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Category Archives: Books

Darwin Day

Since today is Darwin Day, I’d like to take the opportunity to recommend Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders by David N. Livingstone. This short book is a good history of the early scientific debate over natural selection. Unlike the incessant popular portrayal of a war between religion and science, Livingstone shows that the debate was actually over [...]

Almost useful

The Engineer-in-Training Reference Manual is the most almost useful reference on almost everything I have ever seen. I’ve had a copy since I was a sophomore engineering student, and still reffer to it fairly frequently. The professor for my Principles of Engineering class went on about how wonderful this book is and what a [...]

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–And How it can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman

I finally got around to reading Thomas L. Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Friedman is one of the few columnists that I read on a regular basis and the book is on an interesting subject, so I was expecting to enjoy reading it. I didn’t. While I don’t agree with all his ideas, the main [...]

Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How by S. David Freeman

I read this several months ago, but didn’t finish the review until now. This is a hard review to write because Freeman has so many good quotes. I saved 3400 words of quotes from this book.
Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How by S. David Freeman is an excellent book by an expert. [...]

Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg

This is a brief review of Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg.
In chapter one, Lomborg lists four points:

“Global warming is real and man-made.” Very few people argue this point anymore.
“Statements about the strong, ominous, and immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly exaggerated . . .” This is very dependent on one’s source of information. [...]