Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism

Book Description

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism—because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us.

In this unprecedented book, Grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world. What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.

Customer Reviews:

Temple Grandin is an inspiration.......2007-06-08

Temple Grandin's "Thinking in Pictures", is a must read for anyone who is affected by Autism Spectrum Disorders. Her book is well written and provides a lot of insight into what life is like for a young adult on the spectrum. This has been especially helpful for my husband and I as our first Aspie (we have four) is heading off to college and the "real" world. Definitely worth the money.

Amazing.......2007-05-21

Read this and Autism is more understandable (though still a mystery for those who do not have Autism) It also helps one to know better how to work with and interact with anyone having Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Aside from learning more about Autism, you will enjoy the writing and the stories used by the author.

More Conceptual than She Thinks.......2007-03-29

This book provides fascinating, intelligent, entertaining insights into the autistic mind.

Grandin is actually very conceptual, as the ability to use language requires, but appropriate concepts and contexts are difficult for her to define, seemingly due to a sensory system that leads to focusing on details rather than a broader scope. She and psychologists in general simply think she is largely non-conceptual due to their inadequate understanding of concepts, language, etc.

Actually, we all think in pictures; however, most of us use generalized, essentialized pictures most of the time for efficiency.

A grasp of how concepts are formed and organized, and how they are the essence of language, will help greatly. Best and easy to read for effective general psychology is "The Psychology of Self-Esteem," by Branden. Self-esteem is acquired from experience, not by choosing it. Emotions result from thoughts, not vice versa. The best and easy to read for the nature of concepts and language is "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology," by Rand, and then for a comparison with other theories and how they go wrong "Evidence of the Senses," by Kelly.

must read.......2007-03-08

gives insight and hope for parents of kids with autism. also realization of what kids with aspergers can accomplish. this woman has a phd!!!

Temple Grandin and Eleanor Roosevelt would have loved each other.......2007-03-06

Dip vat, squeeze machine, restraining chute...Temple Grandin makes poetry of these unlikely words, and out of the whole of the English language. It's a spiritual miracle that we experience the noise and overpowering smells of the stockyards, yet also find in them the triumph of compassion.

Quite simply, Grandin is one of the greatest women of the 20th and 21st centuries. She should be draped with laurels, carried through the streets on our shoulders as we sing our praise-songs; she should be awarded keys to cities, MacArthur Foundation buckets of money, a Nobel Prize, a Presidential Medal of Freedom...and any other accolade we can think of to bestow on her. Did I say she was one of the greatest women? Check that. She is one of the greatest human beings of any century.

In addition, she is delightful company. She humanizes scary conditions, autism and asperger's, evoking in readers compassion and curiosity they might not have known they had. In this regard, Grandin is a superb spiritual guide with abundant personal experience and vast knowledge, which she generously shares via neat, accessible anecdotes and lists.

Reading Grandin, it is easy to imagine being in the same room with her, listening wide-eyed, and never wanting her to leave. Some nights, I confess that I fall asleep thinking of her as a young girl, joyfully flying those kites in the park...

Robert McDowell, author of the forthcoming Poetry In Your Spiritual Practice

My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance

Average customer rating:

An interesting, representative look into physics, computer science, math, and finance
Engaging
Shorting Sidhartha to ground
An interesting career path
good source of info for those who wonder what a quant is

My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance
Emanuel Derman
Manufacturer: Wiley
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0471394203

Book Description

Emanuel Derman was one of the first physicists to move to Wall Street, and his career paralleled the growth of quantitative trading over the past twenty years. In My Life as a Quant, he traces his transformation from ambitious young scientist to managing director and head of the renowned Quantitative Strategies group at Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Derman’s tale recounts his adventures with quants, traders and other high fliers on Wall Street as he became the best-known quant in the business. He describes the struggles of research and his interactions with an assorted cast of famous scientists. He relates his impressions of some of the most creative minds on Wall Street, including Fischer Black, with whom he collaborated on the widely used Black-Derman-Toy model of interest rates. Throughout his story he reflects on the appropriate way to apply the refined methods of physics to the hurly-burly world of markets and the people that inhabit them.

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Customer Reviews:

An interesting, representative look into physics, computer science, math, and finance.......2007-08-18

This book is an easily readable and interesting look into the life of a financial engineer. Derman describes his life in relation to the history of modern physics and modern finance. He describes the route he took, from a student who wanted to research physics permanently to an enthusiastic programming newbie.

This book is sort of divided into four sections. First his early and student life. Then he ventures into the world of UNIX and computer science. As a computer programmer myself, I especially felt the joy he felt when he created a program to solve a small program that was commercialized and used by many other people. The satisfaction of small victories was quite apparent and mirrored my own life in some ways.

He then ventures into the world of finance in the mid 80s - during the boom time of financial engineering. His work from a naïve physicist to a financial wizard describes both the history of his career development and the quantitave finance itself. He ventures into new topics of finance, such as implied binomial trees and the such.

Sometimes the book does get bogged down into a little too much technical detail. I understood the finance and computer programming part perfectly because I've studied and worked in those fields, but the physics stuff was quite esoteric and I had a hard time following much of it.

All in all, it's a fun book. Nothing really spectacular, but to see the history of a new field being described, told by a pioneer, is quite fascinating.

Engaging.......2007-07-05

This is an engaging book which, I suspect, will be most interesting to those of us with more than a decade of experience in the financial technology field.

