Twenty-Fifth Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (ABAB Symposium)

Book Description

This textbook provides an introduction to dynamic modeling in cell biology, emphasizing computational approaches based on realistic molecular mechanisms. It is designed to introduce cell biology and neuroscience students to computational modeling, and applied mathematics students, theoretical biologists, and engineers to many of the problems in dynamical cell biology. This volume was conceived of and begun by Professor Joel Keizer based on his many years of teaching and research together with his colleagues. The project was expanded and finished by his students and friends after his untimely death in 1999. Carefully selected examples are used to motivate the concepts and techniques of computational cell biology, through a progression of increasingly more complex and demanding cases. Illustrative exercises are included with every chapter, and mathematical and computational appendices are provided for reference. This textbook will be useful for advanced undergraduate and graduate theoretical biologists, and for mathematics students and life scientists who wish to learn about modeling in cell biology. Royalties from this book will be donated to the Joel E. Keizer memorial endowment for collaborative interdisciplinary research in the life sciences.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent overview.......2004-04-01

As a field of applied mathematics, computational biology has exploded in the last decade, and shows every sign of increasing in the next. This book overviews a few of the topics in the computational modeling of cells. I only read chapters 12 and 13 on molecular motors, and so my review will be confined to these.

Nanotechnology could be described as an up-and-coming field, but in the natural world one can find examples of this technology that surpass greatly what has been accomplished by human engineers. The authors begin their articles with a few examples of natural molecular machines, including the "rotary motors" DNA helicase and bacteriophage, and the "linear motor" kinesin, the latter they refer to as a "walking enzyme". Important in the modeling of all these is the theory of stochastic processes in the guise of Brownian motion, which the authors hold is the key to understanding the mechanics of proteins. In chapter 12 they give a detailed overview of the mathematical modeling of protein dynamics, followed in chapter 13 by an illustration of the mathematical formalism in the bacterial flagellar motor, a polymerization ratchet, and a motor governing ATP synthase.

To the authors a molecular motor is an entity that converts chemical energy into mechanical force. The production of mechanical force though may involve intermediate steps of energy transduction, all these involving the release of free energy during binding events. But due to their size, molecular motors are subjected to thermal fluctuations, and thus to model their motion accurately requires the theory of stochastic processes. Thus the authors begin a study of stochastic processes, restricting their attention to ones that satisfy the Markov property. Starting with a discrete model of protein motion as a simple random walk, the authors show that the variance of the motion grows linearly with time, which is a sign of diffusive motion. The partial differential equation satisfied by the probability distribution function, in the continuous limit where the space and time scales are large enough, is left to the reader to derive as an exercise.

The authors then consider polymer growth as another example of a stochastic process, a kind of hybrid one in that it involves both discrete and continuous random variables, the position of the polymer being continuous, while the number of monomers in the polymer is discrete. The authors derive an ordinary differential equation for the probability of there being exactly n polymers at a particular time. From this they show how to obtain sample paths for polymer growth and give a brief discussion on the statistics of polymer growth.

Attention is then turned to the modeling of molecular motions, with the first example being the Brownian motion of proteins in aqueous solutions. The (stochastic) Langevin equation is given for the motion of the protein, both with and without an external force acting on the protein. To find a numerical solution of this equation is straightforward, as the authors show. But they caution however that simulation of this solution on a computer is liable to introduce spurious results, and so they derive the Smoluchowski model, a somewhat different way of looking at random motion via the evolution of ensembles of paths. In this formulation the Brownian force is replaced by a diffusion term, and the external force is modeled by a drift term.

The authors then consider the modeling of chemical reactions, which supply the energy to the molecular motors. Because of the time scales involved in these reactions, a correct treatment of them would involve quantum mechanics, but the authors use the Smoluchowski model. The simple reaction model they consider involves a positive ion binding to negatively charged amino acid, and using as reaction coordinate the distance between the ion and the amino acid, study the free energy change as a function of the reaction coordinate.

