Here's another attempt to bridge the gap between the ``two cultures'' of the humanities and the sciences, this time by a mathematician/mystery novelist. In his introductory ``Note to the Reader,'' Berlinski (Less Than Meets the Eye, 1994, etc.) emphasizes that his goal is to provide not a textbook but a ``tour,'' offering the reader the sort of ``Aha!'' insight characteristic of math. To that end, he brings his novelist's equipment to bear on the subject, with well-drawn character portraits of the men who developed calculus (Newton and Leibniz in particular) and dramatic scenes featuring the author as an instructor with a recalcitrant college math class. There are proofs (presented in appendixes to each chapter), but no problems to solve. And the focus of the text is on the meaning and application of the central concepts of the calculus, as in the use of the first derivative to determine the speed of a falling body after a given elapsed time—one of the purposes for which the technique was invented. A reader who remembers algebra can follow most of the proofs, and the history of mathematics is interestingly presented. But the book goes off track in several ways. Berlinski's portrayal of his college calculus class suggests contempt for those who ``don't get'' math; considering how many readers may picture themselves among the author's reluctant students, this is not an asset. Too many sentences force the reader to stop and puzzle out the plain sense of what the author is saying rather than the mathematical point he is trying to illustrate. Minor factual errors intrude: The author attributes Millay's line ``Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare'' to Keats, then makes a point of Keats's ignorance of math. Finally, the labels on the diagrams often don't correspond to the text they illustrate, a source of potential confusion. A worthy attempt to bring an important scientific concept to the general reader; too bad the execution falls short of the ambition.
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42645-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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