Somewhat disappointing book may leave more frustration than knowledge
938420
I actually got this book for my SO because he's pretty bad at knowing flower and butterfly names. Why do I care? I wasn't always blind so I know what some things look like. It's frustrating for him to say there's a pretty flower and it's yellow - but that's about all I'll get. Sure, he may say it's tall, or delicate or frilly - but it'd be a lot easier for me to picture it if he started with saying it's a dahlia or whatnot. He know roses, tulips, calla lillies and sunflowers but that's about it. Same issue with butterflies.

He said the photographs in this book for both sections are really beautiful. There's no captions to tell you what the different butterflies pictured actually are except the monarch image is identified. The text has interesting info about butterflies, but not the info I hoped. The photos in the flower section are sometimes (not always) too close or only at one angle so that you don't necessarily walk away with a clear enough sense to be able to spot it in nature. Interesting info, like a fun fact, about each flower is shared.

We're not sure for what age group this book is specifically intended. It's not for little kids because there's a number of big words and we don't think this would hold their interest. We have a friend with a young daughter who points at every flower and butterfly, but she wasn't interested. For somewhat older kids who are particularly interested in these topics, they would undoubtedly appreciate the info shared but would share our frustration at not knowing butterfly names and not being able to draw all the flowers included accurately. Showing it to a few kids illustrated this theory.  The pictures are beautiful and there's some interesting info and perhaps it's not the end of the world that it leaves you curious. That could be turned into a trip to the library or how to search the web or prep kids before they're going to do a flower or butterfly activity at school or in a club. But this book on it's own is unsatisfying. The Kindle price is free at the time of writing, but save your money and don't spend $11 on the paperback. I received this at a free or discounted rate in exchange for my honest review. If you found this review helpful please click yes below as I do my best to share my experience with the book.
3461226
Knowing the facts, I really wanted this to be a great book I could feel comfortable giving to others.  While I realize this book was not meant to be the treatise that his prior work on the subject,&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Capitalist-Manifesto-The-Historic-Economic-and-Philosophic-Case-for-Laissez-Faire/dp/0761832211/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire</a>&nbsp;was, I found this book lacking in three key ways.

First was lack of clear organization.  Despite the fact that there are various conceptual hierarchies that could have been used, I was unable to detect any behind the layout used.  In addition to making the material harder to digest, I suspect it will make it easier for those looking to evade the truth to say that examples were chosen to "prove" certain points while other examples which (allegedly) would have disproven them were ignored.  For example, it is said that "monopolies" cannot exist without government interference.  But to make that statement, an alternate definition of monopoly was used.  As an example, a railroad monopoly from over a century ago was used.  It would have been more instructive to examine the case of Microsoft, one more people are aware of today.

The second issue I had was the fact that several key points where not mentioned.  As one example of a simple truth that would have bolstered the case, but was omitted, is the fact that there is no such thing as an unjust price (or price gouging) when it is set between free individuals.  Obviously the seller would always want a higher price, and the buyer a lower one, but if both parties consent to a price, then both are benefiting.  No free person would consent to buy something for more than one finds it worth to oneself, or sell it for less than the value it is to oneself.

Finally, the writing was dry.  I know from&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Heart-of-a-Pagan/dp/1889439290/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Heart of a Pagan</a>, that the author can write compelling prose, but here it falls flat.  For a book that is under 140 pages, it sure takes some time to complete.

In summary, this book makes many great points, but the weaknesses prevent me from strongly recommending it.  I really hope the issues can be addressed in a future edition of this book.
1433172
Barnes writes a book that is frustrating to read through and through because of its pervasive uncertainty. For Barnes, one can not know very much about Rock Art, the subject of his book. For beginners, Barnes questions the adequacy of the term "rock art." He finds it "flawed and semantically misleading." yet he uses the term anyhow.
Barnes fairs little better when making assertions. On page 58 he says that "it is possible to assign some canyon country rock art to particular prehistoric cultures." However Barnes obliges with only one sentence of details, a generalization which he then qualifies.
Barnes does not know who created the petroglyphs and pictographs of the Four Corners area. He does not know when they were created. He does not know to which culture they belong. Too much of Barnes' book is marred by his pervasive uncertainty. If I keep this book, it is only for the photographs.
255781
The content in this book may be a little true but over exagerated with a number of things, but it's an O.K I guess
1765831
The author has attempted to make a captivating but very technical subject accessible to the general reading public, with mixed success. I found it fascinating, but I have a math degree and was an A student in physics and astronomy; I suspect that others might find it too dense. The author makes a valiant attempt to make basic concepts understandable, including use of a great many metaphors and similes from everyday life, especially in the early chapters. Some of these could be helpful, I suppose, but I found them at times condescending (do we need to spin in an office chair with arms outstretched to understand you spin faster if you bring them in?), at times amusing, and occasionally confusing. The author often uses British colloquialisms for these, leaving a poor American like me to discern from context that a roundabout is not a traffic control device but some sort of merry-go-round. As for throwing a jelly at someone, I have no idea what that means; wouldn't the jar crack his noggin?

