Words don't do justice to the work & imagination of Ray & Charles Eames! This is a beautiful book covering the creative minds of two of the best modern furniture designers. Filled with great pictures, & very complete text of their design & the many other things they created besides furniture.The Eames' are my biased favorite, if you love modern 50's furniture,fabric, & art you must have this book.They worked for the infamous Herman Miller company, who has reissued many of the Eames furniture pieces available again today.As creator of the modern molded fiberglass chair, & molded plywood, the Museaum Of Modern Art has Charles' chairs as Art, which they are & comfortable too!More than comparable to their Danish counterparts,this couple brought us sleek,smooth lined furniture that will take us into the space age for at least another fifty years!(check out A.I.-incredible backgrounds of modern furniture!)

This is a wonderful addition to any coffee table! I learned so much about this creative couple that I never knew before. The pictures are A+ & very well done. If you are a fan of Eames furniture, you cannot live without this book!!

The Eamses were innovators in many fields such as Architecture, furniture design, film, etc. But to my mind their gretest acheivement was the definition of a new profession, 'Graphic Design', or as I beleive they called it, a 'Design Office'.

Up till then, there was 'Commercial Art', and 'Art Departments', and whatever styling was applied to an industrial product was done as an afterthought, and usually by an amateur.

After The Eamses, a new recognition that the design of appearances was a craft and a profession, and not just an art, was born.

This book demonstrates in many ways, how Ray and Charles Eames applied this and many other insights to the various fields of endeavor that they entered and changed forever.

Charles and Ray Eames give us a photographic tour of the universe we can hold in our hands. Starting with a picture of the dark emptiness of at the edge of the universe, each page brings us closer to our galaxy, solar system, planet, and down to the one power of ten on which we humans live. But then we continue to dive deeper -- skin deep -- shrinking smaller and smaller through the cells, molecules, and finally sub-atomic space of which we are composed... finding the empty space within the atom to be eerily reminiscent of outer space itself. It's an exciting, thought-provoking five-minute journey you'll want to take again and again.

With a start at 10e+25 meters, from the far end of the universe (~1 billion light years), the book takes 1 power of ten steps downward to the subatomic level, about 10e-16 meters - or smaller than a hydrogen atom. A very good book to get lost in the comparison from one power to the next - be it higher (bigger) or lower (smaller).

The theoretical framework that Page provides is thorough, insightful, and compelling. He then offers brilliant readings of all six of Morrison's novels. Altogether, this is a wonderful critical approach, and one every teacher and student of Morrison should read.

The cover art, "Wanted Poster No. 17" by Charles White, drew me again and again into the depths of this book. It shows a black woman with her hands on the shoulders of a small black boy. Beside them are the first names and ages of faceless persons as they might be shown on a list of slaves to be offered at an auction. The faces of the woman and boy are very human and sensitive as if they are about to speak of what they have seen and heard.

Philip M. Weinstein, Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English at Swarthmore College, begins with his own Southern upbringing by a black woman. The love felt for that black woman was not enough to lead him into some enlightened knowledge of her (or even a visit to her home)until 23 years after her death! Her sister said, when he entered her home, "I've been waiting 23 years for this visit."

When Faulkner writes about Dilsey in "The Sound and the Fury" he is drawing upon the experience he had of being raised by a black woman. Dilsey never expresses personal doubt or pain or need. For such was Faulkner's experience of Callie Walker who raised him. He had no concept of the other world in which she lived and moved and had her being.

Likewise, Morrison has her blind spots. When she seeks to render the white Bodwin in "Beloved" she gives a strong but limited portrait, "a limited but precious truth." As Bodwin is about to enter the house where he was born and has not been in 30 years he thinks merely about the unbearable heat, his toy soldiers and watchless chain. These are nearly his last thoughts in this life were it not for the abortive attempt on his life by the confused Sethe.

The limited portraits by Faulkner and Morrison remind us of both the important contributions they have made to our understanding of their experiences and the need for other pieces of the human puzzle. The last word is not said in having said so much that is gripping and true.

Weinstein calls us to a humility that says where we are without the arrogance of thinking we have said/watched (or heard/seen) it all.

"Powers of Ten" is one of the most influential science books ever printed. It taught me, and tens of thousands of other children, that a "sense of wonder" is something you can get from science, as well as from science fiction. I found it in a bookstore seven or eight years ago, and was immediately transported back to when I first read it, in my school library, at the age of ten. I was swept off my feet at ten years old, and the book can still sweep me off my feet today.

