effect

This is perhaps the best book that I have read on environmental history. Davis contends that the Southern Appalachian Mountains have been raped, robbed, and pillaged for centuries and casts new light on a largely ignored subject. The strengths of the work are Davis' illustrations of the cultural and environmental developments that have occurred in southern Appalachia from an interdisciplinary approach. The work is well-written and Davis displays an excellent knowledge of the literature using both primary and secondary sources. The sources are current and the bibliography is a useful tool for scholars wanting to do further work in Appalachia. Most scholars who have written on Appalachia have largely ignored Native Americans but Davis has shown in the same manner as William Cronan (Changes in the Land) and Alfred Crosby (The Columbian Exchange) in other areas of America, the consequences that European explorers had on Native American populations. Davis certainly executes and conveys with a skill understanding of the precontact environment, ecology, and landscape for the reader. This book could be used in history courses, folklore, Appalachian studies, sociology/anthropology, and a host of other classes. Also, it is written so well it is good for just general reading. This is a powerful, forceful, well-organized, and convincing work.

This book was purchased for my oldest child who is now 12 years old when he was 3 or 4 years old. It was one of his favorite books. We still have his copy of the book, and I have just ordered a used copy of the book for my second child who is now 4 years old. He loves to hear the book but is disappointed that the book's light & sound button no longer works. I will be reading it to my son's Pre-K class next week and I am sure they will all enjoy it as well. If the Publisher of the book reads the reviews, please put this book back in print. (and if possible with a button that a parent can change the battery in!)

This book is very good for students engaging in wind engineering.

The collaborative effort of Joseph M. Moran (Barbara Hauxhurst Cofrin Professor of Natural Sciences (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay) and Edward J. Hopkins (Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madi-son), Wisconsin's Weather And Climate is an informed and informative survey and examination of Wisconsin and its weather patterns through millions of years of history. From how modern-day science uses weather balloons, radar and satellites to monitor changes; to a sweeping view of the changes that have come across the land; Wisconsin's Weather And Climate is a fascinating read, highly recommended for students of meteorology, as well as being completely accessible for non-specialist general readers with an interest in Wisconsin weather history and the impact weather has had on Wisconsin ranging from advances in snow-making technology to the decline of the Great Lakes ice industry.

Orange, Atwood, and Stolorow have put together a quite well-written and thoughtful meditation on intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis. They include a revolutionary chapter which philosophically reconceptualizes psychoanalysis as a form of "practice" or "ethical know-how" rather than a mechanical, programmatic "technique." There is also a very striking, detailed portrayal of the phenomenology of psychotic states, which the authors call "annihilation experiences" and interpret in terms of experiences of invalidation and usurpation by others. These authors situate their whole discussion within the theoretical framework of what they call "contextualism," a methodological sensibility which involves seeking the intelligibility of psychological phenomena by closely examining their interpersonal and historical contexts. The only drawback to this book is a rather turgid chapter on analytic neutrality, which, however, still has some interesting things to say. I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in contemporary psychoanalysis, or the connection between philosophy and psychology. It would be especially good for anyone who may have had trouble with these theorists' previous work, as it is much more clearly written than their earlier books.

Logic is the most common method of artificial intelligence.
Facts, rules and consequences, automated theorem proving,
logic programming and language are all part of artificial
intelligence theory. Founders of formal logic established as
an aim that consequences of situations can be demonstrated
unambiguously. AI has been credited with generating more
productive associations between items of information at little
cost. Look for symmetries, patterns or analogies for establishing
artificial intelligence.

In a robot program:
Guiding systems employ a user to lead robots through motions
Robot level users specify motions and sensing
Task level-users specify operations by their desired effects on
objects

Heuristics consists of a general pruning method. It sets the
search based on local information and explores the alternatives
so that only a subset is explored at each step. Local information
consists of goodness of points in the search space or distance of points utilizing a MINIMAX strategy. If no heuristics,
anything which passes a given set of tests is a solution.

Yazdani's works are an important contribution to the theory
and implementation of artificial intelligence and expert systems.

Many of us feel so overwhelmed by the worlds astronomical environmental and health problems, we feel utterly helpless. But this book offers a simple, straight forward approach to creating a positive change, right in your own home. As a nutritionist and environmentalist, I was reluctant to read yet another depressing book on the state of health of our planet and our human bodies. But I was pleasantly surprised by the quick read and simplicity of Mr. Diamonds idea; how each of us can contribute to positive changes on this earth. the most effort on our part is sending this book to others (especially that it is now out of print!)

I Have the videos ...I have the books, they are all collecting dust except for this one. Trish and Chris Meyer are the Ae guru's. I have been using Ae for about 2 yr.s and I have dramatically increased my income because of this book. Now all the :30 and 1:00 commercials I do are done in After Effects. I strongly recommend this book for an intermediate to experienced editor wanting to break into motion graphics and compositing. This book is guaranteed to raise your IQ (and could quite possibly help in raising your income).

