book can be very educational. The NIH gives a broadly optimistic view of the possible benefits. In studying many diseases and possibly one day helping to cure them.

While the book tries to reach a broad audience, some of the text may be a little too technical for some readers. But if you persevere, you may be able to glean some reliable information, as opposed to rhetoric from public figures like politicians or clerics.

For those who don't know, Tsao Yu is the equivalent of Shakespeare in China. His stories are entertaining while they metaphorically depict China's history as well. Sunrise is probably his second most famous play with Thunderstorm being his first. I highly urge anyone to read this novel for it is a short and easy read, but you will not be disappointed!

The bombastic, triumphalist tone of the title is meant in sarcasm. The author describes in impressive detail how Australia was settled by the British. But instead of following the standard path of focusing on the growth of the cities, he looks instead at the farming sector. Along with how water and other resources were harnessed to feed the cities.

Much of the original environment was drastically altered, at least in the coastal regions where farms could be established. The non-native livestock and crops thrived. So too did species like foxes and rabbits and cane toads. The narrative is almost one of a war against the land.

The book appears to have been translated from one used during the time of the late, unlamented Soviet Union, circa 1970. Directed at a high school audience.

Technically, most of the text is well written. The Soviets at least did not neglect physics education. And physics was not subject to the bogosity of dialectical materialism. So for the most part, what you see here is quite understandable. An American high school student is not so different from a Soviet student.

But every now and then, something pokes up through the translation, to remind the reader that this is a Soviet text. The most glaring example is the claim that radio was invented by Popov. Most non-Russian history books credit Marconi with radio.

China has had few relations with Spain excepting for the Catholic priests, as Spanish Church has reached the whole world. This book remembers to me the stile of storytelling that can be found in Thousand and One Nights: an Oriental stile that seems infantile if you're accustomed to Occident novels from Sweden to Italy.
The adventures of the Dr. Can, so named as he's a wise and good man even cultivated in the Confucian philosophy and other humanities, has however only a precarious formation in medicine, Chinese or occidental. He travels here and there as an ambulant physician and many times he succeeds as, if no real medicines, he's plenty of common sense. The novel reveals the disastrous and demoralized state of China at the beginning of twentieth century and his terrible governmental corruption, deplorable state of the roads, river floods, attacks of tigers and wolfs in the country, selling of women as slaves, pirates, and many other catastrophes, and how the doctor must act sometimes as a detective in a case of murder by poisoned cakes, and it's curious, as it's named Sherlock Holmes as an example to follow, a proof that even in the China of these times this hero was yet translated and known. Also the doctor posses a wristwatch, an object I think no very common by 1903 between Chinese people.

I have the condensed version for field work but to really get seriously involved in the identification of Pacific Northwest Plants, the five volume set is a must have. The abbreviations used in the condensed version are gone and there are much more detailed illustrations in the larger set. The books are not for amateurs and the dichotomous keys are very time consuming and somewhat difficult to master. The books currently are in need of an update, but this does not distract too much from their value in a Botanist's library. There have been a few species changes that are not included. Any serious student of Northwest plants should have all five.

Samuel Milner's "Victory in Papua", first published in 1957, is part of the official history of the U.S. Army in World War II series. It recounts the Allied efforts in early 1942 to stabilize the defenses of Australia against the threat of Japanese invasion and the subsequent campaign to destroy Japanese forces threatening the advanced Allied position in Papua New Guinea. This campaign culminated in a savage and bloody fight to reduce the Japanese beachead at Buna, New Guinea.

The Papua New Guinea campaign, fought in parallel with the extended Battle of Guadalcanal, illustrates the many hard operational and tactical lessons learned by American forces early in the Pacific War. Allied forces were operating in an area almost completely lacking in military infrastructure. Fighting was conduct at or beyond the limits of extremely tenuous supply lines. Throughout the campaign, the United States and its Australian ally lacked sufficient ground, naval and air forces for decisive action. Poorly trained and unacclimatized troops were repeatedly thrust into action in jungle environments short of weapons, ammunition, food, and medical care. The result, on a scale relative to the numbers of troops engaged, was some of the costliest fighting of the Pacific War.

The Allies ultimately succeeded in defeating and then destroying the Japanese forces in Papua New Guinea by isolating the battlefield from significant resupply and reinforcement. Starvation among Japanese troops helped wear down their resistance. Allied success in learning to synchronize the use of ground, air, and naval forces towards a single tactical objective ultimately broke the Japanese defenses. Australian and U.S. troops became increasing proficient in fighting in the jungle. The taking of Buna virtually destroyed two allied divisions but paid off in lessons learned for subsequent campaigns in the Pacific.

Milner's account of the defense of Port Moresby, the prelude to the Buna campaign, is a fascinating story in and of itself. Under the direction of General MacArthur, the limited Allied assets available began a rapid build-up of airfields and ports. A few handfuls of Australian troops blunted a Japanese thrust over the towering and jungled Owen Stanley mountain range to take the vital Port Moresby base complex from the landward side, setting the stage for a subsequent allied offensive.

This book is highly recommended to students of the Second World War and to students of the military operational art.

Lynne Withey succeeds in providing a balanced and well-researched account of the famous explorations of Captain James Cook in the South Pacific. She discusses the impact of Cook's journeys on both the 18th century Europeans and the native peoples of the South Pacific. Although it has been popular to cast the "Age of Discovery" as a violent and invasive period for indigenous people, Withey shows that Cook generally had the best intentions when dealing with the inhabitants of these islands, and that most unfortunate incidents were the result of misunderstandings. Further, Cook showed an uncommon concern and compassion for all the people he came in contact with. Withey's book provides the reader with numerous insights into the motivations which spurred on this age of exploration, both political, in the case of the English government, and personal, in Cook's case. Her fascinating account of the complex events surrounding Cook's death in Hawaii, and the Hawaiian belief system that contributed to this unfortunate event, clearly show how two cultures can come unwittingly into conflict when they first meet. Overall, this book is a clearly written, comprehensive, and highly informative treatment of this fascinating period of our history.

The copy of this which I read is the original 1914 edition entitled WAR'S AFTERMATH. It is interesting to me that the author set out in his questionairre with a set of strong assumptions, nearly all of which unravelled from the replies he received from the wide cross-section of Confederate veterans.

With one exception, the obvious and underlying general assumption that war has dysgenic effects. The loss of perhaps one million or more of men of the finest genetic quality during America's Civil War, is indeed irreplaceable. Little did the author know that two major global wars would quickly drawf that figure.

However, one thing I did notice were the author's Germanophobic comments in his introductory essay in which he essentially called for a new war - although he of course was not EXPLICIT in saying that. Thus a lesson perhaps to be absorbed there, is that while it is easy to condemn past wars, it is equally easy to fly into new and more disastrous ones.

Also his comments interspersed throughout his essay, applauding democracy and advocating its adoption everywhere as some sort of 'solution' to the problem of war, seems completely wrong to me. It is not just dictatorships or tyrannies that indulge in war. An argument could be made that democracies lead to an inherent corruption and tend to produce ever more inferior standards of leadership and a correspondening drop in the political quality of the masses, leading in turn to was and conflicts that could and should be more properly avoided as unnecessary.