In Defense of Hunting: Yesterday and Today

Book Description

An acclaimed nature writer and environmentalist delivers an eloquent and provocative pro-hunting exploration of the primal impulse to hunt and its endangered value in modern society.

Customer Reviews:

Informative.......2005-10-12

A great book that examines hunting from an economic, cultural, and philosophical perspective. As a hunter it made me question my sport and left me with a deeper appreciation of the outdoors. As a nonhunter and member of various "animal rights" groups, I was told by my sister that it helped her to understand why I hunt and that she enjoyed the book even though she remains a nonhunter. An excellent book regardless of your agenda.

The Truth About Hunting and Hunters........2004-01-15

Finally there is a book that gives an honest look at the hunt, hunters and why we hunt. No question that the most ardent guardians of our world and our environment are the hunters. This book explores the thoughts, feelings and motivations behind hunters. It also discusses the unfair judgements placed on hunters by the anti-hunting and animal rights movement. By the time the reader finishes this work, they are given a much greater understanding of the hunter and the hunt. A must read for all who hunt and all who love the outdoors.

Fallacious tripe........2003-12-20

Every single aspect of hunting can be reproduced non-violently simply by replacing the high-powered rifle with a camera. Hunting is about killing and bloodlust, period, and no amount of pseudo-new-age baloney can change that.

Muddled and incoherent, I'm sad to say.......2003-04-17

I have always been into the outdoors and am an avid hiker/rafter/rock climber, so I thought I would enjoy this book. From the reviews below, I expected a rich celebration of the outdoors from a seasoned sportsman. Instead, I found a series of unrelated, rather convoluted explanations that seemed to make the curious argument that hunting is good only because animal rightists/PETA types are so bad/dangerous. I don't care about PETA and I don't want to read about them in this type of book! However, because the author rambles for pages - chapters! - about them, by the end of the book I kept thinking of that old quote: "The lady doth protest too much," or whatever it is. Mr. Swan actually managed to make the PETAists sympathetc and I never quite learned why hunting is so great. Being out in the woods, on a boat on the lake, on a mountain- it's all good for the soul, but you don't necessarily have to be shooting stuff to enjoy it. I don't know, it just seemed to me that whatever point Mr. Swan was trying to make was drowned in a morass of words meant to at once scare and titillate his hunter readers about the evil Peta people. He seems to care only about reaching out to a small audience of die-hards, not your average joe. And he rambles too much - did I mention that?!?

A wonderful book.......2003-03-27

I read this book in late 2002 when people were always asking me why I hunted and why I liked it so much. It was very helpful to hear someone else put into words what I felt but couldn't articulate.

This book clearly spells out the dangerous agenda of animal rights groups, how they exist merely to perpetuate themselves and how little they actually do for wildlife conservation. He does this without personal attacks or bias, but with statistical facts, and personal examples. This book is very well-written despite what some people have posted hear.

There is also a spiritual side to the book that honors animals and nature like I've never heared from an anti-hunter. This author truly lives in nature and loves nature, like all hunters do.

Book Description

A practical and insightful guide covering the length and breadth of Turkey, including Istanbul, the resorts and sites of the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, the lunar landscapes of Cappadocia, the desolate Black Sea region and the ancient sites countrywi

Customer Reviews:

History Buffs.......2006-05-17

If you are a history buff, you'll like this book. If you're not a history buff...and I am not... you will simply feel buffeted. The amount of historical references were overwhelming and the print is miniscule. I wanted practical suggestions for getting around and recommendations for how, when, and where to enjoy Turkey's beauties.

Best Guide for Turkey.......2006-03-05

I am an American who traveled last year to Tukey and Tunisia. I discovered the Footprint guides first for Tunisia, and must say they are the best guidebook I have used for travel. They provide not only the info on where to stay and eat, but hands down have the best historical information I have seen in a travel guide. When I travel someplace new, I want to learn about what I am seeing and Footprints does not dissapoint. With few exceptions, the book gave much better information than the guides we were with. From now on, any time I travel, I will check and see if Footprint makes a guidebook for the area. I woulnd't even bother with the offers to get other books if you get this one. The footprint guide is all you need.

Book Description

This is the story of how three men won the Nobel Prize for their research on the humble nematode worm C. elegans; how their extraordinary discovery led to the sequencing of the human genome; how a global multibillion-dollar industry was born; and how the mysteries of life were revealed in a tiny, brainless worm.

