Essential Guide To Depression (The American Medical Association Essential Guides Series)

Book Description

In clear, nontechnical language, the American Medical Association explains the latest findings on depression, the complex mood disorder that affects nearly 17 million Americans each year. Distinguishing depression from the everyday "blues," this comprehensive guide provides solid, detailed answers to such questions as:

What is depression? Characteristics and symptoms of depressive illnesses are fully explained, including major depression, bipolar or manic depression, dysthymia, seasonal affective disorder, and more
Who is at risk for depression? Age, gender and personality factors are discussed, as well as physiological, genetic, emotional, and environmental causes
What are the latest treatment options? The full spectrum of prescription medications is profiled, as well as the wide range of psychotherapeutic and complementary approaches
Who can treat depressive illness? A section on medical and mental health professionals and their qualifications provides guidelines for choosing the best care
How can I help a loved one? Here is expert advice on how to encourage a family member to seek help; handle destructive or suicidal behavior; know when hospitalization is needed; recognize depression in children and older people; and much more.

With a listing of mental health organizations and resources and a glossary of medical terms, the American Medical Association Essential Guide to Depression presents all the information you need to help yourself or others manage this serious but highly treatable illness.

Customer Reviews:

Insight for the Depressed.......2002-01-26

At first glance, this small paperback seemed like it could not possibly possess enough information. However, don't judge a book by it's cover. The book uses good scenarios to describe different forms of depression. Hypocondriacs may get depressed reading through the common symptoms though. Written clearly and concisely with just enough medical terms for any layman. Pretty good book.

American Medical Association Essential Guide to Depression.......2000-06-02

If you want a clear account of the current thinking on depression this may well be the book for you. It is clear, concise and comprehensive - so why only four stars? This book has all the hallmarks of a book written by committee. In their desire to cover all the bases, the unnamed authors lack a clear voice of their own. They are clearly touting the medical approach, as one would expect of a book from this source. There are long detailed sections on possible causes, diagnosis, the different medications available, including a short section on herbal remedies, and a few pages detailing types of psychotherapy. In the end I began to wish for greater weighing of the different approaches, even if it was at the expense of impartiality. However for someone seeking information, whether for them selves or for someone close to them, this book could be invaluable.

Essential Guide to Depression: American Medical Association

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Essential Guide to Depression: American Medical Association
Unknown
Manufacturer: Pocket Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M4MOXA

Book Description

COLONEL LESLIE R. GROVES was a career officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, fresh from overseeing hundreds of military construction projects, including the Pentagon, when he was given the job in September 1942 of building the atomic bomb. In this full-scale biography Norris places Groves at the center of the amazing Manhattan Project story.
Norris contributes much in the way of new information and vital insights to our understanding of how the bomb got built and how the decision was made to drop it on a large population center. Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, writes, “The brilliant engineer who commanded [the Manhattan Project] has never had his due. Groves finally emerges as the historic, tough, larger-than-life leader who made the atomic bomb happen and gave shape to the atomic age.” Groves’s hard work and numerous innovations during World War II also had a lasting imprint on the Cold War that followed. Procedures and practices developed during the Manhattan Project became the building blocks of the “national security state” and the “military-industrial complex.”
“I had always thought of General Leslie Groves as a fringe character in the story of the atomic bomb,” says Seymour Hersh, “a military martinet widely ridiculed by the nuclear physicists. Norris has rewritten the history of the most important event of World War II and in so doing has given us the best account yet of the military colossus that built America’s first nuclear bombs.”

Customer Reviews:

A Long Fuse.......2002-10-27

As biographer Robert Norris himself concedes, there have been many accounts of the Manhattan Project since World War II, several biographies of Leslie Groves, and even Paul Newman's memorable depiction of Groves in the film "Fat Man and Little Boy." Norris hoped to achieve the academically definitive biography, and no one can accuse him of failing at that. He is thorough. In fact, there is unintended humor in the "racing" title: as late as page 214 the search for real estate for Hanford and Oak Ridge is just getting underway. Groves's bomb has a long fuse.

