Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems

Book Description

This best-selling classical mechanics text, written for the advanced undergraduate one- or two-semester course, provides a complete account of the classical mechanics of particles, systems of particles, and rigid bodies. Vector calculus is used extensively to explore topics.The Lagrangian formulation of mechanics is introduced early to show its powerful problem solving ability.. Modern notation and terminology are used throughout in support of the text's objective: to facilitate students' transition to advanced physics and the mathematical formalism needed for the quantum theory of physics. CLASSICAL DYNAMICS OF PARTICLES AND SYSTEMS can easily be used for a one- or two-semester course, depending on the instructor's choice of topics.

Customer Reviews:

it gets the job done.......2007-10-10

it starts off well enough, but the chaos chapter is terrible. I did use multiple sources while i was taking an analytic mechanics course. The best part of the book is the well assorted bunch of problems.

I doubt students using this text can tackle dynamics.......2007-04-28

I doubt students using this text will be as capable in tackling dynamics problems as one would assume. Give the Physics student fed on a regular diet of this book one of those swirling, mechanical-arm problems and they'll probably be dead in the waters. This is probably one of those books that create the illusion of mastery rather than develop real skills.
Springer has a real good series on classical mechanics nowadays. That's my tip.
Disclaimer: gave up on this book and never really used it, because I think it sucks and life is too short.

worst textbook I ever had.......2007-02-03

This book is one of the reasons why I am now a math phd student, rather than a physics phd student. Unfortunately, physics departments stick to the same awful books, when they really ought to know better. It doesn't matter how much math you know--I was a senior math major. You can follow everything that is written in this book and still not learn much because the book hardly contains any real knowledge. Very little physical insight will be found here, unless you think about it for yourself and come up with your own explanations. The idea of actually understanding anything seems to be completely missing. The problems are often tedious, involving excessive computations (not that some of that isn't appropriate), with a few exceptions. Not a good textbook or reference. If you don't at least question this book, you will miss out, big time--I promise.

If you have the misfortune of having this as a text, please, at least try reading something else. Feynman's lectures cover some of the material at an elementary level. V. I. Arnold's Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics might be worth taking a look at, although it requires some mathematical sophistication for a full appreciation.

This book is a real dissaster!!!.......2007-01-29

I used this book for Classical Mechanics and Classical Dynamics, and was a complete waste of time and money, the explanation of the topics is very superficial, and the mathematics are very poorly. However, the book is well organized, because clearly it develop a line of thought that an undergraduated student can follow, nonetheless the develop of this line of thought is a real dissaster. In conclusion, please look for another book, don't buy this piece of sh... Sorry, but I'm really dissapointed with this book. I had to buy another five books to complete what at last is the real classical dynamics.

P.S.: Beg your pardon if there is any grammar error, I'm not a native English Speaker.

Know's its place.......2006-09-02

This semester is my first in grad school and we're starting into Goldstein and I'm using Marion for review and backfill. The really negative opinions on this page are over done. AND so are the really positive reviews.
Overall the book is just great for an undergrad who won't be going on to the PhD or masters. But once you're in one of these programs you may find yourself reaching for it to make sure you've got your basics covered.
Hopefully Thornton will upgrade the book and not dumb it down as time goes on. A layered approach usually works.

FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?

Average customer rating:

Please read this book
Use of Ancedotal Evidence Left Me Frustrated and Confused
SAHMs Beware
Wise Counter Argument to Stay at Home Mom Phenom
A Relevant Warning to Women

FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?
Leslie Bennetts
Manufacturer: Voice
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Women & Business | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Feminist Theory | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families
Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home
The Feminine Mystique
I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood
Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World

ASIN: 1401303064
Release Date: 2007-03-28

Book Description

Women are constantly being told that it's simply too difficult to balance work and family, so if they don't really "have to" work, it's better for their families if they stay home. Not only is this untrue, Leslie Bennetts says, but the arguments in favor of stay-at-home motherhood fail to consider the surprising benefits of work and the unexpected toll of giving it up. It's time, she says, to get the message across -- combining work and family really is the best choice for most women, and it's eminently doable.Bennetts and millions of other working women provide ample proof that there are many different ways to have kids, maintain a challenging career, and have a richly rewarding life as a result. Earning money and being successful not only make women feel great, but when women sacrifice their financial autonomy by quitting their jobs, they become vulnerable to divorce as well as the potential illness, death, or unemployment of their breadwinner husbands. Further, they forfeit the intellectual, emotional, psychological, and even medical benefits of self-sufficiency.The truth is that when women gamble on dependancy, most eventually end up on the wrong side of the odds. In riveting interviews with women from a wide range of backgrounds, Bennetts tells their dramatic stories -- some triumphant, others heartbreaking.The Feminine Mistake will inspire women to accept the challenge of figuring out who they are and what they want to do with their lives in addition to raising children. Not since Betty Friedan has anyone offered such an eye-opening and persuasive argument for why women can -- and should -- embrace the joyously complex lives they deserve.

Customer Reviews:

Please read this book.......2007-10-03

I am a female attorney who has been practising family law for 26 years.
When I first started out, I represented many women who were married in the 1940's, 50's and 60's, when society felt that every woman's place was in the home. As a result, many "displaced homemakers" suddenly found themselves facing poverty in their old age. My own generation (the baby-boomers) all seemed to gravitate towards careers, so the displaced, poverty-stricken homemakers would be a thing of the past, right?
Wrong.
I am stunned to discover how many women in their 20's and 30's (the so-called post-feminist generation) are opting to become stay-at-home moms.
What is the problem, you ask?
In one word - DIVORCE.
And don't say it'll never happen to you. After all, I'm sure you buy smoke detectors, don't leave matches within your children's reach, don't leave candles or a stovetop unattended - but I'll also bet you also have homeowner's insurance, in case the unthinkable happened and your house caught on fire.
I've known so many women who tried so hard to be terrific wives, great mothers - and still found themselves divorced. Making sure you always have marketable skills so that you are able to support yourself and your children is like buying homeowner's insurance.
Of all the divorced SAHM's I've known, very very few are able to return to the workforce and earn enough money to support their families in the same lifestyle they enjoyed during the marriage. Sure, you can always get a minimum-wage job as a sales clerk or a waitress, but it will not buy you a middle-class lifestyle. Well-paying jobs will go to either a) recent college graduates, with newly-learned marketable skills or b) people who have spent the last 5, 10 or 15 years working their way up the ladder.
This book is a must-read, especially for young SAHM's who are confident that their marriage will last forever and that they will have no trouble re-entering the workforce any time they choose. I do have two criticisms, though: one, it is repetitive (one needn't repeat the same thing over and over to make a point) and it focuses almost exclusively on upper-middle class women, who are only a minority of the population.
Actually, upper-middle class SAHM's often suffer the worst, financially and emotionally, from a divorce, since they tend to have the most unrealistic expectations about the workplace (especially those who never worked outside the home at all) and they experience the biggest drop in lifestyle.
The men, on the other hand, tend to do very well after the divorce, simply because they have always had a well-paying career, without interruption, and after the initial financial hit (splitting the assets and paying child support) they keep on earning a high income, year after year.

Use of Ancedotal Evidence Left Me Frustrated and Confused.......2007-09-27

I would not recommend this book. It's a shame really, b/c I think Ms. Bennetts has a good message. Unfortunately she seems to base many of her points on ancedotal evidence. The writing style was a bit choppy and I couldn't figure out if Ms. Bennetts simply chose the wrong ancedote each time or if she truly wants women to not only support themselves, but to drive fancy cars and live in fancy houses.

