Science Nature Books

This is an excellent book for learning about the rainforest. I used this book in a special education summer school program during our rainforest unit. The book piggy-backs the song "The green grass grew all around"- and is easy to sing along with. There is information in the back of the book that increases understanding of animals and plants for older learners. Additionally, there is a rainforest cookie recipe at the back of the book that is delicious!

I saw the artist Connie McLennan's work online and heard about this book from her website. It is a beautiful book! The writing is perfect for a beginning reader as well. It's a nice story.

I bought it for my granddaughter who is a budding artist- I thought she would love the pictures as much as I do!

Susan K Mitchel has written a wonderful book about the rain forest that is suitable for many different age groups. Younger children will love the familiarity of the text, more advanced readers will enjoy reading the sidebars full of interesting facts about the rain forest. Everyone young and old will enjoy the beautiful illustrations. A very appealing read! A great choice for the elementary classroom.

Beautifully written by Susan K. Mitchell and superbly illustrated by Connie McLennan, "The Rainforest Grew All Around" is an ideal introduction to rainforest ecology and eco-systems for elementary school and middle school students. Young readers will learn amazing facts about a variety of animals and plants native to rainforest habitats. Kids will enjoy looking for rainforest bugs and butterflies nicely embedded in the detailed and complex illustrations. The text is enriched by the inclusion of 'Animal Sidebar Fun Facts' and 'Plant Sidebar Fun Facts'. Kids will learn abut rainforest animal adaptations, plant adaptations, seed dispersal, as well as what can be obtained from rain forests. There is even a rainforest cookie recipe! A special note for parents and teachers is the Sylvan Dell Publishing website's learning links and teaching activities associated with utilizing "The Rainforest Grew All Around" as an educational resource. As fun as it is informative, "The Rainforest Grew All Around" is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to family, school, and community library Nature Studies and picturebook collections.

The Mom's Choice Awards® honors excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of the panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, Ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times Best-Selling Author; LeAnn Thieman, Motivational speaker and coauthor of seven Chicken Soup For The Soul books; Tara Paterson, Certified Parent Coach, and founder of The Just For Mom Foundation(tm) and the Mom's Choice Awards®. Parents and educators look for the Mom's Choice Awards® seal in selecting quality materials and products for children and families. This book has been honored by this distinguished award.

Granted you can find most of this info elsewhere but still this is a great read. Well written, a nice collection of material, and downloadable source code. I found it to be a very inspiring book.

This is an excellent book. I've been reading it for weeks. The chapters are not long, but the content is amazing. The author combines explanations and equations in a format that is demonstrative and repeatible. This is a very good book to study yielding the understanding necessary to penetrate many other advanced books on complexity theory. The author starts by examining whole numbers and real number problems. Next, he examine Godel's incomplete theory of predicate logic showing that no formal language is complete. Next, he examines fractals, self-similar patterns, low ordered with high compression and high order with low order compression, L-systems, and Juliet and Mandel-brot fractals. Fractals open up an emmense study into the complex pattern from simple rules and recursion. Next, he examines equations of strange attraction, chaos, and demonstrates stability behavior within complexity. Next, he looks at small universes created by running CA. NNs and GAs are examined in the last chapter. I was excited to write down many of the authors processes and run them using OpenGL and C. I believe this book to be an excellent book for college students. The material is easy to understand and the content very demonstratible. Cause and effect are very cohesive in this book. Even though the book seems simple, it covers an vast amount of topics necessary to understanding AI and AL.

I recently became interested a lot in Nature. Especially, being someone in the field of Computer Science, the computational aspect. And this book is by far one of my favourite among all the "How Nature Works" kind of books I've read.

This Computational Beauty of Nature (CBofN) covered a lot of topics. Ranged from brief introduction to Computation Theory, Fractals, Chaos, Complexity, Adaptation. (See the Table of Content for more details).

All topics are written in surprisingly clear and very understandable manner. With as little Math as possible. (From my opinion, these topics cannot be completely understood without Mathematics -- The Language of Nature). Therefore, it is also accessible to layperson.

This book does not, however, go so deep into each subject. (You won't expect it to do that with its less-than 500 pages, don't you? :-) Instead, it does give nice backgrounds, fundamental knowledge, and important ideas for each. So, if you are interesting in any of the subjects presented here, you can go on to the more specialized books on your own.

One of the nicest feature of this book, which can hardly be found in other text, is that the it does show how things work together, where and why. For example, natural phenomena like adaptation, evolution, computation, and some other things else related to each other. How can one view this from that perspective, and vice versa. etc.

One other nice feature of this book is, you can really play with almost all concepts using a number of computer programs. All the programs are downloadable (with source code, under GNU license) from the book's homepage. So, you can reproduce almost all the figures from the book.

