Thorstein Veblen: Victorian Firebrand

Customer Reviews:

Reviews from The Int'l Journal of Politics, Culture,&Society.......2000-06-27

Excerpts from the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 13 #2, Winter, `99: ``Though not entirely successful in depicting the `essential' Veblen . . . .[this new Veblen biography] is essential reading for students and scholars of Veblen. It cannot replace Dorfman's but it deserves equal billing,'' Clare Virginia Eby. ``Flaws and imperfections notwithstanding . . . . their book has entered the sholarly literature on Thorstein Veblen and will henceforth be obligatory reading for anyone wishing to know him,'' Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEW, July 11, 1999.......1999-09-09

. . . . Stanford alumni Elizabeth and Henry Jorgensen have written a clear, engrossing biography that corrects significant errors in previous accounts, but they can't overcome the central problem, Veblen himself . . . . Veblen returned to Palo Alto in 1927, 18 years after Stanford fired him for supposed "immorality." . . . .the signal achievement of this book (flawed mainly by the Jorgensens' too-brief sketches of Veeblen's thought): demonstrating, once and for all, that Veblen was not an unscrupulous womanizer. Though implausible oin its face, that reputation has gone largely unchallenged for half a century, mostly because Ellen Veblen blackened her husband's name so well.

Authors are amazed at the current Veblenian revival.......1999-06-11

The authors undertook this project because they believed that a man with such cantankerous ideas must have had an interesting life. Those who had written about him before were earnest in their approach but did not convey an appreciation of his unique personality. Now with the current interest in the millenium, there seems to be a Veblen revival. The WALL STREET JOURNAL of January 11, 1999, devoted a full page to fifteen of the ``Best and Brightest Economic Thinkers Who Made a Difference.'' In this Pantheon of those ``who challenged the conventional wisdom'' and whose perceptions ``changed the way millions thought and lived'' were Saint Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes and Thorstein Veblen. Other recent accolades to Veblen are found in Adam Goprik's article in the April 26-May 3, 1999 issue of THE NEW YORKER, and John Carroll's column ``Conspicuous Presumption'' in THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE of May 3, 1999 Alex Beam of THE BOSTON GLOBE in his colum (April 21, 1999) entitled ``The Love Song of Thorstein Veblen'' had this to say about out book: He observed that he was turned off by books that sort of dragged the sex lifes of their subjects in by the heels, and said: ``Not every distinguished man's sex life is worth researching. . . . But Veblen, the enfant terrible of the turn-of-the century economics profession, enjoyed not just an interesting sex life, as his latest biographers Elizabeth and Henry Jorgensen make clear, he enjoyed his life in full. ``There can be no such thing as a dull biography of Veblen, and this one does not disappoint. ``The man who would later anathematize the titans of capital was a cradle contrarian . . . While Sioux marauders were killing fellow Norwegian homesteaders in Minnesota during the 1860s the boy Thorstein sided with the Indians. . . . [He was also] A-religious--- `If there is a difference between religion and magic I have never seen it.' [Thus] Veblen disdained hsi family's prairie Lutheranism and mocked the pieties of America's golden age. ``He was at heart an anthropologist. THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS represents field work among the grandees who sent their children to the universities where he taught, and among his censorious in-laws. . . . His trenchant analysis of what came to be called male chauvinism in his essay, `The Barbarian Status of Women,' made him ever more unpopular. Escept perhaps, among women. ``Veblen attracted intelligent women, who shared his contempt for male ritual. Even for the serious-minded Jorgensens, it seems impossible to separate Veblen's life story from his love stories. His first wife, Ellen Rolfe, destroyed his academic career by tattling about her husband's affairs to the presidents of Stanford and the University of Chicago. After trudging all night through a blizzard to visit his second wife [-to-be] in `Nowhere,' Idaho, Veblen contacted double pneumonia, which crippled him for life. ``The Jorgensens correctly note that even his most famous writings seem thick and turgid to the modern taste. But he was the rarest of birds in 20th-century Amderica: a dangerous thinker.''

