Altruism has always been a problem for evolutionists. How does one explain a creature giving up something for another, sometimes its very life? Why, for example, will a monkey give a warning cry that alerts other members of the troop, but that gives away its own position? How could genes governing such behavior persist in the relentless competition for a place in the genome?

The kinds of reasoning used to explain behavior that is good for the group but perhaps not so good for the individual performing it is as old as Darwin. Until George Williams demolished whole classes of argument in his lovely 1966 book, "Adaptation and Natural Selection", it was common to invoke "group selection" as an analog to individual selection, and explain, in a vague, hand-waving sort of way, how altruistic behavior could arise by enhancing the survival of the herd, or school, or flock. And after Dawkins, both the individual and the group were banished from consideration, and the selfish gene reigned supreme.

Only one category of altruism has been taken as consonant with the unit of replication being the gene, namely "kin selection". This is the favoring of relatives: since relatives share genes, helping a gene-mate helps one's own genes, whether or not it benefits one's self. Yet much altruism in nature goes unexplained by kin selection. Think of the soldier who falls on the hand grenade so his (unrelated) buddies can live. There are many more examples from the lives of many creatures, most of whom never saw a war movie. How does one explain the clear patterns of altruistic behavior in animals at all levels of consciousness and cuddliness? Wilson, a biologist, and Sober, a philosopher, dare to think the unthinkable, or at least the unfashionable: is it possible that individuals or groups really do play a replicator role in evolution? They believe that group selection deserves another chance, but this time more rigorously specified.

I was very impressed with the first half of the book, in which they justify a group-selection model for adaptive evolution that can explain a persistent strain of altruism. What they show is that selection can take place at the level of a group of individuals in many more sorts of situations than were thought possible. (A nice bonus of this approach is that kin selection can be explained more simply using this more general context of the group.) Groups, however ephemeral, do have a role to play in selection.

The second half of the book is less convincing, as it involves psychological and philosophical arguments for "psychological altruism" in humans (that is, you not only behave unselfishly, but "want" to behave unselfishly), which, by its very nature, is hard (or very hard) to tease out in experiments, or to introspect to. However, the authors are reasonably convincing that nature would most likely not employ some Rube Goldberg-type of mental devices that depended on hedonism (pleasure-and-pain-driven behavior) to accomplish important tasks, such as child-rearing, but rather build in directly the mechanism to make a parent care to care for its child. In that way, the care of its child would be a primary motivation, rather than an intrumental one (sorry about the jargon!) on the way to getting pleasure or avoiding pain. Parents will find this convincing, as the desire to take care of one's children seems not to depend on how much we "enjoy" doing it.

This book is detailed, conscientious and well-written, but it covers a lot of ground and many of its arguments, especially in the second part, are subtle. So I recommend reading it more than once: this is contentious material. While the authors do not make anything of the political and social implications of their work, these are always waiting in the wings. Altruism, after all, is in direct opposition to selfishness. Many people see in this a political point, and a social point. Those issues are not properly a part of such a work, but do give great interest to its arguments and conclusions. And whether or not its conclusions finally survive intact, this book's arguments and approach seem exemplary and fruitful.

This book is a continuation of those books that keep moving us closer to where we came from. After decades of wandering in the jungle of postmodernism, we are finally emerging to find our roots. This book is not for the casual reader. But it is an important contribution in understanding the evolution of groupism, why humans go to war, and why belonging to the human race is not enough to bring forth altruism. Altruism evolved as a means of group consolidation of the ingroup, and genocide towards all other groups. This book should be read along with "Demonic Males" to get a good understanding of how altruism evolved.

For more than a generation now, students of evolutionary biology have been taught that natural selection is a process that works on individuals. Where there is a conflict between the good of the individual and the good of the community, the selfish almost always prevails. There are good theoretical reasons to believe this should be so. Most of the work that has been done in the last century to turn Darwin's theory into a quantitative science seems to point in that direction. Individual selection should be fast and efficient; group selection slow and unreliable. Yet the biological world that we see seems to fly in the face of this conclusion. So much of the adaptation we see in the natural world looks like it benefits the community or the species, often at the expense of the individual. So the pure individual selectionists (99% of evolutionary biologists today) have had to concoct a series of excuses, kluges, and workarounds. There are a multitude of reasons! that what looks like a group adaptation is really an individual adaptation. Most of our community has unthinkingly adopted the view that the "selfish gene" perspective holds a key to understanding the "illusion" of group selection. Wilson has been working for 20 years to reform this situation, and to restore common sense. If it looks like a group adaptation, it probably is a group adaptation. No surprise here - except to that 99% of the academic community who has been raised to think that "group selection" is a dirty word - something like "Lamarckism" or "Creationism". Wilson's book is just the kick in the pants that the 99% of us need. It is readable, yet meticulously documented. He traces the history of our prejudice against group selection, and exposes the faulty logic in those kluges and workarounds. Group selection really is necessary to explain what we observe in nature. Then, he goes on to offer us the th! eoretical foundation we need to make group selection plausi! ble. There are mechanisms overlooked by the quantitative theorists that make group selection a far more viable process than they give it credit for. If you're a lay person, you may think "of course - what's the big deal." But if you're an academic evolutionist educated in the last 30 years, you need this book; your thinking about altruism and fitness of communities will be changed forever. All this is in the first half of the book. The second half, presumably contributed by Sober, is much less focused and scientific, more apt to dwell on definitions and philosophical distinctions. The attempt to connect the sound conclusions of the book's first half to attitudes about human cultures is both more speculative and somehow less ambitious and important than the book's first half.

