A brilliantly successful and heroic effort to present to the educated layman all the major developments and trends in modern science in understandable terms. Probably only Isaac Asimov could have done this. His instinct for lucid explanation makes him one of America's greatest scientist-expositors, for all ages. With an uncanny sense of proportion (he knows what to leave out as well as what to include), he has written a magnificent survey of the history of science, which weaves into a whole the significant contributions of some 500 master investigators in every field. His dependably felcitous style is carefully controlled because of the scope, which would have terrified a lesser man. But the real secret of his success- his superb sense of organization- is more evident here than in his other books. In only 16 chapters he presents his story of the questions man has asked about the Universe, the World, Life. He reveals scientists' investigations of the secrets of Life in seven chapters:- The Molecule, The Proteins, The Cell, Micro-organisms, The Human Body, The Species and The Human Mind. Carefully integrated sub-headings relate the supporting evidence relevant to his explanations. His discussions of Aspects of the Universe and the Inorganic World follow the same highly integrated pattern. Throughout, the text offers a fabulous array of historical facts, the latest ideas, the newest discoveries in every area of science. Its more than 1000 pages and hundreds of photographs and original drawings can provide any reader, with a minimal interest in science, real illumination, leads for further investigation and inspiration. There is an introduction by George W. Beadle. This belongs in every school, college and public library and will make a good gift item for the science-minded person. Special appendix on Mathematics in Science.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1960
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1960
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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