The Book Report

2005-12-21T23:45:00.001-05:00

Gene Roddenberry't Andromeda: WaystationSteven E. McDonald©2004ISBN 0-765-30485-6 (hardcover)$24.95Library bookReal courage isn't about charging into the teeth of the enemy with guns blazing. It's about being scared to death andgetting the job done anyway.

2005-12-16T18:28:00.001-05:00

Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the UniverseGeorge Johnson©2005ISBN 0-393-05128-5 (hardcover)$22.95library bookan easy readan easy summary, without math, of the physics that was going on at the time about the brightness of stars, the size of the solar system, and just what it includes

2005-11-24T16:53:00.001-05:00

Against the Fall of NightArthur C. Clarke©1968, 2005ISBN 1-59687-122-9 (paperback/hardcover)$9.95The hype on the back of the book calls this "the fiveting science fiction adventure." I guess I am not made of steel because I didn't find anything riveting about it. It is not my favorite Clarke work.It also says it "Includes the bonus

2005-11-18T20:49:00.001-05:00

The PlanetsDana Sobel©2005ISBN 0-670-03446-0 (hardcover)$24.95Library BookAuthor of Longitude, which I prefiously reviewed, and Galileo's DaughterEvery chapter is a different style of writingan easy read

2005-11-09T20:46:00.001-05:00

Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the UniverseAmir D. Aczel©2005ISBN 0-7679-2033-3 (hardcover)$24.95library bookWhen I first started out the sriting style seemed very choppy. I don't know if it settled down or if I just got used to it but it didn't bother me as much by the end

2005-11-01T18:44:00.001-05:00

The Gangs of New York: An Informal Histort of the UnderworldHerbert Asbury©1927ISBN 1-56025-275-8 (paperback)$14.95library bookI didn't notice it at first but each chapter is a list of gang names, gang leader names, gang meeting place names, gang wars, etc, with one or two more outlandish items picked out to be further expounded upon.

2005-10-19T12:55:00.001-04:00

Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe (Third Edition)Terence Dickinson©1998ISBN 1-55209-302-6 (paperback)$29.95spiral bound so not too bad to deal with even though it is a large format booknice finder charts with information on the chart that you normally have to go somewhere else to read in text of other styles of booksIt

2005-10-19T12:52:00.001-04:00

2005-10-19T12:48:00.001-04:00

The Next Step: Finding and Viewing Messier's ObjectsKen Graun©2005ISBN 1-928771-12-2 (hardcover)$29.95the life and times of Charles Messier, his employer and collaboratorsorininal Messier descriptionsNGC descriptionsfactsa modern descriotiona picture as wide as the FOV of SARall in one placethe book is landscape mode and printed on glossy

2005-10-06T19:26:00.001-04:00

Salem PosessedPaul Boyer & Stephen Nissenbau,©1974ISBN 0-674-78526-6 (paperback)$This is a paperback book that the library has rebound in a hardback binding due to damage.Sounds like the Hattfields and McCoysI had a copy of the paperback cover scanned but lost it when the hard drive crashedI was disappointed. The book was highly praised

2005-10-06T13:03:00.001-04:00

T2: Rising StormS. M. Stirling©1991ISBN 0-380-97792-3 (hardcover)$24.95I lost the book cover scan when the hard drive crasheda book based on the Terminator moviessecond in a series of at least 3 booksclassed as Sci-Fi but other than it having computers and robots it isn't really that much Sci-Fi. The robots are indistinguishible from

2005-09-20T00:49:00.001-04:00

The Left Hand of DarknessUrsula K. Le Guin©1969ISBN 0-441-00731-7 (paperback)$12.95NYPL"...Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling..."It is written in the first person but there are two people doing the writing so sometimes I was a good way into a chapter before I figured

2005-09-20T00:47:00.001-04:00

New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century ManhattanJill Lepore©2005ISBN 1400040299 (hardcover)$26.95NYPLan in depth analysis of the historical evidence relating to the slave revold in New york City in 1741

2005-08-17T15:46:00.001-04:00

The TellingUrsula K. Le Guin©2000ISBN 0-15-100567-2 (hardcover)$24.00it was a slow book for me to read. It wasn't difficult because of the words but because of the cultural aspects are so alien to me. And yet not.i was not expecting the ending. I thought Sutty and the Monitor would be reconciled but that they would become a pair and

