Distillation Operation

Book Description

There are many books that discuss distillation, but there is only one that concentrates on giving readers practical guidelines for operation, troubleshooting and control. This is that book. Its contents revolves around over 300 actual case histories of distillation problems that occurred in the past. Each problem and its solution are briefly described, and the lessons learned are molded into the practical guidelines that make up the book. Carefully focused, the book shows you how over 90% of all column malfunctions occurred in the past, how they were solved, and how to prevent them in the future. Starting with column internals and their malfunctions, it progresses to installation, commissioning, startup and normal operation before surveying the auxiliary system and the column automatic controls--how they should be, how they can go wrong, and how you can repair them. This book offers the best available compendium of Do's and Don'ts, good practices, and guidelines for trouble-free design, operation and troubleshooting for inlets and outlets; distributors; avoiding tray damage; installation; commissioning and startup techniques; column flood and efficiency testing; pressure, temperature and boilup control; and many more.

Customer Reviews:

Good reference .......2007-06-01

I found this a very good reference on distillation, and a worthwhile resource on the PE exam. It however, as expected, assumes you understand interphase mass transfer and distillation theory.

A must for people in any phase of distillation field.......2002-01-03

This is the more complete book on practical aspects of distillation and absorption. From design (together with the companion book Distillation Design) to startup and troubleshoot. The last subject is also covered by other books, relating to the subject himself, but on distillation and absorption columns this is the only book not out-of-print; note that it covers also mechanical aspects usually fund only on Best Prectices by Engineering and Contracting Company.

The Everything Kids' Science Experiments Book: Boil Ice, Float Water, Measure Gravity-Challenge the World Around You! (Everything Kids Series)

Average customer rating:

GREAT!!!!!
Great intro to Science for kids
Fantastic!
good choice to start some new things with a youngster
Fun, fun, fun!!!

The Everything Kids' Science Experiments Book: Boil Ice, Float Water, Measure Gravity-Challenge the World Around You! (Everything Kids Series)
Tom Robinson
Manufacturer: Adams Media Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Science in Seconds for Kids: Over 100 Experiments You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less
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ASIN: 1580625576

Book Description

Science has never been so easy - or so much fun! With The Everything Kids' Science Experiments Book, all you need to do is gather a few household items and you can recreate dozens of mind-blowing, kid-tested science experiments. High school science teach Tom Robinson shows you how to expand your scientific horizons - from biology to chemistry to physics to outer space.

You'll discover answers to questions like:
Is it possible to blow up a balloon without actually blowing into it?
What is inside coins?
Can a magnet ever be "turned off"?
Do toilets always flush in the same direction?
Can a swimming pool be cleaned with just the breath of one person?

Get ready to enter the laboratory and learn how to conduct cool experiments, understand scientific terms like "photosynthesis," and know fun facts like how many latex balloons per day can be made from a rubber tree. Each section has a great science fair project, complete with all the details you need to wow your teachers and friends.

You won't want to wait for a rainy day or your school's science fair to test these cool experiments for yourself!

Customer Reviews:

GREAT!!!!!.......2007-08-16

2 things - 1) you have to do the dissolving egg experiment... it's fabulous!! 2) pay attention to the age range - my nephew (the intended recipient) loves science (okay, exploding things...) just turned seven and he is definitely too young for the detailed explanations. He didn't like the delayed gratification but he did get a kick out of the results the following week... for the younger kids you might want to do the experiments yourself and then once you have results let them get excited about it... the bouncing egg... after accepting that it didn't happen just then!! ... was a huge hit the next week. This really is just an AWESOME book...

Great intro to Science for kids.......2007-05-14

My 7 year old daughter and I have been going through some of the experiments in the book. The experiments are easy to follow and the explanations are basic enough for a 7 year old to understand.

Fantastic!.......2007-05-08

The experiments are simple enough to implement yet the results are very REACTIVE! Which is GOOD!
Also the kits are not difficult to find. Just stuff you'll have in your kitchen,really.

good choice to start some new things with a youngster.......2007-01-12

I am happy with the choice and so was the family who received it as a gift for their young daughter who is ready to start something new to do with her father in the cold winter months of Maine.

Fun, fun, fun!!!.......2006-08-28

I have a just turned 5 year old that LOVES science and experiments. Although this book I believe was recommended for older children, there are plenty of experiments that I can do with him at his age and get immediate results. Since there are experiments that are targeted for older children, this is one of the rare books that we'll be able to use for several years down the road. I love it so much it's going to be one of my staples in gift giving - it's easy & fun enough for those even not interested in 'science'.

Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Average customer rating:

The Best Novel Since "Lolita" and "Ulysses"
The Rocket Arcs, the Fight Rages On, the Challenges Remain
A very good 3 1/2 star book
Sex and explosions, what more can you want?
You can't polish a turd!

Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Thomas Pynchon
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Against the Day
V. (Perennial Classics)
Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow
Mason & Dixon: A Novel
A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources And Contexts for Pynchon's Novel

ASIN: 0143039946

Book Description

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, GravityÂ's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as JoyceÂ's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.

Customer Reviews:

The Best Novel Since "Lolita" and "Ulysses".......2007-09-07

"Some joker put hashish in the hollandaise, causing a run on the brocolli." Just another event in the life of Lt. Tyron Slothrop, who was attending the wild party in question in the Herman Goering casino as part of his search for the Schwatzgerat--the V2 rocket (serial no. 00000) which carries the mysterious Imipolex G device--all over wartime Europe, while the British secret service, and assorted others, search for *him*.

