After reading only five pages of this small children's novel by the reknowned fantasy writer Frank L. Baum, I felt only one thing: the need to make a dentist's appointment. Baum crafts a sugary tale without anything to really distinguish it, and it's the literary equivalent of eating a mountain of candy and not brushing your teeth.

This is the story of Santa Claus -- here portrayed as a human baby adopted by a wood-nymph named Necile in the human-free forest of Burzee. The baby is the first and only mortal adopted by immortals, and is given the name Neclaus, or Claus. For several years he leads a pretty idyllic life, and all the immortals just adore him.

But then Claus takes an interest in human beings, and ends up leaving so he can "make thousands of little children happy." So he ends up making various beautiful gifts for children both rich and poor. However, plotting his downfall are the hideous Angwas, since "one of the principal sports of the Awgwas was to inspire angry passions in the hearts of little children." So Claus and his little friends have to resist the Angwas so that little kids can have toys...

This is not a Santa Claus story based in any way in fact; rather, this is a tale suited to the mass-produced, plastic Santa Claus images that pop up every Christmas. The sugar level is mind-blowing. The idea of the bad guys, whose sole focus is making kiddies misbehave, is incredibly bad. The forest of Burzee is almost hilarious, with its inhabitants living in a sort of immortal hippie commune, with the kind of uninterrupted, continuous bliss that can only be found in certain controlled substances.

The characters have no real personalities: either they're sickening good or hideously bad. It feels less like Baum is telling a story than Making A Point, with the characters as his means of Making That Point. But even if the Angwas evil, they're not really evil -- instead they have a vague I-know-it-when-I-see-it badness, which mainly seems to consist of depriving the poor wittle kiddies of their toys and make them misbehave. Their idea of a hideous act is to steal and then hide toys (Oh horrors!) and they hate the good guys because... well, because they DO. Baum's idea of war is outrageously bad, and it's hard to take seriously because Baum takes care to tell you that it's impossible for the bad guys to win.

Claus himself is so good and noble that he is literally impossible to connect with, as are all his various nymph, Knook, Fairy, Ryl friends. The children that Claus befriends read like Shirley Temple parodies; lines like "I wants a tat" are too common to contemplate. The dialogue in general reads like a screenplay written by a first grader. If you can read lines like "I will overwhelm them with our evil powers!" without giggling helplessly, then you are a stronger reader than I.

I don't recommend this book for anyone over the age of eight who still retains full brain function, and I definitely don't recommend it for diabetics.

In author L. Frank Baum's book, nymph Necile finds a tiny babe in the forest of Buzee and raises him along with the help of the great spirits, elves, nymphs, knooks and ryls under the wisdom and guidance of the great Ak (Leader of all the great Spirits). She names him Claus who later grows up asking what is his purpose in life, and then decides to make toys to deliver to all boys and girls on one special night out of the year. But as time passes he soon he discovers that he is growing old. . .

A great book by L. Frank Baum that explores the fantastical life of Santa Claus-a real joy and gem to read, especially when you come to realize how many years ago this book was written. Baum's work here is so imaginative that many of today's stories of Santa Claus in my opinion pale in comparison.

L. Frank Baum was one of the great fantasy writers of the early 20th century -- in fact, were it not for Tolkien, I'd be tempted to call him the greatest in 100 years. His Oz books created a beautiful, vibrant land that still draws readers a century later. This book, his twist on the legend of Santa Claus, is part of that wonderful tapestry he wove.

Forget all of the Santa Claus legends you've read before -- there's no North Pole, no elves, no Bergermeistermeisterberger -- the story starts with a baby found in the woods by the fairy Necile. She raises him as her son, Claus (or "Ni-claus," meaning "Little Claus"), until the child begins to wonder about his own people. Shown the dangers of the human world by the great Ak, Claus decides to venture forth amongst the mortals regardless.

Claus gets a lot of credit in this story, from inventing the first toy to inspiring a war amongst immortals to retrieve them, and all of it is done in Baum's clear, clean style that is as easy to read today as it was in his time. It might not be the best book for a small child, who may ask questions trying to reconcile this unique version of Santa with the one he knows, but for an older child who understands that the spirit of Santa Claus is what's important it is a wonderful book. I re-read it every December.

