|  | | | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
 Great Book Nov 04, 2009
This is a really great book. It is true that much of the book is not related to 'level 4' though it is still a great book. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in strange or rarely-seen facets of America.
Misleading title, yes. Good book, yes. Sep 03, 2009
I don't understand why people are getting so up in arms about the title. It's an attention grabber, which is what titles are supposed to do. The book is a collection of short pieces about non-fiction subjects. To those who are complaining that the book isn't as exciting as Preston's other work, please take note: this is not fiction, and is therefore doesn't have as much of an excitement factor. If you take the book for what it is, I strongly believe that you will be pleased. Each piece within the book was fascinating (except maybe the bit about the Unicorn Tapestries, but that's just personal bias). I found this book to be easy to read, highly informative, and very enjoyable overall. I especially enjoyed reading about the Chudnovskys and the rivals in the Human Genome Project. Happy reading to all!
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Not your typical Preston Aug 16, 2009
First I happened to read a book about the 1918 flu. ( The Great Influenza Barry ) Then Amazon suggested some further reading. Pretty good suggestions. So next I read "The Hot Zone". I learned a great deal about threats,viruses, bacteria and fear. I also gave effusive praise to the author in an Amazon review. Then I ordered and could barely wait to receive "The Demon in the Freezer"-another home run.
I knew very little about smallpox and now an somewhat less ignorant but much more scared. I wonder if eradicating it was the best thing to do.....now that all the people's of the Earth have no natural immunity nor immunizations. I then read "The Cobra Event". This was a disappointment for the most part though I kinda fell for the young CDC doctor....this would make a good movie and I can see her character clearly.
Anyway. If you are like me and expect "Panic in Level Four" to be more about highly dangerous level four emerging organisms.....you will be disappointed. The forward does have a personal story about that topic that adds nothing to what you already learned if you read "Hot" and "Demon". Also, you have an entire chapter about ebola virus in this book that is repetition of material in "The Hot Zone". I read it anyway just to see.
The essays are connected some say. I personally don't see it. I think the book has a very poor title and choice of chapter topics. Not that I didn't enjoy part of the book. I did not know of the existence of the "Unicorn Tapestries" and have added them to my list of things to see if I ever get up the nerve to go to NYC again. I doubt I will. That was an interesting chapter. Kind of. Now I want to read a book about the tapestries minus all the math to make a digital photo of them.
The first chapter was , as they say in the Midwest, " a hoot ". I have fundamental disagreements with many of the statements made by the author in the chapter. It's mostly about two eccentric mathematicians who are trying to "discover" things about the value of pi.
You know. Three point fourteen sixteen. So they proceed to calculate it far enough to accurately scribe a circle around the known universe with an error the width of a proton or something like that. So what?
OK. I know my place and have occasionally worked around people of genius level intellect. I know that 140 to 150 IQ won't even get a person in the same ballpark with these guys. Yet, I wonder, and have always wondered, if it's possible for people of just about any average level of intelligence to know things that genius level people never can see for all the obstructions of ego and detail?
What I mean is that, to me, the value of pi contains nothing but repeating numbers. I don't need to look for messages from god hidden somewhere just one more calculation beyond where the edge now stands. It's, to put it very politely, pure bunk. Now, you might say I'm simply not intelligent enough to "get it".
To me mathematics is not a science. Nothing is there to be discovered only invented. Humans invented mathematics to assist in their comprehension of the physical world. The physical world does not run on mathematics. We simply use math to describe it.
At about a half dozen points in reading the first chapter I almost tossed the book in the trash. I don't often toss books that early in their reading. The first chapter is about the obsessive calculation of pi to billions of places to no purpose except to satisfy a couple of geniuses ( or one genius in two bodies as the book says ) that there isn't a message from god hidden inside which begins on digit two billion and ONE.
Which reminds me of my thoughts about what geniuses really know vs the levels of detail they go to trying to satisfy themselves that they know something with certainty.
I am glad I read on. The chapter about the mapping of the human genome was interesting. I've read similar stories about start up companies in the electronics field. I still don't understand what the big deal is though. Always we hear about how a section of DNA produces this or that protein. OK, good. I get it.
