Professor Shapiro offers many very interesting insights that are simply wrong. Sorry.
359708
Probably should read this instead: Contested Year: Errors, Omissions and Unsupported Statements in James Shapiro's "The Year of Lear: Shakespeare"
1244943
The republican commentator who recommended this on her show was right that it is interesting and makes lots of sense. However, I think that commentator is inconsistent in supporting Trump and the arguments in this book. I wish she would see that.
1385287
Cavalli-Sforza holds the world's most politically incorrect job: tracing the origins of genetic differences among races and ethnic groups. Not surprisingly, C-S loudly asserts a series of pious cover stories about the meaning of his work, even though the wonderful data he accumulates subverts fashionable ideas like "There is no such thing as race." Obviously, people can't agree on exactly how many races there are, what to call them, or precisely who is in them. But the same criticisms can also be made of the concept of "extended family," but that doesn't mean extended families don't exist. The reason for the similarity between the concepts of race and extended family is simply because races are extremely extended families.
Similarly, C-S likes to say there is far more differentiation within groups than between groups. Of course, in reality it all depends on which trait you are talking about. Consider the job of identifying individuals for police investigations. Fingerprint variation is largely individual, skull shape is a mixture of individual and racial, while the general appearance of a living person (the gestalt of skin color, hair, facial features, etc.) is largely racial.
Fortunately, C-S doesn't seem to take his politics seriously, so he plows ahead with the world's best research into genetic differences.
C-S's genetic diagrams point to a reasonably coherent 5 or 6 race model: Indo-Europeans (Caucasians); sub-Saharan Africans; Amerindians (related to Asians of course); Papuan/Australians; and East Asians, who can either be thought of as one race or as two divided into Northeast Asians and Southeast Asians. There are of course a number of smaller groups that don't fit the model particularly well.
This book, written for a general audience, is especially larded with political correctness. His more technical and more expensive books are more informative.
3742447
This book makes a start towards answering the question of why gayborhoods are losing gay people.  However, I suspect that the author is greatly underemphasizing the elephant in the room, namely the economic reasons for these changes - it is not that gay people don't want to congregate in these neighborhoods (after all, the neighborhoods are now overflowing with straight yuppies BECAUSE they are so desirable) but that gay people, the working class, and minorities are being pushed out of these neighborhoods by rising rents, making them LESS diverse.  I also feel he greatly overestimates safety as a reason gay people wanted to live in these neighborhoods and are now moving out.  All else being equal, many single gay men (who form 75% of the gay male population according to a statistic cited by the author) would still rather choose to live in a gay neighborhood with its vastly richer sociosexual opportunities, as opposed to an integrated neighborhood where at 3.5% of the population they vanish in the noise - it is simply that they cannot afford it.  It is as if the author only interviewed subjects in the upper 10% and simply discounts the experience of the rest of us.

I also find grating the author's use throughout of the term "post-gay" without sufficient examination of the implicit internalized homophobia attached to the term.  And citing "The Birdcage" and "Longtime Companion" as examples of films promoting "harmful stereotypes" is simply beyond the pale.
1912102
Moshe's background is mathematical, so some of the book tends to academic discussion of Monte Carlo simulations and long formulas that bored me. His most interesting insight is the treatment of your human potential and earning power as a financial asset. He describes how to extract the greatest potential out of your lifetime earnings, and how to allocate the risk appropriately.

The one thing that gives me pause -- the conclusions his mathematical expertise produce tend to look very bad. For instance, he states in his book that he is 150% exposed to equities. That means he has borrowed 50% above his own money and put it into the stock market. Since the publication date was 2008, you can imagine that his nest egg is totally wiped out, if it wasn't carefully hedged.

