Wheels, Life and ... is an enthralling and thoroughly enjoyable book for anyone interesed in math brainteasers. It covers a wide range of intriguing topics, from simple word puzzles to complex mathematical ideas. Knotted threads and geometric fantasies mingle effortlessly with Zeno's paradox and the challenging game of life! I couldn't stop reading one teaser after another, wracking my brain on some tantalising clue. If you're fascinated by mindgames, buy it. Its a Martin Gardner!

I know it's out of print, but I gotta recommend this book and its sequel PAY DIRT, collections of Gardner's classic "Bob Zane" stories for the old pulp mag ARGOSY, written in the early thirties. Until the reprint comes, you can usually find these books at your local public library (at least here in the Southwest.)

Gardner truly loved the deserts of Cal, Az and Nevada. His descriptions of them are the best and most evocative I have ever found-- and yes, I HAVE read Edward Abbey's silly, Macho/environmental anti-ranching mantras. Forget that self-important windbag and read these old pulp mysteries instead. I guarantee your time will be better spent!

This wonderful edition of the classic Oz tale is bothliterature and criticism in one volume. The entire story - unabridged- is here, with all of Denslows pictures (in black and white). It also includes two essays, one biographical and one critical, about Oz and it's creator, L.F.Baum.

The biographical essay by Martin Gardner is a good overview of Baum's "jack of all trades" life: chicken farmer, playwrite, traveling salesman, author. It includes many of the stories included in "To Please a Child," the wonderful biography of Baum that is long out of print.

The critical essay concerns the history of the Oz books as literature. Oz is considered by many both a Utopia and the first true American fairyland. Yet, critics of children literature rarely mention Baum along with other revered authors. Russel Nye captures perceptions of Oz over the first half century in a concise, but comprehensive manner.

My only criticism is that it was not changed from the first edition (published 1957) to the second (published 1994), other than a brief introduction. I would have like to have seen a review of how Oz has changed in the public consciousness in the past 43 years.

Enjoy this book, and enjoy the story at the end.

This is the very best math book I have ever read. As many other reviewers have pointed out, this book is an excellent source for UNDERSTANDING calculus!!! If you want to understand calculus, this book is an outstandingly excellent beginning. I studied calculus over 30 years ago as a math major. I currently teach mathematics and was absolutely stunned when I ran across this wonderful, beautful, lucid exposition of the differential and integral calculus. Dr. Thompson is surely ranked among the greatest math teachers of all time. Of course, Martin Gardner's revision simply increases the lucidity, joy and beauty of this mathematics classic. MUST reading for any literate and intelligent person, who wants to UNDERSTAND mathematics. There are tons of books that one can read in order to learn how to "do" mathematics, but Thompson's book is in a class by itself, when it comes to excellence in teaching mathematial understanding. I simply cannot find the words to describe the sheer joy and wonder I experienced while reading Calculus Made Easy!!!!

Calculus Made Easy is truly a well-written book. It divides into over 20 chapters thorough examples and applications of calculus as well as the development of calculus itself, and everything is surprisingly contained in fewer than 300 pages! Authors of many modern-day calculus textbooks twice its size try to explain the same fundamental concepts but cannot achieve Thompson's levels of triumph.

Topics in this work include: limits, maxima, minima, successive differentiation, compound interest, law of organic growth, and more. Though the subjects are frequently isolated for each chapter, Thompson has nonetheless provided insights to the degree that one could synthesize or put together these various concepts to formulate their own interesting problems and procedures.

With the great Martin Gardner to revise this classic and to provide further mathematical expositions, Calculus Made Easy is highly recommended for the lover of mathematics as well as the teacher who wants to present mathematics from a better thematic standpoint.

