This edition of the classic 1662 Prayerbook is beautifully illustrated, giving it the perfect feel for mediation and contemplation. It includes the entire BCP with the exception of the Psalter, the Ordinal, the prayers on the anniversary of the Sovereign's accession, and the lectionary for the daily office. With these minor deficiencies noted, you should not be disappointed. The text is beautiful and immortal, and a treasure trove of inspiration. If you don't want it for mediation, then it is worth it to own one of the great classics of all time.

After reading this collection, which serves as a retrospective of the writin career of one of the better SW writers, I was left with a feeling that the selection could have been better, but this probably reflects my own eclectic readings of his work. Abbey's writings always seemed uneven, particularly in his fiction. His comments about the role of the independent writer versus that of the commercial hired of the establishment press seems right on. In spite of his many years of part-time non-writing service to various agencies he still managed to maintain his freedom to say what he wished about the rot he saw in the management of public lands. I suspect that he was always a bit shocked about how cheaply managers of public linds could be bought off. As a review of his lifetime of writing the book is excellent. McCrae includes some of his fiction, both the excellent ("The Brave Cowboy") and only fair (The Monkey Wrench Gang"). The sampling from his writings might be occasionally dated, but are still mostly relevant to the problems of the SW. His polemic about the cowboy ("Free Speech - The cowboy ans his cow") clearly points to the problems of allowing anything like an unrestricted use of and romanticism about what can easily become an extractive industry. At the same time Abbey's followers should have a difficult time justapositionng his sense of anarchy with this complaints about the institutional anarchy of commercial capitalism. To finish. A good read and certainly worthwhile for someone new to Abbey's work while being a fair sample of his writings for a person with only a passing acquaintance with the writings of one of the West's best essayist. The closing comments in Wendell Berry's poem about his friend are most appropriate.

This biography of one of the most impressive scientists of this century is both interesting and well written. The author gives a precise and thoughtful account of vN's life. I especially liked the fact that he does not dwell too much on the usual stories (such as von Neumann's memory power, or his famous Princeton parties) but tries to go beyond the public image. The best part of the book, to my opinion, is the section that describes Hungary -and especially its high school system- at the beginning of this century. My main criticism is that the book is rather shallow when explaining the scientific contributions of vN. The author is a journalist and not a mathematician/physicists, and he does not do a terrible job at explaining science. This is especially true for the economics contributions of vN. It is very clear to me that the author does not understand very well the progresses made by modern economic theory thanks to vN contributions (utility theory and game theory).The author, obsessed with Japan and competition, has comments with respect to the academic economics profession (whom I belong to...) that can probably be best explained by the fact that he is a PhD dropout. Anyway, this is very interesting book that I recommend to those interested in the evolution of mathematics, physics and technical warfare (but NOT economics!) in the XXth century.

It seems that as time passes and nuclear secrets are gradually declassified, we get longer and longer biographies of John von Neumann. MacRae's biography is helpful, partly because it is fairly recent, and partly because MacRae gives us a glimpse of the worldly side of John von Neumann. The book captures his social style, his special expertise at bluffing, his sense of academic showmanship, his political power -- and shows how adroitly he used that power and his own mystique to push through his technical insights and decisions.

Von Neumann was a trained chemical engineer. Although chemistry is usually remarked as the slightest of his credentials, he knew it and used it. This book includes the story of how he applied mathematics and chemistry to the development, delivery and control of explosive weapons - first chemical, and then nuclear.

Von Neumann's work on explosives is a common thread that runs through his work and pulls together many of his interests that - seen in isolation - seem amazingly disparate. His interests in computers, aerodynamics, parlour game theory and even meteorology were all rooted in or entrained by his fascination with explosive weapons. (For a thermonuclear weapon, for example, the weather is a delivery system for fallout.)

In 1938, von Neumann first became a consultant to the United States military, working at the Aberdeen proving grounds in Maryland. He began by improving the aim of very large guns with explosive shells. It was a surprisingly complicated business because it involved winds aloft, turbulent flow, impacts, and expanding shock fronts of explosive charges. It was on one of his frequent trips to Aberdeen that he encountered one of the University of Pennsylvania engineers working on ENIAC. Von Neumann was unsatisfied with the analog computers then used for weapons work, and plunged into the problem of improving the nascent digital machine. Ultimately he created a digital computer at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His purpose in building this particular machine was to use it to complete the design of the hydrogen bomb.