2005-08-07T14:34:00.001-04:00

2005-08-03T15:38:00.001-04:00

JavaScript 1.5 By ExampleAdrian Kingsley-Hughes & Kathie Kingsley-Hughes©2001ISBN 0-7897-2499-5 (paperback)$29.99I am reading this book part out of need and part from desire.I have a new web site that uses JavaScript to draw maps using Google's Map API. But I don't really know anything about JavaScript so so far it has been cut and paste

2005-07-29T18:00:00.001-04:00

The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi ScientistsTom Bower©1987ISBN 0-316-10399-3 (hardcover)$17.95Library book"The Americans have a habit," commented one British official, "of assuming the propriety and legality of something they do which, if done by anyone else, they would regard as highly illegal and unethical"

2005-07-14T23:16:00.001-04:00

The Lathe of HeavenUrsula K Le Guin©1971ISBN 684-12529-3 (hardcover)$4.95How the price of books has changed. If it were still in print I would probably be paying $25 for this book today.I saw the movie (Lathe of Heaven) based on this book at the library and borrowed it not knowing anything about it. At a meeting that night someone saw

2005-07-12T00:12:00.001-04:00

2005-07-08T13:59:00.001-04:00

Ghost Ship: The mysterious true story o the Mary Celeste and her missing crewBrian Hicks©2004ISBN 0-345-466665-9 (paperback)$14.95the mystery remains a mysteryhow does he know what the captain was thinking when he was not available to testify at the trial after the fact

2005-07-07T15:00:00.002-04:00

Songs of the SeaStan Hugill©1977ISBN 0-07-031138-2 (hardcover)$17.50I have been borrowing all the books of sea chanties the New York Public Library has to collect the words to the songs I sing at the monthly chanty sings I attend. I hadn't thought to document them here, primarily because most of them did not have dust jackets.Hugill is

2005-07-07T14:47:00.001-04:00

2005-07-07T14:12:00.001-04:00

Essential Atlas of AstronomyParramon's Editorial Team©2001ISBN 0-7641-2276-2r (paperback)$11.95not a sky chart but a description of the different types of celestial objectstranslated from Spanish, needs a native English speaking editor

2005-07-07T14:09:00.001-04:00

Stargazing With A Telescope: Revised EditionRobin Scagell©2005ISBN 1-55407-027-9 (paperback)$14.95now that i own parts of a telescope (not among them the instruction manual) I thought i should read something about using ita Firefly book

2005-05-30T07:22:00.000-04:00

I am still reading. I just haven't been doing that much writing about it. Most of my creative energies are going into documenting my astronomical observations.

2004-07-07T03:24:00.000-04:00

Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York Randy Kennedy ©2004 ISBN 0-312-32434-0 (paperback) $13.95 The first NYC subway rolled out of City Hall station on 27 October 1904, almost 100 years ago. Capitalizing on the centennial New York Times columnist Randy Kennedy has compiled into a book some of the columns he wrote for that paper between 2000 and 2003. As a New Yorker who has

2004-07-05T23:45:00.000-04:00

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 Brian Fagan ©2000 ISBN 0-465-02272-3 (paperback) $16.00 At a time when New York City was frozen solid this was an appropriate book to start reading. It has taken me so long to get through it that I have forgotten much about it. It is not a difficult book to read. It just doesn't hold me in my seat the way other livelier books do. I

2004-07-05T13:00:00.000-04:00

Venus in Transit Eli Maor © 2004 ISBN 0-691-11589-3 (paperback) $17.95 This book was originally published in 2000 as June 8, 2004: Venus in Transit as a hardcover book and was expanded and rereleased in paperback form in 2004 in anticipation of the June 8, 2004 transit. It is not really a guidebook to the June 8, 2004 transit. It puts the transit in perspective. It looks at observations of

2004-07-05T12:00:00.000-04:00

St. Benedict's Rule For Monasteries Leonard J. Doyle (translator) ©1948 ISBN 0-8146-0644-X (paperback) $4.95 This version of the Rule for Monasteries was produced to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Liturgical Press at St John's Abbey in Minnesota. It is arranged as a dailly devotional. An online version can be found at http://www.osb.org/rb/text/toc.html. I picked up my small

