Book Description
Charlie Wilson's War was a publishing sensation and a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller. In the early 1980s, a Houston socialite turned the attention of maverick Texas congressman Charlie Wilson to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight the Soviet invaders. Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujahideen. The arms were secretly procured and distributed with the help of an out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrokotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the Ivy League world of American spies. Avrakotos handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation and, with their help, continually stretched the Agency's rules to the breaking point. Moving from the back rooms of the Capitol, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers' conventions, to the Khyber Pass, this book presents an astonishing chapter of our recent past, and the key to understanding what helped trigger the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and ultimately led to the emergence of a brand-new foe in the form of radical Islam.
Customer Reviews:
Hopefully, the movie doesn't screw up this story.......2007-10-05
There will be three main kinds of people who won't read this book. The first are those who see no reason for military intervention anywhere, ever. The second are those who are hypersensitive to any speaking of ethnicity, race, gender, etc., within a kilometer of earshot. The third are those who don't like long books, and "Charlie Wilson's War" is certainly longer than most. All this would be too bad, because the book is a wealth of little known and critical current history, as well as a real rip-snorting adventure. The most intriguing icing on the cake is that Charlie Wilson, one of the boldest and effective national-interest congressmen of the last century, was a Democrat. He was a Democrat who pushed Republicans forward for a decade, mostly to do the right things. How many right things, of course, remains to be seen in coming decades.
Much of the book is written in colloquial style, as the author reproduces many discussions among a very wide variety of people. This sometimes comes out sounding a little coarse, but the reader should see this quickly as a writer trying to be accurate. Charlie Wilson, the man himself, also might turn many readers off. He abused his body with food and drink, mostly drink; he was a maverick to the point of almost being a loose canon; wild, he certainly was. No one, though, can deny that he was one of those rarest of politicians. Here was a man who did not stop with saying what he wanted to do, he found ways to do what needed to be done. Then he kept at it, and at it. Here was a man of his word.
This interesting story suffers only a small weakness as a narrative, and only if the reader minds. The action chapter by chapter, even section by section, does not always tell us what was happening at the same time with other people, and at other places. Rather, the author likes to keep a thread of a theme or thought and follow it to the end. This can be irritating and a little confusing if you are trying to keep things straight for any particular group of years at a time. If this does not make a problem for reader, then so much the better. A last suggestion: this book goes down especially well by audio CD, and the voice narrator does well with dialogs and accents.
A great true story.......2007-10-04
This is a truly amazing tale. Never told until now and soon a movie. Buy this book and read the true story about how a "wild" congressman and a rogue CIA agent changed history. Better by far than all those fictional adventures!
four and 1/2 stars........2007-10-01
steve coll's excellent book "ghost wars" whet my reading appetite for more on the soviet war in afghanistan. since that military action, with the unanticipated consequences it spawned for the united states, was such a catalyst for the 9/11 attacks, it seems essential for an american to get a grip on what took place there. "charlie wilson's war" is a thrilling account of that international drama. though much of the book deals with funding america's covert involvement through congressional appropriation subcommittees, and with CIA office politics, the narrative is interesting page for page throughout this long work. not once did i find it a chore to continue, or feel an urge to skip past anything. george crile brings the colorful personalities of those involved to vivid life through his clear prose. he actually makes appropriation subcommitees, and their methods of work, interesting. and his portraits of afghanistan and pakistan, and their respective political environments and key political players, is brilliantly executed. the story is told completely from the american perspective, true. you will have to seek elsewhere for a more balanced view (by this i mean one that takes into account the soviet soldiers side of things). but this book being what it is, is a fascinating read, and one you can learn much from.
Great.......2007-09-08
One of the most intriguing stories of American foreign policy making. This book was recommended to me by a staffer for a military oriented Congressional committee. He was quite emphatic in stressing that this book, better than any other, offers a great perspective on the influence Congress can have on foreign and war policy. I don't know how representative it is of the day to day activities of members of Congress, but it certainly shows how a dedicated member of Congress CAN get seriously involved in an issue.