LONG overdue.......1999-05-04

Thorstein Veblen's reputation has not fared well in the hands of his biographers. The worst bio by far ("Thorstein Veblen and his America" written by Joseph Dorfman in 1934) has sat in libraries like so much toxic waste waiting to mislead another scholar.
Between 1993-95, Veblen's Minnesota childhood home was restored at great trouble and expense. Like most scholars, the restorers started with Dorfman and immediately discovered how full of inaccuracies it was. Then the letters of Andrew Veblen (Thorstein's older and "respectable" brother) were discovered. They were written to protest the distortions of Dorfman's manuscript. They were extremely accurate and eventually would guide virtually every aspect of the restoration.

It was only a matter of time before a new generation of Veblen bios would be written based on the new information. Rick Tilman's "Intellectual Legacy.." was the first, and in many ways the best. But his book was written for serious Veblen scholars.
The new Jorgensen bio is not at all daunting. It is well-written, well-research and very enjoyable to read. It focuses on the significant women in Thorstein's life--his amazing mother, his charming sister Emily, his quite crazy first wife, and his extremely helpful second wife.

This emphasis would not have been my first choice, but since TBV was the only political economist of his age who would be remotely acceptable to a modern feminist, it was certainly appropriate. In fact, the Jorgensens seem to believe that of all the "heresies" that got Veblen in hot water, his enlightened views on women in society were possibly the most problematic.

Outstanding! Every person who has ever been remotely interested in Veblen should read this book.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN: VICTORIAN FIREBRAND.(Review) (book review): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues

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THORSTEIN VEBLEN: VICTORIAN FIREBRAND.(Review) (book review): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues
Tony Maynard
Manufacturer: Association for Evolutionary Economics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B00099LLCI
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Economic Issues, published by Association for Evolutionary Economics on December 1, 1999. The length of the article is 1060 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: THORSTEIN VEBLEN: VICTORIAN FIREBRAND.(Review) (book review)
Author: Tony Maynard
Publication: Journal of Economic Issues (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 1999
Publisher: Association for Evolutionary Economics
Volume: 33 Issue: 4 Page: 1037

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

The Anything You Can Do series is unprecedented in its concept of offering real stories of new heroes to young girls. The premise of the series is to profile a variety of young athletes, from a variety of ethnic, socioeconomic, geographical and family backgrounds who have grown up to achieve excellence in Olympic and professional sports.

This is Nancy Lieberman-Cline's story of passion for sport and an intense drive to be the best. Nancy grew up in Queens and learned to play basketball on the streets and playgrounds of New York. Overcoming a difficult childhood, she found confidence and acceptance on the basketball court. At a time when it was unusual for a woman to choose to become a competitive athlete, Nancy broke through the barriers to completely change the game of women's basketball.

Customer Reviews:

Especially for girls with an interest in sports.......2001-02-08

A Drive To Win is the biography of Nancy Lieberman-Cline who, as a tomboy, was better at baseball and as fierce as any boy on the football field. Nancy had always been a sports enthusiast. But when she discovered basketball, she knew she had found her sport. Overcoming her mother's objections and the other kids' taunts. Nancy played every chance she got and when she heard the announcement that the U.S. Women's team was holding tryouts for the Olympic team, she snuck out to the tryouts -- but even if she made the team, would her mother let 15-year old Nancy play? Highly recommended reading, especially for girls with an interest in sports, A Drive To Win is the debut title for Wish Publishing's "Anything You Can Do...New Sports Heroes For Girls" series and focuses not only on one remarkable young woman's struggle to become a competitive athlete, but shows how participation in sports can help girls to grow up and become successful women.

Inspiring reading for kids - librarian's 4 star award.......2000-10-02

If the first book is indicative of the series, then kids can look forward to an exciting time. It is a rare treat when an author can take the life of an athlete who has had a singular pursuit of their sport and make it an enriching, enjoyable story.

I recommend this book for schools.

A Real Trail Blazer.......2000-10-02

What a wonderful, engaging, multifaceted book for adolescent girls.....and boys! Nancy Lieberman-Cline's biography is written in a way that captures your interest from the first page. Girls and women, especially, who have experienced any one of the many challenges or barriers in the pursuit of athleticism can relate to Nancy's life. Young girls who struggle with issues relating to body image, family support, competition, sociability, and acceptance will feel validated after reading this book.

