Troublemaker,Leah Remini

Troublemaker:  Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini is a book that I decided to buy when I started to watch Scientology and The Aftermath on A&E network.  I felt that I had to support Ms. Remini in her battle with Scientology.  My wife read this book and felt it was easily worth the time it would take to read.

Started:  1/12/2018

Completed: 1/14/2018

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  my wife

Review:

This is a quick and easy read.  The writing is engaging and the Leah Remini does a good job of culling facts about her life that might be interesting to her from facts that might be interesting to a random reader.  A loud, brash, frankly kinda trashy New Yorker is a stereotype, by on that Ms. Remini opts to live.  I don't mean that she is trying to be someone she isn't, but that she is comfortable being who she is even if that is a stereotype.  I have to admit that I have not been fond of her as an actress (I found King of Queens to only moderately funny--I don't enjoy the insult humor or the slapstick and I find it hard to watch her on Kevin Can Wait because I feel like killing off his wife was a really harsh way to replace her with Ms. Remini).  I have been very interested in her series on A&E and find her brave brashness welcome, but she also shows her compassion for other people clearly in the series.  That is the person to whom I can relate.

This book shows some of how she came to be the person she is.  It is quite readable and informative.  Plus, it supports her and I think that she is doing a good thing trying to expose Scientology.  Go Leah!

Also, if you are a Scientologist and are reading this, it is possible that by aligning myself with Ms. Remini I am an SP, so if you think so (and you know me), I completely get it if you need to disconnect.

Our Revolution, Bernie Sanders

Our Revolution:  A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders is a book I have wanted to read since it came on the market.  I really need to understand his broad positions well before 2020 rolls around.

Started:  11/5/2017

Completed: 1/12/2018

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  my wife

Review:

Bernie Sandars articulates many views that I have come to independently in Our Revolution.  Part I of the book is how he decided to run for the presidency.  This is interesting, but insanely detailed.  I think I would have benefited from 20 or so pages, not the 200 it was assigned.  For someone who really wants to know Bernie, however, this material is important.  I read the vast majority and skipped the last 20 or so pages as I just got tired of hearing about another meeting where several hundred people showed up and talked about how their lives sucked.  Maybe Bernie's point was that many people have the same frustrations.  If so, he made it resoundingly.

The second part was more about his policies and I found this more interesting.  Unfortunately, this part of the book reads like Bernie speaks.  He makes his point many, many times on many, many issues.  Another 300 pages of excruciating detail.  I probably would have found this wonderful if I already did not know the material.  Over and over I got statistics, charts, and graphs with which I was well familiar.  One area where I learned something really good was in the Native People's section, but it was about 3 pages.

So, this book will tell you why Bernie says what he says.  If you want to know the back story, it is incomparable.  There are a lot of tax raises and service raises.  There are talks of international agreements, partnerships, and scornful international companies.  This is all great.  I really could have used a summary at the back, a table perhaps, that was a balance sheet that showed how the tax increases paid for the service increases.  Maybe some projections on what the anticipated growth rates would be for the economy due to which factor and how that would look over the long time lines (sometimes 15-20 years) in which Bernie thinks.  That would have been awesome even if it had been wrong, because it would have given me some sense of the investment that America should be making in itself.  Maybe, in my retirement, I'll be able to figure all that out and build the table that I think is missing.  Hmmm.

On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder

On Tyranny:  Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder is a book about the potential modern day tyranny brought with the election of Trump.  Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale.

Started:  12/14/1017

Completed:  12/14/2017

Recommendation:  Excellent Read and very quick

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

This is a quick book that helps identify the hallmarks of tyranny and offers a series of simple steps that can be taken to combat them.  Simple steps include things like, "Believe in the Truth," which is the answer to things like "alternate facts."  We can do it.

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is a book that I picked up because of the uprising in Baltimore around Freddy Gray and a desire to understand the circumstances in Baltimore that would give rise to that riot.  I am listening to the audio version narrated by Karen Chilton.

Started: 10/23/2017

Completed: 11/15/2017

Recommended By:  Nobody

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Review:

What a great book.  The statistics are simply shocking.  There is no excuse and Ms. Alexander makes a really compelling case.  All Americans have to read this book.  White Americans should be ashamed.  Black Americans are likely to simply feel validated.