Charlie Wilson is one of the most interesting politicians to have walked on the stage in the past 50 years. Part JFK, Nixon, LBJ, and Clinton - both good and bad parts - Wilson was a smart and dedicated defender of CIA efforts to support the mujaheden in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. More than any supposed hardline conservative, including President Reagan, Wilson, a socially liberal Democrat from Texas, was the most agressive elected official to back the CIA in its anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan. Wilson was also wildly able to get in the worst kinds of trouble: womanizing, drunk driving, and questionable uses of public money. I guess it goes to show that people are incredibly complex and contain a much more dynamic mix of good and bad within them. Kind of like the Incredible Hulk, but with less green.
Hard to read.......2007-08-29
Content was OK, I'm sure acurate, but about 210 pages into this 500+ page book I had to give in - I just couldn't make myself want to read it. I am only 31, so I do not know of Charlie Wilson, or the political temperature in the 80s, but this book was recommended to me so I tried, but couldn't make myself do it.
Amazon.com
"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.
The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan
Book Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy's background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will endure as a chilling document of our time.
Customer Reviews:
Compelling.......2007-09-22
My prep for going to Rwanda was reading this book. This is a snapshot of the state Rwanda was in during the 100 days and the aftermath. However, much has been done to repair the damage. This is a time of reconciliation and healing. Go to Rwanda and see for yourself. It will change your life.
Will really let you see into this tradgedy........2007-05-29
What a great book. Such insight and it really helps you understand what happened in Rwanda. Especially the history of all the long ago violence and things that have happened over the years. Great book and a must read for everyone.
This could happen everywhere or anywhere in the world. Can really open your eyes into how much we all could be killers or saviors at any one time.
Highly recommended.
The Heartbreak of Hate.......2007-04-10
Gourevitch's jarring telling of the atrocities of hate hit with an imact of severe sorrow. The overwhelming scale of the murders in Rwanda are incomprehensible. It is sad to realize that in this age people allow hate and propoganda to rule their lives.
Excellent Book.......2007-03-27
This book was very well written and informative about the genocide that occurred in Rwanda.
Heartbreaking stories from Rwanda.......2007-03-19
This is a superb book, a collection of interviews and incidents from the genocide in Rwanda. There are portraits of unimaginable betrayal, brutality and horror, but also of heroism--the owner of the Hotel Rwanda, for instance. The description of the conduct of the "refugee" camps is particularly useful as a warning on what is likely to happen in the next crisis, and should force us to re-examine our ways of providing relief for people in distress across the world.
Amazon.com
Social phenomena happen, and the historians follow. So it goes with Google, the latest star shooting through the universe of trend-setting businesses. This company has even entered our popular lexicon: as many note, "Google" has moved beyond noun to verb, becoming an action which most tech-savvy citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century recognize and in fact do, on a daily basis. It's this wide societal impact that fascinated authors David Vise and Mark Malseed, who came to the book with well-established reputations in investigative reporting. Vise authored the bestselling The Bureau and the Mole, and Malseed contributed significantly to two Bob Woodward books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. The kind of voluminous research and behind-the-scenes insight in which both writers specialize, and on which their earlier books rested, comes through in The Google Story.
The strength of the book comes from its command of many small details, and its focus on the human side of the Google story, as opposed to the merely academic one. Some may prefer a dryer, more analytic approach to Google's impact on the Internet, like The Search or books that tilt more heavily towards bits and bytes on the spectrum between technology and business, like The Singularity is Near. Those wanting to understand the motivations and personal growth of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, however, will enjoy this book. Vise and Malseed interviewed over 150 people, including numerous Google employees, Wall Street analysts, Stanford professors, venture capitalists, even Larry Page's Cub Scout leader, and their comprehensiveness shows.
As the narrative unfolds, readers learn how Google grew out of the intellectually fertile and not particularly directed friendship between Page and Brin; how the founders attempted to peddle early versions of their search technology to different Silicon Valley firms for $1 million; how Larry and Sergey celebrated their first investor's check with breakfast at Burger King; how the pair initially housed their company in a Palo Alto office, then eventually moved to a futuristic campus dubbed the "Googleplex"; how the company found its financial footing through keyword-targeted Web ads; how various products like Google News, Froogle, and others were cooked up by an inventive staff; how Brin and Page proved their mettle as tough businessmen through negotiations with AOL Europe and their controversial IPO process, among other instances; and how the company's vision for itself continues to grow, such as geographic expansion to China and cooperation with Craig Venter on the Human Genome Project.
