There is a similarity between books of Mr. Diamond and some heavy-duty programming manuals I have to read due to specifics of my occupation: both leave a strange feeling of emotional insight after reading is completed (even though for computer books such completion is quite a relative notion). But there is a great difference too. Computer books is generally hard, if not exhausting, reading while reading of Mr. Diamond’s books is so easy and all-consuming you can hardly believe that this is a truly scientific book. Not every scientist has an ability to write on science of her/his specialization the way it can be easy to grasp and fascinating to read at the same time. Mr. Diamond has definitely succeeded in the latter.

There are many interesting points discussed in the book and I was very surprised (sometimes shocked) to learn some of the author’s ideas regarding artworks produced by elephants and chimps, why woodpeckers are so alone in their ecological niche, how we come to overwhelming and often problematic consumption of various chemicals, about enigma of concealed ovulation and (one of the most striking) gazelle’s mysterious “stotting” when attacked by lion - to name few. But the most important chapter of the book, in my view, was dedicated to human’s strange unwillingness to act in accordance with clearly calculable data to achieve ecological balance. The questions raised by Mr. Diamond in that regard are especially important today when the world started feeling Nature’s wrath in full scale – everybody knows about hurricane Katrina devastation as well as multitude of other examples directly linked to that feature of human’s behavior.

Mr. Diamond very eloquently and convincingly describes “environmental holocaust”, as he calls it, caused by penetration of nomadic hunter-gatherers into North America via isthmus Alaska-Siberia 11000 years ago, when 73% of all large mammals species became extinct within stunningly short period of time. Even though it is pretty much impossible to find out for sure whether or not Siberian migrants were direct or indirect cause of it, I find it very plausible. However, here are a couple of details, which Mr. Diamond does not investigate in depth.

1. Mr. Diamond mentions total unpreparedness of North America large mammals like mammoth, sloth, camel, etc to face human hunting skills. Suggested reason for it is also understandable – those mammals simply never seen humans before. Therefore, they were not able to evolve defensive behavior. The key question is: Why humans were killing them off en-masse so passionately? One of the reasons Mr. Diamond mentions briefly is "machismo". I think this "machismo" was prime reason for those killings. In my opinion humans were highly restricted in their ways to manifest their ego in those preliterate days. There was no literacy, not much of art (not in America), not much of trade, even not much of other people to fight. Today any person can find herself/himself in science, business, politics, military service, writing as Mr. Diamond himself, etc – a great deal of activities are available to single oneself out of the crowd. It is really hard to think of anything else than hunt to achieve the same objective for first humans in America 11000 years ago.

2. Mr. Diamond says first migrants to America, Madagascar, Australia and New Zealand were not able to assess possible consequences of overhunting due to lack of knowledge. I don’t think it is a prime reason for that (moreover, how hard is it to see that animals disappear in direct link with hunting?). In my opinion it is something much deeper in our psyche that prevents us from acting in the right direction. Just a small example – how many of us are getting credit card and indulge themselves in shopping spree perfectly understanding that sooner or later the time to pay interest, late fees as well as principle amounts will come? Nevertheless, we are getting credit cards, exhaust credit limit and in many cases end up with bankruptcy. Even though we know at the very beginning all terms and conditions. Or take bigger example – global warming. The link between fuel burning and some unpleasant events like deadly hurricanes is scientifically established and it is not a secret. But look how hard it is to make sure that humans would act the way so emissions are reduced. Mr. Diamond does not explore this topic either.

But in general the book of Mr. Diamond is a great reading for any person interested in evolution of Homo Sapiens. Chances are the world could be a much better place for both humanity and its neighbors on evolutionary tree if this book is a mandatory reading for high school students. Some of those students when grown up could be making right decisions in business and politics so the fragile ecological balance could be sustained for future generations of humans and the rest of living nature.