I'm not going to say that I understand all of this. Most of it is way over my head, but after reading it, I can say that I understand more now than I did before. I'm planning on attacking it again in a couple years. Overall, however, Gardner does a good job of bring complicated scientific theory down to a plain English level by using diagrams and analogies.

Every decade Gardner updates this book. The five new chapters in the 1990 edition, including material on twistors and superstrings, are well worth the price. What Gardner does best is frame the new theories within a historical perspective. For example, he says it is impossible not to compare string theory with Lord Kelvin's (W. Thompson) 1958 theory of vortex strings. Vortex string theory was fashionable for at least fifty years. Gardner shows the vortex string theory and the superstring theory to be kissing cousins: Lord Kelvin used perfect fluid to refer to the superstring quantum vacuum -- both referring to the same sub-space area. String theory speaks of vibrating frequencies of energy while vortex rings were also vibrating frequencies that gave the atoms different properties. Instead of quantum foam with jittering virtual particles, vortex theory had vortex sponges with billions of vortex motions whirling in all directions.

Gardner's account of Roger Penrose's twistor theory is short and excellent. Physicists have gotten tangled up trying to speak of deeper down events which are hidden from view due to their sub-Planck length size (10 to the minus 33rd power of a centimeter). Here it is pointed out that "on a sufficiently small scale the concept of a space-time point evaporates in the complex space of twistor theory." Twistor theory, like superstring theory, was merely trying to formulate how the submicroscopic particles come into being. Both theories consist of math and lack any experimental verification. To repeat, the author discusses these obtuse theories in a way that frames their overall direction of thought. Gardner appears to agree with Howard George who calls superstring theory a "recreational mathematical theology." The bottom line -- both twistor and string theory are philosophy -- not physics.

I think that THE NEW AMBIDEXTROUS UNIVERSE (1990) is a wonderful book on symmetry and asymmetry in the worlds of everyday life, chemistry, physics, and unification theories. Everything in this book is noteworthy, and also up-to-date except for the last few chapters.
It is a very good updating of the previous (1978) edition, which concluded with many open questions in elementary particle physics that were resolved (and new questions raised) in 1978 - 1989.
It is high time for this book to be updated if Mr. Gardner can manage it (he is rather elderly; born in 1914), and a publisher will take a new edition. Books like this are gueling to revise and update.

I'm writing chiefly to defend this book against charges -- made by earlier reviewers -- that this book is pleasant enough reading, but weak in the philosophy department. As someone who spent too much time doing graduate work in philosophy, I find Gardner to be philosophically sophisticated yet thoroughly unpretentious. Sort of like a really good jazz musician with a strong background in music theory, Gardner mastered theory and technique, and then forgot it. Now he uses philosophy to think about the problems that interest him, rather than to write unreadable treatises about trendy issues that will nudge him closer to tenure or full professorship. Would that some of my philosophy profs had taken this approach! Moreover, Gardner's arguments, far from being trite, combine the views of disparate thinkers, such as Carnap and Unamuno (what the heck...?) in original and imaginative ways.

I recommend this book to readers versed in philosophy as well as to those with no background in the subject. As far as his political and economic views, I'm thoroughly sympathetic with Gardner, but have no background in these matters. I leave it others to judge the worth of these portions of the book. But I would suggest that the dated examples don't seriously undermine his arguments.

Most philosophers nowadays dodge all the really important questions, or if they don't dodge the questions, they write in a terribly obtuse style. Not Gardner. He directly tackles all the philosophical questions that matter to people, thinking and writing with his usual exceptional clarity and vigor. He explains why he holds the political views that he does, why he does not believe in paranormal phenomena, and why he believes in God and the afterlife. The book is a true gem, a pleasure to read, and deserves to be much better known. Just as I would highly recommend Gardner's books on recreational math to kindle someone's interest in mathematics, I would highly recommend this book to kindle someone's interest in philosophy.

Readers who are particularly interested in Gardner's religious views should also read his book "The Flight of Peter Fromm," a novel that describes the transformation of the title character from fundamentalist Christian to philosophical theist. Along the way, Gardner gives many penetrating criticisms of Christianity---whether liberal, neo-orthodox, or orthodox.

