An interesting concept for a book – 300+ pages describing why the book will not be read by the American public at large.
Susan Jacoby tries to delve into most of the reasons why Americans, led by President Bush, repudiate knowledge and state their pride of their ignorance. There are so many reasons covered, however, that the book is not as focused as I would have liked.
Jacoby starts by stating that the current mindset is not just one of anti-intellectualism (although that is certainly present) but of anti-rationalism. She traces the history of anti-intellectualism, where people of great learning are denigrated as “elites”, from the colonies through the present. She shows how intellectuals on the Left were branded as anti-American...
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Where to start? Firstly I love books with short chapters, makes for easier reading and forces you to read just a bit more then you find yourself reading a bit more and more next thing you know you have read 100 pages. This book seems very well researched, lots of pictures not only of Houdini but of people he knew, and places he went. That really helps with helping you see the world Houdini lived in, kinda sets the historical stage.
What makes this different than other Houdini biographies is the authors research into how Houdini helped out the secret service as well as the local police to fight crime. Houdini was able to travel to Russia and Germany as a magician carrying lock picks and other odd items without arousing undo...
Are you tired of the dry cynical takes on the paranormal that is rampant in so many (good) books these days? Do you secretly yearn for those days when accounts of ghosts and mediums piqued your curiosity? If you were still on the fence about believing in an afterlife, would you long to take a year off to explore the unexplained, interview “experts”, delve into the history of humankind’s fascination with the topics?
If you answered yes to any of these questions – and even if you didn’t – you’re bound to be delighted and entertained by Mary Roach’s book: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.
In this witty, intelligent book, Roach takes her readers along for a ride that begins on the back roads of India, following reincarnation...
Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant (1977)
I took a Roman History course in college and when it came to the topic of Jesus the history teacher (who was not a Christian I don’t think) kept it simple – most historians believe he existed and what we know of him was he was a Jewish teacher who started the religion of Christianity. Anything more about what his life meant, what his teachings meant, and religious aspects are not the realm of history. This teacher was very adament about getting the point across to us students that the historian takes each piece of literature for what it is – Shakespeare is good drama, Dante is good poetry, Suetonius is good gossip. :) All these may contain history in them and it’s the...
This book was a gift from another forum poster. Knowing my love for Paris, he sent this to me. It was the perfect gift. If you know Paris at all, this book will enthrall you.
When visiting Paris I would often notice plaques that would mention the Resistance. One that I always notice is near the Metro near the Eiffel Tower that I use. Then there were the graves at the Père Lachaise cemetery. Close to Sarah Bernhart's is that of a young woman, 20 years old, that died in the final days of Parisian occupation by the Germans. There are always flowers on her grave, and as I would look at her face, forever young, I really wondered how such a beautiful young woman could die in the last hours of the occupation of her city. (it should...
A perfect gift for yourself or your older family member! I am seriously reccomending this book for your mom or dad because I know I really needed this update on our neighbors in the solar system. Throw out what I learned in high school and college!
Taking each planet in turn, Corfield gives us the latest update on our neighbors!
He doesn't "dumb down" the information, but he makes is accessable and interesting. Not only do you get what we know NOW, but also how we know it. Interesting space "gossip", such as the Russians saw Venus as "their" planet and we saw Mars as "ours", and a good blasting to the moonhoaxers on page 99, keeps you turning the pages long after your bedtime (I stayed up late to finish it, I really enjoyed...
Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality
Prometheus Books, 1990
428 pages
More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality
Prometheus Books, 1993
452 pages
Steve Allen was a musician, comedian and a television pioneer, perhaps best known as an inventor of the talk show. He was also an author.
As he toured the country, he stayed in hundreds of hotel rooms. In nearly every hotel room was a Gideon Bible, and Allen took to reading the Bible in detail, and keeping track of what he read.
Although he was raised a Catholic and although he grew up believing that the Bible was the Word of God, Allen found himself greatly shaken by many of the passages in the text. He made note of the troubling passages, then consulted a number...
The Lateral Truth is a sendup of some favorite bible stories and Christian history, done in Rebecca Bradley’s inimitable style of entertaining wit, insight and unique perspective. She presents the tales from the different perspectives of lesser known participants in the stories, or by very human thoughts and feelings of familiar characters.
She begins the book with Omphalos, a tale of hope and exploration, transitioning into “a few years later” and how politics and the administrative process has sucked the life out of creation. The tale of Jacob is then related in sit-com style, which adds a new perspective not only to the story but makes one wonder how many other stories could benefit from this treatment.
Rebecca then adds darkness...
Dana Thomas casts her critical eye on the world of luxury goods.
From the first beginnigs of Louis Vuitton in France, to the present day globalization of luxury goods for the masses.
