Professionals' Guide to Commercial Property Development

Book Description

Whimsical, appealing drawings spring like magic from the page as young artists learn how to make charming creations from simple shapes. Each step is carefully shown and finished in full color. Fun examples and instructions all but guarantee success for budding cartoonists! Starting with simple shapes and the most basic materials, these books show young artists the essential skills involved in combining shapes to make characters and objects, simplifying and coloring them.

With 1-2-3 Draw Cartoon Cars, Steve Barr serves up an irresistible and colorful collection for artists of all ages. Starting with a Silly Car reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, he proceeds to cover basic body shapes: sedan, square car, van, station wagon, antique car - and then heads into more exotic racing and sports cars. Some vehicles include drivers (including the Rat Racer, driven by - you guessed it! - a rat), while others become the characters themselves, with bumpers or windshields sporting smiles. While the art is all done in pencil in deference to the elementary school environment, Barr encourages exploration of inking as one's skills develop.

Customer Reviews:

Become a Cartoonist's Apprentice.......2006-05-25

1-2-3 Draw Cartoon Cars was created by Steve Barr who lives in the mountains of North Carolina. He writes and draws syndicated comic strips and has illustrated children's books and board games. His artwork if filled with life and fun and he is also known for his animation projects.

In this book children learn to draw cars and have the option to add cartoon faces. Some of the cars include a Dragster, Convertible, Race Car, Souped-up Roadster and Volkswagen Bug. Each drawing begins with sketches formed from basic shapes and then children can color in the pictures with colored pencils.

A certificate at the end of the book can be filled out to certify that your child has completed the "1-2-3 Draw cartoon Cars" Course.

~The Rebecca Review

Book Description

The richness and color of African cinema have been neglected for too long and its many talented film-makers deserve full recognition. This new and unique book gives detailed information on over 300 major African and Arab film-makers from the main film-producing countries: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Zaire. It also includes important film directors from Southern African states--Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and others--as well as from other African republics. Each entry gives details of the film-maker's career and a complete list of films made. Two extensive indexes arrange film-makers by country and list some 5,000 film titles, in both the original language and English. An important addition is the chronology of African cinema, giving a bold summary of its growth over the last thirty years.

Average customer rating:

Very interesting, but . . .

demi-plenum or demi-vacuum?

Brilliant

The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)
Francis Barker
Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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Similar Items:

Modernity and Subjectivity : Body, Soul, Spirit

The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Architectures of Time: Toward a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture

The King's Two Bodies

The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century

ASIN: 0472065521

Book Description

An ambitious study of literary, aesthetic, and philosophical authors on the modern subject versus the modern body

Customer Reviews:

Very interesting, but . . . .......2005-04-22

It takes a very clever person to write a book this stupid. There is no real argument here, just a string of hyperbolic and oracular assertions. If we try charitably to reconstruct his argument, we come up with something like: *In Pepys' Diary we find represented a private and interiorized sense of self. Shakespeare is not Pepys. Therefore there is no representation of a private self in Shakespeare's plays.* As they say in logic, the undistributed middle is glaring. All Hamlet's talk of "having that within which passeth show" is explained away as gestures toward that which does not yet exist. At the heart of Hamlet's mystery is . . . "nothing" (37). And not just Hamlet, but Renaissance England as a whole does not have any concept of a private self, according to Barker! He completely ignores an enormous body of evidence that contradicts his thesis. Renaissance/medieval confessional literature, spiritual autobiography, lyric poetry, etc. etc. etc. -all simply disregarded. His writing is so bad that it would be laughable if not that people actually take this nonsense seriously. For example, Barker writes, "The split subject is designed at an abject inner distance from itself and from the ambivalent supplementary body which has been exiled, in one of its aspects, from the interior consistency of the subject's discourse to a ghostly, insubstantial place at the margins, and in its other phase, to a location outside discourse as one amongst its objects in the world" (67). There are important cultural differences between the early and late seventeenth century, but Barker comes nowhere near to identifying those differences.