As a man whose mother tongue is Russian I feel very happy that English is a language I learnt as foreign one and not the other way around. The reason is that grammatically English language is enormously simpler than Russian and I am a pretty lazy guy. Russian has six cases for nouns - English has none (objective case does not really count due to extreme simplicity). Russian has three genders (male, female and neutral or "middle" as high school teachers call it) - English has none (with couple of grotesque examples like ship referred to as "she"). Russian has intricate rules of how endings are governed depending on plural or single - in English it is always static no matter how complex a sentence is. After the reading of Mr. McWhorter's book I did realize that even with all its complexity Russian is hardly one of the most difficult languages to study.
This book is probably one of the very few on popular science (I guess anybody who read the book will not disagree that linguistics is definitely a science) I would advise to include into the list of mandatory reading parents create for their kids. It has an extremely rich historical background for many languages as well as for language as a mainstream mean of communication. The author is almost encyclopedically knowledgeable in pretty much every aspect of it and it reads very easily. Frequent manifestations of author's sense of humor are also improves readability.
Several things though I guess may need some clarifications.
Author mentions about Russia as about "highly insular nation for most of its history" (page 101). I have to disagree with this statement. Yes, 20th century was marked by insularism due to well-known political processes. But before and after that Russia was and is quite open for its neighbors for mutual interactions and it definitely includes word loaning from other languages. Yes, there are much less Latin loans in Russian language comparing to English. But at the same time there are tons of loans from Turkic family, notably from Tatar. Medieval history of Russia marked by warfare, trade and periods of political dependence from Golden Horde and because of that many basic words like money (den'gi - from tan'ga), cap (kolpak - from kolpak), strongman (bogatir' - from bagatur), chest (soondook - from sundik) to name few are loaned into Russian from Tatar. It would probably fair to say that Golden Horde played for Russian language the role similar to what has been played by Normans after 1066 for English.
In my opinion, Mr. McWhorter oversimplifies the relationship between Russian and Ukrainian, saying "mastering Ukrainian is more a matter of adjustment than precisely learning" (page 72). Yes, those languages are quite close as well as they are close enough to Polish, Serbian and Belarusian but they are far enough to prevent one from good understanding when the other language speaker speaks fast. I remember, when I was a kid in Kyrgyzstan I visited a little village of Poltavka where descendants of Cossacks sent by Tsar in early 19th century to guard outskirts of Russian Empire still speak a strange mix of old Ukrainian and old Russian. Even though I have spent some time there trying to pick up the language it was still not very understandable as a whole despite on some words and even sentences were clear sometimes.
Also, Mr. McWhorter's examples of certain words usage and phrases are somewhat outdated. For example, on the same page a phrase "pokojnoj noci" is described as a way Russian speakers say "Good Night". In fact it is 19th century way of saying good night. If my girlfriend would say to me "pokojnoj noci dorogoi" (Good night honey) my first reaction would be "Why the hell she speaks like Anna Karenina?". The contemporary way of saying good night is "spokojnoj noci" - one additional sound makes a huge difference. The same is applicable to the word "strashyj" (page 24), which may be in days of Nabokov was used exclusively for depicting really frightful things, like let's say grizzly attack. Nowadays it can be used pretty much the same way the English word terrible is used - one can say "strashno dorogo" meaning "terribly costly" and it would be quite normal and understandable.
But in general Mr. McWhorter's observations regarding Russian language are very true. He mentions about articles as a stumbling bloc. After several years of existence in English environment I still make mistakes with proper usage of those as this text I am sure confirms eloquently. Even when I feel I supposed to use "a" or "the" here or there a strange feeling of something unnatural nagging me inside. The thing is articles are perceived as something grotesquely redundant, the same way a letter "d" should be in the word "boulevard" for orthographic correctness. On the other hand I can only guess what English speakers think of all that convolution of Russian grammar with its multiple genders and cases.
Having said that, I feel like we all can consider ourselves lucky due to a mere fact that a mother tongue of Mr. McWhorter is English. Because of that his profoundly enjoyable book is easily available for our comprehension. How would it be if this great book is written and published in, let's say, Mandinka or Evenki? The cruel truth is a writer's talent should always be accompanied by a mother tongue whose market penetration is competitive enough with other 6000 or so counterparts. Only then it can be truly beneficial for readers audience and writer's wellbeing.

The name of this rather fascinating book is somewhat misleading: there is not too much in this book about child's psychology and a lot about psychology in general. Mr. Bloom, who is evidently a professional psychologist himself, created a very readable fusion of psychology, evolutionary biology and great multitude of historical and scientific facts.

When reading I could not stop recollecting myself as a child and juxtaposing the facts from the book with episodes from my childhood. For example, Mr. Bloom describes kids' imagining of God. As per one of the studies, they think that God is a human like creature with a voice and a face. Many kids in my kindergarten shared their vision of God in similar terms, but I remember a debate (if you can call it that) between other kids and me when we were arguing if God was a man or a woman. For some reason, the majority of kids were absolutely convinced that God was a man even though they could not explain why. The vision of God was changing with age - when I was a student, my professor of a set theory told me that God was infinity in its most abstract version. He was absolutely serious about that.

