Review: Ancient and Classical Art

Ancient and Classical Art by P.P. Kahane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whether painting on walls (frescoes, murals) or pottery, this work plots the evolution of largely Western/European painting from prehistoric cave paintings to stunningly lifelike and naturalistic Fayum mummy portraits. Easily have of the layout content is full-color, high quality images. Nicely laid out chronologically with no text content that cannot be read while the relevant images is at hand, this is a bit like a catalog with detailed, descriptive captions. It is an educational museum in a pocket.

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Review: We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews

We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews by Daniel Sinker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

From my interview with the author (selection 311 at https://archive.org/details/OutsightRadioHoursInterviews2000-2010) from March, 2001 when I read the book:

...

Yeah like you have the initiators the pioneers of what we come to know as punk: Ian MacKaye and Jello leading into it. Towards end of the book there, we get in to the political connotations like Chomsky and Jon Strange. Was your reason nearly to approach a natural chronological beginning by putting them first, or did you think the more intellectual stuff towards the end might be intimidating to the reader if reading right off to the beginning of the book like that?

DS: I think there is definitely a thought as far as that goes. You don't I didn't really want to hit someone with something really dense or very theory-based politically right off the bat. But I thought it was much important actually as far as arrangement goes. If people like MacKaye or Kathleen Hanna, there's more of that. Those people have been so instrumental in creating the language that we use to talk about punk, and each in their own different way. It’s very important in order to approach the rest of the book that this sort of ground work be laid from the start. So, I was sort of my thinking of putting those people first.

...

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Review: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This author narrated his own audiobook and as I often feel in those cases, he shouldn't have. I only got past his kinda quick, kinda monotone delivery by the second half. The first half was very important; tying morality to well-being and the argument that on some level well-being can be treated objectively. ...probably worth reviewing that part. Two things were interesting in the second half to me:

1. Harris goes all Richard Dawkins kinda unexpectedly to assault The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Author Francis Collins is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes, and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He at the time of this writing served as the Director of the US National Institutes of Health. In the book, Collins describes briefly the process by which he became a Christian and Harris is fairly appalled that a leading scientist would hold such beliefs. I am an atheist but I don't feel that makes me anti-Christian any more than I feel I should loathe kids believing in Santa. It just seemed out of place and unnecessarily underscored.

2. References to the studies of E. Margaret Evans et al on the affinity of the young toward magical thinking and Creator-belief resonated with me like the similar portions of How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like.

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Review: Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall by Jacques Damase
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This slim volume is about two-thirds full color plates bookended by a biographical essay reviewing the fantasy-like, dream-like, expressionist visions of the painter. The life story tells of a career and life between Russia and France during the turbulent, tragic World Wars periods; a sad sense that arises in many of his paintings. Unfortunately, the plates have no captions so you have to flip pages to see titles and years.

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Review: An Appalachian Journal: A Patchwork of Life

An Appalachian Journal: A Patchwork of Life by Sue Sword
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Really a pamphlet advertising the Christian social services organization "Christian Appalachian Project" that serves the region, this has only two vignettes of life in this region. One is of Milton, an impoverished octogenarian relying on CAP. The other is of a women that moved her life to the area to support CAP and bake bread for the needy.

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Review: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan by Anthony Scaduto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While this biography ends just after 1971's Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, Dylan's reluctant participation makes it probably about the best Dylan biography available. This covers his Minnesota roots, the impact of key relationships like Suze Rotolo, the relationship with Joan Baez, and the circling into his post-protest folk electric career from his roots as a Little Richard fan and general rocker. Ever the chameleon, this tells the story of a Woody Guthrie worshipper and imitator that dropped into the NYC Greenwich Village scene to dominate the protest folk movement only to walk away from feuling social change to become a pop icon. Much of Dylan's petulance and using of people puts feet of clay on the edifice, but the track-by-track notes on those classic early albums reminds us of what really matters.

