This book helps a child learn to defend and empower herself. Instead of being the victim of the dream, she can use her day mind to negotiate with the fears of the night mind. Instead of changing the subject or creating a fantasy solution,this book helps children confront their fears and envision workable resolutions, to better understand the position the dream has put them in, and the message to be gained from the dream. I have not seen any other book that really helps as well as this book does. Just reading the dreams in the book will show your child that he or she is not the only one that has such frightening dreams. I invited this author to my child's preschool to do a workshop with the children, some of whom were having trouble with nightmares and they really responded to the methods outlined in this book. Also, you don't have to be a therapist to understand how to help your child!

For those who want an exhaustive, touching and unbiased biography of Rosalind Franklin read "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA" by Brenda Maddox. It is far superior to Sayre's analysis. Unfortunately Sayre in trying to defend her friend gets too caught up in supposition on what Franklin was likely to do and not to do, rather than providing factual evidence. Much of Sayre's biography stems from her obvious hatred of J D Watson's personal recollection of events and this leads her into inaccuracies. In the first chapter of the book her attempt to discredit Watson has Sayre stating that the eyeglasses Watson mentions Franklin wearing are pure fiction. Maddox is not so easily swayed by personal vendetta and the photograph in Maddox's book of Franklin at a scientific meeting in 1949 wearing eyeglasses clearly says more about Sayre's motives than the proverbial thousand words.

The question which none of the books on the description of thestructure of DNA can ever answer is whether Franklin would have won a Nobel had she lived. However bear in mind the following. Only three can receive the prize and Crick and Watson would always fill two of those slots. Wilkins in the obvious choice for the third spot because he stuck with DNA and provided additional experimental evidence in support of the Watson and Crick model. Franklin, although she provided help to her student Gosling after she left King's College (Against Randell's specific request that she not work on DNA) she was obviously moving on to other things. So what did Frankin provide that was important for the structure? The only really important detail was the excellent x-ray image of the B form. (Her discovery of the A and B forms was important but not for the Watson and Crick model.) The information contained in this image essentially constitutes the "stolen" data - data that was actually freely communicated amongst a number of scientists, and made available to Watson and Crick. Franklin was obviously aware that such information was used to make the model. Did she complain? Did she request coauthorship with the two "thieves"? No, she did not and it is clear from both Sayre and Maddox that if Franklin had thought she had been "robbed" she would have made her feelings known only too well! It is very possible that she knew the data had been widely disseminated.

IMPORTANT EDIT: I, like many others, believed that a photograph of the B form was included with the material sent to out by Randell but rereading Horace Judson's excellent "The Eight Day of Creation" I find that no photo was included. Thus only Watson saw the B form photo, Crick did not. Any information Watson got regarding the photo must have come from Wilkins, as Judson notes. Ironically Franklin had all the information she needed to solve the main features of the structure (3.4A/base, 34A/turn and 20A width) months before Watson and Crick.

Would Franklin have determined the structure herself? It is even more impossible to predict this than the award of the Nobel. But again bear in mind as the model was being published Franklin was leaving King's College and appears not to have done any more significant experimental work on DNA. Together with Gosling (who stayed at King's to complete his PhD) she may have been successful but she would have needed Watson's luck at having a chemist nearby who knew what chemical form of the bases was appropriate, and to make use of Chargaff's "rules". She would have needed to realize that the two sugar phosphate backbones run in opposite directions (apparently almost immediately obvious to Crick from the crystal data but not to Franklin) and she would have needed to build models - something she was not in favor of doing. Could she have done it in three weeks, maybe, three months, possibly. EXCEPT, she was leaving, moving on, leaving behind DNA which at that point was still only a model, albeit a biologically appealing model. The most important aspect of Franklin's story is that there is no evidence that she had Watson's unfailing belief that the structure would be the holy grail of biology. The most significant aspect of Watson's crusade was that he was never seriously sidetracked by others who wanted to restrict his interest. Rosalind Franklin was a strong-willed individual and an excellent scientist and if either Sayre or Maddox had provided me with evidence that she truly knew the potential significance of her work then I would more easily believe that she would have been determined to complete the structure, but the evidence is not there. When she voluntarily left King's College she left the prize behind.

Sayre's book really was excellent, and, if read carefully enough, seems quite balanced and fair, although of course Sayre has a distinct preference, being a friend of Franklin's. "Blah" from Connecticut, another reviewer here, makes his or her critical credetials quite clear when he/she says the book was scientific and therefore "jibberish." Ah, the intellectual acuity of American conservatives. You see, "Blah," the book was about science; it's going to have "science things" in it; if you can't understand them, that's a reflection on you, not the author. I'm a white male from Way-Back-Woodsville, Alaska, and I found the book quite readable, informative, and insightful. It's obvious that Franklin was never given her due credit until Sayre's book came out some 20 years after Watson and Crick's "discovery"...which they NEVER could have made without Franklin's work. Watson claims he was racing against Linus Pauling, but it's obvious he was actually racing against Franklin. Even Crick, in Sayre's book, admits she was only a few weeks away from DNA's structure. If Watson hadn't robbed her, she would have trumped Watson, Crick, AND Pauling and would have won the Nobel all by herself. So, "Blah," if you appreciate thievery and self-aggrandizement, Watson's definitely your cup of Rush Limbaugh. Me, I'll stick with the real hero...ine: Rosalind Franklin

When I first read Watson's "Double Helix" there were a few things that bothered me. First, it is clear that this guy was really full of himself- that's OK, maybe he's entitled, but his view of science as an exercise in cunning, of "beating others in the race", finding out what they were doing but keeping your results close to your vest, was so at odds with the prevailing view of science and ethics that Harvard University Press refused to publish it. And of course, what seemed to be continual derogatory references to Rosalind Franklin and her family- "Rosy has to go". How in the world could Watson call for the firing of somebody working in another Laboratory many miles away?

Of course, Rosalind Franklin had died by that time and couldn't defend herself.

But as an experimental physicist, I could not understand Watson's fixation on large tinkertoy models. After all,the data supporting such a structure has to be obtained elsewhere, from physics experiments like x-ray diffraction. And Anne Sayre's book explains this to the popular reader.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about all this is the support she received from Max Perutz and Aaron Klug, among others.

Klug and Franklin were the first to determine the structure of a virus (just before her death). She never knew that a few years before, Wilkins, also at Kings College, had given her experimental results to Watson, allowing him to obtain the correct structure for DNA.

Aaron Klug won the Nobel Prize in 1982. On June 25, 1997, he dedicated the new Rosalind Franklin Laboratory at Birkbeck College in London

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