Not quite a page turner, but factually correct throughout. Now I've finished reading it, I'm using it to prop up that wobbly filing cabinet in the corner.

This is a good read book 4 in the Solar Queen series. Book 1 is Sargosso of Space. Book 2 is Plague Ship. Book 3 is Vodoo Planet. If you like the series you will find it along those lines.

Principles and Applications of Organotransition Metal Chemistry is an excellent reference for those students entering the field or a professional needing a quick review of the literature. Extremely detailed with references to the literature.

Twain's novel Pudd'nhead Wilson can seem like an enigma at first, since it is a story about slavery written almost forty years after the end of the Civil War. Certainly race was still a pressing contemporary issue for Twain at the time: by 1893 Reconstruction had failed and race relations in the United States were a mess. Although a black man no longer had to fear being sold "down the river" as Roxy and Chambers do, extreme forms of violence were a distinct possibility. Part of the point here is that although the institutions surrounding race may have changed since 1850, the fundamental problems, even by 1893, had not. By featuring characters who are racially indeterminate--that is, characters who can "pass" or who are not immediately identifiable as black--Twain confuses the issue still further. When slavery was still legal, an individual's racial profile mattered on a concrete level: someone who is one-thirtysecondth black,like Chambers, could be owned as a slave, while someone with no known black ancestry could not. Racial identity, by the 1890's, had become a much more nebulous concept. Broader issues of identity are a compelling problem in this novel. Although this is by no means a carefully structured and polished piece of literature, Twain's multiple plots and thrown- together style do serve to inform a central set of issues, with the twins, Pudd'nhead, and Tom and Chambers all serving as variations on a theme. The coexistence of many characters and many localized plots mirrors the novel's setting. In its vacillation between the tiny town of Dawson's Landing and the metropolis of St. Louis, and in the centralized presence of the Mississippi River, with its possibilities for endless mobility, the novel offers both hope and despair: the world is too big a place for everyone to be known absolutely to their neighbors, yet one also has the ability to start over in a new place.

The idea of being able to start over is continuously interrogated in American literature. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, which appeared almost exactly one hundred years before Pudd'nhead Wilson, sketched out the ideals of self-determination and personal identity in American culture: a man can become whatever he wants, no matter what his background, as long as he has a plan and the work ethic to realize it. Echoes of Franklin can be seen in the eccentric, scientifically-minded Pudd'nhead Wilson, whose writings mirror Franklin's and whose careful analysis and re-categorization of the world around him is also reminiscent of the American icon. Pudd'nhead's self-realizations, though, are dark and socially unsuccessful. Twain's characters live in an America where social mores are largely fixed and one's success depends not on determination but on fitting into a pre-existing public space.

Twain, like Franklin, was a celebrated public figure, immediately recognizable as a collection of carefully developed mannerisms and trademark items. Like Judge Driscoll in this novel, Twain somehow found himself high placed enough in society so as not to be bound by its rules. In Pudd'nhead Wilson, though, Twain looks at those who avoid constraints of reputation and public opinion by being so far beneath society as to be almost irrelevant. He also looks at those who, like the twins, get caught in the middle, in a mire of shifting opinions and speculations. The "plot" of this novel, if it can be said to have one, is a detective story, in which a series of identities--the judge's murderer, "Tom," "Chambers"--must be sorted out. This structure highlights the problem of identity and one's ability to determine one's own identity. The solution to the set of mysteries, though, is an incomplete and bleak one, in which determinations about identities have been made but the assigned identities do not correspond to viable positions in society. The seemingly objective scientific methods espoused by Pudd'nhead may have provided more "truthful" answers than public opinion, but they have not helped to better society. In the rapidly changing American culture of the 1890s, where race, celebrity, and publicity were confounding deeply ingrained cultural notions of self-determination, the depopulated ending of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a pessimistic assessment of one's ability to control one's identity. Twain's novel moves us from Franklin's comic world of possibility to a place where self- determination is Twain, like Franklin, was a celebrated public figure, immediately recognizable as a collection of carefully developed mannerisms and trademark items. Like Judge Driscoll in this novel, Twain somehow found himself high placed enough in society so as not to be bound by its rules. In Pudd'nhead Wilson, though, Twain looks at those who avoid constraints of reputation and public opinion by being so far beneath society as to be almost irrelevant. He also looks at those who,

like the twins, get caught in the middle, in a mire of shifting opinions and speculations. The "plot" of this novel, if it can be said to have one, is a detective story, in which a series of identities--the judge's murderer, "Tom," "Chambers"--must be sorted out. This structure highlights the problem of identity and one's ability to determine one's own identity. The solution to the set of mysteries, though, is an incomplete and bleak one, in which determinations about

identities have been made but the assigned identities do not correspond to viable positions in society. The seemingly objective scientific methods espoused by Pudd'nhead may have provided more "truthful" answers than public opinion, but they have not helped to better society. In the rapidly changing American culture of the 1890s, where race, celebrity, and publicity were confounding deeply ingrained cultural notions of self-determination, the depopulated ending of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a pessimistic assessment of one's ability to control one's identity. Twain's novel moves us from Franklin's comic world of possibility to a place where self- determination is accompanied by tragic overtones, a place reminiscent of the world of another, later American novel about a self-made man that does not end well: Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Finally a science writer who pokes beneath the surface of cells and neurons to explore how the quantum realm affects man's evolution and consciousness-a long time coming. McFadden wades right inside the cell, the DNA, RNA, proteins and enzymes. He put all this in the form of a story for the layman but kept all the jargon for his colleagues. While you read his story you can soak up a basic education in biology. For example he suggests that both the animal's mitochondrion and the plant's chloroplasts started as independent bacteria before symbiotically hitching up with the animal and plant .