Why? You'll have to read the book. Along the way, he meets--among many others--a British captain with black-market connections that allow him to have fresh bananas in London's wartime winter in return for homegrown "magic mushroom" drugs; an African tribe whose members serve in the SS as V2 crews; an insane American Major whose solidiers sing diry limmericks about the V2's various components; an Italian nobleman--and a British Brigadier--with odd sexual practices (even by Pynchon's standards); and that's just the start of it.

The adventures of Lt. Slothrop in this mad looking-glass world are funny, amusing, bizzare, and complex. What's more--and this is what makes the novel a masterpiece--Pynchon integrates so many actual facts into his fictional world that it makes it and its inhabitants have much more versimilitude than the people described in most *non*-fiction works about WWII. Slothrop is more "real" than the Hitler we read about in most biographies of the man; his friends and enemies more real than, say, the defendants in Nuremberg are in most books about the trial.

If Pynchon speaks, say, of a car used by a lieutenant in a specific sub-department of the German Army in 1944, you can be damn sure that particular car model was in fact used by just such lieutenants at the time in reality; that pynchon took into account the wartime shortages that made the car's quality to deteriorate from 1944 to 1941; and that the lieutenant's resentment of this would be relevant to the plot.

To be sure, the lieutenant might then want to kill Slothrop in order to fulfill an anient prophecy based on Mayan star charts (which you can bet are also accurately portrayed); or to have a homosexual affair with him; or to do any number of bizzare or absurd things that one would expect in the looking-glass world where the novel is set. But that is just what makes this novel so great: Pycnhon doesn't research to teach us facts about WWII--even if a lot of the facts he puts in the novel are probably unknown even to WWII history buffs (like myself). He *uses* his research to create his funny, bizzare, and incredibly engaging world.

Read it--perferably, with a glass of wine (or something stronger) at your side. You will laugh, chortle, be shocked, and be amazed. Rarely had a better novel been written.

The Rocket Arcs, the Fight Rages On, the Challenges Remain.......2007-08-06

Ever since I discovered Thomas Pynchon, in college in 1982, I have fought the battle between the two camps on this book ("greatest ever written" vs. "fraud") on the side of Pynchon, where I still stand today. Many of my friends, having heard me talk about this novel, have attempted it and given up. Not necessarily because of its difficulty, but more because of what they want in a book, or don't want, or because they were not interested in what Gravity's Rainbow does, offers, and succeeds at. I don't disparage anyone who does not like Pynchon, but you must conceed the notion that just because you don't like something doesn't mean it is bad. I can't stand rap music, but I would never tell anyone it has no validity for them, and I freely admit that I don't know what makes rap good. Therefore, we all need to be careful in judging Pynchon, and especially Gravity's Rainbow as bad when we just don't like it. For those it speaks to, it has no peer.

As a fiction writer myself, this book first served as an inspiration to me. Few writers since Shakespeare have Pynchon's vocabulary and word craftsmanship. He can write a sentence that you can read over and over and marvel at in its genius. Put a lot of those sentences together and you get a tome of genius. The most important moment for me when reading this novel for the first time was when I was reading along, and I stopped and actually said to myself "wow, I didn't know a novel could do that." This declaration was repeated many times before I reached the end, and it is that amazing realization that makes this novel so great, and so important to human letters. Even the naysayers, those who attempt to find flaw with this novel, those who hate it and find it unreadable, would be unable to point to another novel like it. No other novel takes you where Gravity's Rainbow does, no other novel challenges you in the way this one does. For me, a challenge is what makes a novel special. I don't mean a challenge to understand it, but a challenge to imagine the world it describes. A challenge to look into yourself and find the things that this novel thrives on, and the challenge of letting your mind float across language that the brilliance of which could not have been imagined before you read it. Gravity's Rainbow takes you to places and inspires thoughts that no other novels do.

Now, that being said, let's have a caveat. Gravity's Rainbow was written by a man with a wide range of knowledge, a large vocabulary, and a prodigious thought process. You'll need a dictionary close at hand and you should use it without shame. You might want to read one of Pynchon's shorter books to work your way up to this one, just to get the feel of how he operates. Lots of players spend time in the minors before they are ready for the major leagues. When I first read this novel I had read V and The Crying of Lot 49 before attempting it. I also had a literature class in which we discussed Pynchon and his themes (paranoia, conspiracy, what lies beneath the surface) Most of all, don't take anyone's word for anything about this book. Just read it and let the words do their work. Make of it whatever you want, and if you don't like what's happening to you as you read it, just stop. You're no less a person, no less a reader, no less an intellectual, it just wasn't for you, and this novel is not for everyone. That's one comforting thing about it, it makes no bones about the fact that it just isn't for everyone. Few things of quality are. For me this has always been the greatest novel I've ever read, but that may not be true for everyone. To those who tread the Pynchonian path and, like me, find a home there, I welcome you.

A very good 3 1/2 star book.......2007-06-29

Yes, there's a lot of gravity here - dense, intense, tyrannical and demanding gravity. It does demand. There's nothing wrong with a little work though. Some of the reviewers here had to attempt this thing a few times before actually making it - myself included.
It's a mountain and I the reader felt like a mountain climber, if you will, and when I got close to the top, even though I knew the view would not get any better I said to myself: I'll take the extra steps and finish this thing. Then I can say: I finished this thing. Was it worth it? For all the five star reasons, sure why not. There's gold in them hills.
But, too often I felt frustration knowing I have enjoyed journeys far more user-friendly that had just as good a pay off.

