Reviews (1)

Meandering black humor
My only semi-negative comment about this book is that if you're a person who expects/requires an essay writer to start with a thesis, prove it through argument and then return to it (i.e. have a point) you may find this book somewhat frustrating. I however am not one of those people and found Dekkers' morbid ramblings quite entertaining. (Especially when he goes on about rotten foods being delicacies and how his grandmother was an expert carrion-eater.) Recommended for goths. ;) ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Learning should always be this fun
Named after her award-winning column in Discover magazine, Light Elements is a collection of essays that appeared there and a few originals, on topics roughly categorized as either Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, or General. Stone's style is like crossing Dave Barry, Stephen Jay Gould, and a generic magazine interviewer--and what a party that menage a trois would have been! She has a tendancy to go for the pun, but her word choice while doing so ranges so far across the field, and the informational content between the puns is so high, that you find yourself grinning rather than wincing. The topics are an incredible mixture of commercial science (a microwaveable hot fudge sundae?) to research speculation (the physiological aspects of humor). Just a list of topics is fun: ozone-destroying cattle, mummification of dead pets, thorny security fences (bushes, not bush league), velcro, dental psychology, why people wince at the sound of fingernails on a blackboard, the culture of country music bars (and I bet you thought there wasn't any), jumping and reeking roaches, the cheese detective and nouveaux punctuation. Don Norman, who I've been raving about recently, even pops up as part of an essay entitled "Voodoo Ergonomics." As a blurb on the cover says, "If science had been this funny in school, maybe you would have listened." Maybe you will now.

Hilarious & Informative
A collection of "Light Elements" columns from Discover magazine, these are as informative as they are amusing. Puns, popular culture references and considerable irreverance are Stone's tools-of-the-trade, and as the cover states, "If science had been this funny in school, maybe you would have listened." ... Read more

Book Description

Authors and essaysin this volume are:Sir Robert Stawell Ball: Atoms and Sunbeams -- The Wanderings of the North Pole

Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin): The Age of the Sun’s HeatRichard Anthony Proctor: The Past and Future of our EarthRobert Simpson Woodward: Mathematical Theories of the EarthGiovanni Virginio Schiaparelli: The Rotation and Physical Constitution of the Planet Mercury -- The Planet Mars George Howard Darwin: Meteorites and Stellar Systems William Harkness: Magnitude of the Solar System

Ormsby McKnight Mitchel: The Stability of the Solar SystemEdmund Ledger: The New Planet, ErosEdward Singleton Holden:Sidereal Astronomy: Old and New-- Photography the Servant of Astronomy-- The Beginnings of American AstronomySir John Frederick William Herschel: Stellar Parallax Charles S. Hastings: The History of the TelescopeWilliam Huggins: Results of Spectrum Analysis Applied to Heavenly Bodies-- Celestial Spectroscopy-- The New Astronomy

David Gill: An Astronomer’s Work in a Modern Observatory Pierre Simon: The System of the WorldCThe Nebular HypothesisGeorge M. Searle: Marquis de Laplace-- Are the Planets Habitable ? ... Read more

Book Description

The essays in this book are based on researches the author has undertaken on a wide range of topics, some using equipment no more elaborate than what one can find in an ordinary kitchen, others making elegant use of sophisticated experimental apparatus. Presenting a personal odyssey in physics, Silverman investigates processes for which no visualizable mechanism can be given, or that seem to violate fundamental physical laws (but do not), or that appear to be well understood but turn out to be subtly devious. Written in an engagingly personal style, the essays will be of interest to students of physics and related disciplines as well as professional physicists. Though they deal with subtle concepts, the discussions use little mathematics, and anyone with a little college physics will be able to read the book with pleasure.

Silverman's researches deal with in quantum mechanics, atomic and nuclear physics, electromagnetism and optics, gravity, thermodynamics, and the physics of fluids, and these essays address .such questions as: How does one know that atomic electrons move? Would an "anti-atom" fall upward? How is it possible for randomly emitted particles to arrive at a detector preferentially in pairs? Can one influence electrons in London by not watching them in New York? Can a particle be influenced by a magnetic field through which it does not pass? A basketball is not changed by turning it once around its axis, but what about an electron? Can more light reflect from a surface than is incident upon it?