I read Gardner's "Whys of a Philosphical Scrivener" years ago when I was a freshman in college, and it was perfect reading for that point in my life. It's a rather odd book; basically it's a collection of essays on broad philosphical, religious, and political topics, with many interesting digressions. For me, one of its useful effects was to clue me in to other interesting books, magazines, and ideas, and I'm still benefitting from it. Evem without accepting all of Gardner's opinions, it's probably had, directly and indirectly, the most influence on my thinking of any book I've read. Gardner digresses- often in the extensive and entertaining footnotes collected at the back of the book- into mini-discussions of other writers, contemporary politics, odd historic events, religion, science, etc. It makes a good "what to read" guide. It's almost conversational at times. Read it yorself, especially if you don't know much about philosophy (it will get you interested), and buy it for any curious high school or college kid you know.

This collection of essays, gathering articles written for a variety of publications (but mostly for "The Skeptical Inquirer"), covers a number of subjects: creationism, UFOlogy, television evangelists, a few borderline scientific claims, and especially spiritualism and psychic research. Gardner is brilliant, and his writing is compelling, extremely witty, and easy to understand. In many ways, it should be required reading for anyone interested in "fringe" movements, but readers should understand that, as a whole, the book has some shortcomings inherent in these sorts of collections.

Some of the articles in "The New Age" provide convincing refutations of the topic under discussion, while other essays preach to the converted. Occasionally, he hits a bull's-eye: his essay on certain televangelists, written after the revelations about the Bakkers and before Swaggart's fall from grace, provides much information that is incriminating enough to push fence-sitting readers onto the greener side of skepticism. Other articles are valuable purely for historical reasons, such as his survey of perpetual motion machines. All too often, though, it feels like Gardner is shooting ducks in a very small barrel: easy targets, but bordering on the pathetic. One might argue that these articles are necessary because so many people believe in such garbage, but I can't imagine, for example, that his mocking summaries on the preposterous metaphysics expounded by Shirley MacLaine would convince anyone gullible enough to believe her in the first place. His chapters on the actress rarely offer direct refutation of her outlandish claims or point out their many contradictions.

The second deficiency is far more serious. Like many writers who collect their essays, Gardner has opted for reprinting the essays as they were written rather than rewriting them into a coherent and fluid whole. (His concession to the reader is to publish an afterword to each essay that reprints responses and updates information.) The problem with this unenterprising approach is twofold: since many of the essays were written on related or similar topics for disparate audiences, there is a lot of repetition, and the book bounces back and forth among subjects with no sense of direction. As a result, we read no less than four times, in nearly the same prose, about physicist John Taylor's testing of Uri Geller's "spoon-bending" trick, twice about Robert Browning's skepticism towards D. D. Home's seances, and so on. Likewise, instead of one chapter on Shirley MacLaine, we get two (three if you count the chapter on channeling), repeating much of the same information and placed in different parts of the book.

The final problem with the book is no fault of Gardner's: many of the essays are simply outdated--particularly those on borderline physics (such as superstring theory and the unsupported claims of Thomas Gold and Halton C. Arp, whose fifteen minutes are pretty much up). In fact, in 1996 Gardner published a sequel, "Weird Water and Fuzzy Logic," which I'm now eager to read.

Even though I've highlighted the negative aspects of this work, Gardner's analysis is trenchant and authoritative. Reading these essays made me realize that we need a "debunker's almanac"--an annual collection keeping up with the latest scams. In the meantime, I've ordered a subscription to "The Skeptical Inquirer."

Martin Gardner's writing is not 'technical writing'... it is science writing for the "recreational reader". This book is highly entertaining, accessable to non-scientists, and a highly informative and important book. To all of the avowed skeptics out there: this is one of those books on the short list of books that you need to give to your unsuspecting "non-skeptic" friends. Even the most devout fluff-head will get too far into it before they get put off by the content. And the book is inexpensive enough to give as a gift to someone you are not especially enthusiastic about giving gifts to.
For the rest of us (skeptics): there is in fact some new material that is not touched in the other classics of the "skeptics bookshelf", therefore this one is a must-have.

The material in this volume consists of essays from various periodicals, among them the Skeptical Inquirer, Nature, Discover, et al. It's a more mature work than Gardner's seminal opus, "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science" (which I do recommend as an overall summary of the nonsense that gets MORE rather than less popular).

Mr. Gardner, I now designate you as my second favorite author, next only to Arthur C. Clarke.

Like, say, James Randi, Gardner pokes fun at various fads, most of them known as "New Age." I must say I was a little confused that the text was broken into two sections both of them entitled "The New Age." That must have been a minor editor's error and, at worst, wastes a couple of pages of paper.

