|
March 24
|
|
Damon
gave
 
to:
The Isles: A History (Paperback)
by Norman Davies
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in September, 2007
|
|
February 18
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
Catch-22 (Paperback)
by Joseph Heller
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
Damon said:
"So much fun to read. Heller finds the absurd in everything. H
"
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
Foucault's Pendulum (Paperback)
by Umberto Eco
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
Damon said:
"A great mystery based on academics who dont have enough to do. The paranoia level is very high. Dan Brown should kow tow to this book and beg it for forgiveness
"
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion Of Freedom (Paperback)
by Conrad Black
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in September, 2007
Damon said:
"A surpringly well informed bio based on secondary sources. This well written book provides a wonderful introduction to our greatest president.
"
|
|
February 15
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (Hardcover)
by Charles Freeman
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
Damon said:
"A very good overview of Greek and Roman philosophy and science and how the basic tenants of organized Christianity destroyed it. Think of it as a very long footnote for The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
"
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
A History of Western Philosophy (Paperback)
by Bertrand Russell
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in January, 2008
Damon said:
"I do not know how this book ever became some sort of standard for beginning philosophy studies, it is terrible. There are several blatant errors, such as just getting Anslem's proof wrong and stating that Einstein invented a geometry for the General ...more
I do not know how this book ever became some sort of standard for beginning philosophy studies, it is terrible. There are several blatant errors, such as just getting Anslem's proof wrong and stating that Einstein invented a geometry for the General Theory. This book is great at showing off Russell's philosophic prejudices, which makes it a fun book for those who have studied philosophy; for those who want to see what thinking and questioning is all about, read Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Hume, Anselm, Kant, Hegel, etc....less
"
|
|
October 17
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
Voltaire Almighty (Paperback)
by Roger Pearson
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in January, 2007
Damon said:
"I picked up this book in Paris, figuring it would make some good airplane read. Well something else did, so I just finished it now.
Voltaire is the embodiment of the Enlightenment. In his lifetime he was the personification of the evils of reason wi...more
I picked up this book in Paris, figuring it would make some good airplane read. Well something else did, so I just finished it now.
Voltaire is the embodiment of the Enlightenment. In his lifetime he was the personification of the evils of reason without faith; and though he seems to be forgotten excepts as a post-modern punching bags, his expressed ideology keeps him in the same place. Thus we need to be reminded of who he was and what he said.
The best part of this book is that it focuses on his plays, which English speakers tend not to know anything about except one or two of their titles. Voltaire was mostly known during his lifetime as a play write and Pearson illustrates why this is so. Voltaire does lack many of the subtleties that we associate with Shakesphere, but since his goal was to express his heretical and treasonous ideas, subtlety is not called for. It is for his ideas that we now read him and in this Mighty Voltaire is lacking. His trip to England is covered in detail, but the generation of the ideology is kept very general. This is also lacking his ongoing argument with Rousseau, which is a disappointment.
The book covers the life of Voltaire very well, but could have easily used another 50 pages of though to include more of his thought, dispensed with a retelling of Candide, which we so sorely need now. ...less
"
|
|
September 21
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3)
by Neal Stephenson
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in January, 2006
Damon said:
"This was the weakess book of the series. Stephenson's use of deux ex machina when he writes himself into a corner becomes very apparent here. His strenghts of describing the philosophical and societial currents in the late 17th, earlly 18th century a...more
This was the weakess book of the series. Stephenson's use of deux ex machina when he writes himself into a corner becomes very apparent here. His strenghts of describing the philosophical and societial currents in the late 17th, earlly 18th century are not written to here. It is a very dissapointing book to a very good series.
...less
"
|
|
September 20
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
The Da Vinci Code (Paperback)
by Dan Brown
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in January, 2003
Damon said:
"How many fucking trees were destroyed for the piece of shit book that my cat could have written after 5 minutes on google
"
|
|
September 19
|
|
Damon
gave
to:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Paperback)
by Richard Rhodes
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
Damon said:
"Richard Rhodes does a very impressive job of telling how we got to the atomic bomb. He starts in 1900 when Plank looked into a black box and found a new world. The Making of the Atomic Bomb explores the science that makes the bomb possible, the scien...more
Richard Rhodes does a very impressive job of telling how we got to the atomic bomb. He starts in 1900 when Plank looked into a black box and found a new world. The Making of the Atomic Bomb explores the science that makes the bomb possible, the scientist who worked in breaking the atom, the politics which made people want to do it. In doing so it becomes one of the best introductions to quantum mechanics for the laymen. Much better than other books that try to join mysticism and science, Rhodes goes though, in prose, the basics of quantum mechanics and the people who made it. He has also not shy away from using the scientists metaphors to describe the world of the very small (Rutherford's cannon ball is one of the best), nor does he shy away from explaining the concepts that make the bomb possible, like why natural uranium does not explode and why plutonium is much better than uranium.
Rhodes also provides a sense a drama the scientist and engineers in New Mexico start to build the bomb. When the first one is exploded, the reader feels a sense of achievement and pride at what man has wrought. And like all good writers, Rhodes is does not let us off the hook, the last portion of the book is a detailed description of the casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The descriptions of the flash burn victims whose blacked, blistered skin peeled off their body exposing the muscle underneath is more than enough for anyone to appreciate Oppenheimer's quote: I am the creator, I am the destroyer. ...less
"
|
