Customer Reviews

The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery

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When I was a kid I read everything I could find about the Loch Ness Monster. Although I must admit that I am not a "believer", I remain interested in the Nessie phenomenon and respect those "believers" who are sincere and honest. This is the best book I have found that focuses on the scientific aspects of the monster, with the author dealing with how differences between personal objective and subjective reality impact the monster. What I would like to say is that I wish someone would write a CULTURAL and SOCIAL HISTORY of the Loch Ness Monster( human history, not of the monster herself!) Not written from a scientific standpoint, trying to prove or disprove the monster,or explain belief, but a history as an important event in popular culture over the past 70 some years. This particular book was published by a university press, so why not a human history of the phenomenon written in a serious, scholarly but popularly accessible manner. Everybody has heard of Nessie, perhaps she has not been as important to the world at large as Elvis, the Beatles,rap music or whatever,and without the socio-economic-political implications you can tie into other elements of popular culture, but I think there would be a fair size market for such a book.

This book, is, without doubt, one of the best volumes to be published on the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster. Bauer speaks sensibly of the enigma and provides both positive and negative information to the reader. Bauer produces academic analytical skills as well as those gained by the physical search of Loch Ness to support his undoubted knowledge which he imparts in most readable prose. I thoroughly recommend this work to anyone interested in the case Loch Ness Monster, it provides virtually everything one would need to know.

Remember your high school science textbooks' dry-as-dust rundown of "The Scientific Method?" Well, here's the intro to scientific reasoning you *should* have gotten back then: A ferociously intelligent, smoothly written guide to thinking rationally about the natural world.

The title promises a comprehensive, clear-eyed look at the Loch Ness mystery written by an author with an open mind. The book delivers on that promise, and the result is a delight to read. Bauer walks you, surefootedly, through sixty-odd years of Nessie sightings, as well as reactions to them by the public and the scientific community. If you want a reliable, detailed, neutral study of the Loch Ness mystery--here's your book.

The icing on the intellectual cake is that Bauer is interested in more than just Loch Ness. He makes clear in his introduction that he wants to explore how science works and, once again, the book delivers. Bauer walks you, again surefootedly, through concepts like "data" "proof" "theory" and so forth, carefully leaving in the kinds of grey areas that working scientists have to deal with. Two of the best chapters in the book are titled "Bad Reasons for Believing" and "Bad Reasons for Not Believing." Together (especially in the context of the entire book) they're one of the best discussions of scientific reasoning I've ever read.

Recommended for anyone with a serious interest in science . . . even if you don't really care whether there's anything bigger than a trout in Loch Ness.