This book presents the view of evolucionist pychology. These authors have some excellent points, especially concerning social anthropology and some of Freud's misinformation, and anyone interested in psychology should not miss this book. However, once the authors have given an overview of behavior in the species homo sapiens, their theories cannot be translated to the individual. They have not taken into consideration the complexity of the human brain and the resultant behavior, especially the ability to symbolize. I felt like I was reading a book on how to assemble a Swiss watch using a pick and shovel

I've now read this book about 10 times over the past three years while teaching an evolution of human behavior course at the college where I'm employed. I was motivated to say a few supportive words about this book because I have become convinced of its groundbreaking importance in the scientific literature. After a decade of reading and studying evolutionary anthropology/psychology I find no other single book that so clearly and convincingly articulates the application of Darwinian thinking to modern human behavior. It is a perfect text to use with students as it not only teaches a wealth of information, but is also an excellent example of critical interpretation of data. Many of my students have commented on the power of this book to transform them into appreciative readers of science. From my own experience, it is one of a few books that transformed me from a standard social science undergraduate--mired in theoretical mush--into a more critical and thoughtful scholar. The other books that influenced me were by Sarah Hrdy, Don Symons, and later, Jarome Barkow et al. I encourage anyone interested in human behavior to read this book. Bring along a collegiate dictionary if your vocabulary is anything like that of my undergraduates!

Although nominally about the material designated in its title, this book is no mere collection of statistics, but contains wide-ranging discussions of evolutionary psychology, which Daly & Wilson use as the framework for an understanding of the phenomenon of homicide. So if the propensity to homicide is bred into the human race by millennia of natural selection, so also are other phenomena with which society struggles, like sexual harassment. I guess my point is that this book is about homicide and more. It's also lucid and even witty. It reads like a detective story, which indeed it is, but the culprit here is manifold rather than singular. The book will also furnish guidance to those who subscribe to the view that arrest, conviction, and incarceration will have only limited effects on the homicide rate, and that homicide be treated also as a public health problem. Daly & Wilson consider anthropological data from around the world and historical data as well to draw their inferences. In the most common type of murder the perpetrator and victim are young men who know each other and are in (ostensible) conflict over some trivial matter. But Daly & Wilson say that murder is the rare outcome of a common situation where two men face off against each other with each trying to appear more formidable and dangerous than the other. The (biological) reason they behave as they do is that such behavior causes them to acquire (or keep) control of the reproductive behavior of their women. Think about it: wimps, who allowed their women to be taken away from themselves, left no wimp genes in the gene pool. Of course there are a lot of other kinds of murders: children are occasionally murdered, sometimes by their natural parents, but more often by step-parents. It appears that there is a basis for the ever-popular myth (in many cultures, not just western European) of the evil step-parent. Husbands murder wives, but this seems to be a case of violence being used to control the wife's reproductive behavior, and the violence gets out of hand. When wives murder husbands (a rarer occurrence) it tends to be defensive in nature. Wonderful book! Very thought provoking.

It is a good book, but not great as his another one: Rock and Royalty, Versace/Avedon. If you are a fan of Versace, then it's worth to buy one.

If you're a female (or well, at least a gay), better brace yourself and get ready for a glossy, eye-filling page after page of the finest young men ever born and bred in the whole world! Those sexy studs are very artfully depicted here in a stylish vein by a very creative fashion designer like Gianni Versace and most of them are quite scantily-clad and some of them even completely naked. A very bold and unconventional piece of art that you can find on any coffee table! Too bad this handsome album is just plain too expensive for me to merely pluck right off a bookstore shelf!

Okay, the males are stylish and handsome both--possessed of muscles, adorned with Versace's jubilant, expressionistic attire. But there's more expressionism in the photos themselves. I know of no other book where visual images (here, photos) are not just presented 1-2-3 in static procession, but where portions are repeated--echoed later on--blended with following photos--in a creative interweaving which can only be "art" in the definition of "dynamic combination of symmetry or order, and asymmetry or tension." A beach scene appears, then is blended with another scene later. And interblended with the written text, too. Rare is this twin-starring of word and image, plus this permutation-and-combination of images. Only in comics do word and image so vitally interact. So check out this book for its design-artistry, as well as its aesthetic dudes.....

