Book Description
Andrew Carnegie, a destitute immigrant who became the richest man of his time, helped create "the American mind" by personifying the rags-to-riches story that was the American ideal in the early twentieth century. In this fourth volume of the CREATORS OF THE AMERICAN MIND series, James T. Baker writes a compelling biography that explores how and why Andrew Carnegie continues to exert such a profound influence over the American mind. Like the other volumes in this series, this text includes selections from the subject's contemporaries, scholarly analyses of the subject's life and influence, and comparisons to modern individuals who embody the traits of the subject covered in the text.
Book Description
Profiles of the best players of all time plus the up-and-coming new stars.
Hockey fans everywhere are always hungry for more information on the game.
Hockey's Greatest Stars profiles hockey's greatest players, the all-stars and the promising young lions. Fans will enjoy the book's lively and incisive commentary combined with memorable quotes and insider tales of trades and off-ice antics.
The book profiles 60 of the greatest NHL players of all time plus the 20 top players today. Each profile is illustrated with action-packed photographs.
The legends include:
- Wayne Gretzky
- Maurice Rocket Richard
- Bobby Hull
- Tim Horton
- Gordie Howe.
While the young lions include:
- Joe Thornton
- Scott Gomez
- Jay Bouwmeester
- Rick DiPietro
- Henrik Zetterberg.
Sure to be as popular as the first edition, this updated edition of
Hockey's Greatest Stars is an entertaining and informative book for every hockey fan.
Customer Reviews:
The Best Of The Best In The Adult Industry .......2007-01-10
You take a look at this Videotape and it gives you a great history of the Adult Industry and even if you don't follow the history you are missing a great deal of thought provoking issues that you didn't even consider, because it was taboo to some people. What Patrick Riley did in my opinion was awesome and he opened my eyes. Thank You
wonderful.......2000-06-15
I really liked this book. It gave a really good guide to x-rated films. If someone is thinking about getting this book, I say go for it!
Customer Reviews:
Serious and witty!.......2007-06-05
I am happy that Gingko Press has brought out this handsome 50th anniversary edition of Marshall McLuhan's _The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man_, and I am looking forward to seeing _The Complete Mechanical Bride_ that Gingko Press plans to publish in the near future. I'd like to provide some background information here regarding McLuhan's first book.
It is hard to say exactly when Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) started gathering the materials and writing the short essays that were published as _The Mechanical Bride_ in 1951. However, Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), has reported that McLuhan was working on this project when Ong studied under him at Saint Louis University in the late 1930s and early 1940s. During this same period McLuhan was also working on his Cambridge University doctoral dissertation on Thomas Nashe and the verbal arts in his time, which was accepted in 1943 and published by Gingko Press in 2006.
Because rhetoric has long been understood in Western culture as the art of persuasion, we need to take into account that McLuhan was studying the history of rhetoric in detail when he was assembling the artifacts of American popular culture and writing the witty commentaries about them that came to be published in _The Mechanical Bride_. To spell out the obvious, the artifacts aim to persuade us to buy a product and to imagine ourselves as associating with and perhaps even identifying with the imagery employed in each artifact.
But why bother to write witty commentaries about the artifacts? McLuhan was under the influence of the New Criticism he had studied under I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis at Cambridge University. Thus the short essays in _The Mechanical Bride_ can be understood as exercises in practical criticism (to borrow the title of Richards's most widely known book). To be sure, McLuhan is critical of popular culture, but he takes it seriously enough to write intelligently about it. His short essays are witty and amusing.
--Thomas J. Farrell, author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Media Ecology)
McLuhan's Mythologies.......2007-04-12
This, McLuhan's first book, serves as a good introduction to him, since he has not yet begun to formulate his theories about media that would later make him so famous. Consequently, it is easier to read than, say, The Gutenberg Galaxy or Understanding Media. It is also much more fun.