I was a beginner and this was all I ever used to learn AE. I left out the Z b/c obviously they must have left out a technique or two, but otherwise this is all you need to get up and running. Forget the videos others offer, they're a waste of time and money. There's plenty of online support and training offered from various user groups, some with FREE video clips. LES MEYERS get an A+++++ from this DV Editor.

I've been a long time fan of the Meyers' column on DV magazine, so when I heard they were publishing a book I knew it would be great. I think that this book and it's companion After Effects in Production should be in every motion graphics artists personal library. The tutorials are beautifully explained and illustrated. Even advanced users learn new ways of doing things. For what I've seen beginers can use it as a text book and follow it sequentially, for advanced users it's a great reference book that completly substitutes the original manuals.

This book has some good qualities along with some major flaws. First I should say that it is beautifully written in a style which is almost like a poetic kind of prose. I am a clinical psychologist, and I like the fact that the authors are psychiatrists who are obviously oriented to psychotherapy something that is not so common these days. There is also a nice humanistic quality to this book and the overall theory of love with its evolutionary perspective I found interesting and relevant. As for flaws I see two major ones: an apparent lack of awareness of the history of psychotherapy and a lack of knowledge about treatment outcome research. They present a relationship oriented approach to psychotherapy which in practice sounds almost identical to that of Carl Rogers who emphasized the importance of therapist empathy and believed that the therapeutic relationship itself was the curative factor in psychotherapy. Rogers began formulating his views in the 1940's and ultimately became one of the most influential figures in the history of psychotherapy. Yet amazingly Carl Rogers is not mentioned even once in this book! In addition they fail to mention family systems approaches which view family attachments as the key determinant of human emotional life and also of mental disorders. They also seem to echo one of the key trends in psychotherapy from the 1960's when many of the experiential therapies claimed that most insight was too intellectual and sterile and only emotional experience was seen as therapeutic, a somewhat outdated view. The authors then state that only relationship quality and not therapeutic orientation makes any difference and only long-term therapy can be effective. As someone who specializes in anxiety disorders I know this to be completely inaccurate. There are countless treatment outcome studies done at top universities and medical schools with cognitive-behavior therapy of anxiety disorders with success rates as high as over 90% with short-term therapy. There is no one suffering from agoraphobia or a specific phobia who is going to overcome these problems simply by establishing a good relationship with a therapist even if they come for five years. Exposure therapy is absolutely essential. These results are irrefutable, occur in short-term therapy, and only within the specific modality of cognitive-behavior therapy. This is in complete contradiction to the statements made by the authors and show an unacceptable lack of awareness or selective inattention to the current scientific literature in psychotherapy. My advice for most people is that if a therapist says that therapy will take three to five years explore the possibility of seeing another therapist. The authors also seem to make the assumption that all problems are relationship problems which is not always the case. Some problems are the result of simple classical conditioning such as many anxiety disorders. I also have trouble with the biological rationale offered by these authors for their treatment. If mammals all have a similar limbic brain then why don't we find the same mental disorders in animals as we do in humans? Do dogs suffer from agoraphobia or dissociative disorders? They completely neglect the role of higher human functions which give us the ability to reason, to see a future and a past, and the capacity for language as if these play no role in human emotions and emotional disturbance. So there are some significant problems with this book, but it does have some good points and I think is worth the read.

... Most Americans believe that people should grow up to be autonomous individuals through the sustained exercise of personal will and effort. "A General Theory of Love" is an un-American book.

Lewis, Amini, and Lannon, all psychiatrists, argue that we develop confidence, happiness, and feelings of independent competence only through ongoing dependencies within intimate human relationships. True maturity is achieved not by scorning dependency but by continually satisfying our need for it throughout our lives.

Of course, op-ed writers tell us that children need time with attentive relatives instead of with TVs and computers, and psychologists commenting on recent school shootings theorize that teenagers with violent tendencies lack strong, healthy bonds with their families. "A General Theory of Love" takes such ideas further and grounds them in brain research made possible by new technologies.

Recent research into the physiology of the limbic brain is especially revealing, says the book. Scientists once believed that this part of the brain only coordinated sensations from the external world and internal organs. But recent brain-wave experiments show that experience lays down patterns in the limbic brain which regulate our emotions, and that these patterns change and grow throughout our lives.

Thus our nervous systems are not autonomous or self-contained, but continually rewired by intimacy with others. No wonder two lovers feel like one person: their closeness forms new psychic patterns in both. No wonder psychotherapy takes time: we heal by connecting with healthy therapists long enough for our minds to become more like theirs.

This persuasive, moving book is wise about the heart as well as the nervous system. But the writing can be exasperatingly verbose. Sometimes Lewis whips a sentence to a froth as if hoping the jargon will vanish among the bubbles; sometimes he just seems anxious to impress. If he listened to his prose as attentively as he listens to his clients, he'd create stronger, healthier bonds with his readers, but despite the book's overwrought style its fascinating content makes it well worth reading.

The author's theory of limbic resonance correlates very accurately with reality. As any good theory on human emotion should, it accurately explains why we love who we love and why we are who we are. For years and years I argued with countless intellectuals who said there was no such thing as "Spark". This book not only provided me with a realistic explanation of my own emotional makeup and attraction certain woman (through spark), but gives me a way to examine spark and change it if I so desire.

