After checking ARTHRITIS: WHAT EXERCISES WORK out of the library for the third time in a year, I broke down and bought it. It's terrific. The exercises are tied to specific joints, ranging from the small, fingers and toes, on to shoulders, hips, knees, etc. Some you can even do in bed, but many are much more challenging--there is a range. Doing these for just a couple of weeks increased my flexibility tremendously--washing my back, tieing my shoes, and so forth much easier. And I'm a 53 year old professional female who is in "good shape" with aerobics and strength training--but the targeted flexibility/joint exercises here were new to me. I highly, highly recommend.

Dava Lee Russell is a wonderful author (and teacher), I highly reccommend this book to anyone.

Galileo's Treasure Box by Catherine Brighton [with an introduction by Dava Sobel of Galileo's Daughter and Longitude fame] is a great children's book that will hopefully enjoy a wider readership the second time around. Originally titled Five Secrets In A Box [1987, E.P. Dutton], the book tells the story of Virginia, eldest daughter of Galileo Galilei, and her curiosity about some items her father kept in a gold box. Through a simple text and exquisitely done illustrations, Brighton gives you a view of what it would have been like to be a curious kid in the house of a scientist during the time he made his great discoveries. Virginia finds the lenses for a telescope, colored filters for viewing the sun, and a feather, all in a gold box on her dad's desk. The book leaves Virginia asking why her dad would keep a feather and this will leave the door open for a young, curious reader to find out more. I fell in love with the book when it originally came out and gave many copies as presents. Later, when the original hardback was remaindered, I bought all the copies from several local bookstores and continued to give them as presents. If you know a young reader with readers for parents, give the child a copy of the delightful Galileo's Treasure Box by Catherine Brighton and give their folks a copy of the equally delightful Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel. Hopefully many people, young and old, will discover the story of Virginia and Galileo Galilei.

I consider myself a quasi back pain expert. I had two herinated discs removed 10 years ago and believed that would be the end of my trouble; it was only the beginning. I have have 4 MRIs, five physical thearpy experiences, have seen othropedic surgeons, neurolists, and a pain specialist for cortezone shots. I currently have another herinated disc and a miscellaneous bulge at the site of the prior two surgeries. This book have provided me more knowledge of how to solve my problems than all the rest combined -- however, having all that experience makes me confident this book has the solution. Many of the exercises I was familar with from physical thearpy over the years. And yes, they told me I'd likely have to do exercises for the rest of my life. And that's what makes this book so handy, you don't have a thearpist with you day in and out, this book is very specific on how to do the exercises, how to progress, and what not to do. The advice is practical and well researched, and very much consistent with everything all the specialists have told me during my decade and a half of back problems. And now the REALLY GOOD News. I noticed improvement within a couple of days of starting the exercises. I have found I have to exercise both morning and night, but I am virtually pain free. I was at a point when I purchased this book, that I woke up every morning with some pain and much activity-limiting stiffness -- and periodically my back would "go out" and I'd spend a couple days in bed recuperating. Now I wake pain free; am able to start my day immediately. I remain careful about how I treat my back throughout the day, but I'm very confident my bed rest days are behind me! And I'm more limber, my balance has improved, as has my flexibility. I recommed this book highly!! The section on how to "find time" was very much appreciated and accurate, there are numerous opportunties throughout the day to do many of the exercises. Do heed what the authors say: PAIN is NO GAIN -- so start slow, be gentle, and don't push, this is not a race, for me - it was about getting my life back. Good luck to all, I can't tell you how thankful I am I found this book, I hope it brings you the same kind of improvement it did me.

I have struggled for years with acute back pain. Reading Sobel & Klein's book gave me the answers I was looking for. After getting X-Rays and an MRI revealing that 4 of my discs were herniated from one degree to another. I made an appointment with a trained physical therapist and we set to work on a plan of stretching & strengthening the key muscles. Bingo! I have never felt better. M.D., Mary Pullig Schatz's "Back Care Basics" is excellent as well with an emphasis on Yoga the mental approach for successful rehabilitation.

