This is a ``lecture note'' style review guide, originally designed to support my personal teaching activities at Duke University. It is freely available in its entirety to all the students of the world in a downloadable PDF form, or it can be be read online at:
and will be made available in an inexpensive print version via Lulu press as soon as it is in a sufficiently polished and complete state.
I make this available for free for personal use only so that the text can be used by students all over the world regardless of their means or ability to pay. Nevertheless, I am hoping that students who truly find this work useful will purchase an (inexpensive) copy of this text, if only to help subsidize me while I continue to write more inexpensive textbooks.
Be warned: As a ``living'' document that I actually use to teach, these notes may have errors of omission or commission. Expect them to change without warning as I add content or correct errors. Purchasers of any paper version should be aware of its probable imperfection and be prepared to either live with it or mark up their own copies with corrections or additions as need be (in the lecture note spirit) as I do mine. The text has generous margins, is widely spaced, and contains a number of scattered blank pages for students' or instructors' own use to facilitate this.
Note well that this is an ``odd'' book in that it isn't intended to be used as a textbook ever for any course even though it may well prove to be better than any real textbook for learning or relearning the material it covers quickly. This is in part because this book has no homework problems in it. There are no exercises. There is no possibility of a student being given ``the assignment on page 23'' to complete by Monday.
Yet to learn something it is essential to do something and not just read a book or listen to a lecture. Tough. Maybe one day I'll write up an associated book of problems. Or (if you're using it to teach or learn math anyway) you can always make up problems of your own. Or best of all, it can be used for its intended purposes - to be the book in your left hand while your right is working out homework problems in something else - physics, economics, chemistry, or even algebra, trigonometrics, calculus. Math as mindless manipulation of empty symbols doesn't appeal that much even to most mathematicians. Math as a process of reasoning about problems with meaning on the other hand, can be a real pleasure!
I cherish good-hearted communication from students or other instructors pointing out errors or suggesting new content (and have in the past done my best to implement many such corrections or suggestions).
A lecture note style textbook intended to support the teaching of introductory physics.
A review of all the essential mathematics needed by students taking introductory physics or other physical science courses at the college level. However, it is written to be a gangbusters review for the SATs, for students struggling in a calculus or precalculus class, or even for smart students in middle school who want to ``instantly'' learn the essential results from all of high school math without all the pain and suffering.
A set of lecture notes intended to support the second semester of a two semester course based on J. D. Jackson's book of the same name, although it can also stand alone as a textbook.
An online classic for years, this is the print version of the famous free online book on cluster engineering. It too is being actively rewritten and developed, no guarantees, but it is probably still useful in its current incarnation.
ISBN: 978-1-4303-2245-0
Web:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/rgb/Lilith/Lilith.php
Lilith is the first person to be given a soul by God, and is given the job of giving all the things in the world souls by loving them, beginning with Adam. Adam is given the job of making up rules and the definitions of sin so that humans may one day live in an ethical society. Unfortunately Adam is weak, jealous, and greedy, and insists on being on top during sex to ``be closer to God''.
Lilith, however, refuses to be second to Adam or anyone else. The Book of Lilith is a funny, sad, satirical, uplifting tale of her spiritual journey through the ancient world soulgiving and judging to find at the end of that journey - herself.
ISBN: 978-1-4303-2732-5
Web:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/rgb/Gods/Gods.php
A straight-up science fiction novel about an adventurer, Sam Foster, who is forced to flee from a murder he did not commit across the multiverse. He finds himself on a primitive planet and gradually becomes embroiled in a parallel struggle against the world's pervasive slave culture and the cowled, inhuman agents of an immortal of the multiverse that support it. Captured by the resurrected clone of its wickedest agent and horribly mutilated, only a pair of legendary swords and his native wit and character stand between Sam, his beautiful, mysterious partner and a bloody death!
Original poetry, including the epic-length poem about an imagined end of the world brought about by a nuclear war that gives the collection its name. Includes many long and short works on love and life, pain and death.
Ocean roaring, whipped by storm
in damned defiance, hating hell
with every wave and every swell,
every shark and every shell
and shoreline.
More original poetry with a distinctly Zen cast to it. Works range from funny and satirical to inspiring and uplifting, with a few erotic poems thrown in.
Chop water, carry
wood. Ice all around,
fire is dying. Winter Zen?
All of these books can be found on the online Lulu store here:
Both The Book of Lilith and The Fall of the Dark Brotherhood are also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers, and one day from a bookstore near you!