Although towards the latter part of his life he came to stoop very low, he had, as a young man, decades earlier, reached out very high unto the stars with unwavering courage and determination in his conquest of Scotland and England. His defeat at Culloden in 1746 precipitated tragically what can only be described as the genocide of the Scottish Highlanders.
What a life! The life of Bonnie Prince Charlie is a study of human nature at its extreme. Belatedly, devastatingly, he found out the cruel fact that despite his forceful, determined personality, he was not the master of his own destiny. Be that as it may, he came to be vindicated.
This is a magnificent book of a great, albeit obscure, tragic figure of history.
Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D. is Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Sentinel of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), and author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995) and Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (1997).
Olson is always sort of idiosyncratic. He wore a cowboy hat and a paisley shirt to classes.
His boots were pink.
The book he has written here is also idiosyncratic. He mixes weird stuff: like Hegel and Wodehouse in one chapter, and ancient Greek philosophy and modern mystery stories in another chapter. It was fun to see him go in depth.
The basis for humor, as he once pointed out in a class, was that you take two conflicting schemas, two completely opposite ideas, and have them make love. Their boundaries tickle. It's like omparing motorcycles and oranges. There is always a way to do it. Goosebumps, they both roll, they both smell good, and so on, until you get a productive comparison that makes you laugh. Olson keeps working until he gets it.
Olson is doing that through this whole book. It's a hard thing to sustain because it can get so complex that it falls into apostasy. But that's where comedians should be headed. This is sit-down comedy, though. Sit down, and think about it.
I should maybe try to ompare apples and speedboats.
List price: $39.99 (that's 30% off!)
The authors include people from East and West, North and South; practioners and teachers. All have written in non-technical vocabulary and evaluate their assigned topic(s) in light of evangelical thought. The book is decidedly Christian and missiological in tone.
There are short bibliographical notes at the end of many articles and a good indexing system.
Dive in anywhere and enjoy the learning experience.
In addition to explaining the benefits and liabilities of scientific research as lived out by Messrs. Cope and Marsh, the author provides many other useful features within the covers of Fossil Feud. Mr. Holmes gently encourages the reader's further exploration of dinosaur lore by including a list of rules for what makes a dinosaur a dinosaur, diagrams of basic anatomical and physiological features of a dinosaur, a geologic time line, a listing of the 335 genera of dinosaurs in the order in which they were discovered, a reading list, and a listing of North American dinosaur museums.
Fossil Feud is a valuable tool, both educational and entertaining, which leaves no stone unturned, as it were, in its goal of completeness and accessibility. I highly recommend it.