The reader should keep in mind that this is still premature McLuhan, for he had not yet read Harold Innis's 1950 classic--which represents the true birth of media studies--Empire and Communications. This book hit McLuhan like an atomic bomb, for it completely ruptured his thinking regarding media. In The Mechanical Bride, he is still analyzing the content of the media, deciphering what the subliminal messages are saying to us unconsciously; but after reading Innis, he realized that it was not the message that was important (at least not for him) but rather the type of medium through which the message was conveyed, for Innis's discussions of how particular kinds of media affected the nature and structure of ancient empires caused McLuhan to realize that it was actually the medium that was the important thing. Whether a culture used clay or papyrus as its means of communication, Innis asserted, determined much about the fate of that culture.
With that caveat in mind, then, the reader is free to roam through these pages, observing a McLuhan that would never exist in the same way again. He comments, sometimes hilariously, on one advertisement, movie poster or magazine after the next. He has interesting things to say about genres like the Western or the soap opera (for instance, he says that the Western is the masculine equivalent to the soap opera, for its values are the opposite of those of the domestic drama) and we also find here, for the first time, his speculations on Sherlock Holmes, a theme that will recur in many of his later writings.
McLuhan at this point had read and metabolized such key thinkers for him as Lewis Mumford and Siegfried Giedion, and they are referred to often in the body of the text. (There even occurs a reference to Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces; apparently the only book he ever read by Campbell, his Irish intellectual colleague who was more concerned with deciphering the messages than the media themselves). McLuhan, in The Mechanical Bride, is still feeling his way, and he is not yet sure of himself. But it is a delight for the reader to watch this great American thinker--the equivalent, easily, of any of the great French postmodernists (this book bears certain similarities, for instance, to Barthes' Mythologies)--tentatively poking his way about in the middenheap of popular culture, looking for ways in which to organize it into something one can get a grasp on.
I hope that you enjoy this book as much as I did. But do let me know if you don't.
--John David Ebert, author
Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society
For People In The Know.......2005-12-05
The "modern gal" knows that "getting ahead" means being the first on her block to articulate the ways her body and cultural practices are transformed into parts and routines -- she reads The Mechanical Bride to "stay in the know" regarding the ways that reflection on the discourse of her body can be used to advance her academic career! And "guys on their way to the top", in academic circles ranging from media history to cultural studies, tune into The Mechanical Bride to find out the latest "swinging styles" in everything from discourse analysis to popular tropes for identity production. Keep it in mind, all you Sirens and Sages of the Academy: When it "comes to success" there is "deep consolation" in knowing that the "cream of the crop" always "rises to the top" because it never "falls out of step" with the latest critical styles -- in a liberal era and place, such as our own, this really is Freedom "American Style"!
An important book all should read.......2005-11-20
I don't make the above statement lightly. All of us who watch television, read newspapers and look at ads of any kind (in essence, all of us who don't live in cloistered communities) need to read this book. We cannot fully conceive of how the media influences us--and I don't mean the liberal media, or the conservative media: just the media--until we have experienced the unique brilliance that is McLuhan. And if you are new to McCluhan, don't worry--the book is organized into short articles that you can read, ruminate on and digest. Read this book, and you'll never be the same--to the disappointment of advertisers and PR people everywhere.
Modern-day myth-making turned on its head.......2005-07-05
This is McLuhan's first book, originally published in 1951 and has been long out of print. It precedes his second book and cult classic 'The Gutenberg Galaxy', by a decade and a half. This is also quite unique in that it has no relationship with McLuhan's more famous theoretical ramblings.
In this book, McLuhan takes on myth-making in US society by showing how film posters, comic strips, advertisements, magazine covers, newspaper layout and articles etc., try to persuade people into something, and yet a close observation of their inherent contradictions allows you to escape their machinations.
The book celebrates deliberate misreading of commonplace things like advertising to show how the persuasive trap of mass culture/consumer culture can be escaped.
