Author: Mark Brinkley
By Ovolo Books Ltd

Housebuilders Bible 8th edition., 2010-01-20
Essential, full of useful information-don't consider self build without it BUT make sure you have the latest version as info goes out of date very quickly!!Great book.

Author: Richard Parsons
By Coordination Group Publications Ltd

Perfect, 2010-01-19
This set of SAT papers is perfect for my needs. My son is just turned seven, about to take end of key stage 1 SATs in May. I wanted some example papers so that I could see how he would fare in the real tests. He didn't get everything right but then that is the idea..it enables you to see where your child needs extra help - how you can help him to earn extra marks..and actually he found the English papers quite good fun. The maths papers are not quite so popular with him, but none the less, helps me know where to give him extra guidance. In classes with 30 children, it's beneficial if you can do a little extra work at home to boost their confidence, and fill the gaps that the teacher may have missed. You can do the tests again in a month or two and show them how well they have progressed.

By WileyBlackwell

Royal Marsden, 2010-02-13
I received this item in good time and it was in very good, brand new condition.

Author: Richard Dawkins
By Bantam Press

There is grandeur here, too., 2010-02-21
Professor Richard Dawkins. Anyone would think that this is his second book, following the somewhat polarising God Delusion. Of course it's not, and for those that know his works on the biological realm, here he's back to near his best.

Unlike in other books, in "The Greatest Show On Earth" Dawkins hopes to outline the overwhelming evidence for evolution; to such an extent that even a "history-denier" must come round to the truth. In this objective, I fear the prof may be dissapointed, for as he himself recognises, the creationist is no friend of evidence against their particular doctrine and dogma.

I must quickly point out to the theist open to scientific evidence that, "The God Delusion" notwithstanding, here Dawkins is anything but insulting to religion. If anything he is openly concillatory to those who accept the theory, but cite the guiding hand of God behind it. Here he is only interested in the incontravertible facts, no philosophy is to be found.

Dawins is brilliant on biology; brilliant on science. His wonderfully literary prose is unmatched in my opinion within the realm of the popularisation of science. Anyone with a vague interest in the theory of evolution will find grandeur within these pages, as they will with the view that the understanding of the theory provides.

He makes it so interesting, and so easy to understand. His digressions are thoughtful and warranted, his footnotes often as humourous as they are informative. Dawkins is enjoying himself here, and it's reflected in a book far more enjoyable than The God Delusion. The evidence supporting the theory of evolution is vast and deep, and Dawkins has obviously had to limit himself. In doing this he has often had to find just a single example from any one of great libraries of evidence - DNA say, or comparative biology, or symbiosis, or the fossil record, or "unintelligent design". In each he finds something that, while often not being new to this reader, always contains a wow factor.

The only problem the book suffers is the limiting effect of the book's epic scope. Dawkins often has to curtail a chapter or digression, content to refer to earlier expositions found in other books. So here you find nothing to rival the magnificent final chapter of "Climbing Mount Improbable" on the co-evolution of figs and wasps (something that everyone should read and re-read until their jaw is sent dropping); or a deep and satisfying argument for a gene-selected rather than individual-selected view of natural selection as found in "The Selfish Gene".

I would say that this isn't quite his best, but having read most of his other works, I still couldn't put this one down.

Whether it is successful in converting the history deniers to the facts of evolution is for me unlikely, but that is irrlevent, "The Greatest Show On Earth" is the only game in town.

Author: Richard Dawkins
By OUP Oxford

A ground breaking popular Science book, 2010-02-14
This book hardly needs further introduction. It ranks in the central canon of popular Science writing, certainly in the same league as 'A Brief History of Time'. It is unsual in one respect in that it actually describes original thinking. Its central thesis is that the gene is the basic unit of natural selection, almost to the extent that bodies or cells are merely vehicles to perpetuate the continued existence of the genes themselves. A weakness here is that the book does not define a gene well. A single gene for example may encode for more than one protein; a protein may be the product of several individual genes. Dawkins goes onto explain how altruism may have evolved and that, rather than being paradoxical, is fully consistent with natural selection as outlined by Darwin. In this, Dawkins does provide arguments and evidence to support this. Overall, he is reasonably successful. We learn that group selection as such does not exist, but that through cooperation, it is possible for individuals to increase their own chances of survival and reproduction. We also learn that kin selection arises primarily through the sharing of the same genes: since my brother has a relatedness of 1/2, it may be worth sacrificing myself since my brother has half of my genes. There is, in my opinion, a very good description of the Prisoner's Dilemma, developed from game theory and how this can be applied to model the development of cooperation (or non-cooperation) strategies and to assess whether these may become so-called 'evolutionary stable strategies'. Clealy, this must be seen as an over-simplification. The complexities of molecular biology and neurobiology are great. The book ends with an introduction to Dawkins's next work, 'The Extended Phenotype'.

