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List Price: £4.99
Our Price: £1.19
Author:
Ian Ridpath
By Collins
 An essential reference book, 2006-07-21
This guide is of immense depth and a very good value. A beginner will benefit from the 22 pages long Introduction explaining all the main astronomy terms. 18 detailed maps of the sky for both Northern and Southern latitudes are very helpful, too.
Articles on every constellation give essential information for both beginners and advanced astronomers. The articles are accompanied by very detailed maps showing all the neighbours of a certain constellation (so that you can easily find it in the sky) and also mentioning the interesting features you can see in your binoculars or telescope.
Plus there are many more helpful sections (e.g. a table of annual meteor showers) and a few beautiful photographs of galaxies and nebulae. The pocket size of the book (just 8x12 cm) makes it very light and easy to carry - a perfect reference book!
List Price: £20.99
Our Price: £12.10
Author:
Francis French; Colin Burgess
By University of Nebraska Press
enjoyable, flowing, well-paced, accessible, exciting, 2007-12-21
There are many reasons why I regard this book so highly.
The writing style and narrative is enjoyable, flowing, well-paced, accessible, exciting. The book is superbly researched. The events and human subjects covered in the book are interesting, anything but dull, the authors uncovered uncommon stories about them.
Most of all, I felt like I had walked away after reading this book seeing these spacefarers and astronauts as humans, real people, not celebrities. The authors managed to show us their humanity without losing respect for their accomplishments. In fact, in spite of their humanity, their weaknesses, their environment, I have even more respect for so many of these spacefarers now that I can appreciate what they went through and had to overcome to achieve what they were able to.
I even came away with a much deeper appreciation and understanding of people I've often considered enemies at worst (i.e., Russian spacefarers), and objects of derision at best.
The stories in this book touch the human spirit in a way that is universal, beyond politics, beyond creed, beyond country. That's because the authors were able to capture an underlying essence most humans on our planet share: the curiosity and wonder to explore and give one's life to a cause greater than one's own agenda or paradigm.
List Price: £12.95
Our Price: £8.02
Author:
Michael S. Schneider
By Avon Books
The most superb introduction to Sacred Geometry ever!, 2005-07-12
I cannot rate this book too highly. When I ordered it, I presumed from the cover artwork (and the title) that it would be a kind of "Sacred Geometry for Dummies". I was, in fact, looking for a relatively easy primer to help me grasp the basic principles of this hugely deep and densely arcane subject, but what I did not anticipate was that it would be both exceptionally accessible as well as intellectually satisfying. Our culture has no innate understanding of "the mathematical archetypes of nature, art, and science" (the sub-title) and in fact, our culture, being so hamstrung, so crippled by left-brain dogma, does not even consider that nature, art and science could have any possible common denominator to even discuss! That the author could express ideas that are really so beyond our normal Western rationale, and moreover, does so with such intelligence and yet with such a light touch, is quite an extraordinary feat. The text is profusely illustrated with diagrams and drawings that precisely explain all that is required, and is also littered with hundreds (this I really appreciated) of superbly chosen quotations from all the great minds of history, from all cultures. I do not believe that there exists a better introduction to this deep and wonderful wisdom, and I would gladly give it 9 stars.Even after an hour browsing through it, I felt that I had absorbed levels of knowledge, of perception, that were not there previously. This book is about a level of mathematics that, shamefully, is not taught in our educational system. So much for our so-called "progressive' modern culture, that the real pearls have been disregarded in favour of something that has had all knowledge, life and magic stripped away. All spiritual qualities, in fact. What does mathematics and geometry mean to anybody today, other than for the most common-place pedestrian purposes? I did not know, prior to this book, that the Greek "mathema" signifies "learning in general" and was the root of the Old English "mathein", "to be aware" and the Old German "munthen", meaning "to awaken". Today the word "maths" has, for most people, constricted its scope to emphasise mundane measurement and mere manipulation of quantities. The only, and I mean only, quibble I have with the book, is that it is printed on paper of a quality that does not do justice to the content. This is a shame, but perhaps it's only applicable to the HarperCollins paperback publication that I bought. According to an inner page giving the ISBN details, there was a hard cover version published in 1994, also HarperCollins, and I would assume that that would be printed on better stock. But don't let this put you off. If you have any interest whatsoever in numbers, mathematics, higher knowledge, or any curiosity whatsoever about why the world is designed the way it is, buy this book. It contains the entire universe!