Her apparent emphasis on material wealth repeatedly seemed to undermine her intentions. And the use of ancedotal evidence just compromised her authority. Perhaps I should have been tipped off at the start of the book when she used her mother as an example of a woman that was able to balance family and work successfully without reprocussions. (Too bad she doesn't emphasize the fact that her grandmother provided the childcare.)

Another example is when she put down a stay-at-home mom for driving old cars in order to live in a wealthy neighborhood with a good school system. Ms. Bennetts seemed to imply that the mother should go back to work so her family could afford new cars and other such luxuries. Surely this wasn't her point, or was it?

I was looking for a book that would support my decision to remain a working mom; however, examples like these throughout the book left me questioning the true message of the book and left me frustrated.

SAHMs Beware.......2007-09-27

Women do bash each other too much, but that's probably because we are all trying to be good at so many contradictory things -- and are afraid we're failing at all of them.

This book has jumped right into the "mommy wars," and been bashed accordingly.

Even though young women want to do life differently than their mothers did (who - trust me - wanted to do life even more differently than THEIR mothers did), we all keep circling around the same problem: We want our families to flourish. We just don't want to become penniless and futureless doing it.

This highly readable book argues that combining work and motherhood is tough but possible and even rewarding. Bennetts contends that depending on husbands to earn all the family money is very risky, and she is quite believable when she describes the many ways that this way of life can go wrong.

Bennetts is also not buying many of the "reasons" that have become fashionable for mom's total surrender of jobs, money, and benefits. She is at her most entertaining when she dissects today's version of the weary cult of motherhood, in which only mom's incessant hands-on attention is presumed to create conditions in which an infant can even survive.

Entertaining and thought-provoking.

Wise Counter Argument to Stay at Home Mom Phenom.......2007-09-10

As far as this topic goes, I've always been a live and let live kind of woman, although I would personally not be comfortable totally relying on a man to support me financially. All the women in my family have worked. I grew up with a working mom, who was a stay at home mom, until she found herself widowed with an 11 month old daughter. When I would hear those "I didn't even know where the checkbook was" stories from women who had either been abandoned or did the abandoning, I always thought...where the heck was your brain? Even if you are a housewife/full time mother, you are and ADULT in your home and should share in the responsibility of guiding your family's financial future. I have a very dear friend who is a stay at home mother and home schools her children. She does part time sales, but guess what..she does the books! Her husband wouldn't dare make a financial move without her and it works for them. Conversely, I have friends who also have husbands who earn a good living, but they work, because they feel they are able to contribute more. As a single woman, it is sometimes daunting to think that I am fully responsible for my financial future..but after reading this book, it reminded me that even if I were married, I would still be fully responsible. I'm also a fairly conservative person, but I have to say, I've seen the church and conservative politicians try to hammer home that the BEST solution for families is to have the mother at home while the father worked. But even GOD allows for personal choice, and if I remember my Bible correctly, the Proverbs 31 woman worked both inside and outside of her household. To me the best solution is to do what works for you. If you feel that you should stay home, then stay home. If you feel that you should work, then work. Each choice, like most choices, comes with its pros and cons. However, whatever your choice, in life, you should always make it a priority to educate yourself and develop a skill.

A Relevant Warning to Women.......2007-09-07

This book serves as a warning to all women who have children or are thinking about having children, that you can't always depend on a man to support you. For women who are thinking about dropping out to raise children they need to think of the long term consequences of their future earning power.

The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World

Average customer rating:

FASCINATING...
Wow!
Fantastic
Advancing the body of knowledge
Could You Imagine?

The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World
Lynne McTaggart
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Motivational | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

New Thought | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Personal Transformation | Spirituality | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Science | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe
The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief
The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter And Miracles
Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don't
Matrix Energetics: The Science and Art of Transformation

ASIN: 0743276957

Book Description

The book you hold in your hands is revolutionary, a groundbreaking exploration of the science of intention. It is also the first book to invite you, the reader, to take an active part in its original research. Drawing on the findings of leading scientists on human consciousness from around the world, The Intention Experiment demonstrates that thought is a thing that affects other things. Thought generates its own palpable energy that you can use to improve your life, to help others around you, and to change the world.

In The Intention Experiment, internationally bestselling author Lynne McTaggart, an award-winning science journalist and leading figure in the human consciousness studies community, presents a gripping scientific detective story and takes you on a mind-blowing journey to the farthest reaches of consciousness. She profiles the colorful pioneers in intention science and works with a team of renowned scientists from around the world, including physicist Fritz-Albert Popp of the International Institute of Biophysics and Dr. Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology, medicine, and neurology at the University of Arizona, to determine the effects of focused group intention on scientifically quantifiable targets -- animal, plant, and human.

The Intention Experiment builds on the discoveries of McTaggart's first book, international bestseller The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, which documented discoveries that point to the existence of a quantum energy field. The Field created a picture of an interconnected universe and a scientific explanation for many of the most profound human mysteries, from alternative medicine and spiritual healing to extrasensory perception and the collective unconscious. The Intention Experiment shows you myriad ways that all this information can be incorporated into your life.

After narrating the exciting developments in the science of intention, McTaggart offers a practical program to get in touch with your own thoughts, to increase the activity and strength of your intentions, and to begin achieving real change in your life. After you've begun to realize the amazing potential of focused intention, and the times when it is most powerful, McTaggart invites you to participate in an unprecedented experiment: Using The Intention Experiment website to coordinate your involvement and track results, you and other participants around the world will focus your power of intention on specific targets, giving you the opportunity to become a part of scientific history.

The Intention Experiment redefines what a book does. It is the first "living" book in three dimensions. The book's text and website are inextricably linked, forming the hub of an entirely self-funded research program, the ultimate aim of which is philanthropic. An original piece of scientific investigation that involves the reader in its quest, The Intention Experiment explores human thought and intention as a tangible energy -- an inexhaustible but simple resource with an awesome potential to focus our lives, heal our illnesses, clean up our communities, and improve the planet.

The Intention Experiment also forces you to rethink what it is to be human. As it proves, we're connected to everyone and everything, and that discovery demands that we pay better attention to our thoughts, intentions, and actions. Here's how you can.

Customer Reviews:

FASCINATING..........2007-10-02

"The Intention Experiment" by Lynn McTaggart provides fascinating insights on intentional living. This book shows you how thought can affect your life. In essence thought is an energy that has the potential to transform your own life as well as help others.

Focused group intention is also shown to be a highly powerful tool in affecting animals, plants and humans.

Also, the reader is invited to become involved in a research experiment about the power of human thought.

My most recent favorite New Age books that highlight self-empowerment and life transformation are:

The Secret

Nexus: A Neo Novel

Wow!.......2007-09-26

This book has a wonderful compilation of scientific studies about intention! It is very easy to read and understand. I was amazed at the
scientific research that has been completed in this area, and even more
surprised that so few of us are aware of this research.

Enjoy.

Fantastic.......2007-09-13

You may believe the reports in the book or you might just be a blind defender of the "offcial" science, but in both cases this is a book to read.
I will suggest it to all my friends.

Advancing the body of knowledge.......2007-09-10

This is a wonderful book, bringing forth highly complex knowledge in a digestible form. It helps if the reader is analytical by nature. Thank you to Lynne Taggart for her writing style and depth of coverage of the topic. I am learning from this book how and why prayer works.