Like the company it profiles, The Google Story is a bit of a wild ride, and fun, too. Its first appendix lists 23 "tips" which readers can use to get more utility out of Google. The second contains the intelligence test which Google Research offers to prospective job applicants, and shows the sometimes zany methods of this most unusual business. Through it all, Vise and Malseed synthesize a variety of fascinating anecdotes and speculation about Google, and readers seeking a first draft of the history of the company will enjoy an easy read. --Peter Han
Book Description
"Here is the story behind one of the most remarkable Internet successes of our time. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, the book takes you inside the creation and growth of a company whose name is a favorite brand and a standard verb recognized around the world. Its stock is worth more than General Motors’ and Ford’s combined, its staff eats for free in a dining room that used to be
run
by the Grateful Dead’s former chef, and its employees traverse the firm’s colorful Silicon Valley campus on scooters and inline skates.
The Google Story is the definitive account of the populist media company powered by the world’s most advanced technology that in a few short years has revolutionized access to information about everything for everybody everywhere.
In 1998, Moscow-born Sergey Brin and Midwest-born Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, “change the world” through a search engine that would organize every bit of information on the Web for free.
While the company has done exactly that in more than one hundred languages, Google’s quest continues as it seeks to add millions of library books, television broadcasts, and more to its searchable database.
Readers will learn about the amazing business acumen and computer wizardry that started the company on its astonishing course; the secret network of computers delivering lightning-fast search results; the unorthodox approach that has enabled it to challenge Microsoft’s dominance and shake up Wall Street. Even as it rides high, Google wrestles with difficult choices that will enable it to continue expanding while sustaining the guiding vision of its founders’ mantra: DO NO EVIL."
Download Description
David A. Vise is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post and the author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller The Bureau and the Mole. Mark Malseed, who has contributed to the Washington Post and the Boston Herald, has won high praise for his research efforts on Bob Woodward’s recent books, Plan of Attack and Bush at War.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
A modern business story that is both unusual and topical.......2007-09-13
This founding and growth of Google is a fascinating story. While this book is very boosterish in its approach, that is fine. We understand what is going on and it is inevitable that the "dark side" of Google will come out elsewhere. Still, at its core and in the surrounding landscape, it is a pretty happy story.
Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford, wanted to download the Internet to his computer and thought he could do it quite easily and quickly. He met Sergey Brin, also a doctoral student at Stanford, was also interested in working with vast amounts of data, what could be learned from it, an how to organize it. Page came up with the PageRank algorighms that ranked the searches in ways that made them more useful to the person doing the search. (The name is a pun on Larry PAGE and web PAGE).
Stanford approached a number of organizations and venture capitalists to sell the technology, but there were no takers. So, Brin and Page dropped out and started their own company, which became Google. They have always focused on their corporate culture being innovative, oriented towards small teams, doing interesting things and only later worrying about how to make money with whatever comes of the research, and doing the best to live by their motto "Don't Be Evil".
They didn't follow the normal rules for raising money from the Venture Capital community, but were able to raise $25 million. They promised the VCs they would hire a CEO, but put it off for more than a year and when they did accept Eric Schmidt (because the three of them got along) they would not ever report to him nor would they cede control to him. When they finally had to go public (the VC stuff, again), they didn't follow the prescribed and traditional methods the investment banks use and only paid them half their usual fees.
Yes, going into China caused them real spiritual difficulties, and still does. And their goal of gathering all the information in the world and making it available does raise serious questions about personal privacy and freedom that they have not adequately addressed. However, they have great technology. I do use it and love Google Desktop. The book provides some tips about ways to use Google you may not know. Do you know that you can simply type in a math problem and it will solve it for you? That you can type in an address and it will pull up a map? Do you know about Google Book or Google Scholar? Take a look!
