This is the first book to feature a brain being kept alive outside its body. Now, if you think about that, there have been several stories to use that idea. You can thank Curt Siodmak for that.

Donovan's Brain is a really good read, besides. I read it in two days, and that is pretty fast for me. Every free minute I had, I picked it up and continued the story. I think that says a lot.

Now, I'm not saying it's a great novel. It is not. But it has that one aspect that all good novels should have--grip. This story gripped me and I constantly wanted to know what would happen next.

This book was written in 1948 but it feels as if it were written today. If you are a fan of science-fiction (or of the Orson Welles radio play that was made from this, as I am), I think you would enjoy Donovan's Brain.

Some years ago, I saw a list of Stephen King's ten favorite fantasy-horror novels, and Donovan's Brain was on that list. Naturally, I added the book to my own collection. It really is a good old-fashioned mid-twentieth century horror story. The basis of the tale is rather standard fare: a young, obsessive doctor (Patrick Cory) insists on pushing the limits of human knowledge by attempting to keep a brain alive outside of a host body. A pretty, neglected wife watches and worries, and an older colleague consistently berates the young doctor for his all-consuming passion and preaches to him the dangers of playing God. After some limited success sustaining a monkey's brain, the doctor is presented with a golden opportunity to expand his work to the human brain itself. A plane crashes in the remote area of his private laboratory. He amputates the crushed legs of one survivor, but he knows the man will never live long enough to reach a hospital. Quickly, he seizes the opportunity so serendipitously handed to him by fate. In effect, he steals the brain of the man and coerces his reluctant colleague to help him cover up the act. It turns out that the victim is a man of great wealth and fame named Donovan.. The brain is placed in a vessel, its arteries supplied with blood by an artificial pump. Dr. Cory studies the brain, observes its cycles of sleep and wakefulness via electronic readings, and tries to communicate with it. In time, the brain not only communicates with Cory but comes to take control of his own body, seeing with his eyes, carrying out the dead man's former agenda. When the older doctor tries to destroy the brain, it compels Dr. Cory to attack him. The brain sends Cory to Los Angeles to carry out its orders, which includes freeing a murderer from prison, and Cory eventually becomes a prisoner in his own body, capable of watching the brain speak with his voice and move with his body. The physical brain grows larger and more powerful as Cory's reluctant colleague continues "feeding" it in the lab. Predictably, the book climaxes on a battle between the brain and Dr. Cory for permanent control of Cory's body.

It sounds like standard B-movie sci-fi fare, but Siodmak's writing never allows the story to become a stereotypical, Saturday matinee-type adventure. While I did not find this book particularly horrifying, I did find it compelling and completely engrossing. As an interesting aside, this book would seem to supply the source of a particular tongue-twister used by Stephen King in his novel It. All in all, this is classic sci-fi/horror at its best and stands shoulders above most of the similar works written in the golden age of science fiction.

This is an *extremely* scary book. It starts off as a sci-fi novel, in which a scientist experiments on keeping brains alive after death, but then it turns into a bit of a horror novel, much the way the first "Alien" movie did, starting with when he gets the brain of a millionaire who died in a plane crash nearby... Well, I don't want to ruin it for anyone, so I'll just end it there. It is VERY scary, and for two main reasons: one, the book is just plain scary, and two, because after reading the book, it really makes you think: what if...?

Curt Sampson has ably resurrected the magic of golf in 1960, the famous year in which Palmer became King, Nicklaus loomed, and Hogan and Snead made last runs at majors. Reading this tale one is transported back to what seems to us nostalgically as a simpler time. For a golf nut it is so much fun to relive those dramatic events. I would have given this book 5 stars except John Feinstein has demonstrated what a 5-star golf book is really like (The Majors, A Good Walk Spoiled). Sampson does not quite write with the same level of detail and insight as Feinstein, and lapses a bit more into the rehashing of familiar stories, but he is still quite good.

Only on the fringe of my teenage years in 1960, Sampson marvelously chronicles this year in golf and society. Society we all know because of the revolution that was gaining momentum.

TV is growing and would play a major role in golf's history as well. Along with three individuals, Hogan, Palmer and Nicklaus.

The "y" in the road is the televised Open at Cherry Creek, when Palmer made the celebrated charge. Hogan tries but comes short, and Nicklaus, not knowing for sure his position, didn't really grind, or he likely would have tied. Palmer wins, the sport grows, and as fate seemed to dictate, the game is on the way to the marvelous heights we now see it occupy.

