My book reviews. en-us http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Joe Friel and Gordon Byrn Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -This book has a lot of good information in it. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Lance Armstrong Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -I enjoyed the book. It is a quick read and I learned a lot about cancer treatment. I definitely recommend it. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Nancy Clark Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -I learned a bunch of good things from this book. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Bernd Heinrich Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶Wow, I really enjoyed this book. Running explained from a COMPLETELY different perspective. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Rob Sleamaker and Ray Browning Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -This book has a lot of good information in it. But calculating the training plans is a bit complicated. I made a spreadsheet to help with this. You can download the speadsheet here: http://rogercortesi.com/athleticlog/training_scheduler.xls http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Lynne Cox Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -I enjoyed the book and hearing about her adventures. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Colin Fletcher and Chip Rawlins Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -I mostly used The Complete Walker III. This is an excellent book on backpacking gear and technique. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Neal Bascomb Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -Who knew that the tale of running around a track could be so good! http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Dean Karnazes Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -I enjoyed the book. It was a quick read and it definitely motivated me to go running. A good adventure story. His self reflections got a little repetitive towards the end though http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Julie Summers Rating: ¶ ¶ - - -This is biography about Sandy Irvine (Mallory's companion on Everest). The book is good but not gripping. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Jon Krakauer Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -Note to self: Don't climb Everest Wow, I really enjoyed the read. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Tania Aebi Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -Her dad gave her a choise, go to college or sail around the world by yourself. She was the first woman and youngest person to sail around the world single handed. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Drew Radford Rating: ¶ ¶ - - -About a solo motor cyle journey twice around Australia. My favorite chapter was on how complicated it is to drive a train. I enjoy the story, particularly because I was in Australia at the time, but I was not blow away by it. If you are in Australia or travel a lot on long motorcycle trips then you will likely enjoy it. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Dave Barry Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -FUNNY!!! A great way to kill a look airplane trip. Did I mention that it is really FUNNY? Classic Dave Barry, but longer. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes James Clavell Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶I could not put it down. A totally captivating piece of fiction. Becareful because it is over a thousand pages long, and I didn't want to do anything else until I had finished it. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Neal Stephenson Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -Probalbly my favorite science fiction book. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Albert Camus Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -The text is a litle dry, however, I did enjoy reading it. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Charles C. Mann Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -A fascinating analysis of early civilization in the Americas before Columbus. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Nathaniel Philbrick Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶I really enjoyied this book about the sinking of the whale ship Essex in 1819. This true story was the insperation for Moby Dick. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes David McCullough Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -I learned a lot from the book, but I didn't mind when I finished it. His Brooklen Bridge and Panama Canal books were better. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Stephen E. Ambrose Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -I enjoyed and learned a lot about the building the transcontinental railroad. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Diana Preston Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -A good story about an event in History I knew nothing about. It held my interest, but I would not describe it has "hard to put down". http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Richard Rhodes Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶A fantastic history of the Manhattan Project. The first third of the book is a wonderfully written history of nuclear physics from Rutherford onwards. The technical explanations are thorough and well written. The amount of context and background is exactly right. A fantastic read. Not short, but gripping non-the-less. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Arthur Herman Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -A good nautical history of the British navy and how it changed life for England and the world. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Kurt Eichenwald Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶An extremely throughly researched account of the lysine price fixing scandal of the mid 1990s. The true plots takes so many twists, that if the book were fiction, one would dismiss it as unbelievable. But it is not fiction, which makes it gripping. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Andrew Chalkin Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -A well told, in depth, story of the Apollo program from start to finish. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Bruce Schneier Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶An excellent text on modern commercial cryptography. Well written and fun to read. There is even some humor. It does a good job of explaining the principles and math behind the most of the popular protocols and a whole host of much less used ones. The only downside is that it was published in 1995. So algoriths like AES and Blowfish are not covered. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes David Bodanis Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -A quick history of the discovery of various aspects of electricity. I thought it did a good job of concisely summarizing the various persons which contributed to our current understanding of electricity. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the nervious system. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Steven D Levitt and Stephan J Dubner Rating: ¶ - - - -I thought the book asked and anwered several interesting questions. It would have been much better if the statistical analysis had not been dumbed down so much. An interesting set of topics, but they were not presented throughly enough for anyone with even a basic knowledge of statistics. And the co-author from the New York Times was in way too much awe of the economist. It is like he never met anyone who was good at math before. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Morton Grosser Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶A really cool story about the building of the first successful human powered airplane. It made me want to move to the desert and build one. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Jared Diamond Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -A really interesting look at at why some human groups have dominated and expanded around the global, while others have not. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes William Ryan and Walter Pitman Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -A multi-disciplined explanation of the Noah's Flood Myth. I thought it was very interesting. I really enjoyed the oceanography, marine biology, and geology in the books. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes William F. Ruddiman Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -A interesting look at how humans have changed the climate for the last 8000 years. I thought that it was an interesting and well reasoned discussion of climate change. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Andrew Mishkin Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -An excellent account of the Sojourner mars mission that I has trouble putting down. Well worth the time to read. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Richard Dawkins Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶I really learned a lot about evolution, and wide range of other realated topics and animals. A facinating exploration into the animal and plant kingsome's past and present. Extreamly well written and readable with a lot of the author's personality coming through. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Owen Gingerich Rating: ¶ - - - -I thought the topic of Copernicus' manuscript could be interesting. But I got tired of the writing in the first person. I couldn't finish the book. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Edmund Blair Bolles Rating: ¶ ¶ - - -This book is about the "discovery of the ice age". I learned a bunch of geology from it and the story is ok. But not gripping (hence only a rating of two). http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Kitty Ferguson Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ - -A good bit of writing about Tycho and Kepler. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes David Lewis Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -WOW. This book describes some amazing ways of finding land. My favorite is feeling the rocking of the boat/canoe to determine the direction of land from swells rellecting/refranting around an island over the horizon. If you have spent any time at sea you will be able to appriciate the arts described here. http://rogercortesi.com/misc/showbookreviews.php?showremarks=yes Bernd Heinrich Rating: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ -Another well written and fascinating book by Bernd Heinrich exploring the animal kingdom. He does a good job exposing the reader to many different methods that animals small and large survive winter. One of those books that can deepen your understanding of things you see around you every day.