This is an eclectic collection of interesting stories from an Irish novelist. One of the stories deals with Mary Toft, a woman who appeared to give birth to rabbits in 18th-century England. I enjoyed the wide range of topics in the book at the fringes of history, including Caroline Crachami, 20 inches tall at the age of three.

Readers interested in historical oddities will enjoy the very similarly titled book The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Cliff Pickover. Pickover's book both shocks and delights.

This book is definitely worth reading, even if you have read previous autobiographies. The chapter of most interest and emotional impact is the one that describes how he died, while giving very wise (almost mystical) advice on how to cope with loss and death. A wonderful book.

I'm an avid Pickover fan, and I found this book to be a very interesting diversion from his usual hard science writing. As the book reports, Mary Toft was a young woman who lived in the 17th century. She had a peculiar passion and appeared to give birth to something inhuman. From that moment onward, she was plunged into a world she never dreamed existed -- a dark, medical subculture flourishing in the King's court. Mary careened out of control, a pawn in the hands of the powerful while she forced her contemporaries to question their most basic beliefs.

This book describes many medical oddities, modern day hoaxes, and sexual superstitions. Mary Toft was the Monica Lewinsky of the 1700s. Both women elicited a barrage of media coverage, jokes, and national shame. Monica's story cast a bad light on American politics; Mary's affair placed the eighteenth-century London physicians in a bad light.

Other topics discussed in the book: multiple personality disorder, child abuse, hypnosis, repressed memories, Torquemada, sexuality in the Bible, fringe science, psychic surgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Fox sisters, spiritualism, Piltdown man, Joanna Southcott, Joanna, virgin birth, alligators in sewers, gerbils, LSD, sooterkins, cadaver art, UFOs, garadiavolo, Cottingley Fairies, Cardiff giant, Feejee mermaid, cryptozoology, witchcraft, vomiting frogs, obsessive compulsive disorder, rectal objects, dinosaur fossils, the state of medicine in the 1700s, the effect of the mind on how we perceive reality...

I read Spider Legs on the recommendation of a friend. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It seems to me that some of the other reviewers did not resonate with the quirky characters and strange situations as much as I did. The visual aspect of the book was compelling -- the setting, the monstrous spider, and so forth. If you like scary tales, sea tales, plots with some absurdity, genetic engineering, marine biology, a little romance, Benchley tales, and a host of unusual characters -- then this book is for you. But you have to keep an open mind to the oddness of the whole story.

The plot revolves around sea spiders (pycnogonids) that are terrorizing a community in New Foundland, Canada. One of the lead characters is Martha, who has various genetic defects and is also a martial arts expert. The descriptions of the creature are unbeatable. Just keep an open mind and move with it. Enjoy the zany parts and the scary parts, and open your mind to absurdity -- and don't try to overanalyze the composite structure. Do this, and you'll love this book. It is definitely worth reading.

Kiln People explores a fascinating futuristic technology in which people can, in a sense, "download" their personalities to replicas. These replicas may go on dangerous missions and, just before they expire, upload their experiences to their natural progenitor. The book has humor and wit. The most compelling aspect of the book is that technologies like this may some day be possible -- and the implications of such technology (and on what it means to be human) make this book an important one to read and reread. If you could download yourself to a kiln replica, would you?

There are few books that I enjoy rereading every few years, but this is one. I think it's because of the mystery and the grand adventure through parallel worlds. Believe it or not, when I first read this book, I was not aware of the Biblical significance of the title. Now that I know about the Biblical book of Job, the book's theme becomes more apparent. Don't you love the way Heinlein starts his books -- right in the middle of the action?

This book is awesome! It seems as if Cliff Pickover has journeyed around the world to find unusual people and their fascinating magic squares, circles, stars, and other mathematical wonders. Topics include: Benjamin Franklin's "most magical" magic square, John Hendricks' four-dimensional magic tesseracts and other gems from prisoners, scientists, little-known artists, and computer programmers. Just last year, Pickover came across a wonderful collection of magic figures designed by the late, great Fubine. Fubine, whose real name was Cipriano Ferraris, died in 1958. Fubine's designs ranged from simple squares through a wide variety of linear geometric shapes and three-dimensional figures. Rows, columns, spokes, and diameters consisted of lines of numbers, no single one of which was repeated and whose totals were always the same. Pickover say that in 1929, Fubine lost all his money in the great stock market crash. He found himself in near suicidal state and distracted himself by creating ever-larger magic squares.