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Review: Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir

Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir by Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Of memoirist Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky, ‎Deborah Kaple says in some introductory material here: "Not until nearly the end of my year in Moscow did he tell me about his Gulag memoir. He had written the memoir after he had retired from the USSR Foreign Ministry in 1988. His family says that he often spoke about the Gulag and his work there because the experience deeply troubled him all his life." Thus during Glasnost and Gorbachev, Mochulsky looked back over the decades and described his experiences as one of the low-level Gulag functionaries. Is it self-serving and selective? Maybe, probably, yet still fascinating and a rarity among Gulag memoirs. Kaple reports in afterword on the research she did including comparison to prisoner memoirs that failed to find any material contradiction to the recollections here. The recollections point to running the camp had much of the same restrictions and privations suffered by those imprisoned. Sidelined from a promising mining career out of university, Mochulsky was dropped off north Arctic Circle with little supplies and many people to build a railway undersupplied and under threat. His ways to enable that with POWs, political prisoners, and common criminals is fascinating about the day-to-day operations while Mochulsky does not go very far into the lack of justice, as if that needed underscoring.

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Review: Choosing Light: When an Earthquake Buried Me and My Family for 5 Days, I Learned to Fully Live

Choosing Light: When an Earthquake Buried Me and My Family for 5 Days, I Learned to Fully Live by Viral Dalal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An amazing story of being buried alive for days during the 7.7 magnitude October 2015 Hindu Kush earthquake and surviving and recovering: physically, psychologically, and spiritually. The claustrophobic detail of the immurement juxtaposes the frantic and tragic search for family members amidst the regional ruin. Chapters feature epigraphs: a quotation to highlight the chapter. Isn't it a bit vain for the author to feature himself several times as the epigraph author, too?

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Review: A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James B. Comey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I expected this to be an insider's The Emperor Wears No Clothes account rushed into print, which would have been fine with me. Maybe rushed, but certainly much broader in scope. Comey's long career in federal law enforcement allows him to relate details on the Martha Stewart insider trading desk, the showdown at John Ashcroft's hospital bed over the STELLAR WIND surveillance program—a massive NSA effort authorized by President George W. Bush after 9/11—and more. This also includes Comey's history in fighting the mafia under Rudolph Giuliani. This includes conversations with "Sammy the Bull" Gravano which allows Comey to compare the mafia organizational style of demanded loyalty with the famous personal loyalty demand from Trump.

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Review: The Hobbit [Dramatized]

The Hobbit [Dramatized] by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This a 1979 radio series of The Hobbit, adapted and directed by Bob Lewis and produced by Mind's Eye. It would be most remembered as an NPR radio series and I used to have the cassette box set. It seems most reviews note it as less well done than the famous BBC radio treatment. I would not go as far as that - it holds its own. Each adaptation is a subset of the material and the production tells a slightly different story. The recent Peter Jackson movies of this story is really The Tragedy of Thorin Oakenshield. This treatment puts Bilbo more to the fore for saving the dwarves who are unsure and largely aged, past their prime. My only real complaint is that Tom Luce as Thorin makes the grim figure sound like William S. Burroughs. I wish that director had switched Luce with Bernard Mayes (this Gandalf).

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Review: It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America

It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Johnston obviously has it out for Trump and this is not his first tossing of an inkpot at that devil... His loathing lies so much on the surface, it may be hard for him to be taken objectively. Toss in wonk details about tax law and more and this is a mediocre listening experience among the many published attacks on Trump. Taking in this audiobook, none of which I have cause to dispute, it came to me that whether Trump is deluded or evil is rather beside the point. Even collusion with Russia is only an academic point when considering that it looks like some Russian hackers know more about the buttons to push for the electorate to draft a demagogue. That seems the real issue; a sheep-like voting body. Johnston goes right to that at the end; the very end for a few pages and suggests a more aware and alert and informed group of votes needed. But, how to get there?

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Review: Great Stories of the Great Lakes

Great Stories of the Great Lakes by Dwight Boyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent review of the mysteries around ships gone missing in the great lakes and a few odds and ends about the harsh business of plying that trade, such as managing ice. Not a line about the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is required to make fascinating the unresolved questions around from 1679 when LaSalle's wooden barque the Le Griffon was lost, to each Dean Richmond.