A component of the book also worth its "weight in gold", is the section called "Sports Talk", which is meant to be an interactive platform for readers and their parents, teaches and coaches. It contains excellent research-based information and thought provoking questions for readers relating to issues of girls participating in sport, within the context of the book.

This would be a terrific book to use in a middle school program, where integration of English, Social Studies, Physical Education, and Technology are sought.

Customer Reviews:

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.......2001-06-27

The story of Max Factor as he rose from Russian immigrant to Hollywood royalty-the man who brought glamour to the stars and regular folks alike with the invention of pancake makeup, no fade lipstick and the idea that makeup should fit a woman's coloring. (He had rooms in his store for blondes, brownettes, brunettes and redheads-all color coded and enhanced to work with the skin tones of the women in each category!) The star of this book is definitely the photographs, however. Make-up test shots, his early years in Russia, wig making contraptions, print ads of the stars endorsing his products-the pictures tell a better story than the text!

Beauty For Old Hollywood.......2001-05-15

Filled to the brim with glamour shots of some of the Western World's most beautiful women, this book shows us the man beind the mask, the incomparable Max Factor. Almost every shot is shown behind the scenes, how the look was created, etc. . .Truly a masterpiece work.

Max Factor's Hollywood Glamour Movies Make-up

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Max Factor's Hollywood Glamour Movies Make-up
Basten Fred E
Manufacturer: General Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LBBT5S

Book Description

Hop on Pop showcases the work of a new generation of scholars—from fields such as media studies, literature, cinema, and cultural studies—whose writing has been informed by their ongoing involvement with popular culture and who draw insight from their lived experiences as critics, fans, and consumers. Proceeding from their deep political commitment to a new kind of populist grassroots politics, these writers
challenge old modes of studying the everyday. As they rework traditional scholarly language, they search for new ways to write about our complex and compelling engagements with the politics and pleasures of popular culture and sketch a new and lively vocabulary for the field of cultural studies.
The essays cover a wide and colorful array of subjects including pro wrestling, the computer games Myst and Doom, soap operas, baseball card collecting, the Tour de France, karaoke, lesbian desire in the Wizard of Oz, Internet fandom for the series Babylon 5, and the stress-management industry. Broader themes examined include the origins of popular culture, the aesthetics and politics of performance, and the social and
cultural processes by which objects and practices are deemed tasteful or tasteless. The commitment that binds the contributors is to an emergent perspective in cultural studies, one that engages with popular culture as the culture that "sticks to the skin," that becomes so much a part of us that it becomes increasingly difficult to examine it from a distance. By refusing to deny or rationalize their own often contradictory identifications with popular culture, the contributors ensure that the volume as a whole reflects the immediacy and vibrancy of its objects of study.
Hop on Pop will appeal to those engaged in the study of popular culture, American studies, cultural studies, cinema and visual studies, as well as to the general educated reader.

Contributors. John Bloom, Gerry Bloustein, Aniko Bodroghkozy, Diane Brooks, Peter Chvany, Elana Crane, Alexander Doty, Rob Drew, Stephen Duncombe, Nick Evans, Eric Freedman, Joy Fuqua, Tony Grajeda, Katherine Green, John Hartley, Heather Hendershot, Henry Jenkins, Eithne Johnson, Louis Kaplan, Maria Koundoura, Sharon Mazer, Anna McCarthy, Tara McPherson, Angela Ndalianis, Edward O’Neill, Catherine Palmer, Roberta Pearson, Elayne Rapping, Eric Schaefer, Jane Shattuc, Greg Smith, Ellen Strain, Matthew Tinkhom, William Uricchio, Amy Villarego, Robyn Warhol, Charles Weigl, Alan Wexelblat, Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Nabeel Zuberi

Customer Reviews:

Mind-Sharpening.......2007-05-13

Admittedly, I got this book because of Stephen Duncombe's essay on zine culture in which I am mentioned, but I did in fact read it from cover to cover and was fully absorbed throughout. The authors have taken on the difficult task of offering perspectives on what it all means to have a popular culture and to be a part of it. The danger, of course, lies in writing from such an academic perspective that the essays could become completely meaningless to anyone not an academic scholar. But, I am happy to say that the essays consistently maintain a level-headed, practical attitude and do not insist on meanings that could be seen as peculiar or irrelevant.