In 1998 the nematode worm -- perhaps the most intensively studied animal on earth -- was the first multicellular organism ever to have its genome sequenced and its DNA mapped and read. "When we understand the worm, we will understand life," predicted John Sulston, one of the three Nobel laureates, and his prediction proved astonishingly accurate. Four years later, the research that led to this extraordinary event garnered three scientists a Nobel Prize. Along with Robert Horvitz and Sydney Brenner, Sulston discovered the phenomenon of programmed cell death in the worm, an essential concept that explains how biological development occurs in animal life and, as Horvitz later showed, how it occurs in human life. C. elegans is about as simple as an animal can be, but understanding its genetic organization is helping to reveal the mechanisms of life and, by extension, the mechanisms of our own lives. In the Beginning Was the Worm shows that in order to unlock the secrets of the human genome we must first understand the worm.

But this story is about more than just the worm. It is about how an eccentric group of impassioned scientists toiled in near anonymity for years, driven only by a deep passion for knowledge and scientific discovery. It is the story of countless hours of research, immense ambition, and one of the greatest discoveries in human history.

Customer Reviews:

Genetics from Small Beginnings.......2006-11-22

Why do we grow old and die? Amazingly, after more than forty years of research, we still don't know the answers. This book charts the history of one branch of investigation into this thorny problem and does it with verve, style, and wit. In addition it is written with an admirable clarity that will enable non-specialists to grasp not only what was going on during the 30 years people have been studying c. elegans but also why it matters.

The main omission of the book concerns the fact that unlike complex eukaryotes such as reptiles and mammals our small wormy friend does not undergo cell division. Therefore cell-division-related loss-of-information theories about senescence clearly cannot explain why c. elegans lasts less than a month even under ideal conditions. In principle the fact that this non-dividing cellular system actually does grow old and die should teach us something very important about the mechanisms of aging, but alas we are little closer to understanding why these tiny creatures age than we were when the whole enterprise started with Brenner's initial investigations. It would presumably be very illuminating to contrast the all-too-mortal worm with immortal cancer cell lines; somewhere in there are surely the clues we need to get a better understanding of what it means to age.

But this book is a nice primer on the basic issues involved in the study of aging and as such is a welcome addition to the bookshelf.

Little critters with big secrets.......2006-09-23

The revelations about life promised when the structure of DNA was deduced weren't immediately obvious. In fact, the more investigations proceeded, it was obvious that intense study and analysis would be needed. The inheritance of traits, both physical and behavioural, is a difficult mesh to unravel. Research on single-celled organisms, like E. coli, offered only part of the answers. Even the long years of work with fruit flies only hinted at how genes made bodies and habits. An intermediate creature was needed in order to map out how the DNA did its job. That creature was the humble nematode, about as long as your fingernail is thick. In this highly informative book, Andrew Brown traces the years of study undertaken by scientists and technicians to cut away some of the unknowns to derive answers.

"Cut away" is suggestive. The earliest work required understanding how the worm was assembled by its genes. That effort entailed slicing the worm in bits to map all the interconnections. For a creature made of less than a thousand cells, its body proved anything but simple. One researcher spent three decades studying the vulva of this hermaphrodite. Another, a technician, learned the finesse required to section the nerves in order that the pathways the wires followed could be tracked. No end of complexity was revealed and some of it remains mysterious today. Brown credits childhood habits that contributed to the talents these researchers applied to worm analysis. The "nerve-cutter" did jigsaw puzzles, while another was one of those kids constantly taking things apart - and reassembling them - when he was young. In sharp contrast to today's research environment, Brown notes, these individuals remained individuals, untrammeled by bureaucracy and often working with little or no supervision or even contact with their colleagues. Their own dedication kept them at their tasks for extended periods - and usually extended hours.

Why go to such extreme lengths to examine such a minuscule creature? It was due to Sydney Brenner. Brenner, the son of an illiterate, entered university at age fourteen. When he graduated, Brown notes, Brenner remained too young for legal employment in a university. Research, however, was an open and inviting path. After casting about for the right creature, in the early 1960s he settled on "Caenorhabditis elegans" [say it to yourself quickly!] for detailed study. It was Brenner's vision that the information gleaned would lead to further insights into development and nervous systems - body building and behaviour. Although little was said of it at the time, the techniques would lead to how human behaviour roots would also be revealed.

