This is an excellent biography of one of the greatest lawmen in U.S. history. I've heard a lot of rants from misguided Bonnie and Clyde fans about the book's alleged inaccuracies. Well, there hasn't been a book on Bonnie and Clyde or Depression outlaws published to date (including my own!) that hasn't had some drastic errors in it, one reason being that most of the books, including I'm Frank Hamer, draw heavily from the Fugitives, the ghosted 1934 memoirs of Bonnie's mother and Clyde's sister. I'm not one of these people who presume to know who killed the two highway patrolmen at Grapevine. It may have been Henry Methvin, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, or all three for that matter (ballistics evidence indicated three guns were fired). Nor am I one of those misguided worshippers of Bonnie and Clyde, who were really nothing more than a pair of two-bit, scatter-brained, trigger-happy psychos. But all that is neither here nor there, as this is not simply a "Bonnie & Clyde book." This is a biography, and a damn good one, of the man who tracked them down--Frank Hamer, who captured or killed dozens of other criminals and carried with him the scars, and much of the lead, from many gunfights with maggots of the Clyde Barrow sort. Hamer came out of retirement to run down the Barrow gang. The ambush of Clyde and Bonnie was the perfect closing of Hamer's career and a great service to America as well. It was the job he was made to do and one that had to be done. Forget Hollywood. The real Bonnie and Clyde were murderous criminals who deserved just what they got. And Frank Hamer was just the man to give it to them.

It has been many years since I first read this book and I found it very informative. I am sure there are bound to be some errors but on the most part it is historically accurate. It is not only about ending Bonnie and Clyde's murderous spree but about the man that did it and how he became a Texas Police Officer and came up through the ranks to become one of the greatest Texas Rangers who ever lived. The review written by anomie@mail.com, is total bull written buy someone who evidently prefers to believe the glamorized version of the Bonnie & Clyde movie. I have been a Texas State Police officer for 23 years and have read some of the actual reports of Bonnie and Clydes exploits and to contradict anomie@mail.com, Bonnie and Clyde deserve no respect as stated by anomie. Anomie needs to be better informed of the facts before making reviews. Sorry for the rant but I hate for anyone to bad mouth a great man and take up for a couple of cold blooded illiterate killers who were glamorized by Hollywood as a cute loving couple out for a Sunday drive.

ITS BEEN THIRTEEN YEARS SINCE I INITIALY READ THIS BOOK. I HAVE BEEN DYING TO READ IT AGAIN BUT CANT FIND A COPY TO PURCHASE. BEING AN AMETUER HISTORIAN ON LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY LAWMEN AND OUTLAWS I FOUND THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS TEXT TO BE ACCURATE AND AUTHORATATIVE. A LOT OF MY INTEREST COMES FROM BEING A TEXAS PEACE OFFICER AND AN AFFICIIANADO OF FIREARMS BOTH MODERN AND HISTORICAL. THIS BOOK IS PREDOMINANTLY WRITTEN IN THE INFORMAL AND WESTERN COLOCIAL WHICH FITS THE SUBJECT MATTER. IT IS A WELL VERSED BIOGRAPHY ON ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING AND COLORFUL FIGURES IN WESTERN HISTORY. IT IS A SHAME THAT MORE WRITERS AND OR MOVIE PRODUCERS HAVE NOT TAKEN INTEREST IN THIS UNIQUE AND POTENT FIGURE. THIS WOULD BE A GOOD SUBJECT FOR A DIRECTOR OF THE ILK OF SAY JOHN MILIUS. BEYOND THAT LET ME SAY IF THAT IF YOU ARE TIRED OF THE TRUMPED UP BONNIE AND CLYDE FLUFF AND WOULD LIKE TO GET A REALISTIC AND HEROIC ACCOUNT OF THE GENTLEMAN LAWMAN THAT ASSISTED IN RIDDING SCOCIETY OF THESE AND OTHER NO ACCOUNTS, THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU. THE GOOD GUYS STORY, FOR A CHANGE.

The first half of the book was interesting and kept my interest enough to read every word and scrutinze every example. However, by midway, the author's points became labored and needlessly exhaustive.

I guess it took me about half the book to find out what his general points were going to be. To me the book made connections between the nature of the universe and all things (particularly humans) in it.