The original film was potent too; more so in the directness with which it expresses the scale of the world. But the book, with its annotations and additional pictures, has its own power. You can flip back and forth, and take as much time as you want absorbing the incredible range of scale in the universe.

The book's first picture is scaled at about a billion light years across--ten to the twenty-fifth metres. On this scale even super-clusters of galaxies are just clots of dust on a black background. The right hand side of each page, as you go through the book, zooms in by a factor of ten, and we dive into galaxy clusters, into our galaxy, our spiral arm, our solar system, through the moon's orbit and into the earth's atmosphere, down into North America, and then Chicago, and a picnicker asleep in a park. After twenty five pages we're at a human scale; the pictured scene is a metre across. But the camera continues to zoom in; to the picnicker's hand, through his skin to a lymphocyte, and on down through the cell nucleus to coils of DNA, to a carbon atom and through its electron cloud, and down to the nucleus and beyond. Sixteen pages from the picnicker have brought us to the quarks.

The left hand side of each page provides companion pictures and comments, some drawn from the history of science. For the nanometre picture there's a copy of John Dalton's two-hundred-year-old models of simple molecules; at the millimetre and tenth-millimetre scale there are pictures of radiolaria, seeds, and other microscopic beauties. All are interesting and informative.

I can't recommend this book too strongly--it's a fundamental work of scientific culture, and should be in every house. However, I particularly recommend that you buy this for any nine-to-fourteen-year-old child in your life; it's the best way I know to introduce a child to a love of science.

I've seen this book for the first time in 1985, when I was kid. It is still my all-time favorite.

Although the book does have lots of textual info pages, the core of the book is a series of 42 full-page pictures which depict the an ordinary picnic photo in different scales.

Starting from an ordinary dude resting on the grass, each page turn shows the scene from 10 times farther away. First we see the park he is picnicing on, then the entire city, and before you know it we are in deep space racing towards the outskirts of the Universe.

On the other side of the journey, each page turn magnifies the last picture tenfold. First by viewing a close-up view of the picnicing guy's hand, you quickly find yourself probing deeper and deeper through the realms of biology and chemistry right into the core of a single atom.

The really cool thing about the whole deal, is that all the images are centered at the same object: a single atom on the picnicing dude's hand.

In short, the idea is absolutely brilliant. The images chosen for the presentation is not perfect, but they are still amazing. Of-course, the film is much more impressive then the book, but you can't take a film with you to a camping trip...

This is a great book. Believe it or not, I walk my 5 year old son through the pictures. I am sure it is not meant for youngsters but it can be used like I am am doing.

The idea behind the book is on its smallest scale it is inside a qark inside an atomic nucleus, inside an atom, attached to a DNA molecule, inside a nucleus of a white blood cell, slightly below the skin on a hand of a man asleep at a picnic on some grass in Chicago....all the way to the scale of the universe. My son and I will transverse the middle 1/3 or 1/2 of the journey. He gets to pick his own bedtime books and he chooses this one out of hundreds once or twice a week.

The pictures make a great way to explain the concept of scale and various aspects of science. On the facing page of the main picture underconsideration are objects of the same scale. You can really see that the tail of a dinosaur is 10 times longer than a man.

For the adult, it is an easy introduction to various aspects of science all at different scales. It is not a super serious book - no math - simple explanations. But as a practicing scientist, I view it as vary factual.

I pencil in the date that I finish reading each article in James R. Newman's four volume, "The World of Mathematics" After a good many years, I now find that I am more than halfway through Newman's remarkable collection that spans 2500 pages.

Newman described his work as "a small library of the literature of mathematics form A'hmose the Scribe to Albert Einstein, presented with commentaries and notes". The topics have been chosen with care. Newman preceded each article with a thoughtful commentary.

The individual articles are not abridgements, but are reprinted in their entirety. Some articles are short, some quite long, some are easy reading, some are difficult, but few are overwhelming.

I have not systematically read section by section. I find that I skip around. Often, after Newman introduces me to some mathematical topic, I find myself sidetracked, exploring other books and authors. But eventually I return to Newman, select another article, and begin the cycle again.

The Newman collection was published in 1956 as a boxed set that occasionally shows up in used bookstores. More recently, the four volumes have become available in soft cover (a Dover reprint) and can be purchased individually.

What makes Newman collection so remarkable? The answer is great original papers, great authors, and wide ranging topics.

Imagine reading Descartes on Cartesian coordinates, Whitehead on mathematical logic, Weyl on symmetry, Dedekind on irrational numbers, Russell on number theory, Heisenberg on the uncertainty principle, Turing on computer intelligence, Boole on set theory, and Eddington on group theory.