demi-plenum or demi-vacuum?.......2001-01-12

an exquisite and inadvertent disquisition on the atopical nugatoriality of peri-contemporaneous aca-discourse not unanimadverted by the acolytes of pellucidity, even in their most unguarded phase. it is in the very tension between the prefigurations of inner and alienate subjectivity and innate and alien subjectivity that the significurition of the textuality can be impounded and critically uningested; not merely a structure of plus and minus in the complex plane, but at once a set of negative imaginary diodes that dip into singularity via a reductionist yet bourgeois espoused multipolarity, a kind of exogeneity of inhibitive re-embourgeoisement transposed from the complex into the real plenum during a subduct inversion sequence tendentially dominatory of its own meretriciousness, if you get my drift. and anyone who can explain what is meant by 'the inevitable slippage between evinced bipolarity and the decentration itself' gets this week's 'prolixity buster' award of five plenums to spend on something nice for dinner.

Brilliant.......2000-05-07

Francis Barker elucidates in clear, beautiful prose how the "modern" body came into being with the Enlightenment and brought along with it the idea of individual subjectivity. It is easily the best written book on the subject in terms of style alone; I was absolutely won over by Barker's compelling prose style and argument formation. Recommended read to students of literature, art and philosophy. Indeed, a recommended read to everyone!

Average customer rating:

A suitable path through the forest of theory

The Ruy Lopez for the Tournament Player (Batsford Chess Library)
Gary Lane
Manufacturer: Henry Holt & Co (P)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Chess | Board Games | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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Play the King's Indian: A Complete Repertoire for Black in this most Dynamic of Openings

ASIN: 0805023178

Customer Reviews:

A suitable path through the forest of theory.......2006-11-26

Learning the Ruy Lopez can be a real pain for players -- indeed, there are many variations, and even as deep as the 9th move black retains a substantial amount of choices (Breyer, Chigorin, Zaitsev, and the Smyslov are all variations on the 9th move). Gary Lane tackles just about every significant variation (even some of the less important ones) in this book.

Each variation gets a nice preface which summarizes the variation and what the major themes are. Lane nicely presents a key example or two of how white/black want to play and what to avoid. The examples of "what not to do" are especially helpful, and Lane's book seems singular in its ability to present this.

So why should you buy this book over other Ruy books? Well, it gives a very good, precise overview of all the important variations in the Ruy. Things like the Schliemann, Archangelsk, delayed exchange, Cozio, and Berlin are all covered, in addition to the more "popular" closed systems like the Zaitsev, Chigorin etc. From the white side, buying a treatise on just ONE of these isn't going to cut it, because many black players have their own flavor of the Ruy which they like to play. In this sense, it offers a complete, solid, great reperotoire for the white player.

From the black side, there are plenty of choices. If you want to CHOOSE one of the variations in the Ruy, this is a good way to pick among them. However, if you're looking to specialize in, say, the Breyer, pick up a book on that instead.

Dave Norwood, a contemporary of Lane's, said this about openings books: "There are almost certainly more books written on chess than other sport or hobby, and yet so few can be read with anything approaching pleasure. Many opening books are little more than print-offs of ChessBase variations, with the analysis courtesy of Fritz. Any monkey could write them and I suspect that a lot of the time, they do."

The reason I think it's proper to deduct a star (and this should not necessarily deter anyone) is that occasionally there are too many variations printed. It is difficult for a reader to pick and choose the variations to play; you should know some important deviations, but it's a hassle to get bogged down with four alternatives to 13...Rd8.

Lane does a very solid job meeting Norwood's criteria for a book. Like many of the English authors, Gary Lane elucidates things textually and "Ruy Lopez for the Tournament Player" rarely comes across as a ChessBase printout.

On a personal note, this book gained me hundreds of rating points.

Book Description

Beginning PHP 5 E-Commerce shows you how to build a full E-commerce website from design to deployment. This book will be one of the first books dedicated specifically to PHP/MySQL E-commerce development. Guiding you through every step of the design and build process, this book will have you building high-quality, extendable E-commerce websites quickly and with confidence.

This book is primarily aimed at intermediate PHP 5 and MySQL developers willing to learn how to develop quality E-commerce sites. This book is also appropriate for programmers experienced with other web development technologies like ASP.NET or Java, who learn best by example, and want to experience PHP/MySQL development techniques first hand or who need to refer to a quick documentation for a fully developed E-commerce website.