As smart as Moshe is, I wonder if he'll write a different book as a result of the "Crash of 2008".
1895522
I verified some of author's information by googling some of the professors' in this collection of interesting left-wing bio's. On one of these professor's web-site, there it was, confirmation that Horowitz is writing the truth. This professor declares that one of the main pillers' in his philosophy of life is "anti-violence" he even seems to be disturbed by his professional observation that animals are violent. But he does, indeed, suggest that Castro can be excused for his violence, because the violent methods used in Cuba produced a "better" life for most of the people.

We need a book like this about right-wing professors (can 101 good ones be found?) in a book like that we might find a professor who provides some balance to Professor Chomsky (by the way starlings recently proved that that Mr. Chomsky is also wrong in his area of expertise)  by stating that "America needs a kind of debolshavikization".  Chomsky said "America needed a kind of denazification".
4013355
It's frustrating to read books like this. Florida's insightful observations are undermined by the number of errors in this book.

Florida melds psychology, sociology, and economics to try to determine the importance of humanity's displacement from rural areas to cities and, now, megalopolises. Some of the ground he covers is well-trod, but he comes up with a number of ideas that I find insightful. I particularly liked his categorization of urban districts into such places as, e.g., strollervilles (wealthy neighborhoods full of two-year-olds being strolled around by nannies while Daddy is at the law firm and Mommy is either working or doing something else), designer digs (e.g., Aspen, La Jolla), ethnic enclaves (think Fremont, Calif.), preservation-burgs, and boho-burbs (chic neighborhoods, often on old streetcar lines, with lively shopping areas; e.g., the Sellwood district and N.W. 23rd Ave. in Portland, Ore.). The Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., is both a strollerville and a boho-burb. Florida goes beyond the usual accolades one might expect to be conferred on such places to point out their drawbacks. It's very well done.

If only Florida and his publisher had taken better care to vet the manuscript before publishing it! I'd read only a few pages before I started noticing typos: paarticular, New "Dehli" (must have excellent pastrami sandwiches), So "Paolo," Brazil (must have changed its official language to Italian). Then I started noticing factual oddities: Seoul, Korea, described in two different and seemingly mutually exclusive categories; San Francisco described as a place in which single women predominate when the accompanying map shows just the opposite. By the end of the book, the number of glitches had made me suspicious of every empirical datum Florida was presenting--so that when I read his statistic that only 1 in 20 U.S. households contains someone living alone, I couldn't trust it. It sounded too low. I went to the Internet and found an Associated Press report that "About 27.2 million Americans lived alone in 2000, accounting for about 26 percent of all households . . . ." That sounds right. A Population Reference Bureau web page confirms that Florida's statistic is highly inaccurate.

In summary, the book is well worth reading for Florida's impressionistic observations, but I'd be careful about relying on any conclusion he draws that is based on empirical data.
811451
This is the 1990 book with a new, long preface. I've read that new preface. Wolin doesn't know what he's talking about, because he takes a journalistic (at best historiographical) view of philosophically-motivated issues that Wolin didn't understand in 1990 and doesn't understand now. As Theodore Kisiel established many years ago, biographical perspectives on philosophical activity are suspect from the first word, and grossly invalid in the case of Heidegger (See: "Heidegger's Apology...," in Kissel, _Heidegger's Ways of Thought_ [1993 essay, 2002 anthology]; that's "apology" in the Socratic sense).

However, one unwittingly good aspect of the new preface is that it provides a comprehensive explication of how Heidegger is fundamentally misunderstood, relative to Heidegger's responses to his times. As I've argued at length, Heidegger was NOT a "Nazi" and NOT anti-Semitic. See: Facebook/Heidegger. Gary E. Davis, Berkeley
3027753
Wow, probably the craziest book I have ever read.  I heard Das on Andrew Horowitz's podcast "the Disciplined Investor" twice, and really enjoyed hearing him speak about finance.  After reading his opinions about everything besides finance, I wonder if he is reliable when it comes to finance (although I am inclined to agree with him on his financial outlook).

