Gustavo Cisneros: Un Empresario Global

Book Description

Gustavo Cisneros, uno de los principales empresarios globales, forma parte de una dinastía de empresarios iniciada por su padre, Diego Cisneros, en la segunda generación no sólo mantiene si no supera los logros de la primera. Gustavo Cisneros consigue convertir un importante y saneado negocio venezolano en un jugador dentro del mercado global, propio de la época que le ha tocado vivir.

Pablo Bachelet relata de una forma amena, y no especializada, el entramado de un negocio de muchas cabezas que, conforme se van haciendo mas grande, también se hace mucho mas complejo. Uno siente que se está en la junta directiva de la organización, Volando con Cisneros a Miami, Nueva York o Madrid, e incluso vive en carne propia y casi en tiempo real, el vértigo de negociaciones complejas y, sobre todo, arriesgadas.

El autor presenta a Gustavo Cisneros en toda su complejidad, con sus triunfos y fracasos. En este sentido, las experiencias de Galerías Preciados o, mucho después, el intento de crear una única plataforma de satélite para toda Latinoamérica con Murdoch, Azcárraga, y Marinho son fascinantes como el éxito de CADA, Venevisión, Univisión o la operación ultra secreta para convertir la Organización Cisneros en el Franquiciador de Coca-Cola en Venezuela.

Gustavo Cisneros, "El adelantado," según lo defina Carlos Fuentes en su prologo, es una historia de riesgos premiados. También de errores admitidos. Es una historia de oportunos cambios de velocidad. Del negocio de consumo perecedero, Cisneros pasa al negocio de las telecomunicaciones. De la generación de flujo de caja, a la generación de valor. Y siempre, antes del siguiente paso, la consolidación interna. La saga empresarial de Cisneros - digna de ser descrita por un Balzac o un Dreisner, y comparable a los Fugger renacentistas- posee, como toda vida- y vida, sobre todo, de acción-, luces y sombras, derrotas y victorias, detalladamente descritas en este audiolibro.

Customer Reviews:

Mas que una Biografia, un excelente audiolibro de estrategia de negocios.......2007-07-31

Mas que una Biografia, un excelente audiolibro de estrategia de negocios. Este audiolibro cuenta la vida de Gustavo Cisneros, y los comienzos de su conglomerado que fundo su padre. Ademas de contar su vida, cuenta detalles de grandes negocios incluyendo el cambio de marca de Pepsi a CocaCola en un fin de semana, como se creo Univision, etc. La narracion es excelente, altamente recomendado.

Gustavo Cisneros un Empresario Global : Prologo De Carlos Fuentes / Gustavo Cisneros, World Business Man

Average customer rating:

Mr. Cisneros, venezuelan pride

Gustavo Cisneros un Empresario Global : Prologo De Carlos Fuentes / Gustavo Cisneros, World Business Man
Pablo Bachelet
Manufacturer: Planeta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Spain | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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Customer Reviews:

Mr. Cisneros, venezuelan pride.......2004-08-12

This book demonstrates that in the world of the business, besides the luck, they are necessary other variables, as brain, heart and corage. For the Venezuelans, this book is a pride.

Average customer rating:

Gustavo Cisneros, Empresario Global
Pablo Bachelet
Manufacturer: Planeta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Business | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Leadership | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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Dirección Comercial | Profesional y Técnico | Libros en español | Formats | Books
ASIN: 8408049585

Gustavo Cisneros: Un Empresario Global [Gustave Cisneros: The Pioneer]

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Gustavo Cisneros: Un Empresario Global [Gustave Cisneros: The Pioneer]
Pablo Bachelet
Manufacturer: audible.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Download
ASIN: B000K0YMP4

Book Description

"Frank Parker: Champion in the Golden Age of Tennis" won the Benjamin Franklin Award for best cover design from Publishers Marketing Assocation.

Customer Reviews:

Research on a local hero.......2007-07-22

This book gave me insight on a guy who learned to play the game right down the street from where I live.