Sex and explosions, what more can you want?.......2007-06-11

What sets Gravity's Rainbow above other books, at least in my humble (but correct) opinion is that it changes your perception of how to tell a story. In this book we don't have a simple and straightforward storyline. We don't have just prose to tell it (there are many digressions in the form of songs and poems and details of the lives of inanimate objects). In the end, there is a story behind the madness, even if it's sometimes hard to see.

Also, a little tip. Tips don't work for everybody, but I think this is a good one. Re-read it. I don't think any human can read it once and get everything they can from it. Don't limit yourself to one reading and say "This is great!" or even the opposite. Do it again.

You can't polish a turd!.......2007-06-09

The one and only reason I bought this book was that Neil Gaiman mentioned it in the book American Gods. I was thinking wow, if Gaiman thought enough of this book to mention it, then it must be worth reading. Well, it wasn't!

You ever get the feeling that someone is just writing to read how eloquent he can be? This is that book. This is the emperor's new clothes. I am the kid that says, "Hey, what is that fat stinky man doing running around naked?" Why are all the other people saying he looks so great? Freakin Sheep!

I would have given it zero stars if that had been an option.

Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity

Average customer rating:

Gravity - Great condition
Outstanding
The Road to Relativity
Very motivating, but lacking the math needed for real GR
Amazingly interesting book

Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity
James B. Hartle
Manufacturer: Benjamin Cummings
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0805386629

Book Description

The aim of this groundbreaking new text is to bring general relativity into the undergraduate curriculum and make this fundamental theory accessible to all physics majors. Using a "physics first" approach to the subject, renowned relativist James B. Hartle provides a fluent and accessible introduction that uses a minimum of new mathematics and is illustrated with a wealth of exciting applications. The emphasis is on the exciting phenomena of gravitational physics and the growing connection between theory and observation. The Global Positioning System, black holes, X-ray sources, pulsars, quasars, gravitational waves, the Big Bang, and the large scale structure of the universe are used to illustrate the widespread role of how general relativity describes a wealth of everyday and exotic phenomena. For anyone interested in physics or general relativity.

Customer Reviews:

Gravity - Great condition.......2007-09-20

This product was exactly as described, in great condition and shipped in a timely manner.

Outstanding.......2007-07-10

Simply the best and clearest introduction to this fascinating topic. There's none better, or even remotely close, for clarity and comprehensiveness. I wish I could write as well as Hartle!

The Road to Relativity.......2007-06-27

When an author can write a book on a complicated subject so that anyone without prior knowledge can understand the content, he is truly a gifted writer. Gravity: An Intoduction to Einstein's General Relativity by James Hartle delivers. I studied calculus and had one course in non-calculus physics 35 years ago and was amazed at how much I could understand from this book. I am also reading "Relativity DeMystified" for a different perspective but Hartle is a true winner.

One note: If relativity is your primary goal you can read chapters 1-9 and skip to 20 and then 21 (Curvature and the Einstein Equation) for a short cut, according to Appendix D (Pedagogical Strategy). Its all great stuff though, so take your time and enjoy.

Very motivating, but lacking the math needed for real GR.......2007-03-15

Let me just say, for an introductory textbook, nobody does it better than Hartle!

Very motivating...keeps physics the central topic of discussion instead of wandering off topic.

My only complaint is that Einstein's equation is introduced towards end of the book, giving it a false idea that it is "incomprehensible" which is not true.

But really, great job Hartle!

Amazingly interesting book.......2006-11-26

This is the best book for understanding gravity mathematically at the level of an advanced undergraduate. Though intended for the classroom (and based on a class at UCSB) there are many aspects of this book which make it nearly ideal for self-study:

* interesting side-bars, with some math
* thorough details in mathematical explanations
* never too much repetition of covered material
* moves from special cases (with applications) to more general cases, allowing the student to learn a little at a time (which is rare in books on general relativity)

The only downside is that it doesn't go quite as far into recent theories as you might like. This is fine for me as I, as a complete layman, would rather understand a bit of relativity well--something I missed in my undergraduate physics training.

Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow

Average customer rating:

like looking at the Grand Canyon for the first time
And If You Think The Book Is Great....
Buy it...
Overwhelming

Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow
Zak Smith
Manufacturer: Tin House Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources And Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
Zak Smith: Pictures Of Girls
Gravity's Rainbow

ASIN: 0977312798

Book Description

Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), set in an alternative-universe version of World War II, has been called a modern Finnegan’s Wake for its challenging language, wild anachronisms, hallucinatory happenings, and fever-dream imagery. With Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow, artist Zak Smith at once eases and expands readers’ experience of the book. A leading exponent of punk-based, DIY art, Smith here presents his most ambitious project to date — an art book exactly as long as the work it’s interpreting: 760 drawings, paintings, photos, and less definable images in 760 pages. Extraordinary tableaux of the detritus of war — a burned-out Königstiger tank, a melted machine gun — coexist alongside such phantasmagoric Pynchon inventions as the “stumbling bird” and “Girgori the octopus.” Smith has stated his aim to be “as literal as possible” in interpreting Gravity’s Rainbow, but his images are as imaginative and powerfully unique as the prose they honor.