It is worth noting that the title of the book has led people to assume that Dawkins is a pure genetic determinist. Dawkins stresses that this is not the case, and that we may easily overcome the 'rule' of our genes. Indeed this is essential for living in a sustainable and peaceble manner. In the introduction to this anniversary edition, Dawkins even mentions some regret in the title of the work, since it causes many to make assumption about his beliefs and motives.

Overall, this is a ground-breaking and well written work that makes an excellent read.

Author: Graham Farmelo
By Faber and Faber

Outstanding - a great read, 2010-03-08
I really enjoyed this book. It had a good pace to it and the biographical and scientific material was well balanced. I have read quite widely in this area and have a scientific/engineering background and thought the book gave a good and accurate account of the development of quantum mechanics. The personal side of Dirac's life was fascinating and the title of the book well chosen. The only negative comment I have is that I thought the chapter on Dirac and autism was not necessary and lacked the authority of the rest of the book.
I have already recommended this book to a number of friends.
A book to read alongside is the biography of Max Born entitled 'The End of the Certain World - The Life and Science of Max Born ' by Nancy Greenspan.The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born: The Nobel Physicist Who Ignited the Quantum Revolution

Author: Oliver Sacks
By Picador

shocking, surprising and mind-blowing, 2009-12-02
It is guaranteed that the reader will be utterly blown away with this extraordinary collection of medical insights into the symptoms that can occur when there are brain malfunctions with their consequenct bizarre changes in mental perceptions.This essentially is a collection of case histories that are quite out of the scope of the average persons understanding. Oliver Sacks' accessible style of writing gives us glimpses into the 'unreal' lives of patients who have to negotiate their everyday lives lacking some essential and basic abilities to relate to the world in a 'normal' way either in the business of memory, sensory perception or mobility.Each case reads like a whacky novel and leaves the reader with a feeling of walking on thin ice because the very foundations upon which we as 'normal'human beings base our lives come into question too.Not to be missed!

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
By Penguin

Intellectual earthquake, 2010-01-30
+
This is an important book. All intellectual people should read it. It should be a set text - certainly for all business school students. The trouble is that business schools would have trouble accepting much of what he has to say. Furthermore, Mr Taleb is unrestrainedly outspoken, so that he almost seems offensive. In the first half of the book, I wondered what kind of egomaniac was keeping me company. BUT his erudition and his arguments (and his rough charm) gradually and firmly win through. By the end of the book, I simply have to admit that he is correct.

To admit that he is correct is intellectually like an earthquake, since it shakes down the towers of many things taught in our conventional education, not least business school itself. If you accept he is correct and then go on with your life as normal, then you have not fully accepted that he is correct. I personally realise that I have not internalised his messages and changed my way of thinking and my way of life. I am somewhat confused about the far-reaching implications of his arguments. I will have to read it again and contemplate, and then implement some changes. This almost sounds like a religious book!

So what is it about? A `Black Swan' is his label for a highly improbable, but high impact event. It is an outlier; something beyond our regular expectations. So we do not think about a `black swan' event much. We may not even know it exists. Our experience gives us no clue that it exists. We take a thousand balls out of a bag and find they are all white. Why would we expect a black ball? Our statistics, whether Pascalian or Bayesian, will not alert us to the possibility of a black ball. Then one day we draw out a black ball. All our previous experience is vitiated. Mr Taleb's metaphor comes from Europeans seeing only white swans, and being astonished to discover black swans in Australia.

The metaphors of swans or balls in a bag do not capture well his other key point here. The `black swans' have a high impact. Think of history. 9/11 was unexpected and had high impact. The First World War has unexpected and had high impact - to put it mildly.

Or think of your own life, and the unforeseen key events that changed your life for ever. They were not planned, but once they happened, everything changed. The person you met and married. The job you applied for and got, and the job you suddenly lost. Specifically I think of going to work in Japan, something not remotely contemplated 12 months before I arrived there. I also think of the thunderbolt of being diagnosed with Polycythaemia in 1994; or the stroke that might suddenly floor me as a result.

