I haven't had a chance to read the new up-dated edition, but have an older edition. I enjoyed very much the edition I have & can't imagine that new information that's been added would do anything but improve it.

Dr. Postgate is a professor of microbiology at Sussex University & not only knows his field extensively, but has made a vast & difficult subject [for many] very understandable & interesting. He's not only a scientist but an excellent writer.

If anyone wishes to demystify microbes & learn how they affect us in everyday ways, & the impact they have on our planet, I highly recommend this book.

This book is a classic. Locate one if you are interested in the brain. It is easy. Search the Amazon zShops.

The monkey puzzle of the title is this: DNA studies show we share 95% of our genome with chimps. How can such a slight difference in our respective genetic blueprints account for such a huge difference in brain performance and anatomy?

This book proposes an explanation which, right or wrong, is just a splendid idea, a kind of intellectual marvel. The idea is that the brain is an ancient structure. It fully evolved over a period of many millions of years. This whole long evolutionary period is remote from us. It came and went a long, long time ago. In this scheme, the brain might, for example, have evolved within the head of a prehistoric reptile.

In subsequent evolution the structure of the big brain was lost. It went silent, unexpressed. But it rode the genome down through the eons until suddenly, just 2 million years ago, it was re-expressed in apes. Ourselves. A biochemical accident. Today, chimps still carry the silent code for a big brain, just as they (and we) carry the silent code for many ancient structures like gills and flippers. Chimps don't express DNA encoding the big brain, but we do.

If the hypothesis of an ancient big brain is accepted, a lot other problems suddenly solve themselves. The abrupt, seemingly overnight appearance of the human brain, 2 million years ago, allows almost no time for such an elaborate structure to evolve. The answer: it didn't evolve 2 million years ago. It evolved long before, over a suitably long period of time, and simply re-appeared in man. Popped up fully realized.

A current book, The Prehistory of the Mind, by Steven Mithen, an archaeologist, emphasizes a fascinating observation. Although the big brain appeared 2 million years ago, mankind did nothing particularly intelligent or impressive until 1.9 million years later, that is, just 100,000 years ago. Man was a toolmaker, yes, but he kept making the same oafish, primitive tool, a stone axe, consisting of a rock tied to a stick, for nineteen hundred thousand years. We did not progress.

Finally, just 100K years ago, human beings suddenly got smart -he or more probably she -- finally found the boot disk. Presto.

Everything, the whole explosion of human progress, has happened since that day. An explanation of our 1.9 million years of stumbling and stupidity, the long night of the human brain, per Gribbin's Monkey Puzzle, would be genetic drift. Lack of maintenance. An ancient brain would have come down us in very poor operating condition. DNA encoding for any feature that is unused over time will lose fidelity like a fading photograph. So it took 1.9 million years to get the biochemistry of the brain to start working again. Finally, 100,000 years ago, our antique thinking machine began to kick in. And the rest is history. Find this wonderful book.

This is the fifth book I have read of John Simpson's. All his books - and this is no exception - are articulate and extremely interesting insights into his working life as a journalist. This particular book deals with his famous 'walk into Kabul', John Simpson teases us by telling us the story in small segments during the book, whilst also discussing his very personal opinions on journalism, the BBC as well as many anecdotes. One thing I enjoy about his books is the way he talks about his own arrogance, pig-headedness, determination to get to the true story with such unusual honesty. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to be better informed about the wicked ways of the world. Amazingly, Mr Simpson keeps you entertained whilst educating you. He has such tremendous experiences as a journalist it would have been a waste not to put pen to paper.

John Cramer has brought a western to the shelf that provides a much needed departure from the "cookie-cutter" westerns that we are used to. The novel is quite interesting and is definitely one you can read in one sitting. The plot is more than just a shoot-em-up horse-opera. This book is a must read for western affecionados... Word is that there is a sequel on the not too distant horizon. This reader can't wait.

Many short stories bound together. EZ reading that will keep you reading for hours.