Could You Imagine?.......2007-09-10

Picture this... A World with Peace, a World with Love, A World where EVERYONE has enough. If I am to understand what Lynne McTaggart is saying here, then I am to understand that a simple change in Our Collective thoughts 'could' change Our World. Peace, Love, Harmony. Groovy.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Average customer rating:

interesting perspective
A Necessary Read
An Important Read
Good read
Thank you

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Barbara Ehrenreich
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Labor Policy | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Labor & Industrial Relations | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

U.S. | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Fast Food Nation
Bait and Switch : The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
The Glass Castle: A Memoir
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

ASIN: 0805063897

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.

As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.

So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed

Book Description

Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generositya land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

Customer Reviews:

interesting perspective.......2007-10-17

I read this years ago but came across it again while packing. I have an awful memory but for some reason this book has stayed with me. I work and go to school so reading about her experiences with being a server and cleaning brought back memories (not good ones). I enjoyed reading about her struggles on getting by and having to deal with her family while she was away. She is a journalist so that had made me feel like jumping into that career even more so at the time. I do however feel like she cheated during her "investigation," because she had ran out of money or needed something from her "previous" life. I must also add that she made good points about working for certain big companies and how corporate places treat their employees. I don't know if her book would pertain to how things are today but I'm sure some things never change.

A Necessary Read.......2007-10-14

Some Amazon Online customers disagree with my fondness for Nickel and Dimed. Various readers consider the author to be elitist and sheltered. These people consider comments such as, "I am, of course, very different from the people who normally fill America's least attractive jobs," to be arrogant. However, these comments can also be interpreted as Ehrenreich's admittance of her obvious differences from most low-wage workers, as well as her ability to give credit to her newfound co-workers. This reader goes on to criticize the author's choice of locations; Florida and Maine especially, because as he claimed, they will always be more expensive than most places. This is not necessarily factual. It will always be difficult- virtually impossible- to squeak by when earning $2.73 per hour plus tips at a low-traffic restaurant. This is inevitable whether the restaurant is in Key West, Florida (a supposedly "rich" city) or a rural area, where the cost of living will require other fees. Yet another complaint from this reader is that Ehrenreich is racist in her statement, "My worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves." On the surface, this comment absolutely sounds racist. Throughout the entire book, though, Ehrenreich systemically drops these types of comments with the intention of a) being sarcastic and b) exemplifying how easy it is to develop stereotypes of people (i.e. oppressing others) when you, yourself, are oppressed. As seen, the author cannot be blamed for these particular wrongdoings.

An Important Read.......2007-10-09

For anyone who did not have to struggle through a minimum wage job as an adult, this book is for you. Way too many Americans think people can survive on minimum wage. This will humble that opinion and identify your misconceptions.

Good read.......2007-10-05

I had to read this book for class and i must say it was a good read. extremely easy to read and equally funny.

Thank you.......2007-09-30

I got it in time for class, actually ahead of time. Fast delivery, great price, item was exact.

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Average customer rating:

...and so is this book
Ranks up there with Common Sense, Uncle Toms Cabin, The Femine Mystique
Embracing Business Globalization's Irreversibility
What a good boy am I
My opinion is flat

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Thomas L. Friedman
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

International | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

History & Theory | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Globalization | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

ASIN: 0374292884
Release Date: 2005-04-05

Amazon.com

Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim, in his new book, The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.) Friedman tells his eye-opening story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns will know well, and also with a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. His book is an excellent place to begin. --Tom Nissley

Where Were You When the World Went Flat?

Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we'd happily have peppered him with questions about The World Is Flat for hours. Read our interview to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?")

The Essential Tom Friedman

From Beirut to Jerusalem
The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Longitudes and Attitudes

More on Globalization and Development

China, Inc. by Ted Fishman
Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz
The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs

Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto

Book Description

When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004," what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this "flattening" of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?

In this brilliant new book, the award-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demystifies the brave new world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt. The World Is Flat is the timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.

Download Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist gives a bold, timely, and surprising picture of the state of globalization in the twenty-first century

Customer Reviews:

...and so is this book.......2007-10-10

Though it has become an immensely popular book, Friedman's work is fairly shallow and simplistic. It is important to remember that this is a world analysis written by a journalist, not by a political economist or any type of economist or political scientist. His views are oversimplified and his support relies heavily on anecdote, making his 600-pager about 400 pages too long. We read it for a poli sci class and proceeded to tear it apart intellectually.

Ranks up there with Common Sense, Uncle Toms Cabin, The Femine Mystique.......2007-10-10

One of the greatest books ever written. Everyone in America should read this book. Every teacher in America should read and teach Frieman's lessons. Every parent should read and help prepare their children for the world that is coming. Every student should read and begin to prepare for the world they are going to face. This is the most important book of our times, bar none.

Embracing Business Globalization's Irreversibility.......2007-10-10

This is easily the most relevant book written on the new realities of business globalization, its irreversibility, and the practical consequences to our future. Friedman does an excellent job describing the numerous factors that led up to our current global economy including the ongoing fall of communism, the advent of the personal computer, and the ubiquity of the Internet. His historical review and assessment is fascinating and it sets up the reader to understand the context for his theories and practical applications. Friedman delves into numerous industries, businesses, personalities, case studies, technologies, psychological factors, and sociological factors. Although he covers numerous business, technological, and economic concepts, his writing style is very engaging and entertaining, using many personal examples and narratives, thereby holding the reader's interest. Rather than bemoaning some of the common perceived negative consequences of a global economy (such as US auto workers losing jobs to overseas cheaper labor) Friedman helps the reader to understand business globalization's irreversibility. In so doing, he describes many personal, practical, and business strategies for thriving in this new environment. Friedman is realistic and compassionate concerning the changes and the challenges. He states, "the great challenge for our time will be to absorb these changes in ways that do not overwhelm people but also do not leave them behind. None of this will be easy. But this is our task. It is inevitable and unavoidable" (pp. 46-47). As Friedman unfolds his strategies, he gives the reader a broader, global perspective that is filled with hope and excitement. Whether as a CEO, a business student, or a brand new professional embarking upon a career, this book is insightful, practical, and essential reading.

What a good boy am I.......2007-10-06

Reading this book is like watching someone else's kids open their Christmas presents from relatives they don't really know. I'm not sure how the author can possibly be so fascinated by technology and yet know absolutely nothing about it at the same time, but his endless diatribes about the miracles of PayPal and Microsoft Word are beyond laughable, and I was pretty much in shock when he started citing howstuffworks-dot-com as a technical reference on fiber optics and SOAP. What editor told him that this was OK?

So enamored with his own cleverness is he that Mr. Friedman dedicates several pages to explaining the book's title, even though a single sentence would have sufficed. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop after the first chapter; rather than make a point and move on, he has to point out the fact that he just made a point and tell you what a wonderful point it was just in case you missed the point. It's like hanging out with that one friend who sits around smiling and pointing to his hindquarters after he rips one off at the dinner table.

If you want to learn about globalization and are not old enough to remember the first light bulb, go read "No Logo" instead. This is horrible, irrelevant geriatric babbling.

My opinion is flat.......2007-10-03

When a book has had over a thousand reviews, what can I possibly say that hasn't already been said? So I will keep it short and not so sweet.

No one will read this book, or any of the updates, for "fun." Do you NEED to read it? Yes, it contains some important economic concepts and realities, but it's a bit overlong. I'd say it could be cut in half, so skim through some of the numerous "interviews," repetition of central points, and endless advice and encouragement. The global pie is getting bigger and better, but the competition for piecies of that pie is heating up. Smart, ambitious, creative people will thrive; slow, lazy, dull people will languish, and everything inbetween. For too long many Americans have been sitting on their laurels and the day of reckoning is near. Heed this warning: Put down your TV remotes, game controllers, and iPods, and start working like your life (or lifestyle) depended on it. Get your rear into some serious gear, and don't balk at the notion that you should be an "expert" in at least three different, unrelated fields. Does this scare or excite you?

