Women and their role in the labor movement and unions in Canadian History Essay Example for Free

Women and their role in the labor movement and unions in Canadian History Essay Equal employment policy for women stands at an historic juncture in the advanced industrial democracies. In Canada, a federal Human Rights Act went into effect March 1, 1978 . It not only established a commission to handle complaints of discrimination but also introduced the principle of equal pay for work of equal value, making possible the adjustment upward of womens wages based on a comparison of the rates of pay for women who work in dissimilar jobs. This represents a radical departure from similar policy in other countries. Four approaches to equal opportunity and equal pay policy stand out: collective agreements between trade unions and employers; a legal strategy emphasizing litigation; a legal strategy involving administrative enforcement; and general employment and training programs. The activities of womens organizations and of women in trade unions facilitated the achievement of equal opportunity policy through these means. The time, courage, and commitment which so many women have given to formulating, implementing, and fighting for equal pay and equal opportunity policies are the bedrock of the successes that have been achieved. This work will develop a heightened appreciation of the womens labor movement and consider its role in Canadian history. Since the 1900s, Canadian womens groups have remained strong and consistent voices for reforming or creating policies influencing labor policies. At the turn of the century, several womens groups were actively involved in social reform, but the most influential was the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC). Founded in 1893, NCWC was established by middle-class women who believed that womens mothering and nurturing within the home could be transferred to the public sphere, resulting in more humane and progressive social policies. This ideology has been labeled maternal feminism. NCWC lobbied for childrens aid societies, mothers pensions, minimum age-of-work legislation, and curfew and truancy acts as strategies to reduce juvenile delinquency. Although members campaigned for jobs for women in social work, teaching, nursing, recreation, and police work, they undercut the same professional advances by insisting that womens most natural place was at home. Numerous other womens groups began in the early years of the twentieth century. For example, the Young Womens Christian Association focused on providing a safe place for young urban working women to live, and has continued to provide accommodation, community activities, and support groups for women and their families up to the present. The Womens Christian Temperance Union promoted child protection legislation and reformatories for juvenile delinquents, as well as fighting for the prohibition of alcohol which was viewed as detrimental to family life. The Canadian Federation of Womens Labor Leagues also focused on concrete reforms of working conditions such as maternity leave and equal pay for equal work. Womens groups flourished during the first half of the twentieth century, although most accepted the patriarchal family and worked within the tradition of volunteerism. Mary Corse, member of the ITUs womens auxiliary and co-founder of the Womens Labor League in Calgary, was the lone candidate to win a seat on the school board. All other eleven candidates were defeated. After a spring of distraction and a summer of preparation, the Calgary branch of the Dominion Labor Party (DLP) came into being in September 1919. Its model was the Alberta DLP, formed eight months earlier, and both branches adopted a constitution and platform loosely based on those of the British Labor Party. Local labor figures were quick to point out this connection. The meeting concluded with the election of Pryde as party president, Alice Corliss as vice-president, and Edith Patterson as secretary-treasurer. This strong representation of women in senior positions in all, three of the seven executive officials were women would be an enduring feature of the DLP throughout the 1920s. According to historian Roome (1989), the Calgary DLP had a core of fifty to seventy-five active female members, consisting of single working women usually teachers or journalists and married women belonging to union auxiliaries. A Canadian-American Womens Committee on International Relations made up of the Womens Committee on International Relations of Canada and the U.S. National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War had been established to examine problems of joint concern to women. It held a conference in Montreal in April 1943 which was attended by seventy delegates. Frances Perkins, Margaret Bondfield, Rose Schneiderman, and several senior members of the ILO staff (including the Acting Director and Assistant Director) addressed the conference and discussed the wartime activities of the ILO. A round table session, at which Elizabeth Mayer Johnstone reviewed the wide gains of women during the war, gave special attention to the problems of domestic workers. A second potential influence on attitudes was the re-emergence of feminist activity in Canada during the 1960s. Second-wave feminism has challenged the many social and economic barriers to womens full participation in public life and widened womens experiences, aspirations and social expectations. The womens movement in Canada incorporates many different forms of feminist philosophies (for example liberal feminism, radical feminism and socialist feminism) which have all contributed to the policy objectives of the womens movement and constructed a â€Å"feminist† agenda for social change. Although the focus of these different strains is distinct and they have, at times, come into conflict with each other, they can often be found within a single movement organization such as National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC). The contemporary womens movement in Canada has benefited immeasurably from a long tradition of womens voluntary associations. Religious groups such as the Anglican Church Women, the United Church Women, and the Catholic Womens League, and other groups such as the National Womens Institutes (a national organization of largely rural and small town women), the National Council of Women, the Canadian Federation of University Women, the Imperial Orders of Daughters of the Empire, and the Fà ©dà ©ration des femmes de Quà ©bec, have been in existence long enough to have built national networks of women with some interlocking memberships and considerable ongoing exchange of information. The NAC developed from a coalition of these and other trade union and professional women. The improvement of equal pay laws in Canada owes much to a voluntary organization NAC. An umbrella organization with a membership consisting of approximately 130 Canadian organizations, NAC has a combined membership of about 5 million women. NAC later expanded its agenda and became an active lobbyist on behalf of the concerns of Canadian women. Since its inception in 1972, the organization has been active in the struggle for improved labor legislation, including the enactment into Canadian federal law of the ILO Convention 100 concept of equal remuneration for work of equal value. The main impetus for NACs formation came out of the pressure put on the prime minister of Canada and his cabinet by a group of leading Canadian women to create a Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW). Royal commissions in Canada perform an important role in the study of special issues—from taxation, to the relations of labor and capital, to national security. The commissions vary widely in their composition and goals but the approach of most is similar. They research the issue, hold public hearings across the country, receive briefs, and make recommendations for legislative and administrative reform. On the matter of equal pay, this commissions recommendations were strong and sweeping. As a result, in 1973 the federal government appointed a Minister Responsible for the Status of Women and a government department (Status of Women Canada) to co-ordinate efforts to promote the advancement of women. Because women are closely aligned with children and family, numerous family policy issues have been promoted. In the same year, the federal government established the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW), a para-governmental organization to advise government and inform the public through research and education. For over twenty years, the CACSW researched and analyzed numerous issues relating to family policy, such as reproduction, family law, child care, and employment leave for family responsibilities. After the 1995 cut-backs, however, the CACSW was dissolved and some of its functions merged with government. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, provincial advisory councils also monitored womens status and provided research and information on family issues. Feminist groups have also initiated and developed important family services at the local level, especially transition houses for women and their children fleeing from abusive homes. While the shelter movement began as a feminist alternative to mainstream social services, many transition houses now receive government funding. By the mid-1980s, however, womens groups focused more on preventing the erosion of social programs than on pushing for new ones, with greater public concern over government spending and a backlash against feminism. Since 1983, the conservative group REAL Women of Canada (Real, Equal and Active for Life) has argued that the state is undermining the traditional family by responding to alternative lifestyles and by funding interest groups such as NAC. REAL Women, with roots in the western Canada anti-abortion or pro-life movement and in fundamentalist Christianity, promotes stronger government support for home-makers but opposes abortion, liberal divorce laws, pay equity, and universal day care. Several recent innovative initiatives are worthy of note. In June of 1995, after a year of intense planning, three branches of the 10-day Quà ©bec Womens March Against Poverty converged on the National Assembly in Quà ©bec City to join 15,000 supporters. This March was initiated by the Fà ©dà ©ration des femmes du Quà ©bec, and organized by more than 40 groups including unions, anti-poverty groups, immigrant groups and womens organizations. The March was quite a success: in response to their nine demands, the Quà ©bec government agreed to raise the minimum wage; to introduce a proactive pay equity law; to deduct child support payments automatically; to set aside 5 per cent of social housing for poor women and five places for every 15 in non-traditional trades; to reduce the length of sponsorship for immigrant women; to allocate money to the social economy to generate jobs; to extend basic employment standards to those on workfare; and to freeze student fees. Building on this initiative, NAC and the CLC sponsored a national womens March Against Poverty For bread and roses, for jobs and justice in May and June of 1996. Caravans traveled to Ottawa from both the west and east coast stopping in over 100 communities. The March ended with a two-day womens Tent City and a protest rally of over 40,000 women at Parliament Hill which demonstrated against the right wing corporate and government agenda. The Canadian union movement was actively involved in building the World March of Women launched on 8 March 2000 and culminating on 17 October 2000, the International Day for the Elimination of Poverty. This worldwide activity endorsed by over 200 countries and 2200 organisations was initiated by the Fà ©dà ©ration des femmes du Quà ©bec modelled on their successful 1995 March. Over the past century, Canadian womens groups have made a strong impact on policy reform. The socialization explanation argues that the impact of the movement and the policy positions promoted by womens groups during this second wave of feminist activity, have led to growing differences in womens and mens attitudes. The Canadian womens movement has acted as an advocate for many political issues touching the lives of women. Social welfare policies, and questions of international and domestic force and violence along with feminism and equality issues have frequently been found on the movements agenda. By conveying pro-women policy positions to politicians and the general public through lobbying efforts, the mass media, and the educational system, the movement has become an active agent of socialization in society, providing a political space in which women can reconceptualize their social identity. Trade union women worked with community based feminist groups, both to build coalitions around key issues such as childcare and pay equity, and to pressure the union movement to respond to the feminist challenge. Canadian womens movement have had an important impact on the politics and practices of the Canadian life, weakening the tendency towards individualistic solutions and introducing (and reintroducing) a class perspective. Coalition strategies both respond to and highlight the significance of diversity in the Canadian context, that is, they represent recognition of power dynamics and an organizational alternative to homogeneous organizations. Whatever the debates about the â€Å"success† of the womens movement or about a perceived growing backlash against feminist goals, there is little doubt that in Canada it has greatly altered the political agenda and has helped pioneer new forms of political action. It has indeed brought â€Å"the personal† into the political arena. Works Cited Ball A. â€Å"Organizing Working Women: The Womens Labor Leagues.† Canadian Dimension 21(8): 1988. Cohen M. â€Å"The Canadian Womens Movement†. In Pierson et al., 1993. Everitt, Joanna â€Å"The Gender Gap in Canada: Now You See It, Now You Dont.† Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. Vol.: 35 (2), 1998. Kealey, Gregory S., and Peter Warrian, eds. Essays in Canadian Working Class History. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976. Kearney, Kathryn. â€Å"Canadian Women and the First World War,† Canadian Woman Studies 3 (1), 1981. Palmer, Bryan D. Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labor, 1800-1991. 2nd ed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992. Roome, Patricia. â€Å"Amelia Turner and Calgary Labor Women,† in Beyond the Vote: Canadian Women and Politics, ed. Linda Kealey and Joan Sangster,. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. REAL Women of Canada. Brief to Members of Parliament. 18 November 1986. Vickers, J., P. Rankin and C. Appelle. Politics as if Women Mattered: A Political Analysis of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Pr. 1993.

Indian watch industry

Indian watch industry Indian Watch industry is estimated to be around 1600 crores and Titan is riding on top of it with a market share of over 50%.This is a super brand that has changed the way we look at ( or wear) watches. A marketing success story, Titan is a brand that will be of interest to most of the marketers. Titan , a brand from TATA was launched in 1987. During that time Indian watch market was dominated by HMT . At that time watches were seldom stylish and was catering to the basic need of knowing the time. Titan changed all that. With its stylish watches and smart advertising ,Titan took the market by storm. Titan infact changed the way watches was manufactured and marketed in India.HMT , a public sector company seldom bothered to respond. Titan initially pioneered the concept of Gifting watches. The ads captured the essence of gifting and along with the trendy music, easily caught the imagination of the market.Customers who were fed up with ugly time machines welcomed the brand and Titan had a dream run for many years. Titan faced lot of problems later when the competition began to eat up the lower end of the market. Besides that, there was another problem. The brand was lacking innovation. To be more precise, the customers were bored by Titan.There was nothing new. Gifting proposition was no longer working . During this period, Titan made a big mistake. It wanted to play the volume game. For that Titan launched another brand Sonata. Sonata was a huge success because it was a cheap product but at the cost of the mother brand Titan. Titan was perceived to be a premium brand but with Sonata ( at that time Sonata from Titan) endorsed by Titan took away the premium image from the mother brand. It was a big costly mistake. Titan realised this mistake and took away the Titan brand from Sonata. Now Sonata is endorsed by Tata not Titan. Titan realising that the market wanted something to be excited about watches began an extensive marketing campaign. Titan carefully segmented the market and developed different subbrands for each segment. Sub brands like Edge, Steel, Dash, Nebula , Classique, Royale, Fast Track , Raga, and the recently launched Wallstreet . By having various products / models and subbrands, Titan was able to create freshness about the brand. Titan also moved away from gifting . Titan was positioning itself as a fashion accessory rather than a time keeping device.Titan also found its persona in Aamir. Aamir provided the much needed edge to the brand. Titan was careful in keeping the brand above the celebrity.The ads were fresh and neatly executed. Titan also was pushing another strategy . Watches was perceived as a one time buy and consumers seldom owned multiple watches. So Titan pushed the concept of Matching Watches to Clothes in the recent commercials. Since men are becoming more serious customers of fashion accessories, this is strategy that is worth trying out. For Titan, even if the concept fails, It has created the much needed freshness in the brand.Titan also made its presence in the ladies watch segment. It have a sub brand Raga targeting the upwardly Mobilee ladies in the premium segment. Titan also relaunched the FastTrack brand of watched aiming the target segment of 18-30 yrs old. Earlier Fasttrack was targeted at 20-25 year olds and positioned along the line Cool watches from Titan. Then the company found out that the youth in the age group of 11-20 years account for 42% of watch buying in India. Based on this insight the company relaunched the brand lowering the target segment to 18-30 year olds with the baseline How many you have?. Again the strategy aimed at promoting the multiple watch owning concept. Fasttrack also launched a range of fashion accessories like Sunglasses trying to be a lifestyle brand. Indian watch market is clearly segmented and lot of serious players are fighting out in these segments . The lower volume segment has HMT, Sonata , Maxima fighting it out. The mid segment has Titan, Timex etc and the premium segment has Titan ,Citizen etc. The super premium segment is also hotting up with lot of international brands setting shops in India. Titan has carefully created a market for itself through careful segmentation and branding strategies.It is a brand that showed the world that Indians are good in Branding.