"A Universe of Atoms" is the second edition of Silverman's "And Yet It Moves"; each essay in the earlier collection has been revised and updated, and some new essays on the uncommon physics of common objects have been added ... Read more

Book Description

The early modern genre of historia connected the study of nature and the study of culture from the early Renaissance to the eighteenth century. The ubiquity of historia as a descriptive method across a variety of disciplines -- including natural history, medicine, antiquarianism, and philology -- indicates how closely intertwined these scholarly pursuits were in the early modern period. The essays collected in this volume demonstrate that historia can be considered a key epistemic tool of early modern intellectual practices.

Focusing on the actual use of historia across disciplines, the essays highlight a distinctive feature of early modern descriptive sciences: the coupling of observational skills with philological learning, empiricism with erudition. Thus the essays bring to light previously unexamined links between the culture of humanism and the scientific revolution.

The contributors, from a range of disciplines that echoes the broad scope of early modern historia, examine such topics as the development of a new interest in historical method from the Renaissance artes historicae to the eighteenth-century tension between "history" and "system"; shifts in Aristotelian thought paving the way for revaluation of historia as descriptive knowledge; the rise of the new discipline of natural history; the uses of historia in anatomical and medical investigation and the writing of history by physicians; parallels between the practices of collecting and presenting information in both natural history and antiquarianism; and significant examples of the ease with which early seventeenth-century antiquarian scholars moved from studies of nature to studies of culture. ... Read more

Book Description

The integration of scientific knowledge and military power began long before the Manhattan Project. In the third century BC, Archimedes was renowned for his research in mechanics and mathematics as well as for his design and coordination of defensive siegecraft for Syracuse during the Second Punic War. This collection of essays examines the emergence during the early modern era of mathematicians, chemists, and natural philosophers who, along with military engineers, navigators, and artillery officers, followed in the footsteps of Archimedes and synthesized scientific theory and military practice. It is the first collaborative scholarly assessment of these early military-scientific relationships, which have been long neglected by scholars both in the history of science and technology and in military history.

The book begins with the innovation of gunpowder weaponry in both Christian and Islamic states of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. Other topics include the cultural resistance to scientific techniques; the relationship of early modern science and naval power, particularly the intersecting developments in mathematics and oceanic navigation; the efforts by early practitioners and theorists of chemistry to increase the power and consistency of gunpowder; and the application of advanced scientific knowledge and Enlightenment ideals within the military engineering and artillery organizations of the eighteenth century. ... Read more

Book Description

Professor Gerald W. Esch, one of the world's leading ecological parasitologists, presents a series of essays on classic examples of field parasitology. The essays focus on the significance of the work and its contribution to the field but also on the people and, particularly, the sites at which the work took place. Taken together, they represent a beautifully written account of the development of an entire field of scientific endeavor spanning a period of 50 years or more.While the essays are not meant to be academic in a scientific sense, they contain a great deal of science. The book will be of great value to all parasitologists and ecologists, but also to anyone interested in how biological field work is carried out and how it contributes to greater understanding of the natural world. ... Read more

Book Description

With this beautiful book, Spencer Nadler takes us into the remarkable world of cells–and into the lives of people whose behavior is affected by the cells seen under his microscope. After twenty-five years as a surgical pathologist, Nadler began to miss interacting with the people whose cells he studied. And so, he came out from behind his microscope and as a writer began to focus on people as well as on their cells, examining in this unusual book how a person’s life and spirit–and cells–coexist.

In the diminutive landscape of the microscope, a young patient’s sickle cells look like harmless apples and bananas, but the impact they have on him and his mother is acute. Under Nadler’microscope, normal breast cells look like pink hydrangeas to the remarkably spirited Hanna and her breast cancer cells like distorted hula-hoops.Among the other people we meet are an orchestra conductor who must choose between the rhythms of his music and those of his heart; an obese woman who must learn to get along with her fat cells as she copes with bariatric surgery; two people with early Alzheimer’s disease who fall in love and decide to live together despite the microscopic changes in their brains. In The Language of Cells, Spencer Nadler illuminates in lyrical prose “the quiet heroics of everyday people” as cells and the spirit contribute to the beauty of the human continuum.
... Read more

Reviews (11)

Life and Death Matters
There's more to disease than the cells a surgical pathologist sees under a microscope. These cells can nail a diagnosis, but tell us nothing about the person suffering from a disease. Spencer Nadler in The Language of Cells reveals the complexities of a cell as well as the human patient whose diagnosis can mean life or death. Nadler combines the insight of a scientist with the language of a poet as he weaves the stories of patients he has known. Disease sometimes takes on a benign form as we read of the individual people in this volume, whose illness brings them closer to life as they draw nearer death. Even death, in the chapter, "Dying Matters," can instruct and inspire. Also inspiring is the story of Alzheimer patients who learn ways to enrich their lives despite their increasing loss of memory. And who can help but admire the courage of an African American boy who lives with the searing pain of sickle cell anemia, or the woman with breast cancer who asks to see her cancer cells with her own eyes? As a special bonus are color plates that show the unexpected beauty of the cells Nadler sees every day in the course of his work. I plan to give this book to my friends during the holiday season. I know they will enjoy it as much as I did.