Leslie R. Groves entered West Point on the eve of World War I. When the United States entered the war, the Academy's curriculum was compressed into a two year matriculation in the belief that many new officers would be needed quickly on the European front. As timing would have it, neither Groves nor many of his fellow cadets saw action. What resulted, however, was a glut of peacetime officers, an undesirable situation for ambitious career officers like Groves. Eventually Groves's accomplishments would outrun his rank, a major political liability. In the end, however, Groves himself was his own worst enemy. Intelligent and self-motivated, Groves became an accomplished engineer at the Academy, though it would seem that as a cadet he acquired the skills without the polish. As an officer in the Corps of Engineers he was brusque and dogged, except with those who could advance his career. Superiors tolerated his rudeness and obesity because he could kick behinds and deliver the goods. In peacetime he might have been shuffled out; but as the Nazi shadow extended closer to home, a man of Groves's productivity would be annually disciplined for his interpersonal shortcomings and "punished" with greater responsibilities. It was thus that Groves became a major force in the construction of the Pentagon, and ultimately a secret weapons project based in the New York District of the Army Corps of Engineers, the so-called Manhattan Project.

To the uninformed, Groves's contribution to the production of the atomic bomb was as scoutmaster for a collection of scientific mad monk geniuses in the desert of New Mexico. In fact, Norris leaves the impression that Groves was more of an absentee landlord at Los Alamos. The real action was going on elsewhere, primarily in massive industrial complexes at Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In some respects the building of these two industrial facilities was as impressive as the making of the bomb. That Groves was able to build not one but two mammoth atomic factories in roughly eighteen months is staggering.

As Norris tells the story, Groves enjoyed a decent relationship with Robert Oppenheimer and most of the scientists working for him. He did not totally understand the intricacies of atomic physics; in truth, the entire project was a foray into the unknown. Where he excelled was in translating theoretical problems into practical management components which he executed against incredible odds: shortages of rare substances and wartime civilian labor, secrecy and security, political and military infighting, and concern over the German nuclear program, to cite a few. When his scientists were divided over opposing theories and techniques, Groves's favorite stratagem was simply to test both possibilities in laboratory situations and select the one that worked.

Which raises the question of costs and accountability. The funding of this massive secret project is probably a good subject for a separate work. Suffice to say that Groves drew his funding from an extraordinarily large but innocuously named account, and that funding was one problem he did not have to face, at least until after the war. Conveniently, there was in fact no one-certainly not his [many] senior officers-who could question the wisdom of Groves's expenditures and management techniques. He answered, nominally at least, to a civilian board appointed by Roosevelt, which included James Conant, President of Harvard. But from this narrative the board's primary relationship with Groves appeared to be running interference.

After Japan's surrender, Groves exercised a proprietorship over the newly confirmed nuclear technology, and he would parcel it out sparingly and reluctantly. He advocated an American hegemony of nuclear weaponry-no international control of atomic bombs, no sharing of technology with allies-and even within America he embargoed information to most government agencies, including the White House. Groves protected the stockpile, and since the weapons were stored as component parts, Groves could obfuscate the true strategic strength of the American arsenal as political needs dictated. Norris contends that Groves forged much of this nation's current nuclear philosophy during and immediately after the Manhattan Project.

New technology notwithstanding, the old politics would eventually derail Groves. In 1948, during his annual fitness review, Groves was told by Dwight Eisenhower to his face that his maverick days were over and that he would not be appointed chief of engineers. Eisenhower, who regarded Groves as a loose cannon, made it clear that too many officers had been rubbed the wrong way by his arrogance. No fool, Groves submitted his resignation and spent several years with Remington Rand in the early years of computer development.

Norris depicts Groves's role in the atomic espionage trials of the 1950's in a benign light, [Gregg Herken's new work depicts the General's involvement in a darker light] and I suspect that the author's closeness to his subject made him somewhat less critical of Groves's tactics and style. Overall, this is an extremely valuable work for several reasons. "Racing for the Bomb" is a commentary on the pros and cons of national crisis management, the dilemma of giving someone enough power to get the job done without creating a dictator. There is also a message here about contemporary nuclear proliferation. Have India, Pakistan, Iraq, and North Korea mastered their own Manhattan Projects, or is nuclear proliferation simply a matter of espionage and horse-trading? One can almost hear Groves saying, "I told you so."

good, dry scholarship.......2002-10-07

This biography fills a significant gap in the historical record: behind the incredible scientific and engineering triumph of the Manhattan Project, there was a master administrator. Leslie Groves is that administrator, the take-charge guy who knew how to inspire, find competent people to whom he delegated tasks, cajole and bully his way into the historical achievement of the first working atomic bomb. In this bio, you get to know who he was, how he operated, and what he did. There is no doubt he was a great and talented, if somewhat unsung, man.

