http://bookblog.alibris.com Book reviews and discussions of notable books. Share your passion for literature at Cuppa Joad and drink up a good book. Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:42:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I was born too late to be a real hippie. Too late for free love. Too late for all-day drug binges. Too late for all those bell‑bottomed jeans. That's just as well, because Drop City transported me—without the risk of overdose or social disease—to a Northern California hippie commune just ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20081021/drop-city-boyle-review/ It occurred to me as I read through John Varley’s various visions of the future in his short stories that the best new voices are the old voices. All 18 stories in The John Varley Reader: Thirty Years of Short Fiction brilliantly look forward into worlds of possibilities in science ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20080502/john-varley-reader-review/ The City of Falling Angels. I mused at the title and turned the book over in my hands several times. It was an intriguing title, and then I noticed the author, John Berendt, who had written the lovely and enticing, wicked and clever Midnight in the Garden of Good and ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20080225/city-falling-angels-berendt/ When does mathematics become a flight of imagination where a prime number is called prima donna, a square root transforms to rutabaga and Pascal’s Triangle becomes a number triangle? It all happens in the Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure, cleverly and lightly penned by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. The author writes ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20071126/enzensberger-derbyshire-review/ Why Aren't More Women in Science?: Top Researchers Debate the Evidence—it's a really great question and a really great title for a book in which "top researchers debate the evidence." Two editors, Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, compiled 15 very different essays, wherein authors attempted to sort fact ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20070917/women-science-ceci-williams/ Set in England and Holland, and shifting between the close of World War II and the present day, Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal is a careful, restrained, young-adult novel of the resistance and Nazi occupation, framed by a connected subplot of discovery in modern England. Mal Peet's ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20070724/tamar-mal-peet/ In a well-integrated blend of history, biography, and scientific discussion, author Steven Johnson recounts the search for the causes and cure of a specific disease: cholera. His book, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, clearly presents the ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20070627/ghost-map-steven-johnson-review/ In Old Man's War, author John Scalzi uses forceful, direct, blunt, and exceedingly clear voice to introduce a refreshing view of intergalatic conflict and a cast of lively, aging, intelligent, and distinctive recruited foot soldiers. The elderly and exceedingly practical natural leader, John Perry—who narrates in first person—signs on for ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20070503/old-mans-war-scalzi-review/ Editor's note: Cormac McCarthy has won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road. America's most distinguished literary award comes on the heels of perhaps its most lucrative honor: Oprah Winfrey named the novel as her latest book club pick. In the following review, which we originally posted in January, we agree ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20070329/cormac-mccarthy-road-review-2/ About Alice is a short book. Written by Calvin Trillin to honor is beloved wife, the eponymous Alice, who died five years ago, this slight tome is big of heart and largely a glance back at a woman with whom many readers have become acquainted through Trillin's sizeable and entertaining ... http://bookblog.alibris.com/20070319/calvin-trillin-about-alice-review/