The book is practically infested with a great deal of facts and citations, which eloquently illustrate author's points. I have to admit that the author reminds me of Borges in this regard, whom he also mentions when describing some aspects of how human memory functions. Some of such illustrations are quite unusual. For example, when discussing the art and its role in human life, Mr. Bloom mentions a weird habit of Aristotle Onassis to have his barstools upholstered with the scrota of killer whales. Many might find it unusual at least and disgusting at most but it does perfectly illustrate how different human beings are in demonstration of status and power. The same is applicable to the description of Goya's painting SATURN DEVOURING HIS SON. After I read about Mr. Bloom's experience when he was admiring this painting in Madrid, I found reproduction of this artwork in the Internet and become very puzzled of how can it be anyhow enjoyable.

The last chapter of the book left me disappointed. Not because of the text itself, which was a very good reading throughout the whole book, but because of Mr. Bloom's verdict regarding factual non-existence of the soul. It is really hard to deal with such an approach, especially when formulated by a competent scientist like Mr. Bloom. I wonder how Mr. Bloom himself is dealing with this shocking discrepancy. He might be explaining it in his following book. Hopefully.

After I completed reading of this book, I have got an impression that the heyday of the great Islamic civilization is definitely over. Author very eloquently describes how Islamic cultures of the past contributed to the world progress in many different aspects such as math, medicine, philosophy and architecture. At the same time, he makes the reader believe that the face of contemporary Islam (in its infiltrated everywhere Wahhabi form) is incredibly intolerant and brutal and totally incompatible with the present day realities.

Pros: The book is very informative and contains many interesting factual details and historical perspectives: it is obvious that the author made quite extensive research across the whole corpus of Islamic written heritage from the Quran to the latest works of Bosnian clerics. The book very well depicts the world of Islam, in its past as well as in its present, as highly mosaic with multitude of very different branches and sometimes diametrically opposite understandings of such things as music or poetry. The book provides the reader with basic knowledge of the Islamic varieties that can be important for understanding of Islam. Christendom consists of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches and a great deal of denominations; we know this fact well here in the West but general perception of Islam is that it is monolithic, usually mysterious and sometimes suspicious, religion. Author does a good job in general and historical description of Islam.

Cons: I do understand that it is really hard to write on such a topic and stay objective and not emotional, especially on such a sensitive issue as Arabic-Israeli relationship. It is hard and author understandably provides reader with his point of view, which may be very different from the point of view of others, or a reader's.
For example, the author compares the motives for jihad of contemporary mujahids and soldiers of Ottoman Empire. He asserts that Ottoman soldiers were "overwhelmingly ordinary, normal men, even when they were called by their faith, and exalted by Sufi spirituality, to combat for God". I think it is very hard to judge correctly what exactly was the driven force for Ottoman soldiers to fight Greeks, Serbs and other nations in 14-19 centuries especially taking into account the fact that many janissaries were Greeks and Serbs themselves. Also, the author speaks of ayatollah Knomeini and his passion for poetry and philosophy but does not comment anyhow a well-known fatwa against Salman Rushdi.

I would definitely recommend reading first four chapters of this book to anybody who is interested in basic knowledge of Islam in historical perspective. The rest of the book may generate some disagreement with the author's point of view and may need to be read in juxtaposition with other sources on the topic.

This book is a not bad introduction to ASP.NET. The reason I purchased it is I really needed to master Web Matrix ASAP and Mr. Sussman's book was quite helpful in accomplishing that goal. Of course, it is better to begin with Visual Studio since Web Matrix is somewhat limited resemblance of Visual Studuo but Web Matrix has something nobody could resist - it is free.
Make sure you learn as profoundly as possible chapters about datagrids and reusable content; these two are absolutely irreplaceble components of practically any online database application. Also pay attention to inclusion of namespaces at the very top of your code, it is forgetable. The only thing which was not working for me is Web Services. Other code samples work fine.
I would recommend to start with this book to anybody who needs to master ASP.NET.

When I was a kid I liked a lot books of great Russian historian Lev Gumilev and I was glad to find out that historical book in English can be as readable and deep as Gumilev's: "Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest" is one of the very few books I was reading without forcing myself to finish the reading - it is very eloquent in regards of historical factology (the text is abound with extremely interesting details), the logic of author's reasoning is clear and transparent and the language of the text is easy to perceive. I would like to single out chapters about myth of the White Conqustador (I would never even think that there was any blacks in America before the famous proposition of Bartolome de Las Casas to Spanish court) and about myth of miscommunication (the author very convincingly depicting the role of translators and language barriers between Spaniards and Natives).
The shortcoming of the book is even though the author unmasks the myths of Spanish Conquest quite successfully he does not really offer any fresh explanation of why the Conquest happened the way it happened. The reasons suggested (horrendous epidemics of unknown diseases and steel weaponry) are well known even though they look quite plausible.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes well written historical books and interested in the history of Americas. I would say if conquistador's PROBANZAS DE MERITO are written the same way the book of Mr. Restall written they would all be definitely approved by Spanish Court:)