In so many interviews with foreign entrepreneurs, we are told (or reassured) that no matter how much of the "mundane" work is performed by countries other than the U.S., America's creative and innovative spark is still unsurpassed: All the world looks to America to lead the way into the future. I'm not sure. A lot of that "mundane" work was high level and highly paid, and why should we expect that America will continue to dominate in creativity and innovation? The truth is, we're in for a flattening of living standards, and from the perspective of the relatively high American standard of living, it will seem like a drop in standards until we reach another equilibrium (who knows how long that will take?). In any case, the reassurances about the talents and abilities of Americans seem at odds with other parts of the book, such as Bill Gates feeling "terrified at the American work force of tomorrow."

If you're already working hard at becoming an expert in three fields, then you probably don't need to read this book. Indeed, you probably don't have time to read it, or to read and write Amazon reviews, for that matter.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Average customer rating:

interesting
The Black Swan and What's Wrong with Nassim Taleb's Viewpoint
Bell curve Intellectual fraud
The World of Unknown Unknowns
Interesting, but long-winded

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Epistemology | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Way of the Turtle: The Secret Methods that Turned Ordinary People into Legendary Traders
A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation

ASIN: 1400063515
Release Date: 2007-04-17

Amazon.com

Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb continues his exploration of randomness in his fascinating new book, The Black Swan, in which he examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact. Engaging and enlightening, The Black Swan is a book that may change the way you think about the world, a book that Chris Anderson calls, "a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature." See Anderson's entire guest review below.

Guest Reviewer: Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.

Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it's something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.

The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.

Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."

In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature. --Chris Anderson

Book Description

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.

Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.

Customer Reviews:

interesting.......2007-10-17

I like the fact that he presents things differently, even though he seems a little bit to "conscious" and proud of this... :)

Good book generally.

The Black Swan and What's Wrong with Nassim Taleb's Viewpoint.......2007-10-17

I'm 94 percent through reading Nassim Taleb's remarkable book about random events having higher than expected occurrence throughout history. I'm an unusual reader however in that many of the people he's met, read about and formed friendships with, I've also had the opportunity to meet, read about or write to. Being the "loner" that I am however, unlike Mr. Taleb, I didn't form friendships with these guys. Didier Sornette and Benoit Mandlebrot are two of his hero's if I can use poetic license, whose works I've followed throughout the years and as an applied scientist working first in the aerospace and auto industry, and now in finance, have had a chance to apply their work and ideas to real world problems. However, I've also been a student of Newton, Kelvin and Einstein all of whom would and did make room for the "Gaussian" curve that Mr. Taleb has disgust for. I would also fall into one of Mr. Taleb's cohorts with whom he has high disdain, since I also was educated in physics and mathematics in the usual academic curriculum. This being the case, I feel I have some credibility to offer a secondary review of his work having used the tools of "Extremistan" as he calls it.

To begin, there are many statements in his book that I agree with. The Nobel self-congratulatory awards, the assertion of many academics to request a mathematical proof of his "theory", the view that mathematics exists only in the mind for nature offers neither a true square, diamond, or triangle, the lack of an explanation for the observation of highly probable events and his continued persistence that an explanation isn't necessary are just an example of his high intellect that in the "real world" we all come to appreciate and assume some brotherhood with this smart-alec of a man. However, there is clearly a mischievousness in his demeanor that snickers at anybody who disagrees with him that is uncalled for. This appears as high arrogance that rightly his mother ascertained from his character when she said to him, "if you can get people to pay you what you think you're worth, instead of what you're really worth, then you've got something".

Let me make a thoughtful empirical criticism which underpins Mr. Taleb's ranting and raving in the book. Mr. Taleb says on page 281 of the Black Swan, "you need one simple deviation to reject the Gaussian, but millions of observations will not fully confirm the validity of its application. Why? Because the Gaussian bell curve disallows large deviations, but tools of Extremistan, the alternative, do not disallow long quiet stretches". His overall argument fails on this one simple account: there are more than one cause in effect for almost all known observations of any phenomena in the universe. What's typically done in physics is to attempt to understand the strongest influencers of an outcome, not ALL of the influencers of an outcome. He fails to understand that it's not one distribution or one cause in effect, but always multiple causes occuring. Extreme events have a different mechanism that triggers cascades while every-day events, those occurring that aren't extreme have a separate cause. One only enters into the conundrum of explanation when you try and link all observations, both from his world of Extremistan and Mediocracistan together into one cause. This is never the case in any phenomena I've ever dealt with or heard about, from weather forecasting, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, chemical kinetics, or the financial markets. There are competing effects going on, not just one. Some trigger daily and can be observed regularly, some trigger every 100 years or more.

Take for example his principal teacher of Black Swans, the financial markets. Okay, so thirsty bubbles, credit crunches, LTCM, October 1987, August 2007 occurred and weren't explained by the "Gaussian" model. Well, for ease of explanation, say there were two underlying distributions with two completely different mechanisms involved. One cause of market movements say, results in a distribution of returns modeled like a Gaussian and the other cause, is best explained by some distribution that has extreme tails, infinite variance and allows for discontinuous jumps. I have yet to meet a physicist or mathematician who wouldn't agree with this and it satisfies Mr. Taleb's points exactly. What he fails to comprehend I believe, is that multiple causes are in effect simultaneously in any problem I've ever encountered, each resulting in its own distribution of outcomes. What's not separable and creating havoc in explanation, are the multiple causes that create the underlying distributions and/or which cause has what distribution?

As a practicing computational and modeling scientist since 1987, I see Mr. Taleb's book as delightfully playful, but certainly amateurish. His understanding of science is quite ignorant really. I was amazed at the name dropping, though he continually disavows making a habit of it. And why Mr. Taleb can't see to find anybody but Herr Dr. Professor Mandlebrot to agree with him is beyond me? Perhaps the physicists he did find who agreed with him, weren't quite as famous as they needed to be, to be quoted in his book. Lastly, being a student of history that Mr. Taleb purports to be, I was amazed he didn't dig up these two quotations, one from the supreme empiricist Isacc Newton and the second from the best theorist I know, Albert Einstein:

Thus far I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity. I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for these properties of gravity. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
I. Newton

Newton forgive me; you found the only way which in your age was just about possible for a person with the highest powers of thought and creativity. The concepts which you created are guiding our thinking in physics even today, although we now know that they will have to be replaced by others farther removed from the sphere of immediate experience, for we know that science cannot grow out of empiricism alone.
A. Einstein

I would say that one can't predict extreme events so one doesn't model them generally. It's not a failure of "modelers" as Mr. Taleb suggests, but of tackling simpler problems first. We didn't throw Newton out when his laws failed to account for relativistic velocity; we shouldn't throw Markowitz, Merton, Sharpe, Black and Scholes out either for their early contributions. Sure, they'll be overtaken by Rachev and the Levy-Stable distribution function but in 1968, who could compute a numerical basis function on a piece of paper since computers were hardly around! The Gaussian was used simply because you could compute it; it had a closed form analytical equation.