Customer Reviews:

like looking at the Grand Canyon for the first time.......2007-08-15

I just saw the Zak Smith exhibit at the Walker Art Center in Minn. where I had gone to see the "Picasso in America". But this Gravity's Rainbow page-by-page is, by far, the reason to go to the Walker right now. Mindboggling. Buy the book and picture each page lined up like a grid covering an entire wall. The Pynchon book is quite challenging to read so try to imagine Zak Smith capturing the concept of each and every page with a drawing or picture. Number 404 looks like an inch thick melted white plastic mess--does anyone know what happened in the book on this page? I noticed that one of the "tags" for this product is "genius." Believe it.

And If You Think The Book Is Great...........2007-06-05

If you live anywhere near Minneapolis get yourself over to the Walker Art Center, where every single one of Zak Smith's drawings/paintings/sculptures (yes, some are three dimensional) for this project are displayed on one wall. (All are in the permanent collection of the Walker.) How do I know it's all 750+ artworks? Because I counted. 45 columns by 17 rows. You could spend hours staring at them and not exhaust this monumental project. I'm not sure how long they'll remain on display so don't put it off.

Buy it..........2007-03-28

Zak Smith a genious, and this book the best.
if you like concept ilustration, you'll love it...

and the prize it's great!

Overwhelming .......2007-01-18

I am at a loss for words.

It's one of the most beautiful things i've seen in years.

Average customer rating:

worth one star, at least.
Very difficult but top notch in some ways.
Previous reviewer said it all!
Not everyone enjoys mountain climbing
A promising plot and some entertaining digressions undone by a sense of trying too hard

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources And Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
V. (Perennial Classics)
The Crying of Lot 49 (Perennial Fiction Library)
Infinite Jest: A Novel
Mason & Dixon: A Novel

ASIN: 0140283382

Amazon.com

Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then (as Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sinister, insinuatingly sibilant opening sentence), "a screaming comes across the sky," heralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket. The novel's title, Gravity's Rainbow, refers to the rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah to symbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. History has been a big trick: the plan is to switch from floods to obliterating fire from the sky.

Slothrop's father was an unwitting part of the cosmic doublecross. To provide for the boy's future Harvard education, he took cash from the mad German scientist Laszlo Jamf, who performed Pavlovian experiments on the infant Tyrone. Laszlo invented Imipolex G, a new plastic useful in rocket insulation, and conditioned Tyrone's privates to respond to its presence. Now the grown-up Tyrone helplessly senses the Imipolex G in incoming V-2s, and his military superiors are investigating him. Soon he is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany.

That's just the Imipolex G tip of the shrieking vehicle that is Pynchon's book. It's pretty much impossible to follow a standard plot; one must have faith that each manic episode is connected with the great plot to blow up the world with the ultimate rocket. There is not one story, but a proliferation of characters (Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more) and events that tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patterns only just past our comprehension. You will enjoy Pynchon's cartoon inferno far more if you consult Steven Weisenburger's brief companion to the novel, which sorts out Pynchon's blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of jokes. Rest easy: there really is a simple reason why Kekulé von Stradonitz's dream about a serpent biting its tail (which solved the structure of the benzene molecule) belongs in the same novel as the comic-book-hero Plastic Man.

Pynchon doesn't want you to rest easy with solved mysteries, though. Gravity's Rainbow uses beautiful prose to induce an altered state of consciousness, a buzz. It's a trip, and it will last. --Tim Appelo

Book Description

"The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II."-- Edward Mendelson, The New Republic

Packaged with French flaps, acid-free paper, and rough front.

Customer Reviews:

worth one star, at least........2007-08-25

wow, all the hard work that this man put in just to bore me! the effort alone is worth a star. gallant attempt mr pynchon.

Very difficult but top notch in some ways........2007-07-27

My theory is that Pynchon is gifted and playful (misanthropic?) enough to have written this book to visit the greatest possible suffering on the reader, in much the same way certain modern artists infamously compete to foist the worst piece of junk on some rich fool with a poodle and no taste. He tantalizes his victim with a tidbit of brilliance or irresistible mystery at each point the reader would otherwise quit, then continues the torture until the same point has been reached again. And again.

And again.

Crazy? Maybe, but looking at the book through this lens explains both its problems and strengths, not otherwise easy to reconcile. The main problems are that the book is insanely long, far more so than its number of pages would suggest, it rambles crazily, and it's disgusting. Even if you're so tough nothing else in it makes you squirm, the regular pedophilia will be uncomfortable for anyone outside the Catholic priesthood. The strengths are two; some of the writing is among the most beautiful ever done, and some of the writing demonstrates a width of knowledge and gift of perception no other author has ever shown. Pynchon apparently expects these strengths to excuse an awful lot, but let's face it - they excuse an awful lot.

Should you read it? Get the Crying of Lot 49 instead. If at the end you can honestly say `I'd take eight hundred fifty times as much of what's bad about this book for 20 percent more brilliance' then you have your answer.

Previous reviewer said it all!.......2007-07-27

So, I have nothing much to add other than a reminiscence. I first read Gravity's Rainbow while working the graveyard shift at an Army postoffice during the 70's - could there be a better background for appreciating this novel? Everyone there was totally paranoid, on drugs, and into conspiracy theories!