Nonetheless, Groves' life and methods are not exactly something that would inspire a lay reader about the epoch. There are far better books for that, such as Rhodes' Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is the most readable and best reported and researched of the whole shelf of books on the subject in my opinion. No, this is a book of value principally for specialists in scientific and military history and for atom-bomb buffs. There was info I needed in it and could only find there, so it was most useful for a scholarly purpose. But it was not a fun read about a rich time.

Afterall, when contrasted to great politicians or scientists or adventurers, there is a reason why very, very few bureaucrats find a narrative niche: they are simply not as interesting or as comprehensible. Norris even says as much, when he admits there were not many layers to Grove: he was a competent and arrogant man, who when given extraordinary authority during the war was capable of achieving extraordinary things. At the end of the war, he refused to change along with the army and instead retired to a corporate position and as a curmugeon who corrected in excruciating detail the innumerable accounts that kept appearing.

I do not mean to diminish Norris' achievement here, only to put it into perspective for prospective readers. The prose is clear, if a bit lackluster. But this is very good scholarship and a useful addition.

Recommended for specialists only.

Great biography of Leslie Groves.......2002-09-03

The book is definitive, scholarly, yet dramatic and exciting. Indispensable for understanding how the atomic bomb came about. A necessary counterpoise to the prevailing scientist-based story of the development. Additionally Norris's description (meticulously documented by a vast quantity of letters and interviews) of Grove's childhood and professional years before WWII recreates a lost era when society's leaders and doers were on a higher plane than they are today.

great reading.......2002-07-17

This has to be the definitive biography of General Groves. The research is meticulous. The book reads more like a suspense story than a biography

I really enjoyed the book.

Why I loved "Racing for the Bomb".......2002-05-27

For those interested in the development of the atomic bomb, this book fills a gap, telling who made the American program succeeded where other nations failed or followed later. General Groves drove the project relentlessly to timely success with immense resources, personal determination, project management skills, and effective delegation. Without Groves, the world would have changed more slowly. A good read, if a bit slow on Groves' life before the bomb.

The Manhattan Project's taskmaster. (Scientists' Bookshelf).(book on Gen. Leslie R. Groves)(Book Review): An article from: American Scientist

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The Manhattan Project's taskmaster. (Scientists' Bookshelf).(book on Gen. Leslie R. Groves)(Book Review): An article from: American Scientist
Philip Morrison
Manufacturer: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This popular set, the fruit of 27 years of intensive labor by an outstanding scholar of Judaica, opens the basic work of Jewish Oral Law to study. Every page of the Hebrew text of the Mishnah is accompanied by Rabbi Blackmans lucid and literal English translation. His enlightening introductions, supplements, and notes make this set indispensable. This attractive set includes the six volumes of the Mishnah.

Customer Reviews:

Clarity.......2001-09-07

The beauty of the commentary is he makes this fairly vague and often confusing book understandable to a layman.

A solid translation with excellent notes.......1998-01-13

The Mishnah, the second text of Jewish Scripture after the Jewish Bible, is here translated in clear and trustworthy form. The seven volume set includes an entire volume which is supplementary information and indexes. Each volume covers a different order (seder) of the Mishnah. There are several footnotes throughout each volume to explain details of the law involved, offer grammatical notes and specific nuances of the translation. Several cross references are given to help one to see how the Mishnah deals with the same or a similar subject in different orders. If you've got the budget and shelf space (10" or so) for more than a single volume but don't want to dedicate an entire shelf and several hundred dollars to the Artscroll series, this is the edition for you. It is also a fine compliment to the Artscroll series given the different principles of translation that the two editions use.

