~This book is very well-written, composed of many short (c. 2 pg) articles on various subjects relating to biology/medicine, such as Sickle Cell disorder and Huntington's Disease. Not only are these articles very informative, they are interesting. ~On top of that, there are some really great pictures, including a pull-out poster of deadly microbes. ~The material covered in this book is fascinating, but it's not something that you think about every day (unless you're a biologist or you're really into biomedicine). It stimulates thought, and brings you to the realization that, yes, this is sort of cool. I was somewhat interested in the broad category of biology and medicine, but when I bought this book, I was affirmed in my belief that biomedicine is a remarkably intriguing field of study. ~I would strongly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in biomedicine. It is a truly amazing book! 5 stars!

Exploring the Biomedical Revolution examines the work of frontline scientists and how they are changing the face of modern medicine, with chapters presenting articles on research enhanced by vivid color photos. Many titles on biomedicine are inaccessible to lay audiences; not so this book, which focuses on explanations which are easy to understand, yet with plenty of scientific detail added for those involved in health care. Highly recommended.

Anyone who has done research on the Civil War approaches veteran's memoirs with a degree of caution. Memoirs are always self serving to some extent and often take too much advantage of hindsight. This work is remarkably free of such justifications. Rather it is the honest work of a soldier coming to terms with his war experiences. Philip Stephenson was a mere boy from St. Louis, age 15, when he followed his brother, Hammett, to Memphis to join the Confederat army. Hammett enlisted in the 13th Ark. and the underage Philip tagged along. He served as something of a mascot to his brother's company until he enlisted in the 5th Co. Washington Artillery. Until then he seemed to be free to come and go. Stephenson was present at or near most of the actions of the Army of Tennessee. He relates what he observed in great detail particularly in the last year of the war. Through his memoirs we see what he saw on the march, on the field and in camp. His descriptions of various Arkansans from officers to enlisted men offer rare insights to the boys which can be found in no other place. His observations on the men of the 13th Ark. are somewhat condescending, but he says, "All of them made as fine fighting material as the world could produce." The first one-third of his text covers the years 61-63. The greatest part of his memoirs discuss affairs that took place from 64 to the end of the war. From the Atlanta campaign until the war ends, his writing seems much more personal, more expressive of his emotions at the time. This coincides with the period when he served in the 5th Co. of the Washington Artillery and marked the first period of the war that he was not under his older brother's wing. From the moment Sherman attacked the Rebs at Dalton in early May until the Battle of Jonesboro on Sept. 1st, the men were in constant danger. Stephenson notes the horrors of trench warfare and the stress that it put on the men. The pressure became too great for some and he describes some of those who cracked. One member of his battery horrified the other members by taking his bayonet and jabbing out the eys of a dead yankee. Another deliberately walked between the lines to relieve himself as everyone watched in disbelief and the man was killed by a sharpshooter. Clearly this campaign had pushed many of the men to the breaking point. Perhaps no other participant has been as effective and honest in telling this story. Stephenson's account of the Battle of Franklin is very moving. His unit had been guarding a bridge some 30 miles away from Franklin and by forced march had arrived on the field between 9 o'clock at night just as the battle was dying down. Stephenson's one thought was the welfare of his brother and friends in the 13th Ark and he went among the wounded crying out "Where's Govan's Brigade." He finds his 3 best friends badly wounded and there on the battlefield they break into tears to find each other still alive. If there had been any thought of winning the war, it ended there. After Franklin, surviving would replace winning as the ultimate goal. Stephenson's memoirs are very personal. Through them we see how one survivor deals with his memories of both the best times and the worst times of his life.

This book is very challenging. As you go from the first page to the last you see it gets more difficult. A must for all beginners in Calculus.

Phillip Porter is a recognized expert on the Jaguar XK series. His book, suplemented by excellent photos, details each version of the car with text and photos. For anyone restoring an XK series Jaguar, the photos are a rich source of originality information highlighting differences between the various models. This book is well worth purchasing.

In an era when curious Catholics must contend with dissident Hans Kung's poor summation of Church history via the Modern Library Chronicles, it's refreshing to know that Philip Hughes' masterful compendium of his three volume work is available on Amazon.com's marketplace.

Though unfortunately out of print, the recent success of H.W. Crocker's similarly respectful Chuch history, "Triumph", gives hope that some publisher will reissue Hughes' essential book.

