Mind Neanderthal

Darnton, John: MIND CATCHER, New York Dutton Adult 2002
ISBN: 0-525-94662-4 As New Condition

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but neither pioneering neurosurgeon Leo Saramaggio nor Warren Cleaver, a brilliant researcher seeking to unravel the mystery of the soul and recreate it in a microchip, has any intention of letting that happen to Tyler, a 13-year-old boy whose brain is all but destroyed in a freak accident that leaves him closer to death than life. John Darnton, the author of two previous scientific thrillers (Neanderthal, The Experiment), offers a provocative glimpse of what lies beyond the frontiers of both medicine and artificial intelligence in this clearly well-researched and tightly plotted thriller that's bound to provoke comparisons to Robin Cook and Michael Crichton. <P> Unlike them, Darnton is able to tell a gripping story without dumbing down the science or shortchanging the characters, even those who aren't central to the plot, like Tyler's father, Scott, or Kate Willett, a neurosurgery resident who suspects that her superiors have gone way beyond the boundaries of ethical practice in their treatment of Scott's injured son. This is a fast-paced, suspenseful thriller that demonstrates Darnton's increasing command of the genre and holds out the possibility that in his next book, he'll surpass it. --Jane Adams From Publishers Weekly At Manhattan's renowned St. Catherine's Hospital, brilliant neurosurgeon Leopoldo Saramaggio does pioneering research on healing the damaged brain by linking it to computers that can take over its functions temporarily. Unbeknownst to the imperious Saramaggio, colleague Dr. Warren Cleaver, a fame-hungry mad scientist in the Hollywood tradition, carries out illegal experiments with mentally ill patients at run-down Pinegrove Hospital on Roosevelt Island. Cleaver's experiments take Saramaggio's work to dangerous extremes. Thirteen-year-old Tyler Jessup is rushed to St. Catherine's after a piece of rock-climbing equipment gets lodged in his head. His distraught father, Scott, a famous photographer and single parent, agrees to let Saramaggio try his new technique on Tyler, convinced that it's his son's only chance. Second thoughts quickly follow and, assisted by beautiful Dr. Kate Willet, new on the staff at St. Catherine's, Scott battles to get his initial consent reversed. The story sags as Scott and Kate grow closer, a development dictated more by literary convention than logic or character chemistry, but it quickens again when Tyler's bodily functions fail and evil Cleaver whisks him away for his Frankenstein experiments. Darnton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Neanderthal and The Experiment, writes elegantly, but maroons the novel in no-man's-land: too short on action and suspense to fully succeed as a thriller, it lacks the character depth to convince as serious fiction. Published at Twenty Six dollars. Hardcover 6 x 9"

[SW: greg iles, suspense, fiction, historical fiction, overrated, mystery, jack ryan, thriller, tom clancy, clancy, spenser]

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Darnton,John: Mind Catcher, New York, New York, U.S.A. E P Dutton 2002
ISBN: 0525946624 Fine

A square solid tight clean un-read copy. The jacket has some light rubbing wear,minor edgewear. The author of Neanderthal,his third book. First Edition/First Printing N-Fine Hard Cover

[SW: FICTION THRILLERS MEDICAL NEW YORK]

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Gooch, Stan: Cities of Dreams, Rider London (1989)
22x14cm, x,278 pp Contents: Suppose, Red Ochre; Chronology & Geography; Three Ms: The Hunted Maidens; The Dancing Maze; The Spinning Moon; Aboriginal World; Shanidar; Blood on the Skirt; Thirteen Moons; Gone to Spiral Castle; Left Out; Lindow Man; Uncommon Ground; Wild Men; The High Civilisation of Dreams; Biological Imperative; Appendix: Skeletons in our Cupboard ["This book challenges the orthodox view that nothing worth the name civilisation existed prior to the last Ice Age & the subsequent emergence of 'modern' man some 30,000 years ago: Building on solid & accepted archaeological evidence, Gooch argues that, unlike ourselves, Neanderthal man, who flourished during the millenia before the Ice Age, was not at all concerned with permanent structures or developing technology. His attention was directed to the pursuance of complex religious and mythic beliefs and rituals. To use Gooch's phrase, Neanderthal man built only ' cities of dreams'. His very highly evolved culture and civilisation ( capable for instance, of calculating the moon's long-term cycles and the periodicity of the planets) was nevertheless one only of the mind. The book propose's that 'modern man' - patriarchal, sun-worshipping Cro-Magnon - discovered the matriarchal, nocturnal, moon-worshipping Neanderthal, with a long-established and widespread religious 'empire'. Over a period of many thousands of years, Cro-Magnon gradually conquered and wiped out Neanderthal man - but in the process changed his own culture radically and forever.,." - publisher's description]

orig.boards Minor rubbing. VG., dustwrapper.

[SW: Palaeolithic Archaeology Neanderthal Man Neanderthals Stone Age Paleolithic History of Religion Prehistory Archeology Ancient Religious]

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Fuhlrott, J.C. Menschliche Überreste aus einer Felsengrotte des Düsselthals.

Bonn, Henry & Cohen, 1859. With 1 lithogr. plt. p. 131-153 in : Verhandelungen des naturhistorischen Vereines der preussischen Rheinlande und Westphalens. 16 Jg. Bonn, vi,448p.3 plts. or. boards. First edition. Darmstädter 564, Poggendorff III 486 (only first book ed. 1865). Printing and the mind of man nr. 342 :" THE NEANDERTHAL MAN. In 1856 quarrymen working in the Neanderthal between Düsseldorf und Elberfeld unearthed a number of bones in a limestone grotto. Part of a skull and some long bones eventually reached Johann Carl Fuhlrott, a schoolmaster at the college in Elberfeld. He immediately recognized the importance of the find, but was not able to save any more bones from what was in all probability, a whole skeleton. He sent a cast of the cranium to Schaaffhausen at Bonn University, who was at once convinced that they were human, and that the extraordinary skull was not a pathological specimen but had belonged to a normal individual of some ancient race of human which differed considerably from all modern races. It was untill 1886 that Neanderthal-type remains were unearthed with a rigorous scientific precision that left no doubt as to the antiquity and normality of 'Neanderthal-man'". The "first part" mentioned by P.M.M. in 1857 consists merely of a short note in the same "Verhandelungen". The treatise of 1859 is the most important of the two, was written by the actual finder and is illustrated. KEYWORDS: anthropology anatomy zoology

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