I'm going to be a junior in HS next year and take AP Calculus, but I got bored over the summer so I decided to pick up this book and learn some stuff to give me an edge next year. The first few chapters were very easy to understand and were written in plain simple language, but I got pretty hard when I started the chapter on finding derivatives of ln's and exponents. I spent like, a whole week on that one chapter before I finally understood. However, I hit a brick wall on the chapter about dodges, pitfalls, and triumphs (Integration techniques). This chapter is HARD HARD HARD!!!!!!! I'm still on this chapter; the first section of it is easy enough, but it got much harder on the second example of subsitution. Anyways, if you are going to buy this book, then be prepared to be stuck several times throughout the book! Oh and you need to have taken serveral years of math in order to get thru the book; I suggest taking a look at it AFTER you finish 2 years of algebra (Alg I and II), geometry, and Trig (The guy who said he read the book when he took geometry must be on crack or something because theres NO WAY a geometry student could understand this stuff (well, MAYBE the first few chapters, which are REALLY easy; it get MUCH harder from there), because geometry is BELOW Alg II and Trig, both of which are CRUCIAL to your understanding of calculus!) If you do manage to get thru the book, then it is VERY satisfying, and you'll learn a LOT, because calculus sort of ties up all your math up to this point; all that math that you have learned throughout all those years will finally come together!

You're right: I have no one to blame but myself. (Fool me twice, shame on me.) I'd read another book annotated by Gardner before, so I knew something about what his notes were like. Still, I thought, who better to explicate the puns, colloquialisms, and mathematical, logical, and philosophical references in _Alice_ than one of the great polymaths of our time, a connoisseur of puzzles, and an aficionado of Victorian literature? Plus, it's hard to deny that _The Definitive Edition_ is a handsome one.

Well, Gardner has really outdone himself this time. The notes go on and on and on, eclipsing the actual text in length. While Clavin might interrupt a conversation on the Bermuda Triangle to point out the little-known fact that it's really shaped like a tetrazidrhomboid, Gardner thinks that when a character uses an idiomatic expression involving ferrets it would be relevant to mention a get-together that ferret owners recently held in New York City's Central Park. Much of the inside information Gardner does provide is along the lines of telling us that this character is based on Alice Liddell's third cousin, once removed, or that that character is named after Dodgson's pet gerbil.

I think Gardner may have finally succeeded in turning me off of annotated editions for good.

The title of this book says it all--more annotations than a Richard Posner book, and as definitive an edition as one can expect. It is a bit peculiar to imagine a simple children's story dissected to pieces, but the researchers and editors behind this volume from Norton (purveyors of some of the best academic editions) bring new light to the hidden humor and brilliance behind Lewis Carroll's works. Featuring original artwork from the first edition, as well as some abandoned passages, you will not find a more complete version of Carroll's Alice tales anywhere else. A must-have for the children's lit bookshelf in your home library.

I always enjoyed the twisted logic and unique sence of humor that I found in Lewis Carroll's Alice tales, the only problem I encountered was that some of the jokes required information that was no longer common knoledge. For example: when Alice continually misquoted the old English nursery rhymes I found myself wondering what the actual versions were, information that every child in Victorian England could have easily told me but that has since been lost to obscurity. After reading through this book I found the answers to all my original questions as well as many that I never considered asking. At first I thought that the commentary would strip the original work of its character and reduce it to a lifeless shadow. I found that the commentary did exactly the opposite, in a surreal way it made the book even more entertaining to read. The incredible detail of the commentary and the wide range of topics covered made the comments themselves seem part of the insane illogic that pervades the realms of wonderland and looking glass house. This does not mean that the coments themselves are insane or illogical, on the contrary they are all intresting and many offer new insights into the books, what makes the commentary so entertaining is how the story of "exactly 7 and one half" Alice is juxtaposed with comments on how the structure of the plot relates to physic and Robert Oppenheimer. Altogether I found the Annotated Alice to be a wonderful read and a gorgeous book which I recomend to anyone who enjoyed the original tales.

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking glass are two interesting stories. When I was a child, I watched the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland and enjoyed it. I've watched it again recently and find it very strange. I came across the book, "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass" in an old library at my Grandparent's house. This was an old English version, which may have made it more difficult to read and comprehend then if it was in common dialect. The first story, Alice in Wonderland, is the better of the two. It tells of a dreamland that a seven-year old Alice is visiting. This book jumps around a lot, and it is difficult to keep track of who's who by the end. The second story, "Through the Looking Glass", was worse then the first one. It is once again in a dreamland of a world seen backwards from Alice's own world in the reflection of a mirror. When Alice enters this world, there are about two chapters before they enter the difficult analagy of telling the story through a game of chess. This is extremely hard to follow, seeing as you have to visualize the chessboard in your mind. Each seperate story takes place on a different tile while Alice is a pawn waiting to be Queened. In the end of the story, she is Queened and has tea with the other two queens, that is, the white and red queens. The dissapointing conclusion was that Alice was really in her world the whole time and her kittens were the queens in the story. I found both stories a challenging read, and was relieved when the book was finally over!

