Mine Interesting Books of great knowledge and stories

A Criminal Defense

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 23:44:00 -0700

Losing the trial of his life could mean losing everything.

When a young reporter is found dead and a prominent Philadelphia businessman is accused of her murder, Mick McFarland finds himself involved in the case of his life. The defendant, David Hanson, was Mick’s close friend in law school, and the victim, a TV news reporter, had reached out to Mick for legal help only hours before her death.

Mick’s played both sides of Philadelphia’s courtrooms. As a top-shelf defense attorney and former prosecutor, he knows all the tricks of the trade. And he’ll need every one of them to win.

But as the trial progresses, he’s disturbed by developments that confirm his deepest fears. This trial, one that already hits too close to home, may jeopardize his firm, his family—everything. Now Mick’s only way out is to mastermind the most brilliant defense he’s ever spun, one that will cross every legal and moral boundary.

Author -

Biography

William L. Myers Jr. is a Philadelphia lawyer with thirty years of trial experience in state and federal courts up and down the East Coast. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, he has argued before the United States Supreme Court and still actively practices law.

Myers was born into a proud, working-class family and now lives with his wife, Lisa, in the western suburbs of Philadelphia.

William L. Myers Jr.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Wow.. Didn't see that coming... - If you love procedural legal dramas and mysteries you will love “A Criminal Defense’ by William L. Myers Jnr…

This is filled with clever courtroom angst, conflict and drama. A young female journo is found dead and a prominent businessman is the accused… and our male Lead – Mick McFarland, defence attorney extraordinaire is in for the case of his life! While there is a great deal of detail I found myself flying through this book.
Mick is in a conundrum... it’s clear that this trial is far more than it seems and there are lives and livelihoods at stake… but who does he trust? who does he back?... where does it lead.
This was entirely unexpected... I enjoyed the legal volleying... There were many believable yet unexpected twists that kept me glued.
I did not see the end coming…I’m still reeling… I hope you enjoy it as much as I did...
Law & Order eat your heart out! 4.5 solid stars…

ByNicShef❤️ReadingTOP 500 REVIEWERon March 1, 2017

Format: Kindle Edition

2) I would read another novel by this author in a heartbeat - Details.
The devil is in the details.
And this author's knowledge of the criminal justice system makes the story sizzle.
I shouldn't enjoy the lead character as much as I do.
But flaws make every one of the novel's characters compelling.
There are no unrealistic good guys; there are no irredeemable bad guys.
Even the murder victim is flawed.
You are caught up from the very first in a mystery you have to pick at constantly.
Who is lying? Who is hiding unwelcome truths? What exactly is going on?
I wanted to know who done it!
And even when I was sure I did know, I only had part of the story.
The author gives you plenty of clues.
He makes sure you know there is more going on in this murder trial than meets the eye.
Still, the ending is as unexpected as it can possibly be. In fact, it left me breathless.
I'm going to search for another novel by this author immediately.
And that is high praise from a reader with a low tolerance for mediocre writing.

ByDenise L. Meyeron March 2, 2017

Format: Kindle Edition

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1000 Solved Problems in Classical Physics: An Exercise Book

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:02:00 -0700

This book basically caters to the needs of undergraduates and graduates physics students in the area of classical physics, specially Classical Mechanics and Electricity and Electromagnetism. Lecturers/ Tutors may use it as a resource book. The contents of the book are based on the syllabi currently used in the undergraduate courses in USA, U.K., and other countries. The book is divided into 15 chapters, each chapter beginning with a brief but adequate summary and necessary formulas and Line diagrams followed by a variety of typical problems useful for assignments and exams. Detailed solutions are provided at the end of each chapter.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) I Recommend This Book To Physics Majors :) - Really good book of solved problems in physics. If you have enough time to do all the problems from both books ( 1000 Solved Problems in Modern Physics and 1000 Solved Problems in Classical Physics), you should be almost ready for the Physics GRE. I would recommend it to all physics majors.

It would have been nice to own this book when I started my physics courses so I could have had more example on how to do physics problems.

ByTiconderogaon January 23, 2015

2) An excellent collection of solved problems in classical physics - This is an excellent collection of solved problems in classical physics, many of which are taken from examination papers in UK and Indian universities. High school and college students studying physics will find the collection useful in helping them master the subject.

ByCheeLimCheungon March 5, 2013

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Everyman today call Rome

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 03:25:00 -0700

Written in 1987, this is Charles Coulombe's first book in which he yearns for a retracement back to Catholic principles. This book is comprised of three sections. The first and largest section outlines the history of world events which have shaped our world and have ultimately led to the current crisis in the Church. The second part discusses changes in the approach to the Mass, the Sacraments, and Christian life as a whole. Mr. Coulombe closes the book by explaining how a person can safeguard the integrity of his faith amidst all the challenges of today's world. Everyman Today Call Rome is a historical narrative that is loaded with wit and insights in typical Coulombe fashion that you will not want to miss.

Author -

Biography

Charles A. Coulombe is one of North America’s most respected and sought-after commentators on culture, religion, history, and politics. A specialist in the history and government of the Catholic Church, Coulombe’s influence and expertise extend far beyond matters religious. He has written on topics ranging from the history of rum to haunted houses to a history of the United States.

Mr. Coulombe is a social and political commentator of note. In 2005 he provided narration and commentary for ABC News during the funeral of Pope John Paul II and the subsequent election and installation of Pope Benedict XVI. A former journalist, Mr. Coulombe served as a film reviewer and Contributing Editor of the National Catholic Register, during which time he received the Christian Law Institute's Christ King Journalism Award. Coulombe's work has appeared in over than 20 journals, including regular columns in Fidelity (Australia), PRAG (London), Monarchy Canada, and Creole Magazine (Louisiana). He has also been a frequent contributor to such publications as Success, Catholic Twin Circle, Gnosis, FATE, and the New Oxford Review.

As an informed and passionate speaker on a wide variety of religious, social, political, historical, and literary topics, Mr. Coulombe has appeared on lecture circuits throughout the North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1992 he lectured at Oxford University and the following year embarked on a lecture tour of Ireland and Great Britain, returning to Oxford and Cambridge in 1995. Coulombe has also delivered lectures at the University of Southern California on the history of Rock & Roll and at Cleveland's John Carroll University on the history of medieval monarchy. In February 2011, he was invited to take part in a debate on the abolition of the monarchy before the prestigious Oxford Union.

Charles A. Coulombe

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) I still derive wisdom and insights that entertain and delight me. I put it up there with Chesterton - First some context; I am a 55 year old practicing Catholic who with my wife raised 8 children in the faith. This book was written by an author roughly my age who wrote it three decades ago when he was young. Yet after several reading and re-readings (the book fell apart and I had it spiral bound at the office supply), I still derive wisdom and insights that entertain and delight me.I put it up there with Chesterton, Belloc, Lewis and Rudolf Otto. A short book that sent me to Google repeatedly to research obscure references that amused and illuminated. I have read several of the authors other books and with the exception of the "White Cockade" (poetry), they simply fall short of this earlier work. I hope he has a liaison with whatever muse he was consorting with back in his earlier years and turns out another book like this one.

July 20, 2014

Carlos A. Santayana

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The Milky Way's Black Hole

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 08:47:00 -0700

Some scientists believe that black holes are the gates to other universes. It is interesting that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the existence of black holes that ostensibly allow space travels. The Milky Way's black hole is a super massive black hole located just outside our front door – it lies about 25-28,000 light years away from Earth. Black holes exist not only in our galaxy, but also everywhere in the universe. However, scientists are not able to observe this space time area that prevents anything, even light, from escaping. Astronomers can specify whether black holes exist in a given area by detecting their effect on other matter nearby. It is worth mentioning that black holes can be of one atom size, but also of hundreds of thousand or even million solar masses. According to scientists the Milky Way's black hole has a mass of over 4 million solar masses. It is also known that black holes are permanently expanding by feeding on hundreds of thousands tonnes of matter. However, the Earthlings do not need to worry about the extermination caused by black holes as it is impossible or even ridiculous. Many millions of years need to pass until this scenario becomes real.

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The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sun, 31 May 2015 08:35:00 -0700

Jeffrey D. Sachs has been cited by The New York Times Magazine as “probably the most important economist in the world” and by Time as “the world’s best-known economist.” He has advised an extraordinary range of world leaders and international institutions on the full range of issues related to creating economic success and reducing the world’s poverty and misery. Now, at last, he draws on his entire twenty-five-year body of experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring big-picture vision of the keys to economic success in the world today and the steps that are necessary to achieve prosperity for all.

Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling to his laserlike analysis, Jeffrey Sachs sets the stage by drawing a vivid conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall. Then, in a tour de force of elegance and compression, he explains why, over the past two hundred years, wealth has diverged across the planet in the manner that it has and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. The groundwork laid, he explains his methods for arriving, like a clinical internist, at a holistic diagnosis of a country’s situation and the options it faces. Rather than deliver a worldview to readers from on high, Sachs leads them along the learning path he himself followed, telling the remarkable stories of his own work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa as a way to bring readers to a broad-based understanding of the array of issues countries can face and the way the issues interrelate. He concludes by drawing on everything he has learned to offer an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that most frequently hold societies back. In the end, he leaves readers with an understanding, not of how daunting the world’s problems are, but how solvable they are—and why making the effort is a matter both of moral obligation and strategic self-interest. A work of profound moral and intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, The End of Poverty is a road map to a safer, more prosperous future for the world.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) The Economist as Savior - Jeffery Sachs' "The End of Poverty" is three books in one: First, it is an exploration of the world, focusing on economics but surveying wide array of topics regarding international relations and politics, and offers a portrait of the planet today. Second, it is a crash course in development economics. Finally, it is an impassioned plea for more western aid to poor countries particularly in Africa.

I know of no better book for understanding the current state of the world. In several brilliant
Chapters, Sachs takes us through the hyperinflation of Bolivia, the post Cold War transition to market economies in Poland, Russia, India and China, and the struggles for existence in Sub Saharan Africa. All these are put into context of International Relations, Economics and Politics, and personified through Sachs' description of his own role in these happenings. It's a tour de force.

The weaknesses here are the complete absence of the Middle East, and Sachs' all-too-human tendency to portray himself as the epicenter of the events he describes, convincing Polish politicians to accept responsibility, and leading the fight against hyper inflation in Bolivia. But his involvement has not necessarily been as influential or beneficial as he portrays it: Bolivia, at least, can hardly be called a success story; Even though Sachs praises both its leaders and its policies, Bolivia is still not up to its 1980 level of GDP per Capita (p. 108).

As a primer on development economics, "The End of Poverty" is a more of a mixed bag. At best, it offers powerful insights, particularly about the importance of Geography to economic development. Although the case has been made before (most famously by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies but also by David Landes and others), Sachs really drives the point home about how close a relationship exists between geography and economic possibilities. Possibly he overstates the case somewhat - based on their geography, Egypt and Panama should have been economic empires - but Sachs truly has opened my eyes to a dimension in the question of economic development which I had barely considered before.

Africa is the chief victim of its geography, Sachs argues. In his view, the solution to Africa's problems is not really economic - it is not a matter of right monetary and fiscal policies but of hospital beds, malaria nets and AIDS treatments - readily available technocratic solutions which are missing for lack of funds only.

On the other hand, some of the chapters of theory are painful to read, particularly the one in which Sachs compares development economics to emergency medicine. His history of the world economy from time immemorial to the present is pedestrian and hardly innovative (it owes much to David Landes' superior The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor . Like Landes, it also owes much to Adam Smith - he is quoted in virtually every chapter of Sachs' book). But development theory - as opposed to technocratic solutions - is ridiculously over simplified (in Sachs' view, it boils down to two words - "foreign aid" pp. 247-250), as William Easterly points out in his review [...]- it's false to think that we know all the answers, and that the UN and other aid agency are sufficiently efficient to carry out the solution even if we had known them. For development economics, Easterly's own The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics is a must read.

As an advocate, Sachs's chief cause is persuading Western governments, and particularly the US, to live up to their obligation of spending 0.7 percent of each nation's GDP on aid. Sachs is an enthusiastic advocate of the Millenium Development Goals - a UN program to half poverty by 2015 - and of UN secretary general Kofi Annan (whom he calls "the world's finest stayrsman" p. 205. For a more balanced - although still highly favourable - view of Annan, see The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power).

Sachs effectively promotes his development goals from challenges left and right; Sachs points out that African Governments are no more corrupt then other governments (pp. 312-314); that "economic freedom" does not guarantee economic growth (p.320), and that reducing Infant Mortality rates coincides with a reduction in birth rates (pp. 324-325). I was also shocked to realize how little the US spends on foreign Aid (I knew it was little, but I didn't know it proportionally less than any Western country save Italy, p. 302) and that the 400 richest Americans are 20% richer than the one hundred and sixty one million, three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants of Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda (p. 305). Sachs convincingly argues that America often finds itself militarily involved in economically collapsing states (whether Vietnam, Lebanon, Zaire or Bosnia Herzegovina), and that indeed almost every country in which the US had to intervene suffered "state failure" (p.334). Wouldn't it be better to spend more on preventive medicine instead of risking American troops in the battlefield?

From the left, although Sachs identifies with the motives of the "Seattle Movement", he disagrees with their policy recommendations, calling for more - not less - trade, and for a large role for Multi National Corporations in reducing poverty.

Yet Sachs offers little place for dissenting views? Is the UN really this effective an instrument for poverty reduction? Is money spent in Africa really solving problems? To date, no country has been lifted from poverty via the large scale government sponsored policies Sachs promotes - instead, they have developed through mostly their own efforts with limited amounts of outside help. Africa does need more foreign aid - but maybe it needs more foreign humility, too.

By Omer Belsky on October 22, 2005

2) Much to offer (even if you don't believe in Sachs's plan to end poverty) - Sachs covers a lot of ground: a bit of world economic history, a bit of travelogue, moral arguments for foreign aid, and ... The Plan (to end world poverty by 2025).

The Plan itself, while mostly fascinating to read (with patches of exhausting technical detail), has its challenges. The biggest problem is that, while the investments he outlines will theoretically jump-start growth, it has never been tested, and the West has a long history of failed development ideas. Among other more technical points, Sachs either underestimates the inefficiencies in the aid agencies and in governments, or he overestimates the ease of overcoming them.

But the plan (and how to pay for it) makes up only four out of eighteen chapters. Here is what else awaits you: a brief economic history of the world and characterization of the rich-poor divides in the world today (chapters 1 and 2), a primer on growth economics (chapter 3), Sachs's prescription for how development economics should be practiced (chapter 4), tales of Sachs's very high level consulting in Bolivia, Poland, and Russia (chapters 5 through 7), economic histories of India and China (chapters 8 and 9), an overview of the economic and health situation in Africa (chapter 10), Sachs's views on how the West should respond to terrorism (chapter 11), The Plan (and how to pay for it (chapters 12 through 15), dispelling myths about why aid doesn't work (chapter 16), and the pep talk (chapters 17 and 18). The book can largely be read piecemeal. I particularly enjoyed chapters 1, 5 through 9, and 16.

