The book is organized around what they consider the three big questions of ETI: The "SETI Question," the "McCrea Question," and the "Fermi Question." The SETI question from the Drake equation asks, if ETI is common in the galaxy, why haven't we detected signals from them? The McCrea query from astronomer Sir William McCrea, who asked it of the authors, posits, if elementary life forms are common, what is the chance that creatures like humans will evolve? The famous Fermi quip is, if they are there, why aren't they here? The authors explore these questions in light of the latest knowledge and speculation. The answers they come to are similar to those found in the classic Extraterrestrials: Where Are They? edited by Ben Zuckerman and Michael H. Hart, namely that there are many reasons we haven't heard from them, from they don't care to communicate, to their civilizations are short-lived, to creatures like humans are very rare, etc.

The authors make a couple of important points I don't recall in other SETI books. The first is obvious once mentioned, namely that a communicating ETI must have more than just intelligence. It must have dexterity. "[H]ighly evolved dolphins with the intellect of Frank Drake are not going to build radio telescopes to search out ETI," is the way the authors put it on page 92.

The second point is that science should not abandon "ufology" because it is now mostly in the hands of pseudoscience and the tabloid mind; instead the methods of science should be applied to UFOs as elsewhere; this despite the fact that it is pretty well realized that alien visits are highly unlikely. I might add that keeping a scientific eye on UFOs is valuable because if aliens ever do visit we may need the most acute and discerning instruments, experience, and intelligence to even notice them. My suspicion is that ETI may be so much different from us that we wouldn't recognize it if it sat down next to us! This is an up to date report that manages to be accessible to a wide audience without any dumbing-down. It includes a glossary, a short bibliography and some web sites. But books on SETI are like computers. Because of the rapid pace of technological and scientific advancements, we must have a new one every three years or so. I'm already looking forward to the next.

Since it's early history, the Marines have been tasked with a wider range of objectives than any corporation would even consider. To succeed, they have developed an organizational structure that is the evolutionary result of thousands of successes and failures spanning 226 years in "every clime and place" around the world.
This organizational structure is the most dynamic (and therefore flexible) an entity can achieve without being disorganized and Mr. Freedman does an excellent job of highlighting the principles associated with the Marine Corps methodology and how they apply to business. This book is an interesting read that will challenge today's managers to rethink their own beliefs. It is very easy to see how the various analogies presented, illustrate a much more effective management approach than the standardized, rigid and leaderless method that has infected our b-schools.
Currently I am employed as a manager in a "corporate culture" and feel frustrated in the lack of ability, professionalism and absence of vision and focus that is constantly displayed by those in my organization due to the "management system". I can not express fully my frustration and feeling of impotency at filling out three forms to order a stapler.
Today's corporations are avidly searching for a new management approach to maximizing employee value and effectiveness in a competitive and fast changing environment, but what they don't know is that the "new approach" has been in use and refined since 1775.

Corps Business reads like a story as well and covers the 30 principles perfectly. The mini-stories about how other businesses utilize these principes (even if they don't know it) provide a great 'real world' view of them.

Being a Navy veteran I have always admired our Marine Corps partners (They are part of the Dept. of the Navy) and their great espirt de corps. This book will show how it is done.

Bottom line, if you want to make a difference for your people and create a great organization at the same time (be it Government, civillian, non-profit or even military) this is definetly the book for the job.

Get one for EVERY member of the management and supervisory team!

Another good book to get is called "Smart moves for people in charge". The two should be bought together for maximum success!

Semper Fi!

Light in the Sea is a large coffee-table book measuring 12in x 12in and is packed with a collection of photographs taken in, on, around, above and, of course, below the surface of the sea. It is, however, far more than just another collection of photographs of fish, corals and other sea creatures - this is an complete exercise in what to aim for when taking similar photographs.

I am studiously avoiding such words as "Outstanding" or "Excellent" when describing the pictures contained in this book. This is because there are many outstanding and excellent photographers out there - but David Doubilet is a cut above the rest and in a class of his own. His photographs need no such description.