Essay on Loss of Freedom in The Giver -- The Giver Essays

Loss of Freedom in The Giver  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Giver, a book written by Lois Lowry, questioned my ideas, thoughts and beliefs.   The novel describes an ideal society, in which everything is supposed to be perfect, with all life’s problems solved.   It is all about being happy with what the people have and not questioning their life styles because they did not know the difference between good and bad.   The people are denied of their preferable way of life without their knowledge of how the real world is supposed to be.   In the real world, I live each and everyday to learn and gain freedom as much as I can.   However, the citizens of this society are not able to control their life; for example their choice of clothing, choice of loving and having feelings, or choice of family members.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   From all existing creatures, we humans differ because we are able to use our brain to make decisions.   In the novel, the people of the given society have authority figures that show them how to live their life.   â€Å"Katya, became a Nine and removed her hair ribbons and got her bicycle† (P. 14).   Therefore, this previous quote is referring to how the people are controlled.   They have no say in their own life style.   The rules start from small thing like what age one starts to ride a bike, which age group wears certain types of jackets, the clothing one wears each day, and even what to eat.   In the real world, we humans make similar decisions for our selves without thinking about it.   People need guidance in their life to the right way of living but not a book of instructions.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Many of ... ...t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, The Giver told him the feeling that was so strong in the room is love† (P.125). Family in the novel is described as a group of people that have a unit or bond that they share each day together.   In the real world, family is more than a unit; it is care and mostly love. In conclusion, life without experience or memory is meaningless.   When all freedom is taken away from an individual, that person will not strive to make a better tomorrow.   These people are missing the freedom to choose their future.   Starting from success, family and their individuality has been taken.   Furthermore, most people in reality need love and happiness to go on and survive.   While we try to fix our lives with all the scientific ways, we are forgetting the most important parts of nature.      

Temple of Luxor :: essays research papers

Ancient Egypt’s pyramids are the oldest and largest stone structure in the world. Along the Nile 35 major pyramids still stand. The three largest pyramids at Giza rank as one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World. It was on the list of notable things to see which was made up by the travelers during ancient times. The ancient Egyptians also built temples of limestone. They designed parts of the temples to resemble plants. Moreover, many of ancient Egypt’s finest paintings and other works of art were produced for tombs and temples. Ancient Egyptian sculptors decorated temples with carvings showing festivals, military victories, and other important events. Sculptors also carved large stone sphinxes. These statutes were supposed to represent Egyptian Kings or Gods and were used to Guard temples and tombs. The Temples were houses of worship. The word temple most often refers to Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, Taoist, and ancient Near Eastern and European places of worship. Most Temples are built to honor god, a God, or many Gods. Many of these buildings are considered the homes of gods. Back then and still today worship at temples often involves traditional ceremonies and may include sacrifices. Certain temples stood on sacred sites. The design of numerous temples was symbolic. Luxor has often been called the â€Å"worlds greatest open air museum†, as indeed it is and much more. The number and safeguarding of the monuments in the Luxor area is said to be unparalleled then in any other part of the world. Actually, Luxor is really comprised of three different areas, consisting of the City of Luxor on the East side of the Nile, the town of Karnak just north of Luxor and Thebes, which the ancient Egyptians called Waset, which is on the west side of the Nile across from Luxor. The modern town of Luxor is home to 170,000 people in Egypt today. Luxor is the site of the ancient city of Thebes, which was the capital of Egypt from the 12th dynasty (1991 BC) and achieved its peak during the New Kingdom (1539 BC to around 700 BC). Although the mud brick palaces of Thebes have long disappeared, the stone temples have survived. The temple remained buried beneath the town of Luxor for thousands of years, and was not uncovered until a mosque was built on top of it. Now, the mosque remains an important part of the entire temple.

Identity in the Works of Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney Essay -- Lava

Identity in the Works of Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney Many times poetry is reflective of the author’s past as well as their personal struggles. One struggle that poets write about is of identity and the creation, as well as loss, of individual identities. Using a passage from the essay Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland, I will show how two poets use their craft to describe their struggle with identity. Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney both write poems which express an internal struggle with roles of identity and how they recreate their roles to fit their needs. Through retrospection and reflection, both poets come to realize that the roles they led as well as those they reinvented have created their own personal identities. Boland, in her essay Lava Cameo, touches on several emotions (loss, despair, etc) and episodes in her life which capture the essence of her identity. It is this notion of individual identity that is a central theme throughout Boland’s essay and some of her poems. Boland, through retrospection and hindsight, has been able to recognize the roles that society has dictated that she follow. These roles were not necessarily created for any rational reason (ex: female role as subordinate and even as marital property). One passage in particular captures the internal struggles Boland has endured. This passage runs from pages 27 to 29 in Boland’s Object Lessons. It begins by saying, "It may not be that women poets of another generation†¦" and ends with "†¦but because of poetry." The passage begins by discussing how Boland may be experiencing some unease that female poets before her time may not have experienced nor have even considered for a fleeting moment. Boland claims that she had stumbled upon a realization, one tha... ...s the possibility of reinvention of those roles for self betterment. Both Boland and Heaney show internal struggles with identity, particularly in feeling like a follower and then reinventing themselves into the role of a leader. Although Heaney chose to be a follower whereas Boland felt she was forced to be, their struggles are similar as are their resolutions. Works Cited Boland, Eavan. "Object Lessons: the life of the woman and the poet of our time." Lava Cameo. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. 3-34. Boland, Eavan. "An Origin Like Water." An Irish Child in England: 1951. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 190-191. Boland, Eavan. "An Origin Like Water." Fond Memory. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 192. Heaney, Seamus. "Opened Ground, Selected Poems 1966-1996." Follower. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. 10.