The numerical simulation of the protein motion is then considered in much greater detail, using an algorithm that preserves detailed balance. This involves converting the problem to a Markov chain and a consideration of the boundary conditions, which the authors do for the case of periodic, reflecting, and absorbing. Euler's method is used to solve the resulting equations for the Markov chain, and after dealing with issues of stability and accuracy, the Crank-Nicolson method is used. The last few sections of the chapter are devoted to the physics of these solutions and the authors give some intuitive feel for the entropic factors and energy balance on a protein motor.

In the last chapter of the book, the considerations in chapter 12 are applied to concrete molecular motors. The first one examined is a model for switching in a bacterial flagellar motor, which involves the protein CheY as a signaling pathway. The binding of CheY to the motor is modeled as a two-state process, with the binding site being either empty or occupied. The resulting set of coupled differential equations for the probabilities is solved for when the concentration of CheY is constant. An expression for the change in free energy is obtained, and the authors give a discussion of the physics in the light of what was done in the last chapter. The switching rate is computed, along with the mean first passage time.

Book Description

Natural Computing is concerned with computation that is taking place in Nature. The investigation of computations in living cells is one of the central and fastest growing areas of research in this field. Gene assembly in ciliates (unicellular organisms) is a splendid example of such computations, and it is fascinating from both the biological and the computational viewpoints. As a matter of fact, both biology and the science of computation have benefited from the interdisciplinary research on the computational nature of gene assembly – this work has helped to clarify important biological aspects of gene assembly, yielded novel insights into the nature of computation, and broadened our understanding of what computation is about.

This monograph gives an accessible account of both the biology and the formal analysis of the gene assembly process. It can be used as a textbook for either graduate courses or seminars.

Customer Reviews:

A very interesting discussion.......2005-10-22

The use of living processes to generate grammars, artificial reasoning patterns, or computational algorithms is now a broad area of research and has been labeled as `bio-inspired computing'. Bio-inspired computing includes such fields as evolutionary programming, genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategies, cell grammar, and DNA computing. As a branch of DNA computing, this book is unique in that it tries to develop a formal theory of gene assembly in living cells by studying the case of ciliates, which are single-celled eukaryotic organisms possessing two different kinds of nuclei, namely the `micronucleus' and `macronucleus.' Gene assembly involves the transformation of the genome of the micronucleus into the genome of the macronucleus. The book therefore does not address the ability of the computational model of ciliates to solve difficult (combinatorial) problems, but rather, as the authors emphasize in the preface, emphasizes the gene assembly process itself. They are interested in the different kinds of genes that can be generated during gene assembly, along with the different strategies used in gene assembly. The book is interesting, in spite of the lack of practical applications for computing as of yet. It remains to be seen whether studies like the one in this book will result in practical realizations of (in vivo) DNA computing.

After a brief review of the biology of the cell in chapter 1, the authors give more details of the biology of ciliates in chapter 2. Of particular importance are the MDSs (macronuclear destined segments), which are DNA segments created during evolution of segments of IESs (internal eliminated segments), the latter being nongenetic DNA. The authors describe as `natural computing' the conversion of micronucleus into a macronucleus. This involves the elimination of the IESs and the eventual splicing of MDSs in an "orthodox" order. The `gene scrambling' process described by the authors that occurs in a particular group of ciliates called `stichotrichs' is fascinating and they give a brief discussion of the possible evolutionary advantages of this process.
The authors develop the formal model for gene assembly in ciliates using various levels of abstraction. The actual assembly process involves three molecular operations, namely `loop', `hairpin', and `double-loop' recombination, abbreviated as `ld', `hi', and `dlad' in the book. All of these operations can work in parallel and in their description the pairs of repeats are referred to as `pointers' (they "point" the way for MDS joining). For stichotrichs, the macronuclear formation takes place by homologous recombination between pointers. The authors mention, interestingly, that it is an open question as to how two identical segments recognize each other. In their formal models of gene assembly, the authors use the notion of a `intermediate' gene, which is obtained during the process of assembling the macromolecular gene. The process of formalization involves first neglecting the identity of the IESs to form `MDS arrangements' and then to `MDS descriptors', the latter being strings of pairs of symbols representing pointers. The MDS descriptors also involve the use of symbols indicating the beginning and ending of the micronuclear gene. This is simplified even further by using `legal strings' consisting of only pointers.

