Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell Structure and Function

Book Description

This pocket guide describes 34 species of Adirondack trees and interprets their role in the region's ecology. Written by a noted naturalist and educator. Numerous photographs. By Dr. E.H. Ketchledge. 164 pages. Softcover.

Book Description

This sophisticated coloring book is a beautifully detailed illustration of the world's living diversity. It is written for science students, teachers, and anyone else who is curious about the extraordinary variety of living things that inhabit this planet. It opens with an introduction to the classification systems, distinctions between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, an introduction to life cycles, Earth history, and an explanation of how to best use this coloring book. The next section is organized by communities in which the organisms live. The final section details the variety of major groupings - phyla - within each kingdom and shows how the organisms in each are distinguished from one other.This coloring book gives a visual understanding of the enormous diversity of life on this planet and will be an enlightening and educational resource for students from a variety of backgrounds.

Customer Reviews:

It IS a coloring book.......2006-08-02

If you had read the book's description be fore buying, you migh have expected a coloring book. You were probably looking for Margulis' book: Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth.

Book description QUOTE:
It is written for science students, teachers, and anyone else who is curious about the extraordinary variety of living things that inhabit this planet. It opens with an introduction to the classification systems, distinctions between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, an introduction to life cycles, Earth history, and an explanation of how to best use this coloring book.

DIVERSITY OF LIFE. The Illustrated Guide to the Five Kingdom.......2000-10-25

DIVERSITY has surprising success in being all things (well almost all) to all people. It's about equally divided between fact-packed technical writing, full of Latin names, and line drawings of them. The intro is convincingly authoritative. And TEN pages of further resources are provided.

At first, I thought this is not a book for me, a novice, But Latin names are coupled with common ones. The fifty-page glossary is nicely written in everyday language. And the line drawings are tantalising. I am invited to color the drawings!

The cover shows the beauty of color and design that the authors contemplate. Spiral binding lies flat for coloring. I wonder what medium works best. Colored pencils? How would the paper take to water color or acryllic? The authors urge me to photocopy the drawings. I might enlarge one, use good art paper and create something worth framing!

There's no clue as to what colors are right. Shall I create my own color scheme, or go to the zoo or a swamp for real-life colors? I think fantasy will be more fun.

DIVERSITY does assume some knowledge of biology. I'd call it an expansion of knowledge for those who like knowledge for its own sake, and certainly a well-organized reference book. It could also work as a student-friendly text for a sophisticated high school or beginning college level classroom.

Just learning that there are five kingdoms staggered me because I studied biology before 1960, when there were just two. The animal Kigdom is now "animalia" and the vegetable kingdom is now "plantae." Modern biologists distinguish bacteria and fungi as numbers three and four. The fifth is really unnerving: something called Protoctista -- very close to the medical words that start out Procto --.

This adds up to more diversity of life than I've ever thought about.

On page 21 I find the first creative drawing/learning project: two cows in a field. One has its digestive tract outlined, with magnified drawings of six kinds of bacteria that populate its gut. Further along I find a pretty little drawing of the notorious E. coli. schematically resident in a fisherman's stomach. What wonderful colors shall I choose?

I think I shall use DIVERSITY as my Field Guide to the Minuscule as I color with my grandchildren. And somewhere I will find out what a Proctoct-- really is.

Who is this book for?.......2000-01-19

I purchased a copy of this book because I've been buying nearly all of Lynn Margulis's books in preparation for teaching a course. The description here was minimal, and I wanted to warn other potential buyers -- this is basically a coloring book. The weird thing is that the concepts and vocabulary are at a first-year college or advanced high school level. I can't imagine just who is supposed to use this book, sixth grade geniuses with crayons, or easily amused college freshmen? I suppose if you have a really bright grade school class you might want to give this book a try, but in my judgement it's not at the right level for anyone, anywhere.