List Price: £10.99
Our Price: £4.84
Author:
Christopher Knight & Alan Butler
By Watkins Publishing
Strange but a very thought provoking argument, 2006-06-15
Quite remarkable. I came to this unusual book after it was studied by the National Science Teachers Association and found to have a case that required an answer. The maths used in this book are simple, clear and inescapably accurate. I see one reviewer has suggested (without substantiation) that the authors are in some way numerically illiterate. Not so.
People prefer to see proof of what they already believe to be true and it is obviously disconcerting when a book like this brings up so many inconvenient facts. A growing number of scientists are now realising the dishonesty that exists to protect old ideas. Terance Kealey a clinical biochemist and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham has observed "Scientists actually treat facts the way barristers treat hostile witnesses... it is a myth that working scientists always respect falsifiability. Scientists often ignore inconvenient findings".
Anyone who likes to think for themselves should read this fascinating book and deal with the facts as they stand.
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £3.34
Author:
Mike Mullane
By Simon & Schuster Ltd
A must read - both entertaining and thought provoking., 2008-09-28
I've always been interested in NASA and the Space Shuttle. I bought this book and read it in less than a week. It's that good I found it hard to put it down!
Mike Mullane tells us in brutal honestly what it is like to be an astronaut. How the fear of a launch will keep you awake at night but then how you would not miss it for the world. The extremes are all there - from the tradegy of Challenger and Columbia, to the absolute joy of being in Space and looking back down on the Earth. And then there is Mike's sence of humour (of as he calls it - his "arrested development" sence of humour!), which is an absolute joy.
I loved this book from start to finish. It is easy to read even if you have no interest in the space programe. I recommend this to anyone. Fantastic book Mike!
List Price: £4.99
Our Price: £1.71
Author:
Matt Tweed
By Wooden Books
This book is amazing...!, 2006-12-17
I bought this book in Chester Cathedral bookshop about a month ago. Since then I have carried around in my handbag - it fits beautifully.
Each double-page spread consists of an (often subtly humerous) illustration and accompanying text. It is organised starting with the largest-scale, furthest features in the universe, gradually approaches earth, and covers topics such as relativity in an extremely well-thought-out, approachable way in excellent prose.
The book is also fully recyclable (in the unlikely event you do not enjoy it) and has a beautiful cover illustration with the word 'Cosmos' picked out in subtly reflective silver.
All in all, one of the most fascinating books I have ever come across, and possible my favourite book of all time. Buy it now!
List Price: £20.99
Our Price: £14.00
Author:
Colin Burgess, Francis French
By University of Nebraska Press
One of the 5 books on spaceflight to have, 2008-07-29
Francis French and Colin Burgess' latest book travelled with me during a short trip to Gdansk/Poland last year, and it took me this week to read it from start to end. It was time very pleasantly spent - excellently written, and a smooth composition from the beginning to the end. If I hadn't come for some other things to see, I probably wouldn't have stopped reading before the last page would have been turned. That is quite an achievement for a non-fiction book.
Many of us had read the individual astronauts' autobiographies that are on the market. On those astronauts of course, little new could probably be said. However, French and Burgess unearth stories and backgrounds from those others that have not yet shared their life with the readers. In this context, I particularly enjoyed the extensive descriptions from Bill Anders, Rusty Schweickart, Donn Eisele that figure prominently in the book.
If I "missed something" after having read the first volume, it is the stories from NASA's competitor, the Soviet space programme. The first volume had covered the stories of Gagarin, Titov and Tereshkova. The 2nd volume only briefly mentions Komarov, and a longer paragraph on the joint flight of Soyuz 4 and 5. I feel a larger coverage of the parallel events in the Soviet Union would have been in
List Price: £12.99
Our Price: £4.06
Author:
Richard Rhodes
By Simon & Schuster Ltd
Magnificent and desperately sad, 2008-07-04
Some of the more negative reviews of this book are less than perceptive. Rhodes' earlier 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' is an extraordinary book, an exhilarating intellectual adventure that suddenly becomes what we had forgotten it was all along; an appalling human tragedy. The description of Little Boy's effect on the city and people of Hiroshima is some of the most powerful non-fiction writing I have ever read. The atomic scientists believed, almost up until the last minute, that they would be permitted a role in the decision to drop the bomb. When they weren't, it affected them in many different ways. This book is about those ways.