In this book you find out about a little girl named Alice who falls down big holes, eats strange mushrooms, and shakes a chess piece so hard that it turns into her kitten. Join Alice in her adventures in wonderland and through the looking glass. This book is so totaly unpredictable and exiting that you can't put it down. It also makes you wonder and wish this could happen to you. Take a walk through Alice's imagination and read this book.
(I'm so cool.)

I think this book is very imaginative and fun to read. In the first part where she's in Wonderland she goes through a world of nonsense and is trying to find a way out. In Through the Looking Glass she goes through a mirror into a backwards world. I would encourage anyone to read this book because it encourages people to use their imagination and to learn that stuff happens you just have to find the correct way to deal with it.

My favorite character was the Duchess in the first part because she was very annoying and didn't even know it also she has a very comical cook who's obsessed with pepper. My favorite part of the book was when Alice met the Mad Hatter and the March Hare at their tea party.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, the definitive collection of Gardner's essays, and recommend it highly. My recommendation, however pales beside those that appear on the book jacket, including praise from Noam Chomsky, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Raymond Smullyan, Arthur C. Clarke, and Stefan Kanfer. Little more need be said about the value of this splendid book; but I would like to offer some observations.

The first chapter, a review of four books on symmetry is easily the most informative and insightful ten pages I have ever read on the subject. Gardner's rare talent for making things clear is shown to such advantage here that I would recommend it as a must read for anyone wanting a career in science writing. It's almost magic, the way he evaporates the fog.

The next nine chapters are on the physical sciences including chapters on relativity, quantum mechanics, time, superstrings, cosmology, etc., all good reads. The next five are on the social sciences, and it is here that I was introduced to a side of Gardner that I had not found in the other three collections of his that I have read. Chapter 11, "Why I Am Not a Smithian," is on economics and is primarily a dissection of the supply-siders who held forth during the Reagan years. It makes for lively reading even though, curiously it turns into a tribute to Norman Thomas as "the only notable American" to vigorously oppose the Japanese internment camps during WW II. In the next essay, "The Laffer Curve," Gardner continues his assault on the "voodoo economics" of the Reagan years as he presents his own satirical "neo-Laffer curve." Gardner is a sharp eyed and sharp-penned social critic, and, as he demonstrates in Chapter 21, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," a pretty good movie critic as well. (Although here I think he underrated the magic of Spielberg's movie in order to better concentrate on zapping the usual Spielberg schmaltz and pseudoscience.) Politically speaking, Gardner reveals himself as a "social democrat."

The chapter on "Newcomb's Paradox," which Gardner interprets as "related to the question of whether humans possess a genuine power to make free, unpredictable choices," has the effect of revealing Gardner's personality. You'll have to read it to see what I mean, but the choices he makes are psychological choices and reveal him as a man who is not afraid to stand by his beliefs. Herein and in the next chapter we encounter the question of whether we can have free will in the view of an omniscient God. Gardner's solution (with C. S. Lewis and others) is to put God outside time and avoid the contradictions. Incidentally, Gardner makes the very salient point that any language that allows sets to be members of themselves or evaluates the truth or falsity of its statements will run into contradictions (p. 419).

It is here in the chapters on philosophy and religion that Gardner is at his most intriguing. He is a theist and a believer in free will, although he admits that "distinguishing free will from determinism" is something we are incapable of doing (p. 427). He equates free will with self-awareness and consciousness, and declares (p. 444) "I am not a vitalist who thinks there is...a soul distinct from the brain." Yet on page 438 he writes, "I cannot conceive of myself as existing without...a brain that has free will." Although none of this is contradictory, we can see that there is something Gardner believes in that is akin to Bishop Berkeley's idealism and beyond the rock of realism that Samuel Johnson gave a kick to in an attempt to refute Berkeley. I agree with Gardner that we are not about to find an answer to the conundrum of free will, although I think it's important to add that as a practical matter the illusion of free will is, for us, as good as the "real" thing. Readers may be surprised to learn that Gardner also identifies himself as a "fideist," a word I had to look up. It refers to someone who believes in God as a matter of faith.

