Gleick, James

Average customer rating:

Brilliant
An engaging and readable introduction to Chaos Theory
A pop-science take on Chaos
Whoa! What happened here?
A great introduction!

Chaos: Making a New Science
James Gleick
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140092501

Amazon.com

Few writers distinguish themselves by their ability to write about complicated, even obscure topics clearly and engagingly. James Gleick, a former science writer for the New York Times, resides in this exclusive category. In Chaos, he takes on the job of depicting the first years of the study of chaos--the seemingly random patterns that characterize many natural phenomena.

This is not a purely technical book. Instead, it focuses as much on the scientists studying chaos as on the chaos itself. In the pages of Gleick's book, the reader meets dozens of extraordinary and eccentric people. For instance, Mitchell Feigenbaum, who constructed and regulated his life by a 26-hour clock and watched his waking hours come in and out of phase with those of his coworkers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

As for chaos itself, Gleick does an outstanding job of explaining the thought processes and investigative techniques that researchers bring to bear on chaos problems. Rather than attempt to explain Julia sets, Lorenz attractors, and the Mandelbrot Set with gigantically complicated equations, Chaos relies on sketches, photographs, and Gleick's wonderful descriptive prose.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant.......2007-06-25

This is another excellent book from Gleick, surely one of the best writers alive right now.

An engaging and readable introduction to Chaos Theory.......2007-03-29

Mathmeticians, physicists, and others that unlike me did not find college level calculus challenging may be slightly disappointed with this book. There are no real equations for the Mandelbrot Set on the cover or any of the other areas of the discipline that are illustrated so well throughout the book. I have to say that the book was extremely interesting and difficult to put down. The visual presentation rather than equations seemed effective to me and Gleick is a very good science writer. There is possibly no other book that has stirred interest in this subject as well as this book for the layman in its 20 years. If you're not disappointed that you won't need a calculator to read this, I think you would appreciate the explanations for this new perspective on physics, meterology, biology, geology and math. I think of this book many times when I see alluvial flow patterns in the sand, the veination of leaves, mammotous clouds. It's an eye opener to part of the world that you may not perceive or begin to understand without reading this book.

A pop-science take on Chaos.......2007-03-12

Is Chaos theory a new title? Or a catchy name tacked on to the science explained by non-linear math? Either way, James Gleick explains the emergence of a new non-mainstream science movement. Like most of his pop science work, Gleick delves into the history, personalities and impacts of the science, as opposed to the in depth mathematics behind it. Taken as that, it's a worthy book that meets it's goals - documenting what might have been the beginning of a great scientific revolution.

Whoa! What happened here?.......2007-02-24

Chaos is as great a science book as it gets outside of some of the better than your average undergrad science textbooks; i'm talking about the good textbooks like "Project Physics Course" or Morris Kline's "Calculus". As noted by some who obviously have pride in knowing the real thing, these types of books are not the real thing; the real question is 'are they worth anything?' Yes! These general science books that are good general science books are philosophy books.

This Chaos theory book has been ranked pretty highly for its philosophizing as far as I can tell. To say the least, this is where my shock at contemporary supposedly 'intellectuals' goes up! James Gliek goes on and on(he even has a whole chapter called "Revolution" in the book) about how Chaos theory is a new science(o.k. it is), and that this new science raises questions about scientific method; to say the least, if chaos theory challenges you on scientific method, then your already dead in the water as far as an understanding of science and its methods are concerned! In fact, humanity takes steps backwards if a book that argues this stance is so popular with the 'intellectual' community. Ernst Casserir and Jacob Bronowski way back in the stone ages of the 1900's had all this figured out. Jacob Bronowski's books were published because his articles were so popular! What happened?

What happened is a new generation was born every fifteen to twenty years, and they just learned what they needed to.

Getting back to James Gliek's 'Chaos', he talks about how Chaos theory blows up the 'reductionist' views of science. Chaos theory is somehow more holistic than previous sciences. Never mind how he never mentions how Maxwell's electromagnetism 'combines' light with electricity; quantum mechanics derives chemistry, and General Relativity derives newtonian mechanics, he never even mentions how the abstract nature of mathematics works. Mathematics is an abstraction(not the popular notions of empty and vagueness); abstraction is the common form that any set of similar structures can take on; the famous example is how a couple of oranges and apples are two concrete examples of the common form of the number two. Abstraction is a unification; all of mathematics and science concepts are such unifications at one time or another. A strange attractor does not break this scientific methodology; it is as much an abstraction as any scientific concept.

Scientists seem to have lost track of all this including all these transhumanists who just happen to be nanotechnologists

A great introduction!.......2006-12-14

Why are snow flakes so different?

And: Is there any limit to the shapes they can assume?

It turns out that the answers to both these simple questions involve matters of the highest import to the nature of how reality itself is constructed.

With brief, pithy descriptions of the discovers who've staked out the territory of choas theory, Gleick lucidly describes the theory's basic applications and relevance to other established fields of study.

Firstly, Gleick demonstrates how choas is not uniform. That is to say, it predicatably yields to patterns and even predictably produces pockets of order.

These first assertions speak mightily to common sense Aquinas notions of purposeful design.

Then, in the areas of physics and chemistry and biology and even architecture, Gleick discusses how choas can be helpful in maximizing surface area while minimizing volume. Part of the resonant beauty of for example the Eifel Tower is its use of fractal structure giving it a more organic look.

Also, he explores the ultimate importance of even minor differences. Just as a butterfly flapping its wing can litterally alter the balance to create a sunny day, subtle differences in temperature and atom distribution give snowflakes their own unique individuality.

And like each snowflake has its own unique, irreplaceable beauty, this book shows that so too each life -- choatically brought into being -- has its own irreplaceable beauty.