The Illustrated Five Kingdoms: A Guide to the Diversity of Life on Earth

Average customer rating:

The Illustrated Five Kingdoms: A Guide to the Diversity of Life on Earth
Lynn Margulis , Karlene V. Schwartz , and Michael Dolan
Manufacturer: Harpercollins College Div
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Natural History | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 006500843X

Diversity of Life: The Illustrated Guide to the Five Kingdoms

Average customer rating:

Diversity of Life: The Illustrated Guide to the Five Kingdoms

Manufacturer: Tandem Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: 1417642483

Book Description

Zeolites, with their crystalline microporous structure, are cordial hosts to a wide variety of guests. Traditional absorption techniques, as well as X-ray diffraction and spectroscopic techniques, have contributed to a better understanding of the nature of the host materials' characteristic cavities, cages and channels. The same techniques, coupled with powerful computational methods, have given new insights into the interactions of guest molecules with their hosts. In turn, this has led to new developments in the direction of structure during zeolite synthesis as well as potentially new applications of guest--host materials. The 11 chapters of Inclusion Chemistry with Zeolites: Nanoscale Materials by Design represent the cutting edge of modern research, describing some of the most recent studies on structure direction in synthesis, characterization techniques, computational aspects, coordination and organometallic chemistry, photochemistry, and electronic and optical materials. The diversity and wide utility of its presentation will inspire creative readers to create their own `nanoscale materials by design'.

Book Description

New and striking results obtained in recent years from an intensive study of asymptotic combinatorics have led to a new, higher level of understanding of related problems: the theory of integrable systems, the Riemann-Hilbert problem, asymptotic representation theory, spectra of random matrices, combinatorics of Young diagrams and permutations, and even some aspects of quantum field theory.

The Counterfeiters: A Novel
Average customer rating:

Minor Masterpiece

good read

"Strip from the novel everything that does not belong to it"

Decent novel, but overrated

A brilliant, lyrical masterpiece.

The Counterfeiters: A Novel
Andre Gide
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
French | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Gide, Andre | ( G ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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The Immoralist (Penguin Classics)

If It Die . . .: An Autobiography

Strait is the Gate (La Porte etroite)

Lafcadio's Adventures

Nausea Nausea

ASIN: 0394718429
Release Date: 1973-06-12

Book Description

A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.

Customer Reviews:

Minor Masterpiece.......2005-10-23

This qualifies as literature, and should be read by everyone, but, compared to the rest of the literary pantheon, it really is a bagatelle. It's quintessentially Gallic in style, and Gide inserts a great deal of his Oscar Wilde-like wit into the characters' dialogue; this accounts for most of the reading pleasure. There is a plot of sorts, but the narrative isn't plot-driven. Very easy to read, funny, and well-written. (There is a dour, rather melodramatic climax, but I got the sense that this was dutifully tacked on, as it didn't represent the culmination of the overall arc of the novel...which may have been the point!)

good read.......2005-07-23

This is not a plot-oriented story, so if you are looking for "what happens next", you will be disappointed, even though there is enough happening. For example, in the beginning, the affair of Vincent and Laura is in the foreground, but then half way through, after Laura goes back to her husband, it's almost forgotten and Vincent is out of the picture, and the reader is not going to be informed about what happened to him or Laura in details. Instead, the other issues of the other characters take over the story. In other words, the "events" aren't the important issue Gide is dealing with.

There are so many, in fact too many, for my little brain to grasp, characters and each of them has his/her own story and issues to be dealt with, and at times I felt I couldn't digest them all (to remember all the names alone was a challenge). As Gide says in his notebook, this book could have been divided into two books. Nonetheless, he decided to put everything in one book, one story, and he "gave everything" he had, as he expected this story to be his last novel.
There are more discussions on art, literature, and moral issues than the story itself, which I enjoyed and learned a great deal. This sort of novels are very rare these days, as the current trend of novels are more "event-based" than "idea-based".
His notebooks are even more enjoyable.

As for homosexuality, I didn't find a trace of it in this novel. Would someone tell me where people got that idea? Or am I missing something? My guess is the affection and respect between Eduard and Oliver is the cause of it, but they're Uncle and Nephew, which makes it only natural that they possess affection, fondness and love, especially if they share the same interest, and both of them being artists, shy and sensitive by nature.
The corruption of the society, both in adults and young people, was brought up brilliantly. Only, I wish it was told through Oliver's eye. (I really wanted to get to know him better, but there were too many other characters who took up the pages.)

The sudden ending caught me by surprise, and I was a bit dissatisfied, but after reading the notebooks and realized that's how Gide wanted it, I decided to respect his decision.
Some of the characters needed a bit more attention and needed to be developed a little more, I think, especially Boris, as he is the one who ends the story by a drastic action such as committing suicide. (I never got to know him well enough to know what was going on in his head.)