The most helpful feature of the book is the more precise mathematical formulations that the authors give to the processes of gene assembly. This involves viewing DNA sequences as (cyclic) graphs, with the important concept of an alternating Hamiltonian path arising during this discussion. The ld, hi, and dlad operations are then rewriting rules for MDS descriptors, with the latter being defined in terms of `MDS arrangements'. Of particular importance are `orthodox' MDS arrangements, which do not contain any inversions and which are in their "natural" order. A signed permutation of an orthodox arrangement is called `realistic' and the authors show that each realistic MDS descriptor has a successful assembly strategy (i.e. an assembly strategy that results in the beginning and ending symbols).

The simplification of the MDS descriptors using legal strings arises when the parentheses and markers are deleted. This removal process is represented by a "morphism", with a legal string being called `realistic' if there exists a realistic MDS descriptor that gets mapped by this morphism to the string. Since structural information about the molecule is lost in this simplification, it is important to characterize those pairs of micronuclear arrangements that are described by the same realistic legal string. Strings that come from a particular alphabet are called `realizable' if they are isomorphic to a realistic legal string. More interesting are the double occurrence strings that are also signed, for the authors show that they can be realized if and only if their graph has an alternating Hamiltonian path. The authors show in detail how the rewriting rules ld, hi, and dlad on legal strings result in what they call `string pointer reduction systems.' In contrast with the case of MDS descriptors there are only three types of rules for legal strings. The authors prove that there is an injection between the operations for realistic MDS descriptors and the operations on legal strings.

Without grammatical representations of the authors' constructions in terms of formal language theory or computational linguistics, it might be difficult to realize them in a computing machine. Their results though are very helpful to mathematicians who need a more compact and simplified way of thinking about gene assembly than what is usually encountered in the biological literature. Many mathematicians and computer scientists have in recent years been highly motivated to enter the field of computational biology or bioinformatics both because of its inherent fascinations and in its challenges. The content of this book will definitely help them on their way, and give hints on how more complicated gene assemblies. The authors point to areas that need further study, such as the need to characterize when a particular assembly strategy is more feasible than another one, and the need for better methods for comparing a particular strategy to another one. These questions among others are ample material for those readers interested in entering this particular field of natural computing.

Bioinformatics and the Cell: Modern Computational Approaches in Genomics, Proteomics and Transcriptomics

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Bioinformatics and the Cell: Modern Computational Approaches in Genomics, Proteomics and Transcriptomics
Xuhua Xia
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0387713360

Book Description

The many books that have been written on bioinformatics tend to fall on two extremes: books that feature computational details with a great deal of mathematics, for computational scientists and mathematicians, or books that treat bioinformatics mostly as a giant black box, for biologists. Previous books written on bioinformatics often have limited contribution to creating interdisciplinary scientists needed in modern biological and biomedical sciences.

This book aims to render both mathematical equations and biology to numbers, to help truly interdisciplinary scientists. Although the book covers bioinformatics methods at a level more advanced than most other bioinformatics books, the extensive numerical illustration of these methods should make it accessible to most senior undergraduate students and graduate students majoring in science and software engineering. Nearly all algorithms in the book are implemented in a free and user-friendly computer program (DAMBE).

A Cell Biologist's Guide to Modeling and Bioinformatics

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A Cell Biologist's Guide to Modeling and Bioinformatics
Raquell M. Holmes
Manufacturer: Wiley-Liss
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Bioinformatics | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

A Cell Biologist's Guide to Modeling and Bioinformatics introduces an array of informatics tools that are available for analyzing biological data and modeling cellular processes. This book combines expert discussion with examples that can be reproduced by the reader, who will quickly learn to fully leverage public databases and create her or his own computational models. Assuming only a working knowledge of algebra and cellular biology, the author provides all the other tools that the reader will need to understand the necessary statistical and mathematical methods.

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Computational Cell Biology: A Textbook
Volkhard Helms
Manufacturer: Wiley-VCH
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

This first textbook of its kind provides an ideal introduction to the field for students of biology and bioinformatics. Carefully designed study exercises -- with corresponding answers -- offer excellent support for those preparing for exams in these subjects, and help introduce the more technical aspects of the topic. In particular the text focuses on a network-based approach to the study of cellular systems.