Reading this wonderful book, it gives one more insight and compassion into those early pioneers who made it what it is. Today's pros seemed so pampered, however, the stress is large and looming larger.

Sampson is articulate writer and delivers great insights: Hagen's saying to Sarazen before the shot heard round the world at Augusta: "Come on, hurry up, I've got a date tonight."; and Gary Player calls up Hogan for some advice on his swing, so Hogan asks, whose clubs do you play? When Player answers Dunlop, Hogan responds, "Ask Mr. Dunlop."

Empathy for those like Sampson who wrote passionately about the game and didn't really make a living, let alone get rich. Loved the story about Bob Drum being snubbed by his paper until they hear Palmer is leading The Open, then cable him to send a story. Upon receipt of telegram, Drum crumbles it into ball, and said: "Hope to hell you get it."

This is a must for any serious golf collection of books on the game.

I've read a lot of golf books. This is one of my favorites, and I'm glad to see it's finally back in print--there are a lot of golfers I need to recommend this to. It's more just plain fun to read than almost any one I can name. One of golf's great years, and one of the sport's all-time great cast of characters: Hogan, past his prime at 48 but trying to win one more major; Arnie, the greatest golfer of the 50s, trying to win the Grand Slam; 20-year-old Nicklaus, the chunky college kid; and plenty of other characters, like the irascible Charlie Sifford, the first black player on the tour; the legendary Sam Snead; Chi Chi Rodriguez, who weighed 118 pounds; party animal Doug Sanders; Gary Player, the Man in Black from South Africa; and several others. Reading about these guys is just fascinating, they come alive in this book, and the story of how several of them could have and should have won the Open is one of the best in golf. Sampson has a breezy, highly readable style and has a good sense of humor. I highly recommend this book to any fan of golf.

Although you probably know that. You're probably not here unless you've already read that book (or perhaps Gabriel's Body) and want to know more about what happened to Dr. Patrick Cory.

Well, Hauser's Memory is along the same lines, except that in this one Cory and his colleague Hillel Mondoro try to save just the memory of a dead Nazi--Karl Hauser--by extracting the RNA from the brain using mortar, pestle, and centrifuge. Cory offers himself as the subject but Mondoro injects himself behind Cory's back. Mondoro almost immediately begins to feel the effects--having dreams and memories--and begins to follow the dead man's wishes.

Similar story as before, but still well-told.

In Hauser's Memory, a biochemist, Dr. Hillel Mondoro, deliberately injects himself with RNA extracted from the brain of a man who has just died - Dr. Karl Hauser, a physicist. Mondoro believes the RNA might, or might not, encode the memory of the dead man. He experiments on himself in order to find out. In this story it turns out that RNA does indeed encode Hauser's memories. But science fiction novels are supposed to work within the factual framework of science. Does this one?

Hauser's Brain was written in the mid-1960s. It was partly inspired by a UCLA experiment which suggested that RNA encoded memory in the brain. In this experiment a rat's memory appeared to have been transferred, via RNA extract, to another rat. But before the novel was published the UCLA experiment was utterly decredited. Some 23 scientists jointly authored a paper in Science reporting their respective laboratory's attempts and failures to replicate the memory transfer. The idea has never recovered respectablity. It survives primarily in this novel.

Yet in retrospect it is easy to see that neither the original experiment nor the failure to replicate its result meant anything at all. The episode provided us with no new knowledge about RNA or the brain or the memory. It did give strong direction to the study of memory - basically by slamming a door. Fully two decades later, when I was studying neurochemistry in graduate school, our textbook's (short!) chapter on learning and memory simply advised that it would be a mistake, professionally, to even attempt research on memory chemistry. Pretty succinct career advice.

Today, no one could say decisively whether or not nucleic acids encode memory in the brain. It is unclear how one would go about testing, proving, or refuting the idea. Around 1993, however, the prevailing model of memory, which holds that it is a function of synaptic modification, began to balk a bit because we suddenly lost our most basic understanding of what nerve impulses (and thus, synapses) actually do. See Spikes, by Rieke et al for this story, or Koch. Probably the idea that human memory, like most biological information, is stored as molecular sequences or shapes - will get a second hearing someday. Meantime this novel, Hauser's Memory, has a perfectly valid poetic license. It is first rate entertainment, and it should be recognized that it is only Curt Siodmak's great gift as a storyteller that has kept this interesting technical idea alive for the past 35 years.

