Chambers is the leading name in reference works in the UK, and so it is not surprising that this is an excellent work. The question is do you really need a biographical dictionary? Just how handy is it, and does it contain the names of people you might be interested in?

I got along without one for many years, but I find it increasingly valuable not only for my reading and writing but for following the news. I use to look up spellings in the back of my Merriam-Webster dictionary (one of the uses of a biographical dictionary), but found that only worked for really famous and usually dead people. Now when a newsworthy person is mentioned I can look that person up in the Chambers biographical dictionary and usually find an entry. Even if that person is not found, at least I know that he or she is new to the celebrity game.

Let's check some names and see. Osama Bin Laden? Yes, he is found under "Bin Laden, Osama bin Mohammad," born 1957, "Saudia Arabian terrorist leader." He gets about 250 words. His near exact contemporary on the next page, "Bird, Larry (Joe)," born 1956 "US basketball player" gets about 90 words. Between them I find "Binoche, Juliette," born 1964 "French actress" with maybe 80 words.

Well, what about, say, the Buddha? Yes, he appears and gets a special text box as befits "the enlightened one." (Jesus Christ, "believed to be both human and divine," gets a bigger box.) Others getting boxes are poet T.S. Eliot. He gets almost as much space as Jesus. And Queen Elizabeth I, etc. Shakespeare tops them with two big text boxes.

What about the possible UK-bias in the selection of names? There is a slight bias, but remember Chambers wants to sell this book not only in the bigger US market but to English-speaking people world wide, so the bias is kept to a minimum. One thing to note is that your run-of-the mill US congressman is not listed. Orrin Hatch (long-time Republican senator from Utah) does not appear, but the late Strom Thurmond does. Of course President George W. Bush does appear, but embarrassingly enough (embarrassing for the precognitive powers of the editors, perhaps) Massachusetts Senator John Kerry does not appear.

Scientists are not neglected. There's a box for Stephen Hawking, for example, and biologist Edward O. Wilson gets a mention. Even literary critics appear, the late Edmund Wilson, but not Harold Bloom. Speaking of blooms, Judy Sussman Blume, "US writer for teenagers" gets a hundred words, but US writer for adults, Howard Bloom does not appear.

Una McGovern, who is the editor for this the Seventh Edition, writes in the Preface that the criteria for inclusion is the same as it has always been, "achievement and recognition" while hinting slyly that "recognition" is probably the more important factor. There are "over 17,500 biographies" stuffed into 1,650 two-column pages. The book weighs about five pounds so it's a little bit of a problem for extensively perusing while in bed. Every edition adds new celebrities, so some old ones have to be eliminated to keep this to a one-volume work. There are about 500 new entries for this edition including Madonna (the new one, not the old, although "Mary, Mother of Jesus," does rate one and a half column inches.) And speaking of Biblical comparisons, I recall that the Beatles had remarked some years ago that they were more famous than Jesus of Nazareth. Let's see what Chambers thinks: Well, the Beatles do get a 700-word box, but Jesus gets one twice as large.

Bottom line: more entertaining than one might expect (but this is a Chambers reference book trademark--see their quotation books), and definitely worth the relatively modest investment.

This is an infectious read. The book itself is beautifully presented and Nina Munk writes like an angel. Well, if you're not Jerry Levin, et al., she does. She has a knack for making the words flow and the personalities as vivid as the sights of childhood. Her hard-edged but clean and crisp style will be widely imitated I predict. Her ability to research and to sift through the results of that research and to lay it all out in such an intriguing way is something close to amazing. I really don't give two hoots about Steve Case, Jerry Levin, the old Luce culture ("I am biased in favor of God, Eisenhower and the stockholders," p. 7), the Warner Bros. legacy (sleazy ethics and "foul tongues" and rumored "Mafia connections," p. 35), the dot com upstarts ("You people really need to start moving at Internet speed," p. 231), etc., but Munk makes it fascinating, like egomaniacs twisting in the wind, so to speak.