From Physics to Biology: The Interface between Experiment and Computation: Bifi 2006 II International Congress (AIP Conference Proceedings)

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From Physics to Biology: The Interface between Experiment and Computation: Bifi 2006 II International Congress (AIP Conference Proceedings)

Manufacturer: American Institute of Physics
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Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

All papers in this volume were peer-reviewed. The BIFI2006 Conference represents an interactive forum for physicists, chemists, biologists, and mathematicians for sharing ideas as well as adressing recent advances in the frontier between physics and biology. Current challenges in molecular and cell biology, biomedicine, and biotechnology require the interdisciplinary collaborative effort of theoretical and experimental researchers benefiting from the interplay between the latest computational and experimental developments. There were three main topics at the conference: nucleic acids, proteins and peptides, and collective behavior of biomolecules. This volume includes papers on: protein folding, nucleic acid structure, ligand binding, proteomics, network dynamics and topology, cell signaling, collective behavior, biomolecular modeling, systems biology, and biophysical computational methods.

Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1994

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Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1994
David T. Kingsbury
Manufacturer: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc
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Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KF4NEO

Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer 1997

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Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer 1997
J. Craig PhD (editor) Venter
Manufacturer: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KFP67M

Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998

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Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998
Waterman Michael PhD. (editor)
Manufacturer: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KFTJWA

Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 5, No. 4, Winter 1998

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Journal of Computational Biology : A Journal of Computational Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 5, No. 4, Winter 1998
Eric S. PhD. (editor) Lauder
Manufacturer: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KFTFY2

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Who's afraid of Saul Bellow?

An Amazing Masterpiece of Jewish and American Literature

A New Planet Indeed

The Civilized Moralist Among the Dilipadated Hypocrites

Difficult, depressing, and entirely worthwhile. Highly recommended.

Mr. Sammler's Planet (Penguin Classics)
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Kaaterskill Falls

Out of Egypt: A Memoir

ASIN: 0142437832
Release Date: 2004-01-06

Book Description

Mr. Artur Sammler, Holocaust survivor, intellectual, and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City, is a “registrar of madness,” a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future (moon landings, endless possibilities). His Cyclopean gaze reflects on the degradations of city life while looking deep into the sufferings of the human soul. “Sorry for all and sore at heart,” he observes how greater luxury and leisure have only led to more human suffering. To Mr. Sammler—who by the end of this ferociously unsentimental novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap between himself and his fellow beings—a good life is one in which a person does what is “required of him.” To know and to meet the “terms of the contract” was as true a life as one could live. At its heart, this novel is quintessential Bellow: moral, urbane, sublimely humane.

Customer Reviews:

Who's afraid of Saul Bellow?.......2007-08-28

I'm a big fan of John Steinbeck, Hemingway and Falconer...
But over the years I've made three attempts to read this book.
My first impression was it was just a lot of mumbling prose
and not very interesting. My second impression was that it was deeply depressing.
My last impression is that it just isn't worth the effort
to sort through the depressing stuff to get to the interesting porn
of a black guy showing his privates to a half blind old Jewish man.
Something is pretty wrong in literature when this is given a prize?