This book shows you how to build a site in three phases. The first phase puts the site live on the web, with an attractive interface and fully searchable product catalog. You can start receiving orders right away, using PayPal's service to handle the shopping cart, checkout, and payment. The second phase adds facilities to increase sales through cross selling and upselling, enhanced customer service, and a better shopping experience. Along the way you'll build your own shopping basket and checkout, but continue to use PayPal for credit card processing. In the third phase, to reduce costs, you’ll find out how to automate order processing, and carry out your own credit card transactions through Verisign PayFlow Pro, and learn how to integrate with other systems using XML Web Services.

Customer Reviews:

Great.......2007-06-12

Although I am having A LOT of trouble implementing all the code, this is the only book I have seen that will actually walk you through all the steps. And the author actually does reply to his emails. I would definitely recomend his second edition of this book.

Introduction to E-Commerce and the Smarty Framework.......2007-02-15

I've read, and enjoyed, other books by Cristian Darie. This book is no different. This book shows how to use PHP 5 and the Smarty framework to produce an E-Commerce site. The Smarty framework is a good choice for PHP developers seeking to implement a good template. This book fills a gap by being a good introduction to this framework as well.

If you are not familiar with Smarty, the following description is from their web site:

Smarty is a template engine for PHP. More specifically, it facilitates a manageable way to separate application logic and content from its presentation. This is best described in a situation where the application programmer and the template designer play different roles, or in most cases are not the same person.

This book guides you as the author develops an advanced E-Commerce system. Think of something such as Amazon, complete with product reviews, customer and catalog management. Once the user is finished reading the book they are left with working catalog order system that they can modify to suit their needs. Or completely create their own similar system.

The table of contents for the book follows:

Chapter 1: Starting an E-Commerce Site
Chapter 2: Laying Out the Foundations
Chapter 3: Creating the Product Catalog: Part I
Chapter 4: Creating the Product Catalog: Part II
Chapter 5: Searching the Catalog
Chapter 6: Receiving Payments using PayPal
Chapter 7: Catalog Administration
Chapter 8: The Shopping Basket
Chapter 9: Dealing with Customer Orders
Chapter 10: Product Recommendations
Chapter 11: Customer Details
Chapter 12: Implementing the Order Pipline: Part I
Chapter 13: Implementing the Order Pipeline: Part II
Chapter 14: Credit Card Transactions
Chapter 15: Product Reviews
Chapter 16: Connecting to Web Services

Misleading.......2007-02-05

I have purchased a multitude of books from Amazon over the years. However, I have never written a book review, no matter how bad the book turned out to be. But, there is always a first time. This is one of the worst - if not the worst - tech books I have ever read, and with over 25 years of Engineering and Software development experience I have read a lot of books.

Now I know why Apress doesn't let you look inside their books on the Amazon website before you purchase. If they did there might not be an Apress at all. First, there is nothing "novice" about this book. Second, you had better know how to use Smarty, and I mean use it well. Don't rely on the Smarty website documentation to help and there are not many definitive books on the subject either. I only found one title devoted to Smarty on Amazon and that would cost another 39.99.

I typically like to review books in the local bookstore and take a gander at Amazon "reviews" before purchase. However, I couldn't find the book locally (which should have told me something) and I failed to pay proper attention to the reviews, i.e., take a look at Michael Brand's review. The editorial book review doesn't even mention Smarty which is a major part of this book.

This book reviews at 4.5 stars. From this, I can only assume the large majority of those reviewing the book work at Apress or are kin to the authors. After the first three chapters I was seeing stars. Don't be suckered in to buying this book unless you are thoroughly familiar with Smarty.

So, if your an experienced -not novice- php/mysql programmer and Smarty wizard, and love to read(and debug) code with little useful explanatory info, then by all means buy this book. Oh, did I mention it makes a great coaster for coffee?

JC.

The Right Book.......2007-01-20

I dont usually spend time writting this stuff, and when i did it, it was not for good reasons. But this time, i'm really really really happy about the material in the book, it not only teaches you about the code, it get depth really depth in how you must implement, think, best practices, and a lot of things that even if you are an experienced programer havent thought about.
If i could give the book 10 stars, i would.