Tennis Book.......2005-09-15

Fairly accurate chronicle of Frank Parker. Lots of personal information that most people would not know about him. I happen to be his nephew so I have a pretty good reference point.

The Golden Era of Tennis.......2003-01-03

I truly liked this book. The author does an excellent job of capturing the tennis world of yesteryear, when gentlemen players like Frank Parker were the norm and not the exception. The details of Parker's Davis Cup years are especially well presented. She also touches, clearly and without sentimentality, on the hoopla created by Parker's unconventional (for the times) marriage, as well as on the last years of his life. An inspiring story, very well done.

Average customer rating:

House and Home

Frivolous but fun

A Gimmick by any other name...

I read it in my (too small and soon to be redone) bathtub

Only for the Professional!

Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses
Marjorie Garber
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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House As a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home

Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture

A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time

Realty Blogging

Home: A Short History of an Idea

ASIN: 0385720394
Release Date: 2001-09-18

Amazon.com

Were this book only about sex and real estate, it would quickly get dull. After all, the comparison between buying real estate and dating, while apt, doesn't merit more than the few pages devoted to it in the introduction. Fortunately, Marjorie Garber tackles much more than the title implies, delving into literature, history, cinema, and psychology in order to make sense of the fantasies and longings we project onto our homes. Chapters examine the cultural role of the house as lover, mother, body, dream, trophy, history, and escape, and range from Jane Austen to Steve Martin, the history of architecture to Puritan guilt. In her teasing and self-effacing way (Garber admits to her own house fetishes), the erudite professor gives us the history of the bathroom and analyzes the current trend of moving what was once the most hidden room of the house into the foreground (along with the kitchen, which wealthy families of the past would not have deigned to enter).

While contemplating the dream house, she looks at dreams themselves, in particular Carl Jung's famous dream of himself as a house and its image of the collective unconscious. In one of the best chapters, she explains how mother and home became conflated as part of the 19th-century idealization of domesticity. Ultimately, the idea of home as fantasy or desire is the foundation of Garber's thesis: "Home is more than a place ... it is the ground of possibility, a place of beginning and ending (or, as the poets have it, of womb and tomb). But more and more it is also a conscious fiction." As time becomes a longed-for commodity, home has become a substitute for the unlived life, the repository of our desires. Though these can never truly be satisfied, the attempt to bring our dreams to material life is a perennial one. --Lesley Reed

Book Description

Cultural historian Marjorie Garber offers incisive and witty commentary on what men and women today really want in her enlightening study of what may be the most meaningful relationship any of us will ever have.

Real estate has become a form of “yuppie pornography.” Hopes of summer romance have given way to hopes of summer homes, and fantasies of Romeo have been replaced by fantasies of remodeling. Even real estate ads are flirtatious in their offers of bedrooms that are sensuous and sinks that are seductive. Thus the house you live in, like the partner you choose, can be everything from your beloved to your dream to a status symbol trophy. Marjorie Garber has fashioned a uniquely fascinating book that is as provocative as it is pleasurable, as erudite as it is entertaining, one sure to make readers consider more closely the rooms in which they live.

Customer Reviews:

House and Home.......2002-02-06

For those interested in the difference between house and home, this IS the book. Not only is it an intense review of the comparison of house and home, but it tackles the topic of the contemporary obsession with the past and instant tradition. References a lot of literary texts as well as psycho-analytical studies and "Emily Post" style writings.

Frivolous but fun.......2001-11-25

While I sympathise with the earnest souls who criticised Garber for failing to look at homelessness, disability and the spread of AIDS in this book, I also wonder if their senses of humour have died. Yes, the book is frothy, but it's funny, too - the stories are hilarious even if they do deal with the baser, greedier side of middle-class and middle-aged aspirations. And in chronicling those ugly yearnings to excel, Garber shows us - without labouring it - where the greed that generates a refusal to spend tax dollars on the poor has its home.

Meanwhile, the humourless get what they deserve with earnest but boneheaded stuff like Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human.