An Amazing Masterpiece of Jewish and American Literature.......2007-08-19

Three days of the life of a seventy-odd-year-old Polish Jew in New York. He is going to witness everyday life in New York, recollect his life in England where he was a university professor up to 1939, remember his moving back to Poland in 1939 to solve some family inheritance, his being caught by the Germans with his wife and a great number of other Jews (one year after the Crystal Night, which makes it crazy of him to have gone back), being blinded in one eye by a German rifle butt, forced to dig their mass grave, lined up in front of it, shot and pushed into the grave, covered up with earth and then his crawling out of it, joining the partisans in some forest, escaping their anti-Jewish purification at the end of the war by surviving in a Polish vault in a cemetery, and finally his being sheltered in the Salzburg Displaced Persons Camp and recuperated from there by some cousin, a rich doctor in New York. With only one good eye he is going to live, see and observe life and become the gathering mind of western culture while filtering his vision through it. Thus he will refer to some one-hundred-and-sixty authors, philosophers, artists and works of art in these three days. One will emerge very strong, H.G. Wells whom he had known personally in the late 1930s and whose theories on the Moon he will reminisce and cross with the theories of an Indian scientist, Govinda Lal, who is technically thinking the migration of humanity towards other planets. He will observe the other members of his family. His daughter first who is a gatherer too, but of everything she can find in trashcans or public places, and she will manage to borrow, with the intention of not bringing it back, the only copy of the manuscript Govinda Lal used to deliver a lecture on the moon, in order to give it to her father in order to incite him to finish his essay on H.G. Wells. She is obviously spaced-out, particularly because she escaped the Nazis in Poland by being sheltered, half converted and educated by Polish nuns. Then we have the Gruners, the doctor who retrieved Mr Sammler and his daughter after the war, and his two children, Angela and Wallace, both spaced-out too because they were raised in a family that provided them with everything without having to make the slightest effort. Angela is described as a sex addict and Wallace as a dangerous half crazy squanderer. Finally another cousin, the widow Margotte Arkin, in whose flat he lives as a guest. The main two events of the novel are the aneurysm that will bring Dr Gruner to his death in three days, and the dishonest scavenging of Pr Lal's manuscript by Shula, Mr Sammler's daughter. Another character will give the opening event and one of the closing moments: the black pickpocket who will corner Mr Sammler, who has witnessed him in his picking pockets and purses, and exhibit his penis to assert his authority. This pickpocket will end up being severely wounded by Mr Sammler's son-in-law, an Israeli artist visiting New York, when the Columbia University Professor Feffer will take pictures of the pickpocket in his criminal activities which will bring up some kind of a fight. The whole book is a vision of the western world before and after the Second World War by a man who has only one valid eye and who is screening everything through the numerous cultural references he has accumulated in his mind over the years. His vision is thus warped by its one-eyed-ness. He is obsessed by death, which is coming in Dr Gruner and which he has survived by crawling out of his own grave in which he left his own wife. He is also obsessed by God though his references are mostly marginal Christians like Meister Eckhardt or agnostic thinkers like H.G. Wells or Nazi-inspired or -influenced thinkers like Schopenhauer. And this is the most fascinating aspect of the book. It is entirely animated by a fight between three musics that are built by the sounds, the words, and the syntax of Mr Sammler's language. The standard music of the Bible that becomes that of the world, a binary music built with choices between two elements or co-ordinations of two elements, or multiples of two. Then his intellectual, mental, abstract, conceptual constructions, always ternary because of Aristotle's dialectic, the mould of all western thinking, and Mr Sammler reminds us several times that the Jewish God and the Jewish religion is not European, not western but Asian. Mr Sammler constantly tries to bring together these two logics and he does it in the most biblical way, by using Solomon's number or David's star (a symbol all by itself after WW2), i.e. six but always decomposed in twice three or three times two. The book thus closes on Mr Sammler's prayer to God in front of Dr Gruner's body awaiting an autopsy. The last word is "know", the master word of a university intellectual, but entirely regenerated in a godly and divine direction by the subtle shifting from a conceptual "the terms [...] each man knows", to a personal "I know mine" and to the collective, Jewish, Israeli final sextuple vision in the collective "all know" followed by five "we know" centered on a direct address to God exactly before the last four "we know", hence making divinely Christian (eight is the symbol of Jesus's Second Coming, and four of his crucifixion) his very direct Jewish godly evocation. This novel is probably one of the most refined and best achievements by Saul bellow.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

A New Planet Indeed.......2007-01-31

In Mr. Sammler's Planet, Bellow uses Sammler as an unwitting witness to a cast of characters who border on the burlesque in their quirks and oddities. The device is clever, since we get the feeling that Sammler is perhaps a witness from another planet, or more to the point, the inhabitant of a new, transformed world. And this is apt: Sammler emerged from a pit of dead bodies in the Holocaust, a sort of rebirth to a new world. How does one live in this new, post-Holocaust world? Bellow gives few answers, but provides a series of interpretations of western civilization through Sammler as mouthpiece. In a sense, it is a novel about how we continue to live when our ideas about life prove themselves to be bankrupt.

