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There's a new book social networking site called Book Mooch. The idea is to share books you are willing to give away, and you earn points for sending them. You can then use the points to "mooch" books from other people. I signed up yesterday and listed an initial batch of books I'm willing to part with (because I have multiple copies!):

• Some Mistakes of Moses by Robert Green Ingersoll
  
• The Philosophy of Humanism by Corliss Lamont
  
• Arguing for Atheism by Robin le Poidevin
  
• Is it God's Word by Joseph Wheless
  
• 
  

When I woke up today, the first three book have already been mooched! Two moochers are from the US and the third from the UK. Sending overseas gives me 3 points each. Now I can get some of the books I've always wanted! And since these books are given not sold, I don't have to pay any taxes or tarrifs! Take that, you corrupt customs officials!

If you have books you want to give away, go sign up at Book Mooch. You might even have a few books I'm looking for!

A Major letdown. I had expected much more from Janet Browne, famed Darwin biographer, from her book Darwin's "Origin of Species": A Biography. While the book itself is very readable (I read it in one sitting), it's too superficial a treatment of Charles Darwin's monumental tome On the Origin of Species. As part of the Books That Shook the World series, it doesn't give the reader enough background on the social and scientific situation in Victorian England when the book was developed, written and finally published. So how would we know that it really "shook" the world then?

Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin's ideas, as well as Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation were mentioned briefly, but their differences with Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection wasn't fleshed out. Neither was Darwin's development of his central arguments tackled in any appreciable degree. Browne mentioned Darwin's reliance on Malthus, but again, it was only discussed in brief.

I cannot recommend Browne's book except to those who are just beginning their study of Darwin. Instead, I recommend Niles Eldredge's Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life. It also tackles the development of Darwin's book, but with more detail.

I just finished Eric H. Cline's book From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. It examines seven "mysteries" of the Hebrew Bible from an archaeological perspective. Mr. Cline is a biblical archaeology scholar and is the associate directory of an ongoing excavation in Meggido (the biblical Armaggedon) in Israel.

The book is aimed at the interested layman and his writing style is very readable and easy to understand. His treatment of the various mysteries in the Hebrew Bible is short but informative. While I question some of his positions, on the whole the book is a great resource and I recommend it to everyone.

The seven mysteries his book tackles are:

1) The Garden of Eden

2) Noah's Ark

3) Sodom and Gomorrah

4) Moses and the Exodus

5) Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

6) The Ark of the Covenant

7) The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel

What's surprising in his book is his acknowledgement and treatment of crackpots. I'm used to scholars ignoring works by the lunatic fringe, for even acknowledging their theories gives them too much credibility. Not with Cline's book. In each of the mysteries, he enumerates both sober and fantastical ideas, challenging them for their consistency with the archaeological record. His dismissal of some fringe works can be acerbic, but not unwarranted as most of these "theories" get more media attention and gives genuine research a bad name.

I won't go into detail on each of the mysteries (go out and buy a copy if you want to know more!) but I will have to nitpick on his chapter about the Ark of the Covenant. I think he gives too much credibility with the biblical claim that King Josiah rediscovered the Ark (p. 151, "Since no one has seen the ark since at least Josiah's time"). It seems to me that Josiah concocted the story to give divine credence to his religious reforms. I think it's much too convenient that Josiah would suddenly stumble upon the Ark, with its Deuteronomic revisions of the Law, and how it so happens to justify his reforms.

Maybe I'm being too unsympathetic in my reading of that rather innocuous line, but at the very least Mr. Cline should've hinted at the possibility of Josiah's fabrication of the story about the ark. (Cline admits that he's less interested with examining the text of the bible and more with what archaeology has to say, so I guess he doesn't want to wade into contentious textual criticism territory.)