I really wanted to closely scrutinize the chapters on sound (I am a musician and scientist). Unfortunately, by that last third of the book, I was too fatigued by the writing style. I ended up reading a few paragraphs in each section and skimming the rest, knowing (or making a logical guess) about the rest of the material. The author's basic points had already been made.

Furthermore, I felt unsatisfied by the author's overall treatment of art (particularly music). I was hoping for something more "insightful." It seems somehow self evident that particular sights and sounds are "appealing" to us given our physiology, evolution and their relationship to the nature of the universe itself. These arguments seem like tautologies; We like what we like because we are who we are. In the end, this isn't very interesting. On the other hand I could plead guilty to expecting too much.

There is more to art and music than meets the direct senses. When you try to explain what is "more" about music, you lose the meaning. Maybe the lesson is to just play the music and let it speak for itself. If the author was trying to make this point (indirectly) it is now very well taken. It's better to explain the beauty of music with selections of Joco Pastorius...

Finally, I thought the book was in places too human centric. Clearly books are intended to be read by humans. But I thought some of the author's points of view bordered on saying human animals were somehow more "important" than others. The universe doesn't make conscious choices to anoint one animal over another. Those evaluations are (too often, unfortunately,) made by us, not nature. Free will does exist.

Given these points, I do think the book was worth reading and might even be suitable for a seminar. I took about 4 days to read the book, but maybe should have taken more time. Anyway, at best, I think this book is worth 3 stars; Not bad, not great, but worth reading and discussing with others.

This is a good book for a beginner, e.g., an undergraduate student in philosophy, psychology, or art. It can provide some solid basic understanding of the issues involved in interpreting and reproducing the world(s) around us. The book's thesis is that we are hard-wired by the process of evolution to interpret the world a certain way and that same process limits the kinds of art and science we are able to create. Those already familiar with this thesis will find little that is new in this book. Also, I was a bit disappointed that the book contained only black and white illustrations, it would seem that the subject matter chosen cries out for some color. The topics covered in the book are diverse and hang together loosely, which can be a challenge to a reader accustomed to a more focused and sustained discussion.

Barrow, of course, is with Frank Tipler the author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, which argues that the fundamental constants and initial conditions of the cosmos had to be more or less exactly as they are or life - thus our conscious, self-aware human life - could not have happened.

In The Artful Universe, Barrow explores in great and fascinating detail just exactly how the fine structure of the cosmos bears fruit in the structure of the human body, and in particular the structure of our ideas, preferences, values, aesthetic reactions, ways of thinking; our minds. The primary thrust of this wide-ranging survey is that animal minds and bodies subjected to natural selection are in big trouble if they embody propositions about the world, and therefore about the appropriate way to behave, that are in any important way essentially wrong. He argues that just as the structure of the eye constitutes evidence one way or the other for the correspondence to reality of our ideas about light, so the structure of, e.g., our mathematical faculties constitutes evidence for the mathematical structure of reality.

Barrow is terrifyingly erudite, and a clear, graceful writer. He manages to convey boatloads of highly technical concepts from numerous fields in crystalline arguments accessible to anyone with a basic scientific education. You will learn a ton from this book. You'll work for it - Barrow never condescends - but you will be well rewarded.

I happened to pick this book up at a local Half Price Book seller near my home. It had some great information I needed for a school report, by nearly any of my class understood it. It still has some great theories and is a great read!

Excellent presentation of the latest theories about the origin of the universe, like the 'no boundary condition' (Hawking and Hartle), the quantum origin, the inflation period (Guth) or superstrings.
This book is more a scientific explanation with charts and dwawings, but - not always easy - understandable for the layman.
I missed the speculation of a John Gribbin or a Martin Rees.
As in his other excellent book 'Theories of Everything', the author believes that "One day we may be able to say something about the origin of our own cosmic neighbourhood. But we can never know the origins of the universe. The deepest secrets are the ones that keep themselves."

For anyone that enjoyed A Brief History of Time this is a excellent follow up. Great explanation of inflation and the possibilty of a non-singularity beginning of the universe.