The book is appealing on many levels: the story of a physicist-turned-quant, the drama of professional life amongst the players in the fin-tech field, and the discussions of the mechanics of quantitative analysis, made accessible by Mr. Derman's plain-spoken writing style.

I don't read many books for pleasure, but I couldn't put this one down.

Shorting Sidhartha to ground.......2007-03-11

After reading Derman's Platonic idea of the origin of physics on the first two pages, I was so angry that for a while I couldn't read further. When finally I did read further, I couldn't put the book down until midnight. This autobiography of a physicist turned financial engineer is more entertaining than most novels, and is informative in a way that no other book is. Derman's description of his life and times is the chronicle of an era. This is a book that should be read by physics grad students who fantacize about working for banks or trading houses.

I remember how in 1957 we and our neighbors went out at night to watch Sputnik pass overhead as a pale, visibly moving light. This was the same year that Mercury had produced the 6 cyl. 60 h.p. outboard motor, Chevy produced its classic model, Elvis sang 'Loving You', and my youngest brother was born. Then, each morning before school, we would turn on the Today Show and often watch as a rocket from Redstone Arsenal (Huntsville) or Cape Canaveral went up a few meters, then fell over and crashed. Finally, von Braun (who'd escaped from Penemünde via Thüringen to North Tirol (where I mainly live) and then engineered his capture by the U.S. rather than the Russians or the French) eventually got it right and launched too, but not before Americans were treated to huge, Life Magazine photos of Chicago teenagers jitterbugging their lives away, and of Russian teenagers intensely studying math and physics. The US reaction to Sputnik was in part the NDEA loans that got me and a lot of other science majors through the university, and produced a very large excess supply of physics Ph.D.s by about 1970. In the seventies, academic jobs in physics in the US were so few, and the competition so great, that it was the kiss of death to take a postdoctoral fellowship in Europe. Going there put you outside the loop. One could generalize a British postdoc's experience after his arrival at Cal Tech in the following way: the US was the center of the universe in physics, and to a first approximation Europe did not exist. In the early eighties I noticed that a former physics grad student in nonlinear dynamics had been hired by a trading house. I didn't understand the significance then. Eventually, one of my later to be closest collaborators (and is Feigenbaum's only grad student to boot) worked for a year in 1990 at a Chicago trading house before coming to the University of Houston. In 1999, the same year that I heard of the Physics and finance meeting in Dublin where Gene Stanley coined the awful but effective term 'Econophysics', I read that Mitch Feigenbaum and Nigel Goldenfeld had opened a derivatives-related business in New York. Derman was one of the first physicists to go to work as a modeler on Wall Street. Derman's book, written humorously, self-deprecatingly and introspectively, yet objectively, is a chronicle of that era, a chronicle of physics and job hunting by physics grads in the post-Vietman war era, the era that began with Nixon's deregulation of the dollar (tied to gold at $35/oz. from 1935-1971, gold that Americans were not permitted to own for reasons of attempted currency stability). I'll stop here with my introduction and recommend that anyone who really wants to understand something about the world financial system read Eichengreen's `Globalizing Capital'. Here are some comments about parts of the book that I liked particularly well, or particularly disliked. The book can be read as a useful complement to `The Predictors', Liar's Poker', and `Inventing Money'.

The platonic view of the origin of mathematical laws of nature expressed on the first two pages is wrong. One can understand how a theorist with a focus on gauge theories might get on that track, but it is not true that Einstein thought that way in his early discoveries. For a better picture of why mathematics is unreasonably effective in physics, read Wigner's `Symmetries and Reflections', and read Barbour's `Absolute or Relative Motion' for the history of the discoveries.

The difference between physics (academic research) and financial engineering (on the Street) is described pretty well. In the latter, a good graphics interface is more important for business than is a good model. The description of the difference is generally true of physics and engineering per se, and is not peculiar to the financial brand.

The description of reductionism is the extreme brand believed uncritically by people like Steven Weinberg. Any correct mathematical description of nature, any isolation of cause and effect, is a form of reductionism. Attempts to understand markets empirically is a form of reductionism.

The description of Lee and Yang's quarrels is revealing (both visited the University of Houston Physics Dept. at various times in the seventies and eighties). The description of Cvitanovic rings too true! I was not aware (!?) that Feigenbaum and Libchaber (name misspelled) like Steiner's writings, although it's fairly well known that Feigenbaum reads Goethe.
Derman describes vividly how no one can get past T.D. Lee in a colloquium, then with British understatement writes that his own thesis defense, with Lee on the committee, was no problem. And his advice to students about blind alleys and perseverance is correct. The race is often won not by the quickest but rather by the one who doesn't quit in the face of adversity.

The author had a tantalizing taste early on of the life of the successful (i.e., well-connected) physicist on the conference circuit. I myself read too many biographies of German professors who took a Kur for 6 weeks on the Baltic or the North Sea.

His description of life at Oxford, and the string of postdoctoral positions is believable and hilarious. The description of the pain of having to live apart from his wife and son is painful to read, although many physicists live so.

Derman also describes what makes physicists arrogant without naming it: life in a scientific culture where the standards are set by certified geniuses. It's hard to live in the shadow of these people. One learns a certain degree of arrogance merely for survival in the culture, and that makes us hard to live with at home and in society. Advice from a bright colleague how to get along with your partner: 'grovel, grovel, grovel'. It works.

