Edwin Mellen Pr.

A biography of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, an eighteenth-century woman mathematician; with translations of some of her work from Italian into English.

While the debate about whether women should be allowed to study science and the fine arts raged about her, Agnesi quietly published the first complete and pedagogically appropriate textbook on differential and integral calculus in 1748. Her work was translated into French and English and fellow mathematician Frisi even published a contemporary biography of her. However, now Agnesi's work only falls into footnotes here and there. Cupillari (mathematics, Pennsylvania State U.-Erie) makes up for the lack of attention here, evaluating Agnesi as a mathematician and promoter of mathematics as well as a woman of her age. Cupillari also provides interesting background and genealogical information and new translations of the Frisi biography, Agnesi's work in mathematics, including the rules of differentiation, integral calculus, Riccati's method for polynomials, and differential equations of the first degree. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Climate change as a crisis in world civilization; why we must totally transform how we live.

Smith (law); David Shearman (medicine, both U. of Adelaide); and Sandro Positano, a clinical psychologist specializing in post-traumatic stress syndrome in South Australia, examine the scientific evidence for abrupt or dangerous climate change, and the health effects of such change. They place climate change within the context of a plethora of well known environmental crises stalking industrial consumer society, particularly the degradation of land resources, forests, biodiversity, fresh and marine water, and fossil fuels and other critical materials. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Differing developments of organic agriculture in Canada and Sweden; the experiences of the farmers themselves.

McLaughlin (sociology, St. Thomas More College, U. of Saskatchewan, Canada) examines the move towards organic agriculture as an example of social change and the result of nature, social structure, and human agency. Organic farming in Canada and Sweden are employed as examples of differing development with identifiable patterns in the choices farmers are making based on institutional context. Chapter topics include theories of social change, the methodological consideration and research design, ecological consciousness, resources and constraints, agents and agency, and making agriculture sustainable. A glossary and multiple appendices are included at the end of the book. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The educational philosophy of Abraham Flexner; creating cogency in medical education.

His reports began in 1910 and continued for nearly half a century. He influenced medical training in the US, Canada and Europe, advocating university-based schools with sophisticated laboratories, clinics and hospitals and a solid foundation in both science and the humanities. Most of all, those with the power to make changes listened to his criticism of commercial medical schools, with low admissions standards, endless lectures, and little experience with real patients. Zelenka (education and life sciences, Indiana U. at Bloomington) evaluates the contributions of Flexner to medical education and his ongoing influence, beginning by describing his historical contexts, his educational ideas for the development of a profession, and his beginnings with the Carnegie Foundation. Zelenka describes the response to Flexner's initial efforts, the methods he used to support his assertions, his commitment to humanism, and his hope that both research and practice would improve through better training. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The evolutionary epidemiology of mania and depression; a theoretical and empirical interpretation of mood disorders.

Drawing from Darwin's hypothetico-deductive methods and also calling upon him for theory, Wilson (psychiatry, Creighton U.) and Cory (political science, San Hose State U.) trace the trajectory of bipolar disorders by applying neuroscience to social science. They begin by determining what is "normal" and healthy, describing the evolution of human sociality, its normal limits, and the discernment of psychopathology beyond that "normal" state. They describe the evolutionary legacy of neuropsychiatric epidemiology, analyzing the classical genetics of mania and depression, its population and quantitative genetics, molecular genetics, its parallels with other evolutionary epidemiologies such as sickle cell anemia, the incidence of an excess of bipolar disorder evidence, and the use of such interdisciplinary methods as evolutionary anthropology, game theory, sociobiology, neurotransmission of social rank and alliance, and the neuropathologies of talent. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)