Hauser's Memory is a great book. The book is not filled with action, but the plot never ceases to thicken. Hauser's Memory, unlike many other books I've read, does have a good ending. There are no strings attached when the book concludes. The book is filled with German names, and math and science terms that make it difficult to read. I was interested constantly with this book.

I found this book to be an easy read, and well setup; however, there were many typographical errors that I can't believe made it into print. Question section has many errors were MS Word must have went crazy in its auto numbering. Furthermore, the software has alot of errors including figures and illustrations that are mismatched with the questions; grammatical errors; and there software apparently doesn't handle the apostrophe character. While these may seem like minor errors, it is a representation of the author's and publisher's professionalism.

This book is a must for anyone considering the 70-227 ISA exam from Microsoft, or for anyone intending to evaluate and/or deploy ISA Server 2000.

I found the book easy to read, and covered all the core subject areas that I needed to pass the 70-227 exam. I read the book over a three week period, testing my knowledge as I went, and passed the exam easily.

In a word - buy it! (no wait, that is two words!)

This MCSE book is very good - clear, to-the-point, and great labs. The review questions are challenging and will get you ready for the exam. I know - passed it the first time!

The stories are varied, entertaining, and required reading for anyone that enjoys listening to baseball on the radio while sitting on their porch on a warm summer's evening. I could have done without Curt Smith's introduction to each chapter, as his over-the-top prose didn't seem to fit with the simplicity of the language of the anectdotes.
From coast to coast, this is a winner. New Yorkers will be particularly fond, however, of the pre-California baseball tales.

Curt Smith gathers some of the legendary Voices of baseball together to (what else?) tell stories. The anecdotes are invarably interesting, funny, moving, and illuminating, whether or not the reader has actually had the pleasure of listening to any or all of these broadcasters. My only quibble with this book is that author Smith seems to have lifted several passages in toto from his earlier, and even more fascinating, "Voices Of The Game." This seems like unnecessary duplication and can be mildly annoying for those of us who've read both. Still, it's well worth the time of anybody who loves the Summer Game.

I saw this book on amazon.com and knew I had to get it. Great stories inside the game and behing the broadcast booth. Couldn't put it down, just spectacular, wish there was a sequel!!!!

Having grown up in the 70s, this book features Superman stories which were new to me. These are the stories prior to Clark Kent's move to television and the creation of Morgan Edge. As the preface to the book says, many of the stories were told time and time again. It's interesting to see a time when comic books weren't always trying to be some dark statement. After all, Metropolis isn't Gotham City. This book helps you get a grasp of the changes the Superman franchise went through in the 60s, with dozens of new survivors of Krytpon, endless robots, an incredibly naive Jimmy Olsen, and a not-yet-liberated Lois Lane. Each story is "safe." Nice to look at, but if you're expecting anything of substance that you could, perhaps, ponder, hopefully a "Superman in the Seventies" volume will be coming out soon. Here you will see Clark, Lois, Jimmy, Morgan, Steve Lombard, and a less-important Perry White take on more human characteristics. Until then, this book will give you lots of super-simplistic stories that may or may not help you relive your youth.

Being a comic book fan who has lost interest in the "new" post-Crisis Superman, I found these older stories to be lots of fun. A more honest and innocent hero, and a great flashback to my impression of the character when I was younger. A great peice of pop-history.

This was a great book with only a sample of how great the 60's were to the Man of Steel. It showed how comics should be adventuresome, fun and innocent. Many famous stories like the Superman-Batman Revenge Squads and works by the greats like Jerry Siegal, Wayne Boring, Curt Swan and Neal Adams. All future comic writers & artist should have this book. Don't just sit there. Buy this book!

Curt Smith's history of baseball broadcasting on both radio and television from 1921 to 1991 is a must-have for any baseball library and a fun overview of an oft-neglected topic. Many wonderful insights are revealed for the first time about local and network broadcasters, their comings and goings and their impact on the game itself. About the only drawback of this book and which keeps it from five stars is Smith's annoying habit of digressing into his personal opinions about various broadcasters, past and present. While this isn't too intrusive for announcers he praises, I for one was offended by his rude treatment of an announcer I grew up with as a Yankees fan in the late 1970s and who was my "Voice Of Summer" as surely as Mel Allen was to an earlier generation, in my case Frank Messer of the wonderful Yankees broadcast team of Phil Rizzuto, Messer and Bill White. Ditto his obnoxious diss at Gary Thorne of the New York Mets and ESPN who only happens to be one of the top all-around play-by-play men in the business today. Such comments are better suited to a media critic in the newspapers and not to a historical overview and in my opinion keep the book from being a flawless gem.