However, for one thing, the homepage address given in the book, in the edition/printing I have is incorrect. Maybe MIT Press had changed the structure of their website or something...

...you can still search for it using your favourite web-search engine.

About the website, all the good things are there as well, including errata. (Of course, Perfect things are very rare in Nature... So, books with some errors are ok. The thing that matter is the authors know it/admit it and tell the readers or not).

Conclusion: If you want to understand "How Nature Works" from the computational point of view. If you interested in Chaos theory, Fractals and Complexity. Then, make no mistake, you can't go wrong with this one. (And, get the hardcover edition, because you will read it, read it, read it again, and keep refering to it. So the paperback edition probably can't endure that :-)

I want to give it more stars if I only could. This book will always get the highest rating possible from me wherever and whenever I review it.

Nature herself is so beautiful. So, it's time to get to know her, to learn about her and to understand her! And this book just did it, in such a way that can hardly be better!

Good book, [X] bucks is a bargain, it's worth twice that easily.

Favorite things about this book
Covers L-systems and also gives the rules for how to make some interesting plants. Also this book touches on some aspects of AI like game-trees and neural nets. The author discuses "boids" and self-organization with autonomous agents that act together, and shows simulations of ants and a flock of birds using this concept.

This is a good introductory textbook for college undergraduate mathematics and computer science students that attempts to combine the theory of computation with some mathematical concepts and in the end, manages to model virtual life by explaining basic concepts in chaos, adaptation, fractals, and complex systems. There are better books on all of these subjects, but few others do such a good job of tying together key concepts from each discipline into the one theme of this book. However, there is only enough room to outline the included subjects rather than investigate them thoroughly.

Also, the mathematics is elementary enough to be accessible to a mathematically mature high school student. The mathematics is concisely explained as it is needed, with just a page or two for each of calculus, linear algebra, affine transformations, complex numbers, vector calculus, and matrix algebra. Thus, the included mathematics makes a better refresher than a tutorial for the novice even though the author states in the preface that he wrote this book for a younger version of himself. This book teaches its subject matter mainly by demonstrating concepts through simulations that are expressed in dozens of programs which illustrate the points being made. Instructions on using the programs are scattered throughout the book. The source code is available for download on the web, along with selected excerpts from the book.

I would recommend this as a first book for those interested in simulating natural concepts, but it should not be your last if your goal is to truly grasp the concepts presented and produce simulations of your own. However, an even better book on this subject is "Mathematical Models in Biology", although it is an advanced text. A very accessible book that is also more advanced than this text is "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering". It clearly explains the mathematics while tying it into key concepts in nature. "Chaos and Fractals" by Peitgen is a good book on the subject for the layperson with a fascination for mathematics presented in some depth. The book also has various Java programs that illustrate key concepts.

Obviously anyone that has a different agenda and purpose for purchasing this book will write a different review. I purchased this text on a trial basis for my 9.5 yo homeschooled gifted son. My first encounter with Physics was when I took Physics at 15 so it had been 20 years ago plus the textbook and the teacher weren't that impressive. My background is in International Business. My first choice would have been Conceptual Physics by Paul Hewitt just to expose him to the concepts first before the Math computation. So I needed to have a good book and a good teacher wrapped into one.

I am pleased with the text so far. It contains 16 modules which cover topics in Motion, Newton's Laws, Uniform Circular Motion and Gravity, all the way up to Magnetism. I like the fact that the author explains the concepts as if he is right there sitting next to the student as opposed to a dry, impersonal textbook approach of a traditional author.
The laboratory part of the text is immediately after the lecture pages; the important terms and definitions, though highlighted, are easy to remember because the author explains them all in such a way that the young student can understand them without grappling with rote memorization of definitions.
The author's love and knowledge of the subject clearly shows in the way he uses simple, everyday examples to explain concepts that some people might find difficult. He writes with a warm tone which is pleasant to read and nurturing almost. This is an important aspect for students who might be intimidated with taking an upper-level science course. We're talking about educating a young child who is developing a love of science including Astronomy. Because this is a regular high school science course, naturally there are technical calculations involved but are do-able as long as the primary teacher at home has enough background in upper level Math.

Others may argue against this text because it contains too many references to a certain Western religious sect. My advise is this is not the Bible so don't worry. The author is not trying to shove religion down people's throat just as Al Kwarizmi, the inventor of Algebra, did not try to shove Islam down the infidel's throat. Clearly he is knowledgeable about Theology/Religion and science just as many of the scientists of the past were and is able to convey to the reader/student the important connection between the two.

I would have liked to see Dr. Jay Wile write a Conceptual Physics geared for the Elementary Grades. Also I would have liked to see current Physics-related social/economic issues being touched on that might be relevant enough for the student to study further. That's my only wish.