The Language of Surprise
Being a suspense-thriller freak, this is not the kind of book I would read but, given to me as a gift, I dutifully picked it up, thinking I'd read the first story and put it down. Wrong!
The stories are about any one of us or someone we may know, written in a very readable way that any non-medical person can easily understand. It is as intriguing as any thriller. I lent it to a friend, an oncology nurse, who lent it to her boss, who lent it to another doctor and so it's been making the rounds. I don't think I'll ever see it again and have ordered another copy that I won't lend: this is a book you want in your home library to pick up every now and then for it's inspiration and plain beauty.
Spencer Nadler is the kind of doctor we want and need to take care of us...his insight, his feelings, his empathy, knowledge, care and concern for his patients is there from page one. The stories are heart-wrenching and heart-warming, moving and inspiring and even though the book is not yet available here in Israel, I found it worth the expense to order several from abroad to give as gifts here.

Praise for an observant, compassionate doctor
Every once in a while I pick up a book or choose to purchase a book on the basis of a slim review, or because the book itself looked interesting. I tend to buy books in bulk, often more than one at a time. This was one such instance where four books were bought about two months ago. This one was put aside, as I had to finish two classes and do work for the two computer web sites I work for. The other books were read and discarded, appreciated for what they were...then given to the library so others may enjoy them to. This particular book, from which I expected little, will remain in my own personal library to be lent to the few who I know can appreciate both the medicine and the literacy of this particular doctor-author.

Other reviewers have outlined the stories of this book. It is immediate recognized that it is a different book...it's table of content is not a one-page outline of the chapter titles. Rather each chapter is outline by a large photograph of the cell types dealt with in that chapter. The 'name' of the chapter is in small typeface below or adjacent to the electron photograph. This warns the reader that whatever they had expected from this book, is liable to be different from what they get. Thankfully, this is so...

Nadler is a pathologist, a man who devotes his life to diagnosing the secrets of the individual units of our bodies. Pathologists are decoders basically. They read and tell other surgeons and doctors what they have biopsied or what they have seen. Pathologists rarely have intimate contact with the people whose cells they have examined. I worked in two neuropathology labs for almost six years. It is fascinating work, but other than your fellow lab workers, there is no human contact.

Somehow, from reading Dr. Nadler's book, I will guarantee that this physician has made it a point throughout his life and career to purposely remain involve with individuals. Unlike some doctors who I know have much more contact with patients, this doctor refuses to consider the cells alone, without considering the person. Perhaps because he is not involved in the conveyor belt of modern medicine, he has not lost that compassion or steeled himself against 'feeling' too much. For that alone, he deserves accolades.

His language, his metaphors, the observations he makes are far beyond the abilities of most doctors, indeed beyond the abilities of most people period. Like Oliver Sacks, he brings attention to a disease through the person who is affected by that disease. In doing so, readers become aware of the courage these individuals choose to face their illness with. So many times in labs and hospitals, we forget that what we see under the microscope was once deeply embedded in an individual. Nadler reminds us exquisitely of that, and in his writing, he brings an understanding of not just the disease, but of those who must deal with these particular disease. The story told, the picture drawn...may start with the cell that he originally focused on, but Nadler quickly changes the focus to the person.

An outstanding book by an outstanding person...

Karen Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh

Drama under the microscope
In beautiful and clear prose, this book depicts the drama in interpreting a sick patient's cells. But it is also the story of one surgical pathologist's journey to find out what is human about his patients and himself. It is a touching read and a fascinating look behind the curtain into a highly specialized hospital laboratory.

Exquisitely rendered tales of human disease
Spencer Nadler is a pathologist who would be a clinical physician. He is a doctor of medicine who would be a literary artist. He demonstrates in these exquisitely wrought pages a deep sense of identification and empathy with the very real human beings whose cells he sees in his microscope. He writes about intersecting with their lives in a style both concrete and moving so that we cannot help but also identify with the heart-wrenching experience of disease.

So there's an irony in the title and a kind of strange misdirection: Dr. Nadler's concentration is NOT on cellular life, but instead on the psychological, existential and spiritual aspects of people whose cells have gone bad.