All articles in the book follow the format of article/poster/ad, its analysis and some sharp witty aphoristic observations in a boxed area that serve as liberating repartees against the messages that these products of consumer culture intend to send.
The philosophy of the book is derived from McLuhan's premise (borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe's story 'The Maelstrom') that to escape a maelstrom you need to study things going down and things that resurface and align yourself with things that resurface.
In this respect, it can be considered a jargon-free precursor of latter-day deconstructive literary and cultural criticism. And it is much more liberating and enlightening to a lay reader than jargon ridden discussions or purely vehement denuciations of the power of mass culture which don't help laymen liberate themselves anyway, because of their highly inaccessible prose.
Customer Reviews:
Marshall knew it back then what is right here, right now!.......1998-07-29
If you are reading this review, you are doing exactly what Marshall feared most and predicted back in 1969 when laying his thoughts, joys and fears of electronic media and the de-evolution of arts and humanities. Yes HUMAN-ities are soon to be completely erased from whatever fast food culture is left in 2000 and beyond. Humans slowly have evolved over time from human beings to Humans doing. And Marshall McLuhan was an early genius well aware of the dangers of our lust for quick and immediate gratification and results from all life's pleasures, lessons, fate and present moment circumstances. Unfortunately our insane need for convenience (as McLuhan predicted) will further class struggle, unemployment, depression, progress to a "un-culture" with limited & empty human expression, creativity, emotion & feeling. .We think the internet would be the next doorway to Utopia? Wrong! As Marshall points out throughout this beautifull, yet dangerously close to g! od-like premenions this e-culture will erase physical interaction & contact to family, friends, and ultimately ourselves. We will be transscribed and altered by our 100% adaptation, manipulation and masterbation of the electrons McDonalds! McAmazon! McArt! McPeople! McNothing! McGoodbye! McAbsolute clear and correct predictions and thoughts fill the pages of Mechanical Bride regarding YOU, right here, right NOW! McLuhan!, baby. Buy it online today (while you still can!) This book will strengthen your coffee shop banter while the painted canvas, beat poet, and free form jazz players are gasp for life. I think Marshall would agree that Bill Gates should be respected and consulted ASAP on how to FIX this impeding doom, similar to Andrew Carnagie way back when his workers cried for freedom. (We don't know that were slaves yet) How strange that our culture's intellectual ellites throw crass judgement upon a Gates & his world we all celebrate and beneifit from (again right! here, right now) Marhsall McLuhan knew that this would ha! ppen. He just did not know his name would be Bill. Amazon indie bookstore killers, romans and countrymen lend me your modem! buy this book NOW.
Customer Reviews:
A little bland but good for your health.......2000-02-25
White Wolf tends to give a better thought to the bad guys than to the good guys. At best they are portrayed as good intentioned guys but with the wrong ideas. This is not the exception, i liked the book, but a lot of what it contains could have been out and never been missed. The Aberrant design team should really decide if they are planning to publish character sheets or just an average of the powers and abiilities because in some supplements you can find the whole stats and in other just an overview. The Proteus section is O.K. but i am getting tired of the all powerful conspiration behind the scenes guiding your actions. They are necessary for the system but in the end it all stays in the middle without any real juice given, i really liked more the Teragen book and what you are going to find in this one you can come up with. They still need another book to be better than the original rule set.
Book Description
Visual C#, a feature of Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005, is a modern programming language designed to deliver a productive environment for creating business frameworks and reusable object-oriented components. Now you can teach yourself essential techniques with Visual C#—and start building components and Microsoft Windows®-based applications—one step at a time. With STEP BY STEP, you work at your own pace through hands-on, learn-by-doing exercises. Whether you're a beginning programmer or new to this particular language, you'll learn how, when, and why to use specific features of Visual C# 2005. Each chapter puts you to work, building your knowledge of core capabilities and guiding you as create your first C#-based applications for Windows, data management, and the Web.
