The title's provocative phrase "The True Origins of the Pyramids..." does not indicate a proposed alternate civilization of pyramid-builders; instead, it is about the possible common historical origins of the various pyramid-builder (and other) civilizations around the world.

Schoch, a geologist, is perhaps best known for his re-dating of the Sphinx back to 4700-7000 BC, based on weathering and climactic patterns. (This book has an Appendix where Schoch replies cogently to various critics of his Sphinx theory and cites some additional support.)

The main premise in this book is that there are enough distinct threads of evidence to support the theory that the proto-civilization for many of the notable cultures of the past (such as the ancient Egyptions, Mayans, and so on) was based in a time when the sea-levels were much lower in a region called "Sundaland". This region is now mainly underwater due to glacial melting since the last Ice Age and stretches from Indochina to Borneo and Timor.

Schoch uses a myriad of types of circumstantial evidence such as commonality of flood myths, linguistic comparisons, genetics, geologic, tree-ring data, archeological remains, ancient math and astronomical knowledge, and so forth to piece together support for his theory. Some of it is robust, some of it is a bit tenuous, but all in all, I find it worth considering.

In pulling together these disparate trails of evidence into a prehistorical timeline, I do not think Schoch has reached beyond plausibility; indeed, I consider some of mainstream archeology to be more ardently ideological and consist of far more speculative story-telling than what Schoch proposes here.

This book is a worthwhile read for someone interested in the idea that civilization did not spring up suddenly in the last 5-6,000 years. To me, it is far more parsimonious that the homo sapien mind of 10,000, 20,000, or even 40,000 or more years ago - a mind which was identical in capability to ours - had societies and cultures which acted as significant sources of knowledge and influence on the later cultures we know historically. Whether Sundaland was indeed the site of one of these proto-civilizations is something that will likely never be provable to a high degree of certainty, but perhaps this book will at least stir more investigation.

Robert Schoch has done an admirable job in collating data from the Earth's odd corners. This book is one of the best ever books on ancient navigation, and also on catastrophism. Interdisciplinary and of wide scope, it's better and more focused than his earlier popular work, _Voices of the Rocks_ (ISBN: 0609603698).

Schoch isn't the first to raise the prospect of an ancient megalith building, seafaring civilization. He's not the first to come around to a catastrophic way of looking at the past, in historic or prehistoric times. But his presentation and credentials lend much higher credibility and a higher profile to such ideas.

From the work with proxy data in tree rings etc, to anthropological studies around the world, to exploration of the continental shelf, this scientist has produced what is easily the best of a problematical genre, as well as being a work of popular science. So much debris has been penned regarding the origin of the Great Pyramid, alleged astrological links with ancient structures (Tiahuanaco, Stonehenge, Giza, etc), and precolumbian navigation (those works written from a political rather than scientific or linguistic perspective), this book by Schoch is a new light in an ancient sky.

As Schoch recounts, Homo Erectus was crossing miles of open sea 800,000 or more years ago. But we're supposed to believe that crossing open sea was abandoned thereafter in the SW Pacific for at least 750,000 years, then abandoned again for at least another 47,000 years, and Australia was settled just twice during that nearly one million year period.

My reservations about this book involve Schoch's use of the conventional pseudochronology of the ancient Near East. But had he been interested in anything else, his book wouldn't stand a chance. As it is, the book's enemies will continue to forge links for their Marley-banshee chains. Recommended.

This is a fascinating book. The authors explore the idea that early civilizations were in much greater contact than we know, and that the pyramids are evidence of this contact. The idea sounds speculative, even crazy, but they back it with so much carefully selected and weighed evidence that I found myself nodding and saying yes, yes, yes. Even better, the book is a great read; I had trouble putting it down. All science writing should be so good.

Most dog training books tend to be written for a standard person with a standard dog. If you and your pet are both standard then fine. Bonnie Bergin has written a book for the rest of us. Bonnie trains service dogs and unlike a 'how to guide for assembling your Bar B Q', Bonnie assumes that dogs are different and people are different. She has a structure for identifying personality types (both people and dogs). She then goes on to describes how these types interact and how to manage the relationship(still your responsibility) to get the most out of it. There is a lot of personality theory here but for someone trying to understand themselves and their dog, this is the best book I've found so far. It takes you beyond the fact that dogs are pack animals and gives you a richer relationship model than the one that says you should be the the pack leader and your dog should be a member of the pack.

speaking as long time dog owner and dog lover and avid reader of all literature/canine 'bergin's book is,absolutley,the best thing out there.'