Once A Man Twice A Child has completely changed my perspective and understanding John Lennon's death. Before reading this book I did not know much about Lennon or The Beatles other than the songs they recorded. I live in the same town as the author and was lucky enough to meet Dan Alice. He handed me a copy of his manuscript. The first thing that captivated me about this book was the strange image on the cover; A man dressed as a walrus with outstretched arms similar to Jesus on the cross. It seemed kind of taboo to me. Later I discovered that this Walrus was also found on the cover of The Magical Mystery Tour Album. The walrus is also the Scandinavian symbol for death. I found it even stranger that the song I Am The Walrus from this Magical Mystery Tour Album was released exactly 13 years to the day before Lennon was murdered. Was this album and walrus a sign predicting Lennon's death or just a coincidence? When the novel suggested this I thought that this was insane. Personally I am very skeptical when it comes to coincidences, prophecies, astrology, spirits, etc. However, after reading this novel and the hundreds of strange coincidences and facts interpreted through numerological and astrological interpretation I began to think twice. I became so obsessed that I looked up as many facts the book brings up and every one of them is completely true! People, places, dates, events, ect., all 100% true. It made me wonder if the spirit of John Lennon's deceased best friend Stuart Sutcliffe was still among us and if Lennon's death was written into the stars. It has really spooked me out especially since so much evidenced has been overturned in this novel and examined from a perspective no one has ever taken before. I love this novel and give it two thumbs up. I would recommend it to anyone especially if you are a Beatle or Lennon fan.

John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (pseudonym Michael Innes) was born in 1906 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and his mysteries reflect both his scholarship, and the year he spent in Vienna, studying Freudian psychoanalysis.

"One-Man Show" (1952), also titled "A Private View" is later Appleby. Sir John has already been knighted and married, and has worked his way up to the position of Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard. He and his wife, Lady Judith (a sculptress by profession) play equal roles in solving the double mystery of who murdered the young artist, Gavin Limbert, and who stole two very famous paintings from the Duke of Horton's estate. (The Duke also plays a prominent role in the early Appleby mystery, "Hamlet, Revenge!" (1937).)

This story begins when Lady Judith drags her unsuspecting husband off to a memorial exhibition of the works of Gavin Limbert, a young artist who was thought to have committed suicide. When Limbert's 'chef d'oeuvre' is stolen from the gallery, right under Appleby's nose, he feels compelled to reopen the case on the painter's mysterious demise.

Appleby's assistant, Inspector Cadover is already acquainted with the case and he serves as a stiff upper-lip to his chief's intuitive, sometimes playful method of investigation. When Appleby disappears after a nocturnal ruckus in a junk shop, Cadover takes over the case and brings it to a successful conclusion---just as he later takes on Appleby's role at New Scotland Yard after Sir John's retirement (for more about Cadover, read "The Case of the Journeying Boy" by Michael Innes (1949).)

This particular Appleby is an equal mixture of mystery and adventure---Appleby personally engages the villains in glorious, but somewhat ignominious battle; Judith hides in a closet and overhears an artist plotting murder, etc. There is a wonderful chase scene that ends when Lady Judith and the Duke of Horton save Appleby from a particularly appalling fate.

Don't let the author's gift for playful, erudite dialogue disguise his mastery of character. "One-Man Show" contains a portrait of an amnesiac young woman that is probably the most sensitive and believable in all of mystery literature (eat your heart out, Dame Agatha!)

John Dinges, the author of the book, Our Man in Panama:The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega, does justice in shedding light and illuminating the path to understanding the evolution to Noriega's involvement, as a foreign-policy actor, holding the highest military-government office in Panama and how the U.S. supported and politicially embraced Noriega as a key political figure.
The book evolves with Noriega's involvement with the CIA, his early years with the PDF, Central American involvement, electoral fraud in Panama in which the CIA funnels millions to destabilizes the opposition, and leads the reader to examine how the near, if not over, 30 years relationship between Noriega and the U.S.is breaking down.
More importantly, the book will intelligently raise questions, argue foreign policy issues, such as the canal bases-treaties, and how the media, as a shaper of opinion formulated and shaped opinion as well as cultivated a "non-responsive" mood in the U.S. It can be argued, in part, that the power of propaganda was instrumental in debilitating the average viewer with just enough information to keep the reader misinformed, confused, and as a non-participant voice during the U.S invasion of Panama.