But this story isn't just about AOL Time Warner but about corporate America in general, about how merger mania and golden parachuted moguls can play fast and loose with our money, our livelihood, our country, and our future. It's about the collateral damage, the megalomania, the broken hearts and the evaporated portfolios. It's about the mentality of corporate CEOs like Levin who as he turned sixty wanted to be remembered for something other than the bottom line, "for integrity...high moral principles; and wisdom." (p. 133) Ah, yes, a lifetime of chasing money and power and now True Religion. One is reminded of Bill Gates with the very demanding problem of how to distribute all that money wisely before he dies.

Munk knows these people. How she got them to be so carelessly candid at times amazes me, especially her work with Levin. She understands their psychology and to some significant extent, their business. She had to, to write this book and make it work. She packs the text with spiffy and sometimes all too revealing quotes. She has the heart of a baggy-eyed scholar and the soul of a muckraker. The almost surrealistic give and take between Case and Levin as they cooked The Deal reads like something out of a Hollywood movie. Whose ego, whose sense of personal power, and imagined historical accomplishment and brilliance needed massaging the most by whom? And who would steal more from the other? And the ease with which Salomon Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley each got $60-million for their part in the deal reads like tales of manna falling from heaven.

There are some black and white photos in the middle of the book. The test is exquisitely edited and proofed, and the book handsomely designed. Munk ends this "morality play," as she calls it, with a curtain call of the cast of characters in an epilogue and brings us up to date on what has happened to them and what they're doing now.

Incidentally, my subject-line quote about a "mess of porridge" is from Robert Murdoch, no doubt licking his chops. (p. 280)

Bottom line: you will be kept up at night reading this page turner. Better yet take it on that trip to Singapore. It's a jet-lag killer.

This is a liberal politician's book aimed at convincing everyone that the minimum wage, for example, ought to be raised, and that health care, day care, and other benefits for the "working poor" are not just good morality but good business. Reich's bottom line argument is that happy and healthy workers are more productive. And you can out-source THAT to India.

The problem is that happy and healthy, or unhappy and not so healthy, foreign workers are still cheaper, and that is where the jobs have gone and are going. No argument from morality is going to stop that. His argument, sliced a little finer, is that American companies need to make American workers happier and healthier at home so that don't have to out source; that is, make them happier than their cheaper cousins in Bangladesh and they will produce more goods and services (albeit at a living wage) and everybody in America will profit both economically and morally.

If only. I think Reich is right that making workers happier and healthier will make them more productive. But I don't think that will solve the problem of jobs going overseas. US companies will simply use the same happier, healthier techniques (at a cheaper cost) overseas and they'll still send the jobs away.

Reich's argument that spending more money on education and job training, on the other hand, is the right way to go. If America's work force is the best educated and most skilled it will out-compete foreign labor for the work and the work will stay right here. Indeed foreign companies will move their plants to the United States to get the best employees.

Reich's indictment of the Bush administration for its "semireligious faith" in "trickle-down" economics is based on the observation that "corporations and rich individuals," blessed with even more riches, will simply invest the money overseas because "investment dollars" in today's economy "travel the world in search of the highest return." (p. 116) I believe Reich is right about this and that the Bush administration is living in the fantasy land of a long-dead Keynesian past. At any rate, we'll see in a few years.

All and all this is a good book of its kind except I wish that Reich had not brought his wife's failure to get tenure at an unnamed university into the mix. He points to that day as the day he became a feminist. I don't think arguments about gender politics help his economic agenda. The fact that he called up one of those who voted against his wife and called him an SOB may understandably make Reich feel better, but I wonder how I would feel if I had lost a tenure vote and my wife called up one of the voters and called her a name.