But how do the sum total of the human chromosomes, or those of a frog, make the physical animal and set it into motion? Map the genome all you want.....humans are about as close, IMO, to understanding how DNA works to create a complex animal ( or a bacteria for that matter ) as chimps are to understanding the periodic table. ( on second thought perhaps the chimps are closer to their goal ).
I read with interest the chapter about the Unicorn Tapestries. Hey, why don't these brothers get it together and figure out how a virus like influenza works? Certainly the IQ is there to do it.....but perhaps pi continues to beckon them?
I did not read the last chapter. This self eating disease is so rare and so little understood and so gruesome.....and described elsewhere in the other Preston books I've read that I skipped it.
I keep a lot of books. I read books many times that I like because my memory isn't much good today. I'm writing this from notes. In a few short weeks or couple of months I can reread "The Hot Zone" and remember little of it. Ah,I understand at the moment of reading it though.
This book got tossed in the charity donation box. It's not worth my keeping. I'm never going to reread it. I suspect the only thing I may recall from it are the two words "Unicorn Tapestries". Did I mention I'm a huge fan of French Gothic Cathedrals? Kinda fits with the tapestries.
I suggest that Mr. Preston consider topics that are current and highly important and squarely within his greatest gifts. He could pursue the thread of Gulf War Disease possibly being caused by a bioweapon. He could expand on the current threat of bioweapons from our friends the Russians or Chinese....or North Koreans since he has taught us how small bioreactors can be to still turn out mucho bad stuff. He could illuminate for us other delicious bits of dangerous living stuff like, for example, those Australian jellyfish that are so deadly. Why is that anyway?
I'm kinda glad I'm not a genius. If I were I'd probably believe in string theory and the big bang because I just could not bring myself to admit ( to myself ) that I could not explain some natural phenomena no matter how arcane and twisted the math I invented became. It's like the search for new "discoveries" in pi. How can something be discovered inside a creation of the human mind? I guess such intellectual power needs exercise. The invention of mathematics is the perfect way to accomplish that. Math is also useful in describing the physical universe and making nifty things to better our lives. But looking for messages from god? Do I need a 200 IQ to comprehend why that makes sense? If so, don't put that Krell skullcap on me bro.
I stopped reading material like that in the first chapter over twenty years ago when "string theory" popped up. It seems that the genius cosmologists could not explain the known physical universe using known properties of matter. No matter that we can see only a small part of it and that from far away and long ago. No matter. When their theory didn't work mathematically they just invented a new fantastic physical construct to plug the gap.
Yah, light years long these superstrings with no width or mass but capable of holding galaxies in place and never directly observed. Yah, those boys are the sort who might like to see what pi looks like at three billion digits just to make sure they didn't miss anything and once at three maybe four or five billion will seem necessary to hear from the diety. Do these guys go to a church with the symbol for pi on the steeple?
Are you sensing sarcasm here? You are correct.
For this book, for me,two was a generous rating just because I like the author's other work. I'd like to see the author get back into "Hot Zone" and "Demon" territory and give us some meat to digest ( to borrow his description of how certain viruses notably ebola like meat a great deal ). Hey,tell us about antibiotic resistant TB and other horrors and stop telling us to look for god in a number.
0 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Panic in Level 4 Jul 17, 2009
It was sent to me quickly. Which I liked. I didn't have to wait. I have another order out right now. I placed it 2 weeks ago. But, it will not be sent to me until the end of this month. And the place I ordered it from has charged my card already.
Not up to Preston's standard Jan 08, 2009
Having read Demon in the Freezer several years ago, I had high hopes for this book, but was hugely disappointed. The chapters are unrelated and, as a result, the book has the sense of a glued-together group of short articles Preston had cluttering his file cabinet.
By the way, why on earth should anyone but an obsessive mathematician care that Pi has been calculated to over 2 billion digits? Preston makes no attempt to tell us.
|
| |
|
![Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51V%2Beipy8-L._SL75_.jpg "Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]")
![Across the Universe [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51T24FuHPEL._SL75_.jpg "Across the Universe [Blu-ray]")
![Underworld Trilogy (Underworld / Underworld: Evolution / Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F27VzUl%2BL._SL75_.jpg "Underworld Trilogy (Underworld / Underworld: Evolution / Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) [Blu-ray]")
![Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RQUEopdlL._SL75_.jpg "Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour [Blu-ray]")