You might no think it, but the concept of the perfectibility of man has been widely held by philosophers. Of course, what they meant by perfectibility hasn't always been the same. This topic is the subject of the very enjoyable work by John Passmore. He discusses the attitude of philosophers and theologians from antiquity to the present, as well as touching on writers such as Orwell, Shaw and Zamiatin. Needless to say, many have opposed human perfectibility and Passmore devotes sections of the work to opponents such as Augustine, Luther and Calvin. For example, Calvin writes: "He who comes nearest to perfection has not yet advanced half-way." [p. 162.]

This book is lengthy, but you can use it as a reference work on thinkers. For example, there is a fascinating discussion of Teilhard de Chardin, who as Passmore points out, combines almost all the diverse themes found in perfectabilist literature. [p. 410.] Even many who have read a fair amount about Teilhard might be surprised to see his almost grudging support for totalitarian regimes of Europe in the 40s.

This biography was printed in a limited edition, and one could hope that it would be reprinted. The book is an essential reference for readers interested in seafaring novels about the Royal Navy during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is the biography of Rear Admiral Peter Puget, covering his entire naval career from the time he was a midshipman (starting at the age of 12 in 1778) serving in the West Indies during the American Revolution, to his final assignment as Naval Commissioner in India, with details of his final days in England, and some details on his children.

A large segment of the book deals with his service as second lieutenant aboard His Majesty's sloop Discovery under the command of George Vancouver during that ship's voyage to the northwest coast of North America (1791-1795). It gives some valuable insight into that voyage and the personality of Captain George Vancouver (Vancouver had served with Captain James Cook on both his second and third voyages). Lieutenant Puget was promoted to lieutenant at the age of 25 (see Richard Woodman's, "A King's Cutter," for a story about the difficulties of a midshipman from the American Revolution struggling for promotion).

The voyage of the Discovery started out soon after the mutiny aboard the H.M.S. Bounty (see William Bligh, "The Mutiny Aboard the H.M.S. Bounty"), with the result that a consort, the armed tender Chatham under the command of Lieutenant William Robert Broughton, was sent to accompany the Discovery. George Vancouver and William Bligh had served together on Captain Cook's third voyage, Bligh being the sailing master. There is no doubt that the mutiny on the Bounty influenced Vancouver's attitudes towards his officers and men. Vancouver had also been present when the natives in Hawaii killed Captain Cook, and that undoubtedly colored his attitude towards native peoples.

Peter Puget was responsible for surveying and charting Puget Sound in what in now Washington State. He apparently made a good impression on Vancouver. When Broughton was send overland to carry dispatches back to England, Puget was given command of the Chatham, skipping over Lieutenant Mudge, the first lieutenant on the Discovery.

Puget participated in the capture of a Dutch East Indiaman during the return voyage to England in 1795 for which he received an unknown amount of prize money (records show the final account was not closed until 1834, when his widow received a small balance of one pound, 17 shillings, 6 pence). The balance of the book covers the remainder of his career, promotion to commander in command of a transport, service at Gibraltar, command of a flotilla of transports, command of a sloop, promotion to Captain by Admiral Jervis at Lisbon in 1797 and assignment to command of a Spanish ship of the line captured at Cape St. Vincent, and then service with the Home Fleet in command of various ships of the line. He commanded the in-shore squadron at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807. He was appointed Commissioner of the Navy at Madras, India, in 1810, and continued in that position until 1817, among his duties overseeing construction of the dockyard at Trincomalee. He was forced to retire due to ill health in 1817, arriving back in England in early 1818, and never held another active command. He reached the top of the Captain's List in 1821 and was promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue after 24 years as a captain. He died the following year at the age of 56, having never regained his health. The book gives a good account of naval service during that period of time, including accidents and illness, the hard life at sea, successes and failures. He had enough time on shore to father 7 sons and 4 daughters.