A Gimmick by any other name..........2000-12-29

This is a fascinating concept, and a marketable one as well, in light of America's current infatuation with the Edifice Complex. Considering the author's scholarly credentials, SEX AND REAL ESTATE should have been a absorbing book. "Should have" is the pivotal phrase here. No question that Garber's body of knowledge is vast--she hops all over the map with only the most tenuous connection to her thesis. Maybe she merely was showing off how much smarter she is than the average reader. While I have no doubt but that this fact is true, the book still quickly descends into boring psychobabble. Anyone seeking enlightenment is bound to be disappointed.

I read it in my (too small and soon to be redone) bathtub.......2000-12-04

Don't excoriate Garber for the title of this book; authors typically don't choose the title or write jacket copy. It is true that the book has little to do with sex. It should probably be titled "Miscellaneous thoughts on American houses". If you're about to buy, remodel, or sell a house, this book will make a nice comforting read in the tub. It is sort of like watching Jerry Springer or Oprah and realizing that there are plenty of people whose lives are even more messed up than one's own. Skip the book if you're not about to engage in a huge real estate transaction of some sort.

Only for the Professional!.......2000-10-02

Okay, I read all the other views, but I sell Real Estate, and lots of it - I can tell you that she nails the emotions many people attach to their homes. If you make your living selling homes you will find this book helpful, especially if you've had a run of nut case buyers!

Average customer rating:

after just 2 questions

Sharpen your calculation skills and positional understanding

It's Your Move: Tough Puzzles (Everyman Chess)
Chris Ward
Manufacturer: Everyman Chess
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Chess | Board Games | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1857443411

Book Description

Feeling up to a challenge? In this highly original and instructive self-test book, Grandmaster Chris Ward presents a selection of carefully chosen puzzles to solve. Hot on the heels of his very successful It's Your Move and Improvers It's Your Move, comes It's Your Move: Tough Puzzles, which this time aims to rack the brains of even the most experienced chess players.
The puzzles might be a bit more difficult this time but, in the same style of the previous two books, the reader is once again helped by the choice of five plausible plans and has to decide which is the most likely to succeed. The answers then identify the most promising plan and explain why the other choices are less attractive. Instead of opting for the traditional 'check, check, mate ... mate!' type of puzzles, Ward concentrates on situations which are much more likely to occur in practical games.

Customer Reviews:

after just 2 questions.......2006-12-23

after just 2 questions i'm disappointed.
My initial fide rating is 2017.
i've started with the 1st question in a waiting room, and i found the correct answer immediately (but didn't check if it was the right one). It was a strategic question. Then i go home, i put the position on the board, and after a long analysis i found that another answer, a tactical one, was strategically wrong but it wins too. The author think that this winning move is the worse of them all, becouse it's strategically wrong. This is really questionable.
In the second question i have another surprise. The first choice of the author is ok, but the second (tied) loose some advantage, and it looks weaker than 4th choice.
I know that it's not easy to put in order 5 choice in a won position, but i was expecting something more from the book, since there are just 50 questions.

Sharpen your calculation skills and positional understanding.......2006-06-06

This book is the third volume of the "It's Your Move" series. Like the other two volumes, the book contains five tests, each consisting of ten puzzles. The reader is provided with a diagrammed position, and is tasked with finding the best move. Usually this involves coming up with the best plan, choosing a move that best implements this plan, and checking the concrete variations that support the choice. To assist the reader while working out the solution, five fictional "advisors" suggest possible answers to varying degrees of plausibility; the reader ultimately chooses from the five recommended continuations. Detailed solutions with diagrams, variations and explanatory prose follow at the end of the book. Each answer is worth up to 10 points, with partial credit given where due. When the reader has completed all of the tests, there is a final chart for interpreting the scores.

The exercises are mostly critical middlegame positions, but there are many endgame situations and a few from the opening. They are all from actual games from high-level competition. In no case is it sufficient to guess an answer based on general principles; some amount of calculation and painstaking thought is invariably required. It is from this effort, along with the immediate feedback from the solution section, that real chess improvement takes place.

