Wednesday, October 02, 2002

Michelle Singletary, columnist with the Washington Post, is starting the Color of Money Book Club.  Each month she will promote one personal finance book that can help us navigate out of the mess the economy now seems to have found itself in.  Her first selection is The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clason $ 6.99 from Signet.   She selected this for several reasons - 144 pages quick read, inexpensive, but most important an old book with time tested wisdom about building wealth, using parables set in ancient Babylon.  We are invited to an on-line discussion of the book Oct 23 at noon CDT http://www.washingtonpost.com but if we want to win one of the dozen copies she will be giving away, our entry must be postmarked by Oct 7.  Details in her Oct 2 column. 11:41:49 PM

Remember Longitude, the PBS special shown in America on A+E, based on the book by Dava Sobel?  How about The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester?  Well, to that collection add The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder, featured Inside Borders Oct 2002 edition, a book store chain recently arrived in Evansville Indiana, where I live, but undoubtedly a familiar chain name in many larger cities.  What these 3 books have in common is that they help us understand the history of science by following along the struggles of the people who made the discoveries. 2 astronomers in the 1700'ds attempted to measure planet Earth, and their research led to our metric system, but apparently they made a mistake, and covered it up.  What mistake?  Aha, now you will have to read the book, 11:34:12 PM

© Copyright 2002 Al Macintyre.