His advice about publications is absolutely right: it rarely hurts to put a collaborator's, host's or advisor's name on a paper. I contemplated publishing my thesis alone because Onsager had not really contributed to it, although he suggested the problem. Actually, I doubted that he wanted his name on such a seemingly trivial piece of work, but it turned out that he liked it and did want his name on the papers. He liked all sorts of calculations. As long as they were right ....

There is no correct analogy between economics/finance and thermodynamics, the far from equilibrium nature of markets prohibits it. Fischer Black, whom I admire enormously and have read carefully, was wrong about 'equilibrium': he swallowed the economists' notions uncritically (Derman describes Black as 'in love' with the idea of equilibrium, and one can swallow anything when one is in love). CAPM is certainly not an 'equilibrium' model, and CAPM does not lead to the Black-Scholes pde, there's an error in the 1973 paper. I prefer the Black-Scholes paper to all of Merton's useless rigmarole about utility, a nonfalsifiable notion at best, although it's true that replication is not in the Black-Scholes paper. I can't see that Merton's derivation of the backward time pde is 'more rigorous' than Black's delta-hedge condition.

Derman's description of his self-imposed exile to Bell Labs is hilarious. His loving description of UNIX is beyond me (I know how to use a word processor).

Weltanschauung is mis-spelled, there are n+1 split infinitives in the text.

Now I know where Lisa Borland's boss comes from.

The description of Fischer Black is worth the book alone, even if the rest were not good. Osborne, Black, and Mandelbrot can be counted as the ancestors of Econophysics, which differs from Financial Engineering the way that physics differs from engineering. Black was right that expected returns, seen as anticipating the future, is not an observable notion. But, then, what does Soros do when he beats the market (nonmathematically)?

Derman's description of economic theory as nonsense (my term) is absolutely correct, when applied to micro- and macro-economics texts. What one finds inside those books is useless, falsified mathematized ideology. To make matters worse, economists know that and still teach the stuff in the classroom, misleading generations of students.

All in all, this is a highly recommendable book!

An interesting career path.......2006-12-11

This book is not for those interested in learning quantitative finance. Rather, it is a memoir written by a physicist who came to finance relatively late in life.

There is some poignancy in Derman's transformation from theoretical physicist bent on a life in academia (where he hoped to make groundbreaking discoveries about elementary particles) to mid-level employee of one of the world's great financial institutions (Goldman Sachs). Although he was undoubtedly well paid for the skills he brought to the financial markets, Derman's story is tinged with sadness about the loss of an ideal.

The book is particularly valuable for the insights it provides about the inner workings of a major investment bank, and in particular about the role played by the "quants" in the development of new products and trading strategies. It also provides some perspective on the development of quantitative finance as a practical discipline; and it makes clear that quantitative skills, while important to a successful career in a major financial institution, generally take a back seat to salesmanship, practical trading skills, and internal politicking.

Those with a liking for pure mathematics will have to grin and bear Derman's critical comments about mathematical rigor and economic theory.

good source of info for those who wonder what a quant is.......2006-11-13

Mr. Derman took the reader along with his journey from theorectical physics to financial modeling. The later chapters provide simple to understand explanations of what he did at Goldman Sachs to model bond options. No knowledge of advance mathematics required. One shudders when one realizes that models are formed usually after the fact. Today trillion of dollars are traded based on imperfect models. What if ... there was a flaw in the model?

Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism

Average customer rating:

It doesn't live up to the hype
A Must-Read for Oliver Sacks Fans
Moving, inspiring, thought-provoking
Thinking In Pictures
Thinking In Pictures : and Other Reports from My Life with Autism (Vintage)

Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism
Temple Grandin
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679772898
Release Date: 1996-10-29

Amazon.com

Oliver Sacks calls Temple Grandin's first book--and the first picture of autism from the inside--"quite extraordinary, unprecedented and, in a way, unthinkable." Sacks told part of her story in his An Anthropologist on Mars, and in Thinking in Pictures Grandin returns to tell her life history with great depth, insight, and feeling. Grandin told Sacks, "I don't want my thoughts to die with me. I want to have done something ... I want to know that my life has meaning ... I'm talking about things at the very core of my existence." Grandin's clear exposition of what it is like to "think in pictures" is immensely mind-broadening and basically destroys a whole school of philosophy (the one that declares language necessary for thought). Grandin, who feels she can "see through a cow's eyes," is an influential designer of slaughterhouses and livestock restraint systems. She has great insight into human-animal relations. It would be mere justice if Thinking in Pictures transforms the study of religious feeling, too.

Book Description

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism because she is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us. In this unprecedented book, Grandin writes from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person. She tells us how she managed to breach the boundaries of autism to function in the outside world. What emerges is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who gracefully bridges the gulf between her condition and our own while shedding light on our common identity.

"There are innumerable astounding facets to this remarkable book...Displaying uncanny powers of observation...[Temple Grandin] charts the differences between her life and the lives of those who think in words."--Philadelphia Inquirer

Customer Reviews:

It doesn't live up to the hype.......2007-09-19

Yes, it is remarkable that an autistic person has written a book about autism and how autistic people see the world and process information.

But that's the only thing that makes it remarkable - if the book were written by a non-autistic person, it wouldn't have found a publisher, at least not without some serious editing. The subject is highly interesting, and the ideas in the book are really thought-provoking, and it's too bad that as a reader I found it hard to get really engaged in the book. It is sometimes rambling, with choppy sentences, and frequently highly repetitive -- sentences that are almost the same are repeated, ideas are restated over and over. It got to the point that I felt while the book could have been condensed into a fascinating article, as a book it was frustrating and bloated, and needed a good editor to prune it by at least a third. Maybe the stilted prose and repetition are meant to provide a valid simulation of how an autistic person actually speaks, but it doesn't make a book readable to the rest of us.