Reich's rationale for injecting gender into the discussion is in answer to the constant harping by social conservatives on what they call "family values." Reich makes the point that it's fine to talk about vague "family values" when you are financially secure and have someone at home to take care of the kids. It's a different story when the sole support (the mother) has to work and commute to work fifty or sixty hours a week and can't afford a nanny or day care. Family values must be centered on home economics is Reich's argument (p. 106), and it is a good one. Also good is Reich's answer to the "blame-mongers" who peddle "simplistic explanations" for the decline of "family values": "They demonize people on welfare while doing nothing to end corporate welfare." (p. 101)

A question worth asking (and one I wish Reich had devoted some serious ink to) is, If no solution is found to the growing chasm between the haves and the have nots in this country, what will be the social consequences? Will we see terrorism adopted by the poor people in our cities and on our rust belt factories and farms as a means of acting out their frustrations? Or will they be docile sheep? As the entire world becomes more and more polarized between the first and third worlds, will terrorism become an instrument of the deprived as it is now of religious fundamentalists?

Perhaps a powerful argument for sharing the wealth (Reich calls it "redistributing capital" rather than the old-fashioned redistribution of wealth--but it amounts to the same thing) can be found in these dire thoughts. I don't believe that poverty is the root cause of terrorism in the world today. Osama Bin Laden is not a poor man. But it may become a cause in the future if the present tend continues.

What one realizes while watching this is how limited and ultimately unsatisfactory is a relationship based purely on sex.

I imagine that the familiar dominance/submissive psychology at the heart of this visually stunning movie--and it really is beautifully shot--comes from the novel by Elizabeth MacNeil. I say that, not having read the novel, because the seduction of Manhattan art dealer Elizabeth (Kim Basinger) by the smooth and supremely confident financier John (Mickey Rourke) is so very well done with the expensive presents, the well-timed flower deliveries, little endearments, etc., that it amounts to a woman's fantasy. The partial debasement of Elizabeth and her eventual triumph over her darker instincts and her realization that there is a difference between love and submission is also something that one might expect to find in a woman's point-of-view novel.

However when we get to the actual sexuality and how it is acted out, it is unclear who dreamed up the scenes, MacNeil or director Adrian Lyne or the scriptwriters. I say this because the scenes were so predictable and so ordinary, and when not ordinary and predictable, were bordering on the just plain dumb. Making love in the rain, at the top of a tall building (inside the clock tower), blindfolding the woman, making her crawl, feeding her strawberries, etc., bring nothing new to eroticism. And the scene requiring some imagination--[...]--was not realistically done. Why directors insist on allowing a man holding onto the hand of woman to outrun the men chasing them never ceases to amaze me. And then to have Elizabeth and John stop in the middle of the street to allow the bashers they have outrun to catch up was just plain stupid, not to mention the phony fight that followed.

Not only were the sexual scenes predictable but clearly Lyne was in harness (and I am glad of that) since he stops well short of what might happen if this sort of theme were fully played out.

Putting all that aside what makes this movie worth seeing is Kim Basinger. She is absolutely stunning, and it is clear that Lyne and his camera adored her. More than that Basinger does a fine job of acting in a demanding role. I was impressed. Before seeing this film I thought she was a rather ordinary actress, but her ability to combine grown-up New York chic with little-girl vulnerability and to make absolutely clear the psychological dilemma her character's heart faced really held the movie together.

Lyne's insistence on whispered dialogue difficult to hear was consistent with the theme of the movie but not kind to these ears. But that was okay because much of the dialogue was secondary to the visual exploration of the woman's sexuality. The peek-a-boo and off center and shadowed shots of Basinger's face and her silhouette, and the studied smile from Rourke combined with the stark black and whites of their clothes and the furnishings served to highlight and emphasis the flesh tones of Basinger's skin while lending an appropriate artistic and fashionable atmosphere to the movie, which after all has an art dealer at its center. The many scenes that were began and suggested, and then cut away from, allowed a richer texture of experience for the viewer than would have been possible had the scenes been played out. And that was doubly good because again it is the visuals that make this movie worth seeing, not the originality of the story and its development.

To those viewers who thought that this was some sort of high class pornography, I can only say you missed the point entirely, and indeed, you may be projecting your own sorry mentality.

See this for Kim Basinger whose sensitive and robust beauty dominated the screen.