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Review: The Home Front: Life in America During World War II

The Home Front: Life in America During World War II by Audible Original
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of podcasts. The audio is a fascinating glimpse into WW II life stateside, largely around women coming into their own: jobs and pants! This is largely presented in oral history from interviews with people that staffed aircraft factories and the women that flew them stateside only when they were not being sabotaged and killed in the attempt. Another part of this era I did not know of was WW I atrocity propaganda that was recalled then and made it difficult to believe stories of the Nazi holocaust and other terrors. There is also exploration of racial unrest at the time including an exploration of the zoot suit riots.

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Review: Jackie Oh!

Jackie Oh! by Kitty Kelley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love the Kelley unauthorized autobiographies. I guess this book does largely slur Jacqueline "JACK-leen" ("rhymes with queen") Kennedy Onassis, but from what I know, for someone in a bubble whose reflections back amplify and rationalize any negative personality traits, was she really that far beyond the norm? I don't think so, really: her cheapness in outgo combined with luchre-amassing actions and acting superior while hounded by paparazzi all seems par for the course. The main things I come away from: How would JFK's rampant philandering playout in today's journalistic arena? I think they call it something like R.I.P.: Reveal - Investigate - Prosecute, or something.... Also, Jackie's final abandonment of Onassis on his deathbed really seems to reveal a mercantile aspect to that marriage which (partly) scorned mistress Maria Callas slammed when asked for a comment after his wedding: “She did well, Jackie, to give a grandfather to her children. Ari is as beautiful as Croesus.” Ah, wonderful muckraking about the 1% of the 1%.

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Review: The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking

The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking by Olivia Fox Cabane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a varied collection of active thinking techniques some of which could even be labeled new age: meditation, etc. Be prepared for "loving kindness" and "mindfulness". Well, at the peak levels, it is all a head game and this motivating compendium of approaches reminds us of the activating effects of altruism, and the voice of genius that can be heard in zen-like tranquility. There are also useful approaches to corral brainstorming sessions in meetings, etc.

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Review: New World, Inc.: How England's Merchant Adventurers Created America

New World, Inc.: How England's Merchant Adventurers Created America by John Butman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read a lot of early American history; more in the past than recently. While few subjects cause so much ink to be expended, what more can really be said? This book really does bring, for me, a new perspective. Reaching back to the 1558 end of the Pale of Calais and the English wool trade interests, this book sets up the economic and social motivations for reaching out to the markets of "Cathay" through -- whatever would work -- the Northeast or Northwest passage. On the surface, this seems rather dry, but the social motivation are an unruly populace exemplified by Robert Kett. Kett's Rebellion was a revolt in Norfolk, England during the reign of Edward VI, largely in response to the enclosure of land. It began with a group of rebels destroying fences. One of their targets was yeoman farmer Robert Kett who, instead of resisting the rebels, agreed to their demands and offered to lead them. This is a small part, and Kett does not even rate an entry in the largest "Cast of Characters" I have seen, but it is one of the spicy tales of unrest that shows how England, certainly by the time of Elizabeth I, truly needed to find a new market for its wool goods. This economic need may seem easy to satisfy in a globe being conquered and colonized left and right, but England was much behind the game compared to Spain, Portugal, and even France. In probing around the New World looking for a toehold, the first came about (and this is something I learned here) as New Albion claimed by Sir Francis Drake for England in 1579 on the coast of what is now California. So, this was years before Roanoke, Jamestown, etc. Of course those more well-known settlements get their due, which seems rather anti-climactic and back into the familiar territory. The author here spices this up with some insight by explaining how the impact and perceived relevance of The Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony) versus the Puritans (Massachusetts Bay Colony) began to be crafted as a sort of American forefather mythology, really in the days after The Civil War. (The Pilgrims offering an ideal; The Puritans a pragmatism so loose as to even admit slavery.) Either way, all were ultimately after lucre...

[I received a copy of this book from the publisher to review.]