What a smorgasbord for children, laypeople, and even seasoned mathematicians! In this book, you'll find information on magic square creation, classification, and history, and graphical representations that can be quite beautiful. The book contains math and art. Although, the literature on magic squares is vast, this book contains some magnificent structures discovered in the last few years. I don't think there is any other book that presents such a huge range of patterns.

Unlike many thrillers, the characters are compelling and interesting. In many ways, I enjoyed the range of characters as much as the plot itself. The most notable character is Eli Glinn, the extremely focused and cool president of Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc.. I think writers may like to study this book just to see how the pace keeps the reader in perpetual suspense and how the interplay of characters drives the plot. The setting (Cape Horn) is also used to great benefit. Excellent reading. I will be buying other books by these authors.

Strange Brains and Genius is by far the best book I have read that catalogues numerous examples of the fine line between genius and frailty in a wide range of colorful and influential people. Nikola Tesla had a horror of women's pearl earrings. Oliver Heaviside, the father of modern electric-circuit design, painted his nails cherry pink. Renowned scholar Samuel Johnson had so many tics and quirks that some mistook him for an idiot. Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher who promoted the idea, "the greatest good for the greatest number of people", fell in love with rats. He also advised rich people to plant embalmed corpses of their ancestors upright along highways. There apparently is a link between extreme genius and madness in certain individuals. Pickover also goes further and discusses the role of the brain in religious and alien abduction experiences.

Pickover points out that in repressive times, strange geniuses have been persecuted, but in more enlightened eras these nonconformists have had the freedom to make great contributions to science and society. Are their minds like our own, or are they so different that these geniuses should be viewed as entirely different beings? What do geniuses have in common, and how can we foster their continued emergence? Is their a link between their obsessions and their creativity?

This book is organized into three parts. In Part I, Pickover discusses several geniuses with obsessive-compulsive (and Asperger's) tendencies. Many of the individuals might have Asperger's syndrome (characterized by an impairment in social interaction and development of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities). Part II is smorgasbord of short subjects ranging from IQ to the influence of the brain's structure on behavior. Part III discusses how individuals were selected for this book and describes the effect of other disorders such as bipolar disorder and temporal-lobe epilepsy on creativity, religion, and even the alien abduction experience.

Buy this amazing book and go beyond "A Beautiful Mind"

This book is a marvelous collection of puzzles and artwork meant to take the reader to a higher plane of existence and thinking. The puzzles are varied and test everything from your moral and ethical choices to higher mathematics. I have never seen a puzzle book quite like this, and I love to dip into it over and over again. Good for children and adults. A great onversation piece to bring to parties. Here is the book's table of contents:
Preface
Chapter 1. Who This Book is For

Chapter 2. Symbols and Difficulty Levels
Chapter 3. Alien Tiles
Chapter 4. Alien Sperm
Chapter 5. Alien Ellipses
Chapter 6. Alien Repeats
Chapter 7. Alien Matrix
Chapter 8. Internal Organs
Chapter 9. Alien Dissection
Chapter 10. Alien Addition
Chapter 11. Hyperdimensional Sz'kwa
Chapter 12. Alien Spiral
Chapter 13. Survival on Arcturus
Chapter 14. Alien Medallion with Lights
Chapter 15. The Omega Prism
Chapter 16. Alien Worm
Chapter 17. Alien Homoptera
Chapter 18. Star Chart
Chapter 19. Alien Spores 1
Chapter 20. Alien Spores 2
Chapter 21. Alien Spores 3
Chapter 22. Alien Spores 4
Chapter 23. Alien Spores 5
Chapter 24. Rubik's Tesseract
Chapter 25. Animal Eye
Chapter 26. Cosmic Rosetta Stone
Chapter 27. Alien Ants in Hyperspace
Chapter 28. A Severed Human Finger
Chapter 29. The Antikythera Mechanism
Chapter 30. Alien Scrambling
Chapter 31. Alien Aesthetics
Chapter 32. Alien Knowledge and Talent
Chapter 33. The Sagittarius Maneuver
Chapter 34. Siriusian Geometry
Chapter 35. Human Brains in a Jar
Chapter 36. Human Belief Structure
Chapter 37. Contact from the Pleiades
Chapter 38. The Elk Hunter's Abduction
Chapter 39. Loss of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 40. Aliens and Sprinklers
Chapter 41. Unanswered Questions
Chapter 42. Moral and Emotional Choices of Humans
Chapter 43. Coded Transmission