Interesting facts abound, that make you really think before you ever spend another penny if you were simply buying because it's "better made".
A real stopper for me was the fact that an Armani suit bought in Italy is made in Egypt. And Armani suit bought in the US is made in Italy. That's because in Europe you don't have to label where clothing is made, and in the US you do. The Italian made suit really is better, but it's simply the image of Armani that counts with most consumers.
Hermes and Chanel get thumbs up for sticking to their traditions...
Katie Roiphe gives us a short history of seven important marriages, or relationships, among the Bloomsbury crowd of London. H.G. Wells, Vera Brittain, Vanessa Bell and the lesbian couple Una Tourbridge and Radclyffe Hall are among those covered.
This was a time of free thinking, and belief that marriage could be bettered by being open and honest. At a time when views like "Man should be a slave to nothing but his toothbrush" were being expressed, these people tried to make relationships work, simply by redefining them.
The odd feeling one gets is that in the end, marriage really is just a piece of paper. Many of these couples were trapped as firmly as any traditionally married couple simply because if their open relationships...
A very interesting book where each chapter takes a medicine or treatment and shows how it was the result of accident rather than a methodical intense study.
Eyeopening in that the most prescribed medications in the Western World were the result of someone going "well isn't that interesting" rather than, "let's find a treatment for depression".
The chapter on ulcers alone is well worth buying the book. If only because most of us were alive and can even remember the old treatments (that only made ulcers worse) and theories on the subject. Guess what? It isn't stress. Yet doctors went with what was traditional rather than thinking "maybe we have this wrong". Even today most people think ulcers are caused by stress and the wrong...
An easy read, that gives the history of the development of the telescope through history. You also get a good background on those involved in the development, including an overview of the mystery of who invented the telescope.
From the first chapter that brings up the question of the Hubble (too expensive, and out of date technology) to the question of does size really matter...it's a great book.
Great read for students too, as it is broken up into easy chapters that give a good overview of the perils and profits of seeing the stars.
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This is a history, primarily of Victorian era magicians, of stage magic. The book does reveal secrets, but is mostly centered around the lives of the magicians.
The author is very critical of some magicians, especially Houdini. He describes Houdini as a great escape artist but a terrible stage magician. The "Hiding the Elephant" trick is Houdini's greatest stage magic, but the author is unrelenting of his criticism of Houdini.
The book is well researched and will give the reader a feel for what life was like for stage magicians between the 1850's through 1940's. It also shows how the various illusions evolved and kept returning in slightly different guises.
There is an underlying thread (Disappearing Donkey) that is resolved at the...
“Where chaos begins, classical science stops.” Chaos is a history of science written for the general public about the theory and methods used when dealing with chaotic, or non-linear systems. It opens in the 1970’s with Edward Lorenz, his experiments with creating weather simulations, and the now-famous Butterfly Effect, and takes the reader through the ongoing development and application of chaos as it applies to meteorology, astrophysics, fluid dynamics, ecology, and chemistry, among other fields.
Although chaos theory is primarily mathematical in nature, the book is written with a fine balance between a focus on the scientists and the science. There are a few equations presented in context, but the math is at a fairly basic level...
This is my favorite book about physics. I know I skipped physics in high school, and never saw a reason to even take physics in college. Like most of us, I never even thought of physics beyond Einstien. Physics was just a vague theory about time/space and apples falling off trees.
This book brings physics into the real world. It shows us how the great discoveries and scientists have changed our world. Things like photography and Xrays are featured. Each chapter is a little bit of science history, with a good enough mix of science and story to keep anyone interested. Can I make myself miserable plowing though a physics textbook to understand basic physics? well yes, but then I'd be really miserable
Can I read this book and...
Deborah Blum claims she went into this book as a "skeptic". Yet at the end of the book she assures the reader she has now become a believer! I was rather shocked, as what she is basing her belief on simply seems to be that learned men believed despite the sad lack of evidence. Ms.Blum hedges her bets with all the old tired excuses. She counts only the "hits" while acknowledging the misses. She pulls out the old claim that psychics eventually lose their powers, that they cheat but only some of the time, that if you are paid then you are a less "pure" psychic than the "ones with real powers". She trots our Leonora Piper as a case of a "real" psychic. William James and others seemed to have real faith in her as being the ONE TRUE...
The Age of Reason, Part I
By Thomas Paine
Available online at (among other web sites):
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/part1.html
-----------------------
Thomas Paine coined the term "The United States of America."
Thomas Paine wrote the most influential political pamphlet in human history, "Common Sense," which showed the American colonists why they need not respect the authority of a king who claimed to rule by divine right.