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Average customer rating:

Reader
Complements the Autobiographies
"As though Groucho Marx was suddenly standing in for a great scientist"
Hard-pressed to surpass Feynman's rampant brilliance
Particle Physisists Made Accessible

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
James Gleick
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679747044
Release Date: 1993-11-02

Amazon.com

If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a biography of Feynman would be a waste of your time. Wrong! Gleick's Genius is a masterpiece of scientific biography--and an inspiration to anyone in pursuit of their own fulfillment as a person of genius. Deservedly nominated for a National Book Award, underservedly passed over by the committee in the face of tough competition, and very deservedly a book that you must read.

Book Description

From the author of the national bestseller Chaos comes an outstanding biography of one of the most dazzling and flamboyant scientists of the 20th century that "not only paints a highly attractive portrait of Feynman but also . . . makes for a stimulating adventure in the annals of science" (The New York Times). 16 pages of photos.

Customer Reviews:

Reader.......2007-06-17

If you love Dr.Feynman and physics, you will love this book too. Impeccably written it charts out four phases in his life-from birth, to early education, Los Alamos and the final struggle with cancer which apparently had its origins in the Manhattan project owing to prolonged exposure to radiation. Woven into the body of the text is the same light heartedness and banter that so characterized his life and work but brings home the rampant brilliance of this man in all its profundity. His uncanny sense of bringing the truth, far removed from the official verbose so much in evidence when he was a member of the commission that probed the Challenger disaster, is the recurring theme throughout the book. Gleick illustrates that beyond the free sprit that seems to stick out, an intensely personal side shows up as his tribulations when wife Arlene battled tuberculosis and he frantically worked at Los Alamos .The last few sections are poignant, when a cancer struck Dr.Feynman realizes that his hopes of visiting an exotic but secluded Soviet territory Tuva was fast vanishing, caught in the foliage of government bureaucracy, he so detested; the visa did arrive but by then it was a little too late. Even in the final moment his spirit shines through; his last words being, "I would hate to die twice, it's so boring", as the end came at 10:34 pm, 15th of Feb, 1988 at the UCLA medical college. James Gleick has composed a wonderful book of one of the most inscrutable characters of the world of physics. Surely worth reading!!

Complements the Autobiographies.......2007-03-12

Richard Feynman, the eccnetric Nobel willing physicicsts, has written two annecdote-driven autobiographies, "Surely You're Joking" and "What do you care what other people think?" Gleik's book, Genius, picks up where they left off, filling in the holes about Feynman's extended background, contributions to physics, and importance above and beyond the curious stories.

This is great for anyone interested in the man behind the science, though clearly not intended as a deep science text. Doesn't replace the autobiographical books, but certainly complements them.

"As though Groucho Marx was suddenly standing in for a great scientist".......2007-02-02

The challenge for any biographer of a scientist is to make the subject both interesting and understandable to the lay reader. Fortunately, the life of Richard Feynman provides James Gleick with plenty of material; in another era, Feynman might have served eminently as an overqualified court jester. While a genius and a polymath, Feynman was also a very serious man who never took himself all that seriously.

Gleick's book charts four stages of Feynman's life: his childhood and education; his work on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos; his groundbreaking investigations in particle physics, mathematics, and computing (with even a brief foray into genetics); and his final months battling cancer and investigating the Challenger disaster. Not surprisingly, the most interesting section describes Feynman's war-years in New Mexico, made all the more poignant by his wife's ongoing battle with (and death from) tuberculosis. The strength of this section nearly makes the rest of the book feel anticlimactic.

The details of Feynman's subsequent work, including the stuff for which he won the Nobel Prize, are, of course, impossible to explain adequately to a non-scientist, but Gleick conveys both the excitement of the various investigations and, above all, their tenor. Feyman's solid grounding in mathematics, his insistence on the practicality of his research, and his method of starting his investigations from scratch (rather than reading what others before him had done) both caused him to make honorable mistakes and allowed him to find methods of doing things nobody else had considered. (The famous Feynman diagrams are an example of his ability to examine something from a new angle.) Even when I didn't understand the science or the math involved in Feynman's explorations, I always comprehended their significance and relevance of his successes and the deficiencies and frustrations of his failures. (The book also made me want to read more about Murray Gell-Mann, Freeman Dyson, and Julian Schwinger.)

What livens up the erudition even when the substance gets tough to follow is Feynman's Groucho Marx persona (the quote heading my review is C. P. Snow's take on Feynman). Rarely has a scientist been so notoriously fond of practical jokes and clownish behavior; from picking safes at Los Alamos to that oddest of hobbies, playing the bongo drums. Even his most serious efforts could have unintentionally comic results; there is an especially hilarious episode in which Feynman trieds to examine what would happen if one were to reverse the flow of water in a rotating lawn sprinkler. His glass contraption explodes and nearly destroys Princeton's only cyclotron. Who'd have thunk I'd have laughed out loud so often while reading the biography of a physicist?

That's not to imply Feynman didn't have an ego; he didn't suffer fools lightly, and he could innocuously issue a dismissal of the life's work of another scientist with a bluntness that could be devastating. For any other man, such candor would make quick enemies, but Feynman's easy-going buffoonery (which he and his son privately called "aggressive dopiness") as often as not endeared him to his unfortunate targets. Similarly, although brief, the section on Feynman's role in the Challenger explosion (which provides the perfect coda for the book) portrays the physicist as a common-sense Sam Spade battling against an intransigent and insular bureaucracy.

Overall, I can't imagine how Gleick could have written a better biography of such an inscrutable character for readers whose knowledge of physics is sketchy. There's much to be learned here--but, better yet, there's much to be enjoyed.

Hard-pressed to surpass Feynman's rampant brilliance.......2006-12-03

An aquaintance of mine is named Feynman, a name so unusual I felt obligated to google it. I dropped by the bookstore later that day and picked up "Genius" as well as Feynman's acclaimed autobiography, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman." After charging through the latter, I started James Gleick's book with a little trepidation - Feynman's powerful charisma would surely be difficult to surpass.