Bell curve Intellectual fraud.......2007-10-16

Didier says, "A crash occurs when order wins. In stable markets buyers and sellers balance out each other, normal times are when disorder wins. When the imitation strength K gets close to a special critical value Kc, a very large group of investors share the same opinion, a may act in a coordinated way, an abrupt drop in price, infinite slope K/Kc, a crash occurs. "New demographic, technological, or economic developments prompt spontaneous innovation in financial markets and the first wave of investors and innovators become wealthy. Then imitators arrive and overdo the new techniques. In the ensuing crises, latecomers lose big before regulators and academics put out fires."

Taleb says that the human suffers from three ailments: 1. the illusion of understanding, orhow everyone thinks he know what is going on in a world that is more complicated or random than they realize. 2. the retrospective distortion, or how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror (history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality). 3. the overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories-when they platonify" Taleb hedges with puts in calls that are designed to make money when a black swan occurs and that is all that matters.

Properities of Extremistan: Scalable; Wild randomness; the member is either a giant or a dwarf - strong inequalities in the extreme; winner take almost all effects; vulnerable to the Black Swan; total will be determined by a small number of events; hard to predict from past information; history makes jumps; and the distribution is either Mandelbrotian gray Swans or totally intractable black Swans.

"Gaussian-bell curve variations face a headwind that makes probabilities drop at a faster and faster rate as you move away from the mean, while scalables or mandelbrotian variations, do not have such a restriction." Didier demonstrated using a log periodicity equation that sudden changes could occur and that stock market crashes followed a curve. I observed that Didier used fractuals and mandelbrots, in his book.

Gaussian bell curve did not provide an accurate prediction of reality for the German dutschmark when in the 1920, four trillion were exchanged for one dollar. "An outcome that tells you that the bell curve is meaningless as a description of the randomness in currency fluctuations. All you need to reject the bell curve is for such a movement to occur once - just consider the consequences." The bell curve is used as a risk-measurement tool by regulators and central bankers. The point of Gaussian bell curve is that most observations hover around the mediocre, the average. A gaussian bell curve of men reaching 9 feet 1 inch is one in one with 100 zeros behind it. So if you see a nine foot Chinese, according to the bell curve that is impossible and yet the possibility does exist. Suppose an increasing number of 8 foot Chinese emerge and suddenly a nine foot Chinese exist then pay attention to the black swan. The black swan is impossible according to the bell curve but its random existence should cause one to pay attention.

Outsourcing has not caused America to bankrupt. Wealth is scalable because workers have shifted into a post-industrial society were ideas are valuable. For example, software is scalable, costing almost nothing to produce but capable of generating massive amounts of wealth. "The inequality among the superrich is the same as the inequality among the simply rich-it does not slow down" "For any large total, the breakdown will be more and more asymmetric". Work is unfair. One programmer may be capable of producing more power designs and code than twenty of his peers. "The 80/20 rule is metaphorical; it is not a rule, even less a rigid law." In some situations you may have a concentration of the 80/20 type and you can identify beforehand where the 20 percent are. Why is the bell curve so popular? The Bell Curve allows for certainties to exist and confidence to increase; the bell curve disregards the possibility of sharp jumps or discontinuities and are inapplicable to extremistan; large unpredictable deviations are rare, but can not be dismissed; the Gaussian way is to focus on the ordinary; if there is gravity pulling numbers down that we have the gaussian approach, but if we have a singularity emerges than a rarity of enormous magnitude has occurred, a black swan, an anti-gravity field canceling out gravity, a inward spiral of energy, to a single point; the mediocristan type of randomness does not allow for some extremes; the consequence of variation (errors) around the average of gaussian are not truly worrisome. Fuzzy Logic is better than probability. Fuzzy logical explains the chance that a possibility will occur. Probability predicts whether something will exist and may exclude things that rarely exist. It gets worse, standard deviations outside the gaussian do not matter and gaussian are the only class of distributions that standard deviation describe.

What causes catastrophes? "Statistics is not a science, it is a fraud." Divergence form the mean was considered an error. Marx picked up on this and promoted the idea of average man. "The notion of the average man is steeped in the culture attending the birth o the European middle class, the nascent post-Napoleonic shopkeeper's culture, chary of excessive wealth and intellectual brilliance." The outcome is a society without any deviate outcomes. Nervousness caused from disbelief causes catastrophes.

The World of Unknown Unknowns.......2007-10-15

NNT's use of a "narrative" strategy based on a questionable premise (did the sighting of the first black swan in Australia really impact the world?) to attract readers has paid dividends and his book has attained Grey Swan status among Amazon's Business & Investing bestsellers. The author, as he admits, has clearly enjoyed the writing experience which, besides dealing with the Impact of the Highly Improbable, has enabled him to sideswipe individuals and groups he sees mired in a world of Gaussian illusion.

On reading the book for the second time I kept asking myself "is this new to me?" and, if it is, "what is its relevance to me?". On reviewing one's own life to date, as the author recommends, it is clear that much of it has indeed been determined by high-impact unforeseeable events. This does not come as a great surprise - but then Taleb says that it never does, in retrospect! This contrasts with the chilling realization that there are almost certainly more such occurrences ahead. It is interesting to read explanations for why humans "don't know they don't know" they live in an extreme world but many, without realizing it, will already be familiar with psychological phenomena such as "platonism", "tunnelling", "confirmation bias" and the "narrative fallacy".

Interestingly, Taleb seems to miss what could well be the main reason why individuals "don't know they don't know": they just don't want to know they don't know they don't know! It seems to be a natural human reaction to put one's head in the sand when faced with the possibility of unforeseeable, high impact, possibly negative, events - particularly when they believe they can do nothing about them.

What, perhaps, is newer and more relevant to many is the fact that the professionals apparently rely on defective tools for analysing their particular piece of reality. Having some knowledge of the financial world and its questionable mathematical models, I can readily believe that many professionals - and even Nobel Prize winners - are led astray by the humble Bell Curve, as Taleb suggests. In fact the reasonably experienced small investor already has little faith in market "experts". On the other hand this same investor does not automatically transfer his scepticism to experts in other important fields, such as the social sciences, economics, environmental studies and military planning, where predictive errors can be far deadlier.

Besides peppering his text with the names and contributions of important thinkers - apparently a deliberate technique to achieve greater credibility - Taleb gives us some fascinating theory in the shape of non-linear relationships, the limitations of the Gaussian distribution, and the ability of so-called "power laws" to turn some Black Swans into Grey Swans. However this review stops a long way from demonstrating that life is largely determined by full-blooded (i.e. totally unpredictable) Black Swans.

Although I don't think that Taleb will make us see our lives in a totally new light it is important that he reminds us - in case 24-hour world news ever allows us to forget - that day-to-day affairs can be subject to unforeseen, and potentially devastating, modification. He also offers us the flip side: some ideas on how we can take advantage of positive Black Swans. It may be due to a lack of imagination but, not being a venture capitalist or a "quant", I couldn't immediately see measures of easy application in this area. Defence against Black Swans seems easier, namely diversification across very disparate fields. Taleb himself suggests a portfolio composed of up to 90% of extremely safe financial instruments (like Treasury bills) and as little as 10% in leveraged speculative bets like options (ideally involving "venture-capital style portfolios"). His general advise is more homely: learn to recognise undertakings exposed to positive and negative Black Swans, don't be narrow minded, seize opportunities, be wary of government plans, etc.

Many interested in the impact of randomness will find the book a good, if fairly demanding, read. In the end, however, it is not entirely satisfactory. This has something to do with the fact that rather than be carried long by a limpid river of reasoning we are subjected to an avalanche of opinionative observations, some relevant, some less so. Some readers might also find many of the chapter and section headings irritating: "The Vagueness of Catherine's Lover Count", "How many Wittgenstein's can dance on the head of a pin?", etc. I suppose its all part of the relatively successful effort to make randomness fun. But although we'd enjoy seeing pompous academics and self-satisfied hedge-fund partners squirming with mice down their necks is it really necessary to rub the long-suffering French up the wrong way?