I have recommend these exercises to patients, but more importantly, they can benefit anyone who doesn't want to develop back pain in the future. Unfortunately our medical model is one of treatment and not prevention. I agree with another reviewer that consultation with a qualified physician is recommended for any type of chronic severe back pain, but there are very few cases I have seen, including patients who have failed surgical treatment, who have not been helped by some way in using moderate regular exercise. These are great exercises to reverse the effects that our sedentary working society foists upon us. I recommend this book strongly but emphasize the importance of dispensing with the "pain-gain" concept and embracing the a-little-bit-every-day-in-a-consistent-manner-without-pushing-to-discomfort paradigm. Kudos to Dava Sobel and colleagues for an excellent write...May I recommend "The Care and Feeding of Your Brain" as a companion book for helping deal the distress, depression, and other cerebral manifestations that accompany chronic pain...All the best!! Kenneth Giuffre MD, author, "The Care and Feeding of Your Brain"

Buying this book, i was expecting to a) read about SETI b) be introduced into thinking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life in new ways, as this book, written by Frank Drake one of the men responsible for the establishment of SETI would be a great source..
Instead: i wound up reading an autobiography disguised under the title "Is there anybody out there", a title which also disguises the fact that Drake spends more time and pages writting about the problems he encountered setting up SETI than SETI itself. Not to mention that he uses all 300 pages of his book to praise himself in a way that makes you yawn once you become familiar with the mechanism it is written. Indeed for a book that tackles an otherwise super interesting and controversial issue the book is boring. It's totally devoid of any humor and any attempts at such are further contributions to boredom. What's even more interesting is that for an author who clearly believes there is intelligent life out there he uses but a mere 2-3 pages to dismiss any accounts of aliens having already visited earth, recently or not so recently..2-3 pages to dismiss that? Hmmm, makes you wonder...In the end, after having (thankfully) been through with it i wound up thinking more about the motives behind Drake having written it than the book itself. Buy something else on the subject. Blindly.

i was surprised when i found this book in a second-hand book store. I had heard about it and wanted to read it, but knew it was out of print. Being a SETI enthusiast (running the seti@home screensaver 24/7), this book elegantly took me through the step by step advances in the field, told by the man himself, Frank Drake. What really got me hooked was the Sagan-like simplicity of the book. I urge anyone and everyone to read "Is Anyone Out There?". Highly insightful and very objective. (made me even go out and buy an amateur telescope!)

This book explains SETI to the average person very nicely. The fact that is written by Frank Drake, the person to conduct the first search for extraterrestrial life in the universe is a great bonus, because you know it written by a person who understands the subject, inside and out.

Frank Drake is the person that the Drake Equation is named for. The Drake Equation a simple formula for calculating the change that other intelligence life in the Universe Exists. How you decide to plug numbers into the equation is where all the debate on this subject is conducted.

Great book. Get it if you can find it.

If only we had Galileo's letters to his daughter. These did not survive. So we have only one side of the correspondence. His illegitimate daughter writes to her father about her very dull life in an Italian convent, and about his laundry. There is not enough material in the daughter's letters to sustain a narrative so the book, as other reviewers have pointed out, is really a life of Galileo which focuses on his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo is portrayed as the virtuous (if not wholly heroic) victim of the wicked Inquisition. No doubt it will appeal to readers who enjoy "popular" history and know little about the subject matter. However, it is not as well written as "Longitude" and having enjoyed the former I found "Galileo's Daugther" somewhat disappointing. The author's speculative opinions on what was going on in Galileo's mind were rather irritating. The book might have been improved if it had been subjected to some ruthless editing, or perhaps written as a historical novel (a scientific version of "The Agony and the Ecstasy"). There are much better (scholarly and popular) books available both on the history of seventeenth century science and on Galileo's trial. Having said that there is one delightful twist to the daughter's story at the very end which made up a little for my disappointment with the book as a whole. If you already know quite a bit about Galileo, I suggest that you don't bother buying the book, but take peek at the last couple of pages in the bookshop.

A wonderful exploration of history, science, religion, and love. The entire book is based on letters written to Galileo by his illegitimage daughter, a nun. When he was questioned by the Inquisition, the convent destroyed his letters to his daughter for fear of a stain on the convent itself - so his replies must be assumed from her references to them.
The difficult part of the book is the careful translation done in the archaic and overly polite language of the times, which makes for heavy going and loooong wordy passages at times.

In the first one-third of the volume the author writes about Galileo's invention of a telescope, first observation of the moon's mountains and valleys, discovery of four satellites of the planet Jupiter, observation of a "nova" to impugn the Aristotelian immutability of the heavens, guess about the nature of sunspots, endeavor to support the sun-centered theory of Copernicus, etc., etc. Thus I thought that the title of the book was quite inappropriate.