The Civilized Moralist Among the Dilipadated Hypocrites.......2006-08-22

I can imagine few curses worse, historically speaking, than being born in Europe at the fin de sielce. Being born during this period afforded millions of individuals a front row seat, from the flowering youth into the onset of middle age's end, to this century's most colossal stupidities and unspeakable horrors. First industrialized warfare with its colossal waste during the First World War and then industrialized murder in the second. Artur Sammler, not thoroughly affected by the first war is, in every conceivable respect, a survivor of the second. Sammler exemplifies with his one eye, the other sacrificed to a Mauser rifle butt, what it means to see the world clearly, unmediated in its most extreme forms of viciousness and madness. He has lived life at its extremes.

There are many ways to read Mr. Sammler's Planet, and though it probably detracts from gaining some of the meaning of the work, I choose to read it as part historical document and part philosophical treatise. As a document of the 1960's and 70's, it is a lamentation by Bellow at seeing an environment of what he considers adolescent intellectual arrogance blossom up all around New York coupled with a hedonistic sexual revolution which, though not necessarily condemnable is certainly not commendable. Sammler's New York is a mad house of crime, vice, and utter-ridiculousness. For him, one who saw society fall apart at the seems with disastrous consequences for his life--Bellow's narrative reveals very early on that Sammler should in all actuality be dead--New York is very close to being a modernized Sodom or Gomorrah, but a long ways away from having fire and brimstone rained down upon it. It is only redeemed by being almost stupidly infantile.

The circles that Sammler travels in and his acquaintances are, and this is a great understatement, decidedly strange. The circle of survivors of World War II--camp survivors, veterans of the Red Army, or his daughter who was hidden in a Polish Catholic convent--are grotesqueries suffering from weird fetishes, capable of incredible violence, or simply incapable of being reasonable human beings. The young Americans who Sammler is forced to suffer could make lifetime studies for Freud, Jung, or Lacan. They are wild children borne of extravagance and wealth who have only redeeming qualities--two are hucksters, and one is described by her own father as a "sloppy c***." Sammler sees them as the product of a society that is going deeper and deeper into madness--all three are in fact being analyzed--and is incapable in its present state to live life in a way that accords with normal values. Since Sammler survived the greatest calamity of the twentieth century though, just watching the conduct of many of these people, many of whom is down right comical. Sammler's New York is a big stupid child that is unaware of itself.

Sammler is an extremely intellectual man, who during the two days in which in the narrative takes place lives what is rightfully called a life of the mind. Ideas are central to his existence, and he sees many of the problems with New York, which is extended into a microcosmical metaphor for the whole of America and the entire world. One of the reasons that Sammler so broods upon this is that the United States is about to launch humankind onto the moon, and seemingly bring about a new era of human civilization--i.e. transporting humanity with all its problems into frontiers unknown. Though space travel is only fleetingly mused about in the conversations that Sammler has with his highly intelligent and utterly sane friend, the Indian professor of Biophysics, V. Govinda Lal, any mention of it in the books publication year, 1970, would have invoked it. As one who looked death straight in the face and saw human bestiality at its most brutal, Sammler sees it, just as sees humanity with much skepticism. Sammler's planet is profoundly flawed and filled with people who seem incapable of even basic courtesy. His whole narrative begs the question: what business do they have in space?

One thing that I have always liked about Bellow's novels is central role that ideas play in his character's lives. Sammler is the best example of this that I have yet seen. Named for the great nineteenth century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer and a great admirer of H.G. Wells, the self-described Polish-Oxonian anglophile is best described in the way that he himself described Wells: "simply a mass of intelligent views." Not only an intellectual though, he is also a severe critic the modern world. For him it is the values of his decidedly un-intellectual nephew and patron, Elya Gruber, which are most praiseworthy. He is a picture of generosity and familial loyalty even with his over-sexed daughter and huckster son--there is nothing about him that is not easily pardonable. Sammler knows though that Elya is atypical though. The world around him is frivolous, impatient and unwilling to look with even the slightest tolerance upon views that are not their own. He even goes so far as to extend the squalor of Spanish Harlem to Columbia University's intellectual demeanor. Both are squalid, but at least the first is only based economical impoverishment; the second's squalor is self-imposed stupidity and arrogance. Sammler sees the intellectual heroes of most of these young people, like Theodore Sorel, as celebrants of the kind of catastrophic violence that he just barely survived two decades before. This does not bode well for the future of human race.