The books and its style both seem to defy categorization. It's sort of a historical novel set in Europe during WWII, and the style ranges from bawdy parody of serious war novels to elegy for lost worlds to...everything else? At first it was baffling because it was impossible to pick out a theme, (unless you count the many strange uses for calculus). After several readings, I concluded that I didn't really understand much of it, but it just didn't matter. The book kept me intrigued and awake, which was all I really wanted. It was also fun to go to the library, in those days before the internet came along, and look up the details of WW II technology and history to see which were fiction and which were fact. Surprisingly, the seemingly most bizarre ones were often real.

Bottom line: I'm glad I read it, but it is definitely not for everyone.

Not everyone enjoys mountain climbing.......2007-06-28

A promising plot and some entertaining digressions undone by a sense of trying too hard.......2007-05-30

Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is often looked upon as the author's magnum opus, a 900-page monster that, in constructing its fairly straightforward story, plunders all the riches of history and many of the sciences that its author found fascinating.

The plot is simple: in the last days of World War II British intelligence notices that a map American lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop has made of his sexual conquests in London corresponds exactly to where German rockets subsequently hit. An obscure branch of the British military specializing in all manner of ESP, voodoo, and Pavlovian crackpottery--Pynchon is playfully referring to how much money was thrown at all kinds of war-winning proposals--tries to discover how exactly Slothrop can predict the rocket, but Slothrop breaks away from his handlers and heads off to discover his destiny. Pynchon digresses from the main plot extremely frequently. From a 5-page tour of the awful English candies of yesterday to the creation of a new alphabet for Turkic speakers in the Soviet Union, from the tropes of Westerns to Herero religion, references abound to all manner of obscure subjects.

The novel has a reputation for being "difficult" and full of obscure references, but this is largely exaggeration. The reading public shouldn't have trouble following a long main plot of wartime intrigue and shifting between a wide cast of characters--after all, Neal Stephenson's similar and similarly huge novel Cryptonomicon was a best-seller. Most of the digressions are understandable for anyone with a solid university education.

In the end I found the novel disappointing. I did, indeed, read the thing, Pynchon fans, so don't accuse me of not having what it takes to make it through there. My reasons for not liking GRAVITY'S RAINBOW are somewhat similar to those of Pulitzer board members that overturned the 1973 award, calling the novel "unreadable," "turgid," "overwritten," and "obscene". Unreadable it's not, I got through it as have many. However, the problematic parts of the novel are turgid, overwritten, and obscene at once. Most digressions are entertaining, but often Pynchon throws in long passages of foecal humour or unusual sexual fetishes in a transparent attempt to be shocking and boundary-pushing. Unlike a William S. Burroughs, who wrote could sincerely write out-there stuff, Pynchon's risque writing is calculated and lame.

Much of the novel is impressive--and I especially like the surprise ending and the Finnegans Wake-like circle the book makes--but its failings were pretty big for me. I wouldn't warn all readers away from GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, as evidentally many do like it as a whole, but one can risk disappointment with Pynchon's work.

What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches"

Average customer rating:

An Absolute Classic from a Great Thinker
Stimulating Reading
A physicist's essay on a topic he cannot know as a scientist, only as a human being
A Classic
It's all there, before the elucidation of DNA via x-rays

What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches"
Erwin Schrodinger
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
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Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
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ASIN: 0521427088

Book Description

Nobel laureate Erwin SchrÃ¶dingerâ€™s What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. A distinguished physicistâ€™s exploration of the question which lies at the heart of biology, it was written for the layman, but proved one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of the structure of DNA. The philosopher Karl Popper hailed it as a â€~beautiful and important bookâ€™ by â€~a great man to whom I owe a personal debt for many exciting discussionsâ€™. It appears here together with Mind and Matter, his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Schrodinger asks what place consciousness occupies in the evolution of life, and what part the state of development of the human mind plays in moral questions. Brought together with these two classics are SchrÃ¶dingerâ€™s autobiographical sketches, published and translated here for the first time. They offer a fascinating fragmentary account of his life as a background to his scientific writings, making this volume a valuable additon to the shelves of scientist and layman alike.

Customer Reviews:

An Absolute Classic from a Great Thinker .......2007-08-03

In "What is Life?" monograph, Schrodinger brilliantly enlightens us with the true concept of life science. He proposes what himself calls "a naive physicist's ideas about organisms." Years before the discovery of double helix structure of DNA, Schrodinger beautifully details how the huge volume of information is related to the structure of what he calls "aperiodic crystal" (what we currently call it "protein structure."

The ideas are still fresh and everybody who really wants to start the REAL and TRUE molecular biology must read this classic. It is astonishing to see how this great thinker and physicist had elaborated, very correctly and properly, to use the statistical tools in physics (statistical physics) to explain the fundamentals of life.

It is an absolute classic from a great legend. Please read and enjoy it.

Stimulating Reading.......2006-10-15

Schroedinger, one of the great physicists of the 20th Century, applied the knowledge he gained in his own discipline to analyze human life. Based upon lectures that he gave in the 1940s, this brief book contains Schroedinger's fascinating speculations on the nature of life, several of which have proven prophetic (including the discovery of DNA). The reader comes away with the joy of having shared in the workings of a great mind.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the book is that it can be readily understood by persons relatively untrained in science or mathematics.