This children's book, illustrated by Mary Azarian, won the 1999 Caldecott Medal for best illustrations in a book for children. It is the story of Wilson A. Bentley (1865-1931) of Jericho, Vermont, who had a passion for studying snowflakes. Having developed a technique for photographing snowflakes, he spent years collecting and giving lectures in the midst of running his farm: a true farmer-scientist. He even wrote a text called Snow Crystals. He noted the six sidedness of most crystals and a few three-sided. One wonders what he would have said upon hearing that some researchers in the late 1990s had found two identical snowflakes since he had never been able to find two that were alike. This book is a celebration not only of the man but of our love and interest in the natural world. Children will enjoy this book with its magnificent woodcuts immensely.

The inspiring true story of photographer and self-made scientist Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley proves that anyone can achieve their dream. Born of humble means on a Vermont farm in 1865, Bentley was fascinated with weather and devoted his life to studying snow crystals. With the aid of his parents, who sacrificed their life's savings so he could buy the proper equipment, Bentley created photographs that provided the world with invaluable insight into snow crystals.

Mary Azarian illustrates this charmer with warm, hand-colored woodcuts that create an appropriately old-fashioned feel. The simple main text of this 1999 Caldecott Medal winner flows well with the charming illustrations. Sidebars on each page add additional details that maintain interest for older readers and allow the main text to remain focused on the story.

I found this very inspirational and a joy to read. My only complaint is the dearth of actual photographs by Bentley. The entire book builds interest in the photographs, but only three tiny copies of the actual photographs are shown on the last page.

Snowflake Bentley is one of the best biographies I have seen for children because it combines so many elements of a worthwhile children's book so successfully. First, the book deserves its Caldecott Medal for outstanding illustrations from the gorgeous hand-colored woodcuts that provide a wonderful old-fashioned feel. Second, the book also describes the beauty of snowflakes and shows both abstract designs of them as well as some of Mr. Bentley's own photographs. Third, many of the fundamental science facts about snowflakes are described (I learned more about why snowflakes are unique than I had ever known before). Fourth, Mr. Bentley's life is inspirational in several ways. He followed and lived his passion. His parents also supported him in the passion, in a wonderfully loving way. He succeeded in bringing beauty to the world that has changed the way everyone sees it. In doing so, he has lightened the burdens of winter a little for us all.

Mr. Bentley was "a boy who loved snow more than anything else in the world." Where others saw cold and discomfort in his home of Jericho, Vermont, he saw beauty. That was good becaues the snowfall averages around 120 inches a year there. "He said snow was as beautiful as butterflies, or apple blossoms." In the good weather, he could net butterflies or carry apple blossoms to show to others, but snowflakes were more difficult to share. His mother (who was his teacher until he was 14) gave him an old microscope, and he began to look at snowflakes in the cold. He noticed that no two were alike, and began to draw them.

At 17, he learned that you could photograph what you could see in a microscope. His parents made an enormous investment and got him one. The cost was equal to the value of his father's whole herd of ten cows. The camera was as large as a calf. In those days (1882), you had to use large glass plates to make images.

From then one, he was committed to his photography. Some winters, he could only make a few photographs successfully. The best time was during a snow storm in 1928, when he made over 100 in two days overlapping Valentine's day.

He learned to make his images better and better, and shared them with others. During the good weather, he also photographed spiders' webs, the dew on natural objects, and other small scenes of nature. He earned a little money from all this, but his costs exceeded his revenues by almost 4 to 1 over a lifetime. All of his money went for photography. When he was 66, some scientists gave him the money to publish a book of his photographs. Shortly thereafter, he died of pneumonia contracted after photographing during a blizzard. The town honored him with a plaque.

The book contains the story of Mr. Bentley's life, has sidebars that provide more detail on the science and certain aspects of his life, shows photographs, and is illustrated with the hand-colored woodcuts I mentioned earlier. The result is something that can appeal to a child in different ways at different ages. You can read this mostly as being a biography, or as mostly about snowflakes, or as mostly about photography of nature.

Most parents would encourage their children to do what they love. Here is a life that shows the wisdom of that inclination. In the course of reading this book, I encourage you to tell your child that she or he should find a similar passion and explore it. In the process, you should describe your own passions, and how you explore them to provide a further example.

Explore all of the uniqueness of yourself and your children! No two are exactly alike -- like snowflakes!

I first heard about the issue of genetically modified (GMO) food a few years ago when the protest movement against it began in Great Britain and then spread to the rest of Europe. However, I did not know the issues involved...