The only major criticism that it seems possible to have of this work is that much of it seems the irascible lamentation of a man, namely Bellow not Sammler, who is disgusted with excesses of sixties cultural revolutions. A great deal of the narrative becomes bogged down in parodying theses excesses with the grotesque behavior of the characters which embody these extremes. When this occurs, the novel becomes almost a polemic against values that it views as contrary to civil society--i.e. Sammler employs the same level of intolerance he finds so abrasive he finds in those who look askance at his views. If that fault can be forgiven, and it is fairly easy fault to overlook even, the novel becomes exactly what it attempts be; an argument for decency, courtesy, and kindness. Values that are very difficult to oppose.

Difficult, depressing, and entirely worthwhile. Highly recommended........2006-07-23

After escaping death in World War II, Mr. Sammler lives out his days in New York City. He is an observer and a half-blind prophet in a time of social decay and moon exploration. This is the sort of book in which nothing world-changing happens and yet the world is changed: Sammler explores the cause of social decay and the apocalypse, humanity's chance for new life on the moon, and what it means to be human and participate in the human experience.

There are two ways to read this book: either to take it at the surface level, simply for what it says, or to try and unravel what is truth and what is error. Sammler the protagonist, observer, and prophet, is literally half blind, and his observations and theories are therefore skewed. The reader can chose to take this into account or to ignore it.

As it stands, without taking into account Sammler's blindness, the book is brilliant. The concepts raised by all characters make sense, and Sammler's final observations, no matter how pessimistic they may be, real a lot about our culture. The concept of the indistinguishable masses is in no way unique to Bellow, but the conclusion that follows--that men respond to the masses by attempting to create identities (through exaggeration and vocalization or normal human traits) both makes sense and explains a lot.

Unraveling the book proves to be much more difficult, and it is a big investment for any reader to make. I cannot, myself, pretend that I have completely unraveled the novel. I can say this, however: if Sammler's views seem too negative, the reader can remind himself that Sammler's views are also limited and skewed by his unique misperception. Sammler presents only one view of humanity. There are others out there, but the book is worth reading if only to see this one view. Mr. Sammler's Planet is engrossing, well written, bitingly satirical, and a worthwhile read for what it says about men, individuals, society, and the apocalypse.

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Mr. Sammler's Planet
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
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Binding: Hardcover

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Bellow at his second- best

Mr Sammler's planet
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006D66CC

Customer Reviews:

Bellow at his second- best .......2006-04-07

Sammler is the story of a middle-age plus West Side denizen, a survivor who meditates on the rough and rude character Western civilization is transforming into. He is one of Bellow's most grumpy heroes, without the charm of Herzog, or the eccentric humor of Henderson.
This is not Bellow at his best, though it is the kind of reflective poetic stylized language which only Bellow could write.
As always with Bellow there is much insight, and the read is well- worth the read.
But it is not Bellow's best. For that , go to 'Herzog' and 'Seize the Day'.

El Planeta De Mr. Sammler / Mr Sammler's Planet (Contemporanea / Contemporary)

Average customer rating:

El Planeta De Mr. Sammler / Mr Sammler's Planet (Contemporanea / Contemporary)
Saul Bellow
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Psychological & Suspense | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Mr Sammler's Planet. Signed copy
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: The Viking Press Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UL100S

Average customer rating:

Mr Sammlers Planet
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: BALLANTINE BOOKS @
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SEY7QQ

Average customer rating:

Mr Sammlers Planet
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: FAWCETT CREST
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UD99MC

Average customer rating:

Mr Sammlers Planet
Bellow
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O3XUKK

Average customer rating:

Mr Sammlers Planet
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: VIKING PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000PXXQ9O

Average customer rating:

MR. SAMMLER'S PLANET
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HWE4A8

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