Who Got Einstein's Office offers an interesting look at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study, the famous people that work(ed) there, as well as their work. The book seems to suggest that the tenured researchers at the Institute of Advanced Study have done their best work before they joined; That somehow at the Institute, they were isolated from a vibrant academic life, from contact with other researchers and students in their field, etc. As such, the book is definitely worth reading.

Having said that much, I feel that I should voice my indignation at the way the author depicted and presented one of the greatest lights of this century, the logician Kurt Goedel.

It's almost embarrassing to me to mention this, since Goedel's work -- profound and deep and beautiful, is what most people that remember Goedel at all remember him for. But Goedel apparently had some difficulties of an emotional and mental nature that effected his life -- from adolescence to adulthood, difficulties that the author, Ed Regis, finds the generousity to mock. In describing Goedel's relationship with his mother and the influence it had on his romantic life, Regis refers to Goedel as "Kurtele" -- a diminutive of Goedel's first name -- like turning a "Richard" into "little Dicky"... This is but an example. Regis goes to greater length to belittle Goedel and the appreciation of his work. This is beneath contempt. However bizzare and eccentric and troubled Goedel's life was, Goedel himself was its only victim. Goedel left the world precious gems of thought and changed the world of logic and mathematics forever. I think he deserves quite a bit more respect and compassion than Ed Regis afforded him.

It certainly doesn't have to be the case that if you don't respect someone you also don't understand his work. It's just ironic that the author, who refers to Goedel mockingly as "The Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler", fails to understand even the most basic things about Goedel's work: The incompleteness result is described as "... the mathematical equivalent of the assertion that 'This statement is unprovable.'" What could be simpler? Add to this Goedel's own self-doubts, and the author now begins to wonder whether the incompleteness theorem isn't in fact a rather obvious and straightforward result.

But as the saying goes, "God is in the detail", and the author doesn't even begin to see the subtleties involved: Mathematics "talking about itself" -- Goedel numbering as a mechanism for mathematics to encode sentences about methematics, a mathematical proposition "refering to itself" -- indexicals, expessing "this" in thematics... As a consequence of "mathematics talking about itself" -- the effective computability of the provability predicate -- What Goedel did in fact is write a scanner, parser and interpreter in type theory -- all in 1931 -- twenty-something years before there were computers around, and people could write canners, parsers and interpreters for programming languages. And Goedel got them all right -- scanner, parser and interpreter -- written maticulously as recursive and primitive recursive functions. Merely envisioning these back in 1931 is a tramendous intellectual achievement.

Not having appreciated the depth of Goedel's contributions to logic, it's no wonder Regis doesn't appreciate Goedel's admirers: In describing a meeting between Rudolf Rucker and Kurt Goedel, Regis qoutes Rucker's words of appreciation of Goedel's understanding and insight into the problems he raised during their meeting: "perfect understanding", "informative laghter", ... to which Regis has to contribute: "Of course! Why not? We're not talking about talking about a man, after all, a mere mortal. We're talking about the Emperor of the Forms, the Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler."

Well, shame on you Ed Regis!

I'm surprised I didn't know about this book sooner. It was published in 1988 and definitely deserves to be better known.

This is one of the more enjoyable books on the history of science I've read. It details the history of the Princeton Institute for Advanced study through the lives and careers of some of its most famous scions. There are chapters on Einstein, Kurt Goedel, Oppenheimer, John von Neumann (the inventer of the electronic computer), and Ed Witten, the author of the string theory, and many others.

The book is full of amusing and fascinating details and stories about the many famous and often eccentric scientists and mathematicians who worked in its cloistered halls. For example, referring to Einstein's eventual obsession about disproving the uncertainty aspect of quantum mechanics, Oppenheimer once said, "Einstein is cuckoo." Oppenheimer once learned Greek so that he could read classic literature in the original. Upon learning that several of his fellow scientists were meeting to discuss Italian literature, he learned enough of it in a month to start reading the books. Godel developed a paranoid delusion and spent his last months refusing any food, eventually starving himself to death, having become convinced that his doctors were trying to poison him.