Quickly, though, the author moves into the details of planet formation, fortunately without the equations. Rather, we must take her word, and that of countless other scientists, as to what is possible or impossible. For the 99.999% of us who can't do the calculations ourselves, Clarke's Third Law applies: the rules of planet formation are indistinguishable from magic. The problem with this is that what we/they thought was impossible is now being observed in distant star systems. Huge gas giants are orbiting very close to their stars. So are rocky superearth planets where they should not be able to form. There are planets whose density is between those of the rocky planets we know (Earth, Mars) and the gas giants we know (Jupiter, Saturn). So what are they made of? Water? Silicate rock? A rocky core surrounded by gas? What we "knew" about planets isn't true anymore. The author explains all the theories that the experts have come up with, but she states right up front that we really don't have good explanations for much of what the observational science is producing. The exciting part is that we are finding more and more exoplanets. New discoveries bring new knowledge.

If you are primarily interested in whether there is life out there or a planet capable of hosting us after we destroy the one we're on, you'd be advised to skim liberally up to the last few chapters where these questions are addressed more directly. The short answer is that alien life is certainly possible, maybe probable, but it is unlikely to be in a form we could ever communicate with or even observe. A place where we could relocate would have to be closer to home and the only candidates seem to be moons within our own solar system, although none of them look all that promising. Still, it is amazing to consider all the factors that life as we know it require and how lucky we are to be in that Goldilocks zone. Once you do that, then consider those organisms like tube worms and anaerobic bacteria that do not require sunlight or oxygen. Life has a way of adapting to some very inhospitable environments.

The author and publisher have bravely aimed for what seems to me to be a very small slice of the reading public. The book is too simplified for researchers in the field and too technical for most other readers. She writes very well but there are a few errors. On p. 232 she states that the temperate zone in our solar system is conservatively estimated at 0.84au to 0.14au. That second number should be 1.14au. Otherwise we wouldn't be alive. All in all I really enjoyed the book but I find it hard to recommend to most people. What I can say is that when you see the next headline that reads "Second Earth Found!" don't believe it.
452219
I had high hopes for this book, and what I think it's trying to do is admirable, ranging and probing.  I had wanted to use a chapter from it for a college course.  But upon close reading, I became more and more disappointed with the writing, and convinced that I couldn't put this in front of students.  There are key ideas - exciting insights into Schwitters' total program, and difficulty of elucidating his particular mysticism - woven together in prose that's alternately clear and convoluted.  It's not simply that it's "scholarly" - that doesn't put me off - but that it sets out to elucidate a difficult subject, one that needs attention, and still doesn't seem quite clear to itself.  Maybe this impression is encouraged by the many editing mistakes in this book - it cries out for a copy editor ( - words are missing, phrases transposed, spelling, etc.).  Again, I admire the effort - can we send it back for a re-write?  I really want this book to succeed.
1197877
This book is a tough read and leans much more towards the graduate school level textbook than the popular history book it seems to be marketed as. The author clearly has extensive knowledge and research for his subject matter and the depth of information is more extensive than I have encountered in any other history book. This could have easily been expanded to a multivolume series (and perhaps should have been). An additional strength of the book is the analysis of the civilizations of the period. Both their relationship to other civilizations of the same time period and different time periods of the evolving European landscape are extremely well thought out and convincing (although often require lots of rereading to understand). Wickham knows the facts and scholarship of his subject thoroughly and it shows.