Great programming cookbook.......2006-11-15

This book really helped me start my site. I was new to php and databases at the time, and I always learn best by example. By the time I finished the book, I had way more examples than I needed -- and a skeleton for my site.

Customer Reviews:

BIG Texas Handbook.......2007-09-24

This is one HUGE book. Very intimidating. I was looking for a "handbook" and not something this detailed.

Superb, and not just as an encyclopedia.......2006-08-10

Want to know Texas history? This is your book. Not Fehrenbach or any of the other Fehrenbach imitators. This book is an encyclopedia, arranged in alphabetic entries, but it's also so much more than that. The book opens with a 100 page history of the state which reads like an excellent archival history in itself. Then the entries are a mixture of important political, cultural and historic topics which fill in so many of the critical details of Texas history. Many of the essays written as encyclopedia entries (Literature, for example) are excellent in their own right. This is THE source for Texas history and culture in one BIG volume. Forget about the guidebooks and the other narrative histories. Sink your eyes into this one and appreciate the enormous amount of research, writing and editing that went into this exceptional project. Worth sixty bucks? You bet.

Portable Handbook of Texas.......2006-07-21

This publication covers every thing one would want/need to know about the State of Texas. Most publications on Texas History merely cover the high points. This publication fills in the details.

A RESEARCHER'S DREAM.......2001-01-14

For a researcher in all things Texas, this book is a must. I have been a professional researcher for the past 50 years and anytime I have ever needed anything on Texas or people of Texas I have gone to the "Handbook of Texas" and found it easily. This new edition of the "Handbook of Texas" has only gotten better. You can now carry it around with you and it will be easily accessable at any time. If you need information on Texas, this is the place to go to find it. This book will be on my list as a must and will definitly be mentioned in my research classes as a must for my students. Carlene Peacock Brown

Average customer rating:

THE PORTABLE HANDBOOK OF TEXAS
None Found
Manufacturer: Texas State Historical Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M7Z0AG

Book Description

"When I was 12, I didn't think I would get past ninth grade. When I was 14, I didn't think I would live to my twentieth birthday. For me to be here today is a dream beyond my comprehension."

Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War's aftermath, this memoir tells the story of Trinh Do, a boy fighting for survival in newly unified communist Vietnam. Trinh Do was born in Saigon in 1964. His father, a soldier in the South Vietnam Army, was taken to a re-education camp after the communist victory in 1975. His family was thrown out of their home, and Do took care of his mother and younger brothers. He struggled to stay in school; because of his father, Do faced constant prejudice from the communist administration. He was expelled for refusing to betray his classmates in 1978; soon after, his mother arranged for him to escape Vietnam in a fishing boat. After a perilous journey, he landed in Malaysia, where he spent six months in a refugee camp, and then made his way to the United States. His parents attempted a similar escape four years later and were lost to the South China Sea.

This memoir tells the story of Do's generation coming of age in a brutal period of Vietnam's history and is illustrated with family photographs. Framed within a complex historical setting, it reveals the cruelty inflicted upon the populace by the Vietnamese communists for the purpose of "internal security". An intimate portrait of daily life under communist rule and an examination of the political and military situation, Do's memoir describes the propaganda and repression through the words of a Vietnamese schoolboy.

Customer Reviews:

Inspirational.......2006-08-03

Trinh Do is my hero. The story of his life in Communist Vietnam and of his escape is a testament to the his determination, perseverance and inner strength.

He and his parents displayed amazing resilience in the face of despicable conditions imposed by the corrupt regime. I greatly admire Trihn's:

* Dedication to his intellectual and scholastic development
* Determination in single-handedly toiling on the family farm to stave off starvation
* Moral fortitude in the face of daily bombardment from communist propaganda
* Courage during the terrifying escape

At the risk of seeming trite, I must say that Trinh's tenacity in the face of horrendous situations is my inspiration. When I am feeling sorry for myself, or when a task seems overwhelming, remembering Trinh's story refreshes my perspective.

Life is good. I will persevere.