Way cool.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson
Excellent business book.......2007-08-15
Very interesting read. The author clearly loves Google but that aside, he covers the story from the start of Google as a research project at Stanford University through to their IPO and after. The best parts of the book for me was the incubation phase where they thought it was a good idea but needed to figure how to make money off it and turn it into a successful business. Lots of details on the key decisions made along the way but not too many details where you'd get bored reading it.
I appreciated how the author covered this as a business story covering the early investors who believed in the value of the idea to the immensely successful branding of the Google name. If business and technology companies in interest you, I don't think you'll be disappointed reading this book.
Great read!.......2007-08-13
This book was a true delight to read! This was so much more than just how two guys from college created a successful company. It was more than that. Those guys were turned away from Alta Vista, Excite, and Yahoo and had suffered disappointment after disappointment but never gave up. Their product (almost overnight) grew to be a massive empire once they got an investor to give $100k to their company. What I LOVED about this book was watching two easy-fun loving guys (who skateboard at their office in jeans and t-shirt) who continued to look to the future in the face of defeat. These guys never gave up and I, for one, was truly inspired after reading the book.
The back-story of how google came to be can be described as the underdog finally reaching the top and overtaking those who turned him down.
Great company summary.......2007-07-31
This book does a wonderful job of explaining that Google's success comes from great timing, great leadership, having a solution to a specific problem, and a bit of luck. A worthwhile read for sure.
Good Book.......2007-07-29
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Amazon.com
"I am a Scotsman," Sir Walter Scott famously wrote, "therefore I had to fight my way into the world." So did any number of his compatriots over a period of just a few centuries, leaving their native country and traveling to every continent, carving out livelihoods and bringing ideas of freedom, self-reliance, moral discipline, and technological mastery with them, among other key assumptions of what historian Arthur Herman calls the "Scottish mentality."
It is only natural, Herman suggests, that a country that once ranked among Europe's poorest, if most literate, would prize the ideal of progress, measured "by how far we have come from where we once were." Forged in the Scottish Enlightenment, that ideal would inform the political theories of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and David Hume, and other Scottish thinkers who viewed "man as a product of history," and whose collective enterprise involved "nothing less than a massive reordering of human knowledge" (yielding, among other things, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, first published in Edinburgh in 1768, and the Declaration of Independence, published in Philadelphia just a few years later). On a more immediately practical front, but no less bound to that notion of progress, Scotland also fielded inventors, warriors, administrators, and diplomats such as Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, Simon MacTavish, and Charles James Napier, who created empires and great fortunes, extending Scotland's reach into every corner of the world.
Herman examines the lives and work of these and many more eminent Scots, capably defending his thesis and arguing, with both skill and good cheer, that the Scots "have by and large made the world a better place rather than a worse place." --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Who formed the first modern nation?
Who created the first literate society?
Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism?
The Scots.
Mention of Scotland and the Scots usually conjures up images of kilts, bagpipes, Scotch whisky, and golf. But as historian and author Arthur Herman demonstrates, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland earned the respect of the rest of the world for its crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since.
Arthur Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. He lucidly summarizes the ideas, discoveries, and achievements that made this small country facing on the North Atlantic an inspiration and driving force in world history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong.
How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond.
Victorian historian John Anthony Froude once proclaimed, “No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world’s history as the Scots have done.” And no one who has taken this incredible historical trek, from the Highland glens and the factories and slums of Glasgow to the California Gold Rush and the search for the source of the Nile, will ever view Scotland and the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again. For this is a story not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world and its consequences.
“The point of this book is that being Scottish turns out to be more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it. . . . This is the story of how the Scots created the basic idea of modernity. It will show how that idea transformed their own culture and society in the eighteenth century, and how they carried it with them wherever they went. Obviously, the Scots did not do everything by themselves: other nations—Germans, French, English, Italians, Russians, and many others—have their place in the making of the modern world. But it is the Scots more than anyone else who have created the lens through which we see the final product. When we gaze out on a contemporary world shaped by technology, capitalism, and modern democracy, and struggle to find our place as individuals in it, we are in effect viewing the world as the Scots did. . . . The story of Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is one of hard-earned triumph and heart-rending tragedy, spilled blood and ruined lives, as well as of great achievement.”