Don't get me wrong, I think Temple Grandin is an amazingly successful person and she should be commended for sharing her world and knowledge with us. I just wish the quality of the final published version had been better - she deserves it.

A Must-Read for Oliver Sacks Fans.......2006-10-30

As you would expect from a book subtitled And Other Reports From My Life with Autism, Temple Grandin gives us a fascinating inside view of what it's like to be autistic. What you might not expect is how deftly she weaves neuroscience, animal behavior, humane practices in America's animal processing facilities, biochemistry, and even religion into this bestseller.

In contrast to the "experts" who tell us that there can be no true thinking or tool building without language, she's here to tell us that her visual, computer-like method of solving problems and getting along in the world are just as valid as any language-based solutions. Inspired by the opening lines of the Lord's Prayer, for example, she explains that she grew up with a very clear image of God working at an easel.

What's not obvious from the title is that she holds a Ph.D. in animal science and has designed one third of all the livestock handling facilities in the United States. Sometimes her beliefs about her charges' thoughts and feelings would appear hard to confirm. However, when she applies her ideas to the many facilities she has designed, the animals become calmer and step through their paces more easily. Some readers may find her more gruesome slaughterhouse experiences hard to stomach. But she seems to be stressing the vast improvements she has made rather than trying to gross out her audience.

Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and often insightful, Thinking in Pictures is a treasure for anyone who wants to learn more about these topics.

Moving, inspiring, thought-provoking.......2006-03-23

Temple Grandin is an autistic who refused to take early retirement from life. With the help of her mother and some forward-thinking teachers, she drew upon her own inner resources, talents and strengths to move into the world of people who think in words and in two dimensions, rather than in 3-dimensional pictures.

I especially liked this book because it was highly informative. Ms. Grandin not only has a lot to say about autism, but goes into detail about an area that is obscure to most readers: Livestock handling. From any other writer, this might be a terribly dry and even distasteful subject, but her writing tone is one of great patience. She has learned how to bridge the comprehension gap by explaining in detail how she thinks and accomplishes various tasks.

I'd be honored to meet this lady and am hoping to attend one of her lectures some time. She helps us to understand that autistic people aren't so different from non-autistic people...and vice versa.

Thinking In Pictures.......2006-02-24

This book provides a wonderful account of how one person with autism views herself and the world. It helped clarify some perceptions I had about people with autism and is a must for service providers.

Thinking In Pictures : and Other Reports from My Life with Autism (Vintage).......2006-02-20

A fascinating account of the author's efforts to overcome her
genetic defect through learning and understanding, and through education of others. I learned a great deal about Autism that I was ignorant of, and of how the mind works in some of its infinite variety of ways.

My Life With the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician

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A lazy Sunday on the couch book
Hilarious but shallow
My life with spirits
Learn the direct magical experiences by a practitioner of the art.
A Man of Great Insight

My Life With the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician
Lon Milo Duquette
Manufacturer: Weiser Books
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ASIN: 1578631203

Amazon.com

The first time I met Monsieur DuQuette, at a booksellers' convention in Los Angeles, he read my fortune with tarot cards. I was about to move, he predicted. Irritated, I huffed "that was ridiculous," I'd just moved into my boyfriend's house. When I arrived home from the convention, my aforementioned boyfriend told me he'd had a change of heart and would I please move out as soon as possible! The next time I sat down with DuQuette, at the same conference (several years later in Chicago), he regaled me with witticisms and stories. I was struck by his sincerity, self-revelation, and personable nature. This is the first time a true magician has written an autobiography since The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, and it's the next best thing to being able to sit with the charming and adept DuQuette. It's intimate, straightforward, and neither self-deprecating or egotistical. It contains excruciatingly honest revelations by a contemporary individual attempting to understand the universe and how it works. Here's a man who comfortably accepts himself and urges the reader to do the same. If you are not interested in magick, think of this as a fascinating autobiography. If you are, it's required reading. --P. Randall Cohan

Customer Reviews:

A lazy Sunday on the couch book.......2007-04-19

A good read for a lazy Sunday or a long train/airplane ride. A nice light writing style carries the reader through without being tedious or ponderous. It is a 'give-me-glimpse' book for the curious of and beginners to magik. 4 stars for the entertainment value.

Hilarious but shallow.......2007-01-21

I have read this book mostly to learn about Lon DuQuette's experiences with the angelic (Enochian) magick. What I found only confirmed my opinion that modern "magickians" are to the old-days magi like third-graders doing science experiments to the professional scientists using a university laboratory. It is not just that DuQuette apparently believes in the efficacy of the Golden Dawn and Crowleyan rituals which bring results roughly at a par with those of school science experiments. He also displays an uninformed and rather crude contempt for Christianity, not only in its American fundamentalist form which would be somewhat understandable, but in general. No wonder than that instead of Dee's angelic visitors he conjures up simian creatures throwing mud in their crotches.

On the other hand, DuQuette is an outstanding comedian and I truly congratulate him on his excellent and often self-deprecating sense of humor. "My life with the spirits" is a hilarious read and that's what the three stars are for.