Even reading later chapters, where many letters addressed to Galileo by his daughter with the name of Suor Maria Celeste are cited, I thought that this was a biography of Galileo himself, which well depicted not only his scientific but also his personal life together with family and social backgrounds. Near the end of the volume, however, there was an episode like a mystery. I felt like thunderstruck, and smiled and said to myself, "Yes, the title is quite appropriate!"

I could not help but imagine what wonderful work would Suor Maria Celeste have done if she had lived in the modern age not as a nun but as a scientist. The book also invoked in my mind great desires to read Galileo's books, "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems" and "Two New Sciences," and to observe planets with a telescope. These facts would prove the excellence of this book.

"The Illustrated Longitude" is an excellent, worthwhile historical account of John Harrison's progression as an instrument maker and legitimate finder of a practical solution to the problem of determining Longitude at Sea.

If you are at all interested in the antecedents of today's accurate timekeeping devices this book is a must. The print quality is very high and the illustrations a wonderful aid to feeling the story unfold. The book does not contain detailed plans of Mr Harrison's chronometers or description of the techniques of celestial navigation, but rather is a brisk, engagingly written account of the origin of the Longitude problem, Mr Harrison's solution and those of his rivals and the political intrigues which delayed full acknowledgement of the merit of the H-1 to H-4 devices.

I bought this book some months after visiting the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. The ingenious mechanisms at work can keep an observer enthralled for hours. They are also very beautiful. "The Illustrated Longitude" really fills out the significance of the Longitude problem in that era and the career details and challenges overcome by a very clever and self made man.

Having bought and read "Longitude", the only lightly illustrated original hardback version, I wanted to know more about how the actual clocks worked, and I wanted to see them, without making a trans-Atlantic pilgrimage to Greenwich.

Hence, when I saw an illustrated version of "Longitude", I had to buy it. This book contains the original text, with no additions, except for the illustrations. The photographs are beautifully done, as is the printing.

My only hesitation in not awarding the book five stars is that I was hoping for one of two things; either an illustrated version of the original, with a couple of pictures of each chronometer, at a reasonable price, or a more detailed illustrated version, with more information on how the chronometers actually work. What we ended up with is a compromise. Beautiful pictures of the chronometers, but little extra detail of Harrison's marvelous inventions.

Still, an improvement on the original, which is an excellent book, one I have read several times. Highly recommended.

By the way, when I purchased this book, I donated my original version to the library.

I originally read a library copy of "Longitude" back when it was published in 1995. But I hankered for a copy of my own. Recently I discovered this new illustrated version of the original and must say that it's a real find. The pictures really do help one understand better the magnitude of William Harrison's breakthrough discovery about how to use a very accurate timepiece (now called a "chronometer") to determine longitude and help ships avoid the tragedy of becoming lost with potentially tragic consequences. The text is not so technical to put off a non-expert. I'm sure one could learn more about the workings of the chronometer, but I suspect a more detailed explanation might have put it beyond the comprehension of many of us.

This book is the result of a survey of 492 backache and neckache sufferers, and what did and what did not work for them. It discusses types of practitioners, drugs, therapies, exercises, and other lifestyle tips. I found it very helpful.

Latitude and longitude are fundamentally different. Rotation of Earth endows our planet with an axial symmetry. So while finding latitude is relatively easy, determining longitude is not. Save the moon and the planets, the night sky looks exactly the same if you travel along the parallel 15 degrees to the east east, or simply wait for an hour. Without an accurate clock and a sextant, this made navigation on the open sea a black magic. For any expanding overseas empire, this was serious matter. Serious enough that the British Parliament offered a high prize -- several millions dollars in today's money -- in 1714 for solving the longitude problem.

By 1730, the world still did not have any practical and reliable method of finding longitude. By 1760, it had two. One of them, backed by Britain's the most influential astronomers of the time, included a quadrant (later sextant) and tabulated ephemerides. With them, a skilled navigator could have calculated its position within hours, in clear weather. The other method required only an accurate clock. If the clock can tell you your home time, you only need to determine your local noon -- when the shadows are the shortest -- and the difference between the two tells you your longitude. This method was backed by a lone clockmaker, John Harrison. This book is about him, about his life-long pursuit of a reliable, seaworthy chronometer, and his battle with the scientific establishment.