The most amusing character covered at some length in the text is Shirley MacLaine. A friend of mine passes from one New Age fad to the next but he doesn't hold a candle to Shirl who communicates with the dead, the gurus from millenia ago and God knows who else. In the text to which I referred above, Gardner covers L. Ron Hubbard when he was still limited to "dianetics," before that "movement" became a religion. In this volume, he confesses that long ago he just felt Hubbard to be a b-grade sci-fi writer with delusions of literary and spiritual authority. Now he finds L. Ron a pathological liar without any moral merit to speak of; that's what happened when Gardner learned more from two biographies of that founder of Scientology.

Oh, then there's J. Z. Knight who has been responsible for a real estate boom in the Pacific northwest where her disciples are flocking to get wisdom from 35,000 years ago. And the relatively short chapter on "Prime Time Preachers" was a real education to me who remembers Oral Roberts from the early 1950s!

Anyway, many other personalties and fads are reviewed here and it would take pages to mention them all. Like Randi's "Flim Flam," I recommend this as a general overview of silly fads most of them categorized as "New Age."

The first third of the book contains articles & biographies relating to children and science-fiction book authors, along with 3 chapters on the history of a religious group/cult (7th Day Adventist).

The first chapter ("Wandering Jew") was promising, once one makes peace with it being a history of the consequences of poor scholarship without actually correcting the scholarship. However, it was spoiled in the end by vitriol.

The last two-thirds contain book reviews; two chapters on the Wizard of Oz (more than most would care to know), the "Christian Science" cult, a look at social constructivist claims about mathematics, etc.

The book tends to undermine itself; gratuitous phrases like "moronic" and "tin brains" suddenly pop up. It seems like the author just can't get over the existence of human fallibility: the compulsion to instruct people on proper right-thinking seems irrepressible.

The common thread is that the attacks are directed only at people who challenge human-based authority. The modus operandi is to seek deviant examples for caricature and hope it carries over as a generalization in the reader's mind. Thus the extensive coverage of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, bizarre religious cults, and so on. The innocent reader would never guess brilliant modern religious thinkers and writers like Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Norman Geisler, Gary Habermas or Kelly James Clarke exist -- not even a whisper about their work. Someone might find out thoguhtful and powerful answers exist to humanist charges. Analysis of Augustine or Aquinas or Calvin? No. Any serious knowledge of church history? No. Just a spotlight for the deviant.

For all the overt and covert attacks on religion, the book seems mostly informed on the subject by "60 minutes" or "20/20" segments and the garish cast of characters who show up there. The goal seems to be how long a sneer can be sustained.

There seems dissatisfaction that individuals cannot be prevented from wrestling with issues of God and existence. However, the topic can't be controlled like mathematics: restricted to an elite 1 out of a 100000. People with of all sorts of intellects and cognitive skills and sinful natures are drawn to these issues. I would think a person who claims an intellectual life would seek out the best thought, not dwell on the weakest. One can't help but think of the junior high-school student who likes to pick on the 3rd graders. Trying someone at his own level or higher means the risk of getting creamed.

There are dozens of thoughtful, brilliant volumes one could profitably spend time with. Why the author avoids them is an open question:

"6 Modern Myths About Christianity and Western Civilization" (Sampson). "Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry" (Carroll),"Inventing the Flat Earth" (Russell), "How Now Shall We Live" (Colson), "Church History in Plain Language" (Shelley), "Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom" (Morey), "Reasonable Faith" (Craig), "Christian Apologetics" (Geisler),"New Evidence That Demands a Verdict" (McDowell).

With all that is happening in the world, "The Wandering Jew" could leave one thinking the biggest problem out there is that someone somewhere might be taking an herb not approved by the FDA/AMA and "who-knows-what-might-happen-if-he-thinks-it-works?". Trivial stuff and a waste of the author's (and reader's) time.

Martin Gardner has done it again: Another fabulous jewel in his crown of critical and thought-provoking works.

I have been a fan of Gardner's since "Fads and Fallacies (In the Name of Science)". His strength is in taking an unflinching look at the foibles and farces that most people would prefer to pretend don't exist in our civilized world... But they do, and they're ugly, and they need to be looked at -- acknowledged -- as a first step to fixing them, much as an alcoholic or drug addict first needs to admit they have a problem.