Before Einstein came to the U.S., there was a movement in Germany against "Jewish physics." One hundred supposed scientists joined this group and once held an anti-Einstein meeting at a large auditorium, with thousands of people in attendence. Einstein himself went to the event just to see what the whole thing was about, and finding out of course that their objections were nonsense and "absurd," as Einstein said. But it was at that point that Einstein finally decided things were getting a little too overheated in the Fatherland and he finally left for the states--their loss and our gain.

Another funny thing about Einstein was just how crazy the public went over him. They named everything from their children to their boats after him. One time Einstein visited the famous biologist J.B.S. Haldane in England, and his daughter fainted dead away at the sight of him.

The public may not have really understood much about Einstein's new ideas--light having weight, space actually being curved, and so on--but all that mattered was that Einstein understood it. He was the prophet of a new world order and would revolutionize our understanding of reality with his unique genius, and the public was practically giddy as a schoolgirl about Einstein as a result.

There are many other interesting and funny stories about the lives of these emminent thinkers in the book, but I'll leave the rest for you to read for yourself. This book is definitely worth your time and money.

A fine history of The Institute For Advanced Study, endowed as a place that would "permit a haven where scholars and scientists may regard the world and its phenomena as their laboratory without being carried off in the maelstrom of the immediate. . ."

A memorable series of oral histories / stories about the interaction of some of the 20th century's most famous theoretical physicists: Niels Bohr, Einstein, Max Planck, Lorentz, de Broglie and so many others who passed through the Institute. A fascinating look into the every day lives of some of the brightest stars in physics.

You don't need to know a thing about math or physics to enjoy this fine portrait of a fascinating group of minds at work and play.

Remember, this was published in 1990, and today is out of date. If you have come looking for specific examples, or secrets of how the Japanese have been making such huge gains, THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. The book is great from a historical standpoint, but it misses totally on any detailed examples of what Toyota has done. Anyone in manufacturing who has not heard of work-circles or suggestion boxes, would probably find this a great read with lots of info, but for the rest of us, this is just a history book. Go for Lean Thinking instead.

The Machine that Changed the World has been published more than once. Amazon, you're offering a special "buy these 2 titles, and save", but they are the exact same book.

This book is about a major study that has been executed in the beginning of the eighties about the competiveness of car manufacturing plants. Now we know that the Japense manufacturing is not that supriour after all this book is still a great book to read. For two reasons. First because its give a clear idea about how you can run a succesfull manufacturing plant and secondly because its give you a beautifull insight about a time when both Europe and the USA were affraid to loss it all to the Japanse. A classic on both business and industrial engineering

If you can't draw but you really wanna be a fashion designer this book is for you it explains things so well and it has great drawings to help you!!!!

I love this book. It is big, and hardcovered, and the sketches are accurate in portraying details. I have not read it yet, but my sketches already have improved.

This is an excellent and comprehensive book for all fashion design students who wish to learn the art of fashion illustration or for anyone who desires to perfect their skills.
As a fashion figure drawing instructor I suggest that if one's budget only allows them to purchase a single book I would highly recommend this one. In addittion to the female croquis, it touches on the male and juevenile croquis as well as illustration techiques, flats and portfolio presentation.

I really enjoyed this book. It is really the only book that authoritatively covers this topic. The book's sections on the different SF organizations in the DPRK are based on solid evidence. Some of the information seemed to me to be quite old (from the 60's), but nevertheless is convincing and still relevant considering that the DPRK seems to still operate in many of the same ways.

It is not surprising that some of the rhetoric in the book is right-of-center. For instance, Bermudez (like most other American authors on the DPRK) likes to point out atrocities committed by 'communist' guerillas while ignoring the fact that most atrocities committed during the period of 1945-1953 were committed by the Korean National Police, Army of the Republic of Korea, and right-wing youth groups. He mentions atrocities committed by communists during the Yosu-Sunchon Rebellion, but fails to mention the utter holocaust visited upon the residents of Cheju Island by the Korean Constabulary (Army), KNP, and violent right-wing youth groups; by the way, these forces were transported to the island with US assets and advised by US military advisors in the field. Bermudez doesn't seem to be interested in really addressing what motivated the guerillas of the South, but considering the scope of this book, this is just a minor detail.