Post-PostModernism, Jeffrey T. Nealon

Post-PostModernism Or, The Cultural Logic of Just-In-Time Capitalism by Jeffrey T. Nealon is a book I picked up because the Hedgehog Review had a whole issue devoted to Post-PostModernism and I needed some sort of background before the magazine arrived.

Started:  5/21/2017

Completed: 11/5/2017 (stopped reading)

Recommendation: Not recommended--run away.

Recommended By:  Google web search on the topic, this seems to be the current survey text

Words and phrases for which I sought help:

chiasmus -- an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases

infelicitous -- inappropriate or awkward; not well said

Review:

Simply unending double speak.  6 months wasted on this book.  Here is the sentence that ended it:  "However incredibly productive and oppositional this deconstructive insight has proven to be over the years, Negri points out that our contemporary masters (corporations, media conglomerates, spin doctors, finance capitalists, port-Fordist outsourcers of all kinds) no longer dream of a kind of exclusionary, binary totalization and don't achieve their hegemonic effects primarily through a normatively repressive logocentrism."  If you can make sense of that, then you should read this book.  Otherwise, run away.

The Fiery Trial, Eric Foner

The Fiery Trial:  Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner caught my eye when it was nominated for the Pulitzer prize.

Started:  8/14/2017

Completed: 10/23/2017

Recommended By:  I thought I read a review in The Nation, but I cannot find that review on-line, so it seems like I must not have.  There were numerous reviews in the Washington Post, New York Times and National Public Radio, but they all seem to be around the time it was published (2010) and not after the Pulitzer.  I remember that the Pulitzer really caught my eye (I've read a fair amount about Lincoln), so it must have been a review after the Prize was awarded in 2011.  Maybe it was mentioned in passing or something like that.  The upshot, however, is that I cannot remember exactly what the recommendation was, but it may have just been a summer reading review or best 100 books review or something along those lines.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Words for which I sought help:

clevis -- a "U" shaped or forked metal connector within which another part can be fastened by means of a bolt or pin passing through the ends of the connector.

pertinacious -- holding firmly to an opinion or course of action.

Review:

This book is a really interesting walk through Lincoln's relationship with Slavery.  I have listened to courses from the "The Great Courses" on the Lincoln-Douglas debates and I had read several of the speeches of both Lincoln and Douglas.  I was, thus, aware of Lincoln's position in favor of relocating the slaves and his stated belief that white and black people could not live together.  I understood that the Emancipation Proclamation was as much an effort to bolster the Union's troop strength as it was a condemnation of that "peculiar institution."  I did not realize, however, that Lincoln's personal view of black people and the institution of slavery in general underwent a series of dramatic changes which led him to being an abolitionist and a supporter of suffrage for all regardless of race.  I had never had occasion to read Lincoln's second inaugural address although I quickly recognized, "With malice toward none..."  It really lays out the sense he had of the role of the civil war as a means to emancipation; his sense of the war's start as an effort to preserve the Union; and his desire to bring the war to a swift conclusion and lasting peace.  The research done to bring to the present the details of Lincoln's thinking, the opposition and support he found, as well as the times in which he made his decision was excellent.

Sapiens, Yuval Harari

Sapiens:  A brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari is a book that was on President Obama's reading list and looked interesting to me.

Started:  8/2/2017

Completed: 8/24/2017

Recommended By:  President Obama

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Review:

The first half of the book was a bit of drudgery for me.  It was largely a rehash of things I already knew well and I was getting worried that the whole book would be that way.  The second half, however, was excellent and it built cleanly on the first half (so, I would not skip the first half).  The very end was mostly speculation about when/how "humans" might graduate from being "Sapiens" to some other form of existence.  I found this later part also a rehash of speculation with which I have long been familiar.

The focus on Capitalism as a "religion" and the concept of happiness as a measure of the success of changes that have been made were both novel to me.  I really enjoyed the insights that both pieces brought and I was, once again, reminded that I should be spending more time meditating and making that part of my normal existence.  It seems that almost everything I encounter encourages me to spend more time meditating.  I think that this is because more and more learned people are experiencing the value and wanting to share it with others.  Either that or there is a divine force pushing me to meditate :).

I highly recommend this book as long as you will not be offended by the broad definition of "religion."