Actually some of the medicine debunked here is merely not effective beyond the placebo. Homeopathy is a case in point. Wanjek includes it because he believes that people relying on such medicines tend to deprive themselves of real medicine. This may indeed be the case sometimes, but more often people turn to alternative medicine when conventional medicine fails. Clearly if one has an affliction that can be cured by conventional medicine and instead flies to the Philippines for some fake surgery, this is not good. On the other hand if the medical profession has stopped treating somebody's cancer, it is understandable that one might try anything. Still even this is sad since such desperation rewards quacks and charlatans.

But this book is about much more than bad medicine. Wanjek actually takes on a wide range of phoniness from bad TV health reporting to urban witch doctors, from why we go gray to why the Rambo-like violence in movies is unrealistic and dangerously misleading In fact, Wanjek's book is the widest ranging book of its kind that I have read and I've read a few; furthermore as far as I can tell he is right on the money.

Some things I learned with interest: what the appendix actually does, and where the silly idea that we only use ten percent of our brain comes from, and why "Vitamin O" (oxygen) is just so much bunk. Also: how health studies are conducted well and not so well and how they can be fudged, and why it is highly unlikely that Julius Caesar was born of a Caesarean section since his mother lived on and in those days nobody, but nobody ever survived such an operation.

There is also of course a lot that I already knew including the fact that the black plague is still with us, and that cold weather does not cause colds, and that antibiotics are useless against viruses (such as flu or cold viruses), and that radiation used in radiating food does not contaminate the food anymore than baking the food in a conventional oven does.

Wanjek even changed my mind on a couple of things, and for these old eyes to see new light is a rarity. I used to give Chinese medical practice and India's ancient ayurvedic treatments the benefit of the doubt believing that all those many centuries of experience counted for something. However, Wanjek makes the very excellent point that such medical traditions existed not because they were effective but because there was nothing else. He adds that conventional medicine is largely replacing these practices in their very countries of origin. Wanjek adds in implication that the entire history of medical practice up to (and to some very real extent) including modern times has been one long exercise in malpractice and painful ignorance. What horrors are we practicing on our patients today, one might ask, horrors to compare with bloodletting and Mayan brain surgery? Try chemotherapy for cancer, Wanjek suggests.

The only fault I could find with the book is that in his discussion of why we are getting so fat and in his eagerness to nail the Atkins diet to the wall he failed to mention so-called "carbohydrate intolerance." (Maybe he doesn't like the phrase.) I want to therefore remind him that in the prehistory there were not only no fatted calves or choice cuts of beef but no amber waves of grain either. Humans have little tolerance for living with a lot of easily gotten carbs anymore than they have genes for resisting fat-laden foods. Before the rise of agriculture, gathering wheat and other grain plants was such a labor-intensive process that not even Momma Cass could get fat from eating grass seeds.

Bottom line: the most comprehensive book on pseudoscience that I have read in recent years and one of the most readable.

You know how there used to be half a dozen Jennifers in every high school class? Well, what we have here are three Heathers (last names: Duke, Chandler and McNamara, if anybody cares) who reign as upper crust sosh queens at Westerberg High, home of the Rottweilers. One of the Heather Rottweilers is Shannen Doherty of TV infamy who seems perfectly cast except for the fact that if she's still in high school, I can play opposite Barbie Doll.

Trying to work her way into their circle is a one-time study-freak with a talent for forging handwriting named Veronica (would that we had Archie and Jughead as well). I mention her penmanship because it's part of the plot, although why they bothered with the fancy foreshadowing I don't know since most of the story is beside the point anyway.

This is a black comedy that takes off on the usual high school teen angst cliches: suicide, rigid social stratification, dumb jocks, dumb parents, dumb administrators, and even dumber teachers. And there are some very funny bits to be had along the way. Unfortunately playing Veronica is Winona Ryder who, although she is as pretty as pretty can be, even sporting a monocle--yes, somebody must have pointed out to director Michael Lehmann that putting nerd-girl glasses on a pretty girl has been done to death, so he had an Inspiration. Ryder has moments--some of them unintentional--but there is no way she can be seen as a comedic actress. We really needed Rene Zellweger or Reese Witherspoon.