2004-05-25T22:50:00.000-04:00

The Western Ocean Packets Basil Lubbock originally published 1925, reprinted 1988, no copyright ISBN 0-486-25684-7 (paperback) $5.95 Each of the two chapters is broken up into sections that can be as short as one sentence long or as long as a few pages. It makes for a choppy read. The introduction says the book first appeared as a series of brief magazine pieces that were reassembled into a

2004-05-21T12:00:00.000-04:00

Life In A California Mission: The Journals of Jean François de La Pérouse Malcolm Margolin ©1989 ISBN 0-930588-39-8 (paperback) $10.95 I paicked this book up while visiting Monterey. It describes life in the missions of southern California, then called Alta California, in the 1780s. It is based on the journals of Jean François de La Pérouse. Monterey was the capital of Alta California at

2004-05-14T03:55:00.000-04:00

The Great influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History John M. Barry ©2004 ISBN 0-670-89473-7 (hardcover) $29.95 This book is at once a history, a science book, and multiple biographies. History encompasses a lot. You could say the same for biography or science. But when I read a book from one genre that is what I am expecting. The Great Influenza was too all encompassing

2004-04-19T21:02:00.000-04:00

The Empire of Tea: The Remarkable History of the Plant That Took Over The World Alan MacFarlane and Iris MacFarlane ©2003 ISBN 1-5867-493-1 (paperback/hardcover) $22.95 This is another history similar to Cod and Salt which I read and reviewed previously. It covers an item of food since its earliest recollections through the present. This story deals primarily with the production of tea in

2004-04-09T12:27:00.000-04:00

Star Charts and Glow-In-The-Dark Star Finder Hubbard Scientific ©2000 ISBN none (paperback) $24.95 When I was growing up I learned somewhere that when you are gifted with money you should use it for something that you would like to have but would not buy for yourself rather than for practical everyday necessities. That is kind of how I came by this book. I was attending an annual

2004-04-09T11:09:00.000-04:00

The MILITIA-MANContaining, NECESSARY RULESFor BothOFFICER and SOLDIER.With an explanation of theManual EXERCISES of the FOOT. Illustrated withForty-Eight Cuts representing the different Positions ofA SOLDIER under ARMS.In which is prefixed, A Proposal for making the Love of Arms universal,And some Proofs, that many ofThe greatest Military Arts have been performed byMILITIA. ~1740 ISBN 0-9633659-

2004-04-04T07:43:00.000-04:00

Spirit In The Stone: A Handbook of Southwest Indian Animal Carvings and Beliefs Mark Bahti ©1999 ISBN 1-887896-09-0 (paperback) $15.99 Fetishes are stones, or sometimes other natural objects, which Native Americans of the southwest find, that remind them of an animal that they hold sacred. Fetishes are used in devotions to evoke the spirit of the animal represented. In the home the fetishes

2004-03-25T07:49:00.000-05:00

Graze Observer's Handbook Harold R. Povenmire ©1979 (Second Edition) ISBN 0-934086-00-1 (hardcover) $ (out of print) This is another book that is out of print. My copy is a second hand one that was discarded by a JHS library in Florida and may have been checked out once. It isn't the kind of book you are going to read unless you need to, and since I am trying to observe grazing occultations I

2004-03-20T13:46:00.000-05:00

The Belarus Secret John Loftus ©1982 ISBN 0-394-52292-3 (hardcover) $13.95 (out of print) Several of the books I have read over the past few years have made reference to Operation Paperclip, a secret program at the end of World War II to recruit German scientists for the United States, ostensibly to deny the resource to the Russians. There were other programs of a similar nature going on at

2004-03-12T16:34:00.000-05:00

Panoramic Photography Joseph Meehan ©1996 (Revised and Updated version) ISBN 0-8174-5347-4 (paperback) $27.50 At the end of April I will be attending the international conference if the International Association of Panoramic Photographers of which I am a member. I plan to take their test for Qualified Panoramic Photographer again (I have already passed the test once and fulfilled all the other

2004-02-24T15:14:00.000-05:00

The Hammer of God Arthur C Clarke ©1993 ISBN 0-553-56871-X (paperback) $7.50 Quick looks at earth's history of brushes with and impacts by objects from space and a look at how we might deal with an upcoming impact and the possible outcome. Near Earth Objects (NEOs) have been a hot topic recently, but I suspect that they will now take a back seat to the new race to the Moon and Mars unless the