This book is about you. From the time you, as a homo sapien, took your first steps until today. You are defined in terms of your evolutionary biology, history, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology. David Livingstone Smith constructs a view of human nature that will give you a framework for understanding why we are the most dangerous animal. The author gives us many facets of human nature, which will leave you in deep thought about the war-like nature of mankind.

Once upon a time we were little australopithecine animals living in mortal fear of the great carnivores as we tried to steal bones from their kills, sleeping at night in trees where great snakes and huge eagles treated us as prey. Then some time later we grew larger and smarter and begin to ward off the carnivores with sticks and stones and group cohesion. And then there came the day when we became the most feared predator of them all.

This little history, according to the lengthy and perceptive analysis in this most engaging book, sheds important light on why we wage wars and kill with such ferocity.

"The Most Dangerous Animal" is us. We have guns and walls and locks to protect us not from lions and tigers but from each other. But to gain the right ferocity and the sheer bloodlust needed to defeat our human enemies, we had to turn them into beast and vermin and other non human creatures because, simultaneously with our ability to kill, we had a mental module that urged us not to kill our kind. Therein lies, according to Professor Smith, who is both a philosopher and a psychologist, the terrible dialectic that is the human mind as warrior. For the tribe to survive it had to be able to stir its young men to a killing rage like chimpanzees tearing a strange chimp to bits with their bare hands. But at the same time, this violent ferocity must not be turned upon family, friends and other members of the tribe. And so these two assortments of mental neurons (mental modules) exist simultaneously in the human brain, and depending on circumstances lead us to brotherhood or to genocide.

The question that confronts us today is will we always have war? When I was an undergraduate I argued against the affirmative with others and in particular with one of my psychology professors. In the final argument it came down to the definition of war. If war is any violence of humans against humans, then, yes, war will never end until our nature changes, possibly through some kind of biological engineering. But if war is tribe against tribe, nation against nation, then it is possible that through the rule of law imposed internationally upon all people, war may end. Possibly. Smith is pessimistic, and I can say--no longer an undergraduate--that unless human nature changes, there will always be disputes that sadly cannot be settled in any other way. War is "politics by other means."

Smith defines war as "premeditated, sanctioned violence carried out by one community (group, tribe, nation, etc.) against members of another." (p. 16) He recalls the work of Jane Goodall and others who observed chimpanzees carrying out "raids" against other chimps in a purposeful way that is very much like humans going to war. Since we are genetically very much like chimpanzees, their behavior suggests a common inherited source of warlike violence. But Smith also points to the bonobos, the smaller chimps who practice what can only be called "love not war"--or at least "sex not war." They too are our close cousins. And how like caricatures of the human left-right political dichotomy they are! I think what we need to understand is that those who believe in the war system and those who do not, come by their beliefs genetically. Their beliefs are ingrained. And in many of us both beliefs are held simultaneously.

What we do, as Smith so painstakingly demonstrates, is we lie to ourselves. We practice self-deception to an amazing degree. Smith even argues that self-deception is adaptive in the Darwinian sense. He cites biologist Robert L. Trivers as arguing that self-deception is adaptive because it is easier to fool others when we have first fooled ourselves. (p. 126) Furthermore, how do we avoid guilt and self-loathing after killing another human being in cold blood on the battlefield? Or better yet, how do we get our young men to do this killing? We convince ourselves first, and then them, that our adversaries are monstrous vermin, that they are subhuman, that, although they have a human form, they lack the "essence" of being human. Smith gives many examples of people from ancient times to the present day as doing exactly this. The prelude to genocide is the dehumanization of others.

But this book is about more than the war system. Professor Smith demonstrates a profound understanding of human psychology in other areas as well. His take on consciousness is one of the best I have ever read. He writes: "...it is a mistake to imagine that there is something in the brain corresponding to our notion of consciousness. Consciousness is not a thing inside the brain rubbing shoulders with the anterior cingulated gyrus or tucked away discretely behind the amygdala. Consciousness--if one wants to use this slippery term at all--is something that the brain does. The fact that the word "consciousness" is a noun half-seduces us into thinking of it as a thing. The word `consciousness' should have a verbal equivalent: we should be able to say that the brain is `consciousnessing'." (p. 104)

Actually we do have such a verbal equivalent. It is "perceiving." Consciousness is perception, but perception writ large, including partial perception of our inner states and our mental activities, and the feelings that come from our emotions, as well as what has happened, is happening, and is likely to happen, around us. This is in addition to the perception that comes from the "third eye"--the mind. This perception, at which we are the planet's clear leaders, combines knowledge from perceptions about things past and present, about things seen and heard and told about, and puts all that information together in a grand mental perception about what has happened, is happening or is to come.