He begins with the story of a 35-year-old woman who has breast cancer. She wants to see the cancerous cells in the microscope. Nadler, whose daily work is performing biopsies, especially surgical biopsies made on the fly as the patient is etherized upon a table, obliges, and thereby begins a relationship with her and her illness that goes well beyond what can be experienced through the lenses of his "research-quality German microscope made by Zeiss." She sees landscapes and metaphors in the dead and dying cells, and Nadler is once again reminded of the human experience of disease.

Next is the chapter entitled simply "Fat" about a woman suffering from morbid obesity. She undergoes the Rouxen-Y gastric bypass, a gastrointestinal reconstruction surgery that miniaturizing her stomach from a capacity of 1,700 milliliters to 35 milliliters. (I have a question not answered in the text: why did her stomach have to be SO small? Couldn't they have left her with say, two or three hundred milliliters?) The procedure works and she goes from over 360 pounds to 180, but she cannot eat more than a few ounces of food at any one setting and she must--as Nadler so beautifully phrases it on page 39-swallow only "bonsaied boluses" and take "great care to chew them to a flow."

"Fat" is quite frankly one of the best medical essays I have ever read. But I am not alone in admiring the artistry of Nadler's carefully constructed prose. Two of the essays in this book, "Brain Cell Memories" and "An Old Soldier," the first about brain tumors, and the second about a 75-year-old man who has been a paraplegic for 55 years, are included in, respectively, The Best American Essays, 2001 and The Best American Essays, 1999. I was particularly impressed with "An Old Soldier," in which Nadler's clear, stark prose reveals the courage, strength and sheer cussed determination it takes for WWII vet Sam Patterson to live when "His lower trunk and limbs, his bowels, bladder, and genitals, are permanently incommunicado, shutting him off from the rest of his body like a demented mind." (p. 150)

The other chapters are "Heart Rhythms," which is essentially a heroic portrait of conductor Mehli Mehta; "Early Alzheimer's: A View from Within" which features AD-sufferer Morris Friedell who "can crystalize the life that remains and devise ways to enhance it" (for example, he takes notes and crosses off the tasks and experiences as they are lived); and "The Burden of Sickle Cells" about a boy that Nadler befriends who has the sickle cell disease.

The last chapter in the book is an appreciation of hospice work and grief counseling with a focus on Nadler's friend, Brad Deford, a chaplain to the dying. Nadler follows him on his rounds and experiences first hand how comforting it can be to have someone help with the emotional and spiritual preparations. Nadler refers to one old couple, each facing eminent death, as having become, "in their married years together...two nuclei in a single cell." His final words before the Epilogue are: "How awesome is this cellular ride, so steeped in mysterious efficiency. But it is the human dying, so urgent and inevitable, that is graven unto me."

As can be seen, Nadler is a very fine prose stylist, and his book is to be compared favorably with the best works written by practicing doctors from what I might call "the medical tale genre." Some recent examples include Jerome Groopman's Second Opinions: Stories of Intuition and Choice in the Changing World of Medicine (2000) and of course the works of Oliver Sacks, e.g., An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (1995) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other clinical tales (1987). ... Read more

Amazon.com

Although he was trained and once worked in theoretical physics, Jeremy Bernstein is best known as a longtime science writer for The New Yorker magazine, in whose pages he wrote sprawling essays on such matters as quantum mechanics, probability, and the birth of the nuclear age. The Merely Personal gathers several of his magazine pieces, many written in the last 10 years. They address the origin and history of scientific concepts, probe into the deepest workings of game theory and chess machines, and raise big questions: If German scientists had succeeded in making a nuclear weapon, would they have turned it over to the Nazi government? Is reality knowable? Does God, in fact, play dice with the universe?

The best parts of Bernstein's book, however, are those that look into the often strange lives of individual scientists, such as the mathematician Kurt Gödel, "a full-blown paranoiac" who used his isolation from the world to afford a new way of looking into logical systems, and the scientist Richard Feynman, whose "Mozartean genius in physics seemed to be combined with an almost equally Mozartean urge to play the clown." Bernstein's portraits of Einstein, Kepler, Oppenheimer, and other major scientific theoreticians and practitioners offer a bird's-eye view of how research is conducted and breakthroughs are made, all delivered in highly readable prose. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A collection of essays.
This book is a collection of essays written in the style of the New Yorker magazine. Personal aspects of well-known physicists are presented. The book can be a bit dry at times, but some interesting facts are provided on these scientists. Scientists are very human!