Account not to be missed.......2005-07-30

Gripping story of the harsh reality of life in Vietnam after 1975. So often we have heard of Vietnamese who got to the point that they were willing to throw caution to the winds and risk everything to escape on some kind of a boat. This account as seen through the eyes of a young boy helps explain why in graphic detail. It is also a tribute to the courage and devotion of his parents who were later lost in their attempt to join their children.

An inspiring page-turner........2004-09-28

Trinh Do and his wife are the parents of one of my daughter's classmates. It was amazing to know these people and then to read the story of what Trinh Do survived. I remember the boat-people stories as meaningless news clips when I was a child, but this book has made the faces of all those people real to me. This story inspired me. It was absorbing, suspenseful, and well-written.

Triumph of the spirit.......2004-07-14

I just finished reading Trinh Do's incredible tale of his life in the years after the fall of South Vietnam. It is a captivating, poignant read interspersed with moments of laugh-out-loud humor. Besides giving a candid account of life under communist rule and the insidious infiltration of propaganda into every aspect of society, Trinh Do's book is also an account of a Vietnamese adolescence replete with dreams, friends,and first love; albeit in a background of utter tragedy.
It is truly amazing that Do can write his memoir with such smooth and flowing prose, as the story is one that can bring out strong emotion in the reader. I have read many memoirs of survival in desperate circumstances-Nyiszli's Auschwitz and Ung's First They Killed My Father come quickly to mind. Do's book ranks at the top of my list.
I will keep a copy to give to my daughter for the time when she is old enough to read it and understand.

Comunist Reality 101.......2004-06-14

Trinh Do's account of daily life after the war is a shocking eye opener for those who are blessed enough not to have live under communist rule. A story of pain, hardship and the will to survive at all cost. The eternal love and sacrifices parents give to their children. A must read for all the ages.

Book Description

A major refutation of the almighty status of genes in evolution and human behavior.

Over the last thirty years, many scientists have come to insist that our behavior is governed by our genes—above all when it comes to sex, which, we are told, is how genes perpetuate themselves.

Not so, argues evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge in this powerful book. Sex certainly seems to us more complicated than a matter of our DNA struggling to survive, and that's because it is. Eldredge directly confronts those who would cast us as puppets of biological imperatives rooted deep in our hunter-gatherer past. Their models, he points out, are based on lower forms of life. In humans, there is an intricate interplay between meeting our needs for day-to-day survival, sex, and reproduction ("the human triangle")—further complicated by cultural forces (customs, laws) that routinely override selfish-gene behavior.

Authoritative and delightfully combative, Why We Do It challenges us to rethink the assumptions of today's science in the important task of understanding ourselves.

Customer Reviews:

The seat of power.......2005-11-23

This book is initially confusing because Eldredge says he is trying to balance genes and environment when, as we read the book, he is really trying to demolish genes entirely.

For a book that is meant to be about sex it is strikingly odd that the clearest manifestation of genetic influences - ie the differences between the sexes - is hardly acknowledged.

Eldredge says that sex in humans is about power and self-esteem but if this were so then the most promiscuous women and prostitutes would be the most powerful people and have the most self-esteem. He also says that humanity has an insatiable desire for pornography. No, Niles, only men do. Without acknowledging these sex differences he can then ignore the significance of reproduction and the 'selfish gene'.

He avoids considering, for example, how the avoidance of inbreeding leads to different groupings of animals within the same species. Sometimes males will do much of their living alone or in an all-male group which cannot be accounted for in economic terms.
That these males will also risk injury or death to join a breeding group rather than just enjoy living itself should tell us that reproduction is not merely a side-effect of living as Eldredge says. Though we need to be alive to reproduce many males and females damage their own 'living' in order to reproduce.

And there can't be many mammalian mothers on the planet who aren't offended by the idea that reproduction is a mere side-effect of living! And does Eldredge really believe squirrels produce baby squirrels as food for foxes??!! That animals do what they do mostly to keep the local ecology going?!

As for humans decoupling sex from reproduction, lets face it, human males never really wanted it coupled in the first place.! Mating is ok but not what comes next. And very few males throughout nature experience any reproductive costs following mating so it should not surprise us if human males feel it is 'natural' to maximise numbers of matings but to use contracepton - preferably by the female so as not to interfere with his potency of course - so as to avoid the known consequences.
As long as a male body is 'mating' it is achieving its reproductive goal. Only the female body 'knows' whether it is reproducing or not, the male body can never really 'know'. It simply reacts to fertility signals - in human females these can be permanent signals just as strong as if they were sporting swollen, pink behinds. Human females have concealed ovulation not by never looking fertile but by always looking, or trying to look, fertile.