The style is unique. It's written mainly in 3rd person omnicient, but often Gide lets Eduard tell the story in his journal, in 1st person. And then he goes back to omnicient again in the next chapter. This repeats throughout. The trouble I had was that there were so many characters, and I really didn't get to know any of them intimately. Eduard was the only one I felt I got to know, but that's because he was given many chances to write journals in 1st person.
There are several main characters obviously, but then occasionally the less important characters also come out in the foreground. So you think there's going to be a story about them, but then they disappear and you don't hear about them for a while.
In the notebook, he says that the important characters shouldn't be in the foreground but instead let the reader figure them out, or something to that effect. It was only then I realized what he was trying to do. It is a rare style, I think, and requires some adjusting.

In any case, it's a very readable novel, has a lot to offer, and I should say you will get your money's worth.

"Strip from the novel everything that does not belong to it".......2004-04-14

There's no shortage of quality literature, but it's not so often that you find someone who actually seems to be working with the limits of the medium, and stretching them. With this book, Gide did for the novel what people like Lynch and Tarentino have done for film.

'The Counterfeiters' is a novel presumably written by one of its characters, Edouard, who is planning to write a novel titled 'The Counterfeiters,' but is struggling with a case of writer's block. What seems to give him trouble is that the complexity of his experience keeps defying his attempts to apply a scheme of interpretation to it, and a sense of personal crisis which makes it difficult for him to maintain his objectivity as an artist. As a read, though, it isn't half as strange and experimental as that might make it sound; its wide cast of characters is typical of a traditional novel, such as War and Peace or a Tale of Two Cities, but Gide works with incredible subtley behind the scenes. Edouard's musing about the nature of narrative structure (to other characters) is suddenly reflected in his world, as though he were unconsciously God. The themes are tenuous and only gradually developed. Some characters are the ordinary sort of people who began to emerge in the literature of Twain, Dostoevsky and Turgenev, while some are more like the dramatic heroes of Shakespeare and Dickens. There's even a guest appearance by Alfred Jarry, the gleefully profane French dramatist of the period. Halfway through, in a chapter titled 'The Author Stops to Appraise his Characters,' Gide himself (or possibly Eduoard) offers his frank opinions on the characters (or real people?) who populate the novel.

If possible, buy a copy which includes 'The Journals...,' the record that Gide kept while writing this, which provides even more insight into his method.

Decent novel, but overrated.......2003-07-10

Three-and-a-half stars. Gide's reputation precedes him. He is generally regarded as one of France's best novelists and is widely admired by American writers as well. I plunged into this novel eagerly and emerged from it, two days later, with little more than a shrug. I hesitate to be too critical about books that I read in translation; one never knows how accurately the translator has captured the original work.

All in all, there's nothing really wrong with The Counterfeiters; it reads and feels at times like Dickens and a spate of other nineteenth-century British novels--the cast of characters is rather large, there are ample doses of melodrama, and the story makes use of several nice "coincidences" to tie otherwise disparate storylines together. It's been said that Gide's style was revolutionary for his day, but it's fair to say that readers today will find it fairly conventional. The same goes for the book's "scandalous" reputation--there is nothing about The Counterfeiters that will shock or amaze readers in 2003 the way it may have in 1926, when it was first published.

That said, The Counterfeiters is a decent book. There are moments when the reader feels that Gide has touched upon something greater than the story itself; some cutting observation about the relationship between Art and Morality, or the decline of social morals. But the material and style is otherwise dated. I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this book, if so inclined. But as for me, six months from now, I'm doubt I'll remember much about it. It just didn't make much of an impression.

A brilliant, lyrical masterpiece........2003-06-19

"The Counterfeiters" (1926), by Andre Gide (1869-1951) is a fascinating chronicle of life in Paris before World War I. It begins as two high school friends, Bernard Profitendieu and Olivier Molinier, prepare for the bacchalaureat, their final exam. Bernard finds some letters hidden at home which show he is illegitimate, and runs away from home, thus setting in motion a rich set of adventures among a cast of mind-boggling proportions. From Bernard, Olivier and their parents, the story quickly grows to include Olivier's younger brother George, his uncle Edouard, Edouard's friend Laura, Olivier's older brother Vincent, Vincent's friend Robert Count Passavant, Passavant's lover Lady Griffith, Edouard's old schoolmate Victor Strouvilhou, Victor's nephew Gheri, Laura's father Vedel, Edouard's old piano teacher Perouse, and Perouse's grandson Boris, among many others. As this prodigious cast assembles itself, the fireworks really begin!