Unfortunately Mr. Wickham is not much of a writer. Much of the text feels like trying to untangle a ball of string and can be quite a frustrating read. Sentences and paragraphs are often unwieldy and facts are much too dense to maintain the right interest level and flow of the narrative. Reading this book feels more like the self torture of an eating contest than a leisurely and enjoyable experience. This book may make a great reference or text for a college level course but the casual reader will probably find it difficult and unenjoyable.
1021383
I loved the idea of a book like this and really hoped it would help get me past my "math blindness."  Unfortunately, for me at least, that hasn't proven out.  Perhaps a better title for this book would have been "Math Appreciation," because it's more in the nature of an appreciation course, such as music appreciation or art appreciation.  For myself (and who else's experience can I know?), I already appreciated the big things about math--- how it can be aesthetically pleasing, reflect and explain the beauty of nature, express ideas elegantly, and at times have an almost mystical aspect.  My problem with math isn't appreciating it, but doing it-- and understanding why things work out the way they do.  In math class, my frustration would generally arrive when, after we learned how to do a particular type of equation, a problem would be presented that necessitated not only the use of the skills needed for the previous equation, but also an insight or leap to account for a new wrinkle, or a new layer of complexity.  I was rarely able to make the leap, to flatten the wrinkle.  I believe this was the result of not understanding the underlying concepts thoroughly enough, and help with developing that understanding was what I wanted from this book.  It is not what the book delivers.  Instead, the book engages in the same practice of requiring the student to make a leap from one type of problem to another without explaining how to get from Point A to Point B.  Since that's the single most frightening (and frustrating) aspect of math-- for me-- the book has not helped me get past it.  Frustration piled upon frustration is what leads to fear of math.  Also vexing about this book is that its illustrative examples are themselves too complicated for the truly frightened, and the reasons for conclusions are often left unexplained.  For example, the book quotes Euclid saying (essentially) that addition/substraction is linear: i.e., changing the length of a line by adding or subtracting segments, while multiplication is planar: i.e., using two lines to create a two-dimensional space characterized by area.  The book then assumes these concepts will be accepted and proceeds to build on them.  But I had to wonder why?  Maybe it's a stupid question, but why shouldn't multiplication be seen, geometrically, the same way as addition?  Instead of adding one set of x number to the length of the line, why wouldn't you just add multiple sets of x number to the length of the line?  Isn't multiplication fundamentally reducible to addition?  Obviously, I'm no Euclid, and I wouldn't presume to question Euclid, but for Heaven's sake, even if it seems painfully obvious, EXPLAIN TO ME why Euclid is right.  Likewise, EXPLAIN TO ME why one equation is actually the same as another, seemingly different, equation!  Don't just tell me they're equivalent and say it's clear from our previous work why they are.  Maybe if I weren't "the Frightened," I'd be able to see those things on my own.  And I admit, the weakness is mine.  But I bought this book in hopes of being provided the tools to shore up that weakness.  I did not find those tools here.
2655568
Some information is slightly off and even contradicting at times in different places of the book, but the abundance of content redeems it.
2110232
I learned a good deal of "basics" information from this book, which I suppose it what the author intended.  However, there was also a good bit of information which I found lacking or not fully explained.  For instance, although the author gives you a basic idea of how to determine the degree of aspect when two planets are in conjunction, he isn't particularly clear in advising how to determine aspects that spread across signs.  For instance, you'd be left to thinking that you could count HOUSE PLACEMENTS rather than SIGNS to determine the degree of aspect, which is not true.  Also, the "interpretations" in the last half of the book are very general and tend to become tiresome...so much so that I had to push myself to finish the book.  Taken on the whole, it's still a worthy work for someone like me who's baseline knowledge was largely peripheral, but you may have to seek other sources to expound on what he does not explain.
1787483
I was sold by the back cover quotes from Einstein and H.G. Wells and by the idea of the author leading me from arithmetic to calculus. It's ostensibly a book written so that everyone can understand mathematics. However, the book is not an easy read.

Like one of my students said after I explained to her why I didn't like the book: "the author is multi-tasking."  He tries to explain math concepts and show us the history of math at the same time.  The result is halfway explained math which the reader has to spend a lot of effort on in order to grasp.  This is good mental exercise but as you get deeper and deeper into the book you realize that the author has made it unnecessarily harder by being verbose.

A good number of his sentences are wordy, for example: "It does little credit to contestants of either camp, and the outcome was highly detrimental to the progress of mathematics in the land of Newton's birth."  In the land of Newton's birth?  Why not just England?