Even Eldredge's rape argument is not that support-worthy. Everyone agrees that violent stranger rape is abhorrent. The problem with rape is that the vast majority are far from this. Rape needs to be investigated in an evolutionary context that incorporates the clear differences between the sexes and how human societies view female mate choice.
For Darwin's contemporaries female mate choice was almost an incomprehensible concept. For much of the world today it still is - or it is something that societies do much to prevent as it smells too much to men as infidelity in wives or the wife's sexual refusal of her husband. Hence the widespread practice of controls such as purdah or female genital mutilation - or simple obedience to the husband. Female mate choice, of which rape is one aspect, is a problem for males, and consequently for females, of many species.

Some males, and often the human male, will use resources to seduce females. Perhaps this is why for Eldredge economics seems so much more important than reproduction. Perhaps his 'simply living' is more about the male perspective (not that acquiring resources isn't essential for females too)- more about the male mating effort rather than the female parenting effort. But how we experience being alive and our environment is very different depending on whether we are male or female and this is clearly about the active input of genes.

BUT Eldredge at one point says that a vasectomy 'for most men strikes too close to the seat of power'. So he does, at least subconsciously, know where the power source is - ie in the place where genes are replicated and transported into the next generation. He has to avoid becoming fully conscious of this fact so that he can sustain his view that genes don't matter and the environment is all powerful.

I can appreciate that for political reasons Eldredge may feel compelled to try to make an argument that the engine that drives everything is the environment. But even he recognises on some level where 'the seat of power' really is.

An emotional response to evolutionary psychology.......2005-03-27

This is an attack on what Eldredge calls "ultra-Darwinism" and what he imagines is "selfish gene biology." The main problem in the first instance is that no such animal as "ultra-Darwinism" exists (it's just a slur); and in the second he is tilting against the windmill of a metaphor.

Richard Dawkins, celebrated author of The Selfish Gene (1976), is well aware that genes are not "selfish" in a literal sense. Furthermore, nearly everybody knows that genes work in concert with the environment to shape our biology and our behavior. Indeed, there is nary an evolutionary biologist outside of Bob Jones University who thinks that some kind of endowment, fixed or otherwise, is the exclusive determinate of who we are.

But Eldredge seems unaware of the modern understanding. Not only is he tilting at windmills, he is setting up and trying to knock down straw men that don't exist. Let's look at some of his accusations.

He wants us to know that the drive to eat and stay alive is more fundamental that the drive to reproduce. He calls this the primacy of economics over sex. This is fine, but I know of no evolutionary biologist, anthropologist or sociobiologist who thinks otherwise. They do not mistake the blueprint for the building. Of course in the mass culture a simplistic imbibing of Darwinism and a literal grokking of the metaphor of the selfish gene does exist. It is therefore perhaps a shame that some of this book does not appear in say People Magazine to set the general public straight.

Eldredge notes that reproduction is NOT the purpose of life and posits the existential view that if life has a purpose "it is simply to live." (p. 46) But "purpose" is entirely an anthropomorphic notion and has no place in evolutionary biological thinking.

He wants to emphasize the cooperative nature of organisms as opposed to the idea that nature is competitive. He writes that "overt, no-holds-barred competition in the mating arena is, in the last analysis, relatively rare." And then on the very same page (66) he more or less contradicts himself by writing that male birds "stake out a territory (usually constantly defended against intruding males)..." Note that even using such ideas as "defended" ushers us into the land of metaphor. The birds actually react instinctively to the close proximity of other males and try to chase them away. WE think they are "defending territory."

Eldredge is saying that the males are not fighting over females or sex but are holding onto valuable real estate--that is, their behavior is economic and not sexual. In a nut shell this is his point: life is lived primarily as an economic venture. What counts is getting enough to eat while avoiding life's many pitfalls. He believes it is a mistake to go further and add that the purpose of these behaviors is to reproduce. Again the bugaboo here is that word "purpose." The truth is that all organisms once they have secured the necessities of life try to reproduce. This is NOT the same thing as saying that is their "purpose."