Instead, you get a comprehensive look at everything from pro-wrestling to talk shows, television sit-coms to zines, and much more. The writing is sensible and leaves it up to the reader to draw final conclusions. A general theme is to not take popular culture too seriously and to understand that as consumers, we have the power to shape it. Further, popular culture is not always what it seems and high-flying rhetoric is used by big business and politicians to manipulate consumers for profit. Of course, we know that, but the essays offer us clues as to the process and how we can be more aware of how we are being manipulated.

The book is a long read if you do so cover-to-cover. But the essays themselves read fast. Although some people may wish to read only some of them, I highly recommend the whole book as there are a lot of insights offered into the topics covered as well as bits and pieces of information that allow you to walk away feeling knowlegeable about the topics covered.

Henry Jenkins is brilliant........2004-08-13

Why more people don't know his name is beyond me. Maybe its because of his haircut?

In all seriousness, reading the man's work is like waking up and realizing that you've been dreaming. He lifts the veil off the world we live in, the media stream that we swim in, and he illuminates its basic nature better than anyone I have ever read. He also has the great advantage of not being a "fogey", in other words he's not mystified by popular culture, he UNDERSTANDS it. He KNOWS why we like certain videogames and movies and doesn't berate the world for it, rather he simply looks at the underpinnings of those desires. Great stuff. Read all his works - and then visit VIDEOTOPIA because Professor Jenkins references it and it's cool.

Giving Pop Culture Its Due!.......2003-02-24

An outrageously eclectic collection of essays about the world we live in, finally turning a legible as well as legitimate critical eye towards our cultural organism - and some of the weird and wonderful sprouts. A book to take your mind off of the nasty habits of humanity (like war) and set you thinking about the wonderful weird stuff we do every day.

Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture

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Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture
Henry Jenkins
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MUAGXO

Book Description

There is more than one way to make a hit.
The best assassin is the one that's never noticed.

·Weapon and equipment locations for each mission revealed
·Basic strategies for a hit, with tips on how to keep your notoriety low
·Detailed maps for every mission
·Complete walkthroughs for all assignments, including alternative ways to complete a mission
Information on all weapons and upgrades

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Great courseware

A great book to get learning fast.

Great beginners book

Great book

Hands on for beginners

3ds Max 8 Essentials: Autodesk Media and Entertainment Courseware
Autodesk
Manufacturer: Focal Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Graphic Design | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0240807901

Book Description

Welcome to the Autodesk Media and Entertainment Official Training Courseware for 3ds Max 8 software! Consider this book an all-access pass to the production and training experience of Autodesk developers and training experts. Written for self-paced learning or instructor-led classroom training, the manual will teach you the fundamentals of using 3ds Max 8. The book is organized into sections dedicated to animation, modelling, materials, lighting and rendering. Each section covers basic theory, and then includes exercises for hands-on demonstration of the concept. By the end of the book, you will have mastered the basics and moved onto full-length projects. Flexibility is built in, so that you can complete the tutorials in the way that works best for you. Complete the book and you will be a seasoned 3ds Max pro, ready to work confidently in a production environment.

·For beginners or those new to 3ds max
·Tutorials and exercises designed for flexibility and ease of use
·CD contains 3ds max support models, materials, textures, and animations for completing the exercises

Customer Reviews:

Great courseware.......2007-05-13

As a teacher of animation, I chose this book as basic courseware for my students. Although it doesn't cover every feature of the powerful software program (no single book could), it certainly covers the basics.

This is great for teachers as well as self directed learning.

A great book to get learning fast........2007-01-05

I found this book able to explain the concepts involved with 3D and this particular program very well. It's in plain english, and has exercises to help you come up to speed fast. It's best if you have prior experience in other graphical programs. Overall, a great book.

