"Dick Stevens' book."

[Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com>]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Sandy King wrote:

> If the subject is kallitype you won't find anything in Dick Steven' book 
> about sodium citrate as a developer. He did his research quite a long time
And just as well.  It so happened I was testing kallitype about the 
time Stevens' book surfaced,... and besides what my tests showed, his 
confusion, disorganization, errors and contradictions were such that I 
wouldn't trust that book if it told me the pope was catholic.

Yes, it was a long time ago, so I don't recall many particulars, but among 
the unforgettable was his announcement that such and such condition or 
material would look blue if acid, and a few pages later, same thing would 
look red.

If that were the only gross error (which it wasn't), still, the general 
cockamamie "organization" (or more precisely disorganization) was such 
that even without errors the presentation would cause brain damage.  And
even without brain damage (say, the reader was wearing her teflon space 
helmet) the exercise would be counterproductive. Some folks, like Sandy,
could take it in stride, probably ward it off on autopilot, but that 
doesn't mean it's OK to let loose on the general public.

As I recall, BTW, I wrote this to the list about 10 years ago, in my 
youth, when I remembered more particulars -- tho OK, how about: the book 
opens with a long painstaking detailed chapter about a 
formula/method/technique at the end of which the author announced that the 
method wasn't any good so never mind.

An "editor" with an IQ above minus 2 would have told him, if you feel the 
need to tell this story (padding? boasting?), that's an appendix, not an 
entire first chapter. Surely I'm not the only one with limited time and 
energy. That bogus first chapter was theft of both.

etc.

Judy