After reading this book, I think I have a better grasp on the problems with GMO foods as contrasted to traditional food. The most shocking assertion I found in the book is that GMO foods do not offer any benefits (whether it be higher yields, higher nutritional value etc...). I have not done enough research to verify this either way but if true that would be quite shocking.

Some of the interesting things I learned in the book:

- GMO science is quite imprecise. Researchers are often not sure if the insertion of foreign genes into a host (e.g. a plant) will have the predicted results or not.

- The immense size of some GMO companies, notably the American firm Monsanto. (To give some perspective: Microsoft is to the software industry as Monsanto is to the GMO industry)

One of the most pressing concerns for me was the commercialization of agriculture. For example, Monsanto spent $8 billion US in the first half of 1998 buying out seed companies (a few companies may end up owning patents to all the seeds in the world if this is left unchecked). The new trend of patenting seeds is also creating a dependency on the part of the farmers. Prior to GMO, farmers would save the seeds from their better crops and plant those next years. GMO companies, through contracts and other legal instruments, now insure that farmers buy from them EVERY year and they penalize the farmers if they attempt to save seeds. The whole concept of OWNING plants and organisms was very disturbing (it was interesting to note that a little known US Supreme Court decision Diamond v. Chakrabarty 1980 set a precedent in patenting life)

There was also some discussion of whether GMO foods should be labeled as such (the authors argue that GMO foods should be labeled). Of course, this is done in Western Europe, so there is no question of whether this is possible. GMO companies are vigorously fighting this, fearing that the public will immediately stop buying their products.

The main content of the book consisted of documenting various cases where GMO foods have caused problems of some sort or another. There was an interesting point made on how much of an influence GMO companies have on the Food and Drug Administration in the US. There was also an introductory section on genetic engineering, so the beginner will not get lost.

The authors offered a personal strategy whereby one can try to publicize the issue, find alternatives to buying and eating GMO foods and so on. The authors are clearly of the view that GMO foods are, at best, a strange unknown and, at worst, a foolish risk.

I took off a star off because the writing could have been better and the authors made their agenda a little too obvious. It would have improved the book if they had included and responded to some of the pro-GMO counter-arguments.

The authors have succeeded in putting forward a well-researched and well-argued overview of genetically modified food which the layman can understand. It deals not just with the science, but with the moral, ethical and political debate. With one of the agri-giants reputed to be developing a courgette with a human conscience, this book examines the far reaching implications of genetic engineering.

This is a well written book that provides the facts about modern genetically modified foods such as corn and soy and explores the different avenues by which these foods can be harmful to us as well as other animals.

The book does not tell you what you should do, but it really does not have too because the evidence the authors provide is so compelling, that anyone who reads this book will think twice about their next purchase at the store.

The book also explores the nature by which large corporations such as Novartis and Monsanto are able to saturate the market with their products before ample (or any kind of) testing is performed. Monsanto is also on the path to a closed loop business whereby they sell the farmers the GMO seeds which in turn require the pesticide (or other chemical) also manufactured by saiid company and the farmer must also pay a technology fee for using the seed!

A must read!

This is a very intellectual discussion and exploration of sex and its role in evolution and behavior. It's well-written, easily understood, informative, coherent, and memorable. I read it in 1985 and remember much of its material.

I read this book in a college class. Mind you, I didn't read most of my college books, but I couldn't put this one down. It gives a clear, intelligent, remarkably well-documented, fascinating description of how sex evolved and how that evolution effects the behavior of everything from bacteria to modern social humans.

This book is very accessible to any reasonably educated reader, regardless of your knowledge of evolutionary biology. And each idea is punctuated with a fascinating example taken from nature.

Why do lightning bugs flash, and what controls the pattern to their flashing? Why are there two sexes? Why is a red sports car sexy? You'll learn the (evolutionary biology) answers to these and countless other intriguing questions. This book is a great lesson in evolution and a revealing investigation of why aniamls do the things they do, from an African hamster to... you.

HARRISON'S is synonymous with clinical books that worth their weights in gold. This 15th/ed CD-ROM maintained that tradition. It adds the much-needed portability to some 2700-paged heavyweight. However, the air-tight use-restrictions attached to the ...price is simply suffocating. I wish that the publisher had relaxed a bit!
Overall though, there were compensations. The CD contents are superb: far better than what the textbook versions offer. Anyone with interest in medical science should give it a try. It is elaborate and easy to understand. The excellent chapters on pharmacology and infectious diseases are particularly worth mentioning.