—FROM THE PREFACE
Customer Reviews:
A valuable history lesson and food for thought.......2007-10-12
An amazing revelation of a small country's enormous contributions to freedom and knowledge with special relationship to the founding of our country. Negative, condescending stereotypes are exploded.
A must-read!.......2007-09-26
An absolute must-read for anyone interested in how the principles and values that America was founded on came to be...I couldn't help but wonder after reading this inspiring book, why there isn't some type of national recognition for the Scots like those that exist for other cultures (St. Patrick's Day for the Irish, Columbus Day for the Italians, etc.).
Excellent Book.......2007-08-23
I was lent a copy of this book and liked it so much that I bought one for myself. It gives a very good background on the Scottish culture and the development of the philosophy that underlies it. It covers a very broad area and the way it is written, makes for very good reading.
Excellent.......2007-08-15
This book was a Christmas gift and I recently finished reading it. I had fairly low expectations going in, but my interest was held all the way through. Mr. Herman does indeed make a strong case for Scots leading the way in many aspects of modern society, although I would say that declaring that Scots invented the modern world is rather speculative. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book and was especially interested in how Scots helped shape the United States and Canada with highlanders generally siding with the monarchy and migrating to Canada as Loyalists after the War of Independence and lowlanders siding with the revolutionaries. An excellent read if you are interested in Scottish or New World history.
The Miracle of the Scottish Enlightenment.......2007-04-20
How did it come about that between 1700 and 1800 a small undeveloped European country transformed itself into a modern capitalist democracy? The title is obviously pretentious and used as a marketing gimmick. It worked on me because it convinced me to buy this book. Historian Arthur Herman is not Scottish or of Scottish descent, but he has written a very compelling chronicle of the miracle of the Scottish Enlightenment.
In 1707, the Union Act united the kingdoms of Scotland and England. Prior to this, the two antagonists living on opposite sides of Hadrian's Wall wanted nothing to do with each other. Scotland consisted mainly of primitive clans living in the highlands and slightly more advanced lowlanders living mainly in the cities of Glascow and Edinburgh. The parliament in Edinburgh was controlled by groups of noblemen who in turn were dominated by the rigid and inquisitorial Presbyterian Kirk (church) of Scotland.
After 1707, there were two developments that were crucial to Scotland's rise to modernity. The first was the opening up to the economic free trade zone of the British Empire. At first the Scottish fretted about either being swallowed-up by their world-class English competitors or becoming pauperized like the Irish. Their fears were misplaced, neither happened. Instead, the Scottish became, Herman argues, the most significant player in the the empire's economic and intellectual sphere.
The second big reason for Scottish success was their public education system - the first in Europe. This was the work of the Presbyterian Kirk. They maintained that political power, ordained by God, was vested in the people, not the monarchy or the church. The Kirk believed that all people should be able to read the Bible, and as a consequence they achieved a 75% literacy rate - unprecedented in 1750.
Near-universal education produced in this tiny country a disproportionate number of world-class thinkers - David Hume, Francis Hutchison, and Adam Smith, to name a few. They transformed the fields of philosophy, history, economics, education, commerce, architecture, and many more. Due to their mutual animosity toward the English, the Scots found inspiration from the great thinkers of the French Enlightenment, and vice versa. It was Voltaire who said that, "We look to Scotland for all of our ideas of civilization."
As for Herman's claim that the Scots invented the modern world, it should be taken with a grain of salt. In the free trade zone of the British Empire, commerce and ideas flowed both ways. It can be said that the Scots did much to improve or make new existing ideas, and in some cases invent; but they did not singlehandedly invent the modern world.
The Scottish Enlightenment was not without its dark side. The modernizing of the Scottish Highlands was anything but civilized. Before the Scots exported the ideas of goverment and commerce abroad, it had to brutally convert some of its own population. Herman also sidesteps the ugly fact that the Scots were deeply involved in the slave trade and the Klu Klux Klan in the US, and in the opium trade in China - recall the trading companies of Jardine Matheson and Hutchison Whampoa originally spoke with a Scottish burr. Not to say that they invented either of these unseemly businesses, but they certainly flourished in them.