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Review: History of Number: Evidence from Papua New Guinea and Oceania

History of Number: Evidence from Papua New Guinea and Oceania by Kay Owens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Having previously reviewed Visuospatial Reasoning: An Ecocultural Perspective for Space, Geometry and Measurement Education, I was intrigued to learn more about the insights gleaned through years of study done with the varied indigenous peoples of the region. This volume focuses on the development of counting systems from body-part tallying (by fingers, toes, etc.) to more abstract application. The studies here approach variously the diffusion, categorization, and modern-day survival of the systems studied..."

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]

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Review: Waylon: Tales of My Outlaw Dad

Waylon: Tales of My Outlaw Dad by Terry Jennings
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really great musician biography from Waylon's eldest. His backstage pass to the meteoric rise of outlaw country has details of Waylon's prodigious cocaine use, cameos from Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, and tales of life on the road during a hectic career in the '70s. Jennings inside view is both very forthcoming and unguarded while exuding a true love and respect for his talented and pioneering father from playing bass in The Crickets "The Day the Music Died" to unilaterally leaving drugs behind to be a better parent.

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Review: The Venlo Incident: A True Story of Double-Dealing, Captivity, and a Murderous Nazi Plot

The Venlo Incident: A True Story of Double-Dealing, Captivity, and a Murderous Nazi Plot by S. Payne Best
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Venlo Incident was a covert German Sicherheitsdienst (SD-Security Service) operation, in the course of which two British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agents were abducted on the outskirts of the town of Venlo, the Netherlands, on 9 November 1939.[1][2] The incident was later used by the German Nazi government to link Britain to Georg Elser's failed assassination attempt on German Chancellor Adolf Hitler at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, Germany, on 8 November 1939 and to help justify Germany's invasion of the Netherlands, while a neutral country, on 10 May 1940. However the plot, or actually its denouement, is just a brief bit ox exposition here. There is no real details on "Double-Dealing" or a "Murderous Nazi Plot". This is a POW memoir about "Captivity". Yet, it is a fascinating, detailed, and broad POW memoir. Author and British SIS agent Captain Sigismund Payne Best was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen between 1940 and 1945, and for a few months of 1945 in the Dachau concentration camp. So, basically all of WW II. He was really a celebrity inmate and did not have a typical POW experience, let alone a concentration camp experience, yet his many years as a German prisoner and insights into the psychological changes in long internment are engrossing. He also observed or crossed paths with many notable inmates, including Reverend Martin Niemöller (critic of the Nazis and author of the statement "First they came ..."), Leifur H. Muller (an Icelandic trader), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German pastor, theologian, spy, anti-Nazi dissident. It was while researching Bonhoeffer fascinating life of resolute convictions that I discovered this book.

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Review: A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First of all, kudos to Borders for a beautifully designed paperback edition with deckle edges and a heavy-duty cover with flaps usable for bookmarks, like a dust jacket on a hardcover.

Now, as for the content, this is what I want when I read other Dickens title: evocative description and metaphor, but with an economy unlike the over-writing I feel I encounter in his other novels. The setting from an American Revolutionary War espionage trial to the rapine of the freely wielded guillotine in a much bloodier revolution in France is recalls a fascinating era with as much of a sociological dimension to consider as The Holocaust: That happened.

I am not as much sold on the blood. I think the villainy of the Marquis St. Evrémonde, the cruel uncle of the heroic Charles Darnay, rather gets lots in this inter-generational and inter-continental tale. (I think Wuthering Heights does a better job with the decades of dastardly deeds perpetrated on a family by Heathcliff.) While on film he has been played by several actors and the Basil Rathbone portrayal of St. Evrémonde was nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains as one of the Top 50 Villains I think it can be argued that the film portrayal much more "cut to the chase" than the book.

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Review: The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While this 2011 work just barely predates the 4 July 2012 discovery of a new particle that physicists suspected was the Higgs boson, I feel this is the best book I have read of several laying on the brane-based multi-verse theories. I feel as a popularizer of notions and having a low bar of entry, it is even better than Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions. This is very easy to follow with clear analogies such as blurry photographs of a fly and the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and similarly works well to explain simply ideas like Planck constant and information capacity, the Copenhagen interpretation and, new to me, the inflaton field theorized to drive cosmic inflation in the very early universe. In short, an excellent summary introduction by a researched in cosmology with a gift for explanation.

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