Product Description
Despite the importance of learning abilities and disabilities

in education and child development, little is known

about their genetic and environmental origins in the

early school years. We report results for English (which

includes reading, writing, and speaking), mathematics,

and science as well as general cognitive ability in a large

and representative sample of U.K. twins studied at 7, 9,

and 10 years of age. Although preliminary reports of

some of these data have been published, the purpose of

this monograph is to present new univariate, multivariate,

and longitudinal analyses that systematically examine

genetic and environmental influences for the entire sample

at all ages for all measures for both the low extremes

(disabilities) and the entire sample (abilities).

English, mathematics, and science yielded similarly

high heritabilities and modest shared environmental

influences at 7, 9, and 10 years despite major changes

in content across these years. We draw three conclusions

that go beyond estimating heritability. First, the abnormal

is normal: low performance is the quantitative extreme

of the same genetic and environmental influences

operate throughout the normal distribution. Second, continuity

is genetic and change is environmental: longitudinal

analyses suggest that age-to-age stability is primarily

mediated genetically whereas the environment contributes

to change from age to age. Third, genes are generalists

and environments are specialists: multivariate analyses

indicate that genes largely contribute to similarity

in performance within and between the three domains—

and with general cognitive ability—whereas the environment

contributes to differences in performance.

These conclusions have far-reaching implications for

education and child development as well as for molecular

genetics and neuroscience. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the story of a man whose discovery and vision have changed the lives of millions of people throughout the world. Robert Thomsen's biography takes readers through the events of Bill W.'s life, all the while detailing Bill's growing dependence on alcohol. Thomsen writes of the collapse that brought Bill to the verge of death and of the luminous instant of insight that saved him. This turning point led Bill to the encounter in 1935 with Dr. Bob and the start of what was to be a new beginning for countless others who despaired of finding rescue and redemption.

Every night at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings around the world, a speaker says, "Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now." This describes the story of Bill W., a stirring spiritual odyssey through triumph, failure, and rebirth, with vital meaning for men and women everywhere. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Inspiration for the Newcomer!
If you're having doubts about your chances of success with sobriety, just read Bill's story!His ups and downs, trials and tribulations, surely prove that if he can do it, anyone can!
Shipping was speedy & pricing was awesome!

Great book about a great pioneer
This is a great story about a great pioneer that changed modern day American and has even influenced the world with what he's done.

LSD advocate "carry the message?"

Wilson was serially unfaithful to his wife Lois. Wilson 's affairs with women caused controversy and concern within AA and it was common knowledge in New York AA circles. His interest in younger women increased with his age, and caused Barry Leach and other friends of Wilson to form a "Founders Watch". People were assigned to keep an eye on Wilson during the socializing that followed AA functions and to separate and steer away those young women who caught Wilson's interest. Wilson, like many in his generation, could be sexist, but he was also "capable of treating the women who worked with him with dignity and respect". In the mid 1950s he began an affair with Helen Wyn, a woman 22 years his junior, "in duration, intensity and scope" this was different from his other affairs. Wilson at one point discussed divorcing Lois to marry Helen. Wilson with determined perseverance was able to overcome the AA trustees objections, and renegotiated his royalty agreements with them in 1963, which allowed him to include Helen Wynn in his estate. He left 10% of his book royalties to Helen and the other 90% to his wife Lois. In 1968 with Wilson's illness making it harder for them to spend time together, Helen bought a house in Ireland.

In the 1950s Wilson experimented with LSD in medically supervised experiments with Gerard Heard and Aldous Huxley. With Wilson's invitation his wife Lois, Father Dowling, and Nell Wing also participated in experimentation of this drug. Later Wilson wrote to Carl Jung, praising the results and recommending it as validation of Jung's spiritual experience. (The letter was not in fact sent as Jung had died.)

At a parapsychology meeting in the 1960s, Wilson met Abram Hoffer and learned about the potential mood-stabilizing effects of niacin. Wilson was impressed with experiments indicating that alcoholics who were given niacin had a better sobriety rate, and he began to see niacin "as completing the third leg in the stool, the physical to complement the spiritual and emotional." Wilson also believed that niacin had given him relief from depression, and he promoted the vitamin within the AA community and with the National Institute of Mental Health as a treatment for schizophrenia. However, Wilson created a major furor in AA because he used the AA office and letterhead in his promotion.

For Wilson, spiritualism (communicating with the spirits of the dead) was a life-long interest. One of his letters to his spiritual adviser Father Ed Dowling suggests that while Wilson was working on his book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions he felt that spirits were helping him, in particular a 15th century monk named Boniface.[18] Wilson believed that the living could communicate with the dead and kept a "Spook Room" in his basement, where he along and others would conduct seances with a Ouijiboard, as well as experiment with automatic writing. Despite his conviction that he had evidence for the reality of the spiritual world, Wilson chose not to share this with AA.
One problem that any Christian will have with Alcoholics Anonymous is the organization's abandoning of the Bible. The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is their new Bible. Some members claim to still use the Bible; I sometimes hear a bit of lip service to the Bible like, "Keep the Big Book next to the Good Book," but you won't see a Bible at a meeting, and you won't hear it quoted. Everybody is carrying the Big Book, and all readings come from it, or from a similar book of daily meditations, also written by Bill Wilson and other members of A.A..