I would like to say (since Gardner doesn't) that consciousness as self-awareness should be made distinct from consciousness as self-identity. The former is a question of relative complexity, e.g., chimp consciousness versus flatworm consciousness. The latter is an illusion with great psychological power foisted on us by the evolutionary mechanism primarily to make us fear death. It is adaptive for long-lived creatures such as ourselves, but is otherwise empty. When the Buddhists (and the Vedas and yogic psychology) say the ego is an illusion, this is what they are talking about, this delusional self-identity that we sometimes refer to as consciousness.

There are number of funny jokes and asides herein. One of my favorites identifies Ayn Rand (philosophically speaking of course) as "the ugly offspring of Milton Friedman and Madalyn Murray O'Hare" (p. 484).

Martin Gardner is a national treasure. His breadth of intellect is astounding. The only problem with reviewing a Gardner volume is deciding which of his collections of essays is the best place to start reading.

This volume may represent the best intro to Gardner. While the subtitle is, "Collected Essays, 1938-1995," none of the essay shows any signs of age. Each essay is supplemented by a postscript which updates more recent developments, or more commonly, Gardner's recent thinking on the subject. Consider the section headings: Physical Science, Social Science, Pseudoscience, Mathematics, The Arts, Philosophy, Religion. Is Gardner the last Renaissance man or what?

In short, a great introduction to an amazing thinker. By the way, if you already have one or several of Gardner's other collections, get this one as well. Gardner has lots more to say!

This book is made up of 47 fascinating chapters, which really are Gardner's best. If you liked Gardner in SciAm you'll love The Night Is Large.

In the introductory notes, Allen says that he hurried this book to press because the rise in fundamentalism had been especially active at the time of publication. I wish that he had spent a little more time on it, to clarify and reorganize his thoughts on some topics. Often, a paragraph seemingly unrelated to the surrounding matter seems to pop up for no reason.

The essays themselves are interesting, and at times thought-provoking. (Especially for anyone who has never put any serious thought into the Bible.) For readers already familiar with the errors and inconsistencies in the Bible, Allens book is interesting, but not particularly ground-breaking.

Overall, a good book, simply because it describes in clear language the insurmountable problems that face Biblical Literalism. Too bad that Allen didn't structure the book as an argument instead of as an encyclopedia -- by the end, the force of the subject matter gets somewhat muted by its repetitiveness and scattershot layout.

-- Marc.

Simply put this is a great book. Steve Allen provides a very insightful analysis of the Bible and makes it clear (to me at least) that the Bible is in no way the "Word of God" but is instead nothing but a package of myths hodge-podged together. The purpose of this book isn't to say God doesn't exist, Steve Allen made it clear he believed God did exist. Instead the book tears down the literalist belief of the Bible as being dictated by God. Allen also does a great job of exposing the vile and disgusting behavior found throughout the Bible, much of it attributed to God himself. Interesting insights are provided on the origin of some material in the Bible such as the ten commandments as well as new thoughts on Jesus, Moses, abortion, Genesis and "the fall", hell and the Noah flood. This book should be read by everyone, so a more critical eye can be placed on the major religions of the west.

This is an excellent layperson analysis of the Holy Bible. Steve Allen makes no pretension to biblical scholarship. Indeed, must one have such credentials to understand and appreciate the alleged word of God? I think not and neither does Allen as he rips through dozens of topics revealing the blatant flaws and fallacies of the "good book". He does stop to smell the proverbial flowers, which are the few and far between edifying passages. I must say that it is truly incredible that those of the Western culture either do not see or do not know how much of the Holy Bible is not well suited to children's bedtime stories.

"Scandalon" is the Greek for what is normally translated in English: "stumbling block," or "rock of offense." Especially is it important as Jesus used it in Mt. 18:2ff, such as beginning of verse 6: "whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble."