After the war began, von Neumann was sent to England to study the damage inflicted by German bombs during the blitz. He noticed the German bombs were not completely effective because they buried themselves before exploding. Von Neumann used this insight to invent the "air burst" explosive. Thereafter, allied bombs worldwide were fused to go off before they hit the ground. The technique vastly improved their destructive power. Hiroshima was an air burst. At Nagasaki, the bomb was an implosion weapon characterized at Los Alamos as "von Neumann's bomb" because of the implosive detonator he helped develop for it.

MacRae evidently admires von Neumann's accomplishments as a weaponeer, and as a political advocate of weapons development, but he does not quite convey von Neumann's personal sophistication and sense of scientific inquiry.

For example, in developing the digital computer von Neumann talked to a number of neurobiologists. For the most part he believed what they told him and adapted whatever he found useful. His Silliman lectures, reprinted as his book on The Computer and The Brain, includes his credulous precis on the neurobiology of the early 1950s. But von Neumann also noticed and questioned something few neurophysiologists bother themselves about - then or now - which is the fact that the retinal cells of the eye look backward. They are pointed toward the back wall of the eye, and not out at the world. Perhaps these cells see there a thin film diffraction pattern, and not the literal visual picture our brain shows us as an image of the world. Also, in a book by the editor of The Economist, one might expect a bit more on von Neumanns contributions to economics.

Withal, it is difficult to understand why such a civilized, curious, well spoken, socially adroit and erudite man was so intrigued by explosives. To try to make sense of von Neumann you can also read several other books - there exists no single coherent biography. Find "von Neumann and Weiner," two half-biographies in one volume by Heims; The superb Prisoner's Dilemma, by Poundstone; and for historical context, the Rhodes books on the making of the Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs.

After von Neumann's death, his concepts of strategic games were highly elaborated at the RAND corporation, and ultimately became U.S. nuclear policy. MacRae touches on this legacy, but the best book on this great chunk of obscured American history is The Wizards of Armageddon, by Kaplan. It would be interesting to know if von Neumann's theory of parlour games was also used to formulate strategic policy for the Viet Nam disaster. It would not be surprising.

My father wrote this book after retiring from his career long job as The Economist's longest serving staff writer. Here are some comments on what other reviewers have said.

It's true my father never studied for a phd in economics; if you'd just served in world war 2, got a first in economics in Cambridge and been offered a job at The Economist, you'd probably not have seen any practical point in that either. ( If you want to go into who knows what about 21st C futures, internetworking,intangible assets and new economics, I'm sure we can link you to that at http://www.normanmacrae.com )

It may be that some of my father's admiration for Von Neumann also got blended with his world views. But Von Neumann's family -whom my father worked closely with - didn't want any of that blend diluted.

My father was aiming primarily to explain to everyone why Von Neumann was one of the 2 great mathematicians of the 20th century and what background great mathematicians grow up in. In trying to make that accessible to everyone, he clearly doesn't go into the depth of mathematics theory that might stimulate today's hundred greatest living mathematicians. Everyone else will probably find the mathematical content suitable for a biography which they want to learn from.

Moreover, Von Neumann was the first mathematician to insist that the subject's future lay mainly in teamwork facilitated by computing rather than individual mathematical power. Not every academic has understood that point the way Johy would have hoped.

chris macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk Marketing Electronic Learning NETwork http://www.egroups.com/group/melnet2

The major difficulty in writing a scientific biography of von Neumann is that it is impossible to do justice to his tremendous scientific achievements without going into technicalities that are not accessible for the average reader. Macrae's book deliberately avoids discussing technicalities in detail, and while this makes it possible to give a very readable, comprehensive picture of von Neumann's life and its personality -- especially in context of the current socio-economic conditions -- reading the book one cannot really understand and appreciate why he is regarded by the sharpest minds of this century as a true genius.

John Von Neumann's incredible contributions to a vast array of fields are often overlooked and he is identified strictly with respect to one or two (game theory, the computer, and the development of nuclear weapons). But Von Neumman's contributions spawned such fields as mathematical economics and artifical intelligence as well as many new kinds of mathematics. The only thing lacking in this book is more mathematical detail about his work.