The claim that Rhodes should have 'spared the politics' is idiotic. This book is the shadowy aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it's primarily about the slow construction of the nuclear state. The politics are an integral part of the story, and they are fascinating. Rhodes is very good about the Soviet bomb program, which relied heavily on nuclear secrets stolen from the Americans but which was still a pretty heroic effort. Stalin put secret police chief Lavrenti Beria in charge of it, which probably set them back a couple of years in that the brutal, scientifically illiterate and deeply paranoid Beria never had the slightest grasp of what the Soviet scientists were doing or even that radiation could be bad for you. (When Beria finally gets arrested and executed after Stalin's death, the reader almost breathes a sigh of relief.)
Bad as Beria was, the most chilling character in the book is actually the man who set the US H-bomb program back years: Edward Teller. Teller is spoken of as a great scientist, but he seems to have been incapable of sustained work on any one problem, preferring to flit about from topic to topic and constantly urging the authorities to funnel manpower and resources into his own fundamentally flawed H-bomb design, the so-called 'Super'. The Super never would have worked (the first H-bomb, Ivy Mike, was based on a quite different design), but Teller never seems to have admitted it to himself. Instead, he blamed his old boss Robert Oppenheimer for the failure to realise his own unworkable scheme and when a conniving incompetent named William Borden started making false and damaging claims about Oppenheimer's political loyalty, Teller jumped on the bandwagon and made similar claims of his own. Oppenheimer was subjected to a gruelling and punitive security hearing and his security clearance was ultimately revoked, even though Rhodes finds it easy enough to demonstrate that Oppenheimer could never have been a Soviet spy.
Teller is the book's real villain - a vengeful, bitter and unreliable human being who ended up with enormous influence and power. The eventual key to the design of the H-bomb was in fact the work of Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, but Teller refused to recognise Ulam's contribution and to his death he continued to claim sole credit, something which his fellow scientists quietly insist he did not deserve. In spite of having destroyed Oppenheimer's career, Teller had the insensitivity to go up to him and behave as if they were still friendly, which Oppenheimer found more baffling than insulting.
William Borden was apparently a fairly typical bureaucratic hack with no special understanding of nuclear war; he believed it to be 'inevitable', which as the intervening sixty years have demonstrated is not necessarily the case. He and sometime Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss are the two other least likeable characters in the book, motivated more by personal dislike of Oppenheimer than by any real proof that he was politically disloyal.
Curtis LeMay is a somewhat tragic figure. A personally brave and skilful commander in WW2, he came to be motivated by the humanly commendable but militarily dubious desire to not risk his own men in combat. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that any competent commander sometimes has to do just that. LeMay developed a theory of deterrence that came to encompass the necessity for preventive nuclear strikes; during the Cuban missile crisis, LeMay (at his blustering worst) urged Kennedy to let him nuke the USSR into oblivion and when Kennedy refused, he contemptuously wrote the President off as a coward. Kennedy may have been guilty of brinkmanship, but if he had listened to LeMay half the planet would now be a wasteland and the rest would be suffering from a nuclear winter.
Men like Teller, Borden, Strauss and LeMay governed American nuclear policy for decades, which is one of the reasons why the US now has a colossal national debt. The Cold War ended the Soviet Union, but it also pushed the American economy to the edge on which it has been teetering for years, as well as shoving the mainstream of American politics grotesquely far to the right.
'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' is, among other things, a book about how wise and good men did a very bad thing. 'Dark Sun' is (among other things) about how those men were systematically ignored by powerful men who were less wise, more suspicious, more vengeful, more terrified. It's about how the Cold War came to happen. If it's less fun than the previous book (which of course ceases to be fun the minute the first bomb falls on Hiroshima), it's because it had to be. You need to read them both. Everybody does, because we still have thermonuclear weapons and if our leaders wanted it enough, it could all happen all over again.
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