Great beginners book.......2006-07-26

Honestly a few days ago I did not know a thing about 3D Studio Max 8. All that I knew was that I needed to learn it. This book Ultimately is the beginner's bible for those out there that have no clue about how to use 3d Studio Max. It is divided into sections which cover all the bases from the Overall user interface, modelling, Animation, texturing and finally rendering.
If you want to get started on 3D studio max 8 this is the book, But!!

IF YOU ARE ALREADY EXPERIENCED AT USING IT THIS BOOK IS MORE OR LESS USELESS TO YOU!!!(Maybe as just a reference but that's it)

Great book.......2006-07-06

Great book for 3D beginners, but that's about it. Some tutorials on ligting and shadows are pretty good.

Hands on for beginners.......2006-03-30

I am new to the world of 3d and have no clue with regards to a 3d environment. My company bought 3ds Max 8 and have also sent me on a course to "get-up-to-speed" quickly. Before the course started I thought I would purchase this book so that I do not look like a total novice on the course. What I love about the book is that it explains concepts and then moves into a practicle aspects of what it explained. At all times I knew exatly what I had to do (as they have many screen dumps) and I never found myself looking for a button or a tab (which I often find myself doing with training matterial). I have completed the book and have attended 2 days of the 3ds Max course. To my amazement I would say that I am compentent at this stage of the course.
To conclude: I think that attending a course is always the best way of learning (if you have a great facilitator) BUT this costs a lot of money. If money is an issue I can highly recommend this book to learn the basics of 3ds Max 8. I hope that they bring out another book that is more indepth.

Book Description

Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. This interdisciplinary volume explores the multiple forms of this upsurge and the forces driving it in popular culture, scholarly research, and public commemorations.

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Preparing For The European History AP Exam: with the Western Heritage from 1300
Kagan , Ozment , and Turner
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall College Div
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0536731608

Amazon.com

Just when you've stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb, along comes Sir Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, with teeming armies of deadly viruses, nanobots, and armed fanatics. Beyond the hazards most of us know about--smallpox, terrorists, global warming--Rees introduces the new threats of the 21st century and the unholy political and scientific alliances that have made them possible. Our Final Hour spells out doomsday scenarios for cosmic collisions, high-energy experiments gone wrong, and self-replicating machines that steadily devour the biosphere. If we can avoid driving ourselves to extinction, he writes, a glorious future awaits; if not, our devices may very well destroy the universe.

What happens here on Earth, in this century, could conceivably make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter.

For many technological debacles, Rees places much of the blame squarely on the shoulders of the scientists who participate in perfecting environmental destruction, biological menaces, and ever-more powerful weapons. So is there any hope for humanity? Rees is vaguely optimistic on this point, offering solutions that would require a level of worldwide cooperation humans have yet to exhibit. If the daily news isn't enough to make you want to crawl under a rock, this book will do the trick. --Therese Littleton

Book Description

A world-renowned astrophysicist advances an astonishing and alarming thesis: the odds are no better than 50/50 that our species will survive to the end of the twenty-first century.

A scientist known for unraveling the complexities of the universe over millions of years, Sir Martin Rees now warns that humankind is potentially the maker of its own demise--and that of the cosmos. Though the twenty-first century could be the critical era in which life on Earth spreads beyond our solar system, it is just as likely that we have endangered the future of the entire universe. With clarity and precision, Rees maps out the ways technology could destroy our species and thereby foreclose the potential of a living universe whose evolution has just begun.

Rees boldly forecasts the startling risks that stem from our accelerating rate of technological advances. We could be wiped out by lethal "engineered" airborne viruses, or by rogue nano-machines that replicate catastrophically. Experiments that crash together atomic nuclei could start a chain reaction that erodes all atoms of Earth, or could even tear the fabric of space itself. Through malign intent or by mistake, a single event could trigger global disaster. Though we can never completely safeguard our future, increased regulation and inspection can help us to prevent catastrophe.