Having worked through all three books in this series, I can attest to their usefulness for chess improvement. Unlike puzzle books consisting solely of tactical problems, this requires the reader to exercise tactical vision, positional understanding, strategic planning, and calculation skills - in a content rich, meaningfully coherent way. This is like having a year's worth of lessons with a Grandmaster.

To make the most of this book (or its predecessors), the reader should set up each puzzle position on a tournament board, and try to work out the best move, along with supporting variations. This should be carried out without moving any of the pieces. It is also helpful to write out all of the significant variations. (Some readers may recognize this as doing "Stoyko" exercises - a highly regarded training method once used in the Soviet School.) Once the reader has exhausted his energies on this solo effort (I would suggest 15 minutes to an hour per exercise), he/she should then look at the choices offered by the five fictitious characters, and take the opportunity to amend his analysis accordingly - and only then turn to the solution section.

Ward provides in-depth solutions in his congenial writing style. (Somehow the font even fits the down-to-earth, casual tone.) The actual game continuations are given, along with explanations for the correct *and* incorrect choices. The scoring scheme does not include an Elo rating conversion.

Recommended highly. In fact, get all three volumes.

Average customer rating:

It's Your Move: Tough Puzzles

Manufacturer: EVERYMAN CHESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GTHZWG

Average customer rating:

Helpful How-To for intermediate to Expert users

The One Book You'll Need

Awesome Excel Tutorial / Training / Help

Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Excel 2003
Patrick Blattner
Manufacturer: Que
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Excel | Applications | Microsoft | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
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Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Word 2003

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Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Project 2003 (Special Edition Using)

ASIN: 0789729539

Book Description

Does your life play out in a spreadsheet? Are numbers in columns and rows what make or break you in the work world?

If you answered yes to either of these questions, then Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Excel 2003 is the book that will make it all better. Learn quickly and efficiently from a true Excel master using the tried and true Special Edition Using formula for success. Here, you'll find information that's undocumented elsewhere - even in Microsoft's own Help systems. You'll learn from finely crafted, real-life examples built by an author who lives and dies by the integrity of his spreadsheets.

Unlike most CDs pasted into the back of computer books, this is one that rivals the book in terms of value. You receive a FREE copy of Woody's Office Power Pack (WOPR) - the #1 enhancement to Office. This software sells for $49.99 and you get it for free here...no strings attached.

Customer Reviews:

Helpful How-To for intermediate to Expert users.......2005-08-30

This book is well-written, covers the basics of intermediate to expert features of excel and is useful as a permanent reference work on the Office 11 series.

A comparable book is Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Step-by-Step. This book is far more detailed and intuitive, though. If you are considering getting an office-worthy reference, I would rate this one over the Microsoft title above

The One Book You'll Need.......2003-12-15

This is the best book written on Excel (I bought two other's before I found this one). This is a one-stop shop for an Excel reference book. Easily scannable, easy to read. I especially love Patrick's Quick Tips -- which provide bite size "how-to's".

Awesome Excel Tutorial / Training / Help.......2003-12-11

This is an extremely good reference on Excel. Clear and concise step-by-step. Well worth the investment

Average customer rating:

The seminal seed!

Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865
Joseph Frank
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859

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The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevskii (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

ASIN: 0691014523

Book Description

". . . a narrative of such compelling precision, thoroughness and insight as to give the reader a sense not just of acquaintanceship, but of complete identification with Dostoevsky, of looking through his eyes and understanding with his mind."--Helen Muchnic, Boston Globe "This is unquestionably the best account we have of Dostoevsky in his time."--Donald Fanger, The New Republic ". . . will rightly be considered one of the finest achievements of American literary scholarship."--Ren Wellek, Washington Post

Customer Reviews:

The seminal seed!.......2007-01-04

Maybe sound to free speculation, but to my view, Dostoevsky is spiritually the embodiment of the rebel man. Moreover, he may be regarded the authentic godfather of the existentialism in Literature. There are many arguments to support it, the conceptual, the spiritual affinities, the silence of God, the silent anguish and the clawing scream of desperation before the emptiness of the existence, so magisterially expressed in Karamazov brothers.