2004-02-08T19:44:00.000-05:00

Brain Powered Yuriru Sugisaki (art) and Yoshiyuki Tomino (story) ©1998 (Japan) ©2003 (English translation) ISBN 1-59182-389-7 (paperback) $9.99 I have seen these books in the stores for a while now and picked them up a couple of times to see what they are about. Yesterday I bought one just to get the full experience. These books come from Japan and have been translated from Japanese into

2004-02-07T07:45:00.000-05:00

They Dance in the Sky Jean Guard Monroe and Roy A. Williamson ©1987 ISBN 0-395-39970-X (hardcover) $16.00 Each country has its own mythology about the stars. In some countries the constellations have different names that don't relate in any way to the ones we know, whichever they happen to be. So it is not surprising that there are many Native American stories about the same stars. There

2004-01-12T15:44:00.000-05:00

Nothing to Report It is the start of a new year and researching possible astronomy observations is filling a lot of the time I would normally use for reading. And the book I am reading is a slow go. So it is likely to be sometime in February before there are any new posts here

2003-12-21T17:16:00.000-05:00

Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World Mark Kurlansky © 1997 ISBN 0-14-027501-0 (paperback) $14.00 Cod starts out as an enjoyable history of the cod fishing industry. It starts in the days when boats were small and slow, and catches were plentiful. Over time technologies have increased man’s ability to harvest greater catches from the sea and the catches became smaller. So more

2003-12-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

Shaman Pass Stan Jones © 2003 ISBN 1-56947-332-3 (hardcover) $22.00 This was a very enjoyable book to read. I thought I was going to read it straight through but sleep eventually got in the way. It is the tale of an investigation by Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active into the theft of a mummy and the subsequent murder of a local resident. The trooper is an indigenous person who has been

2003-12-01T22:49:00.000-05:00

Inviting Disaster: Lessons From The Edge of Technology: An Inside Look at Catastrophes and Why They Happen James R Chiles © 2001, 2002 ISBN 0-06-662082-1 (paperback) $15.95 The person who lent this book to me warned me that it was a hard book too read and that warning proved to be accurate. I rarely was able to finish a chapter (about 20 pages) in a single sitting, sometimes even in a single

2003-10-31T15:32:00.000-05:00

Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability Steve Krug © 2000 ISBN 0-7897-2310-7 (paperback) $35.00 If you write, or want to write, Web pages you should read this book. It will help you to design your pages so they are usable by others. Over the years I have developed certain techniques for my web pages that have worked for me. This book validated what I had learned by

2003-10-24T00:07:00.000-04:00

Stikky Night Skies: Learn 6 Constellations, 4 Stars, a Planet, a Galaxy, and How to Navigate at Night-in One Hour, Guaranteed. www.stikky.com © 2003 ISBN 1-56858-253-6 (paperback) $12.00 I did not learn the six guaranteed constellations using this book and it was not through any fault of my own. No one will learn six constellations using this book since it only teaches four. The remaining two

2003-10-20T22:11:00.000-04:00

Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things: How to turn a penny into a radio, make a flood alarm with an aspirin, change milk into plastic, extract water and electricity from thin air, turn on a TV with your ring, and other amazing feats Cy Tymony © 2003 ISBN 0-7407-3859-3 (paperback) $10.95 Interesting but not practical. If I had the resources to carry out most of these projects I would probably have

2003-10-16T00:15:00.000-04:00

Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa Nicholas Shrady © 2003 ISBN 0-7432-2926-6 (hardcover) $21.95 I bought this book more because I was intrigued by its form factor than by the subject matter. not that the Tower of Pisa isn’t of interest to me as an architectural object. Nominally a history of the leaning Tower of Pisa, but more so a history of Pisa beginning before the tower was even

2003-10-13T13:47:00.000-04:00

Salt: A World History Mark Kurlansky © 2002 ISBN 0-14-200161-9 (paperback) $15.00 Salt; NaCl; Sodium Chloride. As most of us know it, t is a small mineral grain we sprinkle over french fries, and a comparably small word . Even in its scientific form isn’t all that impressive. So how do you stretch it out into a book of 450 pages. This is my kind of history. Yeah, it talks about wars

2003-10-05T15:40:00.000-04:00

The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology Nick Cook © 2001 ISBN 0-7679-0628-4 (paperback) $14.95 This book is a mystery as well as a history. It is chronicles the search for the truth about supposed research in WW II Germany into technologies that would defy gravity and may have resulted in flying saucer-like aircraft and be included in the US stealth

