Review: Jaff Mad Monstro

Jaff Mad Monstro by Jaffe

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I've been collecting some MAD stuff here and there, but haven't really read anything since grade school. I thought I'd read this "Al Jaffee's MAD (Yecch!) Monstrosities", now. Still makes me chuckle. I like the absurdist jokes of Jaffee's written humor, but it is really the stylized drawings that I like.



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Review: Uranography: A Brief Description of the Constellations Visible in the United States, with Star-Maps, and Lists of Objects Observable with a Small Telescope

Uranography: A Brief Description of the Constellations Visible in the United States, with Star-Maps, and Lists of Objects Observable with a Small Telescope by Charles Augustus Young

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The pull-out star-maps and dictionary-like lists of objects in this compact imitation leather pocket guide is a detailed vintage look at star-gazing in 1936 in North America. It is much more technical than I think coud excite the typical amateur today which somehow seems to us having lost some incisive yearning along with the light pollution of the decades...



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Review: On the Origin of Species

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Do youself a favor and review or print out the Divergence of Taxa diagram. to know what Darwin is explaining, as he often refers to this image. As such, this is one of the reasons this technical work is actually a poor choice for an audiobook. Also, this particular narrator of the 2nd (1859) British edition has some unusual pronunciation mannerisms: "pupae" sound like excreta in the eye, "inference" has furry accent on an indentified second syllable, and "protean" is a homonym to "protein". Who knew!

Still, I like to listen to Darwin tell of his experiments in applying the scientific method to his theory: tickling aphids, floating seeds, picking at duck feet, and more. A lot here reminds of [b:Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger|984782|Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger|Galileo Galilei|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328873274s/984782.jpg|1229651] in the joy of being on the edge of science. The differences are Darwin is rushing to print and breathlessly touring us through his thought-cathedral as like-minded innovators are going to print with their independent discoveries. It just goes to show it was all "in the air" at the time. Darwin makes convincing arguments about the logical results of natural selection from his journeys to Tierra del Fuego and beyond as well as speaking in detail of the results of then contemporary paleontology (more advanced than I had realized, to study ahead and know your Silurian period from your Cretaceous) as well as strong, studied examples in homology, vestigal forms, and embryology.



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Review: Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger

Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger by Galileo Galilei

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



It was a joy reading this translated work. Like the essays of [a:Michel de Montaigne|17241|Michel de Montaigne|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1332479195p2/17241.jpg], Galileo assys forward throgh his telescope in a thoughtful fashion that telegraphs the excitement he must have felt. I can see the shadows of the moon revealting the rotation of that world and its mountains...



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Review: Player Manager: The Rise of Professionals Who Manage While They Work

Player Manager: The Rise of Professionals Who Manage While They Work by Philip Augar

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The authors have "changed personal details, amalgamated certain chanracters, conversations and events, and created new settings" to the poin I have my doubts on whether this book should be classified as non-fiction. Like a movie "based on a true story", I found myself approaching at entertainment, not science. There is such a reproduction of detailed dialogue in settings of invention that I think wea re detailing here with wanna-be playwrights, not career advisors.

Briefly touched on is this largely American corporate history that has led to middle managers that are producers too, the theme of this book. I would have liked more of that. The only thing I would refer to here again is Table 9.1 "Taking Command" with such tings as:

A Rookie Asks: What do they nned to know?
A Veteran Asks: What do they nned to understand?

I'll photocopy that, and ditch the book. On their "Rookie" type they at least twice list as a "Strength" bneing new to the complex arena of managing and producing. This is one of the things they should have amplified in detail instead of filling pages of imagined conversation and email exchanges.



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Review: The Rise & Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change & Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000

The Rise & Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change & Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 by Paul M. Kennedy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book covers from the Ottoman Empire to The Cold War; roughly 500 years in as many pages. This brisk pace makes the mostly military history come across like a zoetrope; animation through rapid motion. The approach to war is one of the logistics over strategy; technology and foreign cash reserves factor in more than geography and division count. The final chapter looking ahead is almost quanit as the 1987 work still has to consider East Germany and the USSR. However, even then there were still relevant topics: Latin America's drugs into the US, the rise of China, America's uncertain future as superpower, and the rise of Asian economies like aging Japan.



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Review: The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics

The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics by Leonard Susskind

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



...This work presents classical mechanics including conservation laws, Hamiltonian mechanics, and planetary orbits. Such focus is appropriate for a book under two hundred fifty pages. There are little to no mentions of relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory. This allows room for the clear description of advanced classical physics concepts. Somewhat surprising, the authors also use that room for the breezy and humorous. I challenge anyone to show me a book that can skip from a groaner joke about George and Lennie from Of Mice and Men discussing physics to Poisson brackets in a single page. This is an excellent work for its intended audience and the authors succeed in making the material concise and easy to read. I am very glad to see that future volumes are promised. I do have to say that in the age of LaTeX typesetting is at times surprising how careless some of the mathematical typography is. Dots notating differentiation are absolutely untethered from their function and exponents drift about in a disconcerting manner.

[See my entire review at MAA Reviews]



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