On the other hand, at the moment to read that notable essay of Albert Camus: "The rebel man" and the close affinity between "The happy death" and "Crime and punishment" you even may spin finer and so to establish certain parallelisms with the most radical branches of the Romanticism.

Between Dostoevsky and Camus, there are important links: Rimbaud Verlaine and Baudelaire pick up and establish important premises for the reluctant existentialism that remains latent to make its incursion with that impressive outburst after the WW1.

Joseph Franks leads the reader for admirable paths of passionate interest in order to convey us the core of the oul of this writer of writers.

Absolutely recommended.

DOSTOEVSKY: THE STIR OF LIBERATION, 1860-1865.

Average customer rating:

DOSTOEVSKY: THE STIR OF LIBERATION, 1860-1865.
Joseph. Frank
Manufacturer: Princeton U.Press,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000SKUIJ0

Average customer rating:

Excellent collection of primary sources

I hate World History classes

So-so

World History in Documents: A Comparative Reader
Peter Stearns
Manufacturer: NYU Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Historiography | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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Cracking the AP World History Exam, 2006-2007 Edition (College Test Prep)

ASIN: 0814781071
Release Date: 1998-09-01

Book Description

At a time when the teaching of world history is undergoing profound change, Peter N. Stearns has collected a remarkably diverse and original set of documents which anticipate new directions in the field.

World History in Documents combines original sources on key world history topics, covering a sweeping range of periods and societies, with the challenge of comparative analysis. With its emphasis on the utility of primary materials, the book presents historical documents from the major regions of the world and enables the reader to deal recurrently with topics from all continents.

From Hammurabi to Hitler, the Peloponnesian War to Peronism, the Magna Carta to Octavia Paz's Mexico, Stearns covers the scope of human activity, encompassing politics, culture, gender, labor, migration, and social structure. Substantial introductions set the stage for the five major time periods as well as the subject of each chapter. Questions guide student reading and can form the basis for classroom discussion. Throughout, comparative topics are highlighted, enabling students to compare and contrast different societies around a common topic.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent collection of primary sources.......2007-05-31

What can I say about a disgruntled young student who does not like history or his professor and takes that out on a really excellent book? Stearns has done a wonderful job in this volume of gathering some very good and interesting primary sources in world history. I particularly liked the documents about women's lives in various eras. The selections are thoughtful, the organization is effective, and it's not overwhelming as it's only a single volume. Very nice job, indeed, and worth considering as a supplementary reader for any world history course.

I hate World History classes.......2006-07-31

This book was awful. It had nothing of value in it, and my professor was a bumhead.

So-so.......2004-01-04

This book is pretty informational and does a good job of explaining/summarizing the documents. However, its arranged rather haphazardly and can get really repetitive.

Average customer rating:

How not to write a book on math

Unreadable

Math for Smarties (Both Informed and Un)

Infinity Explained

Not an explanation, a discussion

Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (Great Discoveries)
David Foster Wallace
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B000FUO0G0

Amazon.com

Before discussing the merits of David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, it is essential to define what the book is not. This volume in the "Great Discoveries" series is not a history of the personalities and social conditions that led to the "discovery" of infinity. Nor is it a narrative fixated on the cultish fear of--and obsession with--the infinite that has seemingly driven mathematicians insane over the centuries. Rather, Everything and More is a surprisingly rigorous march through the 2000 plus years of mathematical research that began with Aristotle; continued through Galileo, Isaac Newton, G.W. Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and J.W.R. Dedekind; and culminated in Georg Cantor and his Set Theory. The task Wallace (author of the bestseller Infinite Jest and other fiction) has set himself is enormously challenging: without radically compromising the complexity of the philosophy, metaphysics, or mathematics that underlies the evolving concept of infinity, present the material to a lay audience in a manner that is entertaining. To propel his narrative, Wallace even develops a style that mirrors the mathematical language he probes. One difficulty in his focus on concepts and not a strict human chronology, though, is that his structure is dependent on frequent digressions (especially early on). Patience is required. Wallace demands that his reader walk through the equations, study the graphs and charts, and relearn college-level concepts to follow along on the exploration. Indeed, after one wrenching dip into Zeno's paradoxes, Wallace spouts at his imagined complaining audience: "Deal." But the book should be deemed a success. If one grants him the attention he requires, Wallace has made the trip richly rewarding. --Patrick O'Kelley

Book Description

The best-selling author of Infinite Jest on the two-thousand-year-old quest to understand infinity.