I have been reading Harrison's Medicine right from my residency. Its a fabulous book one can refer to as an undergraduate or postgratuate student. However for a practitioner one would prefer to have little more stress on management details. Adding audio to CD of the same book will make it more useful.

Mukund Baheti Consultant Neurologist Nagpur- 440 012 India

This book is the Bible of Internal Medicine. Anyone considering a career in medicine should have this book in their library. Comprehensive and well written, it is the gold standard of medical textbooks.

First, the book is very informative on the subject of step-parenthood as a risk factor for child abuse and neglect, and should be read by anyone interested in the subject. The authors do a respectable, if sometimes overly defensive, job of answering critics of their data. It is clear that anyone disputing this correlation is not only ignorant of the data, but blind to obvious trends in the society around them. It is an excellent introduction to the literature on the subject. However, most of the conclusions the authors draw from these data and the obvious correlation between reconstituted families and abuse are not supported in any way. The book suffers from the same problem as most (though not all) of the books in this series; namely that the authors are not evolutionary biologists, and do not have a thorough understanding of evolutionary theory. While they make a very convincing case for using step-parenthood as one of the most important risk factors for abuse, their attempt to explain it is hardly convincing. Despite the citing of numerous animal examples, they show no reason why this behavior would be positively selected in humans. To be biologically selected for in a Darwinian sense, this behavior would have to impart a reproductive advantage to the abuser, or a survival or reproductive advantage to the genetic offspring of abusers, over the population at large. There is no evidence of this being the case. On the contrary, given the social stigma against abusers, any biological selection acting on this trait would seem to favor non-abusive step-parents. It surprises me that, as psychologists, the authors ignored much more likely explanations, such as the fact that step-parents are entering a family that has suffered extreme emotional upset (divorce or death, etc.), which will put significant strain on what is already an artificial relationship, or that the genetic parent in this case is often likely to choose a new mate based on their own emotional or financial needs rather than on the needs of their children. The lower level of parental care is not necessarily a selective trait, it is simply the lack of activation of the positively selected trait of the parental bond. Since many reconstituted families never produce genetic children of the step-parent, there is always a reduced selection for any trait they possess. While I believe that, as products of evolution, we can and must understand ourselves and our societies in the context of Darwinian theory, I strongly feel that anyone seeking to do so must not ignore the fact that evolutionary theory is not simply "survival of the fittest", and is in fact at least as complex as their own chosen field of expertise, often not even understood by biologists outside the sub-field of evolutionary biology. While I believe evolutionary theory will ultimately revolutionize the social sciences, those wishing to apply it should either make themselves expert in it first, or seek the collaboration of those who already are, rather than depend on their own incomplete understanding of it.

A short, interesting booklet on the sociobiology of step-parents. Darwinism predicts step-parents will be less caring than biological ones, and this seems to be the case. The authors carefully distinguish research on other animals and humans. Certain to enrage a number of "social science" types.

Before reading this book, I was already familiar with Daly and Wilson's work from Wright's Moral Animal, Pinker's How the Mind Works, and others, so frankly, this book did not contain a lot of new ideas for me. By no means do I intimate that The Truth About Cinderella is not worth reading. Definitely, definitely, read this carefully, especially if you harbor any doubts about the validity of their findings, as they very neatly refute critics.

The authors provide an ingenious explanation for the prevalence of evil step-mothers in fairy tales: Mama's telling the bedtime stories. Much as I admire this explanation, I wonder if there isn't more to it than that. Let us leave fairy tales aside, and look at history, which abounds with stories such as that of Duke Wen of Chin/Jin (7th c. BC). As a prince, he was forced to flee for his life after his brother, the crown prince, had been coerced into suicide by his father, at his step-mother's connivance. You can probably provide similar stories. Now, please tell me a story about the mother who puts her own child to death at the step-father's insistence.... Does this reflect a sexist bias in historical records? Perhaps Daly and Wilson have tacity answered this question in another context: "the payoff coming in the form of an increased chance to sire the mother's next baby." Kids are easy (and fun) to come by once you've got a woman, so maybe earlier kids can be sacrificed to keep the woman (who may have cost a pretty penny) compliant.

To their discussion of why step-families do generally work out after all (I call attention to the ubiquity of infanticide, as shown by Marvin Harris in Cannibals and Kings), I wish to add my speculation. Due to our big brain, human birth has always been a dangerous event for women. I suspect step-families were far more common in the paleolithic than now. Men outlived women ¡Xprobably outlived several wives. We know from the archaeological record that old people, unable to fend for themselves, were taken care of ¡Xobviously, by the young and healthy. What I suggest, without a shred of hard evidence, is that young men who looked after old men were aware that one day they might find themselves dependent on the younger generation. It made sense for them to tolerate step-children as well as their own gene-bearing children, because some old-age insurance is better than none at all.