Sure, Gardner packs a modicum of vitriol -- but in that, he merely mirrors what the masses actually feel when confronted by the nonsense that Gardner takes on. He's a brave, bold and straight-shooting warrior in the war for common sense, reason and rationality, and I wish him long life and many more books.

Interestingly the "reader from Pasadena", the only negative reviewer, gives himself (or herself) away by the list of books quoted as being "thoughtful, brilliant volumes one could profitably spend time with": This person obviously suffers from the Religion-is-the-only-correct-viewpoint syndrome. I find it even more interesting that this reviewer states that Gardner's "attacks are directed only at people who challenge human-based authority". "Human-based" as opposed to what? God-based? Yes, we certainly wouldn't ever want to question Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, now, would we? Or any other God-based authority, would we? I can only guess the reader from Pasadena means that religious-minded people should be allowed to "challenge" secular viewpoints, but never the reverse. How sad... and how eloquent a reminder that the world needs Martin Gardner, now more than ever.

Here's a tip: Whenever you're feeling like the world is a crazy, hopeless place, pick up a Martin Gardner book and start reading. It's always a nice feeling to know that there's at least one other sane person out there.

Long Live Martin Gardner!

Gardner is amazing! Each of his collections of essays is a marvel. This volume consists of ten essays and nineteen book reviews or introductions on a stunning variety of topics.

Gardner is known as a mathematical puzzler and a sceptic and debunker of pseudo-science. He is also a philosopher and literary scholar of impressive breadth and depth. This book exhibits depth of analysis on a stunning array of topics, from Christian Science to The Wizard of Oz.

Highly recommended, but if you are new to Gardner anthologies, his collection, The Night is Large, is a better introduction to his breadth of thought.

This book is certainly not a "Colossal Book of Mathematics", and if you are looking for a book full of "Classic Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problems", this book is not it. In short, the title is wrong and deliberatly misleading. That should be enough for one not to buy this book at all, for why should one, when the author tries a con-artist trick with the title itself?

A lot of the book is full of information about stuff that is tangential to mathematics at best, like Escher drawings and other art. Escher is fine, but devoting so many pages to the symmetry drawings of a certain Mr. Kim is way out of line with what a reader might expect of this book. The "fake" chapter is also in bad taste for a book of this nature. Obviously "once bitten twice shy" is not something Gardner believes in.

Also an absence of adequate proofreading is evident. For example, the author claims that N is symmetrical about a horizontal axis. Also wrong (or incomplete) is Gardner's proof about why the second player can never guarantee a win in generalized tictactoe (the "proof" actually proves that the second player can't guarantee a win without looking at the first player's first move). More? The book says 1/0 is meaningless, and this in a chapter on infinity!

I however liked some parts of the book, for example an argument against the parallel universe theory is almost literature (it is not Gardner's but somebody else's whose name I've forgotten, unfortunately Gardner does not come across as anything more than a dilettante). Other interesting bits and pieces exist, too numerous to describe here, but scarcely enough to warrant a purchase. On the other hand, if your local library has a copy of this book, it's not a bad one to borrow.

This book covers a wide variety of subjects. It is not a puzzle book in the strict sense of solving little teasers, but it is a book that starts one thinking in broader terms. Some paradoxes and concepts addressed in this book, that great thinkers spent time debating and questioning, are fun for us more common thinkers to consider as well.

I haven't read nearly enough Martin Gardner.
This book tickled the math centers of my brain, which only get partially used in my work as a software engineer.

If graph theory, game theory, topology, and numbers don't entirely scare you away, you'll find something vaguely interesting at any page you flip to in this book, and after a few more pages will have prob learned something, AND found yourself using a part of your brain that might otherwise go unused during any given day.

Great book. Kept me fascinated throughout. Prefer Michael Shermer, but I loved this one nonetheless.

A classic compendium from the skeptic of skeptics, Martin Gardner. Though the book is now a little dated, the articles and essays on the dubious psychic "research" conducted by Targ and Puthoff are classic examples of why people believe in bizarre things simply because they want them to be true. This should be required reading for high-school and college students.

Gardner has never pulled his punches when it comes to claims of ESP, paranormal abilities, spoon-bending and the like. This book collects 38 pieces he wrote over thirty years, half book reviews and half articles. All of them attack, and in most cases dismember, pseudoscience and its claims.