The Trail of the Huguenots: In Europe, the United States, South Africa and Canada Addenda and Corrigenda by Milton Rubincam

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The Trail of the Huguenots: In Europe, the United States, South Africa and Canada Addenda and Corrigenda by Milton Rubincam
George Elmore Reaman
Manufacturer: Genealogical Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0806302909

Book Description

This is the story of the great exodus of the Huguenots from France at the end of the seventeenth century, and of their dispersal to places in Europe, the United States, Canada, and South Africa. It traces their migrations through Europe and across the Atlantic to Canada and the United States, providing startling insights into the origins of many of our earliest colonial settlers. Over half of the book is devoted to the Huguenots and their direct descendants in

Canada and the United States, dealing with those who settled in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. An Appendix has the names of hundreds of Huguenot immigrants with dates and places of their arrival; there are short biographical sketches with genealogical data, a list of English surnames of French derivation, additions and

Book Description

One of the great advances in scholarship has been in the field of Hebrew palaeography and codicology, and a special feature of the Supplement is the up-to-date information provided by Malachi Beit-Arie for the entire corpus of the 2,602 numbers in the collection.

The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy: Volume 7: 1926-1927 (with Addenda, Corrigenda, and General Index) (Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy Vol. 7)

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The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy: Volume 7: 1926-1927 (with Addenda, Corrigenda, and General Index) (Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy Vol. 7)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0198126247

Book Description

The opening section of this seventh and final volume of the definitive edition of Thomas Hardy's letters covers the period from January 1926 to December 1927: his last letter, to Edmund Gosse, was written on Christmas Day 1927 and he died seventeen days later, on 11 January 1928. Although few of his long-standing personal correspondences were actively kept up during these last two years of his life, Hardy maintained (especially when writing to Sir Frederick Macmillan) a lively and practical interest in all aspects of his work and career; he also responded, usually with a courteous refusal, to the many requests and enquiries that his fame inevitably attracted. The second section is devoted to letters which became available too late for publication in their correct chronological sequence in earlier volumes of the edition; those now added date mostly from the nineteenth century, and include a series of letters to officials of the Duchy of Cornwall about the purchase of land on which Max Gate was built, as well as numerous individual letters of considerable interest and importance. This volume contains more than 350 letters, the great majority of them previously unpublished, which are supplemented, as before, by scrupulous annotation and extensive cross-referencing; by a chronology covering the whole of Hardy's career; and by an index of recipients of the letters included. As the concluding volume, however, it also incorporates an extensive General Index covering the texts and annotations of the entire edition.

A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages IV: Addenda and Corrigenda

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WAKE UP AND READ THE REAL STUFF

A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages IV: Addenda and Corrigenda
R. L. Turner
Manufacturer: RoutledgeCurzon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0728601176

Book Description

Indo-Aryan applies to Indo-European Languages brought into India by the Aryans. This book presents a detail overview with cross references to approx. 140 thousands words. Classic reference work.

Customer Reviews:

WAKE UP AND READ THE REAL STUFF.......2004-04-23

HELL, JUST WANT TO STATE THAt this is areal claassical book and not meant for little children unless they are baby christs and you know mary personally!!!!!!!!!!

The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation Between 1558 and 1640: Works in English With Addenda and Corrigenda to Volume (Contemporary ... Between 1558-1640, Vol 2)

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The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation Between 1558 and 1640: Works in English With Addenda and Corrigenda to Volume (Contemporary ... Between 1558-1640, Vol 2)
Anthony F. Allison , and D. M. Rogers
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0859678520

Book Description

The world at the turn of the twentieth century was in the throes of "Marconi-mania"-brought on by an incredible invention that no one could quite explain, and by a dapper and eccentric figure (who would one day win the newly minted Nobel Prize) at the center of it all. At a time when the telephone, telegraph, and electricity made the whole world wonder just what science would think of next, the startling answer had come in 1896 in the form of two mysterious wooden boxes containing a device Marconi had rigged up to transmit messages "through the ether." It was the birth of the radio, and no scientist in Europe or America, not even Marconi himself, could at first explain how it worked...it just did.