After describing the details of the progress of the "C. elegans" research, Brown describes the growing interest in launching the Human Genome Project. Although nobody proposed slicing up humans to find out what made them tick, other methods were already being developed. Even mapping the simple worm had proven such a tedious task that when computers entered biology laboratories, Brenner and others made quick use of them. The merging of biology and research led to "the algorithm of the worm". Computer images made the mapping process easier for analysis. Databases of the generations of mutations led to better identification of which genes produced the changes. Although even today, some of these mutations remain to be tracked with detail or assurance. The worm, like much of life, retains mysteries demanding more work.

It was these computer methods that made the study of the human genome feasible. Various techniques arose to map the genome, some of them, such as Craig Venter's "skipping over" method, brought the picture of the human genome closer, if incomplete. They also led to the dispute over patenting genes. Brown notes how Brenner was an early dissenter against this practice. His objections led to a Britain versus the US dichotomy about where gene research should lead. There remains dispute over why Brenner was such a strenuous opponent. Whatever else the study of the little worm brought to biology, there is no doubt its rewards are highly significant. If nothing else, the awarding of three Nobel Prizes must be counted as great.

Brown's effort in researching this book, from delving into the literature to extensive interviews with the surviving participants, makes it worthwhile. There are several personal accounts of the time, which Brown fully acknowledges. He cites frequently the "Worm-Breeder's Gazette" which proved to be a unifying information exchange among the scattered scholars that emerged from the original studies. The "Gazette" tied together not only distant researchers, but the work of those who closely studied small aspects and had no other means of learning who was doing what in other laboratories. Brown's only shortcoming here is a rather patchy prose style. He also engages in some unnecessary repetition, giving the chapters the effect of a set of loosely-tied essays. A good Index - which this book thankfully contains - should have eliminated this approach. The other flaw, far more serious, is the total lack of graphic material. Photographs and diagrams would have made this book peerless. "In the Beginning" is a valuable book, but could have been first class with a bit more effort. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Worms and Heroes.......2004-10-21

I have been following (from afar) the C. Elegans story for about thirty years. Once I was even motivated enough to try to isolate the worm from some soil so I could play around with it for myself. The attempt failed--I don't know why--but I never lost my vicarious interest in it. This is the first book that I've read that covers the story in a "behind the scenes" way, and I was glad to see it published.

The worm now, is of course, one of the best understood multicellular organisms in all of biology. How it came to be a model organism rivaling the mouse, the fruit fly, and man is an interesting lesson in how science at its best really works. It was a man, Sydney Brenner, with a plan to pick just the right organism that could be used to attack some of the fundamental questions of genetics, development and embryogenesis. The selection of this organism took several years of hard work. It is remarkable that during this start-up of the project, the funding organization, the MRC, supported the work without complaint, even though it was something like five years before publications began to roll out.

The book is written for a general audience, though there is lots here of interest to those who are more acquainted with biology too. The politics and personalities of the effort, now almost fifty years on, are covered in quite a bit of depth and some of it is pretty entertaining. The technical aspects of the research is also explained in enough detail that the reader can follow it pretty easily, though there are a few challenging rough spots too.

This is quite a tale of heroic science getting done with a conviction that unselfish, cooperative, non-commercial, basic research is not only worthwhile, but can be a lot of fun. And these guys clearly had a lot of fun. I think that one of the main reasons, pointed out by the author, was that the researchers were crammed in together with perhaps only a meter of bench space, and often not even a desk, had a lot to do with it. No closed doors, no power point, and no email probably had a lot to do with it too.

The book could have been better organized--the jumping around in time (what decade was this?) sometimes was bothersome to me. The portraits of the scientists were nice to see, but I'd have appreciated some drawings of the worm too. Pictures of the laboratory would have been instructive, I think.

Brown has done a quite respectable job with this book, and I think it is quite worth reading if you have any interest at all in biology or the history of science. The effort described will serve to confound the deconstructionists, mystics and other quacks of the academy for a long time to come.