Perhaps due to so-called consciousness, our species seems to be the only one affected by vanity. We like to imagine not only that we are in control of our fate, that we "dominate" nature, but also that we are superior to all other animals due to our "morality". No other organism seems particularly concerned with distinguishing between "good" and "bad" (whereas we can fill whole libraries with boring treatises debating this most pressing issue). Ironically, humans are also the ONLY species on this planet that practices war: planning, meticulously preparing, and finally killing hundreds to millions of members of our own kind. If everything goes well, the "victorious" side then gets to compose poems, make blockbuster movies and erect monuments in honour of the "heroic" soldiers who so bravely slaughtered away the "enemy" in the name of God, freedom or democracy. The obvious fact that humans are the greatest killers (and are quite innovative at it, too!) seems nevertheless to cause some discomfort. Invariably we are told that wars are "senseless", "evil", or even "inhuman". Yes, and we would all like to end all wars forever, and live in global brotherhood (at least once we get rid of the "enemies of freedom").
Unfortunately such idyllic fantasies do not impress Mother Nature. And for better or for worse, it's Nature's (or more specifically Evolution's) game we are playing here.

Smith's `The Most Dangerous Animal' proposes a rather cheerless approach to the issue of war: instead of endlessly moralizing about it, he leads the reader on a tour through our evolutionary past, to show how our capacity and necessity to fight wars developed via natural selection, and is therefore deeply ingrained in our minds. What has in the meantime become common sense for at least some people, namely that "evil" is first and foremost to be found within us, can now be confirmed by evolutionary biology. As if it wasn't bad enough that the "paragon of creation", in Hamlet's noble words, has been reduced to a bundle of selfish genes - now we are told that even culture and civilization, our pride and joy, are basically rooted in the wars we have fought, are fighting and will be fighting for years to come!
The first half of the book presents a baffling amount of historical, anthropological and of course biological evidence to show just how advantageous war has been for the spreading of human genes on the planet. It is particularly interesting to observe the transition from more disorganized and limited raids (also practiced by chimpanzees) to "true wars" - involving far more premeditation, ideological preparation, resources and manpower (as well as victims). The latter date back only ten thousand years, when the development of agriculture and sedentary populations made battles for territory and resources all the more appealing... and unavoidable. Ever since, humans have been busy developing the most exquisite forms of torture and slaughter, including manhunts, concentration camps and of course the atomic bomb (in a nutshell). Smith provides countless quotations of astonishingly violent acts across the cultures and eras, basically proving that "the history of humanity is, to a very great extent, a history of violence."
The second part of the book concentrates on the "cognitive" aspect of war, i.e., how come that such sensitive organisms as ourselves (who can even write heartfelt love songs and organize mega-charity spectacles) can so ruthlessly slay other humans without a flicker of doubt. As it turns out, wars are not only messy, filthy and smelly, but also quite traumatizing for the killers. Tricky as usual, evolution has endowed us with extreme empathy as well as indifference towards the suffering of others. The question is how to make the switch from friendly neighbour to greatest enemy. Recovering some of the arguments he had already convincingly used in his previous book `Why We Lie', Smith shows that our ability to be (unimaginably) "cruel" when appropriate is fundamentally connected with our great knack to deceive ourselves. In fact, most of human consciousness consists of self-deception. It should be no surprise then that when it comes to killing, our brains are able to conjure up all kinds of arguments that justify and embellish the act. In a typical example of (self-defensive) vanity, we tend to convince ourselves that "the enemy" is not human at all. Again Smith uses various examples from testimonies, historical accounts, current political propaganda, to show to what extent our minds produce mild (and socially sanctioned) hallucinations that make the process of killing not only endurable but even pleasant.

By the end of this spooky tour through the realities of war there is very little space left for optimism. Smith does try to wrap it up in a faintly hopeful humanistic message - now that we understand where we come from, maybe we can work hard against our evolutionary legacy, etc - but it doesn't sound very convincing. After all, wars are still tremendously useful and necessary (which is why all "civilized" and "peaceful" countries are engaged in proxy wars abroad). Hundreds of battles are being fought as we speak. New deadly weapons are busily being developed by impartial scientists in the best laboratories. If anything, given the state of the world (depletion of resources, lack of space), we can expect even greater wars in a not too far future. Understanding where we come from hardly means that we can influence where we're going to. We are left with little more than the consolation of recognition.

In what is a well researched and ambitious argument concerning the origins of war, the author paints an uncensored depiction of this uniquely human endeavor.

"War is mangled bodies and shattered minds. It is a stomach turning reek of decaying corpses, of burning flesh and feces. It is rape, disease, and displacement. It is terrible beyond comprehension," Smith says early on.
This image however, is rarely the one that most Americans, not to mention most nations who are usually aggressors seldom see. Indeed, most Americans DO NOT WANT TO SEE this picture.

Pictures like the one that Iraq veteran and Marine Nathaniel Fick writes in One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer,

"We pass a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. There's a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. She's wearing a dress and has no legs."