One wearisome feature is the self-promotion. Sachs is the center of everything good that happens in this book. He has only praise for organizations he still works with (the UN and Columbia University's Earth Institute) but ample criticism for others (the World Bank, Western governments).

For more in this field, William Easterly's The Elusive Quest for Growth gives an excellent account of trends in development aid for Africa and why they haven't worked. Robert Klitgaard's Tropical Gangsters is an entertaining and insightful memoir of a World Bank economist advising in Sub-Saharan Africa.

By David Evans VINE VOICE on March 3, 2006

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Global Warming: The Complete Briefing

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sun, 31 May 2015 08:12:00 -0700

John Houghton's market-leading textbook is now in full color and includes the latest IPCC findings, making it the definitive guide to climate change. Written for students across a wide range of disciplines, its simple, logical flow of ideas gives an invaluable grounding in the science and impacts of climate change and highlights the need for action on global warming. Is there evidence for climate changing due to human activities? How do we account for recent extremes of weather and climate? Can global electricity provision and transport ever be carbon free? Written by a leading figure at the forefront of action to confront humanity's most serious environmental problem, this undergraduate textbook comprehensively explores these and other issues, allowing students to think through the problem, assess the data and draw conclusions on the action that should be taken, by governments, by industry and by each and every one of us.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Fair, balanced, scientific, non-partisan, clear. - I have to take immediate issue with the [anonymous] reviews below that claim that this book doesn't address the difference between natural climate cycling and anthropogenic climate change: that difference, in a nutshell, is PRECISELY what this book deals with. Those reviewers never read it, or failed completely to follow its line of reasoning. This is NOT a partisan, political, ideological book. It is simply a guided tour of the science of climate change, revised in 2004. It carefully parses the current research. Read the table of contents [you can click on it at the top of the page] and see that the book is organized around the following inevitable questions: Is climate changing? How much is it changing? How much of that change is caused by people? What are the likely effects, short- and long-term, of these changes? What can we do about it? In the case of climate change, despite all of the political complications that have accrued to what was originally science, these questions are PRECISELY the ones a thinking person needs to ask. To have a book structured around them, referring, as it does, to the best [scientific, independently-refereed] research is a gift. It seems that almost everybody today picks their position on climate change as part of an ideological package-deal: most American conservatives almost automatically disdain the science because the Bush White House and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter disdain it. Most American progressives almost automatically embrace the NOTION of climate change without actually knowing the science, because Al Gore, et al, have told them to. Both positions, taken in ignorance of the science, are ideolgical and symptomatic of the worst party-line politics. I urge you to read the science. It will take some effort, but that effort is our civic duty. This book has no agenda other than compiling the research and putting it before the reading public in an accessible format.

By J. V. Lewis VINE VOICE on July 12, 2006

2) Informative and stimulating overview of global warming issue - This is the first book I have read on global warming. Sir John Houghton has provided a carefully written account, with good explanations, fairly thorough referencing, and informative charts and figures. The subject of global warming is presented from a multifaceted perspective, with both informative factual material as well as elements of a personal perspective, introduced in a non-forceful but persuasive manner.

The book is aimed at those who know little about climatology or global warming. It will help to have some general scientific background. The pertinent facts - how much we have increased the atmosphere's CO2 concentration, in what way this gas effects the earth's energy balance, etc. - are available here, and the information is referenced to primary scientific sources. The prognosis for a warming of the atmosphere is gently asserted in the affirmative, but the uncertainties are also presented. Without being a climatologist, I found most of my qestions of this nature were answered. The only point I was curious about but found missing was what recent changes in glaciers tell us about the present tendency of global temperature.
After presenting the data, the models and arguing gently for a moderate warming tendency, Houghton presents several nice chapters on effects (potentially severe) and responses to the problem, with a particular emphasis on energy. The suggested responses leave one with the sense that Houghton is an optimist. He incites to action, where it is hard to imagine today's politicians asking us to change our habits so fundamentally.
This book is stimulating, both on the subject of global warming (whether or not it is occurring, how much, what is our role), as well as on the potential consequences and suitable responses. Considering that a response is advisable - a point of view which Houghton advances - one is left with a sense of the large scale of the responses which are necessary to reverse the accumulation of CO2: is mankind's ability to improvise its way out of a fix capable of dealing with a problem whose solution would require changes of this magnitude?

By sinklerwl@aol.com on January 3, 1999

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Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sun, 31 May 2015 07:57:00 -0700

The definitive story of American health care today—its causes, consequences, and confusions

In March 2010, the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. It was the most extensive reform of America’s health care system since at least the creation of Medicare in 1965, and maybe ever. The ACA was controversial and highly political, and the law faced legal challenges reaching all the way to the Supreme Court; it even precipitated a government shutdown. It was a signature piece of legislation for President Obama’s first term, and also a ball and chain for his second.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania who also served as a special adviser to the White House on health care reform, has written a brilliant diagnostic explanation of why health care in America has become such a divisive social issue, how money and medicine have their own—quite distinct—American story, and why reform has bedeviled presidents of the left and right for more than one hundred years.
Emanuel also explains exactly how the ACA reforms are reshaping the health care system now. He forecasts the future, identifying six mega trends in health that will determine the market for health care to 2020 and beyond. His predictions are bold, provocative, and uniquely well-informed. Health care—one of America’s largest employment sectors, with an economy the size of the GDP of France—has never had a more comprehensive or authoritative interpreter.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Six Megatrends: Agree or disagree? - Ezekiel Emanuel just published an important book with a great title, "Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System." In it, he describes the history of health care reform in the US, gives an overview of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and speculates about future trends in American health care.

The concluding chapter of Emanuel's book is entitled, "Six Megatrends in Health Care: The Long-Term Impact of the ACA." I will devote this review to discussing his six "megatrends."

Megatrend 1) The End of Insurance Companies as We Know Them

Emanuel argues that health insurance companies will "shift their business to focus on offering services they have expertise in, particularly analytics, actuarial modeling, risk management, and other management services...." or "transform themselves into integrated delivery systems," or they will go out of business. This seems quite plausible. However, I think it will depend on how the ACA implementation goes over the next several years. If insurance companies raise their rates, there could be major political fallout.

Megatrend 2) VIP Care for the Chronically and Mentally Ill

Emanuel argues that "tertiary prevention" for chronically ill people with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc, and mental health care for people with depression/anxiety, will become an increasing focus of our health care system. I agree. I've taken care of many patients with chronic diseases and mental illness who cycle in and out of the hospital. The question is if our fragmented health system can provide coordinated, community-based care for these vulnerable people. Doctors and nurses must learn to use a biosocial approach when taking care of marginalized patients with chronic disease and mental illness.

Megatrend 3) The Emergence of Digital Medicine and the Closing of Hospitals

Emanuel writes: "Digital medicine will allow physicians to monitor patients remotely anywhere they are, get labs and many imaging tests done, and perform interventions once done exclusively in the hospital." I agree - sort of. We are rapidly headed into a digital era. More health care will be provided in the community, and digital devices will continue to proliferate. But will these digital devices provide value for money? Or will the hype outpace their effectiveness? Unfortunately, so far, the hype is winning.

Megatrend 4) The End of Employer-Sponsored Insurance

This controversial megatrend was analyzed in yesterday's front-page New York Times article. I think this megatrend is very difficult to predict. It depends on a number of political and economic factors. Will America's health insurance system remain constant, or will it move 1) towards a Republican system based on tax credits, or 2) towards a single payer system based on universal health coverage, or 3) a Kaiser-like group model? The latter is the most likely.

Megatrend 5) The End of Health Care Inflation

I'm definitely not an economist, but I'm not sure I agree with Emmanuel that the ACA will succeed at controlling the growth in health care costs. In his book, Emanuel admits that the ACA didn't go far enough on payment reform, and that there remains "a serious misalignment between what we want physicians and hospitals to do in terms of improving value, efficiency, and reducing unnecessary care and how insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid, and others pay them." As long as our fee-for-service system is around, and Medicare payments and RVUs are biased towards specialists, the growth of health care costs won't be controlled.

Megatrend 6) The Transformation of Medical Schools

I agree with Emanuel. Medical schools must change, and become much more team-oriented, community health oriented, and digital medicine oriented. The problem is that medical school curricula are very difficult to change. Can they begin to change rapidly? I'm not sure. If they can, it will require a major awakening of medical students and faculty.
With the enormous amount of material for physicians to learn, does reducing the length of medical school from 4 years to 3 years really make sense? I don't think so. I think it would be preferable to keep medical school at 4 years and subsidize medical school tuition, or provide 100% debt forgiveness for medical students who enter primary care careers. The National Health Service Corps is a good program, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. If medical school is reduced to 3 years, will the training physicians receive really be sufficient?

By Philip Lederer on March 23, 2014

2) Excellent Overview of U.S. Health Care - American health care leads the world in costs - 18% of GDP (while excluding about 15% from insurance coverage), vs. 4% for Singapore (excluding no-one) at the low-end. It also infects 5% of hospitalized patients - of which nearly 100,000 die, and kills another estimated 44,000 - 98,000 from other hospital errors. Surely this complicated mess deserves rethinking. Unfortunately, getting from the mess we have now to something akin to the high-quality, much-lower cost care in Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan has proven beyond the capability of America's legislative leaders. Decades of failed prior attempts, followed by compromise after compromise was required to even get the limited improvements afforded by the ACA when it was enacted in 2010.

Dr. Emanuel clearly likes the ACA - understandable given his role in its development. However, he minimizes trying to sell the ACA, doesn't mince words excoriating the initial ACA rollout efforts, and focuses on explaining our current complicated, dysfunctional system. I'm very hopeful that one of ACA's mandates (electronic medical records) will prove far more valuable than imagined, helping to identify important interactions, improve treatment protocols, and save lives. Improving access to care will also save lives. Similarly, encouraging the growth of accountable care organizations with bundled payments should also save lives and reduce costs by incentivizing quality improvement and removing incentives to over-treat. Finally, taxing 'Cadillac' plans will also hopefully make a dent in cost control.

An excellent and objective overview of complicated subjects.

By Loyd E. Eskildson HALL OF FAME on March 7, 2014

For Detail

Click –Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sun, 31 May 2015 07:38:00 -0700

New York Times Bestseller
Washington Post Bestseller

Los Angeles Times Bestseller
Stress Test is the story of Tim Geithner’s education in financial crises.

As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Treasury, Timothy F. Geithner helped the United States navigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, from boom to bust to rescue to recovery. In a candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, he takes readers behind the scenes of the crisis, explaining the hard choices and politically unpalatable decisions he made to repair a broken financial system and prevent the collapse of the Main Street economy. This is the inside story of how a small group of policy makers—in a thick fog of uncertainty, with unimaginably high stakes—helped avoid a second depression but lost the American people doing it. Stress Test is also a valuable guide to how governments can better manage financial crises, because this one won’t be the last.

Stress Test reveals a side of Secretary Geithner the public has never seen, starting with his childhood as an American abroad. He recounts his early days as a young Treasury official helping to fight the international financial crises of the 1990s, then describes what he saw, what he did, and what he missed at the New York Fed before the Wall Street boom went bust. He takes readers inside the room as the crisis began, intensified, and burned out of control, discussing the most controversial episodes of his tenures at the New York Fed and the Treasury, including the rescue of Bear Stearns; the harrowing weekend when Lehman Brothers failed; the searing crucible of the AIG rescue as well as the furor over the firm’s lavish bonuses; the battles inside the Obama administration over his widely criticized but ultimately successful plan to end the crisis; and the bracing fight for the most sweeping financial reforms in more than seventy years. Secretary Geithner also describes the aftershocks of the crisis, including the administration’s efforts to address high unemployment, a series of brutal political battles over deficits and debt, and the drama over Europe’s repeated flirtations with the economic abyss.

Secretary Geithner is not a politician, but he has things to say about politics—the silliness, the nastiness, the toll it took on his family. But in the end, Stress Test is a hopeful story about public service. In this revealing memoir, Tim Geithner explains how America withstood the ultimate stress test of its political and financial systems.

Author -

TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER was the seventy-fifth secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He wrote this book as a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) An honest account - I worked with Geithner at the NY Fed. I was a bit player present at many of the meetings and calls described.

I imagine most ratings will reflect their predisposition to the actions taken by the Fed and Treasury during the crisis. I did not come here to debate those.

I merely came to state that the book is an honest account of how Tim and the rest of us thought during the events described. This is what he believed, and what we believed. I cannot comment on the accounts from Treasury, though they correspond with what I annecdotally heard at the time.

By Brian L Peters on May 14, 2014

2) Beaten like a red haired stepchild - And, Geithner still seems shell shocked. He does a much better job framing the crisis in the book than in real time. But he still doesn't do an a sufficient job of conveying the crushing impact of market panic. It was the kind of fear that you can smell.

His major error is not emphasizing just how small the differences are between market based traditional bankruptcy, bailouts, and nationalization. With nationalization, the owners/shareholders are wiped out as well as some of the bondholders. In traditional bankruptcy, the owners/shareholders are wiped out and bondholders are usually wiped out or take a serious haircut. With partial nationalization (bailouts) including TARP and other guarantee programs, shareholders were either totally wiped out or lost 90% of their investment in the weakest banks. The shareholders of the stronger banks suffered dilution of their ownership through TARP fees, mandatory warrants, and Treasury imposed capital raises.

1/4 to 1/3 of the largest financial firms were effectively nationalized. The owners/shareholders were wiped out. The ONLY difference was the treatment of bond holders, who did better under the TARP and other backstop programs. And these bondholders weren't hedge funds or investment bankers. Hedge funds wouldn't touch low yield bank debt. It was owned by Pension Funds, bond mutual funds, ordinary people and institutions that look more like the president of your local branch bank then anyone on Wall Street.

Partial nationalization. If you don't believe it, ask Ralph Nader. "Nader has been arguing the government needs to recognize the rights of shareholders, instead of sending all the profits of the GSEs to the Treasury, aside from minimal capital buffers." Yes Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were bailed out. But the owners/shareholders weren't bailed out. Nader complains that all the profits were sent to the taxpayer. Per Nader, "... they sensed that this would help keep the deficit down -- that this huge Niagara of profits would --and they were right on that." That 'huge Niagara went to the TAXPAYERS.

Geithner was beaten like a red haired stepchild. And he plays defense in this book.

