A Series Of Unfortunate Events Book the First - The Bad Beginning
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Our Endangered Values America's Moral CrisisJimmy Carter2/2006I recommend this book to all of my religious friends. Mr. Carter's first-hand experience with the Southern Baptists shed light on a disturbing fundamentalist influence on both Christianity and American politics. The chapters on nuclear arms and foreign politics are a little slow, and i was a little annoyed by the lack of citations and/or footnotes regarding the many facts and figures presented, but overall the best former president in my lifetime has put together a good book that i hope will make people see the error of being too rigid in their ideas about beliefs and politics. |
The Truth With JokesAl Franken3/2006I recommend this book to all of my republican friends. But i wonder if any of them would see it as real truth or just dismiss it as "liberal whining". The most frightening thing about this book is this quote from a senior advisor to George W. Bush in the summer of 2002: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." Apparently the Bush administration decides how things will be and doesn't bother with research or facts. This book is pretty much all documented facts, so of course, the republican right probably thinks it's all made up. Sigh. Read this, you'll learn things that'll scare you. |
Company
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A Series Of Unfortunate Events Book the Sixth - The Ersatz Elevator
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The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
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Guests of the Ayatollah The First Battle in America's War with Militant IslamMark Bowden7/2006Great in-depth piece of journalism about the taking of the 53 American Embassy workers (some CIA) in Tehran in 1979. I learned a lot about both sides; what motivated the students (yes, they were mostly college students), the history of their struggle, how the Iranian mullahs took power, and mostly what the hostages went through day after day. It's an eye-opening look at what we face in the world today with militant extreme fundamental religious, uh, nuts. |
Skeletons on the Zahara Dean King9/2006This book started out a little slow, what with the backgrounds of a bunch of the sailors and history of the region, but eventually it settled into a good read about American sailors wrecking on the western African coast in 1815 and being taken as slaves. This is just a retelling of 2 accounts of the ordeal, one by the captain, one by another sailor, and it's pretty amazing what both the people who live in the Sahara and the foreign slaves have to deal with. They all claim to be civilized but look barbaric from the vantage point of time. Makes one wonder how "civilized" our current culture will be viewed. The end of the book sort of condenses one of the sailors last months of ordeal into about 2 paragraphs, which is a bit annoying after having read so much of an in depth account of the captain's journey. |
Adrift Seventy-six Days Lost at SeaSteven Callahan9/2006At first i was a little annoyed at all the "one with nature"ness of this book, but it's really an amazing diary of living for 76 days in a rubber life raft, constantly worried about getting water from a dying solar still and catching another fish to keep going. One interesting thing was that after the ordeal, Steven didn't seem to have any post traumatic stress. He was simply overjoyed to be back among people again. Maybe this was because during his time adrift, Steven had a very good sense of himself and how his rational and emotional sides interacted. If you ever plan on being lost at sea, read this. |
Bush Versus The Environment Robert S. Devine10/2006I found this book at our summer house and was out of things to read so read it. It's kinda dry and my mind kept wandering off, but there are some good points and it paints a very scary picture of how the Bush administration operates in most things in heavy favor to big industry and corporations. Bordering on criminal in my opinion. It should be noted that this was not a political book, just a look at the Bush administration's record on environmental issues (very very bad!) and the walls of secrecy behind which it operates. |
Ultimate Techniques And Tactics James Parinella and Eric Zaslow12/2006I didn't learn a whole lot from this book since i know the game pretty well, but there were a couple of good pointers in it. One of the authors, Eric Zaslow, was captain of Chicago Machine when i played on it and i always was underwhelmed by his overall offensive strategy. He and Jim Parinella don't offer much more aside from the way Machine played. What i found to be missing was overall positioning strategy, which really should be covered as one of the basics, both on offense and defense. |
A Death In Belmont Sebastian Junger12/2006Not as good as The Perfect Storm, but a very good read anyway. The coincidences (or just the confluence of influences of people on other people) throughout the book are almost eerie. The only detraction is that nothing (the murder in Belmont and the Boston Strangler murders, which are the focus of this book) is solved in the end, but that's just the way life is sometimes. |