Interesting, but long-winded.......2007-10-15

Interesting perspective. Shows how unpredictable large-impact events shape life and why we must watch out for these. But you need patience to go thro the 300+ pages. Taleb spends more pages on what Black Swans are and their impact, less on what one can do to lessen their impact. Would love to hear more on what he recommends, though I will take them with a 'handful' of salt....I am as skeptical of experts as he is

Average customer rating:

Smart, Interesting and Easy to Read
Don't expect a textbook
Crowds Oh Wisdom
Food for thought
Surowiecki is a gifted teacher

The Wisdom of Crowds
James Surowiecki
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Consumer Behavior | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

ASIN: 0385721706
Release Date: 2005-08-16

Book Description

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

Download Description

The Wisdom of Crowds

I

If, years hence, people remember anything about the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, they will probably remember the contestants' panicked phone calls to friends and relatives. Or they may have a faint memory of that short-lived moment when Regis Philbin became a fashion icon for his willingness to wear a dark blue tie with a dark blue shirt. What people probably won't remember is that every week Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? pitted group intelligence against individual intelligence, and that every week, group intelligence won.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was a simple show in terms of structure: a contestant was asked multiple-choice questions, which got successively more difficult, and if she answered fifteen questions in a row correctly, she walked away with $1 million. The show's gimmick was that if a contestant got stumped by a question, she could pursue three avenues of assistance. First, she could have two of the four multiple-choice answers removed (so she'd have at least a fifty-fifty shot at the right response). Second, she could place a call to a friend or relative, a person whom, before the show, she had singled out as one of the smartest people she knew, and ask him or her for the answer. And third, she could poll the studio audience, which would immediately cast its votes by computer. Everything we think we know about intelligence suggests that the smart individual would offer the most help. And, in fact, the "experts" did okay, offering the right answer--under pressure--almost 65 percent of the time. But they paled in comparison to the audiences. Those random crowds of people with nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon than sit in a TV studio picked the right answer 91 percent of the time.

Now, the results of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? would never stand up to scientific scrutiny. We don't know how smart the experts were, so we don't know how impressive outperforming them was. And since the experts and the audiences didn't always answer the same questions, it's possible, though not likely, that the audiences were asked easier questions. Even so, it's hard to resist the thought that the success of the Millionaire audience was a modern example of the same phenomenon that Francis Galton caught a glimpse of a century ago.

As it happens, the possibilities of group intelligence, at least when it came to judging questions of fact, were demonstrated by a host of experiments conducted by American sociologists and psychologists between 1920 and the mid-1950s, the heyday of research into group dynamics. Although in general, as we'll see, the bigger the crowd the better, the groups in most of these early

experiments--which for some reason remained relatively unknown outside of academia--were relatively small. Yet they nonetheless performed very well. The Columbia sociologist Hazel Knight kicked things off with a series of studies in the early 1920s, the first of which had the virtue of simplicity. In that study Knight asked the students in her class to estimate the room's temperature, and then took a simple average of the estimates. The group guessed 72.4 degrees, while the actual temperature was 72 degrees. This was not, to be sure, the most auspicious beginning, since classroom temperatures are so stable that it's hard to imagine a class's estimate being too far off base. But in the years that followed, far more convincing evidence emerged, as students and soldiers across America were subjected to a barrage of puzzles, intelligence tests, and word games. The sociologist Kate H. Gordon asked two hundred students to rank items by weight, and found that the group's "estimate" was 94 percent accurate, which was better than all but five of the individual guesses. In another experiment students were asked to look at ten piles of buckshot--each a slightly different size than the

Customer Reviews:

Smart, Interesting and Easy to Read.......2007-09-21

This book was a surprise hit for me. I didn't expect to like it, but ended up loving it so much I just had to have a copy on my shelf. Surowieki is very convincing, in part because he takes such care to bring up alternative arguments and respond to each. He also keeps his focus fairly narrow, so the arguments aren't all over the place. I was especially fascinated by his discussion of experts. We rely on them so heavily these days, but now I know to question their expertise. This book has changed the way that I make decisions and the way I evaluate good decision-making in my elected representatives. I recommend this book to anyone interested in making good decisions. It is a smoothly-written book and you won't have any trouble following the arguments or staying 'into' it.

Don't expect a textbook.......2007-09-19

I really like the Wisdom of Crowds because Surowiecki succeeds in explaining complicated and sophisticated ideas in ways that educated people can not only grasp but also incorporate into their own thinking. This is quite an achievement, one that critics of the book have overlooked. This topic has not been open until now to such a wide audience.

Surowiecki never shies from even difficult and abstract statistical concepts. He draws liberally upon academic journals and scholarly books, writing in a style that is at once journalistic and educated.

Yet, Surowiecki never talks down to his reader. Instead he invites the reader to accompany him through an arcane (and dimly lit) maze of statistical practice as it has been developed and utilized for decades by social scientists and economists. The reader is rewarded again and again because Surowiecki points to a partially hidden jewel, holds it up for examination, hands it to the reader and then leaves it in plain sight (often for reference later in the book).

Thus, this book is a remarkable example, a model, for readers (and writers) who wish to bridge the gaps between educated professionals.

My criticism is along different lines. In this extremely visual era, the editors could have widened the audience for the Wisdom of Crowds much further if suitable images could have been commissioned to throw additional light on Surowiecki's prose. But, paper and ink are so much more expensive than artists these days, one can understand the limitations and constraints Doubleday (Random House) were under. On the other hand, why not put up a web site?

Crowds Oh Wisdom.......2007-09-19

Good book and I thought the pace moved along extremely well. There are some significant things in the book that are a bit dated, but overall this is a very interesting book. I also recommend "Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing" by Lois Kelly published 2007 to couple with this book. Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Food for thought.......2007-08-21

I found this book full of sweeping claims, generalizations and is confusing in its presentation. However it made me think. Overall the writer is saying that people independently working on a problem can in a fair vote be more accurate then the smartest individual. He then quotes examples for such behaviour and examples of when the crowds got it wrong when they acted not independently but in mass. I suspect that much of his arguments are sound.

How much I am not sure for example if I asked the average person independently if they believe there was much truth in astrology, I am sure that over 50% would say yes.

However since the book is making much comments, I hope to see some better studies coming forward.

Having said all this it has changed my views on decision making and how to do it.

Surowiecki is a gifted teacher.......2007-08-08

At first I was afraid that "The wisdom of crowds" was going to be a 250 page restatement of the law of large numbers for dummies. In the beginning it looks that way, because Surowiecki takes a lot of time to explain that the more people trying to guess the solution to a problem, each adding their own bit of information, the more accurate the average guess. Not very revolutionary at all (although possibly counterintuitive at first). But as the book moved on I got more and drawn in and impressed by the presentation, which is rigorous and supremely readable at the same time.
The book describes how crowds can solve problems of cognition, coordination and cooperation. It gives the conditions under which crowds are good and not good at doing so. The author illustrates with a myriad of interesting problems and case studies, some rather obvious choices (why do investment bubbles emerge?, why do political stock markets predict so well?), others more arcane (why did the gangsters in reservoir dogs fail?, why is it often easy to cut a line?). What binds these studies together is the way groups handle information and the good and bad institution designed to make them do so.
Throughout all the diversity, it is the great scholarship of Surowiecki that makes everything naturally fall into place. Being familiar with a lot of the material in academic form, I know how conceptually daring some of it is, but Surowiecki effortlessly reduces it to bite-size portions, without compromising much or exaggerating anywhere. Great reading!