When the colonists and the redcoats broke into open combat, Paine wrote "The American Crisis," which maintained the colonial spirit with its stirring words:
It is not hyperbole to say that without Paine's efforts, the USA's separation from Great Britain would not have...
This is a truly wonderful book about our evolutionary heritage. Based on real scientific research, the process of how the earth was formed and how life on Earth developed is carefully explained in beautiful prose and with a great sense of wonder. The life and work of Charles Darwin is retold. The workings of DNA are also described. Of course, everything is comprehensible to the layperson, and in fact is very enjoyable to read.
Much of the book deals with various animal behaviors such as mating behaviors. A great deal of the later chapters deal with primate behaviors, which vary from species to species. The authors make a convincing case that the differences between humans and the other primates are only differences of degree, not of...
The author does her best to balance her narrative. Even though what the sisters did was wrong (by standards of then and now) you can't help feeling sympathy towards these young women. Their opportunities were extremely limited, the best they could hope for was to marry well. Their lives were indeed harsh, when they finally made money with their seances they had little time to spend it. Their lives were filled with constant visitors and sittings. Both girls turned to alcohol in their 20's, haunted with headaches and stress they lived a miserable life.
These women were tested, and the accounts show over and over when a skeptic was testing them they felt that the sisters were cracking their toes or knees to produce the raps. When...
Growing up in the Bronx in the 1960s, my formal science education at elementary school P.S. 96 consisted of times when Mrs. Schnurr, who seemed rather ancient to our first-through-sixth-grade selves, would visit our classroom with her rolling cart and walk us through the bean seed dissections, celery-in-colored-water demonstrations, and baking soda/vinegar volcanoes that the Board Of Education deemed a fit body of science knowledge for young citizens to master.
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More fascinated, as I was, by the way the flab rippled under her arms when she shook the jars than by the actual experiments themselves, I was not prone to remembering the details. There’s no doubt, however, that sitting through six years of her one-hour weekly sessions...
Harold Morowitz’s the Emergence of everything is an interesting treatise on Emergence theory but tilted by his continual search for the Abrahamic god. Morowitz steps us through 28 major leaps of emerging complexity in the universe, he explains the creation of elements, stars, planets and ultimately sentient life unfortunately he ends every chapter (and indeed almost every thought) with how this proves or strengthens our understanding of god.
Morowitz’s basic arguments and structures are strong and the book could be an excellent introduction to emergence were it not so mired in his monotheistic mission. He describe’s emergence as:Emergence is then the opposite of reduction. The latter tries to move from the whole to the parts. It has...
Those who are religious and believe religion to be the best hope of humankind cannot reasonably expect those of us who are sceptical to refrain from expressing our doubts if they themselves are unwilling to put their convictions under the microscope.
I am not suggesting that science should try to do what religion does, but that it should study, scientifically, what religion does.
– Daneil C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell
Daniel C. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon is an excellent analysis of the role Religion has played in the history and evolution of human society. Dennett ponders what our pre-religious ancestors would have been like, what role religion played as a binding social element and how we can...
The Lost Gospel of Judas Escariot
Another interesting book from Ehrman. (Lost Christianities, others)
He relates the discovery of this long-lost Gospel, and its rather torturous journey from the deserts of the Middle East through the hands of various speculators (including a long stint in a non-climate-controlled safe deposit box) and finally to the scholars that have been engaged in the translation and authentication of the volume.
Just that part alone is very interesting; many of these "lost" works have gone through similar difficulties, and if there's any miracles involved it's that we have as much as we do.
The gospel itself is a Gnostic work, dating from the 2nd century, and gives an entirely different view of the story of...
A novel approach to non-fiction writing, this book has a simple aim, exactly what is stated on the cover - A Biography Of The World's Most Famous Eqauation (E=MC2).
Sadly, there are many obviously apparent errors in the explanations of the equation, it's applications and it's consequences. If you are already well versed in the science and mathematics of relativity do not expect to be further enlightened by this book, merely confused by the contradictions with your current knowledge (at best), or highly frustrated that it will be misinforming people who may have a burgeoning genuine interest (at worst).
For those (like the reviewer) who approached the book looking for details and background about the origins of the equation and it's...
Since September 11th, 2001, the world has arguably changed. For the many amongst us in the Western World, Islam was only a thing to come across in the doctors surgery, in the corner shop, or vaguely touched upon in school.
For Londoners, the only mention we heard was the usual joke about Hindu parents being terrified of their daughters marrying Muslim men. Since the Danish cartoons, It is hard to imagine a similar joke being made again, or at least without a sharp intake of breath from the unconfrontational amoung us.
So why are so many afraid of this faith? Why do so many so keen to brush Islamic extremism under the rug with the classic phrase known to so many, 'Islam is a religion of peace'?
Ed Husain attempts to address these...