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Microbial Ecosystems of Antarctica (Studies in Polar Research)
Warwick F. Vincent
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521544130 |
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This book provides a structured account of the full range of environments in Antarctica and of the microbial communities that live within them. Environments examined include: snow and ice; benthic marine; sea ice; lakes and streams; marginal ice; soil; the open ocean; rock. In the more extreme habitats of this region microscopic life forms constitute the entire biology of the habitat, but in all antarctic environments the microbial communities play a major and often dominant role in the transfer of carbon, nutrients and energy throughout the ecosystem. The book examines the major features of the chemical and physical environment in each habitat, and the influence of these features on the population structure and dynamics of their microbiota.
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Emergency Preparedness Planning: A Primer for Chemists
Timothy L. Pasquarelli , and
Frankie K. Woid-Black
Manufacturer: An American Chemical Society Publication
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ASIN: 0841235791 |
Book Description
This book is the ideal introductory primer to emergency management for those who work in the chemical enterprise and are new or have an interest in the topic. It avoids complicated medical jargon and is aimed at a wide audience, particularly those who have just been given the responsibility for developing an emergency response plan. Many examples and parallels for simple and complex situations occur throughout, making this book understandable and extremely useful. As well, the authors have included appendices that contain supporting information and planning tools to be used during the planning process and an outline that may be tailored to meet the needs of specific organizations. This book will undoubtedly facilitate the use and awareness of emergency management for those just entering the field and for all those who realize its importance.
Book Description
The Second Creation is the intimate story of the decades-long scientific quest for "unification," a theory that draws together all matter and energy, from the hottest supernovas to the whirring fragments of the atom. Based on scores of in-depth interviews with such brilliant scientists as Max Planck, Erwin Schrodinger, Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, and Steven Weinberg, Robert Crease and Charles Mann vividly portray the tense, exciting world of investigators at the last frontier of knowledge. In telling the richly human story of the two generations of scientists who set out to find the "theory of everything," the authors recount a sweeping saga that moves from the early days of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr arguing in a Copenhagen park to the vast, mile-long atom smashers of today. The Second Creation is a definitive group portrait of twentieth-century physics. Robert P. Crease is an associate professor of philosophy at SUNY--Stony Brook. Award-winning science writer Charles C. Mann is a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and Science magazine. His most recent book is Noah's Choice.
Customer Reviews:
a glorious book.......2007-05-26
Humans first drawings date to thirty thousand years ago even with Homo Erectus using fire for hundreds of thousands of years . . . all in all, human intellectual activities has been a source of wonder and fear for humanity for awhile now . . . witness the destruction of Jericho so many times . . . the destruction of Athens by the Spartans, Persians, and the killing of Archimedes by a Roman soldier . . . and then, there's the destruction of the Library of Alexandria and the killing of Hypatia around 400 A.D.
Scientists themselves have had misunderstandings about the nature of their activity. In fact, even Galileo thought the euclidean geometry as the very substance of the world. Mathematians were slow to take seriously the philosophical ramifications of non-euclidean geometry; they even made non-standard algebras before Einstein's General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics threw the Newtonian world in a tail spin. Then, Kurt Godel came up with his incompleteness theorems of finite axiomatic systems and a few intellectuals wondered about the very nature of the mathematical sciences. To me, Jacob Bronowski's "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination" is the best synthesis of all these intellectual events,
but, perhaps Crease and Mann's "The Second Creation" is a good place to start seeing some of the issues of the scientific process General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics had on mathematical science as a whole. What's remarkable is that outside of the final chapters realization that scientific theory is about syntheses and analyses is really syntheses, is that they don't understand the nature of abstraction in mathematical science and the unified treatment of mathematics and science that Jacob Bronowski shows in his "Origin's of Knowledge and Imagination."
Still, outside of initial physics courses, most people don't have the time to study the mathematics of the symmetry theories of the unified field theories mathematical science has pointed towards(and cosmology); better to read a good physics book like "Project Physics Course" and then "The Second Creation", and then! Jacob Bronowski's "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination." Also, Weinburg's "First three Minutes", and Guth's "Inflationary Universe." are good reads for the cosmology end of where man stands intellectually today.
I'd like to end with saying that "The Second Creation" is great for showing the human spirit of exploration which 99% of humanity has and will continue to miss even in a post molecular nanotechnology world where they don't have to learn . . . anything! ever!