Also rather annoying were the frequent and obvious spelling and grammar issues. I don't think there was much of an editing process! Check out page 22 where Bermudez says that communist partisans were to "ferment unrest". I didn't know you COULD "ferment" unrest(!) I believe the word he was looking for was "foment". These issues with his English are frequent enough to be somewhat of an annoyance, but don't really make the book any less interesting.

One is hard-pressed to find a well-researched material on North Korea's military forces, though there are some excellent research books written by military officers in "lessons learned" formats. The North Korean special operations force, according to South Korea's Defense White Paper, poses one of the most significant military threat in the region along with P'yongyang's chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. This book traces this formidable force from its inception through the present, revealing a significant facet of North Korea's overall military strategy. Despite the timeliness of this work and the depth of its research from one of the most well-known North Korea specialist, it suffers from somewhat poor readability.

I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Bermudez as well as reading this book while researching North Korean Special Forces. The book is highly informative and the author exceptionally knowledgeable. It would be interesting to see the latest information he has gathered considering the present economic/food situations.

At time of printing, NKSF were the best special forces in the world for their set of missions. Other special forces are better suited for different missions and have different resources available to them.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for reliable background information on the specific topic, as well as anyone interested in the highly ideological and self sacrificial mentality instilled in these people.

This book will keep you entertained for the whole bathroom-break with very interesting articles, and tiny factoids at the bottom of each page. This is the kind of book that man loves, because it is almost like TV. It keeps your attention with interesting facts and things like that that will make you surprised. Buy this today and you will be entirely satisfied.

The person who gave the scathing review in February is mistaken. I have all of the Bathroom Readers and there are hardly any repeats in the ones that say "All-new" on the cover. (Every once in a while, they goof, but they've probably done over 10.000 pages so far, so i can forgive a few flubs.) Absolutely Absorbing is the best all-new edition so far as far as I'm concerned. It's both funny and thought-provoking, and has some of their best articles ever (Movie Star for a Day, Coined by Shakespeare, The Margarine Wars, and hundreds more). Any Bathroom Reader is great, but it seems like they were really on their game when they made this one!

This is a great book to keep in the latrine. I have found myself spending more time on the throne than needed because I get so absorbed in this book. It offers amusing or serious short to long stories and facts to suite the occasion. Definite recommend.

Gordon Wood's celebrated book is the story of the way people thought about themselves and the revolution they had made. It explains in great detail the initial failures of majoritarian democracy and the development of constitutionalism. A glance at the footnotes reveals the genuine source of this book's authority: Professor Wood has drawn his narrative and his conclusions from original sources--newspaper articles, letters, and diaries of the period. The only complaint I have is the glaring omission of any mention of slavery. That word doesn't appear in the index or anywhere else in this book. This is all the more remarkable in light of our growing awareness of just how deeply the Founders struggled with this issue. Nevertheless, this is the single most important book on the period. If you want to know about American Democracy and its intellectual origins, this is the book to read.

The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 written by Gordon S. Wood is about the intellectual origins of the formation of the federal Constitution. This book makes us understand where the constitution-makers acted, i.e. where in the political literature of the period to the point where the often unspoken premises of thought became clear and explicit.

We begin to understand and get a glimpse of what late eighteenth-century Americans meant when they talked about living in an enlightened age. Reading this volume fine tunes our focus, beneath the variety and idiosyncrasies of American opinion, there emerged a general pattern of beliefs about social process... a set of common assumptions about history, society, and politics that connected and made significant seemingly discrete and unrelated ideas understood and relevant. We see and better appreciate the distinctiveness of the political culture in which the Revolutionary generation operated.

We begin to appreciate the Americans of the Revolutionary generation had constructed not simply new forms of government, but an entirely new conception of politics, a conception that took them out of an essentially classical and medieval world of political dicussion into one that was recognizably modern.

I found this book to be very well written and profoundly thoughtful, being very comprehensive in that it brings to the forefront the political thought of the Americans during the period of constitution-making. Without understanding the thought process involved in writing the Constitution you have little chance in thouroughly understanding the fundamental issues, political culture, for reexamining ideas of the revolutionary era.