Customer Reviews:
Good book that covers alot with decent quick examples........2007-09-28
This book is good for both the novice as well as for people who want a better overall understanding of C#.
Excellent Tutorial For C# Beginners.......2007-08-31
This is one of the best start up books for people that are new to C#, Visual Studio 2005 and the .Net Frameworks, and/or are coming from a VB 6 background, with little or no experience with true object oriented programming concepts.
All the C# fundementals are covered, in a clear and easy to understand presentation.
Basic object oriented concepts are presented in an early chapter with simple examples, and then are later expanded upon with more detailed examples showing the real power of inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and interfaces.
The book also includes useful introductions to the Visual Studio 2005 IDE, Winforms, ASP.Net, ADO.Net, and Web Services, with accompanying labs for each.
Perhaps this book scores it's highest points with it's simplified discussion of delegates and events, a topic which is unfortunately usually made needlessly obtuse by most C# books.
I wish I could have started with a great beginners book like this when I entered the .Net world back in 2002.
I'd recommend this book to anybody new to C# and object oriented programming. After finishing this book, add to your object oriented skill set with the indespensible 'Head First Design Patterns' and you'll have a solid foundation for advancing to the next level of C# and .Net programming.
Excellent explanations.......2007-08-22
Extremely good explanations, I really liked the way the author explained the delegates and events, it just helps you picture it. Really easy to follow for begginers or Visual Basic developers.
I expected it to cover Generic Collections though, I was surprised the author left it out.
excellent introduction to C#.......2007-08-21
I'm on Chapter 17 of this book (only 11 to go!) and have felt compelled to let other potential readers know what an excellent book this is. Each chapter is well organized and incremental in its approach. The exercises are relevant and purely optional. The book has been organized so that it flows smoothly even if you skip over the practice sections within each chapter. Another aspect of this book that appeals to me is that it presents a number of different ways of achieving the same result and suggesting why one coding strategy might be more clear or efficient than another.
Most of the examples are straightforward, although there are times when the author chooses a code sample that is unnecessarily confusing and obfuscates the purpose of the lesson. But a careful read and re-read of these is all that is required. Another comment I would make is that in his code samples, he places variable declarations at the botttom of the class rather than at the top. As such, when you start reading a class example, be sure to jump to the bottom first so that you know where certain variables come from.
Visual C# Step by Step.......2007-08-16
This book is informative, and easy to read. The file examples are excellent ways learn from a "hands on appraoch." The first three chapters are built for new programmers, the next three for inexperienced C or C++ programmers, the next four for programmers transitioning from C, C++, or Java, and the rest is for finer details. I am an exprienced, professional C and C++ programmer. Without this book some of the concepts for C# "unsafe" code and other concepts would have been difficult to grasp.
Book Description
Billy Waugh is a Special Forces and CIA legend, and in Hunting the Jackal he allows unprecedented access to the shadowy but vital world he has inhabited for more than fifty years.
From deep inside the suffocating jungles of Southeast Asia to the fetid streets of Khartoum to the freezing high desert of Afghanistan, Waugh chronicles U.S. Special Operations through the extraordinary experiences of his singular life. He has worked in more than sixty countries, hiding in the darkest shadows and most desolate corners to fight those who plot America's demise. Waugh made his mark in places few want to consider and fewer still would choose to inhabit. In remarkable detail he recounts his participation in some of the most important events in American Special Operations history, including his own pivotal role in the previously untold story of the CIA's involvement in the capture of the infamous Carlos the Jackal.
Waugh's work in helping the CIA bring down Carlos the Jackal provides a riveting and suspenseful account of the loneliness and adrenaline common to real-life espionage. He provides a point-by-point breakdown of the indefatigable work necessary to detain the world's first celebrity terrorist.