The story he didn't spell out in 18 point type is:

1. TARP had a positive return of $billions. Which went to the taxpayer.
2. A huge portion of the financial system WAS effectively nationalized Bear Sterns, WaMu, Wachovia, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, 80% of Citi, 92% of AIG and small chunks of the institutions that were required to increase capital by Geithner's stress test.
3. When the Fed and Treasury acted, markets that had been worshiped since the breakup of the USSR -- failed. For a market system to work, markets need to be relatively efficient, liquid and deep. These characteristics, which were plausible prior to panic, were proven to be illusory.
4. The greed of the prior decade was reversed and replaced by the ice cold sweat of fear. Financial markets were frozen and our economy went into free fall.
5. Geithner won. The Fed, Treasury, and both Bush and Obama saved the country from Great Depression 2.0.

The misnamed bailout didn't bail out the owners of weak financial firms. It bailed out the rest of the country, including iconic American brands like Harley Davidson. Harley (ticker symbol HOG) is the only brand in history whose most loyal customers get tattooed with the brand name permanently and prominently. In early 2009, it was simply unable to finance sales to customers with good credit. It was choking on loans that couldn't be sold into frozen markets. Geithner's TALF broke that logjam and prevented businesses from disintegrating. Anyone that doesn't believe this should simply look it up.

Yes Geithner said it.

But he should have said it more like this. With conviction.

By Generic Guy on May 19, 2014

For Detail

Click –Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

Business adventures

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sat, 30 May 2015 09:19:00 -0700

From Wall Street to Main Street, John Brooks, longtime contributor to the New Yorker, brings to life in vivid fashion twelve classic and timeless tales of corporate and financial life in America

What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety; these notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened.

Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. John Brooks’s insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history repeats itself.

Five additional stories on equally fascinating subjects round out this wonderful collection that will both entertain and inform readers . . . Business Adventures is truly financial journalism at its liveliest and best.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) It's Great to Have This Title Back - Back in the Late Bronze Age, aka the 1970s, I discovered John Brooks and his marvelous accounts of Wall Street and USAmerican business. Brooks died in 1993, and his books have been half-forgotten. I'm very pleased to see this title rereleased in digital format, and I hope all his works are appear soon as eBooks.

This book casts a wide net over the USAmerican business and investing scene, always with with and insight. There's a lot to be learned here, as Brooks examines the three-day stock market mini-crash of 1962, how Ford lost a bundle on the Edsel, how GE broke the anti-trust laws, how Xerox became very wealthy (later, Xerox became very broke, but that was after this article) . . . all great stuff.

Rereading these after forty years, I'm impressed with Brooks ability to get to the bottom of things, especially when there is no "bottom". Why did the New York Stock exchange lose over 5% one day in 1962, then rally suddenly? No one really knows, but Brooks examines the chaos of that day, and dissects the explanations offered after the fact — while noting that BEFORE the fact, none of the explainers had a clue what was about to happen. Interspersed are comments from THE first book ever written on stock markets, "Confusion of Confusions", by Josseph Penso de la Vega (no product link; apparently Amazon doesn't want to use its reviews to sell books other than the one being reviewed anymore). Brooks demonstrates how little has changed over the centuries.

And so it goes through the rest of the essays. Facts and insight, presented with wit, charm, and grace. Highly recommended.
By Stephen M. St Onge on July 13, 2014

2) Anecdotes on Business - I had heard, as I think everyone else has, that Business Adventures was a favorite book of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. I read the ebook, and I understand a print version will be forthcoming in September.

This book makes me feel as though I'm sitting at the knee of my grandfather, listening to wise recollections.
A writer of articles in the 1950's and 1960, many for the New Yorker, the author intelligently and thoughtfully steps through 12 events, one per chapter.

At first I thought perhaps I was particularly dense and wasn't getting the message. What held these stories together? Eventually, I realized that the author is not driving home a point, selling anything, or giving advice. His observations leave room for the reader to consider events, their connections, their parallels to today, the importance of character, and the question of morality in business. It was refreshing not to be told what to think.

I enjoyed the stories of Ford's Edsel, Piggly Wiggly, Xerox, Goodrich vs Latex.

The chapter on the federal income tax is particularly relevant, given the wide-spread debate about taxes and modern conversations about the 1%.

John Brooks' perspective is firmly rooted in the past, when the book was written, and provides readers opportunity for a sense of omniscience since we can consider ramifications the author himself could not be aware of, at that time.

Times may change. People do not.

By H. Roulo on July 19, 2014

For Detail

Click –

Business adventures

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Sat, 30 May 2015 03:30:00 -0700

In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have opened their pocketbooks in hopes of eradicating the scourge. How does a parasitic disease that we've known how to prevent for more than a century still infect three hundred million people every year, killing nearly one million of them? In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer this question, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.

Author -

Sonia Shah is a science writer and critically acclaimed author whose writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, New Scientist and elsewhere. Her latest book is "The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years" from Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (July 2010).

Her prize-winning 2006 drug industry exposé, The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients (New Press), has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as "a tautly argued study...a trenchant exposé...meticulously researched and packed with documentary evidence," and as "important [and] powerful" by The New England Journal of Medicine. The book, which international bestselling novelist and The Constant Gardener author John Le Carré called "an act of courage," has enjoyed wide international distribution, including French, Japanese, and Italian editions. The Library Journal named it one of the best consumer health books of 2006.

Her 2004 book, Crude: The Story of Oil (Seven Stories), was acclaimed as "brilliant" and "beautifully written" by The Guardian and "required reading" by The Nation, and has been widely translated, from Japanese, Greek, and Italian to Bahasa Indonesia. Her "raw and powerful" (Amazon.com) 1997 collection, Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire, still in print after 10 years, continues to be required reading at colleges and universities across the country.

Shah's writing, based on original reportage from around the world, from India and South Africa to Panama, Malawi, Cameroon, and Australia, has been featured on current affairs shows around the United States, as well as on the BBC and Australia's Radio National. A frequent keynote speaker at political conferences, Shah has lectured at universities and colleges across the country, including Columbia's Earth Institute, MIT, Harvard, Brown, Georgetown and elsewhere. Her writing on human rights, medicine, and politics have appeared in a range of magazines from Playboy, Salon, and Orion to The Progressive and Knight-Ridder. Her television appearances include A&E and the BBC, and she's consulted on many documentary film projects, from the ABC to Channel 4 in the UK. Shah is a former writing fellow of The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation.

Shah was born in 1969 in New York City to Indian immigrants. Growing up, she shuttled between the northeastern United States where her parents practiced medicine and Mumbai and Bangalore, India, where her extended working-class family lived, developing a life-long interest in inequality between and within societies. She holds a BA in journalism, philosophy, and neuroscience from Oberlin College, and lives with molecular ecologist Mark Bulmer and their two sons Zakir and Kush.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) A brilliant synthesis of a complicated subject - Malaria is not something most of us think about in-depth unless traveling to an area where the disease is common. However, this incredible book makes an excellent argument for why we should. The author manages to magically transform volumes of scientific information into a riveting tale that just about anyone will enjoy.

Ms. Shah traces the very complex history of malaria from the beginning of human/mosquito interaction, and covers a range of related topics including the routes of infection and transmission; why certain areas and populations are more susceptible to malaria; the role of war, technology, and industry in sparking the disease; and why the efforts to control or at least contain it have not been universally successful. The book is meticulously sourced (at least 30% of the text consists of the references listed at the end of the book and footnoted within each chapter), but is not dry in the least.

The book reads like fiction, and it's too bad that it's not. The author leaves the reader with a very well-developed sense that the merest change in environmental conditions can leave us all susceptible to the next wave of malaria. I recommend this book strongly to just about anyone, but particularly for those who are interested in medical history and public health.

By EJ on July 19, 2010

2) Loved it! - This was a great read... So insightful. It's the perfect book for people who love non-fiction, but may feel a bit overwhelmed by a book like Guns Germs and Steel. That is not to say that Diamond and those types doesn't have a place. However, someone who would never take a text book on vacation for personal reading, but still likes an informative educational book that is well written and light enough to keep your attention throughout may find 'The Fever' to be a good fit. It is definitely deep enough to educate and make you feel like you've learned and stretched your knowledge base. Even more so if you are a fan of medical history, or even just history in general.

By Jessica E. Sims on October 10, 2010

For Detail

Click –The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

Virtual Freedom: How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Fri, 29 May 2015 23:51:00 -0700

Chris Ducker

Entrepreneurs often suffer from ”superhero syndrome”—the misconception that to be successful, they must do everything themselves. Not only are they the boss, but also the salesperson, HR manager, copywriter, operations manager, online marketing guru, and so much more. It’s no wonder why so many people give up the dream of starting a business—it’s just too much for one person to handle.

But outsourcing expert and ”Virtual CEO,” Chris Ducker knows how you can get the help you need with resources you can afford. Small business owners, consultants, and online entrepreneurs don’t have to go it alone when they discover the power of building teams of virtual employees to help run, support, and grow their businesses.

Virtual Freedom: How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business is the step-by-step guide every entrepreneur needs to build his or her business with the asset of working with virtual employees. Focusing on business growth, Ducker explains every detail you need to grasp, from figuring out which jobs you should outsource to finding, hiring, training, motivating, and managing virtual assistants.

With additional tactics and online resources, Virtual Freedom is the ultimate resource of the knowledge and tools necessary for building your dream business with the help of virtual staff. Shop Amazon - Audible Books that Inspired a Feature Film

Author -

Chris C. Ducker has helped thousands of entrepreneurs around the world implement successful virtual staffing strategies into their businesses, releasing them from the shackles of the over-worked, over-stressed lifestyle that most business owners endure on a daily basis. His approach to leveraging time, as well as maximizing business systems and processes – all with a focus on running businesses from a distance – has earned him the title of the “Virtual CEO.”

Ducker is also a popular speaker, podcaster, and video marketer.

BLOG: www.chrisducker.com
BOOK: www.virtualfreedombook.com

Known as the 'Virtual CEO' and regarded as the number one authority on the subject of virtual staffing and personal outsourcing, Chris Ducker is a serial entrepreneur who owns and operates three businesses in the Philippines, amounting to almost 300 employees - including a call center, a recruitment consultancy and a co-working space to support local startup entrepreneurs.

An advocate of virtual team building and as a result, smarter, faster business growth, Chris is also a popular international keynote speaker, business blogger and podcaster.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) If you own a business you NEED to read this book (even if you think it doesn't apply) - This book is THE authoritative guide to finding and managing a virtual staff. If you have never done it before Chris Ducker will walk you through step by step - it is easier than you think! If you are like I was for so long and putting off the idea of building a virtual team let this be your wake up call.

What makes this book extra special is not only is it a good guide for someone starting out, but even for those who have been managing some or all of their team online Virtual Freedom will show you how to take that to the next level. There were several tips I picked up even after several months of working with a virtual assistant.

The format of this book is super simple to read with bullet points and headings. And examples! Every section has an example of someone putting the strategies into practice.

Even without a virtual team on a full time or regular basis this book will help you hire and manage for one off projects, and even improve your own productivity.

The biggest surprise in the book was the final section about content creation. Not too concerned about giving yourself more free time? Then you should still hire a virtual staff so that you can have more time to create content and continue to grow. Your impact and meaning as a business should never be limited by what you alone can do.

Bottom line? Go buy this book! It will change your life.

By Rivka Kawano on March 16, 2014

2) I'm Getting So Much More Done! - In full disclosure, Chris and I are extremely good friends. Best friends in fact. But, he also knows that I'm always completely honest with him about what he's doing, and he's always been the same with me. Friendship aside, this review completely reflects the information in this book, which is spot on. I've suffered from Superhero Syndrome for the longest time, and after meeting Chris a few years back and being introduced to virtual staff, it has completely changed how I've been able to get things done. I'm getting more done, in less time, and although my team has allowed me to spend more time doing the bigger thinking in my business, which is what all entrepreneurs should be doing (not the repetitive day-to-day stuff that can be handed off, which is what I was doing myself), but I've been able to spend more time with my kids at home while also watching my business grow. I've been able to focus on only what I need to focus on, and having my business work for me, instead of me working for my business.

I've read the book and everything I learned from Chris these past few years is in here, plus a lot more. I highly recommend it. Thanks Chris for being a great friend, but for also helping others see the power in letting go of certain parts of your business - something, like I said, I struggled with for the longest time.

By Pat Flynn on March 19, 2014

For Detail

Click –Virtual Freedom: How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business

The Rosie Effect: A Novel

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Fri, 29 May 2015 08:17:00 -0700

The highly anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The Rosie Project, starring the same extraordinary couple now living in New York and unexpectedly expecting their first child. Get ready to fall in love all over again.

Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back. The Wife Project is complete, and Don and Rosie are happily married and living in New York. But they’re about to face a new challenge because— surprise!—Rosie is pregnant.

Don sets about learning the protocols of becoming a father, but his unusual research style gets him into trouble with the law. Fortunately his best friend Gene is on hand to offer advice: he’s left Claudia and moved in with Don and Rosie.

As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting Gene and Claudia to reconcile, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave the Baseball Fan save his business, and staying on the right side of Lydia the social worker, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him the most.

Graeme Simsion first introduced these unforgettable characters in The Rosie Project, which NPR called “sparkling entertainment along the lines of Where’d You Go Bernadette and When Harry Met Sally.” The San Francisco Chronicle said, “sometimes you just need a smart love story that will make anyone, man or woman, laugh out loud.” If you were swept away by the book that’s captivated a million readers worldwide, you will love The Rosie Effect.

Author -

Graeme Simsion is a former IT consultant and the author of two nonfiction books on database design who decided, at the age of fifty, to turn his hand to fiction. His first novel, The Rosie Project, was published in 2013 and translation rights have been sold in over thirty-five languages. Graeme lives in Australia with his wife, Anne, and their two children.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) DIFFERENT THAN THE FIRST? "CORRECT." ANY LESS WONDERFUL? "INCORRECT," AS DON WOULD SAY. - Having worked with a number of students and adults with Asperger's Syndrome, I fell completely in love with THE ROSIE PROJECT and its perfect representation of the logos, ethos, and beautiful pathos of Professor Don Tillman. This sequel, aptly named THE ROSIE EFFECT, is a very different story, but no less interesting to tell or rewarding to read.

Rosie and Don are living in NYC, where Rosie is elbows deep in the challenge of a joint MD-PhD program at Columbia University, where Don is a visiting professor and researcher. Once again written in first-person limited point of view, we only know Don's side of the story, and what a story it is! His shenanigans are as complex and convoluted as we came to expect in THE ROSIE PROJECT, and author Graeme Simsion once again displays his brilliance at weaving crazily-cascaded series' of events as only Don Tillman could possibly create them. Don's true troubles begin when Rosie announces that she's pregnant. It's been hard enough for Don to adjust to his role as husband and defender, particularly when Rosie expects him to face down neighbors with whom she argues, and Don is struggling to handle multiple issues and avoid a personality "meltdown"...his greatest fear, which rears its head when he is at the end of his ability to cope. Whatever Rosie's expectations were (when she announced her pregnancy to Don) we never actually learn, since she does not articulate them. We watch as poor Don falls down the rabbit hole, trying to understand why Rosie is becoming more and more aloof. Their communication breaks down so miserably that there is more lie than truth, and eventually they retire to separate bedrooms. Don engages the help of a ragtag band of brothers--his three male friends (he's making progress!)--in his efforts to win Rosie back, and the hijinks ensue.