The book reviews are acid and make interesting reading, but the articles are the meat of the book, because here is where Gardner assembles fully coherent arguments not just to demolish a foolish book, but to show in detail how someone like Uri Geller fools people. It becomes abundantly clear as you read this book that any competent magician (Gardner is one) can duplicate any of the feats of ESP or spoon-bending cited. It's sad, but not surprising, that this never makes the headlines the way Geller's original claims did back in the seventies.

In addition to pieces on modern figures, some less well-known than Geller, Gardner also writes about figures such as Conan Doyle, who was a passionate believer in spiritualism; and Freud, who had a long and very close friendship with a numerologist. There is a short piece on Einstein, who is often cited by parapsychologists as an establishment figure who nevertheless believed in ESP. Gardner comprehensively demolishes the basis for this citation, quoting letters from Einstein showing that he had no such belief, and was in fact very sceptical.

The only reason I haven't given the book five stars is that its very nature as an anthology prevents it from really achieving coherence. It's an excellent addition to the sceptic's armoury, though, and I strongly recommend it, along with another of Gardner's along similar lines: "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science".

The puzzles in this book seem to be intended for very young ages. The questions did not stimulate my mind and the explanations were not that clear. Elementary school students might enjoy this book, but if you're older I would recommend a different book with tougher questions.

My favorite part of Martin Gardner's "Classic Brainteasers" are the Logic Puzzles (although I was miffed when he actually provided a hint on one of them!). The Warming Up section might seem too easy to most children, but you really do need to be thinking "wrong" in the right way to work through these brainteasers. Yes, I am sure your kids have come across some of these before, but I am also sure they will find a couple that will stump them (hey, I did a lot better on the Science and Math Puzzles than I would have thought). Adults need to remember to concentrate on these when challenged by their kids or they risk being embarassed.

Of course, "Classic Brainteasers" is full of Wacky Wordles, Trick Questions, Proverbs and lots of other things that teachers can use on unsuspecting students in class. Since education is about learning to thinking as much as it is accumulating all sorts of knowledge, this would be a good thing.

This is another great book from the great Martin Gardner, who once wrote the Mathematics column in Scientific American. In this book, he is accompanied by an amazing illustrator, Jeff Sinclair. Sinclair's illustration combined with Gardner's ingenuity are what make this book so much fun.

I strongly recommend this book to those with young children, or for those looking for a fun present for a little boy or girl. The kids will love Sinclair's drawings and adore the book. The simply-stated problems and interesting solutions can provide entertainment for hours.

The puzzles are organized by categories. Gardner begins with a few pages of warm up problems, then proceeds into "word for word," a literary playground. He continues with a chapter utilizing Sinclair's pictures, then continues with tricky questions are teasers. The book finishes with science and math problems, more Sinclair in "Find the Mistakes," and finally logic puzzles. Overall, this book is 96 pages of fun!

'The Club of Queer Trades' is a very clever collection of stories all dealing with an exclusive club. Anyone can join the club...that is, if you can invent a completely new and different form of employment...oh, and be able to sustain a living by it also. This is a very entertaining book that will be a nice diversion for mystery fans, especially those who enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories.

These are six, separate, stand-alone little mysteries that together contain a larger book-length plot. The book is full of cunning though largely innocent deception, and each story backflips into a droll surprise ending. The characters -- the practioners of queer, and quaint, trades -- are likewise other than they seem. For all the philosphical and theological depth of Chesterton, these stories are light and deft and thoroughly entertaining. This is a small book expertly turned and burnished -- an exquisite Victorian miniature.

Michael Shermer praised this book in a recent article in his "Skeptic" column in Scientific American (March 2002) as being the skeptic classic of the past half-century. That by itself is a reason why every philosopher of science or even every PhD student should consider putting this book in their reading list. Unfortunately, while I think that some skepticism is a "correct" defense against "pseudo-science", I cannot agree that this book is supposed to be an example of "good" skepticism.

As another reviewer indicated when discussing the chapter on Korzybski, some of Gardner's chapters are written in a "mud-throwing style", using several "unscientific" arguments to attack the person, instead of the work they produce. Calling people ignorant, crackpot, obsessed, quack, ... are just examples. Another technique Gardner uses is citing elements that have nothing to do with the "scientific claims". That approach makes as much sense as judging Clinton's or Kennedy's presidential work by their respect for their marriage...