Playing opposite Ryder with some finesse is Christian Slater as J.D. Dean, teen psycho, son of Psycho Dad, who explains that he is blowing up the school "because nobody loves me." What really cracked me up about Christian Slater is that "Columbo" voice he sometimes uses. And what I found funny about Winona Ryder were all those outfits with the cutesy hats and leggings. If only they had let her keep them she might have missed her day in court.

Best bit: the two jocks getting their just deserts and the two cops "investigating" the scene.

So bad it was almost good: Veronica getting her cigarette lit by a dynamite explosion.

Like, this could happen: Veronica and Martha "Dumptruck" Dunnstock doing popcorn and old movies together on prom night.

I want to see her do it again, slowly: the Rottweiler cheerleader doing a twirling handstand.

Bottom line: ignore the implausible and send your parents to bed.

The Holy Bible ("Book divine! Precious treasures thou art mine!"--to recall a popular hymn) like many great works of religion can be taken on two levels. The first is as literature, the second as the revealed word of God.

As far as literature goes, the King James Version, "translated out of the original tongues" during the time of Shakespeare some four hundred years ago has been since its inception the standard by which all other versions are compared. More than that, along with the works of Shakespeare, the King James Version of the Bible is the bedrock upon which all English literature rests. The language used by those anonymous translators ranges from the mundane to ethereal poetry of the highest order. If you are reading the Bible as literature, the King James version is the one to get. More than that, one can hardly be considered educated without at least some familiarity with this great work.

As far as the Bible being the revealed word of God, there are two possible ways of looking at it.

One, literally; that is, the Bible as the absolute, denotative truth put down by scribes acting as instruments of God. This is the way Christian fundamentalists view the Bible. "God said it. I believe it. That settles it!" (To recall a bumper sticker.)

Two, symbolically; that is, the Bible as wisdom from God set forth in symbol, parable, story, myth and metaphor.

To be blunt, I don't think there is much to be said for the literal approach. In the first place, the Bible is contradictory in many places and it requires some clever babbling to reconcile the contradictions. For example it is written in many places that the Lord was moved to anger by the misbehavior of his people. Indeed in Kings 17:18 it is reported: "Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight." A God that gets angry would seem to be not much of a God and cannot reasonably be reconciled with the all-knowing, all-powerful being seen elsewhere in the Bible. Attributing anger to God is a pathetic anthropomorphic projection. There is a lot of this silliness in all religions of course.

But more than that, the Bible itself clearly indicates in many places that a literal expression is not what is meant. Thus Jesus spoke in parables ("And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables..." Matthew 22:1) and often used metaphorical language ("Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" Matthew 7:3). Clearly a literal meaning was not intended.

Because of these considerations the Bible is not taken literally by most practicing Christians. Consequently the "seven days" of creation can be seen as a metaphor for Big Bang cosmology (if one likes), and the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for human nature before we acquired consciousness.

The Bible can also be seen as psychological truth. All great religious works that have come down to us are repositories of psychological truth. They have survived partly because people have found them valuable in their daily lives. Regardless of literal truth they are psychologically true. It is a good psychology, for example, to "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Or, "neither cast ye your pearls before swine." And it is a great psychological, as well as a moral, truth that "all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this the law and the prophets." (We are in Matthew 7 where Jesus speaks with especial eloquence.)

How does the Bible compare to the other great religious works? is a question worth considering. Certainly it is longer than the most famous works of other religions such as The Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus or the Tao Te Ching of the Taoists, although not much longer than the Koran. It is much more uneven than any of these, speaking in a multitude of voices from the begets of the Old Testament and the sublime poetry of Ecclesiastes and the Psalms to the eloquence and wisdom of Jesus in the New Testament. One would need to take all the Vedas, for example, from the hymns of the Brahmans to Krishna's expression in the Gita to find something comparable, and indeed there are many similarities.