'Genius' details Feynman's scientific achievements and tones down the rampant quirkiness so utterly present in "Surely You're Joking." It feels much more thorough than the autobiography yet dutifully chronicles his various feats (i.e. dipping the infamous O-ring into ice water) and interests (i.e. women, bongo drums, and safecracking) with much less vim. This book also places Feynman in context by discussing the physics at the time.

Ultimately, Gleick offers no surprises, effectively filling in a niche without making any especially brilliant literary achievements. --- 3 stars

Particle Physisists Made Accessible.......2006-09-18

As someone who barely made it through high school physics, I approached this book with some trepidation, but much like Sagan, Gleick gives understandable insight into the issues during the development of particle physics. Feynman's genius shows itself for a much longer period of his life than most physicists whose major contributions occur early in their careers. Feynman's passion for real solutions to real problems is made clear in dozens of anecdotes in the book. Three cheers and five stars for Gleick and Feynman. One marvels at both while reading this book. Insightful and incredible.

Average customer rating:

Life of a giant.
Short and shallow
Good book, but not great.
on the shoulders of giants
Newton is the Genius

Isaac Newton
James Gleick
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1400032954
Release Date: 2004-06-08

Amazon.com

As a schoolbook figure, Isaac Newton is most often pictured sitting under an apple tree, about to discover the secrets of gravity. In this short biography, James Gleick reveals the life of a man whose contributions to science and math included far more than the laws of motion for which he is generally famous. Gleick's always-accessible style is hampered somewhat by the need to describe Newton's esoteric thinking processes. After all, the man invented calculus. But readers who stick with the book will discover the amazing story of a scientist obsessively determined to find out how things worked. Working alone, thinking alone, and experimenting alone, Newton often resorted to strange methods, as when he risked his sight to find out how the eye processed images:

<blockquote>.... Newton, experimental philosopher, slid a bodkin into his eye socket between eyeball and bone. He pressed with the tip until he saw 'severall white darke & coloured circles'.... Almost as recklessly, he stared with one eye at the sun, reflected in a looking glass, for as long as he could bear.</blockquote>

From poor beginnings, Newton rose to prominence and wealth, and Gleick uses contemporary accounts and notebooks to track the genius's arc, much as Newton tracked the paths of comets. Without a single padded sentence or useless fact, Gleick portrays a complicated man whose inspirations required no falling apples. --Therese Littleton

Book Description

Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.

James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it can truly be said: We are all Newtonians.

Customer Reviews:

Life of a giant........2007-05-24

The shape of the world we live in has been mostly determined by a few hundred people. Newton is one of those. This is a concise, readable, entertaining bio of one of history's really great thinkers. Anyone who uses gravity should read it.

Short and shallow.......2007-04-14

In the Introduction to "300 years of Gravitation", published in 1987 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Newton's Principia, S.W. Hawking( the current Lucasian professor at Cambridge), writes about Newton and Einstein, and says that the latter is the only physicist who has made achievements comparable to the former's. But then he adds: in order to formulate his theory of universal gravitation, Newton invented the mathematics he needed, whereas what Einstein needed for his theory of general relativity was already there, in the form of curved spaces theory developed by Riemann, and perfected by Ricci and others. This is why, Hawking continues, physicists generally place Newton in the first place, ahead of Einstein....
And this is why I consider that Gleick's book is not worthy of its subject: it is too short and too shallow. For not only is Newton's science very scantily presented, but his life also is not treated as one would have expected from the author of "Genius". In fairness to Gleick, writing about the life of a contemporary physicist is much easier than in the case of one having lived in the 17th century, but I am sure Gleick could have done better. In my opinion, a book of this size would not be enough to cover the story of the genesis of universal gravitation alone!(Readers who are interested could refer to Pierre Duhem's "La théorie Physique, son objet, sa structure" available at Books Online.com, but unfortunately in French).
On the other hand, the book contains a few "Gleickisms" (see my review of "Genius" for a typical Gleickism regarding the difference of two successive squares...), which is only normal owing to the modest scientific background of the author. Here are some examples:
- At page 25, the author states that, according to Galileo, all bodies fall at the same rate. And then he adds:"but not at the same speed"!In fact, what Galileo asserted was that bodies falling together in vacuum will fall at the same uniformly varying speed.
- At page 45, Gleicks talks about the relation between differentiation and integration, which are reciprocal operations. But this does not make speed and area "cognate": speed is obtained by differentiating a function of the form x=F(t) with respect to time t, whereas area is obtained by integrating y=F(x) with respect to space coordinate x. There is strictly speaking no relation between the two operations!
- At page 67, Gleick writes"...he began to list cubic equations: curves in three dimensions..." But cubic equations of one variable will never give curves in three dimensions! And the example given at page 68 does not even give a curve: it is the simple 3rd degree equation, which yields three roots in x!
- At page 184, Gleick writes about "rates of change"( with which he is obsessed) and includes in those "potentials and gradients". But whereas a gradient is a rate of change by definition, a potential is not necessarily so!

In addition, few typos need to be corrected for the next edition:

- Page 262-Descartes work is "Discours de la Méthode", not "Discourse".
- Page 271- I don't know where Gleick found the particle"de" in the name of Voltaire.Voltaire is but an anagram!
- Page 272- S.Weinberg is mentioned at page 238, not 237.