What makes THE ROSIE EFFECT so different from its predecessor? First of all, it cannot have the charm of a boy-meets-girl story, because it is not one. Surely we can all agree that a married relationship is an entirely different type of story to tell...so this book is quite different from the first. A new, married status, a new country, new jobs, new home (in fact, two)...and a pregnancy...imagine the strain on Don and Rosie's relationship, then add Don's Asperger's...and you can imagine the wild ride this story is. Sometimes hysterical, sometimes heartbreaking, other times frustrating and disappointing...but at all times, just like in the first book, Don is Don...every single line, every single moment of this story. That is the brilliance of Graeme Simsion...he writes a character so true, so himself, that he is Don Tillman in every word and action; never for a moment does Don do anything out of character, until he learns, analyzes, adapts, and chooses to act differently.

Like some reviewers, I must say that I am disappointed in Rosie's behavior in EFFECT. Rosie displays a new level of selfish here...admittedly getting pregnant by intention, without even discussing with Don. She displays a marked lack of interest in communicating with Don about the imminent change in expectation of him and their lifestyle, and basically is concerned only with her own needs. In PROJECT, Rosie was essentially self-absorbed, but we saw regular moments of concern for and appreciation of Don's many efforts, even sacrifices, for her. Though I wondered a few times in this story just what Don was getting out of his relationship with "the most beautiful woman in the world," I have so terribly much respect for Don that if he feels, as he tells us, that she is the thing he wants most in the world, then that's good enough for me.

PLEASE give us more, Graeme; we are not nearly done with Don Tillman. I can't wait to hear from him again. Do we want another sequel? CORRECT.

By The Literacy Advocate on December 30, 2014

2) The second Don and Rosie novel (4.5 stars) - Considering that I laughed all the way through The Rosie Project, it didn't surprise me that I started laughing on the first page of The Rosie Effect. Don Tillman, the narrator of the Rosie novels, is now a familiar character. In this case, familiarity breeds glee. This novel might not be quite as funny as the first, if only because the character of Don is less startling in this second encounter, but I still enjoyed it.

The Rosie Effect begins after Don and Rosie have been married for ten months. They are living in New York. Don is teaching at Columbia and Rosie is pursuing her doctorate. Don has managed to make new friends (he now has six), has abandoned the Standardized Meal System, and has agreed that sex should not occur on a fixed schedule. His otherwise orderly life is nevertheless unsettled by an unscheduled pregnancy that makes Rosie's emotions even more impossible for Don to predict.

The pregnancy also raises yet another problem that Don finds perplexing: Is Don fit to reproduce? Opinions are mixed. To address the issue, Don embarks on The Baby Project (i.e., he prepares for "baby production and maintenance"). His efforts are hampered by an interfering social worker who is offended by Don's lack of social skills. His life is further complicated by Gene, one of his six friends, a philandering psychology professor who comes to live with Don after his wife boots him out of the house.

As readers of The Rosie Project know, Don possesses the intellectual rigor of a dedicated scientist but has a shortage of empathy. Rosie has plenty of intellect but usually balances her left brain with her right. In pregnancy, however, Rosie is all about emotion despite her unwillingness to concede that the pregnancy might challenge her. Don's desire to understand Rosie's behavior in terms of its evolutionary origins and to offer "helpful" solutions is, like the rest of the novel, hilarious -- to the reader, but not to Rosie.

Much of Don's thinking makes perfect sense (to me, at least). For instance, having told Rosie that he loves her, why should he ever need to tell her again? After all, love is a "continuous state" and only a change in that state would produce relevant information that needs to be conveyed. The Rosie Effect has some insightful things to say about relationships (and some good advice for men), particularly relationships that might lead to reproduction.

While the novel makes a number of serious points about relationships and the value of truth versus deception, its most important lesson concerns the need to be true to oneself -- even if you are socially maladapted. I value The Rosie Effect and The Rosie Project for the lighthearted approach they use to make serious points, but I value them more for the consistent laughter they provoke. If I could, I would give The Rosie Effect 4 1/2 stars.

By TChris TOP 100 REVIEWER on December 31, 2014

For Detail

Click –The Rosie Effect: A Novel

How Asia Works

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Fri, 29 May 2015 05:20:00 -0700

Named by Bill Gates as one of his Top 5 Books of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year

In the 1980s and 1990s many in the West came to believe in the myth of an East-Asian economic miracle, with countries seen as not just development prodigies but as a unified bloc, culturally and economically similar, and inexorably on the rise. In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distills extensive research into the economics of nine countries—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China—into an accessible, readable narrative that debunks Western misconceptions, shows what really happened in Asia and why, and for once makes clear why some countries have boomed while others have languished. Impressive in scope, How Asia Works is essential reading for anyone interested in a region that will shape the future of the world.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Outstanding! - Author Studwell argues that there are three critical interventions that governments can use to speed up economic development. Used in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and now China, they have produced the quickest progressions from poverty to wealth that the world has seen.

The first and most overlooked is to maximize output from agriculture. The second is to direct investment and entrepreneurs towards manufacturing exports. Machines can easily be purchased on the world market, and successful east-Asian governments promoted technological upgrading through subsidies conditioned on export performance. (Exporters were almost invariably better businesses than firms that sold only at home.) The third is to focus capital on the fastest possible technology learning and the promise of high long-term profits, not short-term returns and individual consumption. This tends to pit the state against many businessmen and consumers with shorter-term horizons.

Thus, economic development is as simple as one, two, three. Unfortunately, wealthy nations and their economic institutions (the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund) have provided contradictory advice to poor states, despite the fact that no significant economy as ever developed successfully via free-trade and deregulation from the beginning - including the U.S. and Great Britain. Positive intervention has been required in agriculture and manufacturing that fostered early accumulation of capital and technological learning.

Brazil is the only major economy outside east Asia which has grown more than 7%/year for over 25 years. But it crumbled after the 1982 Latin American debt crisis - currency depreciation, inflation, and years of zero growth. Too much of Brazil's earlier growth came from debt that did not translate into a more productive and competitive economy.

Studwell excludes east Asia's failed states - North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and New Guinea. Their one common characteristic is a failure to trade and interact with the world. He also ignores Asia's two main offshore financial centers - Hong Kong and Singapore because of their lack of an agricultural sector. Micro oil state Brunei and east Asia's gambling center, Macau, are also omitted.

Another key finding is that a large working-age population and proportion increase the possibilities for fast growth. Rapidly declining death rates, especially for children and a rapidly rising work-age population have been a big part of east Asian development success since WWII. Mao boosted population growth in China, telling people there was strength in numbers, while Deng Xiaoping and successors put a stop to that.

The evidence of a positive correlation between total years of education and GDP growth is much weaker than most imagine. The Philippines have the highest levels of tertiary-educated students in southeast Asia, but because more important policy choices were flunked, the country is on the verge of becoming a failed state. Cuba has the world's second-highest literacy rate for children over age 15, and the 6th highest rate of school enrollment. It has inadequate employment opportunities for university graduates, however - one reason 25,000 Cuban physicians take state-subsidized work overseas. Another problem with education - there is too much of the wrong kind - eg. liberal arts. Asian education not only creates a much higher proportion of engineers than most, it also includes a considerable vocational component conducted inside firms and not elite universities.

Political pluralism, rule of law, and democracy are also outside Studwell's scope - again, because the evidence is contradictory. He also ignores geography/climate - most believe colder climates are more conducive to economic success - Studwell, however, points out that the Arabic world's ascension in the early 8th century began in the hot areas of today's Iraq and north Africa, while the famous Tang dynasty operated out of the 'boiling hot Xian' area.

Studwell then goes on to detail the rationale for his thinking - its both interesting and invaluable reading.

By Loyd E. Eskildson HALL OF FAME on June 19, 2013

2) Industrial policy works - This book argues among other things that that protectionism and industry policy are important policy tools for countries at an early stage of development, and that Asian governments have adopted this model with varying degrees of success. Heretical as this claim may be to some, in my opinion it is not even worth debating whether or not the most advanced economies achieved success under "Smithian" conditions.With the possible exception of a few, small trading entrepots, there is not a single example of a country that did. There are rich countries that were "Smithian" (like, laissez-faire Haiti -- if you don't count slaves of course -- in the late 18th Century), but their wealth was unsustainable and they were in no way "advanced" economies.

You can find it all in the works of the brilliant Alexander Hamilton. The "American System" of the early 19th Century was the basis of the economic writings of the German Freidrich List and which went on to influence Germany, Japan (in 1872 one of the leading proponents of the American System, E. Pechine Smith, moved to Tokyo and became the leading adviser to the Mikado on Japan's economic restructuring), and a host of other countries. The three pillars of the American System were infant industry tariffs and subsidies, internal improvements (i.e. infrastructure provided by state and local governments) and a sound system of national finance, with the state playing a leading role.

These are the same pillars that supported the growth of every country that has developed rapidly, and the fact that this is even debated in economic circles suggests to me how unreal academic economics has become and how divorced from historical understanding. I agree with the authors that to debate whether or not industrial policy can work is silly. Of course it can. The real interesting question is to figure out under what conditions it is wealth enhancing and under what conditions it is wealth destroying. This is why the debate is so important for China. The Chinese growth model clearly "worked", I would argue, in the 1980s and 1990s, although in part simply because it involved a rejection of the insanely inefficient polices of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Today, in my opinion, it clearly no longer "works". So why did it sometimes help and sometimes hinder Chinese development?

Unfortunately it is very hard to debate this question because most economists are either ideologically committed to the idea that it is almost always a bad idea (the consensus in economics) or to the idea that it is always the right approach (perhaps the consensus in political economy or economic history). The truth, however,may be that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Although I don't always agree with Joe Studwell's conclusions. this book does a great job of teasing out the important and relevant issues.

By Michael Pettis on July 11, 2013

For Detail

Click –How Asia Works

Norwegian Wood

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Fri, 29 May 2015 05:01:00 -0700

First American Publication

This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Lyrical meditation on life and death masked as a love story - This is the first book by Haruki Murakami I've read, and on the strength of this, I would certainly attempt his other novels. "Norwegian Wood" is a quick read, drawing the reader in closer and deeper as the characters, their lives, and their deaths intertwine.

Having just finished the book, I'm at a bit of a loss for what to say about it. It is about love, death, youth, friendship, and ultimately, how fragile and delicate humans are, and how much we seek protection from this fragility in the arms of others or in our own private prisons. Toru Watanabe, the protagonist, locks himself in a prison of solitude, which he eventually escapes, with difficulty, only through the death of a close friend/lover and the realization that he is basically alone in the world. This realization forces him to come to terms with his feelings for a woman who challenges his cold side while simultaneously acknowledging his softer side via her own need for companionship, understanding, and love.
There are many deaths in this book, although they take place somewhat at the outskirts of the other action. The deaths act as catalysts for characters to learn, grow, change, or in some cases, retreat, wither, and become isolated. It is this constant interplay between retreat and advancement, withering and growth, isolation and togetherness, which seems to be a theme of this novel, and a central struggle each and every one of its characters must face. In that respect, Murakami has hit on a central struggle for all humans: intimacy vs. independence.
It's Murakami's amazingly poetic writing, his evocative, sensual observations, and the way he renders characters so complex with the simplest of language and details that makes this novel so memorable. Another reviewer compared it to Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and while the content and themes are somewhat different, perhaps the lesson is that the elusive "comfort zone," finding it and staying in it, is a major concern of and struggle for most people. There is always something ready to knock us off or out of that balance.
The ending of this novel doesn't suggest that Watanabe has found that balance or lost it. It really says nothing about how Watanabe resolves the current dynamics in his life. And perhaps that "non-ending" is just another reflection of the "unbearable lightness of being," the strange place which we seem to inhabit only at times, when our expectations, needs, and actions all seem to magically work together at once. The normal state of affairs is that these things conspire to unbalance us, especially when we bring other people into the equation. "Norwegian Wood" expresses, in beautiful language, how the balance between people is so delicate, and how it sometimes takes a major catalyst, like death or loss, to jolt us into understanding our inter-connectedness.

By L. Rephann on April 6, 2004

2) long awaited, and worth the wait - I had read and enjoyed Haruki Murakami's tetralogy (Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, A Wild Sheep Chase, and Dance Dance Dance), and I loved his Wind-Up Bird Chronicle novel, but I was ready for something new.

In reviews and on websites, I had read over and over about Norwegian Wood, the "straightforward" novel that was published years ago in Japan, which still was not for sale in the states, since there was not an authorized translation available. This novel sold a HUGE number of copies in Japan. I was wondering: I love those other novels by Murakami. Are they so demanding? Complicated? If Norwegian Wood is so much simpler than the other novels, will I even like Norwegian Wood?
The plot: It's the late 1960's. College student Toru falls in love with the girlfriend of his (dead) best friend. She eventually becomes ill (though not physically ill) and has to leave to live under special circumstances, far away from him. While she's gone, he meets Midori, a college student who obviously is interested in him. But he's holding out for his girlfriend Naoko. Never knowing if she will recover from her ailment and be able to rejoin him in society, he goes to classes, sells phonograph records at night, and spends some time with Midori. He visits Naoko a few times, gets to know her wacky roommate/friend/mentor Reiki, and eventually he has to decide between a life with Naoko (without Naoko?) or with Midori. Throw in a bizarre Geography-major roommate nicknamed "Storm Trooper," a scene where Midori (badly) sings folk songs to our Toru while they watch a neighborhood fire from the balcony above her parents' bookshop, and assorted other hilarious/bizarre characters and passages, and you've got vintage Haruki Murakami.
My favorite scene is one in which Midori takes Toru to visit her ill father in the hospital. He's so ill he can barely eat or speak, but Toru convinces Midori to enjoy a respite, and take a walk by herself out to a park in town. Toru is left alone with this bedridden stranger, in a situation that would seem forced, harsh, and impossible to enjoy, yet they make some very odd and touching inroads with each other. It's very unusual, and perfect in just the way that so many of Murakami's scenes seem to be.
The novel isn't as complex as Haruki's other work, and it's missing some of the magical realist / sci-fi / unexplainable elements that were so prevalent in Dance Dance Dance, Wild Sheep Chase, and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. However, this novel is just as enjoyable, and just as worthwhile. This novel has a sustained emotional depth that other works by Murakami only achieve in passages.
If you're a fan of modern literature at all, do yourself a favor. Read Norwegian Wood, and read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
ken32

By Ken Miller on April 5, 2001

For Detail

Click –Norwegian Wood

xkcd : volume 0

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Wed, 27 May 2015 08:25:00 -0700

Randall Munroe describes xkcd as a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. While it's practically required reading in the geek community, xkcd fans are as varied as the comic's subject matter. This book creates laughs from science jokes on one page to relationship humor on another.

xkcd: volume 0 is the first book from the immensely popular webcomic with a passionate readership (just Google "xkcd meetup").