McFadden explains that a unmeasured quantum state remains only a possibility and that to join the real world a quantum state must be measured. He dives right into Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and asserts that it is a fundamental property of matter. His most creative position is that the living cell can measure its own internal state. He clearly defines his notion of life as a cellular system that can perform internal quantum measurement to replicate, thus providing order as a means of avoiding decay or an increase in entropy. He demands that to stay alive a cell must accomplish the directed action of replication.

His cursory happy ending supporting man's free will was amusing. His stab at explaining consciousness as brain waves was impressive though incomplete. Where he got bogged down was with exaggerating the importance of spoken language. He seemed to say that one could never know whether a mute or a baby could be conscious or not. This notion contradicted his thesis that consciousness springs from the a cellular, quantum fountain of measurement and replication.

"Quest Crosstime (1965)" is the sequel to Andre Norton's "The Crossroads of Time (1956)," and continues the adventures of Blake Walker, a citizen of our own circa-1950s Earth.

Science has never been Norton's strong suit, so when the action shifts to an alternate Earth where life never began, don't quibble over the presence of a breathable atmosphere. Breathe in, breathe out, and follow Blake Walker as he attempts to track down a missing telepathic twin, with the help of her similarly-gifted sister.

"Quest Crosstime" is a wildly scenic adventure through alternate Earths. One of my favorites---a jewel-like vignette to the main plot---is ruled by turtles whose brainy heads are too large to pull back into their shells.

E6525, the alternate Earth where much of the action takes place, had a couple of twists to its history as compared to our own time line:

•Richard III won the Battle of Boswell and the Plantagenets continued to rule in England;
•Cortez was killed in his final battle with the Aztecs, and the Spanish never established an Empire in the New World.

Norton expends a great deal of imagination and verve in creating a successor Aztec Empire that rules North America west of the Mississippi. The action never falters as Blake in his disguise as a trader from New Britain continues his search for the missing twin.

I believe the author may have originally planned to write a sequel to "Quest Crosstime," as the action ends rather abruptly with some of the Time Wardens still stranded on E6525, and only a handful of the bad guys accounted for. I've checked Andre Norton's web site and no sequel is listed, so if any of her fans know of one, please drop me a line.

...he would probably have written a book like this. He wasn't, but fortunately we have Trevor Norton in this pleasant account of Long Ago and Far Away when Marine Biology was still in its infancy & folks could learn much by simply observing animals. Here they observe them in the idyllic setting of Lough Ine, a brackish inlet on the Irish Coast, home of a somewhat ramshackle Marine Station since early in teh 20th century. Norto's writing is clear & lively & really DOES remind me of James Herriot's vet books. Norton focuses as much on the people as he does on the science & this makes for a fun read -he has a remarkable collection of eccentric characters to talk about as he charts his own (and their) gradual agiung from bright eager undergraduates, through productive middle age, to at least in the case of his principals, a rather sad ending. Overall I felt taht I got a really nice sense of both the place,the people, and a good bit of the science that was the focus of what was clewarly a magical place & a magical time. I would reccomend this book to biologists and non-biologists alike esp. anyone who is lucky enough to be considering heading off for their own first summer at a Field Stationn. -oh the illustrations nicvely complement the text & overall this is a book to read, pass on & get another copy of.

A showcase of early century postcards featuring the Historic Architecture of Charlotte, NC. This book is great for history buffs and postcard aficionados alike. It chronicles, in photographs, the urban development of a southern town, and the subsequent demolition of that town to make room for the emerging city development. Sadly some beautiful buildings and homes were destroyed in the process. "Remembering Charlotte" does a wonderful job of resurrecting those structures once more.

Chedzoy does a very good job bring the story of Caroline Norton to life. While very accurate, Chedzoy avoids the common tendency of biographers to dwell on dates and times but focuses instead on Caroline's actual life, which was remarkable. She was born into a family situation which forced her to marry a man which she did not love, and he soon became physically abusive to her. She was close friends with William Melbourne, who became Prime Minister of England, and her husband accused her of "criminal conversation" (a euphemism for adultery) even though he knew very well that this was completely untrue. Caroline's husband eventually took her three children from her and would not allow them to be returned to her until one of them died due to poor medical treatment. In retaliation, Caroline went to Parliament and over the course of a few years reformed the British laws for women. Overall, this was a very good book, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in women's rights, poetry and literature (Caroline wrote many poems and novels-- during her life, she was compared to Byron and thought of as more talented that E.B. Browning), or English history in general.

Very Impressive work. This is better than so many other anthologies I have seen of late that miss the boat when it comes to capturing the integral and exciting contemporary. You won't think poetry is boring any more! Well Done. And the CD is awesome. Nicole Blackman's voice is enough to make you become a lover of spoken word.