My life with spirits.......2007-01-05

Very interresting book and very usefull for some, who work with magic.

Learn the direct magical experiences by a practitioner of the art........2006-11-30

Lon DuQuette tells his life story in an entertaining and insightful way that leaves the reader with a clear idea of how a magical life may be lived. The author describes various magical experiences, something rare in the literature. Some of his experiments have instructions that are far easier and more practical to follow than many ancient grimoires. Any earnest student of magick can learn valuable lessons from Lon's story.

A Man of Great Insight.......2006-08-25

I bought this book based on a review of a dear friend. I was not disappointed. DuQuette's wit is undeniable! He shares his life from the beginning of his pathworking and takes the reader on a journey through his life, his mistakes, his drawbacks, and his breakthroughs.

I highly recommend this book to the novice in mystacism, as well as those who are well on their paths. There are times when he makes you laugh, and times when you cry with him. A great read!

Average customer rating:

Read !
Fantastic Journey of a fascinating man
Why I liked this book.
When NASA was exciting
Take it with a grain of salt

Flight: My Life in Mission Control
Christopher Kraft
Manufacturer: Dutton Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Apollo 13

ASIN: 0525945717
Release Date: 2001-03-01

Amazon.com

On July 20, 1969, near the end of a great decade of near-space exploration, a small craft called Eagle landed on the moon's surface. As anyone who watched the televised broadcast of the landing might recall, the astronauts aboard Eagle were guided to their objective by a capable ground crew headed by Chris Kraft, whom his colleagues had long called "Flight." Kraft was unflappable on the surface, but, as he writes in this memoir, the Eagle's landing had moments of drama that gave him pause, and that few outside NASA knew about--including baleful alarms from the ship's on-board computer that warned of imminent disaster.

For Kraft, frightening moments were part of his job as director of Mission Control. He encountered many of them in the early years of the space program, when failures were commonplace and all too often caused not by mechanics but by politics. We learn of many in Kraft's pages. One such failure was the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch, about which Kraft thunders, "We should have beaten them.... We were stopped by anonymous doctors in the civilian world who didn't know what they were talking about, by a bureaucrat in the White House who'd been stung when JFK shot down his position on manned space flight, and by our friend the German rocket scientist, who got cold feet when he should have been bold."

Plenty of other contemporaries, including John Glenn and Richard Nixon, come in for a scolding in Kraft's fiery account, which offers a rare insider's portrait of the challenging work of astronautics--work that, Kraft writes hopefully, is only beginning. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

The Right Stuff meets Rocket Boys in this gripping memoir by the man who helped create some of the greatest moments in U.S. space history.

NASA flight director Chris Kraft takes readers behind the scenes of the U.S. space program to deliver an unforgettable account of his life in Mission Control. One of our early space pioneers, Kraft emerged from a boyhood in small-town America to become a visionary whose energy and commitment would lead to the creation of our nation's most daring space programs. It's all here, from the legendary Mercury missions that first sent Americans into space through the Gemini and Apollo missions that landed them on the moon. The great heroes of space are here, too-Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Buzz Aldrin-leading the space race that would change the course of U.S history.

From its infancy to its glory days, from near-disasters to astonishing triumphs . . . from the stunning gambles to the pure luck that accompanied each mission, Flight relives the spellbinding moments and events that captured the imagination of the world. It is a stirring tribute to the U.S. space program and to the men who risked their lives to take America on a flight into the unknown-from the man who was there for it all.

Customer Reviews:

Read !.......2007-08-27

Very few books on this period, biographical or not, are quite like this one. The information and personal details give a very complete view of NASA from the very beginning, and give some detail to the management evolution of the organization. It also gives some interesting insights into how development of mission-critical / real-time organizations and management should function.

Fantastic Journey of a fascinating man.......2007-05-15

What a great book. Chris Kraft has really catured those glorious years when man ventured out into the unknown whilst competing with the Russians. Really easy to read and understand. The book took me back to those early years of the space program and Chris lets you experience the development of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions as if it is happening real time. What a great read

Why I liked this book........2006-06-27

This book fills in quite a few holes in my knowledge and curiousity of how a lot of things evolved. Many books spend so much time on Apollo especially 11 and 13. I always wanted to know more about how the size and shape of the Mercury capsule evolved and it's good to hear stories about the guys that originally concieved these ideas. Guys like Max Faget. Also, without telecommunication satellites- putting together a worldwide ground tracking system to track Mercury was an amazing feat, in and of itself, and to do it with such a tight deadline. These guys were good. Sure that stuff is pure engineering and probably pretty boring to the layperson. But those are the dotted i's and crossed t's that made it happen. Kraft was in on conception and implementation of this, and the evolution to Gemini and then Apollo. He is definitly has a no "B.S." management style and is the kind of boss that won't tolerate ineptness.

His critism of Scott Carpenter was the harshest I've read yet, and matched Gene Kranz's version. I know a lot of folks are in Scott's court that it couldn't have been that bad, but if you put yourself into the chair of "Flight" where every small glitch can cascade into a catastrophy, you can understand why Kraft takes the hard line. It's obvious that Carpenter wasn't in sync with mission control, and ignored critical requests for information that could have positioned his spacecraft in the correct attitude for reentry with fuel to spare. No wonder Kraft went balistic. If Carpenter had burned up on reentry, the impact to the program at that point would have been catastophic, and human error in flight is harder to stomach than hardware failure (although equally as devastating, but more avoidable). Kranz and Kraft were happiest when the communications were crisp and direct to the other controllers and the astronauts themselves, and this wasn't what happened with Carpenter, hence the heartburn.