The artist selected personal and fan favorites from his first 600 comics. It was lovingly assembled from high-resolution original scans of the comics (the mouseover text is discreetly included), and features a lot of doodles, notes, and puzzles in the margins.

The book is published by Breadpig, which donates all of the publisher profits from this book to Room to Read for promoting literacy in the developing world.

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SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) More Than a Print Version of the Free Comic - The author admonishes you, in his foreword, that you must have some kind of poor economic judgement, to be buying this book when the comic is free online.

But that does more to illustrate the kind of wit he has, than represent the truth, because the book is NOT a print-out of the pics you can get online, but is apparently based on the original, pen/pencil drawings (at least in part), giving you a (faint) insight into the process of their creation, plus giving a feeling of something authentic, like buying a cell from some favorite animation.

If you have NOT read the comic online, the domain name is XKCD (as you can infer from the name), go read it. If you'd have liked the book anyway, you'll be back to buy it out of sheer joy for the sarcky satire you've experienced.

Who will like XKCD?

* Anyone who likes Big Bang Theory. This is the one source of "nerd/geek" humor superior to that one.
* All Wikipedians, except the anal-retentive ones who didn't even want us to redirect the word malamanteau to the XKCD article.
* Those who are disgusted with "SyFy" for being ashamed of science fiction. (google "syfy, we disown you")
* The kind of people who hear about MIT pranks and think "I could have done better".
* Problem-solvers who, upon realizing that the a-hole ops of #Linux answer every question with "RTFM", spoof another IP while running a hacked ID validator and give wrong answers to their own questions, baiting the experts into jumping in with corrections. And then go help run #linpeople to answer the questions right.
* People who, having studied linguistics, math/physics, logic, engineering, or some other intellectual discipline, determine that the greatest benefit is all the extra puns it allows them to notice.
* Sarcastic romantics
* Pseudointellectuals...OK, they won't, but they'll feel obligated to pretend.
* I will. Did. Do. And that's what counts.

By KAZ Vorpal, aka Michael Karl on August 18, 2010

2) A must have for fans - This doesn't give you any new comics, but it does have a lulzy introduction that makes fun of you (the reader) for buying a printed version of a free webcomic. Still, if you're a fan of the series it's a must have just for the showcasing reasons alone. Also, whenever I want to introduce somebody to the GLORY that is XKCD, I can now say "here, browse through this!" instead of giving them a web address they'll likely never go to. Also, if you've never bought anything from the XKCD store but have been reading the comic for years (like me), this is your chance to give Randall some money finally!

By A. Morgan on August 26, 2010

For Detail

Click –

xkcd: volume 0

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Wed, 27 May 2015 04:15:00 -0700

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

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Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality―the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth―today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.

A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

Author -

Thomas Piketty is Professor at the Paris School of Economics.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) A truly unique work for this generation - EDIT: I would like to point out that it is ridiculous that literally all of the 1-star reviews (except for one that I counted) for this book are from people who did not purchase the book or even read it. It looks like there was some kind of invasion from April 22nd of right-wingers who were told this book is "communist" or something to make a 1-star vote just to bring down the rating of the book. Amazon should not allow this kind of manipulation, and should limit reviews only to those who are verified customers that purchased this book.

If I could give more than 5 stars I would. As a former Libertarian who realized the path quickly leads to oligarchy with such an ideology, Piketty's book is a wonderful reminder of just how wrong I was back then.

The empirical work he has done in assembling the income and wealth concentration for countries is simply invaluable. We have some data like gini and labor vs. capital income, but to meticulously collect and analyze specific percentiles of income and wealth in many nations is truly groundbreaking. No longer can people who deny the inequality we have in the United States. No longer can people deny that we are in a new gilded age. The regulatory capture in our wild west capitalism has led to outright corruption being "legalized", and the politicians merely keep deregulating, cutting taxes, cutting spending on public programs.

Piketty not only provides the important data, and the historical context and analysis, but makes some very clear policy prescriptions. Tax inheritances, get some sane corporate governance standards to stop the insane overpaying of executives, and strengthen public institutions that provide opportunity to the masses.

Remember, the r in r>g is AFTER TAX. We can reverse this if we change the incentives that allow the American oligarchs to use accounting shenanigans, tax havens, and lobbyists to rig rules in their favor.

I recommend this book to anyone who has irrational anti-government tendencies or liberals who still defend Obama and other corporatist Democrats. It is time for this generation to get radical and reform this disgraceful system.

By Aguadito on April 24, 2014

2) An important book (in both the English and French senses of the word) - This is a monumental work about inequality. Despite the title's allusion to Marx's classic (a point emphasized by the dust jacket design), it's neither a primarily theoretical nor a primarily polemical work, though it has elements of both theory and advocacy. Nor is its author (TP) a radical: he taught at MIT, and is thoroughly at home in the concepts and categories of mainstream neoclassical theory. Nonetheless, I think even many who hold less orthodox views about economics will find this book stimulating, valuable and sympathetic in many respects. And all readers ought to find it disturbing.

In the ultra-long comments below, I begin with the book's audience and style (§ 1); then turn to some of the book's main arguments, which are more nuanced than usually reported (§§ 2-6); then to some things that are unclear or missing (§§ 7-8); and I end with some comments about the book's production (§ 9) and some concluding remarks.

1. In the original French edition, TP says that he intended this book to be readable for persons without any particular technical knowledge. In principle, it could be read by a broad, college-educated audience. TP's prose is very clear and direct, with a low density of jargon and a high density of information. (I read the French edition, but Arthur Goldhammer's translation seems to preserve these qualities very well.) The discussion is enlivened by well-chosen references to literature and a sprinkling of sarcastic barbs, both of them techniques that French scholars have developed into art forms (if not as elegant as John Kenneth Galbraith's irony). The allusions here range from Balzac, Jane Austen and Orhan Pamuk to "The Aristocats," "Bones" and "Dirty Sexy Money;" and the sarcasm hits both university economists and The Economist (@636n20), among others.

But: this is a long and demanding book. It talks relatively little about current events or the policies of particular governments, unlike, say, Joseph Stiglitz's "The Price of Inequality" (2012). I wouldn't say Stiglitz's is an easy book, but it was written more with of a popular audience in mind (picking up 270+ Amazon reviews in less than 2 years). TP's presentation is far more methodical and meticulous than Stiglitz's. It helps for the reader to be interested in the fine points of data series and categories, and in the sources of uncertainty in data. Occasionally the discussion will focus on concepts from academic economics, such as Cobb-Douglas production functions, elasticities, and Pareto coefficients; while TP uses words rather than math on these occasions, he generally assumes you pretty much know what he's talking about. Finally, if, as I did, you make it through the whole thing while reading with some attention, I bet dollars to donuts you'll come out of the experience feeling very, very down, on account of TP's message. Actually, that mood will hit you long before the end. Despite its felicities of style, this is an arduous read.

2. The "capital" in the title includes not only farms, factories, equipment and other means of production, but also assets typically owned by individuals, such as real property, stocks and other financial instruments, gold, antiques, etc. -- what's sometimes called "wealth". TP excludes so-called "human capital," because it lacks some features of true capital (ability to be traded in a market, inclusion in national accounts as investment), unless it's in the form of slaves.

The distribution of capital is far more unequal than that of income. Even the Scandinavian countries have a Gini coefficient for capital of 0.58 -- comparable to that for income inequality in Angola and Haiti, among the 10 worst in the world (World Bank figures). For Europe and the US in 2010, the coefficient is at 0.67 and 0.73 respectively, worse than any country on the World Bank income inequality chart. (Of course, the worst countries on that World Bank list have hair-raising capital inequality, too.)

The book's main thesis is that economic growth alone isn't sufficient to overcome three "divergence mechanisms" or "forces" that are in many places returning inequality in income and/or capital to pre-World War I levels. The main mechanisms are:

(A) the historical tendency of capital to earn returns at a higher rate ('r') than the growth rate of national income ('g'), which typically sets a constraint on how workers' salaries grow, symbolized by the mathematical expression, "r > g".
(B) the relatively recent (post-1980) widening spread between salaries, not only between the wealthiest 10% or 1% and the mean, but even within the top 1%.
(C) an even newer inequality in financial returns, which correlates r with the initial size of an investment portfolio -- i.e., different r for different investors.

A point to keep in mind is that g relates to national income, not to GDP. National income = GDP - depreciation of capital + net revenue received from overseas. Among other benefits, this measure corrects for the reconstruction boosts in GDP after wars, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., since the depreciation term takes the destruction of property into account. Also, an increase in national income usually has two different sources: part of it is truly economic, coming from productivity growth (output per worker), and part is due to population growth. Historically, it's the latter that has dominated.

3. The r > g argument has received the most attention. It's to be seen "as an historical reality dependent on a variety of mechanisms not as an absolute logical necessity" (@361). TP finds that this condition has held throughout most of the past 2,000 years. As long as it does, he says, it's the natural tendency of capitalism to make inequality worse -- and the bigger the difference (r - g), the worse that inequality will be. Many commentators about this book make it sound as if this is an obvious mechanism. But if you play with it on Excel, using reasonable values for r and g, it turns out to be slower and more sensitive to initial conditions than you might expect.

Here's a toy example: Let's suppose r = 4%, g = 1.5%, and that salaries rise as fast as g (a very idealistic assumption!); and let's assume these rates are net of taxes or that no taxes apply. I'll compare the situations of three people in Silicon Valley: X, an engineer who made $8.5 million by exercising stock options when the company she used to work for had an IPO; Y, the same company's former HR manager, who made $6.0 million from her options; and Z, a young lawyer at a local law firm, who has a $200,000 salary when we first meet her.

After a year, X has $340K in disposable income, Y has $240K, and Z gets a raise to $203K. Suppose X and Y spend all their income from their capital every year. Eventually, Z can earn more than each of them: it will take her about 37 years to exceed X's annual income, but only 13 years to make more than Y. Now suppose X and Y each save the equivalent of 1.5% of their capital. Then Z will never overtake either one in gross annual revenue, but the situation as to disposable cash is a bit different. After saving, X will always have more cash to play with than Z, but it will take more than 15 years for her to have just 50% more than Z does. As for Y, she'll actually start out with less annual cash than Z, and it will take her 13 or 14 years just to catch up -- even though she's a multi-millionaire.

The true potency of the r > g mechanism comes from its working in conjunction with other circumstances. For example, according to TP's historical data, I've been way too conservative in my assumptions about X's and Y's advantages over Z.

From the 18th through the early 20th Centuries, the people who earned money from capital had proportionally a lot more than they do today: e.g., in 1910, the wealthiest 1% in Europe held > 60% of all European wealth, about triple the share they hold today (see Fig. 10.6). The US was not so extreme, but still very unequal: From 1810 to 1910, the share of the top 1% grew from 25% of American wealth to 45.1% (Fig. 10.5), compared to 33.8% today. So to set our example 100-200 years ago, the endowments of X and Y could plausibly be much bigger relative to Z's wages (especially if we chose, say, Wilhelmine Germany instead of Silicon Valley).

More recently, since the 1980s, most folks with a lot of capital also earn salaries -- and having a lot of capital tends to be correlated with having a salary well above average. So in a more realistic modern example, we should consider that X and Y have moved on to new companies where they receive hefty salaries, which would give each in total a healthy and growing excess of annual spendable cash versus Z. This is the realm of the second divergence mechanism, which is especially formidable in America. In 2010 the richest 1% not only held more than 33% of American wealth, but they earned between 17x and 20x the mean American income (depending on whether capital gains are included). Even the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans work, for average incomes roughly 75x the mean (or 95x, if capital gains are included) (see Table S8.2). At the other end of the spectrum, I was shocked to learn that the purchasing power of the US Federal minimum wage peaked in *1969* -- what was $1.60 an hour back then would be worth $10.10 in 2013 dollars. In those same dollars, the current statutory minimum hourly wage is $7.25 or a bit less (see Fig. 9.1 and nearby text).

On top of these trends, succession to family wealth is becoming important again today, even if not to the full degree it was in 19th Century novels. TP frames this in terms of the dialogue of the worldly Vautrin and the young, ambitious Rastignac in Balzac's "Père Goriot" (1853). Rastignac aspires to wealth by studying law. Vautrin counsels him that unless he can claw his way to become one of the five richest lawyers in Paris, his path will be easier if he simply marries an heiress in lieu of study. Cut to the present: judging by TP's Fig. 11.10, law school might have been the better choice for Baby Boomers, but if you're a Rastignac in your 20s or 30s when you read this, consider marrying up. Maybe you think you'd rather found the next Facebook or Google -- but why work so hard, and against such long odds? TP shows that when Steve Jobs died in 2011, his $8 billion fortune was only 1/3rd that of French heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who has never worked a day in her life.

4. There's another way that "r > g" is inadequate as a summary of TP's argument: TP calculates that during the past century (1913-2012), we've seen r < g, the opposite of its usual polarity (Chapter 10).

High rates of growth -- or at least, what we're accustomed to thinking of as high rates of growth, 3%-4% or more -- aren't a sufficient explanation. In fact, such rates of growth aren't sustainable in the long term, and were not sustained in most countries; they're mainly a catch-up mechanism lasting a few decades, according to TP. During the period from 1970-2010, the actual per capita growth rate of national income averaged about 1.8% for the US and Germany, 1.9% for the UK, and 1.6%-1.7% for France, Italy, Canada and Australia. The wealthy country with the highest per capita rate was Japan, at 2.0 (Table 5.1). (Think about that, next time you're tempted to swallow what Paul Krugman and other pundits pronounce.) Nonetheless, growth rates in this range appear to be what TP calls "weak" (e.g., @23).

Rather, the main reasons for the flip are the tremendous destruction of capital in Europe due to the two world wars, and the imposition of very substantial taxes on capital, at an average rate of about 30% in recent years. These greatly reduced r.

Despite these trends, inequality has been getting worse during the past few decades. This isn't a paradox, but rather the impact of the other divergence mechanisms, especially the rise of the "working rich" and the spread of inequality in salaries. So we should be quite alarmed by TP's assertion that we'll flip back to r > g during the 21st Century. His explanations for this seem rather more speculative than most of the rest of the book, though it's clear he expects g to remain low. I return to this a bit more in § 7 below.

In any case, it's clear that r > g isn't a necessary condition for inequality to get worse.

