Nigel Calder (1)Reviews

I don't remember when we acquired this Penguin book but it has been on my shelves for some time. I could easily have placed it with the sailing books but it is also full of history, geology, and lore of the French and English coasts along with the various islands that exist in the Channel. The history ranges from the prehistoric up to the time in which Calder is writing and is an interesting view of the cross-channel relationships of the peoples involved.

The English Channel takes the form of a cruise in a ketch beginning at Ushant up the eastern side of the Channel to the North Sea, passing Brittany, Normandy, and on to Flanders. Then crossing over to the English side, we sail back down the channel eventually reaching the Isles of Scilly. On the way Calder treats the reader to the geology, geography, and history of each section of the coast as well as a great deal of information on navigation in the waters and ports of the Channel. The many maps were very helpful in visualizing the places he was describing.

While this was a slow read I did enjoy the many stories he told and all the facts about this area that I had never before come across.

This is a zestfully informative book on Halley's comet and on the history, legends, and science of comets as a whole. Calder takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through centuries of speculation and discoveries.

The human world is shaped by the imagination of individuals who capture the enthusiasm of others who in tern struggle to make that dream a reality.
This book explores the proposed solutions offered up by some of the great free-thinkers of their day who contemplated the incredible odds necessary to make colonisation and extra-terrestrial habitation a reality one day in the future.
Filled with over a hundred colour and black/white photos and diagrams (with many high quality full page plates) this book speaks in very simplified terms but the ideas are grand and it makes fascinating reading. I found it a pleasant change to read a generally optimistic view of the future, even if many of the 'big ideas' failed to materialise within the projected dates given - illustrated best (on p.29) by one of the members of O'Neill's Space Settlement team sporting a Tee-shirt boasting 'Lunar Mine by '89'.
Nevertheless it acts as a convenient springboard providing a nice overview and back history of a topic which is still as much in it's infancy as it was in the late 1970's.

This fascinating book accompanied the 1978, three part, BBC / OECA (TV Ontario) television series of the same name, but is a stand alone volume in its own right.

Sadly, now out of print.

I am not a scientist but love to study and read science, especially regarding the cosmos and atomic/sub-atomic particles. This one was a perfect read, and the author makes these tough topics fun and easy to read.

Blew my mind.

Clear explanations of both of Einstein's theories, and why they are so important. Reading the 1979 version also gives a startling picture of how far our knowledge has advanced.

It not often that a book about cruising under sail, Tagged Travel, Cruising could also then justify the Tags of Geology, Archeology, Geography, Etymology, Science and History. This book by British Scientist Nigel Calder is constructed on a cruise in his sailing ketch around the coastline of the English Channel, or la Manche. It strongly stands as a travel narrative, as an interesting cruise, as a history on the creation of the geography, coastal inlets and cliffs by the actions of the Teutonic Plates and as equally strongly as a historical record of the politics, tongues and anthropology of the nations around the Channel. And it is an engrossingly readable book too !

Nigel Calder is the son of the late Lord (Peter) Ritchie-Calder, a brother of the historian Angus Calder, the mathematician Allan Calder and his sister was the educationist Isla Calder … and his father also wrote as the travel writer Simon Calder. With all that family talent, and the additional experience of Calder as an editor of the English magazine New Scientist, it is no great surprise that this book is a scholarly but highly readable account.

Excellent explanation of general and special relativity. Calder does something no else does and starts with general relativity, which seems weird at first but actually makes sense (since special relativity is the "special" case).

This wonderful tome kept the lights burning late many a night as I moved every which way through the interrelated articles on everything under the sun... including the Sun itself! Nigel got his chops writing for New Scientist for a jillion years. No wonder I subscribe to the magazine! Great stuff. Only problem: the paper is too heavy. Wish there was an electronic version available.

In 1964, Calder, who was then editor of New Scientist, asked 100 experts their predictions for 20 years hence. In 1984, he evaluated the results and looked forward another 20 years. Some things he did point out as concerns like global warming and sustainable development are prescient. He also correctly noted the demographic transition. Of course, this was definitely a product of its time. AI and fusion are still nowhere on the horizon. This may also have been the last book written to take seriously that automation would put us out of work. Nothing like the Internet is mentioned. (Connections between computers are small computers to the central big computer.) The main prediction, this being the 80s, is nuclear war. It only took 5 years for history to diverge from the path described here.

756-page compendium of 119 short takes ("stories") on many areas of science.