Provides a series of lively discussions
This essay collection gathers writings over the past ten years, exploring a range of scientific theories, encounters with scientists, and explanations of how scientific concepts relate to everyday living. The focus on both science and scientists provides a series of lively discussions of how scientific process works. ... Read more

Book Description

A special double issue of the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing dedicated to the life and work of Heinz Von Foerster. For details see table of contents. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

This invaluable book contains 36 interviews, including 26 with Nobel laureates. It presents a cross-section of biomedical science, a field that has been dominant in science for the past half century. The in-depth conversations cover important research areas and discoveries, as well as the roads to these discoveries, including aspects of the scientists' work that never saw publication. They also bring out the humanness of the famous scientists - the reader learns about their backgrounds, aspirations, failings, and triumphs. The book is illustrated with snapshots of the conversations and photos provided by the interviewees. It is a follow-up to the critically acclaimed Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists, by the same author. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

More conversations---Chemical Heritage magazine
During his six-year tenure as Editor-in-Chief of The Chemical Intelligencer, István Hargittai, sometimes with his wife Magdi, interviewed more than 120 eminent scientists, more than half of whom were Nobel laureates....
Hargittai seeks to elicit the stories behind the most important achievements in twentieth-century biomedicine directly from some of their most eminent participants. They tell us about their backgrounds, families and lives, both personal and professional, childhoods (Like me or others of my generation, some had chemistry sets or were inspired by Paul de Kruif¡¦s Microbe Hunters or Sinclair Lewis¡¦ Arrowsmith), influences and career choices, motivations, aspirations, heroes (scientific or otherwise), mentors, hardships and triumphs, philosophies, hobbies and nonscientific interests (several are accomplished musicians), and their seminal discoveries.
Nobel laureates describe how the prize affected their lives, research, and careers. Most are modest and admit the role of luck in their good fortune (Kary B. Mullis is the sole exception). In reply to Hargittai¡¦s serious questions a number of the conversations are laced with humor.
Each interview is prefaced with a biographical sketch and includes one or more portraits of the interviewee, many photographed by Hargittai or his wife. The volume contains 176 illustrations of apparatus, formal and informal group portraits, notebooks, letters, models, commemorative postage stamps, plaques, and drawings. Three of the interviewees are now deceased, underscoring the importance of such oral histories. Several scientists discuss their differences with other scientists and competitors.
On the whole, however, most of the scientists are well acquainted with each other and are mutually supportive, and their names crop up frequently in each other¡¦s interviews. Some offer suggestions as to Nobel-caliber scientists whose candidacy was overlooked.�nAn unusually high proportion of the interviewees (at least 22) are Jewish, so the issues of Judaism, the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism are discussed by many of them.
In his preface Hargittai states, ¡§The science of the second half of the 20th century was dominated by the biomedical fields and this is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The present selection of interviews gives a cross section covering a broad range of topics, personalities, and circumstances of recording.¡¨ I agree with Hargittai¡¦s assessment and heartily recommend his book, suitable for both complete reading or browsing, to biomedical scientists, biochemists, chemists, historians of chemistry and or science, and general readers interested in the ¡§inside story¡¨ of the workings of 20th century science. ... Read more

Book Description

In this book, 36 famous chemists, including 18 Nobel laureates, tell about their lives in science, the beginnings of their careers, their aspirations, and their hardships and triumphs. The reader will learn about their seminal discoveries, and the conversations in the book bring out the humanity of these great scientists. NMR spectroscopy, computational chemistry, the drama of buckminsterfullerene, the story of the Pill, the politics of atmospheric chemistry and the resonance theory, the beginnings of molecular mechanics and modern stereochemistry are examples of the topics discussed first-hand by, in all likelihood, the most appropriate persons. ... Read more

Book Description

What are currently the most dynamic areas in the life sciences and where do future challenges lie? In this carefully selected collection of essays, world-class scientists -- all of them winners of the Nobel, Lasker or Wolf prizes -- describe groundbreaking developments in their particular area of expertise. The selection of topics is as diverse and colorful as life itself:
* Will advances in molecular biology allow us to learn all about the cell's internal workings?
* What are the prospects of molecular medicine for the treatment of cancer and other diseases?
* How will agriculture develop in the era of transgenic plants?
* How will life on our planet be transformed as the human population continues to increase?
Founded on hard facts as well as on scientific intuition, each chapter highlights a different aspect of life science and is completely self-contained.
Fascinating reading for anyone with an active interest in the life sciences, as well as being ideal for teaching purposes. ... Read more