Michael Massing of the New York review of books continues with another stark depiction of wars ugly reality,

"Marine named Graves goes to help a little girl cowering in the back seat, her eyes wide open. As he goes to pick her up, "thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her...the top of her head slides off and her brains fall out," Wright writes. As Graves steps back in horror, his boot slips in the girl's brains. "This is the event that is going to get to me when I go home," he says."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20906

When is the last time you heard something like that on the evening news?
And this fact constitutes a large portion of his argument: That self deception, which entails dehumanization and sanitized language (they are animals and we are going to "take them out.") among the other mechanisms, helps soldiers overcome the natural aversion to taking human life. As long as that self deception is allowed to continue in the soldiers mind, he (as most soldiers responsible killing are male) will remain relatively safe from the awesome psychological burden of killing. When the truth occurs to him however, it is devastating, reaping a horrible psychological wound that many times has no cure. Just look at the stories of World War II hero Audie Murphy or the men who fought in Normandy, of which 98% of the survivors suffered psychiatric damage.

In the end, the author concludes that while he is not at all optimistic that war will be eradicated, or even that we can stop men from enjoying war, a notion that he considers a fool's errand, he says, "... our best hope of stopping war is stopping this kind of self deception, or least becoming intolerant of it."

Professor David Barash, an evolutionary biologist who contributed the blurb above, recommended the book to me and so I will recommended to you, with the hope that you will do the same to your friends. This book should be read by both supporters and opponents of the current Iraqi occupation, as well as anyone who wishes to better understand human nature and origins of war.

For a brief interview of the author, go to this site [...]

In the last century alone over 200 million people, mainly civilians, have been slaughtered in war by their fellow creatures. It's mind boggling to imagine what that number would be if we could calculate the figure beginning with antiquity. In this book written for a broad readership, philosopher David Livingstone speculates about the "big question" of war. Why do humans kill each other on such a mass scale and with such ferocious cruelty? How and why do we ignore or overcome our deepest inhibitions about taking another's life? Livingstone frames the question as a choice between two broad alternatives. He rejects the idea that war is a matter of nurture, a learned behavior, or mere "cultural artifact." Rather, he argues that war is deeply embedded in human nature, that it's innate and, if you will, our natural impulse. As such, war is not so much a pathology or aberrant choice, it's "a normal feature of human life."

To make this point Livingstone appeals to science. Much of his book is not about war at all but about neurobiology, Freudian psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, history and archaeology. He's a strict materialist who rejects the notion that there is any "credible alternative to a materialistic conception of mind" (96). As for ethics, "the idea that moral values are objective simply does not hold water" (132). He's convinced that "our taste for killing was bred into us over millions of years by natural and sexual selection" (161) and a "hideously cruel" evolutionary process. That being the case, war might be tragic and regrettable, but in my mind Livingstone has a hard time transcending the conclusion of Arthur Schopenhauer who described nature as a "scene of tormented and agonized beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths" (67). Life without transcendence is difficult.

This book is like a Michael Moore movie. Like it or hate it, you'll find that the topics this book poses are worth exploring in conversation. Additionally, it'll bring you to look at the media in a different way.

Read this to learn about the "darker side of PR". Great and easy read.

iKnow

It's hard to be an idealist in an age of corporate spin, where everything bad is now good for you. Fortunately for the public at large, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton have written a meticulously researched, hard-hitting, cynical look at the PR (public relations) industry and how its influence sometimes works against the public good. I found myself particularly surprised at the duplicity utilized by The Body Shop (a store I used to frequent), as well as other notable American corporations. I also highly recommend their other book, "Trust Us, We're Experts!"

In addition to the fact that this book reads like a thriller, the content and specific examples that are used in this book are so eye opening that it might make you depressed or even nauseated.

Americans are flooded with a propaganda campaign so efficiant that it would make the NAZIs jealous. This book expalins in vivid detail the actual manipulation tactics that are used by the energy, pharmacuetical and tobbaco industries (among others) to blind us into submission and hypnotize us into believing their products are not only safe but are intimately tied to your youth and vitality.

An earlier post for this book made the comment that the authors shouldn't explain the actual manipulation strategies, but the dangerous PR firms allready know how to use them. The rest of us should know these strategies so we can recognize their tactics when we are confronted with them.
Highly recomended book.

Once again, John Stauber has written a book that tells it like it is, and this one ought to be a bestseller. Readers who can accept these truths may also want to read a couple highly detailed yet fascinating exposes of toxic sludge that is supposed to be good for us. First, "Fluoride Deception" by Christopher Bryson. Yup, that fluoride in your water and toothpaste is a poisonous wasteproduct turned to profit through shrewd public relations strategies. Secondly, read "The Whole Soy Story" by Kaayla Daniel. This is even more of a shocker. It's on how we've all been sold on the idea that soy is good for us. Did you know that soy protein and lecithin are waste products -- toxic and sludgy leftovers from vegetable oil and margarine making that the soy industry decided to make profitable? Because no one other than a few vegetarians and hippies wanted to eat that toxic sludge, we all had to be manipulated into believing that they are good for us. And now soy's in so many foods that it's hard to escape it. Thanks to John Stauber's books including "Trust Us, We're Experts,"I'm wary of experts and now know enough to follow the money.