I wish I'd been around back then to be a part of the building years of NASA. This is as close as I can get to that.

When NASA was exciting.......2005-10-22

Fantastic book for any "space cadet". This book, along with "Failure Is Not An Option", brings out the true story of NASA when success wasn`t measured in political currency.

Take it with a grain of salt.......2005-08-24

Much of what Kraft writes about in "Flight" has already been told, going back as far as Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff", or even further back in the contemporary media of the space era. The new material that this book offers is Kraft's unbiased take on the people he worked with during his many years in the manned space program, starting in the late 1950s when he was a member of the original Space Task Group at Langley. Kraft pulls no punches. Even some of his professed admirers such as Gene Kranz come in for the occasional dig, and he reserves an entire chapter for villifying Scott Carpenter, making statements that NASA's official biography of Carpenter refute. Kraft states that Carpenter did not have a college degree, and that he had no time working in flight test, both untrue. In his post-Mercury years, Carpenter was awarded the Navy's Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the prestigious Collier Trophy, also held by Chuck Yeager, not to mention seven honorary college degrees on top of his 1949 B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado. Hardly the life of a failed slacker. I wonder if Kraft has been similarly honored post-NASA? His outright falsehoods about Carpenter cast doubt on some of Kraft's assertions about others that he worked with.

My Life and Work (The Autobiography of Henry Ford)

Average customer rating:

A Surprise from the Past
My Life and Work
Ford led the way
The Mind of Ford
Fascinating!

My Life and Work (The Autobiography of Henry Ford)
Henry, Ford
Manufacturer: Digireads.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Today and Tomorrow (Corporate Leadership)
The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century
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ASIN: 1420928198

Book Description

"My Life and Work" is the autobiography of Henry Ford. Written in conjunction with Samuel Crowther, "My Life and Work" chronicles the rise and success of one of the greatest American entrepreneurs and businessmen. Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company will forever be identified with early 20th century American industrialism. The innovations to business and direct impact on the American economy of Henry Ford and his company are immeasurable. His story is brilliantly chronicled in this classic American biography.

Download Description

Unduly high prices are always a sign of unsound business, because they are always due to some abnormal condition. A healthy patient has a normal temperature; a healthy market has normal prices. High prices come about commonly by reason of speculation following the report of a shortage. Although there is never a shortage in everything, a shortage in just a few important commodities, or even in one, serves to start speculation. Or again, goods may not be short at all. An inflation of currency or credit will cause a quick bulge in apparent buying power and the consequent opportunity to speculate. There may be a combination of actual shortages and a currency inflation--as frequently happens during war. But in any condition of unduly high prices, no matter what the real cause, the people pay the high prices because they think there is going to be a shortage.

Customer Reviews:

A Surprise from the Past.......2007-05-12

I read about this book while doing some research into Lean management. Taiichi Ohno, "father" of the Toyota Production System noted that he learned many lean principles from Henry Ford. After finishing this book, I would recommend that EVERY CEO in this country be REQUIRED to read it. It is a wonderfully clear description of management and leadership principles that all companies should embrace. Mr. Ford is clear on the purpose of a company - to build products and provide services that meet the needs of its customers. If we do this, as he notes, the money will follow. We get it backwards so often these days - we think the purpose of a company is to make money or increase its share price.

As opposed to most business books where one idea is promoted and beaten to death, Mr. Ford's book is full of good ideas on all aspects of managing a business. It's a delightfully refreshing read!

My Life and Work.......2007-01-30

This is a book every business executive should read at least twice.
The wisdom of one the greatest entrepreneurs and practical thinkers of our time is lasting.
Exellent book. Fords thinking is focused and joyful reading

Ford led the way.......2006-11-10

It is little wonder why the leaders at Toyota give Henry Ford the credit for leading them to the promised land of LEAN and TPS. He was way ahead of his time and in some respects his vision is still way ahead of our time. What an amazing personality, mind, and story.

The Mind of Ford.......2006-09-02

First I want to tell you what this book is not. It is not a biography. It really isn't a biography of the Ford motor company either. What it is is the mind of Ford on paper. Henry Ford was a pure genius! This book is about how Henry ran his company and about his thoughts and ideals on business. You will really get to know the man behind the company in this book. A few of the chapter titles are "What I Learned about Business", "The Secret of Manufacturing and Serving", "Wages", "Why Not Always have Good Business" and "Money - Master or Servant". This is one of the top business books ever written. I think it was written very well and it just grabs your attention from the begining. If you are looking for a great business book or just a great book about the real Henry Ford then you need not look any further. He certainly was one of the best business men to ever live.

Fascinating!.......2005-08-31

A wonderfully candid look into the life of an incredibly successful and brilliant businessman. Henry Ford was a genius but never lost touch with the common man. He did a great deal to raise the standard of living for his workers. It was very interesting to take a peek into the mind of this great industrialist.

Average customer rating:

The Satisficing Animal in Our Bounded Rationality
Another Great Reference
Twentieth-Century Polymath
Renaissance Man of the 20th Century
Learn the Why and How of a Distinguished Life

Models of My Life
Herbert A. Simon
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 026269185X

Book Description

In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life.

A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems.

Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think -- based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols -- laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate.

There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.