What I especially dislike however is not Eldredge's insistence on what should be obvious, but the surly manner in which he attempts to dismiss certain of his colleagues and his attempt to ridicule ideas he either doesn't understand or thinks are being applied too broadly. His dismissive labeling--"hard-core evolutionary genetics," p. 130; E. O. Wilson's "consilience gambit" (why is it a "gambit"?) p. 249, "ultra-Darwinism," etc.--cannot stand for cogent argument. Particularly offensive is his repetition of what he calls "the Pleistocene cop-out." His argument here is that evolutionary psychologists explain current human behavior in terms of what worked on the savannas of Africa during the period of evolutionary adaptation. What he attempts to show is that our behaviors are culturally directed and not dances choreographed by genetic puppeteers. The truth is our behaviors are the product of both cultural and genetic influences working in concert.

Nonetheless our genetic heritage IS in no small part the product of our experience during the Pleistocene, and it is part of the genius of evolutionary psychology to recognize this fact. Curiously Eldredge reveals that he understands this because on page 190 he writes (referring to Olduvai Gorge in East Africa), "It is the last best vestige of the environment that produced us, giving us insight into the very conditions in which our bodies--and behaviors--were shaped by evolution." That is pure evo psych, but apparently what Eldredge appreciates on one page is not always evident on another!

This is not to say that this book is without merit. Very well done is Eldredge's answer to the idea that rape is evolutionarily adaptive. (It is not: it is socially abhorrent for one thing; and since we are social animals, the rapist's behavior has met and will continue to meet with the severe disapprobation of society to the rapist's reproductive detriment.)

Also very much worth reading is Eldredge's exploration of infanticide and his explanation for its near universal practice throughout human history--although his point that it is not adaptive in an evolutionary sense is flawed. Sometimes it is better to have fewer children so that the ones we do have gain our full economic attention. The fact that this was often achieved through infanticide does not alter that general argument.

It is a shame that Eldredge's emotional need to discredit evolutionary psychology mars what could have been a useful exercise. He should have concentrated on arguments against rape as an evolutionary adaptation and eschewed the mistaken and gratuitous attacks on his colleagues. His general concern that those not expert in evolutionary biology sometimes overrate the genetic human endowment and underrate the cultural influence is a good one; but this point has to be made without straw men and ad hominem attacks, otherwise the author loses credibility and begins to sound more like a radio talk show host than a reputable scientist.

"WWDI" Genetic Enlightenment on Sex, Mores & Having Babies.......2005-03-11

"Why We Do It:..." by Niles Eldredge, NY: W.W.Norton & Co., 2004 - ISBN 0-393-05082-3-hc,(5.5" x 8.25") 269 Pg., includes Notes & Index.

Author of 4 previous books on evolution, Eldredge is a real-life contemporary of Stephen J Gould, & certainly writes convincingly, knowingly on evolutionary biology & denounces Richard Dawkins of "The Selfish Gene" hypothesis (a really hot topicfor 2 decades). Eldredge, emphasizing "decoupling" of Sex from Reproduction, then probes interacting controlling factors influencing the Sex-Economics-Reproduction Triangle.

Table of Contents has 12 Chapters in Parts I-III (Duality of Life, Human Singularities, & Human Triangle). There are, happily, 22 pages of Notes & 11 Pg. Index. Amazingly, Eldredge discourses on - "Evolution throughout the species, altruism, Darwinism, Ultra-Darwinism, sexual & asexual reproduction, AIDS, birth rates & birth control, cancer, SIDS, puberty, Dolly (clone), soma(tic)/germ-line cells, infanticide, rapes, sexual slavery, bonobos, vervet ("green") monkeys, genocide, social systems & social 'norms', prostitution, mores, food-for-sex, sex-for-food, "making babies", and a whole lot more.