This fictional account with some bordering of the author's theological jaunts have been written in a story of young fundy seminarian at U of Chicago Theology school and his subsequent distrust of the faith handed down.

Replete are these tales of people coming into contact with supposed scholars of Scripture who refute its teachings by their creative and imaginative historical probings. They don't keep open mind to other scholarly credentialed views which can make just as impressive a scholarly position as these, or maybe even refute such.

Written in early to mid twentieth century background, now interesting to view the author's certainty of evolution, while now most all of the supposed facuality of its model as been swept out from under it. The fossil record is nonexistent and it is unable to solve many of the purely scientific problems which confront it. Even its most adamant followers now state it on "faith terms," i.e. no transitional proof, just big significant changes one has to believe occurred without any evidence.

The theological much that is expressed here of a liberal and neo-orthodox mindset has been exposed to be theologically backrupt now. The Jesus Seminar, et al suppose that learned people will put all their spiritual stake in non-existent documents, with wild creative plots built upon their shaky suppositional foundatins.

Here, we see how one soul was deceived and caused to stumble. Shame on these women and men who think they are doing a service to young souls, when their bent is so blindly strued.

For opposing evidence, read "The Long Way Home," by John Jewell; "Case For Christ," Lee Strobel, and "After Modernity . . . What?" by Thomas Oden.

This is one heck of an entertaining book. The main reason is this: Gardner's narrator, Homer Wilson, is downright hilarious. Both his telling of Peter's story and his asides remind me of Uncle Screwtape in C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. Throughout the book, Homer subtly spins every story he recounts and every subject he addresses. His descriptions of certain real-life people are especially funny. For example, Homer describes C. S. Lewis, whose works were broadly Christian, as an "Anglican apologist." He describes J. Gresham Machen, who hated to be called a fundamentalist, as "the last of the scholarly fundamentalists." And those are just two little examples of Homer's spinning. It is strangely exciting to read a story narrated by someone you know you can't trust.

_The Flight of Peter Fromm_ is poignant in that Peter is ultimately ruined by Homer's spinning. Reason does not demand the loss of faith that Peter experiences, but the constant influence of the culture in which he lives, which subjects all things Christian to radical doubt while accepting the bases and consequences of agnosticism unquestioningly, eventually wears him down. Fortunately, Peter's end is hardly the necessary one for those committed to the life of the mind.

Finally, this story is eye-opening in that it reveals what can happen to those who are too brash and self-assured. Peter just knew he would convert the University of Chicago; instead the University toppled him. If Peter had been a little more humble he may have emerged from divinity school with his faith alive and enriched and refined.

I would recommend _The Flight of Peter Fromm_ to both agnostics and Christians. Agnostics, as they enjoy the outcome of Peter's story and conclude that that outcome was inevitable, should take a moment to notice the subtle deceptions of Homer Wilson, and at least consider the possibility that they should test their own thinking more rigorously than they usually do. Christians should take a good hard look at the road that leads, step by tiny step, to unbelief, and ask whether reason demands each step taken down that road. Hopefully all readers will appreciate the meticulous research, wonderful details, and humor that combine to make _The Flight of Peter Fromm_ a truly remarkable work of intellectual and historical fiction.

Gardner's book captures what the ordinary reader misses. The letter-writing form, to a beloved colleague, imitates the epistles of the early apostles, both in form and in content. Peter Fromm (the German form is Peter Pious) travels the gamut of 20th Century theology, with a crisis moment on Easter Sunday. The krisis is at once Kierkegaardian and Barthian.

Our primary interlocutor skeptic is Homer, the Odyssean hero of travel and disaster. When the Pious One sends letters to Homer, we can expect some major fireworks. The major irony of the work is that Homer sits at home, while Peter (like the Apostle Paul) travels the world on a big boat, sending letters back home to Homer.

The chapter on the "Molecules of Jesus" is the center-piece of the work, alongside Peter's Easter Crisis. For anyone who has read the New Testament, the issue of the resurrection and the current question of the intellectual credibility of such a faith claim is still stunningly appropos. Resurrection is ever the stumbling block to faith.

The discussions of Barth and Tillich, from the viewpoint of theological students is unparalleled. Peter's/Gardner's musings on "Who will meet me at the Pearly Gates?" are simply genius in their articulation.