The reader will be amazed by all the ways these characters interconnect with each other. For example, at the beginning of the book, Edouard is traveling from London to Paris to visit and advise Laura, who is trying to extricate herself from an extra-marital affair, but only upon arriving will he learn Laura's paramour is actually his nephew Vincent. Many similar connections between most of the characters will be revealed during the course of this motivating story. "The Counterfeiters" is less a plotted novel than a finely-woven tapestry. Every character interacts with almost every other. The chapters are brief, only a dozen pages or so, but most focus on one of these interactions in particular, making for a compelling narrative. It was notably experimental for its time, but extremely readable, and still fresh today.

The title describes a counterfeiting ring which uses children, like something from Dickens's "Oliver Twist", to pass off gold-plated glass disks for coins. Gide's broader theme, however, is that of falsehood in general, like that popular theme of 19th-century French literature, namely hypocrisy. Beside the counterfeiting ring itself, Gide describes fathers with illegitimate children, adults with hidden affairs, and people generally searching for truth among the artifice of life.

Gide's characters are brilliantly conceived, executed on a par with his predecessor Balzac, whom Gide himself called "possibly our greatest novelist" (as published in the invaluable reference in the appendix of this book, the illuminating journal Gide himself kept while writing "The Counterfeiters"). There is something of Balzac's Goriot in Gide's Perouse, something of Rastignac in Bernard, and perhaps even a little Vautrin in Passavant. But Gide's literary style is markedly different. Where Balzac told self-contained stories, usually ones with social morals attached (as did most 19th-century French authors), Gide tells us he is "fond of sudden endings," and "it is an insult to explain what the attentive reader has understood" (both also paraphrased from this book's appendix).

Gide weaves dozens of strands of the story, intersecting every character with every other character, drawing lines to question the moral behavior of each interaction, an experimental gambit for its time. But I'm pleased to say Gide's experiment worked. The complete book is a brilliant success. His "novelist's novel" is perhaps one of the most important literary results of the early twentieth century, crafting a compelling story of interesting characters, maintaining great intellectual interest throughout. This novel is recommendable to anyone who enjoys fine literature.

Note: Other reviews invariably paint this book in shocking shades of homosexual or hedonistic material, but this is misleading at best. It's true, a homosexual and hedonistic tone appears at places, Count Passavant being the worst offender, but Gide is not a pornographer, he is a moralist. Homosexual himself, Gide was also Protestant (Huguenot), and like his brilliant work "The Immoralist", he believes in showing a moral lesson through human action.

Finally, two small quibbles: An emotional incident at the end of the book, based on a newspaper article Gide clipped, seems incongruous with the rest. It doesn't detract from the book, but it seems tacked on for special effect. Also, while excellent for the most part, the translation insists on leaving some expressions in the French original, such as "chef d'oeuvre" instead of "masterpiece", or "entr'acte" instead of "intermission".

Mackerel Sky: A Novel
Average customer rating:

Canada should be proud

Mackerel Sky: A Novel
Natalee Caple
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0312330243
Release Date: 2004-08-12

Book Description

A novel of criminal intrigue, eccentric love and the power of women.

After a twenty-year absence, Guy Vidoq is returning home to meet his daughter for the first time. He discovers his mercurial daughter, Isabelle, has been raised in a bizzarre, cloistered environment by her libertine mother, Martine, who is now living with a young man, Harry, roughly the age of their daughter. If the intense, closed and sensual relationship of these three housemates wasn't bad enough, Guy soon discovers that the entire household is deeply enmeshed in a counterfeiting operation that produces fake American currency for the black market.

Extraordinarily intelligent, though volatile, Martine soon becomes the obsession of Guy, turning his world upside down. As they begin to rekindle their relationship, tension in the house rises. And when the counterfeiting operation begins to break down, everyone finds themselves in desperate situations as they are each drawn closer to the criminal underworld.

Compared to Milan Kundera, Leonard Cohen and Barbara Gowdy, Natalee Caple constructs an exquisite portrayal of the human psyche with a daring, provocative style. Reminiscent of crim films from the French New Wave, Mackerel Sky is a dark, thrilling novel about seduction, the intricate, often destructive relationship between parent and child, and the impulses of the heart.

Customer Reviews:

Canada should be proud.......2004-04-12

Caple has written a strong, fun, sexy and beautiful story with well written characters. They are probably not the type of people you have ever actually met but I'm sure you will feel like you completely understand and know each.

Imagine a mother and daughter counterfeiting team, Martine and Isabelle, that include a young man, the age of Isabelle but the lover of Martine, in their scheme. Enter Guy, Isabelle's father, a man she has not met before and Martine's young lover year's before. All set in beautiful locations in Quebec, this novel was a pleasure to read.

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