Mind - Sharpening Lateral Thinking Puzzles

The puzzles in this book truly are mind-sharpening. I enjoyed this book & others by this author because it makes you look at life from a different perspective. The illustrations show a dry sense of humor that I enjoy.

The Spear

James Herbert - The Spear

I expected to be thrilled by this novel about neo-Nazis and their attempts to gain power using the spear that pierced the side of Christ, but it was an effort to work my way through this novel. I believe it's focus is too narrow-- it's missing a sense of international intrigue that you would get from a good spy novel, or a sense of awe that you would get from a novel that knows something about the occult. In short, it needed to have opened up a bit more, to have a more global perspective on what are basically earth-shaking events. It doesn't help that some of the action scenes are a bit awkward, either. An adequate time-killer, nothing more.

Godel's Incompleteness Theorems

Kurt Goedel, the greatest logician of our time, startled the world of mathematics in 1931 with his Theorem of Undecidability, which showed that some statements in mathematics are inherently "undecidable." His work on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum theory brought him further worldwide fame. In this introductory volume, Raymond Smullyan, himself a well-known logician, guides the reader through the fascinating world of Goedel's incompleteness theorems.

Recursion Theory for Metamathematics

This work is a sequel to the author's Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, though it can be read independently by anyone familiar with Godel's incompleteness theorem for Peano arithmetic. The book deals mainly with those aspects of recursion theory that have applications to the metamathematics of incompleteness, undecidability, and related topics. It is both an introduction to the theory and a presentation of new results in the field.

Mac, Information Detective, in The Curious Kids...Digging for Answers : A Storybook Approach to Introducing Research Skills

This set is designed for teachers and librarians to help children learn key research skills. When Chen's dog Digger unearths an unusually hard object, Chen, Tanisha, and Timmy are anxious to find out more about the strange bone. With the help of their friend Mac, Information Detective, they pick a topic or question, narrow it down, and make a plan. Interactive Pages invite adults to stop the story and discuss particular topics with the listeners before proceeding. Once Chen and his friends decide that they are looking for information about fossils, they locate, collect, and organize it.