One of the outstanding voices of his generation, David Foster Wallace has won a large and devoted following for the intellectual ambition and bravura style of his fiction and essays. Now he brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity.

Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology.

Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.

About the series: W. W. Norton and Atlas Books announce the launch of an exciting new series—Great Discoveries—bringing together renowned writers from diverse backgrounds to tell the stories of crucial scientific breakthroughs—the great discoveries that have gone on to transform our view of the world.

Customer Reviews:

How not to write a book on math.......2007-10-07

It was Isaac Asimov who once pointed out that to be a great science fiction writer, you must first be a great writer, but the converse doesn't necessarily hold true: you can be a great writer but a poor science fiction writer. The same is true for other genres as well as David Foster Wallace's Everything and More illustrates: he may be a great novelist (though I can't even be positive of that, as I've never read any of his books prior to this one), but he is a mediocre science/math writer.

What is Everything and More about? It is a history of the mathematic concept "infinity". From ancient times, the concept of infinity was troublesome and often worked around. Paradoxes such as Achilles and the Tortoise demonstrated the seeming contradictions of the infinite; for example, this ancient paradox pointed out that to go from point A to point B, you must first go to the halfway point, but to get to that point C, you need to first go to the halfway point between A and C, and so on, ad infinitum. Since there is always another midpoint standing between you and your destination, you can never reach it, but, as anyone who has walked from A to B knows, this seeming impossibility is really possible.

Infinity would be a concept more or less ignored or danced around until the development of calculus made it essential. Even then, for a while, infinity (and the related concept, the infinitesimal) was a shaky idea. Yes, calculus worked, but the foundation it was built on was of uncertain strength. It would take the work of Cantor to finally give infinity its strong theoretical basis; indeed, Cantor is the hero of Everything and More, though he really only appears in the end to clean things up.

Wallace is something of a literary writer, which is not a quality that really fits a math history. He is an occasionally witty and generally wordy writer who is often clever but more often too clever. His constant asides and footnotes are distracting and diminish the clarity that this subject requires. He enjoys abbreviations to the point of annoyance. In addition, a book of this type demands a table of contents or at least an index, but neither are provided.

Reading Everything and More is like going diamond mining. You know there is a gem somewhere, but you need to a lot of work to get to it. In the end, I don't think it is worth the effort. Wallace may be a good writer in other contexts, and certainly this is an interesting concept, but he is not the right man for the job. If you want to see what good math or science writing is like, read Martin Gardener, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Brian Greene or a dozen others; if you want to see how not to write on such subjects, Everything and More is an ideal example.

Unreadable.......2007-09-23

I could not read more than 50 pages of this self-indulgent, illiterate, incompetent mess before going into "browse mode". How did this get past the editors at Norton??

Math for Smarties (Both Informed and Un).......2007-01-05

I originally picked this book up for my math grad student roommate, but on his recommendation I read it after, and I loved it. I don't have an extensive math background, while he (clearly) does, but I think we both liked it equally.

The book is both theory and history and, through the use of footnotes allows you to tailor the information you're receiving to make it either more elite, more basic, or just more specific. As long as the reader is interested in intellectual history he or she should enjoy the book.

Infinity Explained .......2007-01-04

A brilliant book on the big questions about infinity. Wallace can seemingly make any subject a page turner. His explanations of complex mathematics are clear and simple. I loved it.