If you think in personal terms, the significance of `black swans' comes home. Mr Taleb says forecasting is impossible in many circumstances. Planning often turns out to be futile. I would have been astounded to be told in 1978, as an English student at Oxford, that I would turn out to be a financial markets trainer in 2008 (having the effrontery to teach physics graduates financial maths!).

Mr Taleb seems to wander over all kinds of ground in this book, and you wonder sometimes what the relevance and point is. But it all comes together by the end of the book. For instance, he discusses fame at several stages of the book. We tend to idolise the famous. But how did they become famous? Are they really worthy of our adulation? Maybe they were just lucky. Maybe they just happened to be a touch ahead in talent, but then were swept up in the many `winner takes all' processes of modern life. Are the footballers earning £10 million really 500 times better than a lowly footballer earning £20,000? Is the man on TV being heard by millions of people more worthy to be listened to than a mere teacher in a classroom? Was Admiral Nelson truly the greatest leader in the Royal Navy? And what about those who achieved great things, and have never been heard of? A stunning poem written in a book that is lost forever. A talented composer who never gets published? A man who prevents a terrorist outrage, whose name is never known to the public.

What has this to do with infrequent, high impact events? Everything. Many of the fortunate are the products of positive black swan events. Furthermore the luck element, or some self-reinforcing effect like academic peer review, leads to the domination of ideas which are simply weak or misleading - or should be more critically challenged, were they not coming from the mouths of such `famous' people. When he is scathing of Nobel prize winners - especially those who won the Economics Prize - you at first think that Mr Taleb is being very disrespectful. Well he is. And when the scales fall from your eyes, and you see the unfair process by which Nobel prize winners are selected, you realise that Nobel prize are possibly not so worthy of our exaggerated respect. This is well explained by his description of social contagion.

Contagion and feedback loops are a large part of social phenomena that set them apart from pure science. He discusses the financial markets in several chapters, and firmly regards them as social phenomena, affected by human emotions and crazes. He rips apart the ideas of efficient markets and portfolio diversification and risk management techniques (all Nobel prize winning topics).

He talks a lot about `Mediocristan' and `Extremistan'. He says we have to know which country we are in, and it is fatal to the search for truth and assessing risk to mix them up. He stores up positive venom for those who misuse the Gaussian normal distribution curve. It is a tool of Mediocristan. It can be rightly applied in the physical sciences and mechanical / chemical engineering fields. But he rages against it being used in the social `sciences'. Banks who assess their `Value at Risk' with the normal distribution curve are telling us about the 99.9% confidence interval, which is actually unimportant. By their methods and actions they ignore the 0.1%, which is the Black Swan that changes everything. So they are not truly measuring risk, let alone thinking about it.

Finance is rich with black swans that come out of the 0.1% zone: the 1929 and 1987 stock market crashes; the Latin American Debt crisis of 1981; the collapse of LTCM in 1998; the collapse of Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers in 2008. Oh, they are all explained after the event. But we really did not forecast them, and we really did not know the ultimate cause, any more than we really know the cause of the First World War.

So we are urged to get away from the toxicity of Gaussian Curve thinking and to face the fact that many important distributions are highly skewed. Take wealth ownership for instance. Independently of this book, I have found statistics saying that 20% people own 83% of the world's wealth. Furthermore an eye-popping 1% of people own 40% of the world's wealth. The winner takes all - or so near to all that it hardly matters. We are talking about Extremistan here.

Author: Gabriel Weston
By Vintage

Direct Red Review, 2009-10-15
You will never forget:

1) the events that you will read in this book!
2) Gabriel Weston's brilliant use of the English language.
3) Her vocabulary is so descriptive.
4) every time you have to go into Hospital.
5) You will look and listen to Consultants in a new and entirely different way.
6) You will hope that you don't become a Chapter in a book like this...

Author: D.G. Hessayon
By Expert

New starts and old hands reference, 2010-03-03
For a beginner with no idea what to expect, this provides an excellent entry-level guide. For the experienced grower who identifies new behavour or results, this has to be the first place to turn.
Illustrated to the highest standard, written for clarity, this book should be every growers' companion.
For readers who find they need further detail on pests and problems, or who want to know more about 'organic' or 'green' issues there are the essential elements that are expanded in companion books, but for everyone else, this has to be the "growers' bible".