Rees's vision of the infinite future that we have put at risk--a cosmos more vast and diverse than any of us has ever imagined--is both a work of stunning scientific originality and a humanistic clarion call on behalf of the future of life.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating look at threats to our future...........2006-06-25

I'm frankly interested in natural disasters such as tornados, floods, and hurricanes. I find it fascinating how the human spirit can remain strong despite an environment which might at any time become deadly. "Our Final Hour" contains a scientists warnings about spectacular disasters we as human beings might one day have to face, and what if anything can be done to prevent/overcome these unforseen disasters. From flooding, to terrorist threat, this book plays out many scenarios with stunning and interesting outcomes.

This book is not light reading and might take a while to plow through, but I enjoyed every minute. Its interesting stuff, and while I'm not particularly worried about these sort of cataclysmic events included in this book, its nice to be prepared- and it makes good fodder for science fiction writing.

5 stars.

Things we all need to think about.......2004-11-18

A short but very thought-provoking book, this is not a 'doom and gloom' pessimistic view of the future, but an invitation to the reader to seriously think about humanity's long-term survival prospects. A good selection of both natural and human-caused dangers are considered here, though not in a great deal of depth.

There is a focus on space related dangers (and other space topics like interplanetary colonisation as a safeguard against disaster on Earth), which is not at all surprising given the author, and while I would have preferred to have had more coverage on other topics, it was probably a good decision by Rees to focus on those areas he knows best.

One particularly thought-provoking topic is the idea that technology is rapidly reaching a point where individuals (or very small groups) can cause catastrophic global damage, a very new phenomenon. While we generally find the idea of a society with no privacy distasteful, monitoring every individual may become necessary as the only real way to combat this danger. We all may have to seriously start considering how much privacy and freedom we wish to retain, versus how much danger we are willing to accept for the human race.

A sobering assessment.......2004-11-16

An important thing to realize when reading this book is that we will indeed have a "final hour." Whether it comes through extinction or self destruction or through our becoming "posthuman" is entirely uncertain, but come it will.

I have read several other doomsday books, including A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know (2002) by Bill McGuire, and Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man (2002) by Michael Boulter. I have also read some books by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Pierre Baldi (The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence [1999] and The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution [2001], respectively); additionally I have read some of the books that Rees relied upon while writing this book, including, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002) by Francis Fukuyama, and so most of the things that Martin Rees is worried about are familiar to me.

But this book nonetheless broadened my perspective because Sir Martin Rees (the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, and a distinguished astrophysicist) is persuasive in his argument that there may actually be scientific experiments that should not be tried. He warns against some kinds of genetic engineering, especially those attempting to change the DNA of dangerous pathogens, and even rates some experiments in physics as of dubious value. This is a somewhat surprising stance for a reputable scientists to take since most scientists do not relish the prospect of political restraints on their work, and usually afford the same courtesy to practitioners in other disciplines.

His call for taking a close look at experiments with a chance of a "doomsday downside," however remote, is well taken. His sense that some biological experiments have such an unsavory "yuck factor" (e.g., "Brainless hominoids whose organs could be harvested as spare parts," p. 78) that scientists themselves should not be alone in deciding whether such experiments should continue, is also an excellent point.

Rees is characteristically not dogmatic about any of this. He presents the dangers and the objections typically with the proviso that a wider public than an individual scientist, or an oligarchy of scientists, should participate in the decisions made. Indeed Rees is an eminently reasonable man who tries to have as few prejudices (or "yuck factors") about things as possible.

He emphasizes the unpredictability of future developments, noting that "straightforward projections of present trends will miss the most revolutionary innovations: the qualitatively new things that really change the world." (p. 12) Nobody before modern physics could have predicted the power of the atomic bomb, nor could the earliest experimenters with electricity have foreseen how electrical power would transform the world.

Like the futurists named above, Rees sees a posthuman future for our kind, a future in which cultural evolution transforms humans into something beyond human. He recalls Darwin, who wrote, "not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity" and notes that "Earth itself may endure, but it will not be humans who cope with the scorching of our planet by the dying sun..." (p. 186) What both Darwin and Rees are acknowledging is that all species eventually become extinct, and so too will humans.