Eighteen-century mechanics, while far from trivial, is intuitive enough to make explaination of the internal workings of a shiny brass clockwork a wonderful topic. With some diagrams and explanations of Harrison's ingenious inventions, this book could easy become any engineer's dream. Perhaps the illustrated edition (ISBN 0802713440) comes closer to this ideal. Ms. Sobel, although allegedly a science writer, was more interested in the socio-political aspects of the story, and hardly touches the engineering part. Deliberately neglecting the engineering audience, the book is far from being a historical scholarly text either. She writes in an easy-to-read, journalese style. Fair enough, some thirty references are listed in the end for anyone willing to pursue the topic further. So while you cannot claim you've learned a lot of science or history, Longitude still makes a great beach reading. And of course, reading this book is a must for anyone planning to visit the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England, where the clocks are exhibited.

With "Longitude" Dava Sobel has written a very interesting book about the greatest scientific problem of the 18th century.

As a result of the 1707-shipwreck story (with a loss of 4 out of the 5 ships), the English Parliament offered in 1714 a 20.000 pounds reward to the person that could provide a practicable and useful way of determining longitude. (If you have forgot, longitude is the "lines" that runs from pole to pole). Not being able to determining longitude was a great problem. Ships spent excessive time trying to find its way back to port, or worse men, ship and cargo were lost at sea.

John Harrison (1693-1776) spent his lifetime trying to solve the longitude mystery. Harrison was a son of a countryman, with minimal schooling, and was self-educated in watch making. He made several timepieces, which all qualified for the reward, but the reward was delayed several times by the Longitude committee whom believed that other ways of measuring longitude were the preferred ones. Ultimately after a lot of harassment and trouble, Harrison was given the reward money.

Dava Sobel has done a wonderful job in this book, capturing Harrison's fascinating character, his brilliance, preserving and hard working nature. The author has also managed to strike a perfect balance between technical jargon and personal anecdotes, and she does it in such a way permitting the lay readers of the book to admire the elegance of Harrison's discoveries. I believe it is a sign of excellent quality when an author makes learning so interesting.

I was hooked from the first page of this book and I read it in 50-page gulps at a time.

Highly recommended!

Longitude Reviewed by Eve Nikolova, Student in Genetics at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

Starting in the early 18th century, a scientific quest for the measurement of Longitude at sea began with the establishment of the Board of Longitude under the British Government. The Board was charged with the review of helpful inventions and was to award the most talented scientist with a prize of 20,000.00 British lira. The conflict of interests immediately began. Driven mostly by the money and fame that such recognition would bring, numerous scholars and sailors made the measuring of Longitude their life's work. While every one in Europe was looking at the skies, an unknown clockmaker dared to trust his own mechanical knowledge in making the perfect watch. John Harrison's clocks were a tool rather than a scientific method for finding Longitude. Although the incredible work of a genius, these inventions were met with doubt and jalousie and by the Scientific Society. Isaac Newton wrote to the Board: "'One [method] is by Watch to keep the time exactly. But by reason of the motion of the Ship, the Variation of Heat and Cold, Wet and Dry, and the Difference of Gravity in different Latitudes, such a Watch hath not yet been made.' And not likely to be made, either, he implied. This story is set in an era of great scientific activity in which a natural genius did not receive fair treatment because he was ahead of his time. Longitude, The Story of a Lone Genius... reveals to the unaware reader the importance of shows how the pending prize turned to be the reason for many scientific achievements that now a day are regarded as common knowledge. For example, while searching for a way of measuring Longitude, astronomers mapped the skies from end to end in the hopes to draw some use from the Lunar movement while at sea. Galileo observed Jupiter and calculated its predictable eclipses. The exact distance between the Sun and Earth a well as the speed of light was calculated. John Harrison's perfectionism and generosity revealed a major set back in the competitive scientific world of his time. This is a tale well organized and clear that targets the casual reader. Its repetitive pattern informs and educates without obliging. The scene of action is set very carefully and in detail so the reader can feel the impact of John Harrison's both greatness and misfortune.

compelling info on methotrexate. takes forever to get to the point. you don't really know what to do until page 240, "foods to avoid." alot of conflicting info with what most of the latest writing on biological medicine states. i refer to acid/alkaline relationship.