Not an explanation, a discussion.......2006-12-09

This book is a fun discussion for smart people who (more or less) already know the story or like to think they do. It is not the best way to get started on the topic.

I enjoyed the philosophical part where he argues that Cantor topedoes Thomas Aquinas, and thus the foundations of Christian theology. Really thought provoking.

It would have been good to expand the discussion to include the whole Axiom of Choice mess.

Customer Reviews:

Out back of beyond.......2007-02-25

I lived on the edge of the poquosin country for a decade, and it seemed so wild, so untouched, so empty that it couldn't have had a history. But of course it did, and Professor Jack Temple Kirby has written it in his expected elegant style.

A poquosin is a slightly higher and drier patch in the soggy coastal plain of the American South, with its center in the Great Dismal Swamp of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. It might have been logical that with an entire rich continent to expand into, the early white settlers would have passed by this unhealthy and difficult country. But that is not how people behave.

Kirby divides the people into the cosmopolitans and the inhabitants, or as he calls them, the hinterlanders.

The cosmopolitans lived on the fringes of the swamp, were educated and had capital and skills. They wished to employ these close to home. They financed canals, roads and railroads and hired the inhabitants or paid for the resources they could gather, primarily shingles, but also furs, turpentine, fish.

The hinterlanders were marginal characters, especially the black slaves, getting by on canal digging, trapping, fishing, logging, turpentining and farming. Yet, ironically, they were also independent. For the slaves, especially, working on their own, away from their owners, being a "swamper" was a kind of freedom.

Kirby also interprets these men and women as more or less conscious rejecters of consumer society. "Free workers used their wages to resist modernity."

I don't think this is the correct reading. They consumed avidly when they had the money, which was seldom. That they did not abandon their hard, sickly life was probably because it is easier to be a poor man in the country than in the city. For a long time, cities had not much to offer the debilitated, illiterate, unskilled poquosin-man.

Once that changed, the people escaped. For the blacks, with lower material expectations, this happened around 1916. Whites, slightly more demanding, did not flee until 1940. (See my review of Linda Flowers' "Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina.")

Left behind were the helpless and feckless. Kirby has not much to say about them, except to lament the "tragedy of a people unable to sustain themselves harmoniously on a rural landscape." Well, as Peter Huber wrote in "Hard Green" (see my review), the peasant squatting over a cow-dung fire is not green, he's just poor. The people of the area did sustain themselves harmoniously, they were just desperately poor.

It isn't in Kirby's book, but in 1966, Sen. Bill Spong of Virginia made a hunger tour of the area and found whole communities -- almost all black women and children, the men were gone -- that sustained themselves on an annual two-months' worth of low-paid labor in vegetable canneries, plus whatever they could scratch out of their gardens. They were hungry, but they had not rejected modernity. Modernity had rejected them.

As in Kirby's book "Mockingbird Song" (see my review), which is an expansion geographically of the themes in "Poquosin," the author weaves his human story with ecological history. Trees, or the disappearance of them, dominate ecological writing about the South. For Donald Edward Davis, writing about the southern Appalachians in "Where There Are Mountains," the missing tree is the American chestnut. For Kirby, it is the longleaf pine -- always described as tall and stately.

The piney woods are still piney, but today the trees are slash pines. Hogs and turpentining almost extinguished the longleaf. Kirby understates the violence of the turpentine camps, being more concerned about the trees. They were more brutal but less picturesque than Hollywood's idea of Dodge City, and there was no tradition, not even a mythical one, of freelance agents of justice who cleaned up the camps.

Kirby arguably also understates the impact of diseases in preserving the premodern life of the poquosins. Robert Desowitz, in "Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria?" has a good summary of how malaria, hookworm, yellow fever and other diseases beat down the Southerner, white or black.

I am not particularly sympathetic to the yearnings of writers like Kirby or Flowers or Davis for the old rural South. I lived in it, and the modern South is nicer. But Kirby's books about the South are stimulating, valuable, engaging. The real history of the South was much different from the opposing, highly politicized versions its young people more commonly are exposed to today. They should all get a good dose of Kirby.

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