In one sense all religious works of any antiquity are similar in that they are written in a symbolic and metaphorical language. If they were not they would not survive because the literal concerns of one age are not that of another, and furthermore, it is impossible to express many of the great psychological truths in a strictly denotative way. Even more than that, it is perhaps best to express these truths in a general way so that each of us may discover them ourselves as they relate to the challenges of our lives. Thus it is said that "Many are called but few are chosen" (Matthew 22:14). Called to what? Chosen for what? Jesus was referring to wedding guests, but this passage speaks to us of spiritual matters.

As does the Bible itself, properly understood.

This is one of the most sobering of true crime tales, and one of the most intriguing. Former Green Beret officer Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald (still in prison last time I checked) called the police early one morning to report that his pregnant wife and two young daughters had been murdered by a marauding gang of hippies shouting "Kill the pigs, acid is groovy" while he received some superficial wounds trying to fight them off.

Joe McGinniss who at the time was best known for his Nixon campaign book (The Selling of the President 1968) jumped on the case and made arrangements with MacDonald to follow him around and interview him. McGinniss has said that initially he believed MacDonald was innocent, but as he grew to know MacDonald, and as he sifted through the evidence he began to change his mind until in the end he believed along with the prosecution and the jurors that MacDonald had murdered his family. McGinniss reports all this in such a compelling manner that the reader is lead step by step to the same horrific conclusion (or at least most readers are). Also changing their minds about MacDonald were the wife's parents who at first refused to believe that he could have done something like this. Yet in the end they too were convinced.

Not convinced however were MacDonald's many supports including as I recall members of the Long Beach, California police department, many of MacDonald's co-workers, and a number of women who found the doctor very attractive.

All of this is interesting but what I think most fascinated McGinniss and what most fascinates me is an answer to the questions of Why did he do it? and How could any human being do something like that?

The most plausible theory (this is basically McGinniss's theory as well) to explain why he did it goes something like this: In a rage (possibly induced in part by amphetamine use) MacDonald badly or fatally injured one of his family. Rather than own up to this and face the consequences he had the "fatal vision" (thought to have been conjured up in part from an Esquire Magazine article or in remembrance of the Mason family murders) of acid-crazed hippies breaking into his home and attacking his family with him in heroic defense. To make this work he would have to kill everybody except himself and construct a crime scene that would support his story. The prosecution and McGinniss careful show how MacDonald's crime scene construction failed. Readers interested in forensic science will find this aspect of the book absolutely fascinating, even if not entirely convincing.

But to convict a man of murdering his family based on circumstantial evidence especially when the motive is not another woman, or money, but is instead merely a desire to hide what at worse would be manslaughter, seems quite a stretch for any jury, or so MacDonald apparently figured. But what went wrong was not only the evidence, but his personality.

As McGinniss spent time with MacDonald he came to realize that Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald was not like other people. He was charming and very bright but there was a cold aspect to his personality, what in autism is called a "lack of affect." Obviously he was not autistic, or perhaps his is a form of autism. Anyway, according to the current psychiatric wisdom, such a person is called a psychopath or a sociopath. The words mean approximately the same thing, that is, a person who values only his or her own life and welfare, a person who has no real feelings of warmth for others, a person who has no compunction about taking the life of another if he or she can gain from it and get away with it.

The compelling psychological argument for me (and perhaps for the jury that convicted him) is that ONLY such a husband and father could have done that. The fact that he fit the psychopathic personality type was what led to his conviction as much as the forensic evidence. I should add that even though over the years there have been tips about, and bizarre manifestations of, possible hippy suspects, MacDonald has remained the only real suspect.

But did he do it? This book makes a powerful case that he did. Followers of sensational crimes such as the Jon Benet Ramsey case or the current case of Scott Peterson (reported as "laughing and joking" with his attorneys in court today as I write this) will see similarities here. In the Jon Benet case there is the sense of an attempt to cover up some violence inflicted on a member of the family because somebody (probably the mother) lost her temper, while in the Scott Peterson case there is the phenomenon of the sociopathic personality to explain an otherwise unthinkable crime.

