Each stamp has a story to tell, and some of the most interesting are from countries that no longer exist. This book provides some history on each dead country. Perfect for those who specialize in this area or for the general foreign collector. If you want to know more about Bechuanaland, this book is for you.

I can't see why anyone would not find this book wonderfully intriguing and a great reference book. I can't say if there are many who are generalist collectors in dead countries, but I am. I consider it the most important philatelic bible (for my own particular collecting interests. ) And seeing that some traditional stamp shops don't have time to help a kid, a novice collector like myself, being able to buy this with ease is another plus. Have been collecting for sixteen years...three-quarters of my life, and this is the book I have been waiting for a very long time. Kudos to Mr. Harding for this book.

I searched for a book to send my niece who is currently living in England: something Canadian, something inspiring, and above all, something interesting. I found all three in The Journeys of Remarkable Women. Harding's free-flowing style made reading effortless as these plucky pioneers sprang into three dimensions, page by page. I found the details of the lives and travels of these women fascinating as their adventures in the new world unfolded.

Douglas McCurdy, born in Canada (Nova Scotia) was an aviation pioneer; he was Canada's Orville Wright. Besides being a skill aviator, his life was sprinkled with luck. As a child he had the good fortune to be semi-adopted by the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Though the paperwork for adoption never was completed (due to some family members protest), the relationship between Alexander Graham Bell and Douglas McCurdy grew throughout his life and created the foundation for McCurdy's future in aviation. McCurdy was the first to fly in Canada, the first to fly out of sight of land, and the first person to fly from the United States to Havana, Cuba (1911).

This book pedantically lays out McCurdy's rise and recognition as one of the world's aviation pioneers. The writing style is less than engaging, and except for those most enthusiastic about flying, most primary school children may lose interest. Sadly, the book lacks diagrams. When Les Harding attempts to describe how McCurdy and his team developed the 'aileron' for their airplane, (this was McCurdy's most important contribution to aviation) there is no diagram. The verbiage he uses to describe the "little wings" is inadequate for a child to understand. The dozen or so black and white photos at the beginning of the book were wonderful but they stop midway through the book and needed to go on to help children understand the world at the turn of the 20th century and McCurdy's place in it.

Overall, if your child is an aviation buff then this would be "a good book" to explain the little known Canadian aviation history. This book, along with the Robert Redford video "The Great Waldo Pepper," would be a perfect evening with the kids. Recommended. 3 stars

The editor, Andrew Ross, describes this book as "an expanded edition" of a special issue of the journal "Social Text". Potential readers should be warned however that it is also an expurgated edition, from which Alan Sokal's celebrated parody of of recent socio-cultural jargon has been suppressed. One understands Professor Ross's chagrin at the cruel and unusual joke that Professor Sokal practised on him. However, the unadvertised deletion of Sokal's contribution is a hoax on the buyers of "Science Wars" who naturally expect to find in it the one item of the original publication that has received worldwide attention.

The subsequent reviewer found the current tome missing in scholarship, merely by not having reprinted Sokal's piece from the social text issue of the same name (science wars). If one cared to read through the book, however, one would notice a number of quite specific reasons for this: among these that the book is meant as a counter argument to Sokal, Levitt & Gross's readings of their fave foe: pomos and other dangerous 'leftists' (what does this mean?). It is no secret that these authors are fired by a profound hostility and unwillingness to engage with the material with which they are dealing. This has already been shown ad nauseam in the litterature (see for instance Callon's review in social studies of science). Nevertheless this book stands as a nice response to some of the worst nonsense that has come out of the sokal/gross tradition. Specifically one should not miss Hart's devastating analysis of Gross et al's 'scientific neutrality' and their analytical abilities in Higher Superstition. Other pieces such as Mike Lynch's are good too; some however, are merely perpetuating the current stand off in a nasty 'war' (among these both of Ross's pieces). So is this review, I presume. That said, I should stop. Read both sides before you judge, you might get to know a good bit about rhetorical wars from the putatively neutral and objective scientists (sokal, gross, koertge etc).