. . .for more than 20 years. I'm as familiar with the story as any, and more familiar than most. Recently, I had the opportunity to read Sir John Barrow's account of the mutiny and its aftermath and found the book an extremely interesting historical read. Sir John wrote his book at a time when many of the participants were still living. He addresses every major controversy surrounding the mutiny and subsequent adventures and his perspective, while a bit preachy and moralistic at times, is invaluable. While utterly condemning the actions of Fletcher Christian (and blaming the mutiny entirely on him) Barrow is also hard on Captain Bligh, showing him to be an excellent seaman but a poor leader of men (under everyday circumstances). In a crisis, Bligh was able to rise to the occasion (the open sea voyage in the Bounty's launch) but as an everyday commander of men, Bligh was found wanting. Barrow also casts doubt on Bligh's integrity during the trial, suggesting that he deliberately withheld information which could have led to the acquittal of a midshipman against whom he bore an unjustified grudge. Barrow also condemns the behavior of the captain of the Pandora as inhumane (as it was without doubt) and unreasonable, especially to those who were not mutineers, but voluntarily surrendered. Barrow's description of the trial is extremely detailed. He goes to great lengths to demonstrate that in spite of appearances, the guilty were punished and those who were truly innocent were acquitted (or eventually exonerated). He also had an interest in the eternal souls of the mutineers, recording with satisfaction that the three men eventually hanged for the crime showed evidence of repentance and contrition. All in all, this book was a fascinating read, and provided a different perspective than the 20th century movies and popular novels. I hope it comes back into print.

I have the 1980 hardback edition. It is without a doubt one of the best books on the subject of the bounty. The illustrations are great.

Maybe this is the book that should have come with Windows ME, since using help in Windows is maddening. I perused several books and this looked like the best of the bunch. It does cover tha basics fairly well. However, if you want more than that, and you want to know the what, where, how, and why of ME, get another book. The CD that comes with the book is essentially the book (only) on CD and it lacks an index, which (IMHO) is a glaring omission. I guess this can happen to any book, but after using it a few times the spine broke and only the cover was holding the two halves together. I'm a tweaker by nature, and I wanted more than general information. In spite of it's size (almost a 1000 pages) and its title ("The Complete Reference") it's not as complete as I need. It may be for you.

I'm one of the authors, and the CD that comes with this book contains the complete text of the book as an e-book. This means that you can keep the CD in your drive as you use your computer, and look items up in the CD's glossary, which serves as its index.

When we wrote the book, we had in mind intermediate Windows users -- people who already know the basics, but need to look up seldom-used commands and troubleshoot problems. We've included lots of step-by-step procedures as well as explanations of Windows concepts.

If you use Windows 98 or Windows XP, we have editions for those versions as well ("Windows 98: The Complete Reference" and "Windows XP: The Complete Reference") -- they also come with complete e-book editions on their CDs.

Enjoy!

A fascinating account of the two years spent at and around Pt. Barrow, Alaska by the Royal Navy captain and crew of the HMS Plover. Tasked to mount a search from the west for the survivors of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, the Plover overwintered at Pt. Barrow for two consecutive years. In so doing, Maguire and his crew became the first Europeans to reside among the approximately 900 Inupiat Eskimos who then inhabited three villages along an eight-mile stretch of the coastline in this remote northwest corner of Alaska. Maguire's journal seems to be an honest account of his relationships with the Eskimos, which vacillated between strained distance and close friendships. It seems that the relationship at any given moment largely depended on the Eskimos' practice of stealing valuable items from the Plover. For instance, while frozen in the ice for the winter the Plover's sails went missing from the vessel's nearby storage shack. Maguire had to threaten force (using the ship's cannon) to secure the return of the canvas, which was in the process of being cut up in the village. On the other hand, Maguire represented the enlightened and educated leadership found in the British navy, and his fair treatment of the Inupiats was remembered among them as long as 35 years after his departure.