I read the original 3 volume history of the English Reformation by Hughes (printed in the late 1940's or early 1950's I believe). This is probably the best history I have ever read, and I read a lot of history books. There is no doubt that Hughes knew everything about everyone of any significance from this era. This is the work of a great scholar who has spent a lifetime studying the subject. There is no other book which comes close to telling the story of the development of Protestantism in the English speaking world as well as Hughes' three volumes. Not until I read Hughes' work was I able to understand why Protestantism is what it is in our world today. Hughes sets out in great detail the political and economic motivations which lead to the deveolopment of "true religion," the reasons why particular individuals in positions of political and economic influence chose Protestantism as the tool to achieve their goals, and why it was necessary for these people to ruthlessly supress the Catholic faith of the majority of the population. Here is the story of why certain theological ideas were selected by the ruling class. After reading Hughes' work I was able to understand the reason for anti-Catholicism in American history (and the history of the entire English speaking world). Before reading Hughes I was somewhat puzzled why some modern evangelical Protestants and quasi-Christian cults (Mormons, Jehova's Witnesses, Seventh Day Advestists) were so stridently anti-Catholic when exposure to Catholics was not really a significant part of the history of their founders. In order to justify what was quite simply theft by the power of the state (crown) in order to pay for a foreign war and criple the only moral authority in opposition to the crown's desire for divorce and adultry, it was necessary to invent a popular myth demonizing the Catholic Church. By selling the Church's lands to the aristocracy (at relative low prices because of the sudden glut of real estate on the market all at once) the Crown (Henry VIII) gained a very powerful and willing accomplance in its larceny. The powerful in the United Kingdom needed to justify their breaking of the commandment forbidding theft, a damnable act in the Christian faith. The justification came by demonizing the Catholic Church and inventing a new religion, English Protestantism. This demonization,in the form of popular myth, eventually became part of the popular culture, a culture that was carried to the new world by English colonists and incorporated into the new religions (evangelical Protestantism, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, etc.) invented in what was to become the United States. When the invention of English Protestantism is understood and one is aware of the materialist forces driving the development of that religion one can then understand the materialism that is rampant in American Protestantism and quasi-Christian cults today. Needless to say the lessons learned from Hughes' work do even more to explain English history after the invention of English protestantism.
Hughes is a great scholar and a superb writer. This is without doubt his finest work. This work is a must for the personal library of every serious history reader.

I want this book to give it to my friend so thatthey may come to know about the only and only true religion.

This is a fun book to read, and must have been a fun book to write. There are two parts in the book. Part I consists of 14 interesting essays, answering the questions such as: What would Santa Claus have to do to deliver all his presents in one night? Which celestial body is equal in volume to 54,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Big Macs? How loud must a noise be to have lethal effects? How hot would Hell be and how cold would Hell have to be before it froze over? What is the amount of air pressure required to burst a condom? Part II defines and explains all sorts of common and uncommon measures and scales, with lots of tables, illustrations and interesting examples.

My favorite essay is: How many jumping Chinese does it take to start an earthquake?

This book gives the readers a new understanding of all the measures and scales, in a very witty way. That's all I have to say about this book.

When I first saw the book cover/title, Thoughtware, on the Amazon.com website, I was very fascinated. It brought back sweet memories of a part of my corporate life.

It was back in the late 80's that I had the privilege to be associated professionally with two very innovative Swedish consultants: Jan-Erik Lundstrom and Leif Edvinsson. I was then working under them in the development of software for real-time man-machine communications, known as EYESCREAM, created by Jan-Erik. It was then that I believed Leif actuallly coined the term "Thoughtware" for the first time, as he had already delivered papers on it in international conferences. (Leif subsequently went on to co-author two excellent books, Intellectual Capital: Realising Your Company's True Value by Finding its Hidden Brainpower in March 1997, and Intellectual Capital: Navigating the New Business Landscape in June 1998. I would recommend readers to explore these two books, as they documented the pioneering knowledge management work at Scandia, the largest financial services group in Sweden.)

It was my initial experimentation work with EYESCREAM in the late 80's that I began my life-long journey in understanding the intricacies - and the idiosyncracies - of the human mind, in the context of strategy formulation and development. I started gathering all kinds of books, magazine articles, newsletters and research papers on the subject, to help in enhancing my life-long learning and real-world understanding.