No synopsis can adequately describe Waugh's experiences. He spent seven and a half years in Vietnam, many of them behind enemy lines as part of SOG, a top secret group of elite commandos. He was tailed by Usama bin Laden's unfriendly bodyguards while jogging through the streets of Khartoum, Sudan, at 3 A.M. And, at the age of seventy-two, he marched through the frozen high plains of Afghanistan as one of a select number of CIA operatives who hit the ground as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Waugh came face-to-face with bin Laden in Khartoum in 1991 and again in 1992 as one of the first CIA operatives assigned to watch the al Qaeda leader. Waugh describes his daily surveillance routine with clear-eyed precision. Without fanfare, fear, or chance of detection, he could have killed the 9/11 mastermind on the dirty streets of Khartoum had he been given the authority to do so.
No man is more qualified to chronicle America's fight against its enemies -- from communism to terrorism -- over the past half-century. In Hunting the Jackal, Billy Waugh has emerged from the shadows and folds of history to write a memoir of an extraordinary life for extraordinary times.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book.......2007-04-10
Great book....easy to read. Lacks substantial and detailed operational insight probably due to confidentiality. Overall a great book by a great American.
A look behind the scenes........2007-03-19
Billy Waugh is a rare kind of man. His book gives us a look behind the scenes of Special Ops and clandestine operatives.
Tracking the Jackal and More - GREAT READ .......2007-01-27
Imagine that your Walter Mitty dream has come true and you are a star wide receiver playing in the 2007 Superbowl. You run to the huddle only to find a gray haired Joe Namath calling the signals and leading the team on a scoring drive. A dream, but for small teams of young Special Forces soldiers leading the anti-Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan is was very real. A soldier and operator who was a legend in their father's and grandfather's days is there in the middle of the fight.
Waugh, at age 72 is the middle of early days of the fight in Afghanistan, fighting not only the Taliban, but bone chilling cold in the thin air while hauling his share of gear. More than 50 years older than the young fellow soldiers, Waugh was a living, fighting legend. Few understand the impact made by mixed teams of Seals, Delta, Rangers, Air Force and CIA operators on the overthrow of the Taliban.
Understand that the literary review of this book was written by one of the testosterone deficient, panties all in a wad folks whose concept of self sacrifice is only cheating a little on their taxes. They are simply unable to comprehend two foundational truths, that they can write what they want, worship their own god, and speak their mind is created by people like Waugh and protecting their freedoms is a dirty, thankless task.
Do not expect to find the polished writing or the introspection of One Bullet Away, rather this is a story of doing, stripped of almost all emotion. Some of the reviewers questioned if the truth had been stretched. Most likely the bridging details were snipped by the CIA censors, in our interest. A google or amazon search for Billy Waugh normally points to many references to him, usually prefaced by "the legendary Billy Waugh."
Before Afghanistan there were years of fighting terrorism in the hellholes of the world. Waugh was tracking Osama almost a decade before 9-11. Later he was with the team that finally picked up the trail that lead back through a number of steps to legendary terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
Perhaps half of the book covers this lengthy search and then observation. Waugh captured the many months of frustrating waiting for the politicians in Washington to make decisions, especially when any hint that he was being tracked would have sent the Jackal on the run again to the safety of Iran or Iraq. That he was captured is a tribute to the CIA in both their ability to find Carlos and to keep the surveillance operation hidden and secret for months while the politicians fiddled, looking for a low risk way to get rid of Carlos.
In a very modest way Waugh also tells of getting leave from Walter Reed Hospital, where he was receiving care for very serious wounds, only to fly to Vietnam while on leave and ask to be sent back to the field. Despite the fact that he was still limping badly he was allowed to remain after badgering many in the chain of command.
The book has the feel the there was a lot more that was deleted during the CIA's review of the book. In some cases the deletion of information on methodology and technology leaves holes.
One wonders where do men Waugh come from, willing to devote 50 years to the service of their country, mostly in violence torn countries looking for bad guys and protecting the good guys.