Here is a rich portrait of the man and his era-a captivating tale of British blowhards, American con artists, and Marconi himself-a character par excellence, who eventually winds up a virtual prisoner of his worldwide fame and fortune.

Customer Reviews:

the Tesla thief, still glorified...?.......2005-12-10

Surprised that the book fails on a major point: to talk about the highly supportable contention that Marconi stole Tesla's technological ideas, since Marconi visited Tesla and since Tesla was such a "businessman innocent" that he let people root around in his papers for ideas as a friendship gesture.

Still, an intersting read on the early 20th century through various technological vingnettes about the effects of radio that you would find no where else--until a better book is published of course, in my opinion.

We learn much about aerials, but not much about inventions........2005-02-22

This book, at 291 pages, is a quick read. It can be read in about two hours. We learn that Marconi's main contribution was to combine Heinrich Hertz's invention of radio waves with Oliver Lodge's invention of the coherer. We learn of Marconi's discovery of radio waves bouncing off the upper atmosphere, an effect essential for trans-Atlantic radio waves (paves 53-55, 258). We learn of Marconi's "spark method" which worked better than Edison's jumping current method. We learn that it was actually David Hughes (pages 97-98) and Oliver Heaviside (pages 128-131), not Marconi, who built the first wireless. We also learn that Nathan Stubblefield was the inventor of a wireless that could transmit not just Morse code, but also voices and music.

Much of the book tells about Marconi's efforts at building higher aerials and scouting out locations to build aerials, e.g., on various ships, in Cape Cod, Newfoundland, or Santa Catalina Island. In fact, this is the major thrust of the book: scouting out locations for building aerials. The book should not have been called "Signor Marconi's Magic Box," since we learn nothing about the "spark method" or the "coherer" beyond their names. Instead, the book should have been called "Signor Marconi Builder of Aerials." The word "patent" occurs 19 times in the book, but here the word patent is just used in passing, and we learn nothing about the patents, or how they represented improvements over the earlier state of the radio art. "Patent" does not even occur in the index.

The book spends a good deal of time utilizing literary devices, especially the literary device of describing the weather, and the literary device of naming personalities with little or no direct relevance to Marconi. For example, we are told that "on a misty morning three days later a Russian hospital ship sighted another vessel" (page 200). We learn that "the men who were working ran out into the snow in mad rejoicing" (page 146). We find that "day after day through the hot summer months of 1895 . . ."(page 16). We are told that "tens of thousands of chimneys filled the air with the sooty haze" (page 21). We read that "this was a deeply romantic corner of England, a treacherous rocky coast. . . where people still talked of lost bounties of wrecked . . . Spanish galleons" (page 72). We also read that "outside, his men braved the icy winds which blew small icebergs into Glace Bay" (page 100). Moreover, we learn about "out on the snowy wastes of Brant Rock . . ." (page 208). Additionally, we read that "in the summer heat the stony earth shimmers" (page 281) and that "a storm blew up from the northwest" (page 264). The author is a confirmed name-dropper. We learn the names of Marconi's competitors, and the names of Marconi's love interests, literary figures, sports figures, and political figures of the time (e.g., King Victor Emmanuel; Reginald Fessenden; Nevil Maskelyne; Frank Fayant; Alexander Popov; Gordon Bennett; Eugene Ducretet; Inez Milholland; Thomas Lipton; Lionel James; Rossini; Chopin; Arthur Conan Doyle; Frederick Treves; Amos Dolbear; Alaxandre Dumas; Nellie Melba; Beatrice O'Brien; Edmund Gurney; Frederic Myers; Leonore Piper; George Bernard Shaw; Joseph Pulitzer; and Cristina Bezza-Scali; Rudyard Kipling; Bob Fitzsimmons; Jim Jeffries; Jack Dempsey; Henry McClure; just to name a few). On and on and on goes the list of irrelevant names. The book devotes atleast ten times more space describing Marconi's romantic interests than describing the engineers who work for Marconi.

