General Books - Page 5

Norwegian Verbs And Essentials of Grammar

Louis Janus

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

very helpful 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I enjyed stydying norwegian because i have this close to norway and the people. The book showed me more and more about norwegian, I do recommend for this book for whom wants to be an excillent norwegian speaker!

Could have been good - but full of errors 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The idea behind this book is good, as well as its structure. It packs a punch information wise, compared to its size and price.

It is, however, NOT a good book. It seems to have been compiled in haste, and the result is that it's crammed full of errors. Some are not very serious, simply sentences that, although gramtically correct, are put in a way no Norwegian would ever put it. The list of verbs also include strange forms that I have never encountered, and I have read a lot more words than the average Norwegian. Learning something that might be correct by the dictionary, but that 99% of Norwegians themselves would take as an error, is really worse than a waste of time. (To its credit, it doesn't push the outdated De-form, which some books still do, decades after its use ended.)

Many others mistakes include clear cut errors and misspellings, I have counted many dozens - far, far to many for a book this size.

98% of the content is correct. Still, learning a a language from scratch is hard work, and I for one would find it very annoying to spend time getting confused and misinformed because nobody bothered to get this book proof read. Also, it is clear that the author does not have a "native feel" for the language.

I've found clear cut Norwegian language errors on pages 27, 28, 42, 43, 44, 61, 66, 74, 78, 79, 80, 94, 97, 102, 104, 105, 112, 113, 114, 115 and 125, as well as half-errors/unnatural language on pages 32, 46, 52, 60, 62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 78, 82, 106, 107, 116, 118, 120, 122, 123. And this doesn't even include the verbs at the end. The explanatory texts are generally in better shape than the examples.

For the record, I am a native Norwegian who writes for a living.

Editorial Review:

This compact volume offers an integrated guide to both Norwegian verbs and the basics of grammar. All the major verbal and grammatical concepts of the language are presented.

What Einstein Told His Cook 2: The Sequel: Further Adventures in Kitchen Science

Robert L. Wolke, Marlene Parrish

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Worthy Sucessor to the first book! 5 out of 5 stars.
30 of 31 people found this review helpful.

As a big fan of the first book in this series, I was glad to see another one pop up and quickly put it on my wish list. I was also glad to see that it was even longer than volume 1, with an extra 110 pages. The style is great -- well paced, well laid out, with the 'harder' science very skimmable and yet approachable to non-chemists. I particularly like the way he challenges conventionally held assumptions by, in many cases, doing simple experiments that seem to answer things conclusively. The inlined recipes (by his wife, Marlene Parrish) look delicious and provide a nice break to the flow of questions. Some of my favorite answers:
Why does iced tea turn cloudy? Will coffee stay hotter if I put the cream in right away or only when I'm ready to drink it? Why are there sulfites in wine? How can I get a red wine stain out of a tablecloth? Why do onions really make me cry? Why are "sweet" onions sweet? When an banana ripes and gets sweeter, does it contain more calories? What is a free radical? What makes mashed potatoes gluey? How can I best match a pasta shape with a sauce? Does marinating work? (suprising!) What's the difference between browning and caramelizing? Why do we cook with wine?

And so on. If you like cooking and like knowing more about what's going on inside the pan and aren't afraid of a few polysyllabic words (mmmm, alpha-galactosidase... don't worry, they are defined in context) then grab this book. I couldn't put it down!

Editorial Review:

In this sequel to the best-selling What Einstein Told His Cook, he has added a new feature for curious cooks and budding scientists, "Sidebar Science", which details the chemical processes that underlie food and cooking. In the same plain language that made the first book a hit with both techies and foodies, Wolke combines the authority, clarity and wit of a renowned research scientist, writer and teacher. Also including 35 recipes by Marlene Parrish.

Principles of Brewing Science, Second Edition: A Study of Serious Brewing Issues

George Fix

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Excellent technical coverage 4 out of 5 stars.
34 of 34 people found this review helpful.

This is a fairly technical discussion of the subject of brewing chemistry. It's probably more than your typical home-brewer will want to get into, but if you've got some biochem background, or have read Dr. Lee Janson's Brew Chem 101 book and are looking to read on from there, (or you're a very masochistic home-brewer :-)) this would be the next step to take. It does require a greater knowledge of biochemistry and some math (not too surprising, since Dr. Fix had a Ph.D. in math from Harvard). I note the problems with the citations another reviewer here mentioned, who said Dr. Fix refers to his own work and his other book too often, but I didn't mind that too much. Dr. Fix was certainly a competent professional in both math and brewing chemistry, and he did much important work on his own. The important thing is that this book helps to bridge the gap between the professional manuals of industrial microbiology and brewing chemistry and the professional literature. After completing this book, if you want more information, you'll have to go there, such as:

1. Beer and Wine Production: Analysis, Characterization, and Technological Advances (ACS Symposium, No. 536)

2. Biotechnology of Malting and Brewing by James S. Hough

3. Malting and Brewing Science: Hopped Wort and Beer (Volume 2) by D. E. Briggs, et al

4. Brewing Microbiology by Iain Campbell

5. Methods of Analysis of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, by the American Society Of Brewing Chemists

6. Malting and Brewing Science : Volume 1 (#Y0343)
by Dennis Edward Briggs, James S. Hough

7. Brewing Yeast and Fermentation by Chris Boulton, David Quain

Except for the Brewing Microbiology book by Campbell, all of the above are big, expensive professional volumes, but they represent some of the best technical titles out there.

The book also has a nice introduction summarizing some of the important developments of the last 20 years that have made great improvements in beer, such as the use of modern double pre-evacuation bottle filters to cut down on cold-side oxygenation, the awareness of the staling effects of unsaturated long-chain aldehydes, the realization that hot-side aeration could contribute to this, and the importance of malting and non-enzymatic browning also in this process. These were all important developments that led to the modern low-oxygen brewhouse.

So overall, a very fine discussion of all these issues, and I'd actually give the book 4.5 stars if I could.

Editorial Review:

In this indispensable reference, Fix applies the practical language of science to the art of brewing.

Food Science: The Biochemistry of Food & Nutrition, Student Edition

McGraw-Hill

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

food sci:the biochemistry of food and nutrition student edition 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I need this book for teaching in a mexico college on food sci, is a good book for some lab activities suport, but not as text book because has not enough deep knowladge on the field.

Editorial Review:

Enhance your program by offering a Food Science course!

This high-interest Food Science text teaches students to use the scientific method as they study the biological and chemical bases of food and nutrition.

Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Routledge Classics)

Karl R. Popper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

an enjoyable book 4 out of 5 stars.
17 of 20 people found this review helpful.

The book is a collection of articles by Popper. It is easier to understand than his classic Logik der Forshung, and is much richer in content, for Popper embarks in some of these lectures on the history of philosophy and the history of science. There is also a delicious paper on self-reference and meaning in ordinary language.

I especially recommend the paper on "Scientific problems and their roots in metaphysics". Popper's conception of scientific dinamics as a sequence of big problems and answers to them makes him see continuity where experts on some particular philospher usually don't. Thus Popper sees a direct relation between Pythagoras, Plato and Euclid based on some fundamental cosmological problems. Euclid's Elements, Popper claims, were conceived by its author not as an excercise in pure geometry but as an organon of a theory of the world, designed to solve the problems of Plato's cosmology. Plato realized that Pythagoras' "arithmetical" theory of the world was in ruins after the discovery of irrational numbers, and that a new method was needed to understand the world. That is why he initiated the "gemoetrical" programme, which found its culmination in platonic Euclid's work. This way of seeing things is a bit unrealistic, a kind of free "rational reconstruction", but I think it is nevertheless a valuable view.

The fundamental lecture on philosophy of science in this collection is chapter 10, "Truth, rationality & the growth of scientific knowledge", where Popper presents his philosophy of science quite clearly and in detail. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since this paper was first published. His theory of "verisimilitude", for instance, was shown to be unmistakably wrong in the 1970s.

His approach to Tarski's theory of truth in that chapter is rather awkward: he pretends that Tarski's work showed what is meant by correspondence with the facts. To prove this, he appeals to instances of convention (T) and replacement of "is true" by "corresponds to the facts". Thus "snow is white" corresponds to the facts if and only if snow is white. But this might explain what it is for "snow is white" to correspond to the facts, but not what "correspondence with the facts" is. We cannot ascertain what that single property consists of, and surely Tarski's definiens for "truth" (i.e. "satisfaction by every infinite sequence") won't do the job.

Also, Popper's answer to the challenge that Duhem's problem posed on his philosophy is disappointing, the answer being something like "there exists a logical method of proving independence from axioms, so we might hopefully see from which axiomS the falied prediction depended; and even so, I admit that this method is usually difficult to apply; therefore holism is an untenable dogma."