International Change and the Social World Essay

In meeting the demands of a global economy, technological advancements especially in the field of telecommunications and information technology are key factors in making possible various transactions faster, cheaper, more reliable and convenient. Needless to say, these technological advances are important tools if companies and other business ventures are to survive in the digital economy. These technological advancements however, are evolving far too fast which consequently generate pressing problems that ought to be considered. On a preliminary note, the aforementioned rapid technological evolutions pose serious questions if our societal structures can rapidly adapt to these changes and more importantly, if we, ourselves can rapidly adapt and be able to integrate for ourselves these changes. In line with this, what follows is a discussion of how such changes affect the global economy. Within this context, the task of this paper is to discuss the effects of work transformation in society with a particular emphasis on how it affects the people management systems around the world. Weick and Quinn (1999) contend that changes in the organization of work within societies may either be characterized as â€Å"discontinuous and episodic† or â€Å"continuous and emergent† (p.361). The difference between the two lies in the emphasis on intentionality, planning, management control, and specific outcomes in the former and the emphasis on improvisation, spontaneity, and ongoing action in the latter. The two perspectives stated above have a direct effect in the formation of an organizational framework. This is another way of saying that the manner in which organizational change is perceived supports an appreciation of the multidimensional nature of organizational phenomena. The organization of phenomena stems from the human need to conceptually order reality. Such a process is ensured through the creation or adoption of a language that may account for the reality perceived by the individual or by the social group. The importance of such a process stems from its issuance of a fixed and thereby more manageable reality. Such a reality, however, is continuously distorted due to the steady input of new forms of conceptualizations that also opt to enable the manageability of reality. Such a process is apparent within the business sector in the gradual shift from an information-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. The later form of economy recognizes that knowledge occupies a focal point in relation to the function of society. As a result of this, organizations became increasingly aware of the need for a ‘knowledge focus’ in their organizational strategies as they respond to changes in their environment. ‘Knowledge focus’ refers to the deobjectifcation of knowledge in favour of the codification of knowledge into systems (Bell, 1999, p.x). Within such an economy, organizational actors and the complex social interactions that take place amongst them recreate organizations through the continuous process of change. According to Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001), what makes knowledge organizational is it codification in the form of propositional statements set within a group’s collective understanding (p.974). It is important to note that such a process of knowledge codification requires the existence of local knowledge. Within an organization, such forms of local knowledge are evident in the company’s culture; the development of such is dependent upon the existing organizational framework. Such a point brings to focus one of the main elements of the labour market that determines the existing workforce’s productivity and performance within a particular society. The reason for such a focus is evident if one considers that the current shift in economy [from an information based economy to a knowledge-based economy] gives precedence on the role of the members of the workforce in the maintenance of an organizations overall knowledge based culture. In line with this, Davinport (1999) contends that such a culture necessitates a new mode of framing the human capital. According to Davinport, it is time to conceive of workers â€Å"not as human capital but as human capital owners and investors† (1999, p.7). Davinport argues that such a conception is not entirely new since it echoes the conception of the employee as an asset. The difference of such a view stems from the conception of the worker as the owner of the capital since workers are the ones who decide in which field they will contribute the specific talents and expertise they possess within the current market. The organization’s role thereby is fixed to the extent that its main role lies in utilizing and developing the skills offered by the member’s of their workforce. Organizations must thereby adopt new working practices or upgrade workplace skills. An example of this is evident in the content of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) of the United Kingdom which states that â€Å"in a mass customisation environment, where systems of production and distribution are readily imitated and leapfrogged, organisations must therefore continually invest in physical and human capital to keep ‘ahead of the game’†(2001, p.10). As a result of the above stated paradigmatic shift from an information-based economy to a knowledge based economy certain developments occurred within the economic, political, and technological fields. Such developments are evident in the increase in business competition and the advent of information technologies (Weatherly, 2003, p.2). Political and economic developments are evident in the increase in business competition which is a result of the globalization of trade and key economic sectors [e.g. telecommunication, electricity, transportation, financial services]. Technological developments, on the other hand, are evident in the advent of information technology which can best be seen through the continuous popularity and easy accessibility of the internet. According to Lev (2001), such developments within the above stated fields have dramatically changed the structure of organizations to the extent that intangibles [human capital] became the major value drivers of business within developed economies (p.8-14). The reason for this is evident if one considers that from a strategic perspective it has been noted that â€Å"fully one-third of the information used to justify the investment decision is non-financial† (Ernst & Young, 1997, p.10). Examples of such factors are â€Å"quality of management, effectiveness of new product development, strength of market position, strength of corporation culture, and effectiveness of compensations policies† (Weatherly, 2003, p.4). Such factors have an overall link to business systems since they are partially if not fully determined by the company’s culture maintained by its overall organizational framework. Furthermore, since the above stated factors are considered in the determination of investment decisions, it also follows that they have a direct effect in terms of the economic conditions of a business organizations and hence the economic side of society as a whole. As was stated above, one of the defining factors of the current paradigm shift within the market can be traced from the shift of importance from the tangible assets to the intangible assets. Tangible assets consists of financial assets [financial capital] and physical assets [e.g. property, equipment, and other furnishing] whereas intangible assets consists of intellectual capital [e.g. patent formulas and product designs] and human capital. The focus of this paper from the onset has been to lay down the current transformations of work in the period of globalization. What follows is the specification of how these changes have affected society at large. In Work, Self, and Society, Catherine Casey specifies the manner in which changes in work have affected society. Casey (1995) argues that the current conception of work which is defined by the effects of industrialization has turned the worker into a product or a commodity of the market. She states, The convergence of work and virtue (through methodical adherence to one’s ‘calling’)†¦set in place a type of citizen-worker that would subsequently come to typify modern forms of social organization. In modern society people have defined themselves and in turn have been socially defined, by the type of work that they do in the public sphere. (1995, p.28) In other words, the results of industrialization have led to the commodification of the individual as the individual derives his value from his work. The manner in which this is enabled is further evident in the current shift from an information based economy to a knowledge based economy as the value of the worker is considered to be dependent upon his knowledge. This shows how the nature of work within a post-industrial society has changed to the extent that the market has become dependent upon the mental labour and the mental knowledge of the worker [mental labour is considered to be the core of industrial activity] (Lawson, Jones, & Moores, 2000, p.99).   To a certain extent, one might note that this may prove to be beneficial for individual societies since the aforementioned paradigm shift has enabled the development of regional specialties and economies. Sabel (1999) states that the changes in the work paradigm within the post-industrial society has led to the development and growth of â€Å"twentieth century variants of industrial districts in Italy, West Germany, Japan, Denmark, Austria, France, and the United States† (p. 243). Such an assumption however may be considered as the result of a form of hasty generalization since although such developments have enabled organizations around to world to place greater focus upon the members of the workforce as well as upon the development of industrial districts around the world [the development of such is expected to pave the way for the industrialization of all countries and hence the development of these countries] such developments still place the worker in a disadvantaged position as he remains to be a commodity within the market whose value is dependent upon what the work system prescribes. References Bell, D. (1999).   The Axial Age of Technology, Foreword. The Coming of the Postindustrial Society.   New York: Basil Book. Casey, C. (1995). Work, Self, and Society: After Industrialism. London: Routledge. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2001.   Raising U.K. Productivity: Why People Management Matters. Davenport, T. (1999).   Human Capital: What It Is and Why People Invest.   San Francisco: Doubleday. Ernst & Young LLP. (1997). Measures that matter. Retrieved March 22, 2009 from www.cbi.cgey.com. Lawson, T., M. Jones, & R. Moores. (2000). Advanced Sociology Through Diagrams. Oxford: Oxford U.P. Lev, B. (2001). Intangibles: Management, measurement and reporting. Washington, DC: Brookings Inst. P. Sabel, C. (1999). Flexible Specialisation and the Re-emergence of Regional Economies. Modernity: Critical Concepts Ed. M. Waters. London: Taylor & Francis. Tsoukas, H. & Vladimirou, E. (2001). What is organizational knowledge? Journal of Management Studies, vol. 38, no.7. 973-93 Weatherly, L. (2003). Human capital-the elusive asset: Measuring and managing human capital: A strategic imperative for HR. Research Quarterly, Society for Human Resource Management. Weick, C. & Quinn, R. (1999). Organizational change and development.   Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 50: 361-386.