This book is excellent for those thinking about homeschooling, those just starting out and even those who have been doing it a while! Rebecca Rupp explains different styles of homeschool from "school-at-home" to "unschooling" and the pros and cons of each. She discusses what expectations there are for what children should learn and accomplish in each grade level (from preschool to highschool). The thing that Rupp does best, however, is share a wealth of resources. From software to books, from weblinks to packaged curriculum, there is a wealth of knowledge contained in this relatively small and unintimidating volume.

Whether you home school or not this book will help you identify what your child should be learning and how you can help.

This book gives you general guidelines of what is taught and more importantly the skills they should have, for example by the end of kindergarten they should be able to recognize and repeat simple patterns and they should be able to throw, catch and kick a ball; by the end of 1st grade they should be able to listen to, repeat and follow two step directions and they should be able to throw and catch a beanbag.

This book is well-written, it is easy to find what your looking for and assess if your on track.

As a homeschool mom as well as author of homeschool materials, I feel it is important to make sure that I cover all the bases and don't leave anything out. I've seen a lot of scope and sequences, but most of them are so vague, they don't tell me anything. Home Learning, on the other hand, is extremely detailed. It also has high standards, rather than being watered down education. I know that if we cover what is listed in Home Learning, that we'll be right where we should be and doing even better than what is expected in the public schools.

It's not the kind of book you read once and pack away. It's a book that you keep pulling out again and again.

Every recipe in this outstanding cookbook is easy to make and delicious to eat! This book is in colour with lots of pictures, so you can decide what to bake based on how the cake looks as well as how the recipe sounds.

From quick "bake-and-take" cakes for church potlucks, to elaborately designed masterpieces for parties and weddings, to brunch cakes, this book has it all! Why no try the decadent Tres Leches Cake, or the fun Chocolate-Chip Cookie Surprise Cake, or maybe you want a cake in the shape of a train. This book has it all!

This cookbook comes in a handy spiral-bound edition, so there is no propping pages open with bags of flour or pounds of butter (as I have been caught doing in the past). The book is also completely printed in full-color, so the pictures are bright and glossy. About 80% of the recipes include a picture of the finished product.

There is an intriguing introduction where the authors take you on a journey through the mystical world of cake mixes. They begin in 1943 in the Betty Crocker labs and kitchens, and move from there through the trends of the 1960's and into the future of cake mixes in the 21st century. The pictures and magazine ads they reproduce in this book are historical and fun. Before the recipes begin, there is a how-to section on preparing your pans, servings per cake, how to cool and split (torte) a cake, frosting and glazing cakes, and even high-altitude baking. Page 15 features a "Customer Q&A" about the SuperMoist cake mixes.

The recipes are divided into chapters: Bake-and-Take, Wonderfully Indulgent, Special Celebrations, Heavenly Holidays, Come for Brunch, Scrumptious Desserts, Easy Cookies and Bars, and Fabulous frostings and Glazes. The cookbook also adds sections on Helpful Nutrition and Cooking Information, and an alphabetical Index.

The Heavenly Holidays sections features cakes for beginning cake decorators. These cakes require no previous cake decorating experience, and look beautiful. There are chocolate heart cakes for Valentine's Day (no heart pan needed!), an adorable Easter Bunny, a Flag Day cake made with fresh fruit, a Jack O' Lantern cake (no 3-D cake pan needed), and even Rudolph Cupcakes which can be made with children.

My favorite recipe from this cookbook is on page 18, Chocolate Turtle Cake. If you like the combination of nuts with chocolate, this recipe is for you! The recipe has a full-color picture, a tip for serving, and nutritional information. All of the recipes in this cookbook feature nutritional information. The turtle cake recipe calls for a devil's food cake mix, water, oil, eggs, caramels, evaporated milk, pecans, and chocolate chips. The recipe requires a bit of planning as caramels are not a staple item that I keep on hand. The final product, however, is well worth the planning. The cake is moist, gooey, and a favorite for entertaining, especially when served warm.

The Chocolate Graham Streusel Cake on page 20 is a classic recipe from the 1970's. The recipe features an advertisement that was used in the 1970's, a tip for glazing the cake, nutritional information, and a yellow graham variation. The recipe calls for graham cracker crumbs, nuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, devil's food cake mix, water, oil, eggs, and a recipe of glaze (provided on page 242). This recipe was a heavier, denser cake than normal, and as such, it was a little dry. It's a good recipe for a morning brunch or family coffee-style cake.