I am a theological prof who uses this novel to introduce theological students to the gravity of their beliefs. I press them to decide whether to be Truthful Traitors or Loyal Liars, as does our "hero" Peter Pious.

The New Testament Peter denied Christ three times. I am not altogether sure that Martin Gardner's Peter has met his match. Peter Fromm's denial is overt, but not necessarily sure, deep, or three-fold. I found the easy skeptism of the Carlos Castenada Peter on a beach chair the least credible part of the book. I can't imagine that Our Peter would have given it all up so easily. If so, he had little faith at the start.

Cocka-doodle-doo,

The Div Prof Chick

The obvious (and probably most common) comparison is to Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent." Both explore anarchy and revolution and have at their centers double agents. In many ways, though, the two works don't compare. Conrad's work is much darker; his London is infinitely bleaker and grosser than Chesterton's. Indeed, Conrad spends much more time describing his settings and creating the dark mood. Moreover, Conrad is more concerned than Chesterton with the psychological motivations underlying anarchy. These are not at all shortcomings in Chesterton's brilliant work; the two writers, each excellent in their own ways, simply focused on different things and had different goals and lessons to teach.

On its surface, "The Man Who Was Thursday" is the tale of a detective who infiltrates the inner circle of a group of anarchists and assumes a position on its board, whose seven members all bear names of days of the week. Syme, the detective, is Thursday; the mysterious, enigmatic leader is Sunday. Much of the fun of this book is in the twists and turns, so I won't give anything away. Some of the surprises (or revelation) are predictable, but many are not, and one typically builds on all the rest--keeping even the most predictable of them fresh and intriguing. At a deeper level, Chesterton explores the nature of good and evil, of fate and free will, of order and chaos, and also of faith. Indeed, Chesterton's vision of Christianity penetrates his work, sometimes explicitly (particularly the concluding chapters) and often implicitly and more symbolically. It underlies much of the book.

"Thursday" is a difficult book to understand, and the allegory is not easy to see or decipher. This is certainly a book that deserves many re-readings. On this note, Martin Gardner's introduction and notes provide a great framework for beginning to penetrate the book's deeper meanings. Moreover, his descriptions of the relevant geography and landmarks of London prove both helpful and fascinating.

This is a true masterpiece, unfortunately overlooked by far too many who have never heard of Chesterton or who don't know he wrote excellent fiction in addition to his fine Christian apologetics. Anyone stands to profit from reading "The Man Who Was Thursday." And this edition only enhances the experience.

If you have never read this book, DO IT NOW! And buy this copy. For just a little more than the paperback, you get Gardner's notes which help to shed some light on the neighborhoods of London and Chesterton's story. I was not familiar with the layout of London and his annotations gave some interesting facts and tidbits. Also, this is a hard text to tackle and Gardner's thoughts help introduce new ways to understand Chesterton's work.

Definition is impossible : The Man Who was Thursday is not quite a political bad dream, nor a metaphysical thriller, nor a cosmic joke in the form of a spy novel, but it is something of all three. What it has most of is a boys' adventure story, which might help to explain my early excitement but not so much my continuing devotion. And what a title! I will not divulge its meaning here, but I cannot resist saying that anybody who at the sight of it does not feel a faint tingle of excitement and a breath of wonder is not really a fit person to be reading the book. -Kingsley Amis, Introduction to the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics version

G. K. Chesterton's classic novel manages to provide a thriller that starts out like a Sherlock Holmes adventure and ends like Raiders of the Lost Ark, while at the same time offering a profound contemplation of the existence of evil in the world, the role of free will in the universe, the willingness of God to allow Man to suffer, and various other vexing metaphysical questions. Both the basic story and the religious philosophy are exciting, and though generations of readers have complained that the final chapter is too difficult to follow, the Annotated version has explanatory essays by Martin Gardner and there's an excellent essay of his available online, which do a great job of explaining just what Chesterton is up to. It is very much a Christian fantasy (or "Nightmare" to use Chesterton's own subtitle) but can be read with enjoyment by anyone who loves a good adventure yarn and doesn't mind being made to think.

GRADE : A-