Nevertheless, Professor Herman is a gifted writer and he is exceptionally good at explaining the many geniuses that populated this tiny country during the 18th century.
Amazon.com
Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend twenty years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are four hundred at the time of the author's visit, or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about twenty generations of finches -- continuously.
Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: it is taking place by the hour, and we can watch.
In this dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research, Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
The Beak of the Finch is an elegantly written and compelling masterpiece of theory and explication in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould.
Customer Reviews:
The Beak of the Finch.......2007-07-16
Brilliant writing and organization shows that evolution can occur in as short a time frame as two years. Never boring. The non-scientist will find this book of our changing world a good read.
Wonderful science and a great narrative.......2007-04-14
"Beak" is perhaps the best popular book on evolution between Darwin and Dawkins.
Thoughtful, educated persons must know certain facts about the physical world. One of those facts is evolution. Evolution happens, it is not "just a theory."
As the author explains through the story of the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant, we can see natural selection operate in real time, season by season, in fish, birds, bacteria, and throughout the natural world. The explanation of evolution may be somewhat more open to debate but you can't participate meaningfully in the debate without being armed with some facts.
Don't bring a knife to an intellectual gunfight. Arm yourselves.
One of the Best Books on Nature.......2007-02-22
I have read much on evolution, and the evolution controversy in (primarily) the United States. This book does a wonderful job of demonstrating how scientists, right now, are recording and observing natural selection in action. Before I read this book I was not aware of how much information we really have about evolution and natural selection occurring in "the wild" on an everday basis. This book provides thorough mathematical evidence and predictive models of how natural selection changes the morphology of Darwin's Finches on the Galapogos Islands. It interleaves that story with a decent primer on evolution and snippets of other, similar research, going on right now too.
For example, it describes some fasicinating experiments conducted showing how quickly natural selection will change the color of Amazonian guppies based solely on the color of the rocks in the pools in which the guppies live, and the frequency of predation. It is amazing. As I read more about evolution, I see that rates of evolution vary widely. Evolution operating slowly (over 1000's or millions of years) is pretty obvious. This book provides a window into the amazing world of "rapid" evolution.
The best part about it is that it is as much a journalistic endeavor as a well-written book. This is NOT a polemic about why evolution is better than other ideas. This book simply reports the facts. If you don't understand evolution or believe it can be true after reading this book, then you aren't really trying to understand.
Finally, this book deserves the awards and accolades. It is well-written, well-researched, and well-organized. I don't give many books five stars, but this one is worth it. I would recommend it for anyone: scientists, kids, and just people interested in learning and fascinated by the world around us.
Excellent quality -- arrived in good time.......2007-02-10
The book is in excellent shape, and it arrived in a timely fashion.
Beyond Darwin.......2007-01-19
If you're only slightly interested in the ways the evolution works, then this is it. But beware to have some knowledge about the basics of evolution before moving on to this book. There's a bit of a steep learning curve when you're not all to familiair with Darwin's brilliant theory. It also gives a nice insight in the way scientists work.
Book Description
Courageous Souls explores the premise that we are all eternal souls who plan our lives, including our greatest challenges, prior to birth for purposes of spiritual growth. The book contains ten true stories of people who planned physical illness, having handicapped children, deafness, blindness, drug addiction, alcoholism, losing a loved one, and severe accidents. Because very different life challenges are often planned for similar reasons, readers who have not faced these specific challenges will nevertheless see themselves - and their motivations as a soul - in these stories. As readers come to realize that they themselves planned their lives, suffering that once seemed purposeless becomes imbued with deep meaning. Wisdom may be acquired in a more conscious manner; feelings of anger, guilt, blame, and victimization are replaced by acceptance, forgiveness, peace, and gratitude.
Customer Reviews:
courageous souls-Do we plan our life challanges before birth?.......2007-10-15
This book is FANTASTIC!