A Short History of Nearly Everything Essay

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a popular science book by American author Bill Bryson that explains some areas of science, using a style of language which aims to be more accessible to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject. It was one of the bestselling popular science books of 2005 in the UK, selling over 300,000 copies.[1] instead describing general sciences such as chemistry, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics. In it, he explores time from the Big Bang to the discovery of quantum mechanics, via evolution and geology. Bryson tells the story of science through the stories of the people who made the discoveries, such as Edwin Hubble, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. Background Bill Bryson wrote this book because he was dissatisfied with his scientific knowledge — that was, not much at all. He writes that science was a distant, unexplained subject at school. Textbooks and teachers alike did not ignite the passion for knowledge in him, mainly because they never delved in the whys, hows, and whens. â€Å"It was as if [the textbook writer] wanted to keep the good stuff secret by making all of it soberly unfathomable.† —Bryson, on the state of science books used within his school.[2] [edit] Contents Bryson describes graphically and in layperson’s terms the size of the universe, and that of atoms and subatomic particles. He then explores the history of geology and biology, and traces life from its first appearance to today’s modern humans, placing emphasis on the development of the modern Homo sapiens. Furthermore, he discusses the possibility of the Earth’s being struck by a meteor, and reflects on human capabilities of spotting a meteor before it impacts the Earth, and the extensive damage that such an event would cause. He also focuses on some of the most recent destructive disasters of volcanic origin in the history of our planet, including Krakatoa and Yellowstone National Park. A large part of the book is devoted to relating humorous stories about the scientists behind the research and discoveries and their sometimes eccentric behaviours. Bryson also speaks about modern scientific views on human effects on the Earth’s climate and  livelihood of other species, and the magnitude of natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and the mass extinctions caused by some of these events. The book does, however, contain a number of factual errors and inaccuracies.[3] An illustrated edition of the book was released in November 2005.[4] A few editions in Audiobook form are also available, including an abridged version read by the author, and at least three unabridged versions. [edit] Awards and reviews The book received generally favourable reviews, with reviewers citing the book as informative, well written and highly entertaining.[5][6][7] However, some feel that the contents might be uninteresting to an audience with prior knowledge of history or the sciences.[8] In 2004, this book won Bryson the prestigious Aventis Prize for best general science book.[9] Bryson later donated the GBP £10,000 prize to the Great Ormond Street Hospital children’s charity.[10] In 2005, the book won the EU Descartes Prize for science communication.[11] It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for the same year. Unremitting scientific effort over the past 300 years has yielded an astonishing amount of information about the world we inhabit. By rights we ought to be very impressed and extremely interested. Unfortunately many of us simply aren’t. Far from attracting the best candidates, science is proving a less and less popular subject in schools. And, with a few notable exceptions, popular books on scientific topics are a rare bird in the bestseller lists. Bill Bryson, the travel-writing phenomenon, thinks he knows what has gone wrong. The anaemic, lifeless prose of standard science textbooks, he argues, smothers at birth our innate curiosity about the natural world. Reading them is a chore rather than a voyage of discovery. Even books written by leading scientists, he complains, are too often clogged up with impenetrable jargon. Just like the alchemists of old, scientists have a regrettable tendency to â€Å"vaile their secrets with mistie speech†. Science, John Keats sulked, â€Å"will clip an Angel’s wings, / Conquer all mysteries by rule and line.† Bryson turns this on its head by blaming the messenger rather than the message. Robbing nature of its mystery is what  he thinks most science books do best. But, unlike Keats, he doesn’t believe that this is at all necessary. We may be living in societies less ready to believe in magic, miracles or afterlives, but the sublime remains. Rather as Richard Dawkins has argued, Bryson insists that the results of scientific study can be wondrous and very often are so. The trick is to write about them in a way that makes them comprehensible without crushing nature’s mystique. Bryson provides a lesson in how it should be done. The prose is just as one would expect – energetic, quirky, familiar and humorous. Bryson’s great skill is that of lightly holding the reader’s hand throughout; building up such trust that topics as recondite as atomic weights, relativity and particle physics are shorn of their terrors. The amount of ground covered is truly impressive. From the furthest reaches of cosmology, we range through time and space until we are looking at the smallest particles. We explore our own planet and get to grips with the ideas, first of Newton and then of Einstein, that allow us to understand the laws that govern it. Then biology holds centre-stage, heralding the emergence of big-brained bipeds and Charles Darwin’s singular notion as to how it all came about. Crucially, this hugely varied terrain is not presented as a series of discrete packages. Bryson made his name writing travelogues and that is what this is. A single, coherent journey, woven together by a master craftsman. The book’s underlying strength lies in the fact that Bryson knows what it’s like to find science dull or inscrutable. Unlike scientists who turn their hand to popular writing, he can claim to have spent the vast majority of his life to date knowing very little about how the universe works. Tutored by many of the leading scientists in each of the dozens of fields he covers, he has brought to the book some of the latest insights together with an amusingly gossipy tone. His technique was to keep going back to the experts until each in turn was happy, in effect, to sign off the account of their work he had put together. In short, he’s done the hard work for us. Bryson enlivens his accounts of difficult concepts with entertaining historical vignettes. We learn, for example, of the Victorian naturalist whose scientific endeavours included serving up mole and spider to his guests; and of the Norwegian palaeontologist who miscounted the number of fingers and toes on one of the most important fossil finds of recent history and wouldn’t let anyone else have a look at  it for more than 48 years. Bryson has called his book a history, and he has the modern historian’s taste for telling it how it was. Scientists, like all tribes, have a predilection for foundation myths. But Bryson isn’t afraid to let the cat out of the bag. The nonsense of Darwin’s supposed â€Å"Eureka!† moment in the Galapagos, when he spotted variations in the size of finch beaks on different islands, is swiftly dealt with. As is the fanciful notion of palaeontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott chancing on the fossil-rich Burgess Shales after his horse slipped on a wet track. So much for clarity and local colour. What about romance? For Bryson this clearly lies in nature’s infinitudes. The sheer improbability of life, the incomprehensible vastness of the cosmos, the ineffable smallness of elementary particles, and the imponderable counter-intuitiveness of quantum mechanics. He tells us, for example, that every living cell contains as many working parts as a Boeing 777, and that prehistoric dragonflies, as big as ravens, flew among giant trees whose roots and trunks were covered with mosses 40 metres in height. It sounds very impressive. Not all readers will consider it sublime, but it’s hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.  · John Waller is research fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine and author of Fabulous Science: Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery (OUP) What has propelled this popular science book to the New York Time’s Best Seller List? The answer is simple. It is superbly written. Author Bill Bryson is not a scientist – far from it. He is a professional writer, and hitherto researching his book was quite ignorant of science by his own admission. â€Å"I didn’t know what a proton was, or a protein, didn’t know a quark from a quasar, didn’t understand how geologists could look at a layer of rock on a canyon wall and tell you how old it was, didn’t know anything really,† he tells us in the Introduction. But Bryson got curious about these and many other things: â€Å"Suddenly, I had a powerful, uncharacteristic urge to  know something about these matters and to understand how people figure them out.† All of us should be lucky to be so curious. Young children are. That’s why they’re called â€Å"little scientists.† New to the world and without inhibitions, they relentlessly ask questions about it. And Bill Bryson’s curiosity led him to some good questions too: â€Å"How does anybody know how much the Earth weighs or how old its rocks are or what really is way down there in the center? How can they [scientists] know how and when the Universe started and what it was like when it did? How do they know what goes on inside an atom?† The Introduction also tells us that the greatest amazements for Bryson are how scientists worked out such things. His book is a direct result of addressing these issues. It is superbly written. Popular science writers should study this book.| A Short History of Nearly Everything serves a great purpose for those who know little about science. The deep questions may not necessarily be explicitly presented but many of the answers are. The reader gets to journey along the paths that led scientists to some amazing discoveries – all this in an extremely simple and enjoyable book. The prose is extraordinarily well written with lively, entertaining thoughts and many clever and witty lines. Consider, for example, Chapter 23 on â€Å"The Richness of Being.† It begins: â€Å"Here and there in the Natural History Museum in London, built into recesses along the underlit corridors or standing between glass cases of minerals and ostrich eggs and a century or so of other productive clutter, are secret doors – at least secret in the sense that there is nothing about them to attract the visitor’s notice.† This opening sentence really captures the atmosphere of a natural history museum. It is full of vivid descriptions and contains the cleverly constructed, paradoxical phrase â€Å"productive clutter.† The next paragraph begins to make the point: â€Å"The Natural History Museum contains some seventy million objects from every realm of life and every corner of the planet, with another hundred thousand or so added to the collection each year, but it is really only behind the scenes that you get a sense of what a treasure house this is. In cupboards and cabinets and long rooms full of close-packed shelves are kept tens of thousands of pickled animals in bottles, millions of insects pinned to squares of card, drawers of shiny mollusks, bones of dinosaurs, skulls of early humans, endless folders of neatly pressed plants. It is a little like wandering through Darwin’s brain.† And later: â€Å"We wandered through a confusion of departments where people sat at large tables doing intent, investigative things with arthropods and palm fronds and boxes of yellowed bones. Everything there was an air of unhurried thoroughness, of people being engaged in a gigantic endeavor that could never be completed and mustn’t be rushed. In 1967, I had read, the museum issued its report on the John Murray Expedition, an Indian Ocean survey, forty-five years after the expedition had concluded. This is a world where things move at their own pace, including the tiny lift Fortey and I shared with a scholarly looking elderly man with whom Fortey chatted genially and familiarly as we proceeded upwards at about the rate that sediments are laid down.† Often Bryson ends a paragraph with an amusing line. You find very few popular science books so well written. With the exception of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, it is hard to think of even one that is witty. Popular science writers should study this book. â€Å"I [Bryson] didn’t know a quark from a quasar . . . â€Å"| Sometimes even quoting writers rather than scientists and original sources, Bryson draws extensively from other books. For example, most of Chapter 21, whose focus is largely on the Burgess Shale fossils and the Cambrian explosion, is taken from Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life. And much of the rest of Chapter 21 is based on works by Richard Fortey and Gould’s other books. The author does not hide this. Titles are cited in the text, chapter notes provide quotes from books, and there is a lengthy bibliography. Given that Bryson in not a scientist, it is surprising how few errors there are in A Short History of Nearly Everything. Here are a couple that the staff at Jupiter Scientific uncovered: On what would happen if an asteroid struck Earth, Bryson writes, â€Å"Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it.† In reality, the shock wave would travel only at about 10 kilometers per second, which, alt hough very fast, is considerably less than the speed of light of 300,000 kilometers per second. Shortly thereafter, one reads â€Å"Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet . . . â€Å" It would take a few weeks for this to occur. The book gives the number of cells in the human body as ten-thousand trillion, but the best estimates are considerably less – about  50 trillion. Here’s how one might determine the number. A typical man and a typical cell in the human body respectively weigh 80 kilograms and 4 Ãâ€"10-9 grams. So there are about (80,000 grams per human)/(4 Ãâ€"10-9 grams per cell) = 2 Ãâ€"1013 cells per human, or twenty-trillion cells. By the way, since the number of microbes in or on the human body has been estimated to be one-hundred trillion, people probably have more foreign living organisms in them then cells! In the Chapter â€Å"The Mighty Atom†, it is written, â€Å"They [atoms] are also fantastically durable. Because they are so long lived, atoms really get around. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each us, it has been suggested – probably once belonged to Shakespeare.† Most of this paragraph is correct, but because atoms are stripped of there electrons in stars, Bryson should have said, â€Å". . . the nuclei of every atom you possess has most likely passed through several stars . . . † One might be shocked that each of the 6 trillion or so humans on Earth have so many of Shakespeare’s atoms in them. However, Jupiter Scientific has done an analysis of this problem and the figure in Bryon’s book is probably low: It is likely that each of us has about 200 billion atoms that were once in Shakespeare’s body. Bryson also exaggerates the portrayals of some scientists: Ernest Rutherford is said to be an overpowering force, Fred Hoyle a complete weirdo, Fritz Zwicky an utterly abrasive astronomer, and Newton a total paranoiac. Surely the descriptions of these and other scientists are distorted. From a scientific point of view, most topics are treated superficially. This renders the book of little interest to a scientist.| Here are some examples of witty lines that finish paragraphs: The concluding remarks on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis go: â€Å"In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibility, and beautiful, too. And it was all done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich.† On the Superconducting Supercollider, the huge particle accelerator that was to be built in Texas, Bill Bryson notes, â€Å"In perhaps the finest example in history of pouring money into a hole in the ground, Congress spent $2 billion on the project, then canceled it in 1993  after fourteen miles of tunnel had been dug. So Texas now boasts the most expensive hole in the universe.† Chapter 16 discusses some of the health benefits of certain elements. For example, cobalt is necessary for the production of vitamin B12 and a minute amount of sodium is good for your nerves. Bryson ends one paragraph with â€Å"Zinc – bless it – oxidizes alcohol.† (Zinc plays an important role in allowing alcohol to be digested.) On Earth’s atmosphere, the author notes that the troposphere, that part of the lower atmosphere that contains the air we breathe, is between 6 and 10 miles thick. He concludes, â€Å"There really isn’t much between you and oblivion.† In talking about the possibility of a sizeable asteroid striking Earth, Bryson at one point writes, â€Å"As if to underline just un-novel the idea had become by this time, in 1979, a Hollywood studio actually produced a movie called Meteor (â€Å"It’s five miles wide . . . It’s coming at 30,000 m.p.h. – and there’s no place to hide!) starring Henry Fonda, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, and a very large rock.† From a scientific point of view, most topics are treated superficially. This renders the book of little interest to a scientist, but has certain advantages for the layperson. In some cases, emphasis is not given to the most important issue. Bryson simply lacks the insight and judgement of a trained scientist. Chapter One on the Big Bang is particularly difficult for the author. There is too much discussion on inflation and on the many-universe theory. Inflation, which is the idea that the space underwent a tremendous stretching at a tiny fraction of a second after â€Å"the beginning†, is consistent with astronomical observations, is theoretically attractive but has no confirming evidence yet. The multi-universe theory, which proposes that our universe is only one of many and disconnected from the others, is complete speculation. On the other hand, Bryson neglects events that have been observationally established. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, in which the nuclei of the three lightest elements were made, is glossed over in one paragraph. Recombination, the process of electrons combining with nuclei to form atoms, is not covered – an unfortunate omission because it is the source of the cosmic microwave background radiation (When nuclei capture electrons, radiation is given off). Bryson simply refers to the cosmic microwave background radiation as something â€Å"left over from the Big Bang†, a description lacking true insight. As another example of misplaced emphasis, much of the chapter entitled  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Welcome to the Solar System,† is on Pluto and its discovery and on how school charts poorly convey the vast distances between planets. Although the Sun is not even treated, Bryson ends the discussion with â€Å"So that’s your solar system.† Here is another example in which Bryson’s lack of scientific training hurts the content of the book. In Chapter 27 entitled â€Å"Ice Time, he discusses as through it happened with certainty the â€Å"Snowball Earth.† It, however, is a very controversial proposal in which the entire planet was engulfed in ice at the end of the Proterozoic Era. The book says, â€Å"Temperatures plunged by as much as 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The entire surface of the planet may have frozen solid, with ocean ice up to a half mile thick at high latitudes and tens of yards thick even in the tropics.† While it is true that this period was the most severe ice age ever to transpire on Earth, it is unlikely that the weather became so cold as to create the conditions described in the above quote. Then the chapter on hominid development does the opposite by presenting the situation as highly unknown and debatable. It is true that the fossil record for the transition from apes to Homo sapiens is quite fragmentary and that anthropologists are dividerd over certain important issues such as how to draw the lines between species to create the family tree, how Homo sapiens spread over the globe and what caused brain size to i ncrease. However, the overall pattern of homonid evolution is understood. The reader gets to journey along the paths that led scientists to some amazing discoveries – all this in an extremely simple and enjoyable book.| Bryson has a nice way of summarizing atoms: â€Å"The way it was explained to me is that protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.† The number of protons in the nucleus of an atom, also known as the atomic number, determines the element type. Hydrogen has one proton, helium two, lithium three and so on. The electrons of an atom, or more precisely the outermost or valence electrons, determine how the atom binds to other atoms. The binding properties of an atom determines how it behaves chemically. Every important topic in A Short History of Nearly Everything can be found in Jupiter Scientific’s book The Bible According to Einstein, which presents science in the language and format of the Bible. Jupiter Scientific has made available onlin e many sections of this book. This review, which has been produced by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, is in the public domain, and may be used by anyone, in whole or in part, without permission and without charge, provided the source is acknowledged–released October 2004. For comments or questions please contact Ian Johnston. A Short History of Nearly Everything The first thing one notices about a new Bill Bryson book in recent years is the disproportionately large size of the author’s name on the cover—bigger  than the title by a few orders of magnitude. That’s appropriate, I suppose, for an author who has emerged as North America’s most popular writer of non-fiction, with legions of fans around the world, perhaps even something of a cult figure, who can sell anything on the strength of his name alone. Bryson’s recently published book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, is certainly a departure from what he has written so far. It’s a bold and ambitious attempt to tell the story of our earth and of everything on it. Initially motivated by the most admirable of scientific feelings, intense curiosity about something he admits he knew virtually nothing about, Bryson spent three years immersing himself in scientific literature, talking to working scientists, and travelling to places where science is carried on, so that he might â€Å"know a little about these matters and . . . understand how people figured them out† and then produce a book which makes it â€Å"possible to understand and appreciate—marvel at, enjoy even—the wonder and accomplishments of science at a level that isn’t too technical or demanding, but isn’t entirely superficial either.