I enjoy the biographical and historical articles scattered throughout the four volumes. I especially liked Bell's article "Invariant Twins, Cayley and Sylvester", The Great Mathematicians" by Turnball, and G. H. Hardy's "A Mathematician's Apology".

Mathematicians try to define just what is mathematical thought and how a mathematician creates mathematics. Clifford writes about "The Exactness of Mathematical Laws", Von Neumann on "The Mathematician", Weyl on "Mathematical Way of Thinking", Poincare on "Mathematical Creation", Newman on "Godel's Proof", and Russell and Whitehead separately offer their thoughts.

This is the "World" of mathematics. Newman's assemblage also includes a fascinating, eclectic mix of articles that I have not encountered elsewhere like "How to Hunt a Submarine", "Durer as a Mathematician", "A Mathematical Approach to Ethics", "Geometry in the South Pacific", and "The Vice of Gambling and the Virtue of Insurance".

I have had great fun wandering through this four volume set from section to section, article to article. I assume that someday I will finally read the last article. I expect that I will simply begin again. It would be hard to say good-bye to Newman's collection.

Carl Friedrich Gauss, a famous 18th century mathematician said "Learn from the Masters".

The World of mathematics gives us all this opportunity.

This monumental collection of articles from the Masters throws light on all aspects and areas of Mathematics and mathematical sciences.

Do you want to hear about Boolean algebra from Boole himself?
Do you Want to hear about Turing machines from Turing himself?
From Newton to Einstien, all the masters speak to you.

The collection is well organized into different areas of mathematics. Abstract algebra to Logic to Geometry and Physics
Thru a series of wonderful articles from the masters of the field spanning several hundred years, one can understand the Length and breadth and depth of the wonderful world of Mathematics.

You will slowley understand how mathematics is not just about numbers and counting and measurement. Will slowley begin to understand the unbelievable depth of abstractions it aims to capture. you will begin learning the structure and nature of mathematics..its approaches to modeling the intutive world and then..extend it! In a way you will learn what the mind is capable of and is ultimately trying to acheive!

A personal note: I started reading it during my undergraduate and after more than 10 years, still go back to it for more light. Thanks to Prof. Chandrasekar for recommending this to me.

This four volume set is a gem. I bought this treasure back in 1973 but I still go back to it at least twice a week. The writing is uneven because of the different authors who have contributed articles. However, the substance of the book is top notch. Starting with the number system all the way to the differential calculus and parts of game theory, the book is a treasury of mathematical delights. Just pick a chapter, and you are sure to be sucked in. Another point I wish to make is the design and layout of the books. There are no slick, extra large, shiny page designs here. Just plain 6 by 8 size pages with appropriate black and white diagrams. This is when books used to be more like friends, often in one's company, and much perused. It is truly a shame that this series is out of print. If you happen to find it somewhere introduce yourself!!

This book was written to provide a short description of the atomic bomb project that would satisfy public curiosity without giving away any essential secrets. This edition has an intro by Philip Morrison, who worked on the project, and a nice supplementary essay by Smyth, which fills out the picture a bit.

This book is a MUST-HAVE for any historian or person with an interest in our nuclear heritage. This book, of which actually two versions were published ( the second after General Groves read the first version and blew a gasket) was written to establish a classification guide as to what was and was not public domain information at the time. As much of the initial work was done at colleges, there was considerable interest given to the project after the war, and this book was the 'official' response.
Easy to read, valuable reference.

I came upon this book while doing some research into the Gaia hypothesis and found it interesting, especially the autobiographical essays. However, I still think the Gaia hypothesis is a little extreme when formulated as if organisms have a reason to sacrifice their individual survival for the benefit of "Gaia" as a whole. When this anti-natural selection aspect is removed, Gaia says only that organisms have effects on their environment and can evolve feedback systems, which isn't really anything new. It was a fascinating and revolutionary idea - and I do respect it for "thinking outside the box", so to speak - but I just don't see it working out. And attacking reductionism never got anybody anywhere...sometimes things must be understood at their most fundamental level.