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

Average customer rating:

Ok, How did Communities get their wealth?
If You Care for the Earth
Useful Inefficiencies
Turbines and Prayer Wheels
Quite a scary future

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Bill McKibben
Manufacturer: Times Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Policy & Current Events | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Development & Growth | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Policy & Development | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Theory | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Environmentalism | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The End of Nature
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

ASIN: 0805076263
Release Date: 2007-03-06

Book Description

In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, more is no longer synonymous with better -- indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value. McKibbens animating idea is that we need to move beyond growth as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. He shows this concept blossoming around the world with striking results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For those who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of those problems; for those who wonder if there isnt something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to think about ones life as an individual and as a member of a larger community. McKibben offers a realistic, if challenging, scenario for a hopeful future. As he so eloquently shows, the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.

Customer Reviews:

Ok, How did Communities get their wealth?.......2007-10-08

I read Deep Economy with an open mind, however, I found it to be riddled with particular political emphasis rather than real data about economics. In short, the ideas advanced are communal farming, environmentalism through global warming mandates, and outright communism.
These are not tools for the advancement of society, as McKibben suggests, but a return to the comfort of the Dark Ages.
I was very disappointed in the content of the book, being lectured for the first 36 pages on the same uncredited drivel that Al Gore had preached about in his tour on global warming, the very irony of which, wherever Al Gore went, it snowed.
In later chapters, McKibben actually comes out as a liberal by advocating what he believes is the solution for all the societal 'chaos' going on - state socialism.
Truly this book would have been better written if it had been left blank.

If You Care for the Earth.......2007-09-29

This book is a must for anyone who wants to make a change to save the earth. The author has insight and experience about how our present course of living will lead to the destruction of the world as we know it. It's real, but there is hope and Mr McKibben shares that hope with the reader.

Useful Inefficiencies.......2007-08-29

McKibben is one of our best modern thinkers on environmentalism and conservation, ever since debuting with his classic "The End of Nature" in 1989. In this new book he has largely tackled mainstream economic theory and how it has inflicted worldwide damage on the environment and on human communities. Standard development economics suffers from an unyielding focus on efficiencies and consumption, but this more often than not leads to widespread damage and unhappiness. Planners and politicians focus obsessively on per capita utility and efficiency, and vehemently disdain anything that may reduce efficiency for some individuals but may very well improve communities and the planet. McKibben's great contribution here is his coverage of new studies of human happiness. Especially in America, we have passed the point of gaining any more happiness from increased consumption of things, and we have become largely unhappy over the ensuing loss of community and nature. A new worldwide understanding of how economics really works has become imperative - more is no longer better.

McKibben has located many useful examples around the world of communities practicing new sustainable development strategies with demonstrated benefits for all involved. Unfortunately, the areas in which such great things are happening have particular political and economic conditions that make such experiments beneficial (including the American location McKibben covers most often - politically distinctive rural Vermont). The underlying flaw in this book is that McKibben must resort to pretty wishful idealism when applying these local success stories to the world economic system. A related problem is that the second half of the book, where the rubber should be meeting the road in realistically applying the local to the global, largely degenerates into repetitive descriptions of benefits in lieu of real prescriptions for change. However, McKibben definitely deserves credit for explaining in an accessible way all the tragic flaws of mainstream economic theory (see the books and articles he cites for the real lowdown), and it's about time us regular folks resisted the power players - for the benefit of ourselves and our larger community. [~doomsdayer520~]

Turbines and Prayer Wheels.......2007-08-06

This is a wonderful book that swings your emotions from despair to joy and back. I marveled over the story of the village of Gorasin in Bangladesh where the people said no to pesticides after living with their devastating effects and the village has become an organic oases. That is the theme of the book, communities with members from near or far working together to make lives better.

McKibben mentions Heifer International, one of my favorite organizations, and their impact on one man in China with the donation of 48 rabbits and lots of technical advice and the wave of change in his community because of his successful rabbit enterprise.

A group called Future Generations trained some villagers in Tibet and the villagers devised and installed a system that carried water "through a series of split-bamboo pipes, and then through a turbine that used the dynamo from a junked car. A hydrology expert could have helped them build a more efficient system, but all the locals knew how to repair this setup."".....(Also, the hydrology expert might not have thought to use the water pouring out of the turbine to spin a prayer wheel.)"

World community - helping local people meld the old and the new.

But, McKibben asserts, it is time for the haves of the world to share more than knowledge, it is time to cut back on what we use. "Most obviously, if the rich world began making less extreme demands on the planet, poor countries would have more physical margin to work with - a little slack. ...If we Americans can use less coal and gas and oil, we'll in effect free some of the atmosphere to absorb the carbon that the poor world must emit to meet basic needs."

There is so much more in this book to ponder and act on, put it high on your reading list.

Quite a scary future.......2007-07-23

Wow, makes me want to move to Vermont and become an organic farmer. I found this book to bring up some very good points about our current unsustainable economic situation. Over the past 300 years we have created an economic "machine" based on efficiency and production that will be very hard to change intentionally. McKibben offers some ideas on what the new New Deal will need to be if we want to continue a sustainable economy, which includes taking everything back to a local scale. Food, work, consumer goods need to develop inside the community where one lives. Less efficiency, more community and "neighborliness". It's a great idea. I just wonder if people will choose this before the collapse of our current system or try to figure something out after it's too late. I pesimistically think the latter.

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (PSI Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era)

Average customer rating:

Excellent, with one caveat
Must read
Yogi Berra was right. It's déjà vu all over again.
Still relevant today
Old Ways work

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (PSI Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era)
David Galula
Manufacturer: Praeger Security International Paperback
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Strategy | Military | History | Subjects | Books

Military Science | History | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (PSI Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era)
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York Review Books Classics)
The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century
The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual

ASIN: 0275993035

Book Description

Inspired by his experiences as a French military officer and attache in China, Greece, Southeast Asia, and Algeria, the author realized the "need for a compass" in the suppression of insurgency, and he set out to "define the laws of counterinsurgency warfare, to deduce from them its principles, and to outline the corresponding strategy and tactics." His book provides an analysis of how to countermine insurgency and the elements that might hinder its defeat. Written in 1964, the book in its new printing is as relevant now as it was 40 years ago-providing a template for the defeat of today's insurgents and terrorists.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent, with one caveat.......2007-09-04

I will not repeat the good things said in previous reviews on this work, as they cover it well, and the credentials of the previous reviewers in several instances should also speak for themselves.

Galula's book is a very good effort for trying to look at the lessons of counterinsurgency objectively. In reading reviews and other materials on the book, as well as talking to people about it, I fear, however, that Galula's work is often taken out of its historical context, which is dangerous. Galula's essay, like Roger Trinquier's "Modern Warfare," need to be seen in the context of the French guerre revolutionnaire, developed first in Indochina between 1945-1954 (French defense journals at the time are replete with the writings of officers developing the school of guerre revolutionnaire), and carried over to Algeria between 1954-1962. The guerre revolutionnaire school argued that counterinsurgents needed to not just understand the insurgents, but fight a counterinsurgency using the tactics and strategy of insurgency. The intellectual starting point was Mao. The guerre revolutionnaire school and its intellectual heritage in the French Army goes a long way toward explaining many of the excesses and brutal tactics used in Algeria. The four generals who tried to overthrow de Gaulle in April 1961 were some of the guerre revolutionnaire's most vocal disciples.