† The result is a big volume recapitulating the greatest story ever told, from the beginnings of the universe, to the physical history of the Earth, to the development and evolution of life here—an attempt to provide, as the title indicates, an all-encompassing and continuous narrative, crammed with information on everything from particle physics to plate tectonics, from cloud formations to bacteria. For all the obvious natural clarity and organization within science, writing well about the subject is not as easy as it may appear. It demands that the writer select an audience and then deliver what he or she has to say in a style appropriate to that readership, in the process risking the loss of other potential readers. Bryson has clearly thought about this point and introduces into writing about science a style very different from, say, the brisk omniscience of Isaac Asimov, the trenchant polemics of Richard Dawson, the engaged contextual scholarship of Stephen Jay Gould, or the leisured and fascinating historical excursions of Simon Winchester (to cite some recent masters of the genre). He brings to bear on science his impressive talents as a folksy, amusing, self-deprecating spinner of yarns, assuming considerable ignorance in his readers and inviting them to share his newly discovered excitement at all the things he has learned, obviously trying with an atmosphere of cozy intimacy and friendship to ease any fears  they may bring to a book about so many unfamiliar things. This feature will almost certainly irritate a great many people who already know a good deal about science (who may feel they are being patronized) and charm many of those who do not. The information is presented here in an often off-beat and amusing and certainly non-intimidating way. Bryson sticks to his resolve not to confront the reader with numbers and equations and much complex terminology. So he relies heavily on familiar analogies to illustrate scientific theories, and these are extremely effective—inventive and illuminating. There is a wealth of interesting and frequently surprising facts about everything from mites to meteorites, conveyed with a continuing sense of wonder and enjoyment. Bryson delivers well on his promise to provide an account of what we know and (equally important to him) of the enormous amount we still do not know. Bryson is not all that interested, however, in the second part of his announced intention, to explore how we know what we know. He pays little to no attention to science as a developing system of knowledge, to its philosophical underpinnings (hence, perhaps, the omission of any treatment of mathematics) or to the way in which certain achievements in science are important not merely for the â€Å"facts† they confirm or reveal but for the way in which they transform our understanding of what science is and how it should be carried out. So for him â€Å"how we know† is simply a matter of accounting for those who came up something that turned out to be of lasting value (no wonder he is somewhat baffled by Darwin’s delay in publishing his theory of natural selection—the notion that Darwin’s theory may have presented some important methodological difficulties of which Darwin was painfully aware does not seem nearly as important as Darwin’s mysterious illness). Bryson is at his very best when he can anchor what he has to say on a particular place and on conversations with particular working scientists there. Here his considerable talents as a travel writer and story teller take over, and the result is an often amusing, surprising, insightful, and always informative glimpse into science as a particular activity carried on by interesting individuals in all sorts of different places. The sections on Yellowstone Park, the Burgess Shale, and the Natural History Museum in London, for example, are exceptionally fine, mainly because we are put in imaginative touch with science in action, we hear directly from the scientists themselves, and our understanding of  science is transformed from the knowledge of facts into a much fuller and more satisfying appreciation for a wonderfully human enterprise taking place all around us. Here Bryson provides us with a refreshingly new style in writing about science. Indeed, these passages are so striking in co mparison with other parts of the book that one suspects that Bryson’s imagination is far more stimulated by scientists at work than by the results their work produces. This impression is reinforced by Bryson’s habit of plundering the history of science for amusing anecdotes about interesting characters, obviously something which he finds imaginatively exciting. He’s prepared to interrupt the flow of his main narrative in order to deliver a good story, and routinely moves into a new section with a narrative hook based on a memorable character, a dramatic clash of personalities, or an unexpected location. Many of these stories and characters will be familiar enough to people who know a bit about science already (e.g., the eccentricities of Henry Cavendish, William Buckland, or Robert FitzRoy, the arguments between Gould and Dawkins, the adventures of Watson and Crick, and so on), but Bryson handles these quick narrative passages so well that the familiar stories are still worth re-reading, and there are enough new nuggets to keep reminding the more knowledgeable readers just how fascinating the history of science can be. Not that Bryson is very much interested in linking developments in science to any continuing attention to historical context. He’s happy enough to refer repeatedly to the context if there’s a good yarn to be had—if not, he’s ready to skim over it or ignore it altogether. This gives his account of developments a distinctly Whiggish flavour, a characteristic which will no doubt upset historians of science. At times, too, this habit of frequent quick raids into the past encourages a tendency to flippant snap judgments for the sake of a jest or some human drama. But given the audience Bryson is writing for and his desire to keep the narrative full of brio, these criticisms are easy enough to overlook. And speaking from my own limited experience in writing about the history of science, I can attest to the fact that once one begins scratching away at the lives of the scientists themselves, the impulse to draw on the wonderful range of the extraordinary characters one discovers is almost irresistible. Bryson’s narrative gets into more serious difficulties, however, when he cannot write from his strengths, that is, when he cannot link what the  subject demands to particular people and places. Here the prose often tends to get bogged down in summaries of what he has been reading lately or inadequate condensations of subjects too complex for his rapid pace. Thus, for example, the parts where his prose has to cope with systems of classifications (for example, of clouds, or bacteria, or early forms of life) the sense of excitement disappears and we are left to wade through a dense array of facts, without much sense of purpose. At such times, Bryson seems to sense the problem and often cranks up the â€Å"golly gee† element in his style in an attempt to inject some energy into his account, but without much success. And not surprisingly, the world of particle physics defeats his best attempts to render it familiar and comfortable to the reader, as Bryson concedes in an unexpectedly limp and apologetic admission: â€Å"Almost certainly this is an area that will see further developments of thought, and almost certainly these thoughts will again be beyond most of us.† It’s very curious that Bryson makes no attempt to assist the reader through such passages with any illustrative material, which would certainly have enabled him to convey organized information in a much clearer, more succinct, and less tedious manner. Early on, he lays some of the blame for his ignorance about science on boring school text books, so perhaps his decision to eschew visual aids has something to do with his desire not to produce anything like a school text (although, as I recall, diagrams, charts, and photographs were often the most exciting things about such books). Or perhaps he’s simply supremely confident that his prose is more than enough to carry the load. Whatever the reason, the cost of that decision is unnecessarily high. I suspect reactions to this book will vary widely. Bryson fans will, no doubt, be delighted to hear the master’s voice again and will forgive the lapses in energy and imaginative excitement here and there in the story. By contrast, many scientists and historians of science will find the tone and the treatment of the past not particularly to their liking. I’ll value the book as a source of useful anecdotes and some excellent writing about scientists at work, but turn to less prolix and better organized accounts to enrich my understanding of our scientific knowledge of the world and its inhabitants. But then again, if my grandchildren in the next few years begin to display some real interest in learning about science, I’ll certainly put this book in front of them.