My hope is that he will receive enough cooperation from the CIA to put together a few more great books.
Inspirational.......2006-11-07
72 years old in Afghanistan! I thought I was getting a bit old at 45 for Security work. Billy Waugh is one of America's quiet professionals. (This Reviewer is Australian.)I really liked the way the man could do his job and serve his country without disparaging people from other countries. The relationships he develops with indigenous personnel are testament to this. Far too many books by American authors do so much flag waving it gets up your nose a bit.I really enjoyed the bits in Khartoum. I just returned from there and lived in the same neighbourhood where Turabi, Osama and Carlos lived. I saw Turabi's house. The bit about driving at night was spot on. To the reviewer who said it wasn't possible to jog around Khartoum at night as a Westerner....1. Billy was under diplomatic cover. 2. In Khartoum there is next to no street crime. It is safe to walk around there any time day or night. Sharia law is good for one thing. I did it all the time. I even rode the local bus. It was safer than riding around with a target for Al Queda marked on your vehicle (ie. the logo of a well known Humanitarian Organisation.) I reckon AQ is unlikely to target the local bus when there were so many UN vehicles available.
Billy's book has been a real motivator for me to get really fit again.
very good but some part hard to believe.......2006-09-18
Billy Waugh is a great soldier. The only section of this book I would question is his description of the mission in Khartoum to hunt Carlos the Jackal. It's hard to believe a Caucasian man like Billy was able to jog unmolested, repeatedly in the open in such a small city like Khartoum. It's a place where only journalists, arms dealers, terrorists, and government employees mingle. Billy never described what his cover was. The Sudanese government knows EVERYONE who arrives and lives in Khartoum.
He should have at least been arrested!
Book Description
A Palladian mansion filled with Western art in the center of old Calcutta, the Mughal emperor’s letters in an archive in the French Alps, the names of Italian adventurers scratched into the walls of Egyptian temples. In this imaginative book, Maya Jasanoff delves into the stories behind vestiges such as these to uncover the lives of people, collectors in India and Egypt, who lived on the frontiers of the British Empire during a pivotal century of its formation. From household names like Clive of India and Napoleon Bonaparte to little-known figures such as the circus strongman Giambattista Belzoni or the Swiss mercenary Antoine Polier, Edge of Empire traces the exploits of collectors to tell an intimate history of imperialism. Jasanoff delves beneath the grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance to look at the British Empire through the eyes of the people caught up in it. What does empire look like from the inside out?
Written and researched on four continents, Edge of Empire makes an original and significant contribution to international history. Jasanoff offers a fresh account of European imperialism that challenges received wisdom about how imperial power was asserted in Asia and the Middle East. She shows us that Britain’s expansion involved more than the mere imposition of an “imperial project” over foreign subjects, and that the stereotypical “white man’s burden” ideology emerged only after long years of cross-cultural encounters. Edge of Empire enters a world where people lived, loved, mingled, and identified with one another in ways richer and more complex than previous accounts have led us to believe were possible. And as this book demonstrates, traces of that world remain tangible–and topical–today.
An innovative, persuasive, and provocative work of history.
Customer Reviews:
An innovative history.......2007-10-12
If there was ever a `clash of civilisations' it was arguably during the age of colonies where cultures, values, religions and industries convulsed together. The interactions were mostly fractious but occasionally there were some constructive paths that got paved along the way. Compulsive wealth seeking on the part of the colonialists made interactions with the `other' compulsory at one level. No matter how much they may have tried to wall themselves within the sanctuary of clubs and salons, contact with the colonised was inevitable.
In some cases, the contact was alluring and left its mark in strange ways that revealed how human beings have a remarkable propensity for connections -- often through the collection of objects. The resplendent museums that we savour in many Western capitals today are a result of this urge, which in some cases was outright theft, but in others was a more nuanced acquisitive process. Maya Jasanoff has provided a humanising history of this time that addresses the process of mutual change during colonisation through the eyes of these collectors.
