BOOKS


The Soul of All Scenery

is the definitive cultural and natural history of artistic discovery of the atmosphere's many faces - its colors, optical phenomena, clouds, signs of changing weather, and marks of climate, starting from the Ice Age and continuing to the present. Painted and real skies are compared and explained using a scientific perspective that has, in many cases, become available only during the past century, and long after many of the early artists first portrayed phenomena they identified but could not understand.

It also shows how the prevailing climate is but one factor in the artists' choice of atmospheric setting, for in every age, painters have also used the sky as a mirror of humankind's soul and its cultural and historical odyssey, and as a signpost of the times. For example, artists portrayed the sky clear and limpid in optimistic periods such as the Renaissance and the youth of America, but misty, obscured and stormy in pessimistic times, such as when France’s Ancien Régime collapsed into the French Revolution, and when Europe hurtled downward towards the irrational carnage of World War I.

Calculus: Your Royal Road to Genius

the book you wish you had when you took Calculus, takes you on an epic intellectual adventure that helped transform a world of ignorance, impotence, and terror to one of knowledge, power, and confidence. Using a practical approach, it reveals the insights, steps of genius (‘tricks’), and motivations that made Calculus a premier tool for understanding Nature and aiding Technology. It shows how Scientists, Engineers, and Economists use Calculus and its numerical techniques as keys to their subjects and to the computer models that produce intricate designs and accurate forecasts. And it guides you with empathy, humor, and passion through a personal journey that will help you attain greater confidence and surprising mastery in math.

It covers all material of a typical course of Differential and Integral Calculus, starting with a review of plane and analytic geometry, trigonometry, algebra, probability, limits, and sums. It then treats derivatives, integrals, infinite series (including Taylor and Fourier Series) and how they represent functions, multivariate Calculus and vectors, and an introduction to ordinary and partial differential equations. All this it does in only 190 pages, 1000 fewer than most Calculus Texts.

Genial Atheism

shines a light for those who have discovered that there is no basis for religion or belief in God other than our psychological and sociological proclivities and childhood inculcation. It will reassure you that you are correct and not alone in making this grand discovery. It will help you understand any troubles and problems you may encounter when others see you have left the fold and attempt to punish you through shaming, humiliation, shunning, and excommunication for what they label as treason.

Genial Atheism explains what drives so many of us to believe so ardently in a personal God that no one can see and to blindly join religions that urge and may even require us give our lives or take the lives of others. It presents much on the history and evolution of religion and atheism and diagnoses the essential ingredients of religions as human-made systems consisting of fairy tales, rules, and punishments, enforced by coercion or terror, and inspiring people to both noble and the most inhuman deeds and sentiments. It also emphasizes that terrestrial tyrannies have the same nature and operate in the same way as celestial religions.

Sub Ways

is a personal account of the grand human experiment of educating high school students seen from the unencumbered perspective of a university professor turned substitute teacher. It takes you into the classroom to give you a flavor of what it is like to be a teacher and what it is like to be a student.

If your school days are behind you, this book will help you remember, understand, and make more sense of where you spent so much of your life.

If you are a student, it will help you appreciate your struggles, give them more meaning, show you the humanity and sincerity of your overlords, the teachers, and thereby ease and improve the years you are forced to spend so much of your time.

If you are a teacher, it will remind you of the grand, noble mission you are pursuing despite all obstacles imposed by the Education Empire. It will show you that you are not alone in your struggles, and thereby restore any idealism and sense of purpose you may have lost along the way, give you the courage to improve what is faulty and correct what is wrong, and prove that you are a miracle worker.