Explaining Life at the Molecular Level.......2004-06-29

_Caenorhabditis elegans_, happily better known as _C. elegans_ and affectionately known by the researchers who study it as "the worm," would not seem to have potential for being the focus of groundbreaking biological studies. It is only a half a millimeter long, for instance, and is a lowly nematode, living on bacteria and slime mold in temperate regions all around the world. It does, however, display rapid growth and production of subsequent generations, which made it perfect for genetic studies, and transparency, which made it perfect for microscopic analysis. But even the original researchers on the worm would have been surprised at all the work that has been done in the last forty years. _C. elegans_ is now "the most completely understood animal in history." That assessment comes in _In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite_ (Columbia University Press) by Andrew Brown. In fact, the worm looms even larger in biological research; work on its genetic map grew directly into the human genome mapping project. So its story is worth telling, and Brown, a science journalist, has told it largely through descriptions of the personalities and work of the main researchers. There is little technical detail here about the worm itself, but much interesting history about how the researchers came to understand it so well.

Chief of the characters is Sydney Brenner, who designated the worm as a fit source of research in the mid-1960s. Not everyone thought that the worm was the way to go, or even that trying to understand it at the molecular level was a promising avenue of research. There was more glamorous work and ostensibly more productive work going on researching fruit flies, for instance, but Brenner's team showed astonishing dedication. Almost everyone who worked in the lab came away happy, and Brenner and his main colleagues came away with Nobels. One of the most pleasing aspects of the research was how public it was. The researchers were in favor of free trade in ideas within the team, of course, but there was a high streak of idealism in sharing results with the outside world. They truly believed that the unfettered exercise of their talents was for the benefit of humanity. They insisted that sharing results (rather than, say, copyrighting or licensing them) meant it was more likely that someone would latch on to something interesting which needed further work. No one owned the genetic map they produced, and it was from the beginning available to all takers (although it is now much more accessible since biologists can log into it on the web). It is not just that free release is generous and right, but it works. John Sulston, one of the Nobel winners, said, "It was not a theoretical concept, it was a pragmatic way of moving forward."

The importance of the worm in all subsequent genetic research cannot be overstated, and so this is a welcome volume to recount how the worm got to be so well understood. There have been distinct effects on the research on humans themselves. Vertebrates like humans are not descended from nematodes, but we are distant cousins with an ancient common ancestor which eight hundred million years ago solved the problems of living as a multicellular organism, and every animal ever since has inherited those solutions. In a real sense, looking at the worm is a way of looking at ourselves, with all the potential for practical knowledge that this brings. But Brown's book is an inspirational story about researchers who gambled all on the detailed understanding of a humble worm not for practicality, or for riches, but for the sake of knowledge alone.

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In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite
Andrew Brown
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPEN6I

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In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite
Andrew Brown
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IA66V4

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In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite
Andrew Brown
Manufacturer: COLUMBIA UNIV PRESS
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ASIN: B000O5TQ9M

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This practical guidebook details the applications of the most recent methods for polymer synthesis. It is aimed at the synthetic polymer chemist, both in industry and at the university graduate level.

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New Methods of Polymer Synthesis
J.R. Ebdon
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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This book describes recent developments in methods of polymer synthesis. These developments include not only refinements to established methods, but also new mechanisms of polymerization - such as group transfer and metathesis polymerization - and novel non-polymerization routes to speciality polymers.

New Polymerization Techniques and Synthetic Methodologies (Advances in Polymer Science)

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New Polymerization Techniques and Synthetic Methodologies (Advances in Polymer Science)

Manufacturer: Springer
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New Methods of Polymer Synthesis.

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Phenomenal Book.......2005-03-22

This amazing book engages the reader in the discoveries, theories, and experiments that led to the seemingly universal concepts that we call natural laws. The author, John Tabak, shows how natural laws evolve with our ability to accurately observe, measure, and understand the universe. After reading this book, I am totally pumped with anticipation about what the natural laws will be 50 years from now. Natural laws are to science what the US Marines are to warfare - universally applicable and unforgiving when disobeyed.
Semper Fidelis,
James Tabak USMC

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Time Will Tell

Very Interesting!