In fact, reading aloud from the Bible at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings is usually forbidden. The Bible is considered "outside literature". Reading aloud at meetings from anything but A.A. "Council Approved" (and A.A.-published) literature is forbidden.

In addition, A.A. has essentially abandoned Jesus Christ. The A.A. faithful believe that Bill Wilson is superior to Jesus Christ when it comes to dealing with alcoholism, and you will hear Bill Wilson quoted a hundred times more often than Jesus Christ. (As a matter of fact, I can't really remember the last time I heard Jesus Christ quoted in an A.A. or N.A. meeting...)

The third edition of the A.A. Big Book does not contain the word "Jesus" anywhere, not even once. Bill Wilson raved constantly about "God", but didn't talk about Jesus Christ at all. There is one and only one mention of "Christ" in the entire book, and it is Bill Wilson's statement that before his hallucinatory experience on belladonna, his so-called "spiritual experience," he didn't have much use for Christ:


With ministers, and the world's religions, I parted right there. When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory. To Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him. His moral teaching -- most excellent. For myself, I had adopted those parts which seemed convenient and not too difficult; the rest I disregarded.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 1, Bill's Story, pages 10-11.
Apparently, Bill continued to disregard a lot of that stuff even after he "saw the light," or saw "the God of the preachers", because Bill never mentioned Jesus or Christ again, not anywhere in the Big Book, not ever.

The first edition of the Big Book contained one story, "My Wife and I," that contained a line mentioning Jesus Christ:


Here were these men who visited me and they, like myself, had tried everything else and although it was plain to be seen none of them were perfect, they were living proof that the sincere attempt to follow the cardinal teaching of Jesus Christ was keeping them sober.
That story was dropped from the second, third, and fourth editions.


The word "God" appears in the first 164 pages of the Big Book (which William G. Wilson either wrote, co-authored, or edited) 106 times,
the word "Power", as in "Higher Power" or "that Power, which is God" appears 22 times,
the divine "Him" appears 26 times,
and the divine "His" is used 15 times,
but there is no mention of "Jesus Christ", not one single mention.
Alcoholics Anonymous is not a Christian religion, no matter what some members like to say. It is a religion all right, in spite of the denials of the members who claim that it is only a "spiritual program." Alcoholics Anonymous is a Buchmanite religion. Alcoholics Anonymous is just Frank Buchman's crazy "Oxford Group / Moral Re-Armament" religion, only slightly edited by William G. Wilson and Dr. Robert H. Smith.
Basically, Alcoholics Anonymous believes in and practices the teachings of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, another man who had little use for Jesus Christ, because he preferred his own beliefs and teachings to those of Jesus. Bill Wilson did not invent the theology of A.A. -- he merely copied it from Frank Buchman.

In spite of that fact that Bill Wilson tried to hide the strong connections between Frank Buchman and A.A., Buchman's Oxford Group got three mentions in the third edition of the Big Book, while Christ got only one. (The first two mentions of the Oxford Group are in the Forward to the Second Edition, and the third is on page 218 of the third edition, in the story "He Thought He Could Drink Like A Gentleman".)

For that matter, when you consider the fact that Jesus' first miracle was changing water into wine at a wedding party, there might be a real problem with Jesus being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous... (John 2:1 to 2:11.)

I am reminded of a contemporary critic of Frank Buchman's Oxford Group, Pastor H. A. Ironside, who criticized Buchmanism by saying that it was not a Christian religion, in spite of Buchman's claims that it was, because everything in Buchmanism would still be possible even if Jesus Christ had never been born. The same thing is true of Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A. would not have to change one word of the official church dogma even if Jesus Christ had never been born. The sacred Twelve Steps of Bill Wilson do not mention Jesus Christ, and do not require Jesus Christ in order to work, and the Twelve Steps don't even require Jesus Christ to have ever existed.

Neither are the Twelve Steps based on any of the teachings of Jesus Christ. (They are based on the teachings of Dr. Frank Buchman.)

Alcoholics Anonymous simply has no need for, and no use for, Jesus Christ. A.A. worships Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob, not Jesus Christ.

A very good, but incomplete biography
I've been a "friend" of Bill and Dr. Bob since Christmas 1990, and have read a lot of material, both "conference approved" and other, and this biography of Bill W. ranks among the best, but it definitely gives the impression of being written from Bill's perspective.

Fully half the book is devoted to Bill's childhood and early adulthood, through his marriage to Lois and up to the fateful encounter with Dr. Bob, and so this fleshes out that portion of his life.I was disappointed, however, in that the impact and devastation of Bill's many (and prolonged) drinking binges seemed somewhat minimized with regard to their impact on the lives of Bill and Lois as a young married couple.Perhaps Bill simply had a poor recollection of these episodes, as he was not in great condition to remember these things, and so these are not fully reflected in Thomsen's work.