Here's another one:  "Laplace, the renowned French astronomer-mathematician who told Napoleon that God is an unnecessary hypothesis, recognized forty years before Babbage, an Englishman, designed the first computing machine, that the number 2 (in our Hindu-Arabic notation) has an immense advantage in terms of the number of different operations we need to perform to carry out a computation such as some our parents had to learn (e.g. finding /4235) the hard way."  Not only is this sentence wordy but why did he have to add that Laplace told Napoleon that God was an unnecessary hypothesis or that Babbage was an Englishman and designed the first computing machine?

He also sprinkles his book with gratuitous thoughts and opinions like:  "Before discussing this, it may protect the author from unnecessary correspondence to state the truth about one of those historical tags on all fours with the ludicrous assertion that a document called Magna Carta which a circus of half-literate Baronial gangsters forced an English monarch to sign is the Keystone of British and/or United States democracy."  This becomes annoying to the reader that has already struggled enough with Mr. Bogden's math explanations to have to worry about whether what he is saying next is something relevant or just him enjoying hearing himself speak.
207349
I struggled with this read.  The book mostly  does an okay job in describing experiments of others involving hard-wired inclinations that unconsciously affect the way humans look at the world, including the world of investments.  However, too often there are some  points showing bad logic and others that are poorly described.

 For instance, the author mentions tests to show risk tolerance in individuals that had questions like: give a range for how far you think the moon is from the earth so that you feel your answer has a 95% chance of being correct.  Whether a wide range or narrow one is  is supposed to suggest something.  But, some folks like myself know how far the moon is from earth (it's a range itself) so the answer would not measure anything in my case.  Same question for the weight of a sperm whale, etc.  There were a number of troubling things where the reader was left thinking "really?" but the work did not anticipate these reactions or see the problems and so did not address them.

The chapter on confirmation bias describes an experiment with 4 cards which I read 4 or 5 times but did not understand it.  for a bit I  tried to figure out what information had been left out, but gave up.  Was this book proof read for content?

Lots of good information but not consistently described, synthesized or illustrated very well.
941132
I once had a philosophy professor who referred to sociology as "queen of the pseudo sciences".  There is a lot of information in this book.  A number of chapters, especially the two on the cult of the dead and a shorter chapter called "Preaching To Their Eyes", practically throb with facts and charts and statistics. There are sensational (some are interesting) photographs of the street Catholicism which the author hopes will shed light.  There is some theorizing, but that's kept to a minimum - thankfully, probably.  I would have thought the idea of a sociologist exploring a subject like popular Catholicism in Italy might be foredoomed in terms of achieving an understanding that raises interesting questions and discovers interesting answers about an interesting subject, and I was right.  The book reads like a text book, and it's snide.  Little things peppered here and there are what that snideness is made of.  Certainly anti-religious, although nothing overtly rude, but Veiled Threats is the take of a scientist of sorts on ancient phenomena of spirituality, and I yawned through most of it.  A book giving us the 'voices' of the villagers and believers and their priests - those whom science has discarded as being uninterrupted by the so-called modern world - would be more interesting.  It's a believability factor, I think.  2 stars for the book, another for the hyper-indigenous photos.
28624
I appreciate what this book tries to achieve, and I like the general idea that everyone can become better with practice. It's true. Research does support these conclusions.

However, in the first few pages alone, the reasoning is so shaky that it can get frustrating sometimes. For example, in the first chapter, the book gives 3 examples of commonly-know geniuses: Thomas Edison, Mozart, and Isaac Newton. It then proceeds to attempt to "debunk" the concept of natural genius by going through the finer details of these 3 people's achievements. First, it starts off with Edison. Apparently, Edison was really a businessman who knew how to sell his stuff, rather than the actual inventor of the lightbulb. The book goes on to explain this fact, then names the actual inventor of the lightbulb. Edison was a fraud. Genius debunked, right?  No. This is Edison debunked. At this point, the book wanted to show that technical competence was a learned skill, yet they went straight on to show that Edison just didn't have that technical competence. This reasoning seems to be completely ad hoc and irrelevant to the theme.