This is one of those books I rated much more highly when I first read it years ago. It's a "strange history" indeed. It's not always a "straight" history, anyway, dwelling more on psychological speculations about the personalities of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker and on the growth of their legend (with comparisons to older historical and/or folkloric figures such as Jesse James, Robin Hood and even King Arthur) than on a straight recounting of the facts. Movie buffs will be fascinated with the many motion picture adaptations of the Bonnie and Clyde story and that is an interesting segment which Treherne rightly confined, for the most part, to the appendices. He did leave out the 1949 film They Live By Night (Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as Clyde & Bonnie clones) and its 1970's remake Thieves Like Us (Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall) but until Treherne's book I was completely unaware of either the 1939 film Persons in Hiding (one of four bearing this title and based in equal parts on both Bonnie and Clyde and Kathryn and George "Machine Gun" Kelly) or of the 1983 Italian comedy version. But, judging from the title, this book was supposed to be a biography of Clyde and Bonnie and a history of their criminal career. So it is, but little is to found in the historical narrative that is new. Most of it derives from previously published sources such as Jan Fortune's Fugitives and Lee Simmons' Assignment Huntsville, the former an error-ridden work based in equal parts on the recollections of Bonnie's mother and Clyde's sister and (uncredited) on a series of 1934 True Detective articles by Joplin Chief of Detectives Ed Portley, the latter valuable mainly for Simmons' recollections of the Eastham prison break and his recruitment of Frank Hamer and for the statements of gang member Joe Palmer. The confession of W.D. Jones is cited in the bibliography but Treherne seems to have read very little of it. The confession would have made a wonderful appendix, by the way, possibly with comparisons to Jones' 1968 Playboy article, of which Treherne seems completely unaware. Not that Treherne didn't do original research. The chapters on the Stringtown, OK shooting and the Platte City, MO gun battle are based largely on interviews and seem to be accurate accounts. It's a pity he didn't cover the other sites this way. Treherne apparently got no closer to Dexter, IA, the gang's Waterloo, than Des Moines, and missed a lot there. He missed out also on Okabena, MN, the site of a bank robbery Treherne, like previous and later authors, attributed, probably erroneously, to the Barrow gang, and the death site in Louisiana. Details of the final ambush seem to come mainly from the transcripts of Henry Methvin's Oklahoma murder trials and the flawed Ambush account--the ghosted memoirs of Ted Hinton. There is no evidence Treherne ever went near the death site in Bienville Parish. Still, the whole book is an enjoyable read and Treherne wisely used less commonly seen photos than the dozen or so Bonnie and Clyde pix seen in most books on the infamous duo. It is an admirable and worthwhile book. One only wishes it was the straight historical record the title implies. One cannot pschoanylize the dead and the best authorities for the love life of Bonnie and Clyde--whatever the details and whatever dubious historical significance that may entail--died with them. And the growth of the Bonnie and Clyde legend is more suited to a study of folklore than a straight biography.

This is not the best book due to lack of research - many authors seem to complie previously researched facts & information. It is interesting and goes into great detail to explore the legend of Bonnie and Clyde. Reviews all movies and discusses the charachters vs the tru people at length. Not the best, but a nice addition to your collection. John N. Phillip's book is by far the best yet!

Every since studying the Arthur Penn film in college, I've been interested in the myth behind the famous outlaws of the 30's.

The book does an excellent job of fleshing out the people behind the myth. Although I assumed there was some "Hollywood" tampering with the facts of the film, I was more impressed with how accurate the 1967 film actually was in terms of documenting the events. The book fills in the gaps and expands not only on the personalities, but on several key events in the criminals spree that couldn't be included in the 1967 film. While the '67 film tended to humanize Barrow and Parker, this book cuts straight to core of the unbalanced and unsocial behavior of the two.

If you're a fan of the film, or at all interested in the history behind Barrow and Parker, this is the book to read.

I really enjoyed it!

Barrow, of anthropic cosmological principle fame, undertakes to examine the logical, practical, and psychological limits to human [scientific] knowledge. The result is a sometimes interesting, but more often disappointing exposition in the history of science and of philosophy. In a volume that is essentially a philosophical treatise, we find that even Cambridge mathematicians can expound rather sloppy logic, actually evidencing the limits imposed on human investigations by human psychological encumbrances (one of the author's themes). The author's first chapter consideration of visual and linguistic paradoxes features a feeble apologia for agnosticism, which employs a linguistic paradox as an argument against the existence of an omniscient being. Barrow, who seems to be fairly well studied in philosophy, should know that Augustine decisively trashed this type of argument 1600 years ago for reasons that seem apparent in Barrow's own choice of language. [Barrow's cited paradox attests merely that no finite being can know everything. Further, a variation of the paradox attests that no one could ever know that an omniscient being does not exist.] In the second chapter, discussing the limits of the human mind revealed by Immanuel Kant, Barrow states that we understand these problems "as Kant did not" to be explained by natural selection. Natural selection is, of course, a tautological proposition (stating that if gene a is more likely to succeed than gene b, then gene a is more likely to succeed than gene b). As Kant explained, and as any student of logic knows, a tautology explains nothing. Given Barrow's skeptical consideration of various other attempts at explanation, his non-analytical and repetitive alighting on this sacrosanct tautology is unfortunate. Barrow's opening fusillades here may be his weakest, but it doesn't get a great deal better. There are some discussions that I did enjoy: the author's consideration of selective as opposed to absolute limits; and his [re]visitation of a few of the fundamental 'coincidences' contributing to the anthropic principle (chapter 5).
Barrow's consideration of the human mind ("What are minds for?", chapter 4) is essentially useless. His conclusions (chapters 8 and 9) are interesting but don't warrant reading the entire book to reach them: "If this book has taught the reader anything, I hope that the notion of impossibility is far subtler than naïve assumptions ... would lead you to believe."
Likely, this is one of John Barrow's weakest efforts. To the reader interested in the interplay of physics and philosophy I recommend Paul Davies' The Mind of God. For the reader who is interested in logic, this book may suffice as a brief introduction to the idea of limit and to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Reading Immanuel Kant, one of the most finely disciplined minds in scholastic history, would be of greater value. Pass on this one.