It's not a book for everyone, since the first four or five chapters are a bit slow and technical, but if you get bogged down, skip to Hebbian learning (the fundamentals behind artificial intelligence in computers) in chapter six and you'll be suddenly and completely enthralled. The way it ties our mind together as a logical group of thinking units and then ties this back to the way we love is fantastic. Get the book, read it, you'll learn a lot. I guarantee it.

If you've read Diamond's two most recent books -- "Why is Sex Fun?" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel" -- very little in this book will be new to you. "The Third Chimpanzee" covers a wider range of topics and is more overtly political than those two, but much of the same territory is examined.

In this book, which was his first for a general audience, Diamond examines the history of man's evolution, seeking to establish patterns that might explain man's future. He worries that man has a self-destructive tendency -- as typified by genocide, the threat of atomic warfare, and the loss of biodiversity -- that could lead to man's own self-destruction. While Diamond occasionally tries to strike an optimistic note, the book has a dark pessimism throughout it.

One of the book's only failings is that its several aims are sometimes at cross purposes. Diamond begins "The Third Chimpanzee" by trying to level man down to the animals. He does this by explaining how closely connected man is genetically to his closest living cousins, the chimpanzees (thus, the name of this book). On this basis, he then argues that a rethinking in our concept of human rights is in order.

Later in the book, however, when Diamond is exhorting his fellow homo sapiens to save the planet, he chooses to focus on man's unique traits, both destructive and redeeming. Man is capable of genocide, certain types of which, Diamond argues, are unique to man. On the other hand, man is also capable of learning from the history of his species, something which is also unique to man. Diamond's switch from presenting man as just another chimpanzee to presenting man as both world destroyer and potential world savior is a bit jarring, even if not necessarily contradictory.

"The Third Chimpanzee" is an easy and enjoyable read, but it fails to reach the intellectual heights of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" -- a superior book in every way. Clearly, this was a dry run for Diamond, and he would later improve his presentation by dropping most of the overt politics and pessimism, while slightly narrowing his focus. The result was a great book; this is merely a good one.

This is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in how man differs and does not differ from the rest of the animal kingdom (particularly the great apes). Since the book is already over ten years old, it is a bit weak on new advances in genetics and does not seem to be up-to-date on the Clovis debate about the peopling of the Americas (new genetic data showing that the entrance was probably earlier than the assumed 12,000 years ago). However, the bulk of the book is a very mind-broadening, timeless view of homo sapiens and this species conquest of the entire planet. The history that Diamond portrays does not augur well for mankind: habitual destruction of the environment; mass extinctions of other species; increasingly limited genetic diversity in the human species; the propensity for genocide. In short, Diamond shows that man has a history of selfishly expanding its population to the detriment of the very environment upon which he depends and that this proclivity could someday spell the end of the species as our numbers continue to rise. Some sobering facts are offered here; and open minds should recognize them and heed them.

I only give the book four stars for two reasons:
1) As mentioned, the part on genetics is partially out of date and should be made current in a further edition.
2) Diamond has a number of annoying tendencies that are sometimes frustrating: I grew weary of his "Outer Space" perspectives (i.e., the paleontologist from Outer Space, the archaeologist from Outer Space, the biologist from Outer Space), as if the reader were incapable of standing back and gaining perspective on his own species without this trick. Also, he piqued my curiosity on a number of subjects that he promised to cover in detail later. When thse subjects finally came, there were often more questions than answers.

After trying to read _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, I found this book, surprisingly, easier to get interested in and understand. Not that it's simpler or dumbed-down!

The book tries to answer the questions of what it means to be human, and how we are different from other life forms. This might sound like a cliché, but as Diamond delves into ethics, sex, history, evolution, and drug abuse, and comes out with his grim but guardedly optimistic conclusions, it seems apparent to me, at least, that what he is saying is of utmost importance to everyone in the world.

Having read the book _Ishmael_, by Daniel Quinn, a few years ago, I wonder if Diamond's thinking could actually be improved by being combined with Quinn's. Diamond suggests that, when prehistoric societies drove certain animals to extinction, they were acting out a human tendency to be destructive to our local environments that is simply horribly intensified today. Quinn suggests that some of those prehistoric societies were not particularly more destructive than other animals, and for the same reasons; while other, more civilized societies had the tendency to be destructive because of their cultures' inclinations, and passed this tendency on to us, their cultural descendants.

Of course, if Quinn is correct, our culture must be changed, a daunting task; while if Diamond is correct, the solution is unclear. He suggests that we may in fact be learning to change our behavior, in our own self-interest. I don't see much evidence of this offhand. (Although recent books by Paul Hawken and Ray C. Anderson suggest that business can be reformed in a way that's good both economically and ecologically; they're next on my reading list!) Quinn and Diamond alike offer a very cautious hope for our ecological future: that we may learn from the errors of the past and change our behavior accordingly.

But how easy it is to sit and type platitudes about the fate of all human life! Read the book; I'm going to reread it myself, in order to thoroughly take in its meaning. If anyone is interested in discussing these topics, please email me.