No scientist of our times has more right than Lynn Margulis to crow about her once-ridiculed but now-vindicated discoveries, such as the cell symbiosis hypothesis. Yet, for all her enthusiasm in promoting her now widely respected triumphs and her new, still-to-be-tested hypotheses, Margulis does not gloat. She is gracious with her opponents and generous in sharing credit with her grad students and other collaborators. One of the volume's most attractive features is that it summarizes the development to date of the views of James Lovelock and herself, on their widely debated and very influential Gaia hypothesis. We are treated to numerous fascinating anecdotes about the making of such a controversial theory, and about its reception (not always very polite, let alone friendly) by the community of "objective" scientists. The real gems of the book, however, are two autobiographical pieces by Margulis, "Sunday with J. Robert Oppenheimer" and "The Red Shoe Dilemma," and a third article "Big Trouble in Biology." In the first, we witness the encounter between the precocious sixteen year old future scientist Margulis and the recently deposed titan of atomic physics and "father of the atomic bomb" at his home in Princeton. The second piece offers Margulis's retrospective on what it meant to be a woman during our times who tried to be a great scientist, as well as a great wife and mother. Her spare use of words throws sharply into relief the realities still facing young women who would make a career in the sciences. Every one of those young women should read this book, and especially "The Red Shoe Dilemma." For any critics of the excesses of late-twentieth century reductionism in the life sciences, "Big Trouble in Biology" will be a call to arms, albeit a very thoughtful and provocative one. Lynn Margulis is no anti-science crackpot; nor is she a latter-day vitalist. But from one of the most successful practitioners in the methodology of reductionism, this heart-felt call for LOOKING at whole, living organisms and marvelling at their living qualities is a challenge that demands serious attention.

Grant Morrison, at his best, is one of my favorite comic book writers. The Mystery Play, Arkham Asylum, and parts of Invisibles rank among the very best comics ever made. However, like Frank Miller, it seems like Grant either brings the house down in a pyrotechnic jubilee or writes virtually unreadable junk, the latter being the case with Kill Your Boyfriend. It's actually not THAT bad a read-- it's a sexual, violent, druggy romp, but unlike Grant's best works, nothing more.

A short (56 pages) Grant Morrison story that contains neither superheroes nor science fiction. The plot is similar to that of NATURAL BORN KILLERS, where 2 youngsters run off to take drugs and kill people. Like that film, this story is also a dark comedy, although this one takes a more aloof and antiseptic tone than the film did. The tale gets much of its energy from its complete and matter-of-fact disregard of any ethics or morality.

Philip Bond's colorful artwork contibutes a lot toward the dry humor in this story. He draws people's faces and their expressions quite well, which is particularly useful in the numerous asides to the reader, where the girl looks directly out of the page and talks to you. It reminds me of some movies that have used this device.

Although not the greatest Grant Morrison story ever written, it's a malignant little comic with a certain charm, and worth reading if you can find a copy somewhere.

A lovely short story from Grant Morrison, the genius reinventor of Doom Patrol and the current chronicler of The Invisibles. A sulky schoolgirl somewhere in suburban Britain meets a cheeky delinquent boy on the bus one day, and before your jaw can drop they've gone on a killing spree, hooked up with a bunch of anarcho-hippies on a bus, experimented wildly with their respective sexualities and found themselves halway up Blackpool Tower with a live grenade while the Police shout threats at them through a bullhorn.

Love story, irresponsible celebration of violence and Dionysus myth, this is a highly cheeky piece of work from the irrepressible Mr. Morrison. Always a man to take the phrase "For Mature Readers" to the absolute limit, Morrison respects not a single taboo. I forget who the artist is and I'm not proud of having done so, as the art is appropriately wacky and witty, as befitting the, well, Dionysian tone of explosive release. Great fun, even if you're glad it didn't happen to anyone you know, and a slap in the face to boring journalists who claim that British fiction is dead. (Why don't those idiots read comics?)

This is what happens when otherwise brilliant men venture into area where their ignorance outstrips their wisdom. Morrison and Tsipis are both well known and well regarded in physics and les sso in the realm of politics, and not at all in economics. Their solution for conflict and poverty assumes that every individual on the planet is, like themselves, a kind hearted, well-intentioned individual who will readily put their self interest aside for the betterment of others. Would that it were so.

But it's not, and Morrison and Tsipis' naive utopian formula is no different from a thousand other utopian prescriptions. At best, they're ineffectual, and at worst, they lead to opression and dictatorship. For a more realistic view of the typical outcome of utopian societies, read Robert Conquest's "The Great Terror".

This book is fantastic if you read it slowly and with an open mind. They are not promoting a utopia, but instead a better world. The ideas come from far above the harsh realities of day to day life, but they should (could) affect the governments and leaders of the world and voters in democratic societies. Did you know that the rate of increase of the population is slowing? Did you know that for 30 years planes circled the globe carrying nuclear bombs? Do you have any idea of the scales of expenditure related to the military or food or medicine? If you care, read this book.