I originally thought that MacDonald was guilty and I still do, but I admit there is some doubt. Whether that doubt is "reasonable" is for you to decide. The jury has already decided. Someday there may be another trial. If so, that jury will decide. You might also want to read the "answer" to this book, Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders (1992) by Jerry Allen Potter. Or go to the various Websites. I think you'll discover, as I did, why we have trials by jury in which both sides present their arguments. Just hearing one side seems so convincing until you hear the other side.

Bottom line: one of the very best true crime reads, the book that made McGinniss's career and helped to end MacDonald's: one of the classics of the genre.

Since Professor Paulos delights in paradoxes it is appropriate that a paradox lies at the heart of this very fine book. He does indeed play the stock market, but how well and using what kind of strategy? Ironically Paulos's personal tale is one of obsession and foolhardiness, of buying WCOM at 37 (yes, WCOM), of averaging down again and again and buying calls until in near final desperation our good professor finds himself contemplating with a kind of hopeless hope his WCOM calls at $20 as the stock trades at $1.13! (p. 197)

Interestingly enough, most of what mathematician Paulos writes about here is the psychology of the market and what he learned about himself psychologically as he rode the stallion down, down deep into the valley of despair. Yes, there is some interesting and instructive math included, but how refreshing it is to read a professional academic chronicle his experience while being up-front and personal about the emotional, random, and psychological traps that often guided his decisions. It takes a certain amount of confidence to write a book like this, and it helps a lot to be able to laugh at yourself.

My experience during the period beginning early in 2000 when the market began to tank was similar to Paulos's (which is one reason I found his account so riveting) except (thanking my lucky stars) I did NOT average down as he did, and I certainly did not buy calls. Instead gradually (too gradually of course) I began to take money out of the market. For those of you who lived through those days of shock and despair, Paulos's witty self-examination will be a pleasure to read.

On another level this is a book about market theory. Paulos does not believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), which states that prices in the market accurately reflect the value of the market and that any subsequent deviation (without new information) from those prices is a random walk. His argument (a very persuasive one) is that the market is a self-referential system that depends on how the players view the market. Paradoxically, if they believe in an efficient market they will NOT try to figure out ways to take advantage of anomalies and the market will be inefficient! Conversely, if the players believe that the market is inefficient, that there is some surplus value to be gained, they will indeed look for ways to take advantage of differentials and anomalies, and presto! the market becomes efficient.

Consequently, Paulos' theory is a refinement of the EMH. He sees the market as constantly existing in a dynamic state poised between maximum efficiency and something less than that. He sees the market as a complex system subject to the laws of complexity theory, and like the weather only more so, impossible to predict much in advance.

As for technical versus fundamental analysis, Paulos appropriately hedges. Yes, the trend is your friend, but (e.g.) the full blown Elliot wave theory is "murky" while the fundamentalists suffer from possibly cooked numbers and from the information already being factored into the stock's price. One gets the sense that Paulos is once bitten, twice shy! However, I think he has gotten this exactly right, namely that only a small edge can be had through a lot of work using both approaches.

There are some interesting mathematical paradoxes presented here and some scams. Those of you who have read Paulos's previous books (e.g., Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences, 1988; A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, 1995, etc.) know he has a gift for making the obtuse and opaque clear, or at least intelligible, and that he can be laugh out loud funny. I thought that he was even funnier here than usual, perhaps because there is a taint of gallows humor infused throughout. For example, in reference to his love affair with WCOM, Paulos writes, "Investing in it had originally seemed like a no-brainer. The realization that doing so had indeed been a no-brainer was glacially slow in arriving." (p. 199)

One paradox is the familiar "All Cretans are liars" upon which Paulos plays a few variations to demonstrate the self-referential aspect which is at the heart of the paradox. Included is this illumination: "The Prosecutor booms, 'You must answer Yes or No. Will your next word be No?'" (p. 187)

One scam is the familiar Ponzi scheme. Paulos thinks of a stock market bubble (as we experienced in the nineties) as a Ponzi scheme in which dot com buyers are hoping to sell to stupider dot com buyers, etc. In another context, Paulos notes perspicaciously, "Even ravaging of the environment may be seen as a kind of global Ponzi scheme, the early 'investors' doing well, later ones less well, until a catastrophe wipes out all gains." (p. 94)

I must warn the reader to beware of many atrocious puns. In one of the "worst," Paulos is explaining the emotional differences between risk adverse people and their opposite and how a stock's beta may be personalized. "A zero beta person would have to be unconscious, perhaps from ingesting too many beta-blockers." (p. 162)

Ouch!