There is far more to Underwater Photography than taking good photographs underwater and, having studied the many images in this book, I would suggest "Light in the Sea" is the template on which any aspiring underwater photographer should model their own abilities.

Sea Creatures are photographed from every position - with wide-angle lens and with macro-lens, from above the surface, from below the surface - and even from half in and half out of the water. Islands are shown with rows of coconut trees along the shores in the background and rows of corals underwater in the foreground - and all in a single photograph. Even that well-known rocky promontory in Egypt called Ras Mohammed is photographed from a new and exciting angle.

This is a book where every photograph is an abject lesson in photography with each one making the statement; "this is what you should aim to achieve when taking a photograph like this." This is a book where the Master has demonstrated his art to the student and I salute the author.

NM

The beginning of the book provides a description of the advantages of a gelatinous lifestyle, the role of gelatinous animals in marine ecosystems, and the range of habitats in which they occur. This provides the reader with an appreciation for the diverse and successful patterns these animals have evolved to live in a variety of habitats and niches. There is also an excellent section on observing, collecting, and photographing specimens.

Wrobel and Mills have provided a glossary of terms and black and white photographs of each major group identifying various body parts. The description of how to distinguish the major groups gives readers an entree into the descriptions of the species.

Species from four phyla are included: Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Mollusca, and Chordata. The descriptions of the organisms are arranged taxonomically. Information on identification, natural history, range and habitat, and other remarks as appropriate are included in each description. The most striking feature of the book has to be the photographs that accompany each species description. The photographs are truly gorgeous.

A must have for any well rounded child. A true classic, and always in great demand with kids.

This is the worst of several environmental books I have reviewed, largely because its style is too chatty, the type and presentation formats chosen by the editor are terrible and make it difficult to read and enjoy, and there is isn't a single map or chart or table or figure in the entire book. Bearing in mind that this book made the cut from hundreds that I could have bought and read, and it made the second more rigorous cut to be reviewed, these comments should be taken as they are intended: this is a super book that got screwed up by the publisher and a lack of decent editorial guidance. It should be fixed in the second edition, and I hope it gets to a second edition. Given the author's clearly superior access to and understanding of the individual personalities and organizational players across America, I am really stunned and disappointed that there is not an appendix to the book listing all of these, with contact information and URLs.

There is so much solid, worthwhile information in this book, including valuable insights in why Western political interests are undermining proper representation of our national oceans, coasts, and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in Congress, that I would urge those interested in the oceans (hugely more important to our future than the Amazon or globla forestry, just to make the point), to buy this book, suffer its limitations, and ultimately benefit from the wisdom and experience of the author, for whom my respect is unqualified and whole-hearted. In passing, it would probably be helpful if the first thing we all demanded was that EEZ stand for Exclusive Environmental Zone, rather than treating the oceans as a for-profit target area.

There is one other information-related observation I would make that emerged from reading this book: both the United Nations and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are clearly doing heroic and deeply important work vital to the future of the oceans--and they are doing a terrible job of communicating the basic information about the oceans and their work to the larger world of voters and concerned citizens. What really came home to me as I reflected on what to emphasize in this review is that there is a very wide, almost impenetratable, barrier between what the UN and NOAA know, and what is being communicated to the citizens who have the right to know (they paid for that information with their tax dollars) and the need to know and the desire to know. From this I would say that the next big step for those who would seek to save the oceans, is to demand that all UN and US Government information paid for by the taxpayer be put online henceforth, available at no further cost to the public. It is this information, the bullets and beans of the information war between corporate and citizen interests, that will decide the future of the oceans.

By David Liscio

If it's possible to wax poetically about the way offshore oil rigs attract fish, while still remaining a staunch environmentalist, then author David Helvarg has succeeded.

Aboard a helicopter, he writes, "We circle around the flat-topped platform called Pompano. Owned by BP-Amoco, it is the second tallest bottom-fixed structure in the world, drilling into the ocean floor 1,310 feet below the surface. About 700 feet wide at its base, it is taller than the Empire State Building."