A fine coverage of paperback passions

Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps

Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965

Spring Fire (Lesbian Pulp Fiction)

Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics from Before Stonewall

Lust Unearthed: Vintage Gay Graphics From the DuBek Collection

ASIN: B000IOEOTQ

Book Description

From homicidal homos to locked-up lesbians, and almost every sexually dangerous combination in between, Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback is the first complete expose of queer sexuality in mid-twentieth century paperbacks. Compellingly written by historian Susan Stryker, Queer Pulp gives a complete overview of the cultural, political, and economic factors involved in the boom of queer paperbacks. With chapters covering gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexually oriented books, a lively overview of the genres, and loads of scorching paperback covers, Queer Pulp reveals the complicated and fascinating history of alternative sexual literature and book publishing. Featuring the work of well-known authors such as W. Somerset Maugham and Truman Capote to the low-brow and no-brow scribes who worked under several names, Queer Pulp is the entertaining and informative introduction to these lost, salacious literary genres.

Customer Reviews:

Time Will Tell.......2006-07-03

Taking a similar tact to Michael Bronski's epochal PULP FRICTION, ace historian Stryker parlays a collection of battered pulps into a periscope through the murky waters of gay and lesbian acceptance in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. She's able to show, just through the cover alone, how bisexuality proved to be the wedge that eventually toppled Amewrica's binary notions of sexuality. Triangle books, two men and a woman, two women and a man, perhaps seemed safer for timid 50s readers to understand, or at any rate aroused mass curiosity, and before you know it, the "divided path" had made way for full on "queer passions."

Stryker devotes separate chapters to the paperback revolution itself, as well as to lesbian, transgender, and gay male bodies of work. The covers are sometimes humorous, sometimes inane, but all of them give off a nervous sexual energy that still fills you up through your hands and eyes. She delves into the lives of the primary pulp creators, insofar as they have been divulged, and makes you feel with them as they created this enormous corpus. Chronicle Books has outdone itself with its huge, creamy graphics and must have had a good time doing so, with some amusing juxtapositions.

What happened to the end, though? The book ends without so much as an adieu, nearly in the middle of a paragraph. Perhaps the book's chic designer overrode whatever conclusion tthe author had written; they had perhaps run out of illustrations and, like Alice in the Lewis Carroll book, saw no sense in a book that had neither "pictures nor conversations." Instead, an able bibliography appears, meekly enough, and a tidy 4 page index.

Some of these authors are new to me, but I hope very soon to be able to pore through some of the books of Chris Davidson (GO DOWN, AARON; CAVES OF IRON; A DIFFERENT DRUM; THE GOLDEN TUFT), who sounds the most far-fetched of the lot. Will I be using one hand, or two, only time, or Tim, will tell.

Very Interesting!.......2006-03-25

This is an easy read and very fascinating at the same time. Stryker accomplishes bridging the gap between the social atmosphere of the golden age and covering the different genres of books typically associated with "queer" (i.e. bisexuality, transexuality, and homosexuality) while giving a plethora of examples in each category. You just might find a pulp in this book you must read.

A fine coverage of paperback passions.......2004-04-18

Susan Stryker has written a succinct account of this corner of American paperback publishing during the middle of the last century. The four areas she covers are lesbian, bisexual, transgender and gay with each chapter having the relevant book covers (150 in all) nicely placed so they are near the appropriate text.

She covers the two sides of the pulp fiction market, the big mainstream publishers, who issued literature in a mass market format and so had to present Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Somerset Maugham, Truman Capote, Radclyffe Hall, James Baldwin and others with suggestive images (the predictable shapely female with the half unbuttoned blouse) and come-on cover lines to generate sales, I bet they would have loved to change the titles to something more racy though. The other side was the very cheaply produced (but expensively priced) paperback that had no literary pretence and was produced for the 'one hand reader'. Plenty of these latter covers are shown and the designs are as predictable as the words inside but when you see them presented, sometimes four to a page, their overwhelming blandness becomes fascinating, however there are some that look as if a designer has been able to produce something creative with art and typography.

So many of the lowbrow and no-brow paperbacks are parodies of the genre, 'Hot Pants Homo' by Percy Fenster, 'The Man They Called My Wife' by Stark Cole' or 'Take My Tool' by Vivian LeMans, all with the appropriate tacky graphics and blurbs. Overall an interesting book (and well designed, too) about a slice of pop culture publishing that sold copies in the millions. Another book, also well designed, covering the same subject is Jaye Zimet's 'Strange Sisters' (ISBN 0140284028) with two hundred covers of lesbian pulp fiction. Both books will be appreciated by graphic designers and pop culture fans.

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