Good book, but not great........2007-02-03

Most of the reviews of this book seem to be reviews of Newton, not the book. To be sure, Newton is one of the most influential scientists who ever lived, but that is not the point. Rather, the point is how good is this book? I liked the book, but not as much as I had hoped to. I found the book to be somewhat flat and un-exciting, the same impression it gives of Newton's life. There are areas of Newton's life that could have been presented more dramatically, most specifically his conflict with Robert Hooke. The author paints Hooke as one of those people who claim to have done everything before anyone else. In this book, he is depicted as a blowhard, but in other accounts his claims are given much more weight. (For instance, see "The Scientists" by John Gribbin.) Another point of contention is exactly how indispensable was Newton. Had he not lived, how long would it have taken for others to discover what he did? Being a biography of Newton, it is not surprising that he is painted as being indispensable. Again, this is a point of contention, not hinted at in this book. Much of what Newton did was also done by others (calculus was developed at the same time by Leibniz and it is his version that we use today, not Newton's). Newton could not have formulated gravity without the work of Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes. Gribbin believes that within a decade of Newton's death others could have used this same background to develop "Newton's laws". The point is not whether Gleick or Gribbin is right, but that Gleick does not even acknowledge that this controversy exists.

All in all, the book lays out the scope of Newton's life (including the fact that he spent much of the latter part of his life as an alchemist), but in a rather unexciting manner. The important areas of controversy, which aim to evaluate Newton's position in the pantheon of great scientists, are not even broached. I think that such a discussion would have enriched the book and broadened the outlook of the reader, so that Newton would not be just "the man", but rather a man among many.

on the shoulders of giants.......2006-09-27

My view of the world clearly owes a lot to Newton - especially as I have a scientific/engineering/mathematical background. Regretfully however, if Newton stood on the shoulders of giants to get his better view of how things are, I am struggling to get to Newtons waist. And as for Einstein.....

I enjoyed this book for its explanation of scientific and philosophical matters in a clear way that neither avoids complexities not swamps the reader in them.

But most of all I enjoyed the book for learning of the man - his strengths, his weaknesses, the things he indulged in, the things he avoided.

other recommendations:
'The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan' by Robert Kanigel
'The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth' by Paul Hoffman
'Newton: The Making of Genius' by Patricia Fara

Newton is the Genius.......2006-06-30

Mr. Gleick, thank you! Your book is fascinating. I always wanted to know who is the smartest man ever lived. You books answers my question: Sir. Isaac Newton without any doubt!

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything

Average customer rating:

Faster: A List of Facts and Speculations
I disagreed with the entire premise of this book
" The faster we are forced to go, the slower we may need to go"
Couldn't wait to finish
You will recognize your life in this book

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything
James Gleick
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 067977548X
Release Date: 2000-09-05

Amazon.com

Never in the history of the human race have so many had so much to do in so little time. That, anyway, is the impression most of us have of civilized life at the end of the millennium, and Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything only sharpens it. Elegantly composed and insightfully researched, Faster delivers a brisk volley of observations on how microchips, media, and economics, among other things, have accelerated the pace of everyday experience over the course of the manic 20th century.

Author of the pop-science triumph, Chaos, James Gleick brings his formidable writing skills to bear here, creating an almost poetic flow of ideas from what in other hands might have been just a mass of interesting facts and anecdotes. Whether tracing the modern history of chronometry (from Louis-François Cartier's invention of the wristwatch to the staggeringly precise atomic clocks of today's standards bureaus) or revealing the ways the camera has sped up our subjective sense of pace (from the freeze frames of Eadweard Muybridge's early photographic experiments to the jump cuts of MTV's latest videos), Gleick manages to weave in slyly perceptive or occasionally profound points about our increasingly hopped-up relationship to time. The result is the kind of thing only an accelerated culture like ours could have come up with: an instant classic. --Julian Dibbell

Book Description

From the bestselling, National Book Award-nominated auhtor of Genius and Chaos, a bracing new work about the accelerating pace of change in today's world.

Most of us suffer some degree of "hurry sickness." a malady that has launched us into the "epoch of the nanosecond," a need-everything-yesterday sphere dominated by cell phones, computers, faxes, and remote controls. Yet for all the hours, minutes, and even seconds being saved, we're still filling our days to the point that we have no time for such basic human activities as eating, sex, and relating to our families. Written with fresh insight and thorough research, Faster is a wise and witty look at a harried world not likely to slow down anytime soon.

Download Description

If one quality defines our modern, technocratic age, it is acceleration. We are making haste. Our computers, our movies, our sex lives, our prayers -- they all run faster now than ever before. And the more we fill our lives with time-saving devices and time-saving strategies, the more rushed we feel. In Faster, James Gleick explores nothing less than the human condition at the turn of the millennium. He shines a light of enterprising and analytical reporting -- as well as sly wit -- on the newest paradoxes of time. His journey takes us through the bunkers and trenches of a war we barely knew we were fighting: to the atomic clocks of the Directorate of Time, to the waiting rooms that focus our impatience, to the film production studios that test the high-speed limits of our perception, to the air traffic command centers that give time pressure new meaning. We have become a quick-reflexed, multi-tasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don't completely understand it, and we're not altogether happy about it. Faster is a mirror held up to our times -- and a mordant reminder of why some things take time.

Customer Reviews:

Faster: A List of Facts and Speculations.......2006-12-29

I obviously did not conducting enough research before buying this book. I am seventeen and this was an easy read, but I was hoping for and expecting a philosophical examination of our speedy lives. Instead I was bombarded by semi-interesting, useless facts about how our world has been struck by "hurry-sickness" and how everything has been accelerated (a fairly obvious fact).

If you are consious enough of our world to buy this book (because of its title) for yourself, it will not raise you conciousness with any deep philosophical questions or with any solutions. The only people who will benefit from this book are the ones who will never buy it for themselves. Therefore I believe this book is basically useless and slightly boring.

I disagreed with the entire premise of this book.......2006-07-09

Gleick would like us to feel that everything, EVERYTHING is going faster. Ultimately, whetever you are doing now, it will happen faster tomorrow.

Sure, life is getting faster, but that's not the ultimate goal. People want to do MORE, they do not want to simply go faster.

To ignore the need for more is to miss the entire point of why we want to do some things faster: so that we have the leisure to do other things more slowly! I would like to finish my work faster so I have more time to cook a gourmet meal. I like to commute via bicycle so I can combine my workout and commute, but I certainly don't rush!