If you have the intellectual spirit, you'll read this book . . . so, it goes without saying that I hope I've pointed out some interesting things for those who've had enough natural curiousity that every human child is born with anyways to search out this book anyways!
Excellent history of particle physics.......2002-03-01
This book is an excellent choice if you are looking for an easy-to-read history of the development of particle physics in the twentieth century. The book almost reads like a novel. The authors lead us on a tour of the most critical breakthroughs from the discovery of the electron to that of the top quark. Each episode describes not only the physics but also provides interesting insights into the physicists who made the contributions. It is a great diary of man's attempts to discover the smallest components of matter.
The best popular science book yet written.......2002-01-16
This book has proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the telling of the story of 20th century fundamental physics is a task that should not be entrusted to physicists. No, it appears a journalist and a philosopher are not only able to bring the story to life in a way that almost all physics text books fail to do, but at the same time to never lose sight of the important scientific issues.
I thought that I understood these issues well, having been a researcher in the area myself until 1987, but I have to report that they filled embarrassingly large gaps in my knowledge, particularly in relation to experiments, including in subjects that I used to teach to undergraduates.
I would recommend this book to anyone, but most of all to those who call themselves practitioners in the subject, to remind them of how, if at all, what they do fits in to the bigger picture, and also to remind them, to quote Murray Gell Mann (who was probably quoting someone else at the time), that "the best instrument that a theoretician has is his waste paper basket". As the mathematical tangents that theoreticians have gone off on in the last twenty years get ever more bizarre and disconnected from reality, I fully expect this to be full to overflowing soon.
Physics Can Be Fun!.......2000-02-14
Given, I find the sciences interesting, but I never thought I would find myself endlessly turning pages of a physics book. The lives of these physicists was amazing and sometimes even more interesting than their discoveries. If you are at all interested in a "behind-the-scenes" look at post-Einsteinian physics, I would whole-heartedly recommend this book. I guarantee you'll be pleasently surprised. (Now if only there was a biology version of this book...)
I think you'll want to read this........1998-01-24
I noticed this book in a store, picked it up, and almost couldn't put it down! It rewards the reader with insight on the current theoretical structure of physics, excellent background on how it got to where it currently is, and a wonderful personal view of the Theorists and Experimenters who helped to "get it there". Great for physicists, students, or interested laymen. A well written and well balanced book on a complex subject (up to and including the Standard Theory, and Grand Unified Theories).
Book Description
John Steinbeck was never content to repeat himself, and his restless search for new forms and fresh subject matter is fully evident in the books of his later years. This volume collects four novels that exhibit the full range of his gift, along with a travel book that has become one of his most enduringly popular works.
In The Wayward Bus (1947), Steinbeck leads a group of ill-matched passengers representing a spectrum of social types and classes, stranded by a washed-out bridge, on a circuitous journey that exposes cruelties, self-deceptions, and unsuspected moral strengths. The tone ranges from boisterous comedy to trenchant satirical observation of postwar America. Burning Bright (1950), an allegory set against shifting backgrounds (circus, sea, farm) and revolving around the fear of sterility and the desire for self-perpetuation, marks Steinbeck's involvement with the drama in its fusion of the forms of novel and play.
Sweet Thursday (1954) marks Steinbeck's return, in a mood of sometimes frothy comedy, to the characters and milieu of his earlier Cannery Row. A love story set against the background of the local brothel, the Bear Flag, Sweet Thursday is for all its intimations of melancholy one of the most lighthearted of Steinbeck's books. It was subsequently adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein into their musical Pipe Dream. Steinbeck's final novel, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) is set in an old Long Island whaling town modeled on Sag Harbor, where he had been spending time since 1953. The book breaks new ground in its depiction of the crass commercialism of contemporary America, and its impact on a protagonist with traditionalist values who is appalled but finally tempted by the encroaching sleaziness.
Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962) was Steinbeck's last published book. A record of his experiences and observations as he drove around America in a pickup truck, accompanied by his standard poodle Charley, it is filled with engaging, often humorous description and comes to a powerful climax in an encounter with racist demonstrators in New Orleans.