Curt Smith's history of baseball broadcasting, from the early days of radio in the 1920s to the present is a must read for those who have always been fascinated by the men who have broadcast the games over the years and want to know just why baseball has sadly declined in importance on the networks over the decades. It is shocking to see how in the 1950s, there were more than 100 regular season baseball games each year on all three networks, while today we barely see a quarter of that amount.

The only thing wrong with Smith's book that keeps it from five stars are his annoying digressions into his personal opinions of certain broadcasters. As a Yankee fan who grew up in the late 1970s, I particularly take offense to his rude dismissal of Frank Messer, who broadcast more Yankee games than anyone other than Mel Allen or Phil Rizzuto as well as his total glossing over of Bill White, also a Yankee broadcaster at the time and the first black to broadcast regularly for a team. Jon Miller and Harry Caray, two announcers I dislike are overhyped as though they were gods while Gary Thorne, a solid professional for more than a decade on ESPN and the New York Mets is also treated rudely. Smith would have been well-advised to stick to the history and keep his opinions on announcers he doesn't care for to himself.

Simply put, this is THE definitive history of baseball announcing, with biographies of the individual broadcasters themselves interspersed with more big-picture observations concerning baseball and broadcasting in general. The book was clearly a labor of love for its author, a fact which should make his occasional forays into self-indulgence forgivable. Smith has a decided bias toward the late '50s and early '60s, the era of his own childhood; as the reviewer from Ohio noted, he makes too many critical comparisons between the different "Voices" (although THIS reviewer misses Harry Caray tremendously and considers Jon Miller one of the all-time greats); and he peppers the text with comments derived from his conservative political leanings. Nonetheless, the anecdotes are fascinating and the sheer scope of the work is most impressive. All that's needed now is a third edition to touch on the entry of Fox into the network landscape and other developments of the last decade.

The ability to cast long distances is an invaluable asset to any surf caster simply because it could make the difference between fish and no fish in certain situations. However, it is very unfortunate that the author was not very successful in teaching this concept due to poor production and inadequate visual aids.

I found the fuzzy, poorly reproduced sequential photographs of the casting motions difficult to follow. In my opinion, not photographs but a series of clear illustrations, showing the side and overhead view of the cast, could have served as an effective visual tool.

If nothing else, this book will at least make one aware of different casting techniques to increase casting distance which is valuable in itself.

Ron Arra has written a unique guide to increasing casting distance without losing sight of the needs of the average fisherman. Although competitive casting is touched on , very practical advice regarding equipment, lures and rigs, and special casting situations are covered. Photos and verbal descriptions of specific techniques are clear and concise. I was fortunate enough to have a teaching session with Mr. Arra and although he gave me specific advice on my own problems with casting, almost everything he told me was written in the text. He is as nice in real life as he comes across in his book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever been unable to reach breaking fish secondary to short casts. I was able to increase my distance by 30% after reading the book and with some practice!

This interesting and great book that is easy to read and that's a classic for any sports fisherman who enjoys surfcasting. Reading this book. Power Surfcasting has helped me achieve casting distances that I have not been able to attain prior to reading this book. The casting techniques, knot tying, lure selection and bottom rigs for various fishing conditions, that one would desire to use are excellent suggestions. Proper rod and reel selection were a invaluable asset to help me significantly improve my fishing and casting abilities. Arra demonstrates the overall proper rod and reel selection to achieve casting distance and techniques for every sports minded fisherman. The Ron Arra video, Surf Fishing and Distance Casting demonstrates, poetry in motion and is a great companion to the book, Power Surfcasting by Ron Arra. To all sports fisherman, have a great day fishing.

What a terrific idea to introduce people to the works of Curt Siodmak--two books in one! I certainly appreciated the ability to read the first two books in the Patrick Cory trilogy (also including Gabriel's Body) by buying just one book.

Donovan's Brain is a terrific SF/horror novel combining medical experimentation with horrific consequences. Cory saves the brain of a millionaire (this is where all the "brain that lived" storylines originated) and keeps it alive in a jar with electricity and tubes containing oxygenated fluid. But the brain begins to control him. Yeah, I know, it sounds silly, but Siodmak writes in such a way to pull you into the story.