This book has a lot of anecdotal data, which is all very interesting, but doesn't amount to much. Some of the individual chapters give very detailed analysis of specific people or technologies, but Gleick never pulls it all together.

In short, interesting data, but not enough to support his position. And certainly not nearly enough to appease a skeptic.

" The faster we are forced to go, the slower we may need to go".......2006-05-01

This book has a lot of insights about various ways in which the ' pace of life and learning' have since the Scientific Revolution accelerated. In other words it is a book which gives one much to think about.
The problem is that it also suggests that given the vast increase of information available to us, the vast increase in 'possible alternatives' for our attention, that we will probably have our minds moved away from the insights so rapidly as to not even absorb them.
The obvious reply to such an intense barrage upon our consciousness, is to withdraw. And when we withdraw and close out all that is accelerating around us, we begin to try and make a pace and story of our own within ourselves.
The faster we are forced to go, the slower we may need to go.
I think a companion volume , or perhaps a contradictory volume should be written on all those human activities which might be aided by our ' going slower in them'. And along with this volume should be advice and recommendation of how to keep out of our life these seemingly endless intrusions which disrupt our living by our own rhythm.
"Run slowly, slowly horses of the night".

Couldn't wait to finish.......2005-11-01

Though I'm a great fan of Gleick's other books, I found Faster annoying in the extreme. True, it is replete with fascinating facts and insights. After a couple of chapters, however, many of its fascinating facts and insights -- not infrequently organized into endless prose lists -- began to feel like so many bricks to the skullcap, waterdrops to the forehead, ... Enough was enough was enough. I listened to Faster (audiotape) on my commute to work. Mornings 3-8 felt like Groundhog Day. F(un/interesting 15 page magazine article) + C(affeine) + OCD + T(ime) +/- P(er-word-payment) = Faster.

You will recognize your life in this book.......2005-03-25

No one who lives in our modern world needs to be reminded that things are going faster. However, the fact that we don't need to be reminded does not change the fact that we should have that fact pointed out on occasion. Gleick does that, and reminds us that there were advantages to the old days. When round-trip communication took a few hours or even days, there was the opportunity for reflection. If you sent out a nastygram, you had the opportunity to reflect on what you wrote. The very act of putting ink on paper took some time and forced you to do the proverbial "count to ten."
As all of us who use it know, that benefit does not apply to e-mail. When something happens, we send off an e-mail without thinking it through and then are forced to apologize or beg forgiveness later. The nuances in our speech and nonverbal communication also help us determine what the actual message is and is lacking in e-mail. The inclusion of emoticons helps, but they simply cannot replace what we are so accustomed to. One of the most amazing statistics in the book is the report that Americans spend slightly more than four minutes a day engaged in sex. Either we are not doing it often or are awfully quick when we do. No other statistic more accurately describes how fast things are going. This also means that a large number of people spend ten times more time reading e-mail than engaged in sexual activity. I personally know some people who live in the same house that communicate more via e-mail than face to face.
As accurate as Gleick is in his descriptions, the book was written before the advent of the ubiquitous cell phone. In fact, I could not find the phrase "cell phone" in the index. Therefore, things are now even worse than the descriptions in this book. While waiting for stoplights, I regularly observe the drivers going through the intersection. The results of my informal experiment are that approximately fifteen percent of drivers are talking on their cell phone. It makes you wonder how many people engage in sex while conversing on their cell phone.
This is one of the most accurate descriptions of modern life that you will ever find. Everyone who uses modern "conveniences" will recognize their daily life being described in these pages.

The Best American Science Writing 2000 (Four Audiocassettes)

Average customer rating:

Misnamed or Misedited...be warned!
Interesting, but not "The Best"
A Very Mixed Bag
amusing, but very patchy writing skills
Terrific collection

The Best American Science Writing 2000 (Four Audiocassettes)
James Gleick
Manufacturer: HarperAudio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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Similar Items:

The Best American Science Writing 2001 (Best American Science Writing)
The Best American Science Writing 2002 (Best American Science Writing)
The Best American Science Writing 2004 (Best American Science Writing)
The Best American Science Writing 2003 (Best American Science Writing)
The Best American Science Writing 2005 (Best American Science Writing)

ASIN: 0694523992

Amazon.com

Avid science readers know the value of good judgment. There's just too much out there to go through it all in one lifetime, so we learn to appreciate the recommendations of those we trust. Editors James Gleick and Jesse Cohen took it upon themselves to select 19 eclectic pieces for The Best American Science Writing 2000, resulting in a delicious, engrossing volume with something for nearly every reader. Whether relying on well-known authors like Stephen Jay Gould and Oliver Sacks or surprising us with a selection from humor publication The Onion ("Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms of Pseudoscience"), they choose works that combine the best of exposition and aesthetic delight. The scope of topics is broad: physician Atul Gawande reports on medical mistakes, Douglas R. Hofstadter ruminates on natural and artificial intelligence, and Deborah Gordon gives an inside look at southwestern American ant life. Though the editors cheerfully admit that they can't define science writing with any precision, they still please the reader with this important and enjoyable volume. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

Meticulously selected by bestselling author James Gleick, Harper Audio presents a steller collection of essays written by some of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of our time -- each one read by its creator.

Many of these cutting-edge essays offer glimpses of our new realms of discovery and thought, exploring territory that is unfimiliar to most of us or finding the unexpected in the midst of the familiar. This diverse, stimulating, and accessible collection is required for anyone who wants to travel to that frontier.

Customer Reviews:

Misnamed or Misedited...be warned!.......2002-07-22

I liked many of the pieces in this collection and detested just a few. But overall I was very disappointed since I expected essays about SCIENCE, not essays about science history, about preferring music to science, about doctors making mistakes. I'm not saying those types of essays are not interesting reading, but I am saying they're definitely not about real science. Very few of the essays would actually enhance a university science course, for instance.