The central point of this book I believe however is to be found further down the page where Rees writes, "Nuclear weapons give an attacking nation a devastating advantage over any feasible defense. New sciences will soon empower small groups, even individuals, with similar leverage over society. Our increasingly interconnected world is vulnerable to new risks; 'bio' or 'cyber,' terror or error. These risks cannot be eliminated: indeed it will be hard to stop them from growing without encroaching on some cherished personal freedoms."

Indeed, this is perhaps the central conundrum of our time made emphatic by the events of September 11th.

One of the most interesting ideas in this book is this from page 154: "Perhaps complex aggregates of atoms, whether brains or machine, can never understand everything about themselves." I am reminded here of Godel's incompleteness theorem in which he demonstrated that mathematics cannot have a truly rigorous logical foundation. I am also reminded of Russell's discovery that the logic of self-referential systems can lead to paradox. Rees's point here is that we may never really know ourselves.

Rees also makes the point on the same page that our machines will accelerate science, perhaps to the point where only machines can understand the new discoveries.

Clearly we are finite creatures in a world that we can never hope to fully understand. Furthermore there will always be dangers that we cannot predict or avoid. These are sobering thoughts for humans to think.

Rees closes by asking if the future will "be filled with life, or as empty as the Earth's first sterile seas" and he opines that "The choice may depend on us, this century."

Here I think he is waxing perhaps a bit melodramatic since, while we may have the ability to destroy civilization here on earth, life will indeed go on since it is highly unlikely that we will develop any time soon the ability to destroy all life. Furthermore, I agree with those who believe that life in some form exists beyond our solar system. Surely we will not be able to destroy them.

Doom gloom and death .......2004-09-21

This is a very clearly written exposition of the major threats facing mankind in the present and near future. It provides sensible discussions of incredible dangers that most of us do not think about most of the time. It is also reasonable in understanding that the nuclear threat has not vanished with the fall of the Soviet Union but has rather transformed. It too presents a picture of possible survival through colonization of other worlds. And it proposes a whole set of possibilities of transformation of humanity into some other form of being which would make our cosmic survival more likely. Its focus however is in discussing the kinds of dangers human tampering with nature and environment bring to the future.
The hopelessness which I personally felt in reading the work comes not only from the possibility that one of the ' doom scenarios' might be realized. It is rather from the strong feeling which Rees is not alone in presenting, that we human beings as we are, are only a temporary stage which will necessarily be transformed into some other more durable, more intelligent kind of ' thing.' I find that this approach undermines the central value of the 'human'as we know it. Human life,individual human beings, human relations in all their complexity, the human relation to the Divine seem to me to be more precious and holy, than our ' survival ' as another ' form of being'. This book is frightening in its negative prospects but too does not console in the picture of the non- human human future, it gives.

Important, maybe even inspiring, but lacks depth.......2004-09-03

I have the greatest respect for Martin Rees both as a leading scientist and as a scientist who believes in making science widely accessible. My sense is that in this book, he presents so much so briefly that the most important themes remain undeveloped.

The doom-and-gloom title only tells part of the story. Rees summarizes the many threats to our civilization, the biosphere, and even to the cosmos as a whole. These risks stem from natural events such as asteroids, comets, or super-massive volcanic eruptions, but even more from human activities. Rees does a good job of reminding us that science and technology are giving individuals, whatever their motivations, access to more and more power. It won't be long before a terrorist group or a Unibomber-type individual could cause enormous destruction, for example by unleashing homemade bioweapons. Other risks come from scientists heedlessly pushing the envelope of fields such as nanotechnology. The cumulative risk, Rees argures, has never been greater, not even during the depths of the cold war.

Still, Rees provides some hope. He advocates a renewed thrust into space, with the idea of establishing self-sufficient groups of humans (or our "descendants" in the form of intelligent machines) away from Earth, where even an Earth-destroying disaster would not bring human (and posthuman) history to a crashing stop.

These are important themes, which Rees backs up by brief references to those who have gone more deeply into them than he has.

I would have felt more satisfied by Our Final Hour if Rees had taken the time to go more deeply into his most important points himself.

Robert Adler, author of Scence Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation; and Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome

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