To conclude, the author Gavin Weightman provides us with a book having a misleading title (Signor Marconi's Magic Box) and a misleading subtitle (The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century). The book contains only a moderate amount of interesting material, but a huge amount of fluff. The book does not explain the nature of a coherer, a Herzian wave, or the spark method, and reveals very little about Marconi's collaborators and coworkers, essentially nothing about Marconi's business partners, and essentially nothing about what Marconi had actually invented. In striking contrast is Tom Lewis' book Empire of the Air. Tom Lewis covers the history of radio with the insight expected of somebody who is an electrical engineer having a J.D. and an M.B.A. Five stars to Tom Lewis' book Empire of the Air.

Like Early Wireless Itself: Useful, but Flawed.......2005-02-08

From the title, you might suppose this book to be a history of early wireless, with an emphasis on Marconi's work. And so it is, to some degree. It is much more a biography of Marconi, for whom Weightman has an evident fondness. But it is a weak biography, in that it does not delve into Marconi's life too deeply, or too long. Indeed, the book effectively ends (or rather, just stops) at the First World War, with a final chapter or two about the last years of Marconi's life 20 years later. And it's a somewhat incomplete story of early wireless, concentrating (understandably) mostly on Marconi's work, with only glimpses of the advances made by so many other pioneers. Still, it is an interesting and informative read, fleshing out the bare bones of the earliest years of an emerging technology. It just left me wondering what happened to the second half of the book.

Looking (and thinking) inside the box.......2004-04-08

The story of the development of wireless technology is complicated and surrounded by claim and counter claim. Marconi is undoubtedly the central figure of this story but the main characters are interwoven like the twisted pair wires that were replaced by the increasing use of telegraph communications.

Einstein has said that scientific advance is opaque with foresight, transparent with hindsight, and this book amply illustrates the point. It is easy to look back on the breakthroughs of Guiglielmo Marconi and belittle the impact. Yet much of the enormous advances at the end of the 20th century would not have been possible without Marconi (or rather the technology STARTED by Marconi's discoveries). Marconi was a strange mixture of modern and ancient, and did not understand the theoretical background of his advances. Nor does the reader need to understand the science of signal transmission to thoroughly enjoy the book. It is interesting and enlightening to see the attempts to rationalise how `radio' worked, particularly by some of his contemporaries. I suspect that some of our own imperfect understandings will be viewed with similar wonder when viewed from the other side of lucid explanations.

The story is generally well told, and is particularly effective when describing three Atlantic dramas in the years just before the First World War. The passengers rescued from the steam ships Republic and Titanic owed their rescue to both the technology, and to the seriously dedicated wireless operators. Indeed, the operators from the Titanic only ceased transmitting about 20 minutes before the vessel went down, and one of the pair perished. In the third drama, Dr Crippen was apprehended in New York after `escaping' on a trans-Atlantic voyage - the ship's captain recognised the man who had murdered his wife, and the `Marconi men' on board informed the authorities. Both English and French newspapers published the `chase', charting the positions of both Crippen's vessel, and that of the following Inspector Drew (in a faster vessel, which arrived first in New York).

Marconi's advances shine through the pages of the book, but even though it is not dwelt upon, Marconi as a man receives very much less favourable coverage. I suppose if he had been a `better' person, he would not have made the breakthroughs of which we are all grateful.

Peter Morgan (morganp@supanet.com)

A good look at the early 20th century.......2004-01-27

This book is easily read and handles technical issues without getting bogged down in detail. An amateur radio enthusiast would be left hungering for more on the devices, antennas, etc. that Marconi used, but those who are not familiar with the principles of radio should find this book very satisfying. Hertz, Maxwell, Heaviside, DeForest are all here but, as the author makes clear, Marconi himself had no idea about the science underlying his success but was persistent nonetheless. The author ventures into personalities and sensations of the period that will keep you moving through the chapters. Imagine projecting news headlines onto the clouds with high powered lights! Weightman will tell you about it. I had no idea that there was a successful broadcasting service by telephone in Budapest before 1900, with music and news. Threading it all together is Marconi's remarkable life of staying ahead of the pack until the development of the electron tube. You'll get a wonderful sense of the optimism, excitement and wonder of the pre-WWI period in a well told story. I closed the book amazed that all that I had read took place only 100 years, such a short time, ago.

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