5. TP reserves his most anxious prose ("radical divergence," "explosive trajectories and uncontrolled inegalitarian spirals") for the third mechanism, inequality in returns from capital (@431, 439). Those with a great deal of capital are able to earn higher returns on it -- such as 6%-7%, or even 10%-11% in the case of billionaires like Bill Gates and Bettencourt -- compared to those with only a few hundred thousand or millions of dollars, who may earn closer to 2%-4%. This results from two types of economies of scale: the ultra-rich can afford more intermediaries and advisers, and they can afford to take on more risk.

Unfortunately, public records don't provide adequate information on this point, and while TP does look at Forbes's and other magazines' lists of the wealthy, those present many methodological issues. So TP corroborates his findings by looking at the more than 800 US universities who report about their endowments. Most spend less than 1%, or even less than 0.5%, of their endowments on annual management fees. Harvard University spent around $100 million annually (ca. 0.3%) on management of its $30 billion endowment, and earned net returns of 10.2% annually during 1980-2010 (not counting an additional 2% annual growth from new gifts). Yale and Princeton, each with a $20 billion endowment, earned a similar rate. A majority of universities have endowments of less than $100 million, and so obviously can't fork over $100 million to managers; they earned average returns of 6.2% during that period (still better on average than you or me).

TP of course doesn't worry that universities will own most of the world, nor does he find it plausible that sovereign funds from Asia or oil-producing countries will either. The bigger danger, he contends, is private oligarchs, and he believes this process is already underway. Since the officially documented ownership of global assets comes up slightly negative, TP calculates that either the rich are already hiding the equivalent of at least 8% of global GDP in tax havens, or else that our planet is owned by Mars (@465-466).

6. In Part IV of the book, TP considers policy approaches to deal with the three forces of divergence. In short, the answer for all three is a progressive, annual global tax on capital, to be set at an internationally agreed rate and its proceeds apportioned among countries according to a negotiated schedule (@515). This will also need a global real-time reporting system for transactions in capital assets. Many will attack these ideas, but it seems that TP's main intention is to get a serious conversation going. His admits his approach is utopian, but maintains that utopian ideas are useful as points of reference.

What interested me most was that TP doesn't see pumping up g as a viable approach to preventing r > g from returning. For one thing, demographics create some limitations in how far g can be pushed, especially in countries whose populations will soon be declining (or Japan, where that's happening already). For another, the same forces that pump up g can also increase r, at least in theory, so (r - g) wouldn't necessarily change much. The more practical answer then, is to bring down r.

In his final chapter TP turns to the very topical question of public debt, which he sees as an issue of wealth distribution and not of absolute wealth. He reminds us about two of its important aspects: One is that public debt takes money from the pockets of the mass of citizens, who pay taxes, and puts it in the pockets of the smaller group of people who are wealthy enough to make loans to the state. The other point is that nations are rich -- it's only states who are strapped for funds. He calculates that in many countries, a one-time progressive capital tax of up to 20% on property portfolios worth more than 1 million Euro could bring the national debt to zero, or nearly so.

Actually, TP doesn't believe that such a drastic reduction in debt levels is urgent, any more than he believes that such a gigantic tax is politically feasible. But his observation puts the lie to the notion that one must raise consumption taxes or income taxes (or, for that matter, experience economic growth) to reduce debt levels.

7. There were a couple of rare instances where I didn't feel the text was sufficiently clear. TP very graciously replied to my emailed inquiries about these matters, but without that input, I'd have remained quite confused by them.

(a) The first arose in Chapter 1, where α (alpha) is defined as designating the "share of income from capital in national income." According to the perhaps intemperately named "first law of capitalism," α = rβ, where β is the ratio of the stock of capital to the flow of national income (and r is as above, the rate of return on capital).

But an important category of income from capital is capital gains, the profits you make when you buy assets cheap and sell them dear. Unrealized capital gains make up a substantial part of the fortunes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and other billionaires mentioned in the book. And capital gains are *not* included in national income, according to the algorithm for computing that quantity. (Nor are they included in GDP.) This makes the use of the preposition "in" confusing -- does it mean that capital gains aren't considered as income from capital?

This issue seems to have its root in academic economics, where α appears as a parameter in the neoclassical growth model developed by Robert Solow. The model represents an economy that produces one type of good -- i.e., it's all about making and selling stuff that gets consumed, so capital gains aren't considered. (In a sense, this model supplies a lot of the motivation for Part II of the book: the academic debate over the relative shares of capital and labor in the national income, i.e., the size of α and whether it changes with time, is a long and at times contentious one. But you can still benefit from reading Part II without knowing that.)

The answer I got from TP is that because capital gains don't seem to be very important in the long term (>100 years), netting out to roughly zero over such periods, he didn't consider them when discussing α. The subject of capital gains does come up later in other contexts, though, and TP does consider them important in the short-term (which in some contexts can mean a timescale of several decades).

(b) The second issue relates to TP's prediction that our current condition of r < g will flip back to r > g later this century. TP mentions that for the past 100 years, wartime destruction and, later, an average 30% tax rate on capital have brought r below g, despite currently weak growth rates in many countries. The data in the book, though is rather opaque about the relative contributions of these factors. Also, the book's clearest explanation of why matters might reverse rests on the possibility that countries will compete to attract capital by a race to the bottom in capital tax rates, allowing r to edge back up. This sounded rather too speculative to warrant such definite conviction about the return of r > g.

I checked the online material, and found the Excel file (not the pdf file) of supplementary Table S10.3, which mentions some of TP's assumptions. Among other things, this makes it clear that TP factors in destruction of capital from WWII in calculating r even for the most recent 50 years. It seems plausible that this will be less important going forward, so that even a 30% average tax rate on capital might not be sufficient in and of itself to prevent r from popping above g again ... maybe. I'm still not entirely convinced that TP's argument about the future of r is among the strongest in the book; but I'd be even less so if I hadn't consulted the online information.

8. No book can talk about everything pertinent to its theme, so it's all too easy to think of things one wishes had been included. Still, I was disappointed that the book was conventional both in its thinking about economic growth, and in its thinking less about growth's environmental consequences.

TP tells us that part of "the reality of growth" is that "the material conditions of life have clearly improved dramatically since the Industrial Revolution" (@89). Its main benefits include its roles as a social equalizer, and as a "diversifi[er] of lifestyles" (@ 83, 90). "[A] society that grows at 1 percent a year ... is a society that undergoes deep and permanent change" (@96).

Growth's equalizing effect, though, comes largely from population-based growth, whereas "a stagnant, or worse, decreasing population increases the influence of capital in previous generations" (@84). So is a country already in that condition, such as Japan, supposed to open its doors to immigrants? As an immigrant to Japan myself, I can appreciate that there are many social, cultural and political reasons why this could be a bad path both for country and for many of the immigrants as well. How about focusing on productivity-led growth instead? Maybe, because "in a society where output per capita grows tenfold in a generation, it is better to count on what one can earn and save from one's own labor" (@84), instead of relying on an inheritance. The problem is, this takes for granted that gains from productivity improvements will be shared with labor, rather than shareholders. Yet Part II shows that labor's share has been flat or declining. In Japan, productivity improvements nowadays tend to come from using temporary employees instead of higher-paid permanent ones, and from using robots in lieu of employees at all. These have worked out to be more methods for enhancing inequality, than for abating it.

Both population growth and productivity growth have other costs, too. The rapid growth of output TP alludes to could only be of the transitory, catch-up sort, such as China has been experiencing since the 1980s. The environmental consequences of that haven't exactly been benign. Nor does the book give any consideration to the environmental consequences of population growth, when the population in question aspires to a wealthy country's per capita environmental footprint.

So are countries with declining populations doomed to oligarchy until all the other countries in the world can agree on a global capital tax? Obviously there are better ways to proceed. Such as examining whether growth truly is necessary for further improving health and other material conditions of life, even in an already-wealthy country. And inquiring whether deep and permanent change is a virtue in itself, or whether good sorts of changes can be achieved without following policies obsessed with growth. Exploring such questions thoroughly would certainly have been outside the scope of this book, but failing even to hint at their existence was either a missed opportunity or a lapse of imagination.

9. In addition to the good translation, some other aspects of the book's transition to English succeed. The US hardcover has sewn signatures; my closely-read and much-shlepped French copy, which comes in at nearly 1,000 pages in a perfect binding, is already showing signs of loose leaves. The US edition has a pretty good index, whereas the French lacked one entirely. It's not quite complete, though: e.g., you won't find the above-mentioned references to Mars, "Bones" or The Economist in it, and I noticed a few references to Japan that were missing, too. On the other hand, the notes didn't fare as well. The notes in this book are long, discursive and informative; you really should read them. The French original used footnotes, but Harvard opted for endnotes, which means you'll either be doing a lot of flipping back and forth, or else ignoring a lot of good material.

A mixed blessing in both editions is that the technical appendix has been punted online. The package is generous, and includes files for the book's tables and figures in both pdf and Excel formats. The expository appendix (evidently translated by someone other than Dr. Goldhammer) includes hyperlinks to pertinent scholarly articles. Downloading the 2013 paper TP wrote with Gabriel Zucman, "Capital is Back," along with its own humongous technical appendix, might be a good choice: the present book's technical appendix refers to this often. If you want all relevant Excel files (including, e.g., some UN data and TP's comments to the Angus Maddison historical data), be sure to scroll through the pdf of the appendix and click on appropriate links, since several such items are absent from the website's "Piketty 2014 Excel files" folder.

Unfortunately, no one can know if this website will be maintained a few decades from now, or how easy it will be to read .pdf and .xls files by then. Just as is the case today with books by leading mid-20th Century economists, this is the sort of book that scholars will still want to read in future, even after it's out of print. They'll be very frustrated by the many cross-references to the technical appendix (at least 100-200 times by my eyeball count) if the information has vanished. I hope that in the not-too-distant future TP will freeze and publish a hard copy of this supplemental material for archival purposes.

It's also surprising that not even the website provides a comprehensive bibliography. The technical appendix includes a number of references, but these are spread out over a list at the beginning and more references embedded into a chapter-by-chapter commentary. Even this fragmented resource doesn't pick up many of the books and articles mentioned in the printed book's endnotes/footnotes. Again, I hope TP or the publisher will remedy this soon.

===

Among its other accomplishments, the book demolishes a couple of abstractions from the 1950s that economists have cherished for decades. One is the "Kuznets curve," according to which income inequality first rises, then peaks and thereafter declines as per capita GDP (or earlier, GNP) continues to rise. Another is the Modigliani "life-cycle" saving theory, which posits that the people save for their retirement and then spend pretty much everything by the time they die. TP's long runs of data show that both of these theories were plausible, if ever, at best only during a brief era around the time they were formulated, when both capital and income were distributed in a more egalitarian way.

How will the economists of today react to this book? Paul Krugman didn't provide an encouraging sign in his blog a few days after the US edition appeared. First thing he did was to try to "understand" it by plugging TP's data into another abstract 1950s-era mathematical model. The vast majority of mainstream economists didn't see the 2008 crash coming, but after it happened they insisted that their models weren't defective. If an historical event of that magnitude couldn't make a dent in their worldview, one has to be a great optimist to believe that this book will. More realistic may be to hope that this book's impact can be political. Luckily, that isn't up just to economists, but to readers like us.

By A. J. Sutter on March 17, 2014

For Detail

Click –Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Should We Eat Meat Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Wed, 27 May 2015 03:48:00 -0700

Meat eating is often a contentious subject, whether considering the technical, ethical, environmental, political, or health-related aspects of production and consumption.Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks

This book is a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination and critique of meat consumption by humans, throughout their evolution and around the world. Setting the scene with a chapter on meat’s role in human evolution and its growing influence during the development of agricultural practices, the book goes on to examine modern production systems, their efficiencies, outputs, and impacts. The major global trends of meat consumption are described in order to find out what part its consumption plays in changing modern diets in countries around the world. The heart of the book addresses the consequences of the "massive carnivory" of western diets, looking at the inefficiencies of production and at the huge impacts on land, water, and the atmosphere. Health impacts are also covered, both positive and negative. In conclusion, the author looks forward at his vision of “rational meat eating”, where environmental and health impacts are reduced, animals are treated more humanely, and alternative sources of protein make a higher contribution.

Should We Eat Meat? is not an ideological tract for or against carnivorousness but rather a careful evaluation of meat's roles in human diets and the environmental and health consequences of its production and consumption. It will be of interest to a wide readership including professionals and academics in food and agricultural production, human health and nutrition, environmental science, and regulatory and policy making bodies around the world.

Author -

Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed his graduate studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He has been an invited speaker in more than 250 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions. His wife Eva is a physician and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.

Official Website: www.vaslavsmil.com

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) A scientific study - Vaclav Smil sets out to answer the question posed by his book's title, "Should We Eat Meat?" He comes at the question as a scientist without a preconceived answer. He is not trying to justify a personal bias but to discover what the facts reveal. The result is an excruciatingly meticulous analysis of the research (as evidenced by the 33 pages of references). Smil inundates the reader with statistical data. This is not a casual read. However, anyone wanting a definitive answer to the question of whether humans are meant to eat meat should read this book. Smil looks in detail at the nutritional aspects of meat, the role of meat in human evolution, meat in modern societies, and what is involved in the production of meat and the environmental impact. Smil considers the positives and negatives of eating meat within each aspect of his study. Perhaps of most interest to the lay reader is the book's last chapter where Smil outlnes possible futures for the production of meat. Those who have a casual interest in the question posed by the book's title should not attempt to tackle this study. This is a must read, though, for those who are seriously seeking an answer based on fact rather than emotion.

By Mitchell R. Alegre VINE VOICE on July 9, 2013

2) Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory - Smil doesn't tell you to eat meat or to refrain. He does explain his own diet and yes, he does eat meat, but not much and no hamburgers. The beginning of the book for me was a haze of the chemistry of nutrition, I did not understand much. Once he started on meat in human evolution, I found it easier to follow, but who could stay up with Smil? How has he written so many books, absorbed so many facts and figures? I think the key to his remarkable talent is that he treats facts surely but lightly, finds other qualities more important than statistics. As if the Olympic Champion Usain Bolt runs fast for us but usually flies instead of running.

Smil gives exhaustive statistics on meats consumption in different countries with particular attention to, well, every country: Japan, China, Spain, France, Great Britain, the USA, Brazil. The world, especially poor countries, eats more and more meat. Turkeys, chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, beef. Chickens make
up more and more of the meat we eat. The poor things are oh so crowded, they can't turn around in their cages and Smil gets into this. He is very concerned that we make our meat production more humane. He builds no pens or cages, but he is humane for watch how he uses language, no buzz words, he is never glib. "Sustainable" doesn't appear, nor "footprint." He is not sure what they mean. Smil is utterly out of the ordinary and can be read for knowledge or style. Most authors leave their reader with a scientific or political hangover, but not Smil. He does indulge in remote words. None are too long or arcane. Quantities of energy are never translated as they easily could be. Mega joules could be represented by gallons (excuse me, liters) of diesel, if we are discussing tractors. Should we eat meat? He does dwell, as he might, on kg/yr of chicken, beef, pork. Could Smil be converted from the uncomfortable metric to our more humane English system?
Smil gives us a wonderful peek at his diet, when he was young in Czechoslovakia, and we can only hope for a memoir. He is an untiring booster for the USA, which is easy to understand from a European, particularly one who has lived outside of the USA these last decades.