Where oh where do I begin? Toxic Sludge... takes a jaded look at the public relations industry, and exposes more than a few objectionable practices perpetrated on behalf of (mostly) corporate America's pursuit of the Almighty Buck.

I say 'mostly' because, however distressing it may be to informed and intelligent citizenship, even the United States Government and more than a few foreign regimes solicit the services of these most nefarious snake oil salesmen. Let's face it, you really do not consume the services of PR firms in order to foster good relations with your customers, you go to them when you have done something bad, and you want it covered up, or at least 'spinned' in the 'right' direction. You solicit the help of PR flacks and keep them on juicy retainers in order to look good, and not to be good. When the doo-doo hits the fan, whose a corporate ne'er do well gonna call? The PR company, that's who.

Toxic Sludge... contains twelve chapters of absorbing reading. From countermeasures directed at censoring information thoroughly in the public domain, keeping books off the bookshelves and dissenting voices from being heard, to infiltrating shoe-string activist organizations, fomenting criminal insurgency and subverting (and ultimately perverting) any and all attempts to relay the facts, the authors provide example after example of very well-financed government and corporate interests actively frustrating (and quite often foiling) intelligent and inormed democratic participation in the political and economic process. As Mark Dowie, the author of the introduction says, in an environment rife with PR, facts can not survive, nor can the truth prevail.

Some of the strategies and tactics PR firms used with giddy abandon on often unsuspecting targets truly shocked me, for many tools and tricks from the PR Playbook share an eerie resemblance to CIA methods and operations. In fact, more than a few PR players and heavy hitters get their inspiration from millitary strategists such as von Clauswitz, and cross-fertilization between PR firms and the upper levels of government and corporate America impart a uniquely acidic aggressivity and practiced slickness to their campaigns against their opponents. Some of their more colorful operations reminded me of the FBI's use, via its infamous COINTELPRO initiative, of agent provocateurs against student groups, anti-Vietnam war protestors and civil rights activists during the late sixties and early-mid-seventies. This unholy alliance between government, corporations and PR firms, combined with their incestuous linkages to the ad industry, make for one formidable and thorougly intimidating opponent.

The book contains a veritable smorgasbord of eminently quotable quotes and delightful (and very distressing) anecdotes. In this vein, my personal favorite is the story of how PT Barnum, of circus fame, got his start. He put on display an old, black slavewoman, and billed her as 'George Washington's childhood nursemaid', and get this- he claimed that she was one hundred and sixty years old. Barnum made certain that he got the woman in the news as often as he could, and it did not matter what the papers said, as long as his name was spelled right. Of course, Barnum made a killing, the woman died, an autopsy was performed for the benefit of more than a few skeptics, and gee whiz, it turned out that she could not have been more than eighty.

Barnum, of course, handled the situation like the PR pro he was. When the truth was finally revealed, he went public, and said he was shocked, truly shocked, at the way the woman had deceived him!

And that anecdote, in essence, describes the modus operandi of the PR professional. PR pros turn the truth inside out. While they greatly prefer subtlety, they will stoop to other, more brutish tactics in service of their cause. PR groups can obtain favorable coverage of their worldview, much like Barnum did, and can readily obtain the willing cooperation of government agencies, as well as current and former high ranking government officials and politicians to do their questionable bidding.

The PR firm has proven itself to be at times a sinister, vicious octopus with many tentacles in some of the most unlikely places. As such, it behooves any concerned citizen to read this book and take notice of this beast as he or she participates in the marketplace of ideas.

This is an inexpensive yet excellent anatomy learning tool for the horse. Great coverage of all the major systems with all the identifying terms. My 6 and 9 year olds dove right into it.

I'm studying for an equine massage therapy class I'm about to take. And though the homework course they give usually has great illustrations to go with it - for the musculature system - I just really needed a better to see and understand drawing. So I bought this book for a few dollars and then another book for 20 or so dollars. Both are good, but I use this fantastic, very inexpensive little book ALL the time! It was EXACTLY what I need and has proven to be an invaluable asset in helping me understand where the muscles lie etc.

As the book opens, the endpapers display a timeline noting Franklin's numerous inventions and progressive ideas.

Barretta's opening illustration depicts Franklin's many roles as a writer, diplomat, printer, musician, postmaster humorist, scientist, inventor, traveler, philosopher, cartoonist, statesman inscribed on cobblestones while Ben stands on the cobblestones, framed in a style reminiscent of the one hundred dollar bill.

