Friday, April 20, 2007

Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

by Jane Goodall, Phillip Berman, Phillip Berman, Phillip Berman (With)
Search for ISBN: HCL RCL MPL SPPL MnLINK
Search for title: HCL RCL MPL SPPL MnLINK

I finally finished listening to the unabridged audiotape version of this. A charming and inspiring story.

An amazing life, and not one we'll see again - a woman with no college degree gets to do groundbreaking research, eventually gets a PhD (from Oxford!). Very religious (mostly Christian, though with smatterings of other things, even theosophy), and never exactly how you'd peg her. There's a nice encounter with a pro-animal research person (she's done a lot for animal rights, and quotes the nefarious Peter Singer with approval). She disarms the very emotional pro-animal research person (whose daughter was saved by dog research) by telling her of the pig valve in her own mother's heart - and her gratitude for the research that made it possible (and to the pig).

Very interesting - though I will now always think of her voice as being the lovely and elegant sounding actress who read the book (without any British accent).

Monday, April 16, 2007


The Past Through Tomorrow
by Robert A. Heinlein


Wow - I just re-read my copy of this (hard to find, let me tell you - not in print and rare in libraries. Check the used books at bn.com and amazon.com).

Heinlein scoped out a huge "history" in these stories, and I can't begin to do justice to recounting them. To get an idea of how much is there (and in the rest of his works) see the Heinlein Concordance:

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/concordance/index.htm