2003-10-01T15:14:00.000-04:00

The Americas: A Hemispheric History Felipe Fernández-Armesto © 2003 ISBN 0-375-50476-1 (hardcover) $19.95 To be fair to this book, pure history is really not my cup of tea. I have never had an interest in memorizing what happened to who when and why. I do much better with small histories; books about the history of a small piece of our history; books like Coal or Salt that deal with one

2003-08-21T23:55:00.000-04:00

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Mary Roach © 2003 ISBN 0-393-05093-9 (hardcover) $23.95 This is not a book for everyone. It deals with how human cadavers (dead bodies) have and continue to be used in the furtherance of scientific knowledge. The descriptions of some of the uses are rather graphic and could be disturbing to some. Others may feel that the author's treatment of

2003-08-19T14:16:00.000-04:00

Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America Scott Ritter © 2003 ISBN 1-893956-47-4 (paperback) $11.95 This book is based on the premise that everything the Bush administration has said about the war in Iraq and the need to begin it is a complete lie and that Scott Ritter is virtually the only person who has ever told the truth about Iraq and Weapons of Mass

2003-08-11T09:38:00.000-04:00

Tales from Planet Earth Arthur C. Clarke © 2001 ISBN 00-7434-2379-9 (paperback) $14.00 There is nothing new in this book. It was a 1990 re-assemblage of Clarke writings that was reprinted as a 2001 Anniversary Edition. The stories are mainly Clarke’s early ones having been written between 1945 and 1961 with one outlier coming in at 1987 in a piece of political satire. I know I see

2003-08-02T16:44:00.000-04:00

more backBlog -- I'll write about some previously read books today since I have just finished one book started another book of short stories. A while back I was looking for something to read and came across Chesapeake Invader. This was before Near Earth Asteroids became a hot topic and I had never really given meteorite/asteroid impacts much thought, particularly in relation to where I lived.

2003-08-02T16:42:00.000-04:00

Chesapeake Invader: Discovering America’s Giant Meteorite Crater C. Wylie Poag © 1999 ISBN 0-691-00919-8 (hardcover) This book reminds me of the books that were around a while back about the prehistoric man who were found in the ice of the Alps or the bogs of England. They are all part science and part detective mystery. And so it is with Chesapeake Invader. Within its pages you will see

2003-08-02T16:14:00.000-04:00

Meteorite Craters Kathleen Mark © 1995 ISBN 0-8165-1569-9 (paperback) While Meteorite Craters was not designed as a guidebook that is the way I viewed it. There are descriptions of various known meteor craters around the world. But there are other books that are better as guidebooks. This book is more about the science of how the craters were formed. Craters are grouped by morphology

2003-08-02T15:59:00.000-04:00

Rain of Iron and Ice: The Very Real Threat of Comet and Asteroid Bombardment John S. Lewis © 1996 ISBN 0-201-15494-2 (paperback) $13.00 In contrast to Target Earth, Rain of Iron and Ice is all text, and very densely packed text at that. It also doesn’t have the same agenda (provoke a public hew and cry that will result in government finding for the author’s projects). It is more of a

2003-08-02T15:17:00.000-04:00

Target Earth: The Search for Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets That Threaten Our Planet Duncan Steel © 2000 ISBN 0-7621-0298-5 (hardcover) $24.99 Personally I don’t like books that use sensationalism and that is what this book does. The sensational cover images and title play on the present “the sky is falling” paranoia to sell the book. I am not saying that I don’t believe large

2003-08-01T18:27:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Windows XP Professional Administrator’s Pocket Consultant William R Stanek © 2001 ISBN 0-7356-1381-8 (paperback) $29.99 This book is aimed at the IT professional. Microsoft must have gotten the that their products break a lot, (fortunately XP doesn’t break as often as its predecessors but it still breaks) and that the people who have to support it don’t have time to do a lot of

2003-08-01T18:09:00.000-04:00

New York Vertical Horst Hamann © 2000 ISBN 3-8238-5473-9 (hardcover) This book comes in two formats. One is a large coffee table book that is probably around 11x30 inches. My copy is almost a pocket book size at around 4x9 inches. Both versions are hardcover books. There is no price printed on it and I got the little one as a remainder so it was fairly cheap. In the book you will find

