Lawrence Goldstone

In the early years of their marriage the writers Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone decided to become book collectors. I suspect the authors were being disingenuous in claiming to be completely ignorant about the hobby to the point of not even knowing what they wanted to collect. However, their feigned naïveté allows them to lead the reader through dusty old bookshops that have likely ceased to exist by now, learning what to look for. Along the way they introduce many delightfully quirky show more booksellers. Even to the non-collector their excursions into book land are great fun. I picked up a few tips and am glad to find out that I’m not the first would-be buyer to get snubbed in NYC’s Argosy Bookshop. show less

I got off to a rocky start with Lawrence Goldstone's new book, Birdmen. By the end of the introduction, he had already made a silly technical mistake by confusing the special and general theories of relativity. He then botched his discussions of some technical issues with Langley's attempts at flight. Note to author, if you're going to criticise the technical competence of one of your subjects, make sure that you get your criticisms correct. You'll just end up with egg on your face. However, show more in the end I came to enjoy this retelling of the early days of aviation.

The age was filled with colorful, clever, daring men (and women) who's stories fill these pages with a vibrant, squabbling one upsmanship that drove aviation forward technically and culturally. For the first decade the only real markets for the airplane were for competition flying and veblenian thrill seeking by the "birdmen" who dared to take these fragile contraptions aloft. Their daring and disasters burned flight into the consciousness of the times, but these willowy contraptions of lacquered silk and wood, so filled with possibilities, were too feeble to be exploited for practical use. So the money men, who could smell the scent of profit, and the newspapermen, who could taste the blood in the water, put up thousands of dollars in prize money to fund the aerial competitions which drove the technology forward.

And this is where the crux of our story lies. Orville and Wilbur Wright, having designed, constructed and flown the first practical, controllable heavier than air vehicle, filed for and received patents for their method for controlled flight in America and several European countries. If you've ever been involved in writing a patent application, you know how the game is played. You seek to lay claim to so much more than the actual device you have designed. The goal is to make your claims as broad as possible to prevent competitors from slipping past the area you have fenced off in your patent and competing with you on equal terms. This is just what the Wrights intended. Having identified a critical feature of the control of natural bird flight, the fine control of the shape of the wing to stabilize the lateral (or level) flight, they sought exclusive rights to all means for controlling that stability. To their minds the true innovation in their patent was not the specifics of how they twisted the wings, altering the flow of air to effect stable flight, but that fact that you could do this. Thus any means of control by altering the flow of air over the wings would be in violation of their patent.

There is no doubt that Wilbur Wright was a meticulous and innovative researcher. His work and insights were laudatory. But having reached controllable manned flight first, he sought to monopolize access to the skies. He used the courts to try and enforce their patent rights and extract crippling license fees ($1000 per plane sold or about 20% of the sale price) from his competitors. Had those competitors simply acquiesced to Wilbur's demands, they would not have been in a position to compete. The Wright brothers would have controlled aviation development world wide for nearly two decades.

There were many skilled researchers working world wide on heavier than air flight, (many of them for far longer than the Wrights had been), and they were not going to give in so easily to the Wright's patent infringement claims. Before Kitty Hawk, aviation research had been a competitive but collegial world. The Wrights blew that world apart with their patent war. Their legal wrangling alienated them and stifled American aviation innovation. Wilbur Wright's obsession with the legal battle monopolized his time so that he failed to produce any significant innovations while his competitors strove diligently to further aviation...and their pocket books.

Birdmen is a fascinating story that is well told. It has its flaws, and there is nothing new in this retelling, but your time will be well spent getting to know the colorful history of the early days of aviation. show less

There's a blurb on the back of this book from Kirkus Reviews that says Used and Rare is "A sort of Year in Provence for book lovers." This is the perfect description for this book, except it was funnier; I laughed out loud in several places.

Used and Rare chronicles the journey of the Goldstones into book collecting, starting with an innocent search for a used copy of War and Peace suitable for a gift. This is how lifelong, obsessive passions begin. In fact it occurred to me as I read this show more that I have reason to be thankful that MT does not share my passionate love of books because if he did, we'd be the Goldstones and I shudder to think of the swath of destruction the two of us having a shared passion would wreck on our finances.

Having started reading this last night before bed (and making MT stay awake long enough so I could read parts of it aloud to him), I blew off everything I had to do today so that I could sit down and finish it. It's well written, it's funny, it's interesting and surprisingly it has what could sort of be called a plot, in that there's a journey these two take through book collecting and by the end of the book they come out the other other side with realisations made and lessons learned. In fact, the way the book ended was just the cherry on top of a perfectly lovely read.

This book isn't necessarily going to appeal to people who love to read, but people who love to own books and take great pleasure in being physically surrounded by the works of authors who have educated, entertained and changed them for better or worse? I think those people would love this book and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. show less

Reformation-era physician and theologian Michael Servetus is remembered today for two things: he was the first anatomist to accurately describe the circulation of the blood through the heart, and he died a heretic's brutal death at the stake in John Calvin's Geneva. Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone tell the story of Servetus's life and thought in Out of the Flames., with a special emphasis on the fate of Servetus' written works, many of which moldered in obscurity for years.

Calvin (aka "the show more Ayatollah of Geneva") held a personal grudge against Servetus because the scholar had written a scathing line-by-line critique of Calvin's magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The reformer was determined that his rival's work would not outlive him. After an unjust trial, Calvin had Servetus burned at the stake along with his books, and ordered all remaining copies destroyed. Today, only three copies of his Christianismi Restitutio, the book in which Servetus famously rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and described the circulation of the heart, are known to have survived.

Although he was a martyr, the Goldstones do not portray Servetus as a saint. He was brilliant, but also arrogant and in some ways, foolish. He courted his own death by insisting on stopping by Geneva on his way to exile in Italy.

The Goldstones did a lot of research, and it seems they didn't want to leave a single bit of it out. The book gets confusing and a little ponderous as they tell the back stories of many figures through the ages, some of whom were only tangentially related to Servetus. Nonetheless, this is a good introduction to the life and work of a man who held fast to his convictions in the face of murderous opposition. show less