Wei Minzhi (played by Wei Minzhi, essentially playing herself) is a 13-year-old peasant girl pressed into being "Teacher Wei" at a small rural elementary school when the regular teacher must take a month off. She knows one song (a Maoist propaganda song) and that not very well. She hasn't a clue about how to manage a classroom. Her arithmetic is suspect and her people skills are those of a self-centered beginner. It's not even clear that she wants to do the job. In fact she seems more concerned about the 50 yuan she's supposed to get than anything else.

Thus acclaimed Chinese film maker Zhang Yimou sets the stage for a most compelling fairy tale which illustrates how the determined spirit of a little girl might triumph over poverty, ignorance, and the hard-headed reality of the post-Maoist bureaucratic society.

And is she determined! She is given 30 pieces of chalk and warned not to waste any of it. The lesson plans are to copy some lessons on the chalkboard and to get the students to copy the copy. That's it! Both the regular teacher and the town's mayor point to the other as the one who will pay her. When the regular teacher starts to leave without paying her, she chases after him. She is told she will get paid when he returns, and if all the students are still enrolled, she will get a ten-yuan bonus.

Thus we have the movie's title and the source of "Teacher Wei's" determination. When one little girl is picked to go to a sports camp because she can run, Wei hides her from the authorities. When Zhang Huike, the class trouble-maker (played by Zhang Huike), quits school and heads for the city to find work, Wei schemes ways to get him and bring him back.

At this point the magic begins. With this common goal both teacher and the kids figure out ways to raise money to send Wei by bus to the city and back. They figure the cost for Wei's round trip and for Zhang Huike's one-way trip back, with the kids themselves taking the initiative at the chalkboard with the math. Wei makes them empty their pocketbooks, and when there is not enough she takes them on a field trip to a brick-making factory and together they move bricks to raise the cash. Again they calculate how many bricks they must move at so many "cents" per brick.

I mention all this because what is demonstrated, by the by, is some real teaching and learning taking place. In fact the mayor comes by and peeks into the classroom and is delighted to see that the substitute teacher knows how to teach math!

This sequence of events is very moving and is at the heart of the film. Any teacher anywhere in the world will recognize how brilliantly this is done. The kids become so eager to learn that they learn effortlessly, which is the way it is supposed to be. Furthermore, one of the phenomena of the profession is exemplified: that of the real teacher learning more (partly because she is older) than the students from the lessons they encounter.

Now, it is true that director Zhang Yimou does not show us the real poverty that exists in China nor does he point to the horrid dangers encountered by children who go to the city to work. Neither the little boy nor Teacher Wei is preyed upon in the manner we might fear. Recapitulations of the baser instincts of human beings are not part of Zhang Yimou's purpose here. This is in fact a movie that can be viewed by children, who will, I suspect, identify very strongly with the story. Zhang Yimou is talking to the child in all of us and he does it without preaching or through any didactic manipulation of adult verses child values. It is true he does manipulate our hearts to some degree, but with all the ugliness that one sees in the world today, perhaps he can be allowed this indulgence.

Although I would not say that this film is as good as Zhang Yimou's internationally celebrated films such as Red Sorghum (1987) (his first film) or Raise the Red Lantern (1991) (which I think is his best film) or The Story of Qiu Ju (1991) (which this film resembles to some extent), it is nonetheless a fine work of art exemplifying Zhang Yimou's beautiful and graceful style and his deep love for his characters and their struggles. And as always his work rises above and exists in a place outside of political propaganda as does the work of all great artists.

Perhaps more than anything else, however, one should see this movie to delight in the unselfconscious, natural, and utterly convincing "amateur" performance by Wei Minzhi as a most determined and brave little girl. She will win your heart.