2003-07-31T14:44:00.000-04:00

The Catskill Witch and Other Tales of the Hudson Valley James McMurry © 1974 ISBN 8156-0105-0 (hardcover) $6.95 I love to read stories of how indigenous people viewed their history and buy those books wherever I go. This is a book along those lines that I bought back in the 80s and has been sitting on a bookshelf unread ever since. The Catskill Witch is a collection of 16 short stories

2003-07-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

The Voyageur Grace Lee Nute © 1931 ISBN none (hardcover) $5.00 I have had this book so long it predates the ISBN system, its dust jacket is brown with age, and the binding crackles when you open it. It was in its fourth reprinting by the Minnesota Historical Society when I bought it in the mid-70s. Back then I was heavily involved in canoeing, teaching several extended courses each summer

2003-07-22T15:19:00.000-04:00

Circles of Stone Max Milligan © 2002 ISBN 1-86046-661-3 (hardcover) £30 This book is a step up from Sacred Celtic Places (reviewed previously) but essentially the same idea. It is a large format book (larger than my scanner platten so the image is slightly cropped) filled with beautiful images or stone circles which, unfortunately, are not terribly well printed. That this is intended

2003-07-22T15:16:00.000-04:00

Sacred Celtic Places Iain Zaczek © 2002 ISBN 0-7607-3422-4 (hardcover) This is essentially a coffee table book. There are lots of nice pictures with mostly related text. Like Celtic endless knot designs, this book has sections and patterns that repeat and loop back on themselves. The book is divided into chapters on Ancestors, Gods, Heroes, and Holy Men. Within each chapter is a page or

2003-07-22T12:43:00.000-04:00

The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth Alan Cutler © 2003 ISBN 0-525-94708-6 (hardcover) $23.95 Part history of science, and part biography, The Seashell on the Mountaintop looks at the earliest beginnings of the science we know today as geology. Despite Cutler’s urgings to the contrary I still view

2003-07-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

What’s Out Tonight: 50 Year Astronomy Field Guide 2000 to 2050 Ken Graun © 1999 ISBN 192877100-9 (paperback) $39.95 What’s Out tonight is somewhere between a star guide and an almanac. It doesn’t have the detail to do either thing well but it is a useful merger of the two. The star charts show the constellations in a distorted view, as they will appear in the sky at that particular time.

2003-07-18T12:41:00.000-04:00

backBlog -- Its time to take a little break from reading and do some more writing. This morning I’ll spend a little time clearing up some more of the backBlog of book reports I still have to write.

2003-07-18T12:36:00.000-04:00

Ancient Ireland: Life Before the Celts Laurence Flanagan © 2000 ISBN 0-7171-2433-9 (paperback) $10-25 punt This is a book I picked up in Ireland where I visited several megalithic sites. It is not a book that I would recommend for light bedtime reading. Flanagan looks at the archeological evidence from sites all over Ireland from the various eras of history, as we know them today (

2003-07-18T12:23:00.000-04:00

The Hatfields & the McCoys Otis K. Rice © 1982 ISBN 0-8131-1459-4 (hardcover) I went to college in West Virginia and at the time read reprints of the Harpers Weekly reports of the Hatfield/McCoy feud so had to get this book when I found it in a Maryland bookstore. Since it was written much after the fact and not by a partisan, it is more of an objective account of the most famous feud in

2003-07-18T12:13:00.000-04:00

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers Tom Standage © 1998 ISBN 0-425-171691-8 (paperback) $12.00 Using the metaphor of the Internet, which we all understand today, Ton Stnadage implores the social implications of the development of the telegraph. The chapters are short so you don’t get bogged down with lots o physics.

2003-07-18T12:05:00.000-04:00

Stars and Planets: A companion guide for amateur astronomers Joachim Ekrutt © 1990 ISBN 0-8120-4776-1 (paperback) $13.95 This book is dated now so it is not something I would consider buying now unless there is a new version and this far into the new decade it does not look like there will be one. It starts off with your usual astrophysics 101 chapter which is followed by a chapter on

2003-07-18T11:38:00.000-04:00

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime Miles Harvey © 2000 ISBN 0-375-50151-7 (hardcover) $24.95 This is the story of how a man stole bunches of rare maps from libraries around North America. It is part history, part biography and part autobiography. Reading The Island of Lost Maps you will learn a little bit about the history of cartography (map making) and how