Robert DeMott, co-editor, is the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor at Ohio University and the author of Steinbeck's Typewriter, an award-winning book of critical essays. Brian Railsback, co-editor, is dean of the Honors College at Western Carolina University and the author of Parallel Expeditions: Charles Darwin and the Art of John Steinbeck.
Customer Reviews:
Fititng Conclusion to Series.......2007-04-12
This volume is up to the LOA's customary magnificient standards. This is not Steinbeck's best work (although I persist in viewing "Sweet Thursday" as under-valued), but still worth every penny.
Steinbeck fans should have this on their shelves. DeMott's previous editorial work on The Grapes of Wrath establishes him as the editor of choice for any edition, and these Library of America editions are becoming, justifiably, the "standard" texts.
Customer Reviews:
Steinbeck Subdued But Still Great.......2007-07-03
If I had never read so many of his other works, I would probably rate this fine classic five stars. I rate it just under four and a half stars solely because I don't think it quite compares to "East of Eden" and "The Grapes of Wrath". These are times in which I wish Amazon had a ten point scale rating system instead of five. How can I honestly give this novel the same rating as the two above referenced classics? Yet, please don't get wrong, I did thoroughly enjoy this book, especially the second half. What I love most about Steinbeck is that he is truly an American through and through. Which makes him very easy for me, an American, to identify with. I also enjoy the fact the he was an artist that lived among the people (just like, and arguably even more so than Mr. Hemingway). This is a very attractive trait, in my opinion, when it comes to writing the dialogue between the characters. Steinbeck has the language and the mannerisms of the common man down to a tee.
Three quotes I would like to add here. The first quote, will be the best I can think of when it comes to defining the story of Steinbeck's hero in the novel - Ethan Hawley. The second two quotes are two of my personal favorites from this novel, while they also aid in re-defining the book's main message.
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:36
"Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that's what he wants. Mostly it's women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him. The great artists of finance like Morgan and Rockefeller weren't deflected. They wanted and got money, just simple money. What they did with it afterward is another matter." (p. 45)
"Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught." (p. 187)
I am huge Steinbeck fan, and I have read quite a bit of his work. In "The Winter of Our Discontent", he has definitely created in Ethan Hawley a main character that I myself can relate with like none other. I have just become a husband and father. I work in the world of real estate (not as a broker or agent) in the Silicon Valley in Northern California (a.k.a. hades, everlasting fire, nether world, etc...) where attempting to be a man of morality, a man with principals and ethics, is not very easy to say the least. Especially when you are the only breadwinner and you live in one of the most expensive towns. Like Ethan, I am plagued daily by temptations that could easily make me richer and 'more successful' such as kick backs, black mail, cougar women (i.e. Margie Young-Hunt), shady deals, etc... yet, so far, I have been able to hold my ground. For those of you who haven't read this fine novel, that is what you must now find out for yourself. Will Ethan, after years upon years of being Mr. Nice Guy, a man who is going nowhere fast as a grocery clerk, a man that can barely manage to make ends meet for his family, will Ethan finally throw in the towel and join them? God knows he has the pedigree, the smarts, the wherewithal do be a success, the question is whether or not he wants to sell his soul to do so.
Fans of Steinbeck's I can assure you that you will find this novel more enjoyable as long as you don't have the expectations of it being in the same league as those two above referenced classics. I still easily put this in my top five favorites of all his work. My two only knocks (which are in no way a deterrent for reading this) are one, the lack of character development for everyone but Ethan and Margie, you really only get to know the other characters on more of a superficial, less than penetrating level. Which sucked, because I really wanted to get to know some of these people more than he allowed me to. The other knock is that much of the book's plot was a bit too transparent for me. I was almost able to forecast everything that was going to transpire in the novel after reading the first forty pages. However, those are two very minor distasteful details when you consider who the author is. John Steinbeck could write a story about professional fly swatters and make it interesting. So I hope you all enjoy another little treasure from one of America's greatest twentieth century writers and definitely one of my personal favorites. Damn it! I really want to give this five stars!
ENJOY!
Somebody moved the cheese.......2007-06-08
A reviewer wrote here, this book brought him back to Steinbeck. For me, it is different: had I read only this book by him, I would not want to touch another one. I think, the sad fact is, the man had lost his creativity. The story is simplicity and predictability itself, the writing is far from magic, the characters are cliches, the dialogues are so unfunny, they are hard to bear, because they have this funny tone.