A physicist's essay on a topic he cannot know as a scientist, only as a human being.......2004-12-19

I'm wondering why scientists are allowed to give their opinion as scientists about topics they know nothing about as scientists. The beginning of the title ("What is Life") sounds like if Schrodinger can claim anything about the difference between mind and matter as a pure consequence of physics. Too bad, as the rest of the title might make you think that there will be some discussion about why and whether there might be a difference between mind and matter. What remains of mind when you stick to the physics? That would be a very nice question to think about, if only this was the topic of the book...but it's not what is done here.

A Classic.......2004-03-08

What is Life? is an absolute classic. Schrodinger felt that life must be explainable by physics and chemistry, yet seemed to violate the normal behavior of entropy-- and he understood further that this was a remarkable wedge point to explore. He figured out the explanation: life is the result of evolution of genetic information, which selects for complex processes that by ordinary considerations would be very unlikely. He predicted that there must be a molecule capable of carrying the genetic information (incorrectly thinking it would be a protein.) His beautifully-written book was influential and timely. Within 4 years, Von Neumann elucidated the mechanisms involved in self-reproducing automata (illustrating his abstract discussion with a picture looking remarkably like DNA to the eyes of readers today); and within a decade, Watson and Crick grasped the structure of DNA. You should not read Schrodinger's book today as one of your first sources to understand life-- there has been remarkable progress in the 50 years since Watson and Crick-- but you should read it to gain appreciation for how science can be advanced when the time is ready and a wedge point, an apparent conflict between fundamental ideas, is analyzed.

The volume also includes another lecture by Schrodinger, Mind and Matter, which is historically interesting in another way. In Schrodinger's day, the state of understanding had not advanced to the point where it was possible to make as useful conjectures about the structure of mind as of life, and he accordingly felt "[mind] may well be beyond human understanding."

Readers interested in Schrodinger's book will also enjoy What is Thought?, published 2004. What is Thought? argues that mind must be explainable by computer science, that the fundamental issues are computational, and that there is again a wedge point: the question of how the workings of a computer, which are always purely syntactical, can correspond to meaning and understanding. The situation is parallel to the one that faced Schrodinger with respect to life in two respects: first, mind is the outcome of evolution, which has built thought processes that seem inconsistent with our standard science, and second, scientific research has advanced to the point where, if we focus on the wedge point, significant understanding is obtainable. What is Thought? brings to bear on the problem of mind core ideas from computational learning theory, complexity theory, and evolutionary computing, as well as molecular and evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and other areas. The result is a principled and concrete explanation, consistent with the vast array of available data, of how meaning, understanding, language, consciousness, and all the various aspects of mind arise from execution of an evolved computer program.

It's all there, before the elucidation of DNA via x-rays.......2003-11-21

This beautiful little book was based on a sequence of popular lectures given in Dublin during WWII, and in turn on an earlier paper given in Vienna. In the book Schrödinger coins the idea of a genetic code carried by linear molecules with his phrase 'code-script'. He asks how, in the absence of validity of a large n limit required by statistical physics for the validity of any macroscopic biological laws, can the chromsome molecules that carry the code-script yield stable genetic rules. Then, he gives the answer: chemical bonding as predicted by quantum theory ala Heitler-London (Schrödinger identifies quantum jumps in the chrosomes as the origin of mutations, which are also discrete). He refers to the chromosome fibers as linear 'aperiodic crystals' (to emphase their stability in the face of thermal fluctuations) and encourages physicists to study them: he boldly asserts that both the instructions and mechanism for generating organisms via molecular replication are contained in the chromosome molecules (and there is where the "complexity" lies). This book encouraged physicists to study problems of complexity long before the term complexity had become the catchword that it is today. Indeed, our first ideas of 'complexity' were developed parallel in the same era by Turing and von Neumann.

Schrödinger is buried in Alpbach (Tirol), where he lectured and enjoyed the Alps frequently after WWII in a school organized by one of two brothers who, according to a very well-informed source, formed nearly the only Resistance in Austria during the war. On his grave is a pretty little plaque bearing the Schrödinger equation.

Book Description

Adding some 20 percent to the original content, this is a completely updated edition of the indispensable guide to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Steven Weisenburger takes the reader page by page, often line by line, through the welter of historical references, scientific data, cultural fragments, anthropological research, jokes, and puns around which Pynchon wove his story. Weisenburger fully annotates Pynchon's use of languages ranging from Russian and Hebrew to such subdialects of English as 1940s street talk, drug lingo, and military slang as well as the more obscure terminology of black magic, Rosicrucianism, and Pavlovian psychology. The Companion also reveals the underlying organization of Gravity's Rainbow-how the book's myriad references form patterns of meaning and structure that have eluded both admirers and critics of the novel.

The Companion is keyed to the pages of the principal American editions of Gravity's Rainbow: Viking/Penguin (1973), Bantam (1974), and the special, repaginated Penguin paperback (2000) honoring the novel as one of twenty "Great Books of the Twentieth Century."

Customer Reviews:

Full of Spoilers........2006-12-08

Why does Weisenburger decide to randomly drop spoiler after spoiler into his annotations? The companion was extremely helpful but the first time I read GR I realized I had to hide this companion about halfway through the novel. I cannot figure out why when describing a simple German phrase (adequately and with illuminating context to the specific situation, mind you) Weisenburger surrenders plot points that don't surface until the last part of the novel. It ended up happening almost every other episode. It was infuriating. So beware. Probably wait until your second time through to use this useful but endlessly frustrating companion.