This book is a welcome change from books that try to make a dog a good pet by training the AKC obedience exercises. Instead, this book helps you to understand yourself and your dog and then uses that understanding to train your dog to become the companion you always wanted. I find myself looking back into this book as I work with my own dogs and with my dog training students. It is a gold mine of information, tips and ideas. I have surprised myself by carrying it with me to read whenever I have a spare minute.

I wished this book would have had a longer chapter analyzing the natures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the impact this short book has had on culture and society. The lists of movies and theatre plays are good, but there are some faults. (Wrong production year of Fredric March movie, storylines of some of the movies are not entirely correct.) A few times, I wondered whether the authors really had seen the movie or not. When you publish a book like this, you must look up your facts closely! The Stevenson biography was interesting and exactly the right length, though the Deacon Brodie chapter could have been considerably shorter. All in all, a good lexicon for Jekyll & Hyde-fans.

Saw Dr. McNally on TV discussing society's fascination with the "evil within". Great book, well-paced yet in-depth enough to satisfy the thoughtful reader. The chapters tracing the common theme of the two sides of humanity through the movies and media were particularly eye-opening for me. Also, the exploration of Robert Louis Stevenson's evolution of the story was fascinating. Great writer- will have to pick up the Dracula books now!!

This book is a great companion piece to the author's earlier studies of the historical Dracula. For anyone who is a student of literature or of Stevenson in particlar, this is a great resource. I had the good fortune to take one of Prof. McNally's classes, and thus be exposed to his work. They provide a well-researched historical context and examination of the origins of these Victorian classics.

If you haven't read any of McNally/Florescu's previous works on Dracula, do so now and pick this one up while you are at it. For anyone who is fan of Dracula or Jeckyll/Hyde, the two Dracula books and the Stevenson study are "must haves". Stop reading my review, and go buy the damn books!

Prior to the publication of this book, Robert Schoch was best known outside of academic geology as the scientist John Anthony West called in to investigate the idea, by way of Schwaller de Lubicz, that the Sphinx shows signs of water erosion that indicates an age far greater than orthodox Egyptologists are currently willing to consider. As detailed in Chapter Two of "Voices of the Rocks," Schoch came away from his examination convinced both that the Sphinx and its enclosure had been subject to extensive precipitation-induced weathering and that this weathering could only have occurred if the stone had originally been carved at least as far back as 7000-5000 BC, if not earlier, as compared to the previously accepted date of 2700 BC. Anyone looking for a real resolution to the scientific debate that Schoch started with these conclusions will be dissatisfied, as Schoch fails to acknowledge the inconsistencies in his findings (which can be found in Paul Jordan's "Riddles of the Sphinx," among other places), or viable alternative hypotheses, such as one I have seen mentioned on the web that accounts for the Sphinx' characteristic weathering via a model involving its burial in waterlogged sand. Nevertheless, it is this conclusion that Schoch uses as a springboard to consider the possibility of lost civilizations of greater antiquity than Egypt or Sumer, and (more importantly) the concomitant possibility that such civilizations were destroyed by worldwide cataclysms triggered by cometary impacts.

The book is sprinkled throughout with genuine, if most often highly speculative, science, and this distinguishes Schoch's efforts from those of pseudoscientific cranks like Graham Hancock or Rand Flem-Ath. So, for example, Schoch visits the superficially strange underwater "monolith" near Yonaguni, but unlike many (and, most likely, unlike Hancock, who is currently writing a book that will deal with Yonaguni and other underwater "monuments") he concludes that the structure is most likely a product of natural forces of erosion, as evidenced by the processes that can be observed on the beaches of Yonaguni now. Similarly, the notion of "polar shift" first proposed by Charles Hapgood and currently championed by Flem-Ath and Hancock is dealt with summarily here. In these parts of the book, it is refreshing to see a genuinely scientific approach being taken to questions that to date have been given only the most sensationalized and credulous of treatments.