"WWDI" displays Eldredge's insightful reasoning skills as he delivers a powerful story about evolutionary genetics in easy to read pose that features meaningful witticisms, and an enviable knowledge of "pop" culture of the rich & poor in lands near & far. He writes with assuredness we associate with SJ Gould & bolsters arguements with facts & tantalizing snipits of information which gives life to his exposition. Although I have a background in genetics & sociology, it is not necessary to have such background to understand & appreciate the merits of this book. I was enlightened by this charming book wherein the author was able to tie so many loose ends together - & you'll enjoy this book as much as I did, so do read it...

Unstructured rant.......2004-10-18

The author is his own worst enemy. I would love to get into his argument, but the entire book is poorly structured and has the taste of a religious rant. Chapters give an illusion of order. By page 40 he has said all he had to say, over and over again at every possible opportunity. I have reached half way and am finding it difficult to motivate myself to continue. The stream of conciousness style and repetition makes for heavy going and little new hard material seems to come. I am especially irritated because I got it in hardback and it wasn't cheap. Catchy title, though.

PS: Just finished the book. It didn't get better. Towards the end, the author even ridiculed a colleague in the field by name! This sort of thing is out of place in a publicly published work.

I admit to being a layman when it comes to genetics, so I enjoy the occasional book to widen my horizons. But in this case, I feel I have stumbled into one side of a private quarrel between erudite gentlemen and am somewhat embarrassed. It is one of the few books I have thrown away.

Persistent phrases and polemics.......2004-09-23

This book is an embarrassment. Using the most misconstrued phrase in biology - "selfish gene" - as a foundation, Eldredge constructs the flimsiest of straw edifices. The structure, named "evolutionary biology" is then subjected to ritual ranting and vituperation. The denunciation focusses on the false idols of Richard Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson. The chorus of the chant is "ultra-Darwinism" - a meaningless term incomprehensibly still in use after a generation without definition. The theme of the exorcism is "economics". In countering what he sees as an established dogma of sex drive and reproduction motivating evolution, Eldredge asserts that all life pivots around its economic environment - food and other resources. How are these obtained, retained and controlled by organisms?

The significant organisms, however, aren't elephants or magpies or scurrying mice. They're humans. This canon of the Gould-Lewontin-Eldredge cabal - keep humans separated from evolution's process - has long been a mainstay. For a book supposedly unveiling the mysteries of evolution's long progression, Eldredge skims over other life in his haste to explain humanity. And he valiantly struggles to do that, but with a novel approach - he focusses on exceptions. In Eldredge's view, the economic foundation of natural selection is manifested in various cultural norms. Not all of these are pleasant, of course. Chinese and Indian cultures weed out daughters [or potential ones] to reduce family costs. To Eldredge, this somehow refutes the notion of DNA's drive to reproduce itself.

An underlying agenda in this book is the long-standing ambition to ease Darwin from centre stage in postulating how evolution works. Darwin fostered "gradualism" and Eldredge was part of the team advocating "punk eek" - the notion that species would reach a state of equilibrium before a "punctuation event" initiated a new type. Darwin wrote of "sexual selection" - almost forecasting how "selfish genes" worked. Eldredge will have none of it, instead postulating that resource demands lead to change. An unfortunate offshoot of his approach is the justification for humans savaging the environment in response to their genetic economic drive. This, of course, is Eldredge's way of undercutting Edward O. Wilson's hopeful proposal of "Consilience" as a means of increasing our knowledge and protecting the biosphere.

Even books intended for general audiences usually include some further reading recommendations. Eldredge can't be bothered with this chore, except for some sketchy entries in his Notes section. His immediate targets are but scantily represented. The true culprits of overstressing the "selfish gene" concept turn out to be media writers, not established researchers. To the initiated, his use of Gabriel Dover in demolishing "ultra-Darwinism" will come as a jolt. This blemish is only one pimple in a deeply flawed and misconceived work. Eldredge fans will rejoice [as will certain anti-conservationists] at this book. Those who've watched the growing wealth of information on animal behaviour, however, will only wonder at his grim tenacity in holding to false concepts. [stephen a. haines, Ottawa, Canada]

WHY WE DO IT : RETHINKING SEX AND THE SELFISH GENE

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WHY WE DO IT : RETHINKING SEX AND THE SELFISH GENE
NILES ELDREDGE
Manufacturer: NORTON, W.W. & COMPANY, INC.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KUSD18

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