In the mid-90s, came Amazon.com website, which actually helped me in sourcing the main bulk of the best books and other hard-to-get stuff on the brain/mind, learning, creativity, innovation, peak performance, change management, intellectual capital, strategic exploration, opportunity discovery, etc.

Now, back to the Thoughtware book, I must say this has become one of my favourite books. (Readers are welcome to explore some of my favourites in 'Strategic Thinking Bookshelf,' 'Opportunity Pathfinding Bookshelf,' 'Visual Thinking Toolkits for Business,' and 'Business Blindspots, Illusions Mind-sets & Paradigms' on the Amazom.com website).

Using the analogy of computer software, the authors of Thoughtware had very masterfully crafted a book in a creative and engaging style, with 3 major parts, against a smorgasbord of real-world business cases.:

Part 1: Context, introducing the performance drivers; Part 2: New Thoughtware, introducing the dynamics of intellectual capital; Part 3: Installation, introducing the installation framework for new thoughtware, involving 8 modules;

This is one good book which you just can't just read it in one go and put it on your shelf. You have to read it, think about it, reflect on it, synthesise it with your other reading stuffs, research your own experience, add what is specifically your own, come back to it and then plot out your next steps.

In a nut shell, let me recapitulate the essence of the book: What we do is rooted in our thoughtware. This is the ancestor of all our thinking and actions. The sum of the people's thinking in an organisation and their collective interaction is the mastermind of the organization's performance. It is the underlying platform on which every organization operates. First, change the thoughtware in our heads, and we will automatically change our behaviour. We can then move on to create capability to manage the future. We must constantly invest in new thoughtware, new operating platforms that become the foundation from which we generate learning, knowledge, innovation, change and growth.

The authors' contention in Thoughtware is exactly in line with the pioneering work of Edward de Bono, who wrote about the urgent need for FIRST ORDER THINKING in whatever we do, and who also coined the term 'LATERAL THINKING,' in the 70's. For more information about FIRST ORDER THINKING, read his books.

I enjoy reading and working with this Thoughtware book very much, and appreciate also the authors in affirming their book at the onset as "a work in progress." The human mind is too vast and too complex to be explored and understood completely, and then captured in a 200-page book. I expect the authors to come out with their new work soon.

Written as a response to sladerous accusations of lying and insincerity, Cardinal Newman composed one of the best autobiographies in the English language. To properly defend himself, he develops the history of his religous opinions from his earliest memories, through Oxford movement and finally to his conversion to the Catholic Church. Along the way he gives the reader some of the best prose that has been employed to descrbe religious experience. The book concludes with a point-by-point refutation to the arguments of Rev. Kingsley, that incidentally contains some of the best arguments against Sola Scriptura and other guiding principles behind Protestantism.

After publication, Newman's Apologia helped raise the esteem of Catholics in the eyes of the English people and helped make him a Cardinal. I whole-heartedly recommend this to anyone looking for a moving spiritual autobiography.

There are few autobiographies as moving and eloquent as Newman's "Apologia." This is his "defense" of his life's choice to leave the Church of England and "go home to Rome." It's a moving testament to an individual's struggle with spiritual issues and theological dogmas and how they inform our lives. I know of no other spiritual autobiography of such importance other than Augustine's "Confessions."

Yet, for all these superb reasons to read this spiritual autobiography, perhaps there is one "secular" reason to read Newman: His command of the English language. Newman has an excellent command of rhetoric, logic, and exposition that makes him a stellar example of Victorian belle letters.

I'd recommend the Norton Critical Edition over the Penguin edition, obviously, not for the "translation," but for the criticism that helps put the issues involved in context for the 20th century reader.

since the "Confessions" of St. Augustine of Hippo 1600 years earlier.

In this book, John Henry Newman, in order to defend himself from (rather unfair) charges of insincerity, outlines the history of his spiritual development, from his beginnings as a liberal thinker, to his conversion to the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, to his ordination as an Anglican priest, to his gradual move toward Catholic thought, practice and worship in the Church of England, to his leadership in the so-called "Oxford Movement" and its call to holiness and Catholicity in the Church of England, and finally to his ultimate submission to Rome.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Cardinal Newman theologically; whether one can accept his particular conclusions is not important to the enjoyment of this book. It is an honest account of a spiritual journey, written by an articulate man, which should prove inspirational to all persons of faith, and to all on a spiritual pilgrimage.