2003-07-18T11:19:00.000-04:00

Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia Gregory Benford © 1999 ISBN 0-380-97537-8 (hardcover) $20.00 This is an interesting book. It asks, and tries to answer, the question” How do you communicate with someone (or something) it you don’t know anything about that being it its culture. How do you communicate to a culture that may arrive on the earth tens of thousands of

2003-07-11T03:57:00.000-04:00

The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth’s Antiquity Jack Repcheck © 2003 ISBN 0-7383-0692-X (hardcover) $26.00 It seems inconceivable today that at one time we believed that the earth was only 6,000 years old. But that is the fact that was held onto for a very long tine. Priests made the initial estimates of the age of the earth. They were the learned men of

2003-07-09T17:17:00.000-04:00

backBlog - It is finally cool enough here that I can think and type without sweating. So I am going to take this opportunity to work off some of my backBlog of book reports. All of the reports today are on books that I had read before I started blogging. That means I am digging back into my memory here and the lack of detail in some of the reports is a direct result of that. Sometimes, also,

2003-07-09T17:10:00.000-04:00

Megaliths: Stones of Memory Jean-Pierre Mohen © 1998 (English translation © 1999) ISBN 0-8109-28421-2 (paperback) $12.95 After reading Signs, Symbols and Ciphers from the Abrams’ Discoveries series I picked up Megaliths. Megaliths are something that have always fascinated me since learning about Easter Island as a child. I have been to Stonehenge in England and to Easter Island to

2003-07-09T16:34:00.000-04:00

Signs, Symbols and Ciphers Georges Jean © 1989 (English translation © 1998) ISBN 0-8109-2842-6 (paperback) $12.95 This was my introduction to the Discovries series of books from Abrams. Both of the volumes I have were originally written in French and translated into English for the series. The books are divided into two sections. The first section is the text that is heavily

2003-07-09T16:07:00.000-04:00

The Sleeper Awakes H.G. Wells © 2000 (written 1910) ISBN (paperback) $13.95 I have real a lot of Wells but this seems to be on obscure title. I had never seen it until I ran across this centennial edition. It has been through several iterations and this one is supposed to have been Wells' favorite. The story Begins in England in 1897. The primary character, Garreth Davies-Morris, an

2003-07-09T15:21:00.000-04:00

The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story Richard Preston © 2002 ISBN 0-375-50856-2 (hardcover) $24.95 This is one of those books that I thought I was getting one thing and ended getting up another. I bought it when I was looking for something to read shortly after the anthrax letters started appearing in the US in 2001. They were mentioned in the fly jacket description and I assumed that

2003-07-09T14:21:00.000-04:00

Manhattan Block By Block: A Street Atlas John Tauranac © 2000 ISBN 1-878892-12-6 (paperback) $14.95 This is another one of those street atlases that is great for getting around a neighborhood but not particularly good for getting there. The maps are very detailed even showing the footprints and names of major buildings and footpaths in the larger parks. Address ranges are provided, as

2003-07-09T14:06:00.000-04:00

TimeLord: Sir Sandford Flemming and the Creation of Standard Time Clark Blaise © 2000 ISBN 0-375-40176-8 (hardcover) $24.00 Back in the old days you didn’t need timepiece. When the sun got up you got up and went to pick berries until the sun went to sleep. Then you did the same thing. Sol kept repeating this routine and so did you. Then societies advanced and things got more

2003-07-06T15:33:00.000-04:00

The Nigger of the “Narcissus” Joseph Conrad © 1999 (originally published in 1897) ISBN 0-486-40880-9 (paperback) $1.50 I’ll deal with the indelicate title of this book first. That is the title Conrad gave it when he wrote it back in 1897. There is some indication in the book that using the term “nigger” when speaking of black people might have been falling out of favor at that time, but

2003-06-26T10:57:00.000-04:00

GPS Made Easy – Third Edition Lawrence Letham © 2001 ISBN 0-89886-802-5 (paperback) $14.95 If you are thinking about buying a GPS receiver I would recommend that you buy and read this book first. You will learn about all of the features that are included on the various units available and be better equipped to decide which ones are important to you and which you can live without. In the