After critical analysis my conclusion is that where Gardner is probably right in attacking many of the theories cited in his book, the method of attack he is using is not scientific at all. At best on can call this book "fun to read", if you enjoy mud throwing and stories that destroy people.

So, if you want a good course in skeptic thinking, there are other sources I will recommend today. For skeptics, I recommend "How to think straight about psychology" (Stanovich, 2001) and "How we know what isn't so" (Gilovich, 1991). For current theories on judging the scientific merits of a theory, books such as "Science and Values" by Larry Laudan (1984) or "Social and behavioral Science Research" (Krathwohl, 1985) are more useful reading.

Yet, taken into account some skeptic precautions, I still believe we should give an hypothesis the benefit of the doubt until proven true or false. In my own book "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence", I tried to find a balance between the journalistic interpretations of science and the many claims of techniques helping to improve your EQ on one hand and the lack of "scientific evidence" for many of these claims on the other had. Therefore, to compensate a bit, and avoid you fall into the trap of rationalistic "flatland" and reductionism, I also recommend reading "A Guide for the Perplexed (E.F.Schumacher, 1977) and "A brief history of everything" (Wilber, 2001).

This book (written in 1952!) remains a classic of skepticism. It is very much the mid-20th century's answer to Charles MacKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". Gardner amusingly debunks many forgotten pseudo-philosophies, like the flat- and hollow-earth theories. He highlights the sadly lost Iowan science of "Lawsonomy," whose founder produced a host of ludicrously egotistical books, along with perhaps the most wretched quatrain in all of English verse:

"So come on folks, the past is dead,
The future is alrighty,
And by the will, we'll win the till,
With strength from the ALMIGHTY."

But what gives the book surprising and continuing relevance is its treatment of many still-popular belief systems. These include Scientology, Creationism, Velikovsky, UFO's, chiropractic, Nostradamus, and the ancestors of today's holistic medicine faddists. If you are a believer in any (or God forbid, all) of these, you will be challenged, and probably offended. Good, I say.

It's true that a few of the ideas Gardner poked at have, over the last 50 years, moved from the fringes to a reasonable respectability. The Big Bang and continental drift are by now mainstream. I am sure that Gardner would treat these subjects differently if he were writing the book today.

But in a way, that only adds to the value of this book. It prompts us to ask ourselves: Why do we believe what we believe? What role does evidence play? How much of our beliefs are due to family upbringing, and how much to what William James called (not disparagingly) the Will to Believe?

Gardner's work debunking pseudo-science of all kinds is even more relevant today than it was when it was written nearly 50 years ago. Although it has been 30 years since I read it, I can still remember many of the funnier highlights of the book.

For example, some of his revelations on crackpot scientists are truly hilarious. In his chapter on health and health food faddists he discusses Gaylord Hauser, who was a famous name in the area long before people like Adele Davis, Ewel Gibbons, and so on.

Gardner mentions Hauser's famous theory that acidosis of the blood is responsible for just about all health ills, and recommended fasting to counteract it. Unfortunately, anyone even slightly familiar with human physiology will tell you that fasting actually causes acidosis, a little fact apparently Hauser overlooked. Another great theory killed by a nasty little fact, I guess.

Hauser was also unfortunate enough to have died suddenly of a heart attack during his interview on the Dick Cavette show. Probably too much acidosis.

Then there is the chapter, "Down with Einstein," where crackpots par excellence try to prove they are smarter than Einstein. One guy by the name of Gillette (no relation to the razor concern) says of Einstein, "As a physicist, Einstein is not a bad violinist," and insists his "Back-screwing Theory of Gravitation" is far superior to Einstein's. According to Gillette, "...gravity is naught but the kicked-back nut of the back-screwing bolt of gravitation." As you can see, Einstein is not the only genius physicist out there with a good theory or two.

The one person Gardner actually seems to like in this book is Charles Fort, the journalist who himself reported on much of the pseudo-science of his day. Fort was a diligent and witty writer in the area who seems to have been fascinated by things like UFOs, the paranormal, strange phenomena, and bizarre scientific theories, and who appeared content to write about and document it all without really believing any of it himself. The Fortean Society he founded to carry on his work is still around today.

I could go on and on about all the funny things in this book, but I will stop here and let you discover them for yourself if I've managed to peak your interest. This is one of the most entertaining books of science writing ever published, and really qualifies as a classic in its own right that is still as relevant as the day it was published 50 years ago.