Everyone has a story and has things going on in their life.This book makes everything that happens to you make sense. It allows you to understand why you have ended up where you are in life.Why you have chosen certain paths.And allows you to understand and be at peace with other peoples choices and the way they live their life.
I just loved it.Everyone should have a copy.It is well written, easy to understand and informative.But above all..it just makes sense.And things seem alot more clear to me than they did before I read the book.I loved it.For anyone who needs alittle hope or clarity in their lives..read this book.
Slow read.......2007-10-12
This book has some interesting ideas but it is a slow read. Not too sure if I would recommend.
Karma is more than payback.......2007-10-11
This book really changed my perspective on my current life situation. I was quite negative about the situation I'm dealing with, feeling it was just the result of past lives in which I had incurred very bad karma and I would just have to live through it. But, after reading this book, I believe I am living this life because of contracts I made in the pre-birth planning. That changes everything for me - if I agreed to the challenges I'm working with because I wanted to help one I love, there can be no resentment, just gratitude for being able to help, and love for the one I'm struggling with. Thank you, Robert Schwartz, what a gift!
So that's why . . ........2007-10-08
If you ever want to get into the backside of your pre-birth planning of your life challenges, read Courageous Souls by Robert Schwartz. Want to know why you attract illness, accidents, birth defects? Want to know why you chose a life of alcoholism or drug addiction, or are around someone who has? Read this book. The stories, while may start out slow at first, are powerful and insightful. Just stick with them. Robert uses mediums who are able to access multiple guides at one time, and your primary guide and listen in on conversations between you and your soul group.
not credible.......2007-09-30
I got to p. 300 and started reading another book. I found this book painstakingly slow to read, the information provided by the mediums: farfetched, and the conclusions drawn by the author, hard to swallow. Often, when mediums are tired, their accuracy rate diminishes. I never heard of any of the mediums used in this book. Robert Schwartz makes everything so complicated when the subject matter is really quite easy to understand. The book just doesn't flow easily and it's not a page turner in my opinion. I'm a believer, but this book really is a waste of time and money. Read Journey of the Soul by Michael Newton, PhD. Instead of using mediums, he enters the superconsciousness of his clients and elicits information from them directly about their experiences on The Other Side.
Book Description
O'Murchu shows us Jesus in a Wholly new and creative way.
Customer Reviews:
The real message.......2007-01-09
This book lays the challenge at your feet - the real message of Jesus is how to live fully a human life while focusing on the divine within you and every human being. Father O'Murchu's point is looking at God's incarnation from the beginning of man's existance and seeing Jesus' role as the fulfillment of this. I found that the challenge is the same reiterated by G.K. Chesterton - Christianity should not be condemned, it's never been tried. And the book's central theme - Jesus came to show us a radically new way of living our human life in the Spirit of God.
Catching Up with Jesus: A Gospel Story for Our Time.......2006-03-25
An eyeopener as to how we need to have Loving Kindness fill our lives.
O'Murchu Continues His Vision.......2005-09-27
Billed as a sequel to "Quantum Theology," this book is as refreshing as O'Murchu's other work. His argument for updating our understanding of the message of Jesus - catching up with Jesus - is necessary in our 21st century world. The message O'Murchu conveys is one which is in tune with other contemporary thought - living on a shrinking planet with diminishing resources.
The second half of the book, written as monologue/dialogue is a little tedious and sanctimonious but can be forgiven knowing what O'Murchu is trying to convey.