Furthermore, there would seem to be a weird bias present in the selection of the essays. A lot of them are from the New Yorker or the New York Times, hardly the places to go for good science (even though I do acknowledge that when it comes to newspapers the New York Times does better than most...which are terrible in general). There are some from the Sciences, Nature, but not many from places where real science essays are published. I suspect the net was not cast far in a search. How about Science News, Discover, Analog, Scientific American? I am also sure there were more overlooked great science essays in books that were not read (a few such are included and tend to be among the best in the collection). There is even a farcical "essay" from The Onion here!

Gleick explains/justifies this in his introduction claiming to take a "big tent" approach. After reading the volume I think he failed. The tent wasn't big enough to retain enough science to validate the title.

The essays I like in particular included Lord of the Flies by Jonathan Weiner, Antarctic Dreams by Francis Halzen, Interstellar Spaceflight by Timothy Ferris, Einstein's Clocks by Peter Galison, and A Desinger Universe by Steven Weinberg.

Two stood out in my mind as particular poor examples of science writing mainly because they embrace "anti-science" in order to be "witty." Natalie Angier's New York Times article "Furs for Evening, but Cloth Was the Stone Age Standby" examines the recent realization that 20-30k year old fertility figures are shown wearing complex textiles. She may just be reporting the shoddy methodology of some current archeological practices, but she proudly announces that the old assumption that men created these statuettes is wrong based on the detailed textile carving that requires detailed knowledge of such and the cross-cultural studies of the present population of earth that indicates women create cloth, not men. I think the announcement is quite premature and just as big of an assumption. It feels like one of those essays that projects present-day sensibilities on past times, a form of political correctness that has no place in science.

Worse is "Must Dog Eat Dog" by Susan McCarthy from salon.com. McCarthy attacks sociobiological thought but displays an astounding level of ignorance about the details of the theories involved. She attacks a straw man of her own invention in which men must be homeless, starving, lecherous slobs in order to validate sociobiology. She simply cannot have read some of the thinkers she attacks and have written the piece she did. She argues from a political motivation, not from a scientific one, and I was quite shocked to see this essay included. "Witty" it may be, but science it ain't!

This is an interesting collection, but be aware of what is actually included here. Good science is going on in the world today, and people are writing about it, just usually not in the New Yorker.

Interesting, but not "The Best".......2001-02-06

Although I enjoyed most of the articles, this was not exactly what I was expecting. It appears as though many of the articles came out of popular non-scientific publications (many from the N.Y. Times) and were written for a mainstream audience. Too many of them were articles of the "I'm a scientist and here's my story . . ." genre. One story was about an author's "nervous breakdown" and his decision to pursue a career in music rather than chemistry. A few were about the practice of medicine or medical research. They were interesting articles but didn't contain as much scientific information as I expected - I didn't really learn that much. I don't want to sound overly negative. I did enjoy many of the selections. However, calling this "The Best" science writing of the year is a real stretch.

A Very Mixed Bag.......2000-11-26

The best essays were actually on the history of science. There were memoirs of very little scientific interest, some pop-observations of the field of science, some decent philosophy, some medical adventure stories. Not bad, but certainly not a general survey of good science writing spread over all the sciences, so not what I was hoping for at all. I would have to browse the 2001 edition before buying; certainly not an automatic purchase based on this edition.

amusing, but very patchy writing skills.......2000-11-22

There were well written articles by generalists, and good pices by the people who do the research they write about. It's also hard not to enjoy Douglas Hofstadter, even if this was a somewhat weak piece of his.

Mixed in are pieces like Susan McCarthy (from Salon) that use poor argumentative style (numerous ad hominem attacks, the use of Capital Letter sarcasm), poorly researched and develop no thesis of her own. Just scattershot bon mots and drive-by name dropping.

some good with the bad. worth an afternoon, the articles are light on actual content. pop-science.

Terrific collection.......2000-11-01

In general, the BEST collections are the best of the best. First, the essays or books have been chosen for publication and then a few are picked for the collection. These are well written and interesting, covering several areas of science. I especially liked Stephen S. Hall's "Journey to the Center of My Mind" where he describes his experience of an M.R.I. of his brain while being assigned specific mental tasks. Fascinating stuff. And I loved "Lord of the Flies," excerpted from Jonathan Weiner's terrific book, TIME, LOVE, MEMORY, on Seymour Benzer's mapping the genes of the fruit fly.

Each essay in this collection takes you into the world of a specific science and the scientists who are patient enough to stay with their explorations and articulate enough to describe them to others. Some of my favorite authors are in this collection: Stephen J. Gould, Susan McCarthy, and Oliver Sachs. A treat for the mind.

Book Description

Eliot Porters photos of the natural world, spanning thirty-five years and five continentsfrom an Antarctic ice floe to a North American desert to an Icelandic lava fieldreveal in mesmerizing ways what scientists are beginning to see for themselves: the patterns, relations, and inter-actions present in natures disorder and wildness.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful and Profound.......2002-08-26

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to listen...does it make a sound? Is there any sense, order or meaning to the universe beyond our human projections?

These photographs of Eliot Porter--selected to provide an illustration and counterpoint to James Gleick's eloquent text--are among the most rapturously beautiful ever produced. They are the visual equivalent of poet Wallace Stevens' attempt to grasp that which lies beyond the limits of sentience. Looking through the original hardcover edition is both an act of meditation and of homage--to the greatness of creation, in all its mystery, as well as to the human need to think, feel, and reach for meaning. As I journey through these images, I ask myself, do we look out upon the universe from afar--or do we do so from within, as integral parts of the greater mystery? Let go...allow Gleick's text to pose the question--and Porter's photographs to frame the answer.