Look for the 2nd edtion.......2006-11-22

There are two editions of this book. The first was published in 1988. The second was published November of this year (2006). It contains twenty percent additional material and some corrections. Double-check. Both editions have identical titles but the covers differ.

The worst companion except for all the others.......2006-02-21

So you've decided to try and tackle GR. The novel is certainly worth the time and frustration that can sometimes accompany reading it. As far as this companion goes, I usually had it with me while reading GR but certainly did not feel lost without it. The problem is that while Weissenburger does a lot to explain the myriad historical allusions contained within GR, there is very little in the way of literary analysis or deep engagement with any of the interesting ideas and themes. (By contrast, J. Kerry Grant's companion to Lot 49 does a much better job in this respect.) I imagine one could always read the abundance of essays on GR to get such information, and Weissenburger is only a mere mortal. But still, I would have appreciated a companion that was slightly more provocative than one that simply points out references to a type of pudding traditionally eaten by soliders in the Crimean War (not an actual reference in the book, so purists lay off). In other words, the companion sometimes helps make sense of things or provides a few interesting points, but does little to truly enrich your appreciation of the novel as a whole.

If you're on the fence, I would still recommend buying the companion, especially if you can find a used copy. But don't feel that this is indispensable or anything. It's flawed but, unfortunately, for the time being it seems to be the best there is.

Yer gonna need this.......2005-09-13

Yep. Very well put together collection of stuff you'll need -- even if you think you don't -- to get through Gravity's Rainbow proper. Sure you can fly solo, naked, hungry ... but this gives you a bit of support as you swim through. Just a few pivots and landings to catch your breath. Although not essential, it can help. Fer sher.

Useful and well-done, but at a price..........2005-07-18

An extremely useful and interesting companion to GR. Perhaps not essential, but certainly helpful in getting much more out of this fantastic novel. There are different ways to use the Companion - I ended up reading an episode in GR and then reading the accompanying pages in the Companion, which worked pretty well though it obviously breaks the natural flow of the novel. I like the fact that Weisenburger generally does not attempt to provide detailed interpretations - the sheer length of the novel fortunately prevents the flood of over-interpretation and academic nonsense that, for example, sometimes fills companion books for shorter novels (e.g., The Crying of Lot 49). Weisenburger's thoughts on timelines and the overall structure are enlightening.

I do have one major complaint: for reasons I'm sure Weisenburger would try to defend but that I don't understand at all, he "gives away" rather early in the Companion the events described in the very last episodes in GR. We're talking major spoiler here! Although there are numerous hints throughout GR leading up to this, the picture doesn't become clear until the very end. Unfortunately, Weisenburger blows the surprise very early on and personally I really resented this.

A minor complaint: As mentioned in other reviews, Weisenburger commits a number of errors when explaining some of the science and math. Often, these explanations just weren't necessary and in some cases work only to deflate the book's magic. As one of a number of possible examples, consider the extraordinary balloon ride episode, in which Slothrop witnesses the earth's shadow moving across the land. Weisenburger chimes in with a discussion as to whether or not the cited speed of the shadow is realistic, and also informs us that of course shadows can't break the speed of sound! Useless over-analysis of the type that explains why generation after generation of students are turned off to literature when forced by professors with too much brain and not enough heart to dissect great books in the classroom.

Average customer rating:

Good and creepy
I gravitated towards this book
One time, I read a Tess Gerritsen book...and nothing happened
Not her best work
quite believable and well written sci-fi..

Gravity
Tess Gerritsen
Manufacturer: Pocket Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Medical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Medical | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Bloodstream
Life Support
Harvest
The Sinner (Jane Rizzoli, Book 3)
The Apprentice (Jane Rizzoli, Book 2)

ASIN: 0671016784

Amazon.com

Tess Gerritsen used to be a doctor, so it comes as no great surprise that the medical aspects of her latest thriller are absolutely convincing--even if most of the action happens in a place where few doctors have ever practiced--outer space.

Dr. Emma Watson and five other hand-picked astronauts are about to take part in the trip of a lifetime--studying living creatures in space. But an alien life form, found in the deepest crevices of the ocean floor, is accidentally brought aboard the shuttle Atlantis. This mutated alien life form makes the creatures in Aliens look like backyard pets.

Soon the crew are suffering severe stomach pains, violent convulsions, and eyes so bloodshot that a gallon of Murine wouldn't help. Gerritsen brilliantly describes the difficulties of treating sick people inside a space module, and how the lack of gravity affects the process of taking blood and inserting a nasal tube. Dr. Watson does her best, but her colleagues die off one by one and the people at NASA don't want to risk bringing the platform back to earth. Only Emma's husband, a doctor/astronaut himself, refuses to give up on her. As we read along, eyes popping out of our heads, all that's missing is one of those bland NASA voices saying, "Houston, we have a problem--we're being attacked by tiny little creatures that are part human, part frog, and part mouse."

Other examples of Gerritsen's controlled medical horrors: Bloodstream, Harvest, and Life Support. --Dick Adler

Book Description

Now former physician and New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen expands the scope of her landscape of terror in an elegantly crafted, thoroughly menacing new medical thriller. A young NASA doctor must combat a lethal microbe that is multiplying in the deadliest of environments: space.

Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. Jack McCallum, Emma's estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded and embittered him. He must watch from the sidelines as his wife prepares for her first mission to the International Space Station.

Once aboard the space station, however, things start to go terribly wrong. A culture of single-celled organisms known as Archaeons, gathered from the deep sea, is to be monitored in the microgravity of space. The true and lethal nature of this experiment has not been revealed to NASA. In space, the cells rapidly multiply and soon begin to infect the crewwith agonizing and deadly results.

A recovery attempt ends in catastrophe; the NASA shuttle crashes, and the space station is left dangerously crippled. Emma struggles to contain the deadly microbe, while back home, Jack and NASA work against the clock to retrieve Emma from space.

But there will be no rescue. The contagion now threatens Earth's population as well, and the astronauts are left stranded in orbit, quarantined aboard the station -- where they are dying one by one....

Customer Reviews:

Good and creepy.......2007-09-28

This one pulled me in and kept me awake late into the night with its vivid descriptions of a creepy biohazard aboard the space shuttle and International Space Station. The book also has one of the best descriptions of a space launch this side of Michener's Space and Wolfe's The Right Stuff. The combination made this book a 5-star winner. Highly recommended.

I gravitated towards this book.......2007-07-08

I am a reader of sci-fi and horror books. I love action, adventure and humans battling creatures. I didn't pick up this book for the "medical suspense," I picked it up for the "Alien" vibe I got from the synopsis. And I am pleased to inform you that if you're more like me then you will not be disappointed with Gravity.
The book is said to be a mix of "Apollo 13" and "ER", but I'd say it's more like a cross between "Outbreak" and "Alien". It's basically about this mysterious virus that unleashes itself among 10 astronauts aboard the International Space Station. How did it get aboard the ship? Is this an experiment? bioterrorism? a mistake? The virus is extremely deadly, and extremely unheard of so nobody will allow the Astronauts to come home. The astronaut's loved ones will fight for their return not knowing that this virus could wipe out mankind if it falls into the wrong hands.
The book is very well written, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes sci-fi and action-adventure thrillers as well as the medical novels.

My only minor complaint is the latest paperback cover art with the body under the white sheet...umm they're in outer space!

One time, I read a Tess Gerritsen book...and nothing happened.......2007-05-23

Tess Gerritsen's novels were always second- or third-tier for me, something I'd get around to eventually after reading everything of priority on my list. At last, however, I was forced into my lower tiers for a school assignment, and so I picked a comfortable spot in Starbucks and dove into GRAVITY.

A mind-numbing experience in boredom ensued. The book opened with a bang, something I prefer in my fiction, so I thought all was gravy. And then the second chapter busted straight out of the gate, and I thought I'd died and gone to fiction lover's heaven. But something curious happened next: The second chapter was a hoax. Never happened, at least, not in the way it first appeared. I immediately docked Gerritsen points for false conflict. Hoping she wouldn't repeat this error, I kept reading.

But it proved to be more of the same. The first chapter that came on like gangbusters? Never referenced again until late in the book, when the action really did start heating up. But by that time I was too disengaged from the story because of all the hurry-up-and-waiting Gerritsen had put me through. And that's GRAVITY in a nutshell: False conflict after false conflict intermingled with melodramatic love scenes. It all made me feel like something was happening, when in truth the story had stalled like Apollo 13 on the launch pad during a hurricane.

It's not that Gerritsen is necessarily a bad writer; on the contrary, she had plenty of extremely vivid visuals throughout, some thrilling and scary moments, and a steady narrative hand that showed promise as a suspense author. But she too often telegraphed the surprises and undercut the suspense with boo scares. I might give Gerritsen another chance, but not anytime soon. If you want real suspense, read INTENSITY by Dean Koontz instead.

Not her best work.......2007-03-11

I'm a huge Tess Gerritsen fan and this is probably the first one that didn't put me over the top. I was fascinated by the space station information, but certainly there was some dramatic license taken. Especially the "rescue" seemed implausible. While the medical backdrop is usually what I like best about Ms Gerritsen's books, this one was, pardon the pun, a little out of this world.

quite believable and well written sci-fi.........2007-02-09

This is one of the best and well written sci-fi thrillers I have read. Good thing about this is its almost believable. Though the esoteric nature of the subject makes the story more believable I have to accept that its a well written story with a well thought out plot. Great work from Gerristen. To give an idea how much I liked it, I took the public transport instead of my car to work for few days so that I can read the book during commute :)

-Santhosh.

Astrophysics, Clocks and Fundamental Constants (Lecture Notes in Physics)

Average customer rating:

Astrophysics, Clocks and Fundamental Constants (Lecture Notes in Physics)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Astrophysics & Space Science | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

Measurement | Experiments, Instruments & Measurement | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 3540219676

Book Description

The question of a possible temporal variation of the fundamental constants was raised by Paul Dirac in his "large number hypothesis" in 1937. Today it appears in the context of the search for a unified theory of the fundamental interactions. It touches both fundamental and applied physics, as the postulate of the unalterability of the constants is the foundation for modern metrology. The book presents reviews written by leading experts in the field. Focussing on the question of variations of the fundamental "constants" in time or space, the chapters cover the theoretical framework in which variations are expected and the search for variations of quantities like the fine-structure constant, the electron/proton mass ratio, g-factors of proton and neutron etc. in astrophysical and geophysical observations and in precision experiments with atomic clocks and frequency standards.

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