Spanning the period of British colonisation of the Indian subcontinent and Egypt from 1750 -1850, Jasanoff has uncovered a fascinating world where British aristocrats try to take on Eastern traditions and cultures. The mere act of collecting art may seem like a self-centred proposition to many but it shows how an ability `cross borders' in multiple ways. As the daughter of an Indian mother and an American father (both of whom are now professors at Harvard), Jasanoff has a somewhat personal connection to this narrative.
Collectors tried to understand the stories behind the objects that they collected. Focusing on the seductive city of Lucknow, Jasanoff shows how Muslim and Hindu traditions were embraced with equal fervour under the banner of cultural curiosity. Each side tried to co-opt the other in subtle ways, leading to a more nuanced portrayal of East-meets-West than earlier works such as Edward Said's Orientalism have done.
South Asia in particular is a region that has been at the fulcrum of world trade and colonisation for millennia. Aryans who brought Hinduism colonised the Dravidians. Waves of Muslim dynasties in turn colonised the region as well and forged their own alliances and avenues for cultural exchange. This book provides an erudite review of these issues though with some rather academic prose.
Confused.......2006-04-17
This book has interesting episodes- Lucknow, Seringpatam , Egypt and the role of France versus the British,-but lacks a logic or argument which would justify the book. It touches on europeans collecting local objects and local rulers buying foreign technology and advice to defend themselves However as it starts in North America, there should be discussion of why artefacts of North American Indians were not collected. On the other hand there could be some reference to the tradition of collecting of antiquities ( see Jonathon Scott Pleasures of Antiquity or the catalogue of the exhibition at the Gulbenkian Foundation Exotica )The role of France in opposing the British in India should have been argued through : intriguing in the Mutiny but allies in the Crimean War ?
In general the prose is over adjectived, why is the Dictionary of national Biography " compendious ", when is is actuaully comprehensive ?
And the illustrations are a disgrace, too small and dark, the wonderful Col.Mordaunt's Cockfight reproduces as a black postage stamp
Customer Reviews:
important and relevant after half a century.......2007-02-26
More than fifty years after its initial publication, this book remains as relevant and prophetic as it is brilliant and exhilarating.
To start, Wiener explains cybernetics in a way that the intelligent layperson can understand; he discusses how human beings, animals, and machines relate to one another through communication and feedback, thus becoming systems that limit or temporarily reverse the universal tendency toward disorganization (entropy). After establishing this framework, he discusses the implications of cybernetics on society. As he takes cybernetic theory to its logical conclusions--that is, accounting for the communication and feedback between human beings, machines, and the environment as a whole--his insights are shown to be profoundly humane and ultimately very inspiring.
This is no ordinary scientific text. There are discussions of Augustinian vs. Manichaean worldviews and their implications; the inevitable spread of dangerous information (such as that resulting in the atomic bomb) despite the strenuous efforts of governments; and the need not to rely on machines--non-human machines as well as "human machines" such as bureaucracies and corporations--to do the difficult work that human beings must do to remain ethical, responsible, and free.
All in all, this is an outstanding book written in lucid, beautiful prose. The book tells us as much about the systems that make up our world as it does about the brilliance, humility, and humanity of Wiener himself. No summary of this book, in blurb or review format, can possibly do justice to Wiener's achievement.
A concerned and conscienscious genius .......2005-07-04
Wiener was acutely aware of the promise and the danger of the new technolgies he was helping to invent. He worked very hard during the Second World War to help develop an anti- aircraft system which would make use of some of his mathematical and technical innovations. However the dropping of the Atomic Bomb turned him wholly against the military establishment and he became an insistent voice calling for regulation of military technologies.
His own vision of a humane society is one in which the cybernetic and feedback elements enable a better managing of the economy and society as a whole. And this when he again was very concerned about the possible destructive elements of technologies which would provide unreasonable means of control over individual human lives. He very much was concerned that a society in which machine- slaves produced everything would deprive humanity of its freedom and dignity.