Great content, poor printing.......2001-10-31

I received my copy of the new (2001) printing of NATURE'S CHAOS earlier today. While the Porter photographs are both unusual and beautiful, it's great pity that this edition is poorly printed. I've not seen the original edition for comparison. In this printing, color is poorly balanced for many photographs, often to the point that the original vision is obscured. Plus, some photos are very "soft" and lacking in detail, which is surely the fault of the printers as well. What a shame, and what a surprise coming from Little, Brown.

A beautiful work that captures the natural essence of chaos.......1998-06-04

As a graduate student, there is little time or mental space for pursuits beyond the academe-especially one that does not operate in the verbal realm. At nights, on weekends, and in reveries induced by deoxygenated library atmospheres I am a photographer. An early inspiration for me was Eliot Porter. Very early on I became enthralled by the careful studies of trees and fields. I was drawn to the intense, microscopic details in his works, which could not be characterized as minute in any regard. I was amazed at how, by capturing a dizzying array of detail in his work, he could portray the raw, intricate, complex beauty of something I had stared upon, vacuously, every day. Later, when I first became interested in chaos theory, dynamic systems and complexity, I enjoyed a new appreciation of Porter's craft. I found that in the visual sense I was always looking to portray the orderly chaos, or the chaotic beauty of nature. Once, whilst in the office of a professor that I am writing book with (about cognition-emotion interaction as a self-organizing system) I came across the book "Nature's Chaos" by Porter. I immediately recognized the photography and picked the book up from the shelf. To my amazement, Gleick, whose book "Chaos" started a revolution of sorts in the biological science community, was a co-author. I was enraptured. I borrowed it. I tried to buy it from my colleague. I wandered through used book stores on my way to the campus. I made inquiries at the publisher.

Nihil.

So I ordered it through Amazon.com. It arrived, ahead of schedule. I justified the price to myself because I had won a small award for a photograph that was inspired by Porter.

The book is astounding. The text is lyrical and erudite, it flows and meshes with the startling images. I can't say much more-but if you are a photographer, or chaos buff, or god-help you both, then this is a requisite volume. Don't hesitate. Ta panta re!

Book Description

Few writers distinguish themselves by their ability to write about complicated, even obscure topics clearly and engagingly. James Gleick, former science writer for The New York Times, resides in this exclusive category. In Chaos, he takes on the job of depicting the first years of the study of chaos - the seemingly random patterns that characterize many natural phenomena. This is not a purely techinical book. Instead, it focuses as much on scientists studying events as chaos itself. Listeners will meet dozens of extraordinary and eccentric people in this learned but highly accessible book.

What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier

Average customer rating:

Read it Soon , it is becoming more of a History Book every Day
Readable retrospective on the nineties in technology
An Unexpected Pleasure
An enjoyable visit to our technological past...

What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier
James Gleick
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Culture | Business & Culture | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything
Chaos: Making a New Science
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
Faster
Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

ASIN: 0375421777
Release Date: 2002-05-07

Amazon.com

This book of previously published essays by the author of Chaos and Faster is an eclectic chronicle of the information revolution's first 10 years. "The last decade of the twentieth century came as a surprise," writes James Gleick. What Just Happened shows how surprising it was: in the book's first piece, from 1992, Gleick notes that "a relatively small number of personal computer users use Windows." (He's a good sport about it, too, poking fun at himself in an introduction for making such an obsolete observation.) A longish piece on Microsoft from 1995 seems to correct the problem when Gleick comments on "the ever-advancing boundary of Microsoft's Windows package." Then it goes on to get something really right: "Microsoft's own power poses a threat, too--the threat that comes with the self-fulfilling destiny of any monopolist." That's a prescient observation, considering the antitrust actions taken against the company since those words were written. The closing chapter of the book is fascinating and forward-looking; it's not about what just happened but what may happen. Gleick anticipates the appearance of wristwatches containing "biometric information about your loved ones, so you can see how your parents are doing." If that doesn't sound exciting enough, consider this prediction: "One can even imagine properly functional motor-vehicle offices." Now that's something to look forward to. --John Miller

Book Description

Here’s some of what just happened: Millions of ordinary, sensible people came into possession of computers. These machines had wondrous powers, yet made unexpected demands on their owners. Telephones broke free of the chains that had shackled them to bedside tables and office desks. No one was out of touch, or wanted to be out of touch. Instant communication became a birthright.

A new world, located no one knew exactly where, came into being, called “virtual” or “online,” named “cyberspace” or “the Internet” or just “the network.” Manners and markets took on new shapes and guises.

As all this was happening, James Gleick, author of the groundbreaking Chaos, columnist for The New York Times Magazine, and—very briefly—an Internet entrepreneur, emerged as one of our most astute guides to this new world. His dispatches—by turns passionate, bewildered, angry, and amazed—form an extraordinary chronicle. Gleick loves what the network makes possible, and he hates it. Software makers developed a strangely tolerant view of an ancient devil, the product defect. One company, at first a feisty upstart, seized control of the hidden gears and levers of the new economy. We wrestled with novel issues of privacy, anonymity, and disguise. We found that if the human species is evolving a sort of global brain, it’s susceptible to new forms of hysteria and multiple-personality disorder.

What Just Happened is at once a remarkable portrait of a world in the throes of transformation and a prescient guide to the transformation still to come.

Customer Reviews:

Read it Soon , it is becoming more of a History Book every Day.......2006-11-09

A book about the Information Age that is of course becoming dated every day, but still a rewarding book to read. A book that forces a reader often in the midst of a daily struggles with technology to take a step back and review the progress that has been made when one is often so close too the action to appreciate it. The author gives a little overview to show the overall plan of the technology and where it is headed, and discusses some very interesting ideas, such a cyber-dollars. Money that would be good only for internet purchases, only if people will have enough faith in an internet monetary system. The book is a collection of previously published articles by the author. The book is easy to read, thought provoking when discussing the future, and his summaries of the recent past remind the reader of the progress being made in just a years of the information age. Well worth reading.