This is a perceptive study into these fundamental issues, giving us a greater appreciation for the Founders and the thought processes involved in the creation of the American republic.

Godron S. Wood, Bernard Bailyn, Forrest McDonald and Daniel Boorstin all have made great progress in defining this tranformation of political thought of the Revoultionary era easily understandable, lively and penetrating. We should be ever in debt to these men for their intellectual prowess with regard to this time in our history.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It helped me gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of the principles embodied in the U.S. constitution, the nature of American politics, and the structure of American government, both state and federal, as well as the relationship between the federal government and the states. It's a must-read for any serious student of American history, government, and politics.

This book provides a number of helpful suggestions for the knowledgeable amateur who is interested in learning healthier techniques, (ie - poach carrots in orange juice and ginger). The "background" on nutrition, however, is rather elementary.

This book contains an incredible amount of excellent information. It contains everything you need to know for an education in healthy cooking techniques. There are excellent photographs. The recipes are very well explained and each recipe contains a nutritional analysis. Although a basic knowledge of cooking would be helpful for alot of the recipes, a novice cook who is very focused should be able to get quite a bit out of the book.

The wealth of information contained in The Professional Chef's Techniques of Healthy Cooking is "must have" for the dedicated healthy kitchen. Each topic is fully discussed, and a full set of appendices offers quick access to a variety of nutritional and food prep tables. Recipes included in the book prepare large volumes of food in most cases, but they provide good general guidelines, cooking techniques and ideas for the creative cook. First rate photography illustrates the versatility of a healthy diet and adds considerably to the volume's visual appeal. The comprehensive information in this beautiful book is the perfect "go to" reference -- I couldn't recommend it more highly.

This is a book that is geared toward the professional chef only. The layperson might glean a few tips from it but it would never be used on a regular basis for cooking at home.

I love this book, but I thought it did not cover baking very well. I purchased the Study Guide for Baking ISBN 0974328707. This book covers all the basics of baking and there is also another book on Advance Baking ISBN 0974328715. This book goes more into depth of baking, including custards and frozen desserts. These books help me greatly getting through my culinary courses.

I needed to purchase this book for my Garde manger course and I never knew there were so many different types of salads and dressings. I also purchased the Study Guide for the National Servsafe Exam: Key Review Questions and Answers with Explanations and it helped me greatly on all levels of sanitation. Unfortunately, the Garde manger book of CIA does not cover the subject. Even handling vegetables, fruits and salads you have to be careful. This sanitation book even help me with my other culinary subjects.

Globaphobia is a great little text on the benefits of free trade. If only some of those protesting about the evils of capitalism actually took the time to educate themselves. They might then see that everyone benefits from free trade; developing countries have more jobs and developed countries higher real wages; consumers everywhere get greater choice.

There will always be losers - as the book makes clear. But that's a fact of life whichever economic creed you follow. There are significantly fewer losers in Asia now that forty years of economic liberalisation have raised income levels from paddy field to first world standards. This book explains why - in crisp simple terms.

Globaphobia is an important book for anyone trying to get a handle on the free trade arguments. The book is well written and addressed to a lay audience. One should be careful about some of the assumptions in the book, especially if one has no background in economics. I was required to get the book as a supplementary reading for an International Trade Theory course. I found it to be very helpful in getting a big picture understanding of current International Trade Theory. Buy the book; it is worth the relatively inexpensive price!

The ease of reading is exceptional. If you are worried about your limited understanding in economics and especially international trade, this is the book for you. In addition to the book being written and edited to be understood by nearly any modestly educated person it is further advantaged by authors that clearly understand the subject in great depth. As is so often the case the extremely well informed can write with such clarity for the lay reader.

As nearly all economists understand net trade flows always equal net investment flows. Shockingly large numbers of media and congressmen do not understand this utterly simple formula. In a nut shell, with all the foreign money pouring into the USA treasuries market, stock market and direct business investments over the last several decades, it follows that the USA would run trade deficits equal to the net investment inflow over the same period. If you do not understand this or you want an ultra easy review of these simple facts, this book was made for you. In a grand gesture of national service these authors wrote the book that was needed for general understanding of what positive and negative points globalization means to the USA. It is not designed for academic kudos.