Thus, while Galula's book is invaluable, I fear it being taken out of context of the guerre revolutionnaire school of thought in the French army during the 1950s. There is unfortunately very little on it in English as well, which is part of the problem. For anyone wishing to use Galula's precepts in counterinsurgency or to understand the nature of counterinsurgency, please make sure you learn more about the French military in Indochina and Algeria and the context from which Galula formed his ideas of counterinsurgency.

Must read.......2007-09-01

This a must read for officers, soldiers, and thinkers to understand the framework and theory of the relationship between an insurgency and its counter insurgency. A bit dated, but most of the information still appears to carry its value till today.

Yogi Berra was right. It's déjà vu all over again........2007-07-25

Having lived through the 60s and Viet Nam, I can recognize much of what is in the news today - just change the names. The type of war we now face has had many names: revolutionary war, counterinsurgency, counter terrorism, guerrilla warfare, asymmetric warfare, and so on. One size does not fit all, and it would be a fool who believes that there is a one-for-one match between conflicts. It would also be a fool who ignores the practical, political, and theoretical basis for such conflicts and the extent to which they share characteristics.

This book addresses more the military end. This is not in any way a criticism. This book is very well written and well worth the reading. At the time it was written, armies were attempting to build a doctrinal base to use in such conflicts. In doing so, they also concentrated on the military. Again, this is not in any way a criticism, for doing so is their job. The political aspects of such conflicts are, properly, the job of the civilian leadership.

The Iraq conflict, and the war in Afghanistan, have brought the subject again to the world's attention. My personal opinion is that many are now busy re-inventing the wheel.

For anyone interested in the subject, many books are available. The best of the recent publications is General Sir Rupert Smith's The Utility of Force. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Carl von Clausewitz edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. On War. is a given, as is Sun Tzu, and Mao Tse-Tung's, Selected Military Writings. Peking, PRC: Foreign Language Press, 1966. Smith gives the best account of the need for combining all factors in a situation such as we find ourselves in now. Wesley Clark also does a good job of describing the complicated nature of modern conflicts.

Other books are listed below, in no particular order. The (H) and (P) indicate if the book is hardcover or paperback.

Thompson, Sir Robert. Defeating Communist Insurgency, The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Pbulishers, 1966. (H)

Hart, B. H. Liddell. Strategy. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954. (P)

McCuen, John J.. The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War. Harrisburg, PA: The Stackpole Company, 1966. (H)

Paret, Peter and John W. Shy. Guerrillas in the 1960's, Revised Edition. New York: Frederick A. Praaeger, Publisher, 1962. (P)

Paret, Peter. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1964. (H)

Guevara, Ernesto "Che." Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publisher, 1961. (H)

Bern, Major H. von Dach. Total Resistance, Swiss Army Guide to Guerrilla Warfare and Underground Operations. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1965. (H)

Guevara, Ernesto "Che". Guerrilla Warfare, A Method. Peking, PRC: Foreign Language Press, 1964. (P)

Clark, General Wesley K.. Waging Modern War, New York: Public Affairs Books, 2002. (P)(Original Source)

Clark, General Wesley K.. Winning Modern Wars, Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire. New York: Public Affairs Books, 2003. (P)(Original Source)

Still relevant today.......2007-06-20

Read this and understand the difficulties the US is encountering in Iraq.

Old Ways work.......2007-05-09

Some things never change, like an insurgency and how to fight them effectively! And due to he complex wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Galula's classic, written based on his experiences in the Algerian war during the 1950's, has been resurrected. A French Army Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Galula lays out in pretty good detail the necessary methods and procedures for counter-insurgency operations. Galula's clearly articulates that the counter-insurgency requires a methodical approach to defeating the enemy by aggressively controlling and isolating the population, developing a good intelligence program in order to insure to the same population that they are safe from reprisal from the insurgents. Kinetic attacks; killing people and destroying places will only alienate the people that you are trying to win over. I recommend this book for all who are trying to figure out how to defeat an insurgency. If I was a young or old military or State department official I would read this book and act on it's recommendations.

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Average customer rating:

Interestingly probative; woefully incomplete
Might be too technical for the average listener
any impressario, non-performer, non-musician, lacks credibility
Music For The Brain?
Very interesting

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Daniel J. Levitin
Manufacturer: Dutton Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Neuropsychology | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

Acoustics & Sound | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination
The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body
The Female Brain
Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (Bradford Books)
Stumbling on Happiness

ASIN: 0525949690

Book Description

A fascinating exploration of the relationship between music and the mindÂ—and the role of melodies in shaping our lives

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your lifeÂ—even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last be- coming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature, including:
Â• Are our musical preferences shaped in utero?
Â• Is there a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music?
Â• What do PET scans and MRIs reveal about the brainÂ's response to music?
Â• Is musical pleasure different from other kinds of pleasure?

This Is Your Brain on Music explores cultures in which singing is considered an essential human function, patients who have a rare disorder that prevents them from making sense of music, and scientists studying why two people may not have the same definition of pitch. At every turn, this provocative work unlocks deep secrets about how nature and nurture forge a uniquely human obsession. BACKCOVER: Â“I know Dan to have a deep musical knowledge and strong intellect combined with a warm spirit and a big heart. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music . . . He is a fine writer and has the ability to make difficult concepts very clear.Â”
Â—STEVIE WONDER

Customer Reviews:

Interestingly probative; woefully incomplete.......2007-10-15

Let me first say that I enjoyed reading this book. It helped me better understand both music and neuroscience. Music's influence on us is a fascinating and powerful subject.

That having been said, however, I do need to make at least one criticism. Levitin's evolutionary explanation for the development of music is egregiously one-sided. He suggests, with others, that music may be an outward demonstration of intelligence and physical prowess - look at me, I can afford to waste all this time and energy - akin to the male peacock's tail. THIS IS ALL WELL AND GOOD FOR MALES, BUT WHAT ABOUT FEMALES!? I read not one sentence in Levitin's book explaining what evolutionary theory would have to say about female singing. I'm willing to accept adaptive explanations for many things.. but in this case Levitin does little to ward off the inevitable criticism that his book features a number of very half-based "just so" stories.

Might be too technical for the average listener.......2007-10-11

A background in music that goes beyond light listening is required to follow parts of this book easily. Or time and effort could be necessary for many readers. But that would take you away from listening to your favorite music unless you can read about music and listen to it at the same time.

any impressario, non-performer, non-musician, lacks credibility.......2007-10-03

For a musicican, for one trained as a musician, this is a heady intellectual book. However, it often misses the point - entirely, aesthetically, and in practical terms. For instance, a piece practiced a 1000 times, according to the author, should be peerless. Obviously, this is not true. The native talent of the performer is paramount, and, most of all, the piece may be practiced WRONGLY 1000 times, of which, as a non-performer, the author is clearly unaware. The author also almost completely ignores the influence and insight of professional classical performers. The author is an administrator and impressario of rock and probably rap bands. The author has no training in musicology, and probably never talked to a musicologist. I admire the intent, but there are no breakthroughs here in understanding, or enjoying music, and no great insights into music's magic.

Music For The Brain?.......2007-10-01

Certainly well documented and written for those in the know. It tends to be somewhat boring on some occations but you have to continue on the read to hear the music!

Very interesting.......2007-09-30

Being a musician, I was suprised at how little I actually knew about sound. The book was very interesting and well written. If you're at all curious about the phycology of sound, check out this book.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books

China, Inc. by Ted Fishman	Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz	The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz	The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli	The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto