it has been bought ;) after reading the customer reviews I realized that this is one of those books that is going to take a lot longer to read than most of the books I read. Over the last few weeks I have taken on some difficult reading challenges, I am most of the way thorugh: "Godel, Escher, Bach" and i just finished Tao of Physics... so, we shall add this one to my list of: "books to make ed smarter" :) thank you for the suggestion!