Readable retrospective on the nineties in technology.......2003-07-17

It's usually a good sign when picking up a collection of essays to find that they have been previously published in some noted periodical such as The New Yorker or Harper's or in this case (with one exception) from The New York Times Magazine. Gleick's focus in these thirty highly polished essays is information and especially the Internet and how the Internet and related technology are changing our lives. There is a personal, and an "I lived it" quality to the writing that I found engaging.

Author of the challenging Chaos and the very long and adoring Genius about physicist Richard Feynman and the more recent Faster, here Gleick gives us short and easy to appreciate recollections of the communications revolution. His observations are trenchant, mildly apocalyptic and/or gee-whizzed, amusing and very well expressed. Having good editors is something Gleick says he has been blessed with, and in these pieces it shows. This attractive book is simply a pleasure to read.

The first piece is from 1992 about the bugs in software, in particular those in Microsoft's Word for Windows; and I want to tell you even though (or especially because) I use WordPerfect, I identified. I felt the aggravation. Gleick notes that software is unlike any other product in its complexity, an observation that no doubt pleases Microsoft's software engineers. However, he reports that Microsoft, unable to cope with the bugs munching on their code and unable or unwilling to excise them, came to an accommodation with the world by declaring that "It's not a bug--it's a feature," while compiling an in-company list of known bugs dubbed, "Won't Fix."

And then, I guess, had lunch.

My favorite essay in the collection is the one entitled "The End of Cash" beginning on page 143 in which Gleick notes among other things that issuers of digital cash cards expect to "profit generally from lost cards." He adds that "telephone companies and transit systems already figure gains ranging from 1 percent to a phenomenal 10 percent." (p. 152) This is an example of privatized "escheatment," an aptly named phenomenon in which governments have traditionally benefitted from lost coins and paper money, or people dying without heirs. Gleick reports that billions of pennies "simply vanish from the economy each year" which he cites as a "hidden cost of money." (pp. 157-158) But credit cards too have their hidden costs. They amount to a tax on those who do not use credit cards (basically the poor) because "the credit card companies have mostly succeeded in forbidding merchants to offer discounts for cash purchases." (So everybody buying the product shares the credit card transaction costs.)

Gleick also looks into the changes that a cashless society will bring, noting what kinds of crime will no longer be worth doing (e.g., kidnaping for ransom, armed robbery.) He reflects on the phenomenon of "float" in which digital money can be used by financial institutions to earn interest for themselves. Gleick observes that holders of the Yankee dollar at home and world wide (think of the large safe-deposit drawers of Arabian sheiks) are actually lending "their wealth to the United States, interest free, just as holders of American Express traveler's checks lend their money to American Express." (p. 153)

I also liked the essays on advertising ("Who Owns Your Attention") and on the growing lack of privacy ("Big Brother Is Us") and on the awesome power of Microsoft ("Making Microsoft Save for Capitalism"). There are lesser essays on political websites... web browsing ("Here Comes the Spider") and software contracts between vendor and user ("Click OK to Agree"), etc. Finally Gleick notes that we are "Inescapably Connected" and gives on page 299 a weird but telling example of how we are being transformed. We are not yet "neurons in the new world brain," he observes, yet we have gotten so much in the habit of knowing things, or at least being able to find them out that "You get a twitchy feeling that you ought to push a button and pop up the answer."

I've felt that, and soon a connecting chip may be inside my brain that really does do something like twitch as my synapses are activated by the World Wide Web.

An Unexpected Pleasure.......2002-07-07

This book wasn't what I expected. As [the] editorial review explains, but the book description only hints at, this is a collection of previously published work. Since I read the latter, but not the former, I was expecting a retrospective analysis of the .com bubble. Because of the rapid rate of obsolescence of most things written about the Internet, I don't think I would have bought the book had I known that parts of it were written as long as a decade ago, but I'm glad I did anyway.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight at things written about the Internet over the course of the last decade proves to be an illuminating exercise. It definitely seems to be a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Some of the things that have changed a lot since the time the original articles were published are:
* Everyone knows what the Internet is (in his introduction, Gleick explains that in the early `90s, editors made him explain this when he used the term in articles). One of the really interesting things I learned reading the book is that the original development of the Web only dates back to 1989.
* In a 1993 article, he describes people being annoyed by mobile phones ringing in airports. Given the far less appropriate places they ring today, that seems positively quaint.
* In 1993, some people remembered who Dan Quayle was and cared enough to create a newsgroup devoted to making fun of him.

Some current issues that the book demonstrates have a much longer history are:
* Concerns about bandwidth and information privacy (or more accurately, lack thereof).
* Password overload (described in amusing detail in a 1995 column).
* The incomprehensibility of software and Web site user agreements - even to those who bother to read them.

As an added bonus, since it was written as technologies were emerging, the book provides the full name of things that are now only known by their acronyms. For instance, I've never known what ISDN stands for, but now I know that it's `Integrated Services Digital Network.'

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that some of Gleick's predictions were very prescient (e.g. the Y2K anti-climax), while others were less accurate or at least premature (e.g. cash becoming obsolete). All in all, the book provides a very enjoyable look through the rearview mirror.

An enjoyable visit to our technological past..........2002-06-24

I've read Gleick's Faster, and when I saw What Just Happened in the bookstore, I picked it up immediately. Gleick's candid analyses of technological triumphs is an enjoyable walk through the computer and Internet revolution of the 1990s; however, the book was lacking some of the critical interprative edge that one finds in Faster, and for that reason it fell a little short of my expectations. Although What Just Happened does offer an opportunity to step back and think about the implications of the IT revolution, I found myself reading it more for entertainment.

Average customer rating:

Faster
James Gleick
Manufacturer: Abacus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier
Chaos: Making a New Science
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
Brave New World

ASIN: 0349112924

Average customer rating:

Genius
James Gleick
Manufacturer: Little, Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Authors

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