The thesis of the book, says Popper, can be put like this: we can learn from our mistakes. This is held together with this other thesis: there is no ground for believeing any empirical statement to be true. The reader might wonder how Popper managed to believe in these two thesis at one and the same time. In Popper's view, science is this: conjecturing a theory to be true; subjecting this theory to criticism (empirical testing); this testing is done after experiment, but experiments are not reliable, we have no warrant that our perceptual apparatus is not deceiving us; if the theory fails the test, we reject it; but "it" is a whole system of related theories, even observational theories (even logic and mathematics, says Quine); and then we have to guess which of these we have to reject. The risk of taking a true theory to be false is certainly very high, as high as that of taking a false theory to be true. So I don't see how Popper can be so confident that we can learn from mistakes. Perhaps if we purged Popper's methodology of things like truth (not to mention verisimilitude), we could get a methodology of science conceived as a canon of critical procedure, with no claims as to what we are achieving when we abide by it.

The article on hegelian Dialectics is amusing. It tries the impossible task of explaining dialectics in a simple language, and then to refute it. The dialectician's typical reply to this kind of criticism is: you used clear language, so that is NOT Hegel's diatectics.

As I said, this is a highly stimulating and clearly written book, which deserves to be read even if many things in it must to be corrected or complemented.

Editorial Review:

This classic remains one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history.

The Gmo Trilogy And Seeds of Deception Set

Jeffrey M. Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now Jeffrey M. Smith’s best-selling book is paired with a new DVD and CD set that shows how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) put our health and environment at risk. This set will impact consumer perceptions and buying habits. DVD 1: Unnatural Selection

This stunning, award-winning documentary by Bertram Verhaag and Gabriele Kröber reveals harsh consequences of genetic engineering on three continents. Vandana Shiva, Andrew Kimbrell, Percy Schmeiser and others, describe uncontrollable, self-replicating GM contamination, failed crops, farmer suicides, and new GM animals that threaten natural populations.

"Best Film," (CineEco, Portugal), "Best Long Production," (IEFF, Brazil), and "Best Journalistic Achievement," (IEFF, Germany).

"Meticulously researched, excellently photographed" –Ökomedia

DVD 2: Hidden Dangers in Kids’ Meals: Genetically Engineered Foods

Shocking research results, inadequate regulations and warnings from eminent scientists explain why GM foods are dangerous and should be removed from kids’ meals. The dramatic story of how student behavior in a Wisconsin school was transformed with a healthy diet provides added motivation to make a change. It features Jeffrey Smith and more than a dozen scientists and experts.

"Hidden Dangers pierces the myth that our government is protecting our food supply."

–John Robbins, Diet for a New America

"It will change the way you look at food forever."

–Howard Lyman, Mad Cowboy

Audio CD: You’re Eating WHAT?

Jeffrey Smith’s riveting one-hour talk.

"The most powerful presentation I have ever heard on the issue of genetically engineered foods.

–Craig Winters, The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

Seeds of Deception

This is the top-rated, best selling book in the world on GM foods. Smith exposes the serious health dangers of genetically modified foods and the corporate cover-up. A fast-paced thriller of industry manipulation and political collusion, combined with lucid descriptions of genetic engineering and guidance on how to protect yourself and your family.

The Science of Cooking

Peter Barham

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A kitchen is no different from most science laboratories and cookery may properly be regarded as an experimental science. Food preparation and cookery involve many processes which are well described by the physical sciences. Understanding the chemistry and physics of cooking should lead to improvements in performance in the kitchen. For those of us who wish to know why certain recipes work and perhaps more importantly why others fail, appreciating the underlying physical processes will inevitably help in unravelling the mysteries of the "art" of good cooking.

Strong praise from the reviewers -

"Will be stimulating for amateur cooks with an interest in following recipes and understanding how they work. They will find anecdotes and, sprinkled throughout the book, scientific points of information... The book is a pleasant read and is an invitation to become better acquainted with the science of cooking." - NATURE

"This year, at last, we have a book which shows how a practical understanding of physics and chemistry can improve culinary performance… [Barham] first explains, in a lucid non-textbooky way, the principles behind taste, flavour and the main methods of food preparation, and then gives fool-proof basic recipes for dishes from roast leg of lab to chocolate soufflé." - FINANCIAL TIMES WEEKEND

"This book is full of interesting and relevant facts that clarify the techniques of cooking that lead to the texture, taste and aroma of good cuisine. As a physicist the author introduces the importance of models in preparing food, and their modification as a result of testing (tasting)."- THE PHYSICIST

"Focuses quite specifically on the physics and food chemistry of practical domestic cooking in terms of real recipes... Each chapter starts with an overview of the scientific issues relevant to that food group, e.g. toughness of meat, thickening of sauces, collapse of sponge cakes and soufflés. This is followed by actual recipes, with the purpose behind each ingredient and technique explained, and each recipe followed by a table describing some common problems, causes and solutions. Each chapter then ends with suggested experiments to illustrate some of the scientific principles exploited in the chapter." - FOOD & DRINK NEWSLETTER

New Brewing Lager Beer: The Most Comprehensive Book for Home and Microbrewers

Gregory J. Noonan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not a Lager Book 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Although this book has a lot of useful information in it, I was disappointed to find it was not about lager at all. It is simply a general purpose brewing book with a lot of emphasis on all grain brewing. This makes it hard to rate because as a lager book it gets zero stars, which is why it was on my Christmas wish list.