The book describes Franklin's inventions and concepts and depicts how those ideas are still in use in the present.

Experiments with lightning lead to the invention of the lightning rod. A store clerk uses the Grabber for grabbing a box of cereal that is out of reach, while on the opposing page Franklin uses his Long Arm to reach a book high on a shelf.

His See Far/See Near became today's bifocals and his improvements to fireplace design helped move smoke out of houses. He designed the first clock with a second hand and as the reader looks at a school bus driver checking the mileage on the odometer and we see Ben's odometer on a cart which was used while he was postmaster general to measure postal routes.

Barretta shares the information with humor. We see an alarm clock buzzing at 6 a.m. with the moon still high in sky while bleary eyed kids struggle to struggle to wake up. Franklin advocated the idea of daylight savings as a means to save candles and gain more daylight for farmers.

Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father of choice to study in depth here in 5th grade. His extraordinary life lends itself to many areas of the curriculum. This is terrifically engaging nonfiction picture book that would be great fun to share with students.

This cleverly written and nicely illustrated book was enjoyed by my son, and taught me several things about Ben Franklin I didn't know! It shows how Ben's cool ideas are still in use today, without feeling like a history lesson.

For the price that I paid for the book I was expecting much more. The book had good information but few pages. It would be better if it were printed as a soft cover book and the price reduced considerably!

Mr. Barretta offers an abundance of pages that make this book a worthwhile purchase. Properly bound, the hardcover edition is chock-full of finely detailed drawings that will grab your child's attention.

Packed with illustrations and information about Benjamin Franklin, Now & Ben offers readers, both young and older, insight into our nation's most creative Founding Father!

At turns surprising and common sensical, this volume, a generous 40 pages, continues to stimulate and entertain my children (and me!) with Franklin's contributions that permeate our lives daily.

This book has great illustrations. The students I teach spent time looking through all of the details. The stories are accurate and include a fun sense of humor. Students from grade 4-6 also enjoyed the book.

Did you know that nets abandoned (or lost) by fishermen become 'ghost nets' that can perpetually go on fishing? Did you know that certain fisheries throw away (or discard) as much as 80% of the species they catch?

This is a book that anybody should (or must) read. The plundering of the oceans is being quietly executed at an alarming scale that we must be aware of the dangers of depriving future generations of the pleasures and benefits of fish eating.

The book is greatly executed and researched. Each of the major subjects of fishery is compartimentalised (if I'm allowed the expression) in compact chapters around 20 pages each so it's easy to read. Charles Clover is a journalist, so he certainly wants to appeal to the broadest audience possible and wants to pass his message in a clear, almost newspaper-like style.

However, if this is the main strength of the book it is also its main weakness. This journalistic style has boundaries, and I'll make clear what I'm saying by citing a few short passages. For instance, in chapter 8 Clover recounts a trip to Newfoundland, Canada, and tells us that, while driving, the radio is playing Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac... Later on, he arrives at Harvey Templeman's cafeteria, who pushes across a cup of free coffee and helps Clover locate the person he is supposed to meet that day.

This is my point: does the reader have to know about Templeman's coffee or radio music in Newfoundland? Fortunately, these detours are short and only consume a few paragraphs, for Clover immediately dwelves into the subject matter... Yet pushing the journalistic style too far could alienate certain readers who are looking for more of a scientific discourse.

Clover makes frequent analogies between hunting in the Oceans and hunting on land. For instance, whenever the case of animal reserves is championed, nobody worries what the construction industry has to say... But whenever a fish marine reserve is planned, the fishing industry has to be consulted. Fishermen are 'stakeholders' but (as Bill Ballantine says in chapter 15) few consider that the real 'stakeholders' of the Sea are our children and their grandchildren.

Why do land-based industries abide to stringent pollution laws (risking legal action if these laws are not respected) while fishing vessels go about plundering the seas running a very remote risk of penalisation?

To continue with the land-sea analogy, we might say that, with current rates of overfishing, our seas are rapidly becoming marine 'deserts'.

Finally, if I must choose at least one major attribute of this book, I would say it is global in scope. Charles Clover can take the reader, seamlessly, from the waters of New Zealand to the Argentinean Antarctica; from the Lofoten archipelago to the high seas off Peru. Fishing, like almost everything these days, requires a global approach.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3LPQTH283YHEO This is one of the most important books I have read. I have turned a single page of this book into a video relating to by-catch when using purse seine netting as commonly employed for tuna fishing. Long line tuna fishing with hooks stretching out up to 60 miles long (and several lines) is only slightly less worse. The pole and line method is the best. The End of the Line was one of the first books of its kind. It was difficult to get published, but now it is going into new editions, and other books are joining the bandwagon. In order to see just how bad the situation is you may watch the following video from You Tube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZkwewR69w8 The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat

This is an excellent primer on fish mining. It's well researched and easy to read. The future of industrial fishing looks bleak, and Clover clearly explains why.