Even without a picture for every single recipe, this cookbook is an excellent value. The recipes are tried-and-true winners, and are family-friendly. The nutritional information for each recipe and the dietary guidelines in the back are an added bonus, it is a feature that most cake mix cookbooks prefer to gloss over. The full-color printing, alphabetical index, and spiral binding make this cookbook easy to use. A winner!

I am not a baker nor a cook for that matter and was quite nervous when my sister asked me if i could host my nephew's playgroup last saturday at my house. Rather than just buy cupcakes from my local bakery I decided to be daring and try to make something...so glad to have found this book...I made the cookies & cream torte and no one could believe it came from a box mix...it was incredible and not only the kids loved it but the parents did too!! (I can't wait to make this again just for me!!)

I have eagerly awaited Patrick Michaels' book.

I am very actively involved in the debate on climate change. My specialty is human health.

I can say without reservation that in my field, the overwhelming majority of my colleagues are apalled by the nonesense that has been written about the impact of global warming on human health--asthma, mosquito-borne diseases, and all the rest.

Problem is, we all have priorities. Few of us can justify the time to counter this Orwellian gobbledgook. So the field is left uncontested.

On the other hand, there are people out there who have garnered large funding from government and private interests in order to foster this phoney paradigm. It is in their interests to maintain its momentum, with or without the truth.

The result is that the public are being fed with colossal quantities of pseudo-science, much of it expertly packaged and convincing to honest pepole.

Michaels, of course, has his own angle on all of this. Frankly, I would have wished that he had steered clear of the politics. The substance of his book is erudite and well presented. In my opinion, his account would have been much more persuasive if he had he stuck to his highly readable style and avoided all mention of the politicoes.

Ah well! Whatever the packaging, the substance of this book is solid science. I will value it for its bibliographic references and its logic, not for the other stuff.

[Sadly, perhaps, in this age of mis-information, we may have to adapt this sort of style to compete with the propagandists].

So, I give it 4 stars, and recommend Satanic Gases to anyone who wants to know a bit more about this hot topic.

This book is a fairly good review of the politics and "science" of global warming, but the author lets the IPCC off too easily. First of all, "consensus" is a political concept and not a scientific concept. Use of this word shows the IPCC is a political organization and not a scientific organization. The emphasis on consensus comes from the political left and may have been invented by Stalin. How do leftist organizations reach a consensus? A leftist organization only invites those who it knows will agree with its position and excludes those who disagree. As far as scientific evidence goes, only ideas supportive of the paradigm ever mentioned, particularly in higher level documents such as executive summaries. The IPCC says this exclusion is made so policy makers won't be confused, but what is really happening is that all dissent is being suppressed. That is why the satellite observations never got mentioned in IPCC reports and why other contrary evidence never reaches the policy makers. The authors make some of these points, but they could have been far more emphatic.

The cleverly titled "Satanic Gases" is a remarkably interesting book. Those of us who follow the greenhouse issue have been peppered with hot rhetoric and ad hominem attacks on the motives and the credibility of the authors. For example, see Ross Gelbspan's book, which makes the preposterous argument that these two authors have somehow convinced the entire nation that global warming isn't a threat, while the 2,500 scientists can't counter them.

But what comes out of The Satanic Gases is far different than boilerplate rhetoric--from either side. It is very highly referenced (so much for the argument that the critics don't publish), comes with the endorsment of the past presdients of the National Academy of Science, the American Physical Society, the past director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and the past director of the Board of Agriculture of the National Research Council.

The argument made has considerable internal consistency--read it for yourself and compare it to others and you may come to the same conclusion. But, moreover, Michaels and Balling provide a neat explanation as to WHY the issue has been overemphasized that breaks new intellectual ground and seems difficult to refute. In addition, the book is surprisingly evenhanded (considering the opposing rhetoric) taking on misconsceptions about this issue whether they are from the right or the left.

That's what makes this book different, and is why you should read it. I've read Stevens and Gelbspan and Gore's new edition (Satanic Gases is currently outselling all of them) and they just aren't as interesting, amusing, factual, or intellectually challenging. This book is a sleeper that is going to have a lot of staying power.

Madeleine Cooks, based in part on her PBS TV series, is a compendium of very modern adaptations of traditional French ideas, and stylish recipes based on American ingredients and tastes. This is the least interesting of all her books, as it lacks the encyclopedic and technical scope of her other works. The rather hard-nosed author of The Making of a Cook and In Madeleine's Kitchen is absent here, and instead we have a more conventional book of recipes only with glossy pictures. The book will be useful for those who want to do good-quality frenchified American food, but not for those looking for the kind of technical and historical information she loves to provide in her other books. However, duck-lovers will be happy to find that this is one of the few books around with an entire chapter devoted to that bird, including a modern confit and a duck-skin omelette. Slightly trendy, but not overboard or gimmicky like many other modern cookbooks. Novice cooks looking to upgrad! ! e their skills will find this a useful guide for making modernized dishes that are still respectful of tastes and traditions.