Customer Reviews:

The Satisficing Animal in Our Bounded Rationality.......2007-07-11

Satisficing as in searching for "good enough" actions rather than the optimal ones is one of the many contributions Herbert Simon is most famous for, in addition to being one of the parents of Artificial Intelligence. Whether the topic is management decision making, economics, traveling, teaching, or computer programs, this Renaissance Man had a life that many or most would envy.

Herbert Simon is a true example to exemplify the benefits of multi-discipline efforts as one subject does not always know the answers. If anyone is interested in building their own latticework of mental models then the life of Mr. Simon is one to emulate. As this is not your average biography, expect to be challenged as the reading may take you to subjects that you are unaware of or have been exposed to. However, this is what makes the experience worth the trip as my many notes and earmarks attest to.

As his life was about scientific discovery to quote, "I have sketched the theory of scientific discovery to which my study of these problems has led me. It is not a theory of global rationality but one of human limited computation in the face of complexity". Yes, we live in an evermore complex world and I am glade I have some of Mr. Simon's mental models to guide me through it.

Another Great Reference.......2007-01-05

If you are a graduate student of management, this is must for you. Simon is an icon in the field of decision-making. Much of his work has inspired contiuned research in the field of decision-making. An extraordinary man with extraordinary vision.

Twentieth-Century Polymath.......2005-05-21

This intellectual autobiography is not just a chronology of the particulars of a great intellectual life. It is a wonderful opportunity to obtain a coherent overview of the views and contributions of one of the twentieth century's great thinkers. Simon - political scientist with his Ph.D. from University of Chicago, founder of the new and emerging area of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychologist, Cargegie-Mellon faculty member, Nobel laureate for economics (1978), and contributing philosopher of science - was no dilitante. This book, which is written is a very accessible style, reveals the integrity and evolution of his thinking, which can be extracted only with relative difficulty from his large and diverse literary corpus. It is also an inspiring book for any person with an active intellectual life in science or philosophy.

Thomas J. Hickey, www.philsci.com

Renaissance Man of the 20th Century.......2003-07-19

The late Herbert Simon was a veritable renaissance man. His autobiography, "Models of My Life," discusses the single thread that underlined all of his intellectual conquests in artificial intelligence, sociology, cognitive science, psychology and economics. This one thread, animated by philosophical positivism and ripe scientific thirst, was his deep obsession with modeling and researching decision-theoretic behavior.

It's interesting to note that even though decision theory (how intelligent agents percieve and act upon choices amid various modalities) serves as the impetus for Simons work, he uses "Models" instead of "Model" in the book's title. This is no accident. For you see, beautifully fitting of his memoir, this book delves into how Simon's one passion was his "heuristic" in choosing which of many paths he could have taken througout his life. The upshot: Simon's own life emulated the heuristic search (in AI) that he helped invent! Consequently, this lead him all over the globe, from Wisconsin to UChicago to Berkeley to Carnegie Mellon to China.

This book is also about the times of Simon: the positivistic turn in social sciences, the scientific fermet of the 1950's, the cultural tumult of the 60's, the death of behaviorism and the rise of cognitivism -- all along, peppered with intrigue of the politics of academia. Although the writing can get quite dry at times, his book is highly recommended.

Learn the Why and How of a Distinguished Life.......2002-05-16

Herbert Simon's research contributes to human knowledge in many different areas, including economics, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and organizational behavior. In each of the mentioned areas, his contributions are ranked among the most important and influential that even a scientist who focuses solely in one area finds hard to achieve. The testimony is the top awards that the community in each discipline bestowed upon him--the Nobel prize is only one of which.

The secret of this interdisciplinary success is that he is, in his own word, a "monomaniac", studying only one thing--human decision process--for fifty years. The field of his own choosing is not bounded by usual academic disciplines, however, and he did study it from many different aspects, from the levels of individual cognition to organizational decisions, using tools as varied as mathematics, computer simulations, and human subjects.

This book detailed his own account of the various aspects of his life, personal and professional, in a sincere and direct prose. From the childhood that undoubtedly helped set the tone for his later accomplishments, the way he managed and nurtured new academic thoughts that later grown into full-fledged disciplines (artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and, less prominently, bounded rationality), to the philosophy of working and living including brief exposures to familial life, we can learn tremendously from hise xperience, decisions, and actions.

How could he achieve as much as he did? We can glean several lessons from his stories. He collaborated extensively. He learned a great deal from the outstanding individuals he respected. He had a love for truth and rigor in reasoning. An empiricist who firmly believed that any valid theory must be based on empirical facts, he did not hesitate to fight against widely held beliefs conflicting with facts. His work on bounded rationality which helped earn him the Nobel Prize is an outstanding case which his stubborn, and valid, arguments against mainstream theories brought a valuable alternative viewpoint to the world. Strong passion and the ability to break out of the mold and stand tall under storms are important characteristics exemplified by many past giants, including Galileo, Columbus, and Einstein.

Book Description

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) made prolific and lasting contributions to understanding "the life of the infinitely small." Widely thought of as the founder of neuroscience, Cajal made remarkable explorations into the organization and function of the nervous system. His work is still referred to more than that of any other scientist in the field.

W. Maxwell Cowan's foreword to this edition conveys the excitement and energy of Cajal's life and endeavors, the liveliness and flamboyance of his engagements with the microscope. Cowan surveys Cajal's salient discoveries, noting that almost every important conceptual issue in neurobiology was foreshadowed in Cajal's work: the initial description of the climbing fibers of the cerebellum, the discovery of the growth cone, the concept of the "dynamic polarity" of the neurom an anticipation of the later discovery of axonal transport, and the prediction that new synapses may be formed throughout life to serve as a physical basis for learning and memory.