For those of you who are concerned about the state of our fisheries and declining fish populations worldwide, I would suggest a newly published book, "The End of the Line," by Charles Clover. As The Independent suggests, his book is "the maritime equivalent of Silent Spring." Clover takes the reader on an unbiased tour of many of the most important fisheries throughout the world from Africa to Iceland, offshore to nearshore. His appraisal and commentary of fishery management is candid and insightful. I highly recommend this book to anyone who finds themselves trying to contemplate the disequilibrium between fishery management and sustainability. The book ends with some positive examples of fishery management of which there are sadly too few, and he has some helpful tips for all of us to do our part to ensure fish stocks for the next generation.

"The End of the Line" is a well-written, highly informative book which addresses a serious global issue.

"Imagine what people would say if a band of hunters strung a mile of net between two immense all-terrain vehicles and dragged it at speed across the plains of Africa.... left behind is a strangely bedraggled landscape resembling a harrowed field... this efficient but highly unselective way of killing animals is known as trawling... it is practiced the world over every day, from the Barents Sea in the Arctic to the shores of Antarctica and from the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the central Pacific to the temperate waters off Cape Cod."

Overfishing is a serious problem that must be addressed. The statistics are staggering. As journalist Charles Clover shows in his global exploration of the destruction caused by overfishing, we have inflicted a crisis on the oceans in a single human lifetime greater than any yet caused by pollution.

I often buy bulk copies of this wonderful book to give away to young kids who attend my 5-Day hands-on learning camp, aptly entitled 'Science & The Art of Discovery.' My principal objective is to teach young kids how to think scientifically, inventively & productively.

The two authors have done a great job in producing this excellent piece of work. Although it has only 44 pages, the contents are comprehensively rich. It is also very well-illustrated with a simple story format & systematically organised as follows:

How do you answer questions?
Using the scientific method
What do you want to know?
What do you think?

If you want to get your young kids to understand & appreciate the scientific method or simply 'how to think like a scientist', go for this book!

I was very excited to find this book in my local library when I was starting out a "science week" with my kids during their spring break. It is simply wonderful! It explains the scientific method in such simple, logical terms and it was not at all difficult for my six year old to understand. It was entertaining as well as helpful in teaching my kids how to think like a scientist. The last chapter includes some ideas for children to apply the scientific method, in order to answer questions they are curious about. It is a nice ending to this book. Needless to say, I was discouraged when I saw the publication date, thinking this book would be out of print (I really wanted my own copy). I was delighted to find it here on Amazon. I am buying a copy as soon as I'm done with this review!

While the bubble gum pink cover of Stephen Kramer's "How To Think Like A Scientist" may inspire you to reach for something else, pick up anyway! Between the cotton candy covers, lies a charming book which uses humor to express thought provoking ideas and to teach your child to think about science in a systematic manner.

One of the best ways to get the attention of a child is by telling a story and Kramer capitalizes on this idea. My son and I were both engaged by the stories and the lessons which flowed naturally from them.

Your child will not only learn the scientific method -- the process for exploring scientific ideas -- but also will learn the language of experimentation on which to base a lifetime of scientific study.

Well this is a pretty cool book with some great general descriptions of various areas in the big california district. Another key buy would be gem trails of socal more focused on the socal region.

A friend of mine recently got me interested in rockhounding and we went and purchased this book... Anyway, we went to a random site and the maps, although detailed with mileage, don't show distance to site from areas in california. Example, distance from Barstow to Ludlow? YOU have to go there to see the mileagle sign. Secondly, there needs to be better markers on where to turn for these dirt roads. A few sites were passed due to not being where they "should be". I really would hate to take some unmarked road for 10 miles only find it leads nowhere and then have a problem getting back. The lore and history of the sites was nice along with hints of how to dig or uncover rocks but the maps do leave a bit to be desired. Finally, and most annoyingly, all of the photos were black and white and of low quality. How can one tell what green jasper looks like with a black photo? Blooodstone? Rose quartz? This one portion of the book really was what made me not want to purchase my own copy. Maybe future editions will have better maps and at least a few color photos of the rocks,etc. Thanks for your time, Dean

got the book last night, found crystals the next day. I am going for jasper tommorrow. great book!

This book really is solid. It's got some of the best information on everything you'll need to be right in the middle of all that this great big state of California has to offer. I have traveled to 14 sites so far, and almost all of them have been productive and well worth the trip. What I like most is the extra types of information given; like the best season to look for gems and minerals at a particular site, and the specific tools you'll need. Especially appreciated are the alternate maps that are recommended, like the USGS and the BLM, which match up right to the book. Way to go and thank you very much!