This book surprised me in that it was more about philosophy than science or mathematics. Somehow (was it the blurb or the title?) I expected this book to be a complement or development of the ideas in Rudy Rucker's 'Infinity and the Mind', or som3e of the works of Raymond Smullyan. But it shied away from technical aspects in preference to more general exposition. I thought, on starting the book, that I might have learned more about those mathematicians who work without reference to differential or integral calculus because of underlying difficulties in the rationale for using limits in analysis. However, I did enjoy the book and it did have insights that interested me.

Recurring fascination with the question: whether or not the ever-expanding frontiers of science are subject to limits, led me to the study of John Barrow's 'Impossibility'. Barrow asserts that there are definite limits to the development of science due to philosophical, sociological, biological, technological, mathematical and logical factors as well as Laws of Physics, like finite speed of light, cosmic singularity theorems, inflationary cosmology, relative time travel; and 'Anthropic Cosmology', which states that there must be physical constants (viz. the mass of the proton) to allow for the existnece and emergence of living creatures; and Godel's theorem, which has been used to argue that a computer may never be as smart as a human being because the extent of its knowledge base is limited by a fixed set of algorithms, whereas a person may discover unexpected truths.

Without minimising the great merit in Barrow's approach, I feel that finding limits to scientific development is like learning to swim: no matter how much the instructor tells you before hand, you only learn after you have stepped into the water. While it is useful and desirable to have an idea of the limits which may beset scientific inquiry, it is imperative that scientists, at any given time, pursue research on the premise that further progress in science is always achievable.

I'm a fan of Barrow's, but this book is repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. It's a collection of pieces he did for various publications and everything in it is said more clearly in Impossibility or Pi in the Sky or others of his stimulating books. Save your money and buy one of those rather than this deflationary rehash.

This book is a collection of John Barrow's 42 essays mostly published between 1980 and 1998, but none of the topics treated has become out-of-date. Each piece of essay makes a chapter, and all the chapters are grouped into 10 parts. A short introduction in each part clearly sets the theme common to all the chapters of that part as well as the specific subjects of the chapters.

The title of every chapter is quite attractive to those interested in the fundamental problems of physics and cosmology and in their relations to, or a physicist's view of, other disciplines of mathematics, aesthetics and religion. Barrow's writings are sometimes not easy to follow, but are marked by originality of ideas.

For example: In the chapter "Why is the Universe mathematical?" the author first mentions that the sorts of answers depend upon what we think mathematics. Then he puts a puzzle, which is more fundamental in the laws of Nature, symmetry or computation. In the final paragraphs, Barrow states that the science is the search for algorithmic compressions of the world of experience, and comes to the conclusion that mathematics is useful in the description of the physical world because the world is algorithmically compressible. I have difficulty in finding how the earlier paragraphs are related to the last ones. However, the conclusion seems to be simple and persuasive, and would be paraphrased as follows: Mathematics is useful in the description of Nature because she has the characters of orderly complexity.

Only if you haven't read other books by Barrow and want to know his ideas, this would be a good buy.

This book covers basic tasks and troubleshooting but little more. It may be useful for users completely new to the Office programs, but for all the problems I needed help with this book left me hanging.

More irritating than its content limitations is the book's precious and trying-so-hard-to-be cute writing style. Every section begins with a smirky little paragraph which manages neither to amuse nor inform. Not for me.

Covers all the applications of Office XP in a single book. Good index helps me find quick answers to most of my Office questions quickly.