W. Maxwell Cowen is Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting view on science in another age.......2002-02-20

This is an interesting but somewhat strange book. It provides a really amazing view of what it was like to do science in those days, in particular about the various political maneuvering that was required to navigate the old spanish academic system. It also provides interesting insight into the personality of one of the greatest pioneers of cell biology. Unfortunately, part of his personality involves telling us all how great he was, so sometimes I found the book a little tiresome to read. I was also kind of disappointed in that it took a long time before he got around to covering the time when he actually made his important contributions to science. Still, for anyone interested in cell or neurobiology, or in the history of science, I would recommend this book fairly strongly as something they will enjoy.

Excellent.......2000-06-18

This book contained many valuable insights into the life of one of the most influential neuroscientists ever. This book was an excellent read.

Average customer rating:

Rethinking identity in light of adversity...

My Reconstructed Life
Eugen Schoenfeld
Manufacturer: Kennesaw State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1933483008

Customer Reviews:

Rethinking identity in light of adversity..........2005-07-21

I was fortunate enough to get a prerelease copy of this book before it hit the streets. Some people wanted to know what I thought about it because I have an interest in identity issues. I really liked it. It's a very honest treatment given the series of events that the author describes. The author contrasts different times of his life in relation to the atrocities that occurred in Hitlerite Germany. I don't think that you have to have a pronounced interest in Judaism to appreciate the depth of pain and suffering that happened during this time in history or to this man in particular. Though, if you do or if you're in interested in human rights issues, there's an additional benefit associated with it. The net result is that this book gives a very real human face to a very real human tragedy that now seems foreign to most. Though the barbarism of the Nazis is unsettling at times, it's worth the read. The truth often hurts. Maybe it should because that way you can learn from it. Good stuff.

Average customer rating:

You'll end up reading this one over and over again...
I wish I could give it 6 stars!
the funny Durrell
Way better than Croc Hunter
Skeleton of a Plot embellished with tonnes of vocab

My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell
Manufacturer: Peter Smith Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Amazon.com

As a self-described "champion of small uglies," English writer Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) devoted his life to writing and the preservation of wildlife, from the Mauritius pink pigeon to the Rodriques fruit bat. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the Greek island of Corfu, but ended up as a delightful account of his family's experiences that were, according to him, "rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas."

As a 10-year-old boy, Gerry left England for Corfu with "all those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam-jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids." Durrell's descriptions of his family and its many eccentric hangers-on (he stresses that "all the anecdotes about the island and the islanders are absolutely true") are highly entertaining, as is the procession of toads, scorpions, geckos, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and the Magenpies. This is a lovely book.

Book Description

Soaked in the sunshine of Corfu, where Gerald Durrell lived as a boy with his "family and other animals," this book evocatively chronicles his five-year sojourn on the Greek island. With hilarious yet endearing portraits of his eccentric family and their many unusual hangers-on, My Family and Other Animals also captures the beginnings of Durrell's lifelong love of animals. In its passionate understanding of Corfu's natural history, this is an entertaining and enduring memoir.

Customer Reviews:

You'll end up reading this one over and over again..........2006-02-21

I must say this is one of the most light-hearted, hilarious books I have ever read. The story is of a world that one really may not get to see these days.. Go ahead and buy it..

I wish I could give it 6 stars!.......2005-08-09

This book is absolutely, brilliantly funny. The wit and unique characterizations are woven with great descriptions of the animals and plants of Corfu. That Durrell can hold the attention of readers who have no interest in biology simply demonstrates what a fine work this is. Gerald's depiction of a larger-than-life expatriate family on a larger-than-life Greek island is a tremendous celebration of life. The variety of different Greek characters parading through this book rivals the variety of Corfu's flora and fauna. Absolute great read!

the funny Durrell.......2005-04-24

Gerald Durrell was not only a naturalist and a gifted writer about his beloved animals, but a loving brother and son whose descriptions of his family and their foibles will keep you laughing all the way through. This is one of those books which I've reread so many times I've lost count, and which I've given to many friends who needed cheering up. Always works, too!

Way better than Croc Hunter.......2004-06-30

In todays day and age of Steve Erwin and Jeff Corbin who go around hunting for animals, it is easy to forget where it all started. With people like Gerald, and the London zoo. In this book, he collects animals, deals with his demented siblings and his long suffering mother who has to raise four kids and fend off the advances of a really persistent Colonel who gets increasingly vulgar and `grabby' when he drinks. This is a rare story that combines a humorous story with humorous writing and I once caused passengers in a flight to turn around and give me strange looks, so hard was I laughing.

Skeleton of a Plot embellished with tonnes of vocab.......2003-11-17

My Family and Other Animals is a bare-bones story in terms of plot. The Durrell family goes to Corfu, lives through what could be termed as a soap opera, and leaves. It's humourous, but not particularly challenging.

However, the older Gerald Durrell utilises vivid vocabulary over and over when describing the setting and people of Corfu. Fifteen-letter words that paint a crystalline picture are used frequently, relieving the never-ending roller coaster that is the life of the Durrells.

Overall, this is a highly entertaining book that will keep you engaged for the week or so that you will spend reading it every spare second you have.

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