The first 100 pages were great.  Then he starts writing about the environment, and says that anyone who disputes global warming is reminiscent of the tobacco industry trying to undermine the scientific evidence on the dangers smoking.  At this point, he becomes intolerant of anyone who disagrees with modeling that he admits is not perfect. I was disappointed that he stooped to name-calling for anyone who disagrees with his outlook.  He then builds his hypothesis for the future on imperfect modeling.

I then noticed how many of his facts lacked citations, and his prose contained more opinion (pessimistic) than facts: (pg 227) "the use of private wealth to pursue specific objectives undermines democracy." really? always?

The kicker is his books conclusion.  This is the future, and taking action now can only delay his vision by around 15 - 30 years:
-people work til they die or can't physically work
-gov't mandated restrictions on individual space
-mandatory vegetarianism
-punitively expensive private car ownership
-consuming only locally grown foods
-air conditioning is banned
-bottled water is banned
-non-essential air-travel is restricted (no leisure travel)
-electricity consumption is rationed
-mandatory one-child policies in every country
-voluntary euthanasia is permitted

As I read his book, I realized most of his facts could be used to paint a different version of the future, as done by Matt Ridley in the Rational Optimist and Robert Bryce in Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.  The difference between Das and the 2 authors above, is that Das views the future through the prism of today; he can't imagine things changing.  Technology is done improving, we are stuck with what we have already created (he actually argues this point in his book).

Absolutely horrible novel - don't waste your time.
606469
It is evident that the author has exploded after many years of scientific negligence. It focuses on astroparticules physics but other fields like cosmology with dark matter starring currents suffer from similar derivative.  Time for Kuhnnean revolution is coming.
4944406
A number of people seem to be confused about the goals of the author.  David Horowitz is not advocating for a right-wing agenda to be pushed in our college classrooms.  On the contrary, he contends that students are better served by professors who go out of their way to be objective and fair.  Ideological proselytizing is not suppose to be part of their job description.  A student should ideally know little about the political orientation of the professor.  This is especially true of those like George Wolfe, the head of the Peace Studies Program at Ball State University---who is only academically trained to be a Professor of the Saxophone!

Many of our tenured elite in the Liberal Arts are fools.  They are, at best, marginally educated.  One legitimately wonders how these individuals ever earned a Ph. D.  Did they find a doctoral certificate in a crackerjack box? Alas, such existential mysteries of the universe are beyond my comprehension.  Would it be extreme to describe numerous universities today to be nothing less than intellectual whorehouses?  I will not put words into Horowitz's mouth.  However, this is indeed what I think.  You need to read The Professors : The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.  Purchase a copy today.

David Thomson

Flares into Darkness
4688000
While I respect the author, I find his dismissal of Zecheria Sitchin's work disappointing. Also the dismissal of the early reports of the Dogon tribe is equally disturbing. To assume some 20 years after the reports of the Dogon story of Sirius first appeared, that the authors prompted the elders to describe something they could not have known is a stretch to say the least. To try to find a logical explanation is understandable but to assume the facts are based on the scholar's ego is the height of skepticism. The universe we live in is far more complex than the logical mind can allow. This book is worth reading and attempts to clarify what many consider to be myth.
2283885
This lively, amusing book touches on many ways that people relate to the cosmos, from  astrophysicists to the Heavens Gate cult.  That is a virtue, in the sense of providing the reader with a wide variety of material.  It also is a weakness, in that highly reputable scientists are implicitly equated with flakes.  The author should have drawn a sharper distinction between those he took seriously and those he found ridiculous.  The net effect is to introduce a giggle factor into our views of anyone who finds the external universe fascinating and relevant to our future.
 Achenbach is a bit too worshipful toward Carl Sagan and former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin.  In particular, he glosses over the fact that Goldin's faster, better, cheaper policy led to three major mission failures in the late 1990's.
3800532
The Biblical part is handled quite nicely, with good references and good material on language, context, and translation.  The problem--and it's a very serious one--is that the analysis is based on unscientific and sometimes flatly inaccurate sexuality information.  For example, the statistics cited regarding homosexuality, its etiology, and its relationship to sex crimes, sexually transmitted infections, and general health run the gamut from reasonable to out-of-date, to out-of-context, to flatly inaccurate.  There is EXCELLENT research linking orientation to genetic and prenatal factors, where the author flatly denies such, and forensic research clearly shows that a quite significant number of male-male sex crimes are committed by married, heterosexual men.  Unfortunately, the average reader might not know those things, and this book would leave them embarassingly misinformed.  You can't call something "Real" and then go short on research for half of it.  Finally, the author offers far too many of his own opinions about what intuitively makes sense to him.  I'm glad he knows himself so well, but the implication is that others do, or ought to agree.  Few things in life offer as much diversity of opinion as sexuality, so that kind of argument seems out of place in a work like this.  I hope the author revises his book for another edition, because a better researched, less biased book like this would be a valuable work.
4911191
Although there have been some updates in the essay on Christian Science, it's very sad to see the persistent attack on Mary Baker Eddy based on falsities. I have no knowledge of the other "cults" under discussion, but my knowledge of Christian Science is so different from what is written that it makes me doubt the accuracy of anything else published in this book. The falsities abound, starting with incorrect names and events. But the most egregious errors come from the ridicule of a theology that is misunderstood and misrepresented. I kinow several conservative Christians who have changed their minds about these claims after we've had a chance to have an honest heart-to-heart discussion of these issues. Please listen more carefully to those who know the subject matter better.
1964692
There is no doubt Prof. Lieberman has made many meaningful contributions to anthropological linguistics and language evolution.  However, as a leading "anti-Chomskyan," Lieberman has unfortunately allowed his zeal for non-Chomskyan thought to shape his interpretation of the facts: in the present work, he makes the facts fit the agenda, rather than the reverse.
It is true that more and more data point to the important role of subcortical structures in higher cognitive function (especially the basal ganglia & cerebellum).  Lieberman, though, overinterprets and misinterprets data -- linguistic, neurological, evolutionary, and neurobiological -- in his quest to advance his own theoretical perspective.  The result is a poorly reasoned approach and ill founded conclusions that may well hobble new-comers seeking to learn about the important role of non-cortical systems in human cognition.
Interested readers would do better to consult the _Handbook of Neurolinguistics (ed. B. Stemmer & H. A. Whitaker), _Clinical Neuropsychology_ (ed. K. Heilman & E. Valenstein), _The Neurocognition of Language_ (ed. C. M. Brown & P. Hagoort), _The Handbook of Adult Language Disorders (ed. A. Hillis), and anything written by Jeremy Schmamann.
569439
There is some valid science and research reported in this book, but watch out.  Way too much is taken out of context and given a different spin that isn't accurate.  Yes, you can change your brain's neuro circuitry with thoughts.  This author's technique is meditating, doing brain mapping and acting on your desired thoughts.  She calls it by her own invented names and presents it as if she created it all herself.  The very frequent references to herself and her work and how amazingly awesome she is rapidly becomes nauseating.  She tells half truths as if they are the entire truth, leaves out very relevant information and otherwise cherry picks data to support her agenda.  She is so focused on proving God is the only way any of this could be that with her manipulation of research done by legitimate others, I felt revolted by her and her faith.  Surely God doesn't need to mislead by skewed research results, put incorrect spins on facts, claim ownership of other's work nor make leaps to conclusions without any support.  The bottom line, that one can change their brain, is valid and has been presented much more accurately and assessibly by countless others.  As a non researcher but avid reader on this topic, I wrote at least 2 notes of errors PER PAGE.  This book should be taken with a huge grain of salt.  Read Norman Doidge, Bruce Lipton or others for solid information and toss this book.  Glad I didn't pay a cent for it.