Hauser's Memory is along the same lines, except that in this one Cory and his colleague Hillel Mondoro try to save just the memory of a dead Nazi--Karl Hauser--by extracting the RNA from the brain using mortar, pestle, and centrifuge. Cory offers himself as the subject but Mondoro injects himself behind Cory's back. Mondoro almost immediately begins to feel the effects--having dreams and memories--and begins to follow the dead man's wishes. Similar story as before, but still well-told.

Siodmak is obviously the master of this kind of story. He is probably more well-known for writing Universal horror films from the '40's like The Wolf Man. I am an old-time radio fan and I knew him from the Suspense adaptation of Donovan's Brain starring Orson Welles.

I am looking forward to reading the third book in this series and certainly will look for more works by Curt Siodmak in the future.

Dr. Patrick Corey, the main character, deals with two experiments on the human brain. Both are narrated well, are fascinating and they give some real thrill about the opportunities science has got. It is on the one hand like opening Pandora's box, showing a nightmare becoming true, and on the other the prospects that could be reached. Never science is alone, like in a lab. There are always other interests interfering - politics, especially in the time of the Cold War, and money, but also human features like pride or man's will to get as close as possible to the secrets of nature. Siodmak tells the stories and the reader thinks the story on with all the possible consequences. Real horror to see peril and evil and hope and help clearly in the same topic!!!

In Hauser's Memory, a biochemist, Dr. Hillel Mondoro, deliberately injects himself with RNA extracted from the brain of a man who has just died - Dr. Karl Hauser, a physicist. Mondoro believes the RNA might, or might not, encode the memory of the dead man. He experiments on himself in order to find out. In this story it turns out that RNA does indeed encode Hauser's memories. But science fiction novels are supposed to work within the factual framework of science. Does this one?

Hauser's Brain was written in the mid-1960s. It was partly inspired by a UCLA experiment which suggested that RNA encoded memory in the brain. In this experiment a rat's memory appeared to have been transferred, via RNA extract, to another rat. But before the novel was published the UCLA experiment was utterly decredited. Some 23 scientists jointly authored a paper in Science reporting their respective laboratory's attempts and failures to replicate the memory transfer. The idea has never recovered respectablity. It survives primarily in this novel.

Yet in retrospect it is easy to see that neither the original experiment nor the failure to replicate its result meant anything at all. The episode provided us with no new knowledge about RNA or the brain or the memory. It did give strong direction to the study of memory - basically by slamming a door. Fully two decades later, when I was studying neurochemistry in graduate school, our textbook's (short!) chapter on learning and memory simply advised that it would be a mistake, professionally, to even attempt research on memory chemistry. Pretty succinct career advice.

Today, no one could say decisively whether or not nucleic acids encode memory in the brain. It is unclear how one would go about testing, proving, or refuting the idea. Around 1993, however, the prevailing model of memory, which holds that it is a function of synaptic modification, began to balk a bit because we suddenly lost our most basic understanding of what nerve impulses (and thus, synapses) actually do. See Spikes, by Rieke et al for this story, or Koch. Probably the idea that human memory, like most biological information, is stored as molecular sequences or shapes - will get a second hearing someday. Meantime this novel, Hauser's Memory, has a perfectly valid poetic license. It is first rate entertainment, and it should be recognized that it is only Curt Siodmak's great gift as a storyteller that has kept this interesting technical idea alive for the past 35 years.

This interesting little book is a collection of short homilies designed to provide a pick-me-up to a teen. With titles such as "You won't miss out," and "Learn to be a love receiver," the homilies are short and easy to read, and give a mental boost at the right moment. Each one of these begins with a Bible verse (NIV translation), and appears to be non-denominational, which means that this is a good book for any believer. So, if you want to give a teen in your life a handy resource, then I would recommend this book to you.

Attractive and modern outlay of single page devotional/message. done in computer screen style on every page. Messages are relevant to teens. they contain questions to make them think and message is not very long. i believe this is good for some/alot of teens who don't have a very long attention span for wordy messages. Author gets point across and signs off differently each time which is very creative and personal. Strong message of God's love for them comes through each page.

This book is awesome! I myself am a 14 year old girl whodoesn't particularly like to read anything but magazines. My mombought this book for me and I decided to try it out. I am so glad I did! It is a great book for anyone who doesn't necessarily want to sit down and read for long periods of time. This book is one that you can read a few pages at a time, and then be able to pick it up later and not have to re-read some of the pages to get the idea. I also like it because it truly does relate to me and my life. It really makes you think and I have reccommended it to all of my friends.