2003-06-22T20:27:00.000-04:00

David H. Levy's Guide to the Stars Ken Graun, Dean Koenig, David H. Levy and Wendee Wallach-Levy ©2000 ISBN 1-928771-01-7 Technically –- and even untechnically -– this is not a book. But it has an ISBN number (why do we call it an ISBN number when ISBN means International Standard Book Number), and I bought it in a bookstore. So I am going to treat it as though it were a book and tell you

2003-06-22T19:40:00.000-04:00

National Audubon Society First Field Guide to the Night Sky Gary Mechler ©1999 ISBN 0-590-64086-0 (paperback) $8.95 This is my least used book of star charts. It isn’t small enough to fit into my pocket to go into the field. And it doesn’t have the amount of information on the constellations that is available in its big brother, the Field Guide to the Night Sky. But does have beautiful star

2003-06-22T18:55:00.000-04:00

National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky Dr Mark Chartrand ©1991 ISBN 0-679-77998-1 (paperback) $19.00 This is the big brother to the National Audubon Society Pocket Guide: Constellations that was co-authored by Mark Chartrand. I say this is the Pocket Guide’s big brother because it has all the information in it. There is an expanded science section up front. It also covers the

2003-06-22T17:34:00.000-04:00

National Audubon Society Pocket Guide: Constellations Dr Gary Mechler and Dr Mark Chartrand ©1995 ISBN 0-679-77998-1 (paperback) $9.00 This little book is my most used star guide. There is nothing fancy about it. The information it contains is very basic. The Introduction is a brief 25 pages and almost all of the science is contained there. Next comes the star charts. They come in two

2003-06-17T05:37:00.000-04:00

The Way of a Ship: A Square Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail Derrek Lundy ©2003 ISBN 0-06-621012-7 (hardcover) $29.95 I purchased this book off of the non-fiction table at a local bookstore. But in reading the preface I found that it is actually more of a historical novel. Like me, Derek Lundy had a relative, Benjamin Lundy, who was a merchant seaman on a square-rigger in the 1800s. He

2003-06-11T10:40:00.000-04:00

Ancient Irish Legends Padraic O'Farrell ©1995 ISBN 0-7171-3167-X (paperback) Celtic Mythology comes to us through the oral tradition that was later documented and interpreted. The documentation took place during the arrival of Christianity in the Celtic world. The stories that come down to us today are grouped into four categories:The Mythological CycleThe Red Branch (Ulster) CycleThe Cycle

2003-05-26T20:57:00.000-04:00

The Wireless Networking Starter Kit: The practical guide to Wi-Fi networks for Windows and Macintosh Adam Engst and Glenn Fleisham ©2003 ISBN 0-321-17408-9 (paperback) $29.99 This is a technology book which I have read cover to cover. Ok, since I am a PC kind of guy I didn't actually read the passages about installing stuff on the Mac, but the rest of it I read. That is for two reasons: I am

2003-05-10T21:43:00.000-04:00

Exploring the Night Sly with Binoculars David Chandler ©2002 ISBN 1-891938-10-X (paperback) $8.00 This is a brief guide to getting started in stargazing with binoculars. It gives you an idea of some of the things binoculars will help you observe. There are some star charts to show you where representative objects of each class are in the heavens. But this isn't a guidebook to the stars.

2003-05-05T16:20:00.000-04:00

NFT: NOT FOR TOURISTS Guide to Manhattan, 2002 Happy Mazza Media ©2001 ISBN 0-9672303-4-9 (paperback) $16.95 This is a great atlas for Manhattan when you want to know where everything is after you get there. Manhattan is broken up into 25 neighborhood maps which name all of the streets and provide address ranges. I find the tiny orange type for the address ranges hard to read over the yellow

2003-05-05T15:10:00.000-04:00

NY@tlas Stephan Van Dam VanDam, Inc ©1998 ISBN 0931141907 (paperback) $14.95 There are a lot of great atlases for New York City. This is one of my favorites for getting around town on foot. The atlas covers all of New York City, not just Manhattan or Lower Manhattan. All of the streets are named and starting address ranges are noted at intersections. Prominent landmarks are depicted on the

2003-04-30T01:38:00.000-04:00

In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made Norman Cantor Perennial ©2002 ISBN: 0060014342 (paperback) $13.95 I have loaned this book out and am waiting until it comes home before I try to write the review for it. But, basically, this is book takes a look at how smallpox affected varous aspects of society primarily in Europe.