What happens to Ethan, the loser hero of the story, is a normal process of downward mobility and lack of adjustment. The world is changing most of the times, and not everything goes up. That is a truism. Can we say that America changed its morality or that the American ideology became more commercial at the time of the writing? I would have serious doubts about that. There is this pervading, primitive, pseudo-conservative attitude: formerly, things were 'still' better.
I believe that Steinbeck was frustrated himself since a longer time already, almost since the late 40s, although some of his later writing is still powerful. His productivity had run dry. He moved from the West coast to the East coast and observed social phenomena that he had not noticed much before, possibly because he was more upbeat and possibly because the West was younger, although there is social decline also in his California fiction. Only he didn't treat it in the same negativistic way. His Monterey losers were genuine optimists, and Steinbeck did not take their plight into higher spheres of moral reasoning.
It seems to me, that Steinbeck fully bought into the world view of his hero. I am not sure where the praise for this banality of a novel comes from. It doesn't even have Steinbeck's voice, like his previous and following books do. He never whined so in his others books.
One way or another, you pay.......2007-04-16
In "The Winter of Our Discontent", Steinbeck has us step into the shoes of an individual that I would guess is of a pretty rare breed: someone whose immediate ancestors had wealth, significance, & pedigree but all of which was recently lost, reducing this person to scratching out a living paycheck to paycheck. Ethan Hawley spends a lot of time deliberating on the greatness of his heritage and its contrast with his current situation as a grocery store clerk barely making ends meet for his wife and two children. In the course of the novel, Hawley devises a way to augment his finances even though by so doing he must justify a breach of his high moral standards. But as we learn, there's a price for everything...
This is a really well written book that reads quickly. It has a more profound impact than its length of under 300 pages would indicate. I read this a couple months ago and the details are already fading, but certain scenes will remain with me I'm sure. The sad ending of course. The no-nonsense banker / businessman Mr. Baker discovering Ethan's plan. Ethan's last meeting with his drunkard old friend Danny. Ethan's foiled bank heist. A few others.
In truth I'd give this 4.5 stars, if only because Ethan himself is a pretty annoying character since one can never tell if he's joking or serious. Everything else, very well done. Highly recommended. This is a serious book for adults, not light reading for kids or teens.
The Price of Modernity.......2006-12-29
When John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, many felt that this book was what reminded the Prize committee of Steinbeck's greatness. Like all of his books, short stories and non-fiction journalism, this is very well written, has developed characters who readers will recognize and presents a useful moral at the end. This might be his most modern and recognizable story, however.
Ethan Hawley is the well educated scion of a prominent Long Island family that has fallen on hard times and has lost its place at the top of society. Ethan is known throughout the community for his honesty and integrity, but there is pressure from everyone--his family, his boss, friends and local big wigs--for him to sacrifice his morales to earn a better living and make a name for himself. As he struggles with the temptation of a big pay day, he develops a plan which will destroy his own standards of decency, but will elevate his family back into the prestigious position he thinks they deserve.
The story is well told and engaging, plus it gives readers a great opportunity to decide whether the modern society Steinbeck sees is really worth the price it costs. I would highly recommend this book to Steinbeck fans or people who enjoy good writing and stories that make them think.
An American saga... in miniature.......2006-10-17
This book is a perfect way to become deeply enveloped in the psychology of a loveable man grappling with the temptations of corruption, greed, and adultery. The characters are vivid and personal, and often we are privy to their most intimate- and amusing- thoughts. Steinbeck is a master of recreating the essence of a culture, and he successfully creates this New England town which remains steeped in its own quaint history despite the increasing infringements of modern life. As with much Steinbeck, it is the characters and the culture that make this short novel great, and I highly recommend it.
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The Winter of Our Discontent
Manufacturer: The Viking Press, Ny
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Steinbeck, John
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ASIN: B000GTPQQI |
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The Winter of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck
Manufacturer: The Viking Press
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Steinbeck, John
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ASIN: B000MQB8WQ |
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The Winter of Our Discontent
Manufacturer: Book of the Month Club
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Steinbeck, John
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ASIN: B000BHKQ9M |
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The Winter of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck
Manufacturer: Viking
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ASIN: B000JONSXS |
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Second printing before publication. Price of $4.50 on inner flap of dust jacket.
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The Winter of Our Discontent
Manufacturer: Viking Penguin
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