Another platform, Amberjack, is described as "the ultimate Tinkertoy. An active drilling rig, it towers 272 feet from the waterline to the top of its bottle-shaped derrick. Its density of utilized space is a structural salute to human ingenuity."

Author of "The War Against the Greens," Helvarg's latest book, "Blue Frontier: Saving America's Living Seas," (New York: W.H. Freeman & Co., 2001), delivers in-depth reporting on subjects such as ocean mining, reef management, oil exploration, over-fishing, and government ineptitude when it comes to formulating sound environmental policy. The author clearly has divided his time between research libraries and the field. He has visited the underwater living quarters of scientists off the coast of Key West, climbed the towering oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and gone diving off Monterey where Californians keep sharp lookout for white sharks, all with the intention to see up-close what's going on.

At the start of the chapter on offshore petroleum drilling, Helvarg quotes an oil company spokesman recalling the Huntington Beach oil spill of 1990. The spokesman says, "Then this Hollywood star pulls up in his limo, must have been half a block long, wanting to know what we've done to his beach. And I'm thinking, hey that limo of yours doesn't run on sunbeams you know."

Helvarg has been beneath the surface of the sea to examine precisely the rampant devastation of fragile ecosystems, the destruction of coral reefs by disease, human waste, phosphate blanketing, and sheer overuse, particularly dive boats that anchor rather than use fixed moorings.

Although the Alaskan coast dominates the news in 2001 whenever discussion turns to offshore drilling, Helvarg noted, "There are some 4,000 platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico today. Offshore drilling accounts for 20 percent of U.S. oil production and 27 percent of its natural gas. Despite heated debate over drilling off California, Florida, Alaska, and North Carolina, 93 percent of all present offshore production takes place in the gulf." He found that many of those expensive rigs are run by disciplined crews who produce lucrative returns for investors.

Helvarg has meticulously and colorfully described how the oil industry was created in North America, and included a brief review of the movie industry and the media impact it produced. For example, he cited the 1953 film "Thunder Bay" starring Jimmy Stewart as an oil geologist confronting suspicious shrimp fishermen in Louisiana's bayou. As Helvarg put it, the film reflects the dominant view of the time when progress and industry were thought to be synonymous, while today, an oil gusher would be viewed as an ecological disaster.

Key Largo, off Southern Florida, epitomizes another dilemma. In Helvarg's words, "Branching corals that once grew here remain only as skeletal sticks in bleached rubble fields. Many of the abundant rock corals are being eaten away by diseases that have spread in an epidemic wave throughout the Florida Keys. The names of the diseases tell the story: black band, white band, white plague, and aspergillus, a fungus normally found in terrestrial soil that can shred fan corals like moths shred Irish lace."

Through interviews and an exhaustive search for truth, Helvarg has broken new ground. He has managed to explain in a clear and straightforward writing style such issues as beach closings, oil spills, collapsing fish stocks, killer algae, pollution, reckless development, and the failure of the U.S. government to protect what may be its final frontier - the Blue Frontier.

Most importantly, he has found reason to remain optimistic. Consider his closing remarks: "Our oceans remain full of strange wonders and grand experiences that will thrill generations yet unborn. Despite all the problems and challenges we face fighting for America's living seas, that is still enough to give one hope. After all, it is not every great nation, forged by its earliest frontier experiences, that gets a second chance."

(David Liscio is the environmental reporter for The Daily Item newspaper in Lynn, MA, an ecology professor at Endicott College in Beverly, MA, and the Massachusetts correspondent to the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Note to teachers: I use this with my ocean unit. Your students will ask you to read this over and over again. Trust me!

I have purchased a copy for my fishing partner since I don't want to give up my copy. My wife(also nuts about fishing) will never see this book. She is already much too competitive(and lucky)! I figure that the information in this book will give me the edge I deserve.