In other words he saw great promise in the new technologies but also was concerned that might exercise a degree of control over humanity which would make them more harmful than beneficial.
Another Wiener Gem.......2001-12-28
Norbert Wiener was a child prodigy and Professor of Mathematics at MIT from 1919 until his death in 1964. He invented the science of cybernetics (look it up in the dictionary) and the guided missile but refused to help the military during the cold war. This volume includes an open letter published in the January, 1947 Atlantic Monthly magazine entitled "A Scientist Rebels" by Norbert Wiener. An introduction by Wiener biographer Steve J. Heims provides a context for Wiener's works.
If you are at all interested in cybernetics, and particularly interested in the effects it is having and will have on society, this book is must reading. Of course, this book does not approach Wiener's "God & Golem, Inc."(reviewed elsewhere in Amazon.com) for sheer brilliance, but then, what does, except perhaps the "Bahir."
intriguing ideas made plain.......2000-01-21
For those of us who cannot grasp the mathematical, technical version of Wiener's theory of messages in _Cybernetics_, this book is a wonderful stand-in. Wiener wrote this entirely equationless text as a populariztion of his ideas about humans and machines. this book is a fascinating piece of philosophy and sociology also, as Wiener expands his theories and brings them to bear on history, journalism etc. He never loses his scientific perspective though; this gives his writing and ideas a clarity freshness that is uncommon in theoretical writings about society. This is a great and important book
prophetic book.......1999-09-06
where could i find a reedited french traduction of this book published in 62 in france,second hand also ?
Customer Reviews:
The thermostat of society.......2005-03-02
We know the ideal room temperature that we want. There are however all kinds of factors continually changing the room- temperature. We have a means of measuring the temperature continually and making readjustments to keep it steady. The feedback, the report on what is 'happening now in the system' enables us to alter the system to produce the ideal result that we want. This feedback enables us to pilot the system as we want it , and keep it under our control.
So much for the thermostat, feedback, and I believe the basic idea of Norbert Weiner's communications- control world.
But what happens when the ideal result is not agreed upon at the outset? And what happens when the ' measuring' of the system is not a non- ambiguous straightforward matter?
Is it possible that human affairs are so complicated, so informed by what Isaiah Berlin might call 'competing and conflicting ideal ends and values', that a model for their development based on a simple physical analogy is not appropriate? and this even though that model is presented by a very great genius?
This book captures the essential aspects of communications........1999-01-16
The purpose of communication is to control our enviornment. In order to communicate effectively, however, it is essential that we consider the feedback we are getting. Alteration of sending messages is the most important aspect of effective communication. That requires that we consider the audience we are talking to and change our message relative to the feedback and the audience. Weiner presents the philosophic arguments for communication. These concepts remain unchanged since the publication of this book in 1954. This is the finest book on theory of communication I have read. Everyone concerned with improving communication should read this thought provoking book.
Product Description
The single most important and influential work on the relation between computer technology and the social sciences
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Hydrolysis Rate Program
Philip H. Howard , and
William M. Meylan
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Pamphlet
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Hydrology
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Organic
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General
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ASIN: 0873717813 |
Book Description
Now you can calculate hydrolysis rates for chemicals without experimental data using the Hydrolysis Rate Program. This powerful software package calculates the hydrolysis rate constant for esters, carbamates, halomethanes, alkyl halides, and epoxides using the method developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Toxic Substances. The program uses SMILES notation structural input to calculate a second-order acid- or base-catalyzed hydrolysis rate constant at 25° C. Acid- and base-catalyzed half-lives are calculated for pH7 and/or pH8. Hydrolysis Rate Program will run on any IBM® or IBM-compatible personal computer with 320K RAM and will be a valuable asset for any environmental chemist, analytical lab, regulator, or chemical company.
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