And a little later, the authors eventually lead to an explanation about scientific research on a certain "genius gene." They claimed that since science has never found a "genius gene," natural intelligence has no variance except for in the cases of mental retardation. The research they cite is correct; a single "genius gene" has never been identified. Their reasoning, however, is incredibly flawed in so many different ways. It would be absolutely astounding if a population of 7+ billion people had no variance in some given area. Absolutely and utterly astounding. We accept that, even without the presence of a "tall gene," some people end up significantly taller than others. We accept that, even without the prescence of a "deep-voice gene," some people have significantly deeper voices than others. This should all be common knowledge. You can't just dance around the obvious truth about natural variance because it would make people feel bad. Some people really don't study at all and pull off top performances, while others study 12 hours a day, only to barely pass. The book tries really hard to convince you that the people who can perform well with less practice don't exist, when that's clearly false. And to further address the "genius gene" argument, "we didn't find it, so it doesn't exist" is an example of horrible science. Hopefully, I don't have to point out why.

Here's an oversimplified version of how I see things. There's a spectrum of what people will believe in terms of talent. On one end of the spectrum, people will believe that talent doesn't exist at all. On the other end, people will believe that talent is the only thing that matters. Both are false. You want to strike a good balance somewhere in the middle. This book tries to lure readers into the "talent doesn't exist at all" end of the spectrum. It tries to accomplish its mission by skillfully speaking in absolute, authoritative terms in order to have you believing that it knows for a fact what the hell it's talking about. It's an incredibly tricky little volume, and I suggest that you read this (and all other books that try to convince you that some issue is entirely black-or-white) with a critical mind.
2047425
I bought this book because I found compelling to step up my knowledge of the universe, the Earth, their relationship and how all of this reflects on as humans and living beings. However, when I finished the book it felt like a relief, a chip off my shoulder. The reason being, this book can be surprisingly engrossing at times but for most of the time is a sheer listing of data, numbers, theories and mere experiments that haven't even received much attention in the course of human history due to their unsuccessful outcomes. Now, If the author's goal was to present the most updated, detailed and broad version of human history interwoven with spells of cosmology, astronomy and so forth maybe I should have simply picked a single book for each of those topics and I would have achieved a better understanding of the matters covered in this all-in book.
I also reckon that science must be taught by scientists and it is bitterly disappointing to see that some of the most delicate issues in science have been unfolded such that the reader can only grasp matter-of-fact descriptions of ground-breaking theories with very little insights about their actual meaning in the contest.
The narrative style isn't despicable and I admire the author for his huge effort in researching and for embarking on a real writing feat but I think that no one can fit crucial questions - such as how did the universe come to be? where does the earth come from? How did life occur on Earth? - in a single book, much less someone who hasn't pursued these questions in his working background but just happened to turn his attention to them.
In brief, devoting time and efforts to a daunting research on fundamental scientific questions won't bring you any closer to the knowledge of those who dedicated their lives to unravel their answers. On the contrary, this book may well be found confusing to the general reader and devoid of a specific topic but embracing all at once.
4778869
While overall the book was very informative.  I didn't like a couple of things.  First, from a learning perspective I was disappointed when the author decided to not give screenshots of configurations.  The explanation of why made me feel as though it was our of laziness and disregard for the reader.  Second, at times if a topic was very identical it was presented the same in words without making it more interesting.  Many of the illustrations for the e-book were not able to be seen as they seemed to be an after thought.
2247481
Although this book has a lot of helpful and interesting information, it suffers from a key problem - it doesn't know what kind of book it is.  By that I mean that author Ken McArthur seems as if he was at times penning a self-help book, then a very technical how-to book, or was it a how to make a lot of money book, or maybe it was a book warning about the perils of selling an online product, or maybe it was about the difficulties of making a lot of money - wait no, it's an inspirational/motivational book.  All these areas are covered to some extent, and give the book a kind of haphazard feel.  When you get to an interesting section, it's like driving on an otherwise mediocre scenic tour and suddenly coming upon a really beautiful site.

The book is also at times a frustrating read because McArthur covers important topics on a general level, leaving the reader thirsting for a very specific example.  Take online products.  Please provide a specific, detailed example.  He gets specific at the end when he talks about his online product, but even there it not detailed enough. Maybe this book was really just promotional material to go to his website and buy his product.

Part of me wants to give it a 4, but I think a 3 is more justified because in the end I am left with the feeling that there surely are other authors with more focused things to say.

One last thing - a pet peeve.  I really don't like when authors quote themselves in a book.  What's up with placing your own quotes in shaded boxes?  If something is really quotable, it should be done by readers and not by the authors.