Must be for REALLY advanced brewers 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I hesitate giving this book a bad review because it's clear that anyone who does so must not be "advanced" enough in homebrewing to appreciate it. (We might not be altogether different from those who couldn't see the emperor's new clothes.)
The book certainly isn't about brewing lagers (as opposed to other styles.) The author says as much in his introduction. That was a disappointment. More disappointing was the tone. It read more like a textbook than what I've come to enjoy in "homebrewing books." (Books like Papazian's and Palmer's among others.) It screams with the message that brewing is just too serious of a matter to have fun with. I disagree. I guess that means I'm just a beginner.

Editorial Review:

This book offers a thorough yet practical education on the theory and techniques required to produce high-quality beers using all-grain methods either at home or in a small commercial brewery.

Kitchen Chemistry

Ted Lister, Heston Blumenthal

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Editorial Review:

All food is, of course, made of chemicals, and cooking can be thought of as a series of chemical reactions in which changes occur to some of these chemicals. The aims of cooking are several:

• to kill microorganisms and denature enzymes that might bring about undesirable changes in food
• to maintain or enhance the nutritional value of the food
• to improve the texture of the food
• to improve the appearance of the food
• to improve the flavour of the food
• to improve the aroma of the food.

The material presented here looks at various aspects of the chemistry of food and the cooking process. It consists of activities of a variety of types — class practical, demonstration experiments, reading comprehension and paper-based activities — at a variety of levels. The index table will allow users to select an activity of an appropriate topic, type and level. Each activity deals with an aspect of the chemistry of food and/or cooking. Although the chemistry of food and cooking is not directly part of most curricula, it can often be used to show familiar chemistry in a context that may be stimulating for many students. The material also allows teachers to reinforce the idea that everything is made of chemicals and that there is no difference between ‘man-made’ and ‘natural’ chemicals. In particular there are a number of activities on which experimental investigations can be based. Some of the paper-based or comprehension activities could be used as revision lessons or in the case of teacher absence.

The material is presented as teacher’s notes and student worksheets. The worksheets are available on the CDROM accompanying this book or may be downloaded free from the website for this book as colour or black and white pdf files, or as Microsoft® Office Word documents (which can be edited by the teacher if required). Also included on the CDROM and website are video clips related to some of the material. These may be played to start off a lesson or stimulate discussion. However, all the lessons can be tackled without the use of the video clips for those who prefer not to use them. In every case, material is given that the teacher can use to start the lesson by discussion.

The video clips are taken from the Discovery Channel TV series, Kitchen Chemistry, featuring Heston Blumenthal. Heston is a chef and proprietor of The Fat Duck, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, UK. He is noted for his scientific approach to food and cooking and for the fact that he will not take for granted the accepted wisdom without scientifically investigating it for himself. He also makes use of scientific equipment in the kitchens of the Fat Duck — temperature probes, desiccators and reflux apparatus, for example.

North American Pinot Noir

John Winthrop Haeger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Pinot noir, the famously elegant, sexy, and capricious red grape of Burgundy, is finally producing impressive wines in North America. Credit talented winemakers, enthusiastic restaurateurs, and consumers in search of alternatives to cabernet and zinfandel. Considered perhaps the ultimate food wine, pinot noir has an allure based on its special combination of aromas, flavors, and mouthfeel; on its legendary capacity to reflect the terroir where it is grown; and on its reputation for being hard to grow and make. This is the definitive work on pinot noir in North America. A comprehensive reference for winemakers and aficionados as well as a sourcebook for casual enthusiasts, it includes extensive historical and viticultural background on pinot noir in the New World and profiles of six dozen prominent producers in California, Oregon, British Columbia, and New York.
John Winthrop Haeger, known for his perceptive wine writing for more than fifteen years, gives contextual and comparative information about pinot noir in Burgundy and then tells the story of wine producers' early failures, frustrations, and breakthroughs in North America. He discusses plant genetics and clones, identifies the essential conditions for really good pinot, tells where the best wines are grown and made, and analyzes the factors that determine wine styles and signatures. In the second part of the book, he presents detailed producer profiles with accessibly written tasting notes on recent and mature vintages. A final section covers glassware, vintages, wine and food pairings, and other matters of interest to consumers. Maps prepared especially for this book cover all the major pinot-producing regions in North America.