By Stephen C. Baer on May 29, 2013

For Detail

Click –Should We Eat Meat Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory

How to Lie with Statistics

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Wed, 27 May 2015 01:56:00 -0700

Over Half a Million Copies Sold--an Honest-to-Goodness Bestseller

Darrell Huff runs the gamut of every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study, the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which are used to full rather than to inform.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) very popular account of how statistics can be misused - Statisticians hate the old adage "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics", but statistical methods do have that reputation with the general public. There are many excellent accounts, some even understandable to laymen that explain the proper ways to analyze, study and report the analysis of statistical data. Huff's famous account is illustrative and well written. It gives the average guy a look at how statistics is commonly misused (either unintentionally or deliberately) in the popular media. Graphical abuses are particularly instructive. Readers should recognize that statistical methods are scientific and with proper education anyone should be able to recognize the good statisticians from the charletons. For now Huff's book is still a good starting place. As a statistician I hate the public image portrayed in the quote above. However, I do sometimes have fun with it myself. As I write this review I am in my office wearing a sweatshirt that reads "When all else fails manipulate the data."

A modern book by a consulting statistician on the same topic is "Common Errors in Statistics and How to Avoid Them" by Phil Good. If you enjoy this book take a look at Good's book also.

By Michael R. Chernick on February 12, 2008

2) Statistics don't lie; people do. - This book, written in 1954, is just as pertinent today (perhaps even more so, as it's so easy to acquire statistics due to our current technology) -- Darrell Huff gives people the tools to talk back to statistics. Though there is a little bit about deliberate deception, in such things as "The Gee-Whiz Graph" (about how the graphical display of statistics can be twisted so that one can get any desired result, though the stats aren't changed), the meat of the book is regarding sound statistical reasoning, something that people today really need to consider.
For example, every person who listens to the latest survey showing a correlation between certain food and certain health problems or benefits should read "Post Hoc Rides Again", in which people erroneously leap from statistical correlation to a cause-and-effect relationship. An example given in the book is a report in which it was found that smokers had lower grades in college; ergo, said the researcher, smokers wishing to improve their grades should quit smoking! Of course, a statistical study showing that there's a "significant" relation between smoking and low grades doesn't show which causes the other -- perhaps educational failure draws people to smoke! My own theory would be that the =type= of person who is given to smoking is also given to not doing well in school; instead of cause and effect, one has a correlation from a shared, third (and unnamed) cause. One comes across these fallacies in the news =every=day=; I've been reading my online news, and in the science section I've already found two suspicious cause-and-effect reports. As Huff notes, it's not the statistics which are in question -- it's how they're used.
Some of the figures and examples used are funny due to their datedness (I love the picture of the surveyor asking a doctor what brand of cigarette he smokes, and the cigar-smoking baby just makes me smirk). It seems to me if you multiply every monetary amount by 10, you might get a better idea as to what it's worth (I don't know what it is actually worth, as I don't know what the inflation from 1954 is (another suspicious statistic)).
More to the point, with the help of this book, you need not have blind faith in the numbers or disgustedly throw all stats away. The mathematics of statistics guarantees them to have great power, as long as you know how to interpret them correctly. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that more common sense than math is involved in this book, but the truth is most modern abuse of numbers happens well after the numbers have been calculated. Of course, once you talk back to statistics people may think you're crazy; at least you won't be fleeced by false reasoning.

By Mary P. Campbell on July 3, 2001

For Detail

Click –How to Lie with Statistics

On Immunity : An Inoculation

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Tue, 26 May 2015 03:40:00 -0700

A New York Times Best Seller
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book of the Year
A Facebook "Year of Books" Selection

One of the Best Books of the Year
* National Book Critics Circle Award finalist * The New York Times Book Review (Top 10) * Entertainment Weekly (Top 10) * New York Magazine (Top 10)* Chicago Tribune (Top 10) * Publishers Weekly (Top 10) * Time Out New York (Top 10) * Los Angeles Times * Kirkus * Booklist * NPR's Science Friday *Newsday * Slate * Refinery 29 * And many more...

Why do we fear vaccines? A provocative examination by Eula Biss, the author of Notes from No Man's Land, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

Upon becoming a new mother, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear-fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what is in your child's air, food, mattress, medicine, and vaccines. She finds that you cannot immunize your child, or yourself, from the world.
In this bold, fascinating book, Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding our conception of immunity and its implications for the individual and the social body. As she hears more and more fears about vaccines, Biss researches what they mean for her own child, her immediate community, America, and the world, both historically and in the present moment. She extends a conversation with other mothers to meditations on Voltaire's Candide, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond. On Immunity is a moving account of how we are all interconnected-our bodies and our fates.

Author -

Eula Biss is the author of Notes from No Man's Land, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and The Balloonists. Her essays have appeared in the Believer and Harper's Magazine. She teaches at Northwestern University and lives in Chicago, Illinois.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Parents and doctors / This is a "Must Read" for you / It's wisdom and truth - I work in pediatrics- a field that deals with immunizations and questions about immunizations on a daily basis. I have lectured about vaccines to numerous parent and medical groups. There are a cornucopia of books about vaccines out there, and there are many that are good and very good. On Immunity is just excellent.

In my medical training, during the late 1990's-early 2000's, we were taught very little about how to discuss vaccines with parents. The attitude was that the doctor would tell the parent "your child is getting some shots today" and the parent would say "that's great, thanks!" and we would all go on with our day. When I entered the real world, I found that parents had many questions - some crazy and some very legitimate. As I was about to have my own child, I worried that some of the fears I was hearing could be true, and I spent a great deal of time doing further research. In the subsequent years, I put together a lecture that addressed the common fears about vaccines, and discussed with families and other health care workers the validity of those fears. I read many good books about vaccines (like the Mnookin book, and some of Paul Offit's books). I also read some bad ones (the Sears book, Jenny Mccarthy's odd views). On Immunity is definitely at the top of the heap.

If you are a parent who wants to understand the truths and consequences about vaccines in a concise but literate way, or if you are a health care worker who wishes you had a better way of framing answers to questions from concerned families, then you absolutely must read this book. It is gripping but light, short but detailed, and above all it is true. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

By S. Goldstein on October 1, 2014

2) Brilliant, profound exploration of cultural and historical forces that culminate in the decision not to vaccinate - ScienceThrillers Review: On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss is an extraordinary, unclassifiable, vital book that deserves to be widely read and reflected upon. Written by a critically acclaimed essayist, On Immunity is a memoir, an essay collection, a history, a social commentary, a parenting guide, a literary work...The author herself has a hard time succinctly answering the question, "What is your book about?"

I'll tell you what On Immunity is about by telling you why it's an important book. As a scientist and medical professional myself, I "believe" in vaccination. My kids get their immunizations on schedule, I get my flu shot every fall. I bristle when I encounter anti-vaccine people and propaganda. And like many other people in my shoes, I look at the data on the benefits versus risks of vaccination, and I wonder why "those people" don't get it. Essentially, I'm asking, "What is WRONG with those people?"

But did I ever truly, honestly explore the question from a more neutral perspective, not, what is wrong with vaccine refuseniks, but, why do they perceive the world so differently from the way I do?

Fortunately, Eula Biss has deeply explored this important question, and in unfailingly beautiful, intelligent prose, she has answered it with a depth and breadth that astonishes.

Clinical study data have nothing to do with it, which really shouldn't surprise anyone. In how many aspects of our lives do we ignore data and make decisions based on other considerations? Many-no, most.

Biss makes crucial insights into the numerous complex streams that feed the anti-vaccine movement. To begin, she uses an ongoing metaphor of the vampire. The act of injecting a foreign substance into the body is fraught with metaphysical significance. Biss links it to violation, corruption, and pollution. Historically, others have, too. An Anglican bishop in 1882 referred to a smallpox vaccination scar as "the mark of the beast." (Her analysis of the history of vaccination amply demonstrates that vaccine refusal is not new.)

If there is one idea that Biss contributes which is most novel and most important to the conversation about vaccination, it is this: the decision to vaccinate is not a private one. It is intimately a part of our how we view ourselves in relation to our community, our government, and our institutions. Indeed, Biss argues that our own bodies are not as individually disconnected from the body public as we believe. She links immunization to our membership in a group, to the fundamental connectedness of people. She likens universal vaccination to a blood bank. Each person donates part of her own body to protect the health of another. Ultimately, she shows that "immunity" isn't something that happens inside our bodies. It happens to our community. And certain privileged members of this community have a responsibility to act for the benefit of those who are less so.

As difficult as it is to summarize this slender volume, it's even more challenging to highlight the best or most important passages. I swear I highlighted, commented, or dog-eared half the pages in the book. Profound ideas and syntheses follow one after another.

This is an intellectual book. It is ill-suited to soundbites, and is painted entirely in shades of gray, something our over-opinionated culture finds discomfiting. Therefore it will not appeal to every reader. What makes On Immunity the perfect book for the conversation on vaccination is, the author herself is a member of the class most likely to refuse vaccination: educated, married, white mothers. She writes as one of them, and communicates in a way that should appeal directly to the intelligent, socially concerned, well-read women who object to vaccines, women who experience a modern American trauma of "feeling responsible for everything and powerless at the same time."

I hope that many book groups consisting of such women will have the courage to engage with this book. It speaks to them from the heart, and it understands how they feel. While Biss explicitly rejects the idea of a middle ground on the question of vaccination as a false peace, she remains utterly grounded in and sympathetic to the worldview of those who want to protect their children. Her persuasion has nothing in common with the data-haranguing of the medical/scientific establishment. She asks for a larger view of the self, and an embrace of the community.

An advance copy of this book was given to me by the publisher with no promises on my part.

By Amy R. on October 2, 2014

For Detail

Click –On Immunity: An Inoculation

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Tue, 26 May 2015 01:34:00 -0700

From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask.

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe’s iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following.

Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last?

In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by signature xkcd comics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.

The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with updated and expanded versions of the most popular answers from the xkcd website. What If? will be required reading for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) A book that fascinates and inspires one's inner child. Also great for kids! - About half (51%, according to the book, which seems about right) of the questions answered in this book are original, and have never been posted on the xkcd what if? website (https://what-if.xkcd.com/).

Even though I'd already read the other 49%, I re-read them and was glad I did, as Munroe has added a few things here and there; plus, this stuff is just eminently re-readable. It's the perfect combination of irreverent, rigorous, technical, and fascinating. I look forward to every new "What If" (he posts them each Tuesday or Wednesday) and am always delighted to read the latest.

Even if you've read every "What if" ever posted to the website, this book is still for you - it's especially for you! This is a great way to enjoy older questions and answers over again, updated, and to share them with new people, and the new questions and answers - never featured on the website - are delightful; I won't spoil it for you, but my favorite has to be the answer to "If a bullet with the density of a neutron star were fired from a handgun (ignoring the how) at the Earth's surface, would the Earth be destroyed?"

If you have even a passing interest in science and ever enjoy daydreaming about the fantastic or the ridiculous, this book is for you. If you don't think that you enjoy those things, this book will prove to you that you do.

Also, this is a really great gift idea for basically anyone in your life who can read. Kids will love it, adults will love it (I'm ordering a copy for my dad's birthday), and they will be hooked from the first page (who hasn't wondered what would happen if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning?)

Gift season is coming up; thanks to this book my Christmas shopping will be a great deal easier. I don't usually write reviews, but I logged in and made an exception here. I cannot offer higher praise. Enjoy!

By Richard North Jr. on September 2, 2014

2) Essential Reading - At first it might seem dismissive and reductive to call anything "a bathroom book", or a "waiting room" book, (when was the last time you saw a book in a waiting room, anyway?) but unfortunately, this is the appellation under which most "factoid" (or light humor) books must labor.

However, were you to relegate this amazing book to your WC, despite the number of flushes you hear in a day, there would always be a line.

In the case of "What If", this tragic location it is a far cry from what is deserved by the quality of writing, the subject and sense of humor herein. While obviously not having narrative, story or continuity, it has a greater consistency than could be called a topic- humor. OK, two. Humor and patience. Three: Humor, patience, and some amazing research.

A disclaimer from Randall Munroe: "I am a guy who draws pictures on the Internet. I like it when things catch fire and explode, which means I do not have your best interests in mind."

I was instantly hooked.

Further: For the question that warrants a different sort of answer- "What happens if you set off a nuclear bomb in the center of a hurricane? Would the storm cell be vaporized?" Munroe has only to quote NOAA as they reply, "Needless to say, this is not a good idea." Unsurprisingly, he cites their entire article. In fact, the text is followed by a goodly section of references.

There is no doubt he went the distance on these questions, and did so with a mind to give the most accurate, honest and flat out funny answer possible, in some cases going way further over the top than the original question requires. These are the truly great ones. Not to mention the questions do nothing if but give cause for the reader to sit slack jawed and wonder how they could have been conceived in the first place, let alone uttered aloud.

You can read it cover to cover if you, well, can read it cover to cover. I tried- but each question was either so bizarre ("Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?") or compellingly simple ("How high can you throw something?") and answered with equal time, patience and laugh out loud humor that you will not want to miss a page. My copy is already thumb marked and creased from floating around so much. (And don't loan it to anyone.)

Anyone familiar with Randall Munroes's excellent and oft-reposted internet comic, "xkcd" ("A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.") will not be surprised but quite pleased to have a portable, non-electronic version of one of my favorite parts of Munroe's strip- the reader questions. The website consists of not merely these questions, but strips often based life in general through twisted looks via probability science. Another feature, of course, is the "What If" section, from where the rich number of these are drawn.

Here are collected what we must assume are the best of these questions, postulating impossible and absurd questions that might, in some other universe, be quite serious. And as best as one can with tongue in cheek, Munroe uses his extensive background in math and physics to give every question the answer, no matter how improbably. An indestructible heater running on infinite power in a sealed one-meter cube- haven't you always wondered?

Some are just the inexplicable and unanswered "Weird And Worrying Questions", perhaps for "What If Vol II".

But if I had to state a theme, it is that of suffering fools gladly, which the author proves page after page after page. Even though to a scientist, especially a scientist with a great sense of humor, (as the maxim says), "there are no stupid questions"

I had hoped to find the real answer to some of the questions most famously posed by comedian Steven Wright, maybe 30 years ago, perhaps previously the best known purveyor of same-

"If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?" It would not surprise me if this has been addressed already.

"Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen."

So here's an unlikely comparison, but in fact it was one of my earliest thoughts: Bill Griffith's "Zippy The Pinhead" and Munroe's "What If?"

While the text in Zippy - often the daily title itself- usually makes a point, or describes the strip or does not seem immediately relevant, it is nothing compared to the artwork, which is usually so subtly stunning few people recognize it as such.

"What If?" and its Internet source, Munroe's "xkcd dot com" is more or less the opposite. The still entertaining artwork is not any big deal (though still informing the comic) but the text is mind blowing. I mean no disrespect to either author- quite the opposite, I am huge fans of both.

Randall Munroe treats each question as if it had the gravity (a lot of gravity questions here- sorry) of your typical "is there intelligent life in the universe?" (or on Earth, for that matter) yet maintains the attitude of early Bill Cosby- "Why is there air?"

This is one of the most captivating and thoroughly enjoyable books I have seen in a long time.

By palealien VINE VOICE on August 28, 2014

For Detail

Click – What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Tue, 26 May 2015 00:34:00 -0700

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins, bestselling author and the world’s most celebrated evolutionary biologist, has spent his career elucidating the many wonders of science. Here, he takes a broader approach and uses his unrivaled explanatory powers to illuminate the ways in which the world really works. Filled with clever thought experiments and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena: How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? Starting with the magical, mythical explanations for the wonders of nature, Dawkins reveals the exhilarating scientific truths behind these occurrences. This is a page-turning detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well.

Author -

Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was the inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the acclaimed author of many books including The Selfish Gene, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion, and The Greatest Show on Earth. Visit him at RichardDawkins.net.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Truly Magical - In 1984's film "Ghostbusters," there's a comical scene in which a man is being interviewed for the role of the newest member of the "ghost busting" team, and his interviewer asks him the question, "Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?" He answers, humorously, "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say." If you'd asked me the same question at the age of 12 or 13, I would have said "yes" without any hesitation. In fact, I probably would have added some things.

Like most children, I was very curious about how the universe worked and how things had come to be the way they were, and, also like most children, by the time I was in middle school I had outgrown the cute educational kids' shows and picture books about dinosaurs and space. School texts were heavier on bare bones facts than on explaining how scientists knew what they did, and books for adults were dry and simply too difficult to keep up with. (I tried, and abandoned, "The Origin of Species" and "Cosmos" around this time.) Worse yet, I still had the childish tendency to believe most of what adults told me - and to believe virtually all of what I read. In this perfect storm of inquiry and innocence, I was ripe for the plucking for charlatans and pseudo-scientists. And pluck they did! I wasted much of my time during these formative years reading (and believing) that an alien spacecraft crashed in New Mexico in 1947, that populations of plesiosaurs survived in a few scattered lakes around the world (including, of course, Loch Ness), that it was possible to communicate telepathically, that aliens built the pyramids, and so on, and so on... If only there existed some book that could not only explain science at my level, but give me the mental tools to have some sense of what was really science, and what wasn't.

Fortunately for inquiring young minds of today, Richard Dawkins has written that book. "The Magic of Reality" has been written in such a clear, simple manner as to be both understood and enjoyed by boys and girls of middle school age, "caught in the middle" as I was, but it's not at all written in a manner as simple as to "talk down to" them. Dawkins explains lucidly and eloquently (and often humorously) such concepts as evolution, the rotation of the planets, prisms, rainbows, the light spectrum, and a few other things that tend to confuse. A typical chapter begins by posing a question (such as "Why are there so many types of animals?"), summarizing a couple of ancient myths about the subject (a deity vomited them up for some reason), and then explaining what science actually says about it (variation and natural selection cause life forms to diverge over time). And not only does Dawkins "set the record straight," so to speak, but he also explains both the nature and importance of skeptical inquiry and how to use critical thinking to interpret a strange event. He gives a few examples along the lines of "X [an extraordinary event] happened. There are three possible explanations for X: 1.) It was a miracle; 2.) It was a coincidence; and 3.) It was a hoax. 3 is more likely than 2, and 2 is more likely than 1. So it probably wasn't a miracle."

As I imagine you are fully aware, Dawkins is not one to shy away from controversy. This book is bound to be controversial, for Dawkins doesn't just debunk those silly old myths of every religion that isn't yours. Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge are in there, as is the story of Noah's Ark (though in its original "Epic of Gilgamesh" form), and one of the extraordinary events broken down into possibilities is the story of Jesus allegedly turning water into wine. But while Dawkins may refute claims of the supernatural, he's actually a proponent of magic - that is, the "magic" of what is real and what can be studied using real science. This is perhaps the most important thing about the book; it instills (even in myself, a "grown up" studying science at the university level) a renewed appreciation for science and a sense of wonder about nature. The universe is fascinating and beautiful all by itself, without any help from fairy tales. In this sense, reality truly is magical. And so is "The Magic of Reality."

By LeeHoFooks on October 4, 2011

2) No Myth, this is a Really Magical Book! - The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins

"The Magic of Reality" is the latest contribution by evolutionary-biologist icon Richard Dawkins. Professor Dawkins is on a mission of education and in this enlightening book he reaches a younger audience by introducing science like only he can. In one of the most beautifully illustrated science books, he takes the reader on a ride on a wide-range of topics of interest that masterfully navigates between myth and what is real. This mesmerizing 272-page book is composed of the following twelve chapters: 1. What is reality? What is magic? , 2. Who was the first person? , 3. Why are there so many different kinds of animals? , 4. What are things made of? , 5. Why do we have night and day, winter and summer? , 6. What is the sun? , 7. What is a rainbow? , 8. When and how did everything begin? , 9. Are we alone? , 10. What is an earthquake? , 11. Why do bad things happen? ,and 12. What is a miracle?

Positives:
1. A wonderful book on science that is accessible to a younger audience without compromising the science lovers in all of us. Bravo!
2. It's a book written by the great Richard Dawkins, so you know the quality goes in before the product goes out.
3. A true labor of love. The educator in Professor Dawkins comes out and now even our children will benefit from his prodigious knowledge.
4. One of the most beautifully illustrated books you will ever find. Great quality binding only matched by its substance.
5. Science knowledge conveyed in a brilliant, lucid manner.
6. Great format. In each chapter, Professor Dawkins illustrates clearly the difference between the wishful and what is "really" real.
7. What a wonderful way to learn about science. Great practical examples throughout this beautiful book. A ride of knowledge, hop on! Readers of all ages will enjoy this great book.
8. Even-handed and pleasant tone throughout.
9. A wide range of fascinating science topics in the hands of the master.
10. Great wisdom throughout, "We should always be open-minded, but the only good reason to believe that something exists is if there is real evidence that it does".
11. The book cleverly goes from myth to reality.
12. The concept of magic in three tiers: supernatural, stage and poetic.
13. Evolution in the hands of the master. Awesome.
14. Was there ever a first person? Insightful indeed. The best illustrated example I've ever read.
15. Great explanation on DNA.
16. Clever examples throughout, one of the many strengths of this book.
17. A wide range of fascinating science topic in the hands of a master.
18. The three common phases of matter.
19. The importance of the scientific method.
20. The concept of empty space...I finally get it.
21. The importance of carbons, organic chemistry.
22. Telling that there are no myths to describe atoms...
23. So what causes the difference between winter and summer...find out.
24. The illusion of relative movement.
25. The great Isaac Newton. Gravity, lights...we are not worthy.
26. The difference between mass and weight.
27. A great illustration of how far stars are from us.
28. How coal is created.
29. Differences between stars and planets.
30. Energy and the sun.
31. What determines the size of a star? Find out.
32. The epic of Gilgamesh. Interesting.
33. Rainbow as an illusion and how they are formed.
34. Lights as vibrations...I see.
35. Steady state versus the Big Bang theory.
36. How we determine the distance between anything in the universe.
37. How we determine age.
38. Spectral barcoders...neat.
39. Methods for detecting planets.
40. The keys for life on other planets.
41. Plate tectonics illustrated, wonderful.
42. The speed of continents, sea-floor spreading...
43. Myths debunked.
44. Practical explanation for probability.
45. Great examples of evolution...parasites.
46. How the immune system works. Fascinating.
47. Miracles what they are.
48. David Hume's irrefutable logic regarding miracles and many great examples.
49. Absolutely kindles the fire of learning.
50. An excellent gift for all occasions.

Negatives:
1. The book is intended for a younger audience and covers briefly a lot of topics. If you are expecting an in-depth analysis, this is not the book for you.
2. No bibliography.

In summary, a fabulous book for all to enjoy. I usually limit my purchases to Kindle books because of the convenience but I'm glad I was "forced" to buy this book in hardcover binding. It's a beautiful book inside and out. Substance finally matches style and it's a science book for all to enjoy and for years to come. There is a sense of awe, a poetic magic for reality. For all his knowledge, Professor Dawkins is humbled by what little we do know and how much more we need to find out about the world. It's precisely this drive to know more and that hunger for knowledge that I always wanted to convey to my children. Finally, I have a book that expresses my sentiments and I have Richard Dawkins to thank!

By Book Shark TOP 500 REVIEWER on October 5, 2011

For Detail

Click –The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Mon, 25 May 2015 23:46:00 -0700

#1 New York Times Bestseller

“Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations.

FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices.

This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written.

Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to.

FROM THE AUTHOR:
This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:

Pictures
Words
Stories about things that happened to me
Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
Eight billion dollars*
Stories about dogs
The secret to eternal happiness*

*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) People who should buy this book. -

1. People who own dogs.

2. People who suffer from or who have loved ones who suffer from depression.
3. People who want to know what it feels like to have beverages snarfed through their nose(s?).
4. People with a sense of humor.
5. People who know how to order things on amazon.
6. People who are familiar with Allie's site and thus already know some of the content and are ok with that because it still makes them snarf beverages through their nose(s?)
7. People who did not preorder this book and so are not now reading it like I am.
8. People who are unfamiliar with the behaivior of geese and/or enjoy cake.
9. People who like books that are color coded instead of numbered to delineate beginnings and endings.
10. People who are not dead.

By E. Collins on October 29, 2013

2) This book is way better than cigarettes. - I got the book this morning, and as I was hobbled by pain from an ACL surgery and unable to take painkillers because they would make me loopy at work, instead I read this all day. (Shhhhh. It is okay. I also helped customers.)

There are a million things I love about this book, but I can start with the fact that each chapter is printed on different-colored pages than the ones on either side of it, which makes the book look like a rainbow when it is closed. A RAINBOW, GUYS.

The Depression chapters (previously published on her blog) are revelations to those who have experienced depression and touchstones of understanding for those who have not. The Dog chapters are hilarious to both dog-lovers and cat-lovers (AKA dog haters). The chapters that peek into her childhood make me wish I remembered anything about my life before I was twelve. But you know what? I'm going to take a page from this book, and just imagine that my childhood was just as fantastical, wild, revelatory, unintentionally hilarious, and unique.

Yes, there are a few chapters that are repeats from the blog. Sadly, the fish incident did not make it... that one is still my favorite. But the ones that did make it are definitely worth the re-read. Also, the majority of the book is new material, including some introspective chapters ("Thoughts and Feelings" and the two-part "Identity" chapters). Those, to me, were the best ones of the whole book. I love that the author is so freaking honest (can you swear on Amazon? Imma go with no) about EVERYTHING. She holds this mirror up to her guiding principles and then picks everything apart until she's left with this uncivilized and selfish husk, which she then covers up in a sparkly jumpsuit to make it all better. WHICH IS SOMETHING WE ALL DO. We're all basically uncivilized and selfish. But this author has the guts to admit it.

YOU ARE BRAVE, ALLIE. YOU ARE.

I feel strangely proud of the author for producing this book. Proud like a father, even though she is no relation to me and I have never really met her. I want to give her all the gold stars possible. If there were more than five available for this review, I would have gone with more than five. All the way up to eleventy.

Buy this book. Read it. Go read the blog. Re-read everything. Then buy the book for your friends.

By Lac on October 29, 2013

For Detail

Click –Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Funny and Fabulous Fraction Stories: 30 Reproducible Math Tales and Problems to Reinforce Important Fraction Skills

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Mon, 25 May 2015 05:48:00 -0700

Teaching fractions doesn't have to be like pulling teeth! Your students will love these hilarious reproducible stories and follow-up problems that reinforce essential fraction skills: addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, decimals, ratios, and more. Great for reluctant math learners. For use with Grades 3-6.

Author -

Dan Greenberg is a popular educational writer with a reputation for making math super fun. His other books for Scholastic include the best-selling 30 Wild and Wonderful Math Stories, Funny and Fabulous Fraction Stories, and Comic-Strip Math.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) These are funny and fabulous - Fractions can be a really hard concept for some children, they were for my son. This book, that I used this summer between 6th and 7th grade was a great help to get him clearer on this subject.

I love this series that uses humor to teach. It capures their attention and teaches while they are laughing. The book starts out very basic... although probably a bit more advanced than he was in third grade. It starts with *picturing fractions* or as its called *martha crunch, personal fractions trainer*
some examples of contents are:
great artists of the world draw fractions (recognizing fractions)
Louis Lewis, Fractional Private eye ( equivalent fractions)
Texarkana Bernstein, the worlds greatest adventurer and her trusty dog, woovis, episode 1 (adding and subtraction mixed numbers with like denominators)
Arnold guck: man or myth (ratio)
While the message is clearly math, the time spent doing it alot of fun. So the secondary message is positive also...That math need not be a drudge, that anything can be fun... that learning isn't something to be dreaded.
The pictures are fun and can be colored. The pages copied if you have multiple children. The answers are in the back. The book is very readable. I like that they use a combination of several fonts and boldface types..even within the same page. I think it makes it easier for my son to read and separate concepts and areas. Pencils are better than pens or marker as the pages are a bit thin but this book is a clear winner in every sense of the word.

By T. Reinhardt on August 13, 2003

2) Workbook - This is a workbook! I own 3 of Dan Greenberg workbooks and this is the best one. The students reads the story. There are 10 - 20 problems in the story that the student solves at the end of the story.

By Shelley E. Wilson on February 12, 2006

For Detail

Click – Funny & Fabulous Fraction Stories: 30 Reproducible Math Tales and Problems to Reinforce Important Fraction Skills

The Cash Money Story

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Mon, 25 May 2015 05:16:00 -0700

A Simon and Schuster eBook. Simon and Schuster has a great book for every reader. Shop Amazon Books - Up tp 40% of Big Data Books

For Detail

Click – The Cash Money Story

Healing Your Traumatized Heart

earthelement7@gmail.com (JPL) — Mon, 25 May 2015 03:54:00 -0700

For Detail

Click – Healing Your Traumatized Heart