The latter half of Thomsen's book deals with better known AA history, but as a biography of Bill's life, my impression is this book glosses over the other human frailties of Bill, and so does not present as complete a picture as it could of this remarkable man. I think the reader would be more impressed with Bill's life accomplishments if more of his human "character defects" were revealed in this book.

I strongly suggest also reading Francis Hartigan's "Bill W.: A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Cofounder Bill Wilson" to help fill in the deficiencies and areas not covered by Robert Thomsen.Hartigan's book better presents Lois Wilson's perspective, and more completely covers topics such as the terrible impact of Bill's binges on his business ventures and marriage, Bill's infidelities, his long periods of depression, Bill's exploration of the potential therapeutic uses of LSD and Niacin for the treatment of alcoholism, and does a better job, in my opinion, painting a more full picture of Bill Wilson.

DD...GTM... RTBB

Very well written Bio of Bill Wilson
I am a long time member of AA, and knew quite a bit about Bill Wilson prior to reading this book. But I have found out so much more than I expected to from the book, and it is very well written.I can recommend this highly to anyone wanting to know more about the man who founded one of the most important organizations of the 20th Century.

- John T, San Francisco, CA ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good
Very good book, important for my studies and not easy to find in bookstores. Quick and not complicated delivery from USA to Europe. Thank you very much ... Read more

Product Description
A Journal of Scholarly and Popular Articles on Armenian History, Culture, and Related Subjects. Includes a section for book reviews. A Publication of the Armenian Heritage Press, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, Inc. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Publication date: 1842Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
This collection reveals the history of English common law and Empire law in a vastly changing world of British expansion. Dominating the legal field is the Commentaries of the Law of England by Sir William Blackstone, which first appeared in 1765. Reference works such as almanacs and catalogues continue to educate us by revealing the day-to-day workings of society.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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Bodleian Library (Oxford)

T213645

Dated at head of the drop-head title: September 3. 1795.

[Edinburgh, 1795]. 22p. ; 4° ... Read more

Product Description
General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1850Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free.Excerpt: INSTITUTING PRIZES.THE MUIRHEAD PRIZES,To be bestowed, in the form of Books, on the most deserving Students of the Humanity Class, were instituted in 1776, by JOHN MUIRHEAD of Teggetsheugh, and the Rev. PATRICK MUIRHEAD of Dysart.Mb. GEORGE MUIRHEAD, from a pious and fraternal regard to whose memory these Prizes were instituted, as explained in the following Deed, was the second son of John Muirhead of Teggetsheugh, in the Parish of Dunipace, and County of Stirling ; the family from which he sprung being an offset from the parent stem of the Muirheads of Lachop in Lanarkshire. His mother's name was Margaret Sim. He was born on the 24th of June, 1715; matriculated in the Fourth Class in the University of Glasgow in 1728, and was educated for the Church. His first charge was the Parish of Minigaff, in the Presbytery of Wigton, to which ho was ordained on the 4th December, 1746. Towards the end of the following year, on the occurrence of a vacancy in the second charge of the Parish of Dysart, application having been made to the Presbytery for "a call at large," and Mr. Muirhead having been proposed, he received an unanimous call. His brethren in the Presbytery of "VVigton, felt great regret at parting with him; and it is stated in the Minutes of the Presbytery of Kirkaldy, that a letter had been received by their Moderator, from the Moderator of the Presbytery of Wigton, " in which he gave him a large character." Mr. Muirhead was admitted to his charge in Dysart, on 28th January, 1748. Towards the latter end of 1752, on the removal of Mr. Rouet to the Chair of Ecclesiastical History in the College o... ... Read more

Product Description
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
This collection reveals the history of English common law and Empire law in a vastly changing world of British expansion. Dominating the legal field is the Commentaries of the Law of England by Sir William Blackstone, which first appeared in 1765. Reference works such as almanacs and catalogues continue to educate us by revealing the day-to-day workings of society.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
++++
Bodleian Library (Oxford)

T213768

Dated at head of the drop-head title: January 19. 1797.The initial "G." in the title identifies the clerk of the Court handling the case.The 9,[1]pp. section is the appendix.

[Edinburgh, 1797]. 36,9,[1]p. ; 4° ... Read more

Product Description
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
This collection reveals the history of English common law and Empire law in a vastly changing world of British expansion. Dominating the legal field is the Commentaries of the Law of England by Sir William Blackstone, which first appeared in 1765. Reference works such as almanacs and catalogues continue to educate us by revealing the day-to-day workings of society.
++++
The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
++++
Bodleian Library (Oxford)

T214222

Dated at head of the title: April 9. 1795.The title is repeated as a drop-head title on p. [1] of the text.

[Edinburgh, 1795]. [2],35,[1]p. ; 4° ... Read more