Finally, I would like to add that Weidenfeld & Nicolson's Darwinism Today series is thought-provoking, pleasingly designed, and well-printed, just the thing to stuff into your pocket to take somewhere to read and ponder.

Have fun!

What to do if you're trying to make something as stupid and boring as the bible into something that a poor gullible child will accept? This is the problem faced by the authors, and they do a half-way decent job of presenting bible idiocy as something partly entertaining as a comic book. Should be useful for gullible, brainwashed parents attempting to produce gullible, brainwashed children. Start them with Santa, and if they believe that, move on to the bible in comic book form.

Great idea with uneven results. Some superb art in places, but not always as an appropriate counterpoint to the accompanying Scriptures. The parts that do succeed are worth the cover price alone.

This book was well received by me and my teenagers. There needs to be more artistic interpretations like this that tackle scripture. Not every translation done in this book is accurate to the Word of God but every piece is brilliant in its own right. Bravo! Encore!

The presidential campaigns of Andrew Jackson marked a major change in the American political landscape. Those who came before were members of the aristocracy, who believed that the office of the president sought the man rather than the man the office. Jackson's success as a political figure was largely due to the political maneuverings of Martin Van Buren, who was widely known in polite circles as the "little magician." However, his opponents used much less polite phrases to describe his actions. Like so many hand-picked successors to a very popular president, Van Buren served only one term and his elected successor was from another party.
His presidency was dominated by the battle over fiscal strategies and the role of central banks in the U. S. economy. However, it was not so dominant that half the book should have been devoted to it. Other major events were taking place, the continued westward expansion of the nation led to increased sectional tension over slavery in the new states. Van Buren took the position that he was not pro slavery, but would act against it only with the approval of the southern members of congress. While this limited the conflict during his presidency, it also increased the power of a few radicals at the expense of more reasonable voices. Quite frankly, I grew weary at reading the material on the debates over the role of banks. The explanations are over done, they could have been reduced and more time spent on the sectional tensions, both over slavery and the growing economic disparities between the regions. Industrialization was beginning in earnest and there was also a great deal of debate over the role of the federal government in major projects involving transportation.
Martin Van Buren was the first modern politician to hold the office of the president. In that respect, he is a major figure in the history of the office. I would have preferred a book where more pages were devoted to that aspect of the Van Buren presidency rather than the battle over the national bank. The nation was poised for an explosion of westward growth as well as beginning to bottle the tensions that finally led to an internal war. Those aspects of his four years in office should also have received more coverage.

Van Buren's presidency was dominated by two major issues: 1) reshaping the government's financial system after President Jackson's successful campaign to destroy the Bank of the United States; 2) rebounding from the economic depression (Panic of 1837). Major Wilson does an excellent job explaining and analyzing the complex economic, social and political issues of the Van Buren presidency. The book is extremely detailed (sometimes overly detailed) in it's account of the efforts to establish an independent treasury to take the place of the former Bank of the US. For readers not well versed (or interested) in the intricacies of specie and credit systems (I include myself in this category), parts of the book can be difficult to get through. However, there are numerous passages which concisely explain the larger implications of the issues involved. For example, there is a passage in which Wilson presents how the bank and currency issues fit into the Democratic and Whig social, economic and political philosophy of the time. It's one of the best and most concise description of Whig philosophy I've read. Naturally, I would've liked to see more about Van Buren's early career as one of the principal founders of the Jacksonian Democratic party. But the book is entitled "The Presidency of Martin Van Buren" and one shouldn't expect a full biography.

I was reading it to find out some tips, yet it was a corny book. I didn't like it.

This book is more of a transcript of the 4½ hour long master piece of the documentary, but it's curtainly worth the money. Here you have all the still pictures from the hundreds of film Scorsese comments in his programme. A book for every filmbuffs bookself.

This extraordinary book on the last hundred years American cinema is an exceptionally well written, edited and researched document of the film, without any of the usual scholarly classroom didactics or conceited Hollywood self-congratulatory posturing. Scorsese's humble voice is evident throughout, and it is one of self-confidence, clarity and enthusiasm. It's a wonderful companion to the DVD.