If every modestly educated voter would read this book, the future of the USA and the world would be significantly brightened. While this is a pipe dream, at least read this book before you say one more word about globalization otherwise you may embarrass your self in the presence of informed people. If you are informed on economics please forgive my heavy handedness. It is not meant for you. This is a critical issue for underdeveloped nations and the mature nations, there is so much to be gained by informed voters on this subject.

This book is carefully grounded in the proven principals of economics. While a reviewer or two gives an impression to the contrary, decades of reading in economics provides me the confidence to assure you that this book is profoundly well grounded. At each point where scholars may differ the authors and editors have carefully laid out its discussion. This is not a book written with a liberal or conservative bent. Modern economics encompasses a significant degree of science and mathematical logic. To view this book as otherwise, is to be illogical or unwilling to accept the most basic proven equations. Again you will not find an easier more meaningful book to read on economics.

The USA economy for a variety of reasons has sharply declining need for workers without a high school education and places a continuing rising premium on post college education. Increasingly, those that can graduate from the elite institutions lead nearly a charmed life in the USA. Immigrants that are able to enter the USA with limited education are having increasing difficulty as the decades roll by. It is not clear that globalization is a meaningful factor in placing the such great educational needs on the American worker. This book helps frame the questions that might be asked about the rising importance of education in the USA. The book being about globalization does not dwell on this issue, but it does strongly suggest that the potential understanding of this issue of the exponentially rising need for superior knowledge is much broader than the globalization trend.

The most provocative theme in the latter chapters of the book is the impact of globalization on those American workers that are poorly educated. The adverse impacts on this group comes from rapid technology changes, defective educational system, ineffective governmental assistance and to a very small degree open trade. The authors documentation about how little negative impact foreign trade has on a very limited number of workers is shocking. A source of another worthy book would be to provide a more exhaustive review of this aspect. The authors conclude that the popular obsession on this point should treated with a reorganized aggressive worker assistance program. Almost any reasonable assistance program would be a modest cost relative to the diverse and powerful benefits that all the rest of Americans get from open trade according to the authors.

The authors are very negative on the effectiveness of government sponsored retraining. The book is highly critical of the governments ability to define injured parties in open trade without it being a political football. The authors suggest an assistance program that is indiscriminate as to the cause of worker misfortune and focuses on programs that show imperial evidence of effectiveness. The focal point is intermediate assistance for any lower income workers need to find new employment. While the left and the right quarrel about where to draw the line, the authors contend that so few people are in need relative to the benefits of open trade that just focusing on a well designed assistance program would make all the difference in giving support and comfort to the aggrieved relative to the huge benefits of open trade.

This book is somewhat like 'A Random Walk Down Wallstreet" only applies to option trading, not just Wall Street and goes beyond.To the nit wit that blasted this book, I seriously doubt if he took the time to read it.I also recommend Safety First Investing and Wall Street Money Machine for more option techniques.Good books.

Wow, amazing, excellent, insufficient superlatives to describe my feelings - this one and Sheldon Nattenberg's Option Volatility and Pricing and you know more than most of the wall street professionals in my opinion. I found it practical and insightful, particularly with respect to the institutional trading strategies and how the trading floors operate.

This book presents a highly readable overview of the subject of options and I would recommend it to anyone. I have not been able to find one book on options which is as wide ranging in its scope (i.e., history, pricing, strategy, individual and institutional investors' approaches, how the trading floor operates, how market makers trade, etc.). The authors have struck a good balance between depth of the subject matter and readability. There are more detailed texts available in the area of strategy (McMillan's _Options as a Strategic Investment_) or pricing (Natenberg's _Option Volatility and Pricing_), but I would especially recommend this book to individual investors interested in options. After reading this book they will have a much stronger footing from which to approach the forementioned other books (which are also excellent, by the way).

The previous reviewer's comments should be disregarded as I cannot conceive of anyone writing about this subject matter any more clearly (yes, I have read both of Fontanills' books) -- the authors appear to have put much effort into this book judging by its clarity, and one nitwit's daffy comments should not dissuade you!