Catching Up with O'Murchu.......2005-06-13
In liberating the Jesus story for our times, O'Murchu follows a model used by the feminist theologian, Anne Clifford -namely
intelligently critique the conventional story, try to recover the elements of the original story and reconstruct as best as possible a timeless story. O'Murchu does a fairly good job at the critiquing; the recovery section of the book focuses on important, if selected and a somewhat limited view of Jesus' identities. The reconstruction represents an exhausting attempt to practically rewrite the gospels. Because of the size of the task, O'Murchu jumps to some conclusions that seem more fictional with little scholarship to back them up. O'Murchu also tends to repeat some good insights/themes over and over again. At the same time,in love with evolution, he practically skips over trying to explain suffering, the imperfections of this cosmos and other deep mysteries. Many of his challenging insights were left a bit open-ended for me to the point that I wished I lived around the corner from him to be able to ask things like what kind of afterlife does he believe in? He also seems to vacillate as to whether we should move beyond the institutional churches or whether we should re-work them into being prime movers of the Kingom and centers for ritual/liturgies that help stir us in that direction. All in all there's a lot of mind-stretching new ideas about Jesus that do resonate in a new world order that understands how quantum science frees us from a mechanistic world
and leads us to a world of unlimited possibilites as could really pursuing the Kingdom
Book Description
Forensic pathologist Janis Amatuzio first began recording the stories told to her by patients, police officers, and other doctors because she felt that no one spoke for the dead. She believed the real experience of death - namely, the spiritual and otherworldly experiences of those near death and their loved ones - was ignored by the medical professionals, who thought of death as simply the cessation of breath. She knew there was more. From the first experience of a patient in her care dying to the miraculous "appearances" of loved ones after death, she began recording these experiences, knowing that they would bring comfort to anyone who has suffered the loss of someone they love. Written by a scientist in approachable, nonjudgmental language for anyone who has lost someone they love, this book offers stories that can't be explained in purely physical terms.
Customer Reviews:
Forever Ours.......2007-09-14
As soon as we are born, we are all on a path towards death. It's the one great certainty. We don't know for sure if we are going to find love, get a great job, or have children but we know unequivocally that we all will die. With that said, death is generally something that both fascinates us and causes great anxiety. Despite that everyone has an opinion, no one knows for sure what happens after this life is over. Death is probably the world's greatest mystery.
Forever Ours looks at death from an interesting perspective. The author is a forensic pathologist. Part of her job is to talk to the deceased person's relatives and give them information about the cause of death. The author seems like a very caring, empathetic individual who realizes that how she handles each situation is far more important that simply getting a job done. I think it is for this reason that so many patients, relatives, and colleagues have opened up to her about their experiences: about living, about death, about life after death, and about life after the death of a loved one.
Forever Ours is a very insightful book that I would highly recommend to everyone.
Yawn.......2007-06-28
Both books of hers are OK, I guess. It seemed to me that both books pretty much stated the same stuff, nothing different. I was looking forward to more on the scene stories.....oh well, she was great on CTC....
A comfort.......2007-01-30
This book was so comforting to read. I bought it for myself, but I think it would be a great gift for someone going through a loss of someone close to them. The book doesn't make judgements, it just talks about real life people experiencing life and beyond.
Profoundly moving book about what it means to live life.......2006-09-23
This is a profoundly moving book by a sensitive and caring author that will definitely bring tears to your eyes. It's a beautifully written book that provides true stories of love, compassion, and enduring love through living and dying; an inspiring read not to be missed!
I really liked this book and wanted more..........2006-07-07
The short chapters make this an easy book to pick up and read. It was also a quick read. It is a book I will return to again and again. I have met Dr. Janis Amatuzio and she is a captivating speaker. The subject matter was very interesting and also personally comforting. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars, is that I wish it was longer.
Books:
- Child Development, Second Edition: A Practitioner's Guide (Social Work Practice with Children and Families)
- Childhood Medical Journal
- Childhood Speech, Language & Listening Problems: What Every Parent Should Know
- Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap
- Designing the Hamptons: Portraits of Interiors
- Dog Heaven
- Dreamer's Dictionary
- Earthcore
- Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn--and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less
- Eleven on Top (Stephanie Plum Novels)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Everyday Writer
- History: Fiction or Science
- Working Papers, Volume 1, Chapters 1-13 for use with Fundamental Accounting Principles
- Bergman on Bergman: Interviews With Ingmar Bergman
- Dictionary of Accounting Terms
- History: Fiction or Science
- History: Fiction or Science
- 1999 S Corporation Taxation Guide: Planning and Compliance for Today's Practitioner
- As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution
- Nutritional Physiology of Farm Animals
Afghanistan
| Asia
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