Schoch's approach occasionally falters. Immediately after determining that the Yonaguni "monument" shows erosion and weathering consistent with what is happening naturally on the beaches today, he mentions the fact that this does not altogether rule out the possibility that human hands did have a role in shaping it. In the concluding paragraphs of this chapter, Schoch's narrative suddenly veers away from his scientific perspective as he incorporates a manmade Yonaguni monument into speculative and nearly baseless notions of ancient civilizations existing on the now submerged coasts of Ice Age-era antiquity. Although the possibility of extensive neolithic cultures that have been erased by sea-level rises since the last Ice Age is a real one (see Stephen Oppenheimer's "Eden in the East" for a fair summary of the evidence for this), Schoch completely forgets that he has no evidence whatsoever for a human influence on Yonaguni, and plentiful evidence for natural processes.

Even with such slips, "Voices" is a worthwhile read for anyone looking for a more reasoned and less sensationalized perspective on the question of lost civilizations, the legend of Atlantis and the "facts" that might underlie it, and the possibility that cometary impacts have had profound effects on the course of human history.

In contemplating that Homo Sapiens may be at least one million years old, and yet recorded civilization only 5000 to 6000 years old, the author William S. Burroughs referred to that wide gap of history, "a long question mark". Dr.Schoch's book, however, while absolutely fascinating, sheds little light on the "long question mark". This book is heavy on catastrophes and little about ancient civilizations. Dr.Schoch starts the book by defending his theory that the Sphinx may be twice as old as conventionally thought, then a little about the antiquity of the Lascaux caves and an interesting bit about the possibility that the Magdalenian culture of ancient Europe and Asia Minor culminating in Catal Huyuk may have inspired the myths of Atlantis. All quite interesting and worthy of more in depth analysis; but Dr.Schoch merely throws these theories out with little information on their merits or pitfalls,(though he does go to some lengths to defend his theories about the possible older age of the Sphinx.) Far from being paradigm shifting, well over 75% of the book is an apologia for orthodox scientific thinking in regard to catastrophism and possible pre-historic civilizations. Dr.Schoch even resorts, disappointingly, to calling theories he doesn't agree with, (Hapgood, Velikovsky, Sitchin), as "blather"...the old tried and true tactic of the True Faith: label the heretics as lunatics. This is paradigm shifting? Still, the passages in the book about what happens when large extraterrestrial bodies hit are hair-raising and well worth the price of the book. But paradigm shifting? Hardly...

Dr. Robert Schoch's Voices of the Rocks is a scientific expose demonstrating a logical shift from the classical uniformitarian view of the ancient world to one frought with periodic catastrophe. By a combination of hard scientific observation and a more face-value interpretation of mythology and folklore, Dr. Schoch redates the Great Sphinx and pushes back the long held dates of the dawn of civilization. He also attempts to address some mysteries from ancient times. Although, how all those cities burned down at the end of the Bronze Age is still open to debate, Dr. Schoch's hypothesis is intriguing. This is an insightful, information-packed book perfect for the reader who is more inclined to science and less to flights of fancy. I am, however, surprised that Graham Hancock endorsed this book as some of his work is criticized here.

I have to admit that I haven't even finished the book yet, but I fell compelled to write anyway. I am on page 43 of 159 (not counting glossary, appendix and index) but I have already had an epiphany, of sorts. Part, and maybe most, of what is so distressing about panic disorder is not understanding it. We know it's happening, but we don't know why or how. We feel alone, isolated, hopeless, even crazy, and very, very afraid. Everyone has heard the saying "we fear that which we do not understand". In the case of panic disorder this, I'm sure, is half the problem. This book is not a warm-fuzzy book. It is not overloaded with case histories (though there are some). What it is is a very clear explanation of what panic disorder is and the myriad factors that come into play. I firmly believe that one of the best things a person with the disorder can do as self-help is to become educated about it. This book is an EXCELLENT place to start. What a relief to know that I'm not crazy, and there may, in fact, be a perfectly legitimate explanation for why I'm predisposed to this. This book won't fix your problems. But, it will give you a starting point on your road to remission, and maybe even complete recovery. What have you got to lose?

If you have had experience with other relational databases. i.e. SQL Server, Sybase. You may be farmiliar with Unleashed books. This one is nothing like them. The enire books gives a general overview of Informix and 90% of the book covers the Informix-4GL There is little to no examples for SQL and was not worth the $40.00 I spent on it.

I'm primarily a developer, but I also do a little bit of DBA stuff. This book has lots of info for developers, and apparently lots for DBAs too -- it's the book our primary DBA recommended to me. If you need to know something about Informix, chances are it's explained in this book.

This book is a great resource. It's not one to read cover to cover, but rather one to turn to when you have a question. It's helped me at work in critical situations.