Review: Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics

Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics by Charles Krauthammer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Krauthammer was one of the less strident and more considered voices on Fox News, etc. from back when I had cable. (Don't miss it.) When I heard of his passing this year, I decided to read this collection. The collection of columns and speeches feels a bit thrown together and lacking in coherence. However, reading of his love of chess and The Nationals baseball teams as well as the prominent persons he chose to eulogize added depth to his person and about made it worth it reading through the more dated opinions about W., Obama, etc.

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Review: The Castle

The Castle by Franz Kafka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my third time in my life, at least, reading this - and the portrayal of a Sisyphean existence becomes more real and less surreal each time. It feels like a perfect parable of modernity's bureaucracy and regulation. I almost dread liking it -- it would be like "liking" a Holocaust documentary. This is the world we live in, sad and beautiful, engaging and pointless.

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Review: At Home: A Short History of Private Life

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I generally like Bryson books, and this is still one of the better ones, to me. Built around a parsonage in England where Bryson resides, he goes through every feature and room of the place to tell the history of Church of England parsons and parsonages as well as the evolution of the toilet, bedroom, hall, etc. In the broadening spirit of a microhistory he amplifies where entertaining to the history of the Eiffel Tower, Victorian Era child labor, and sartorial minutiae such as why we have buttons on our jacket cuffs.

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Review: Weird Math: A Teenage Genius and His Teacher Reveal the Strange Connections Between Math and Everyday Life

Weird Math: A Teenage Genius and His Teacher Reveal the Strange Connections Between Math and Everyday Life by David Darling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A quarter century ago, writers such as Martin Gardner and Clifford A. Pickover so excited my interest in the mathematical -- especially the speculatively mathematical -- that their works fueled me though undergraduate and graduate studies. I am pleased to see these two authors continue in the tradition of telegraphing excitement to lay readers and embracing deviations from the norm: “A teenage genius and his teacher take readers on a wild ride to the extremes of mathematics.” ...

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]

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Review: Man & Horse: The Long Ride Across America

Man & Horse: The Long Ride Across America by John Egenes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an affecting, sage, evocative memoir of the author riding Gizmo the quarter horse from California to the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia in 1974. Along abandoned stretches of Route 66, empty land, fenced in grazing lands, pipelines and more he witnesses a country changing post-'60s and moving uneasily into a future just as he travels surely to and through the densely populated east. I really did not want to get to the end of the small vignettes or recollections and musings - easy to read wisdom and travelogue.

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Review: Night

Night by Elie Wiesel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An affecting memoir. It is memorably authentic in the dreamlike recollection of Holocaust terror experienced by a child.

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Review: House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row

House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row by Lance Richardson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this biog - really of the 2 Nutter brothers: tailor Tommy and photog David. There remarkable lives are more than the broad-shouldered bespoke suit trend Tommy started after first bringing in the altered style of an English horse riding jacket. Bother moved in orbits with Elton John as a focus and thats three of Tommy's creations on the cover of Abbey Road. Both gay men lived a colorful club life that was eclipsed by the specter of AIDS. The decades covered here feel like a generational sweep of the '70s thru the '80s and succeeding (at times) with a creative life.

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Review: Stanley Kubrick: A Biography

Stanley Kubrick: A Biography by Vincent Lobrutto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an encompassing, very detailed, and often very technical exploration of Kubrick's filmmaking up until (and before) Eyes Wide Shut. Which is fine with me, as that one does not do anything for me. This means there is long, in-depth chapter on each of the following:


1987 Full Metal Jacket (pivotal bathroom set designed per Kubrick)
1980 The Shining (SteadiCam debut; Kubrick saw every ghost story as "hopeful" and tormented Duvall into a believable performance)
1975 Barry Lyndon (not all candlelight, even MiniBrutes were used -- whatever to mock natural light in an early adoption of super-fase lenses)
1971 A Clockwork Orange (Amid controversy over ultra-violence, withdrawn from British release in 1973 by Warner Brothers at the request of Kubrick.)
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (Clarke run through the wringer in writing to Kubrick's demand. Much about the ultimate-trip Star Child ending.)
1964 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Sellers had to be convinced to play through role, again)
1962 Lolita (Sellers had to be convinced to play through role; the pederast angle had to be downplayed for the era)
1960 Spartacus (Kubrick's pluck, dedication, and resourcefulness got him a first real chance)

There is a lot here on the never realized Napoleon project, obsessive reading and researching for a book to base each movie on, on-set technique, etc. including how Kubrick methodically thought out and controlled what prints were used by exhibitors and how films were rolled out to exhibitors.

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Review: Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal by James D. Hornfischer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A couple years back I read Fighter Squadron at Guadalcanal on the the early part of the Guadalcanal campaign when the VMF-212 sent detachments to operate with Cactus Air Force squadrons deployed to Henderson Field until the entire squadron was committed to the battle in mid-October. This work is much more encompassing in scope covering the entire Solomon Islands campaign, a major campaign of the Pacific War during World War II. Much detailed, almost shot for shot, this is U.S. navy focused and full of shell and torpedo strikes as well as survivor reports of gruesome killings, drownings, and shark attacks.

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Review: Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story

Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story by Bill Bonanno
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Besides being an inside report of life as a mafioso, this book has three big, interrelated themes: The Banana Wars among the American mafia, the decline of the American mafia, and the assassination of JFK. The interrelation is that they were in a mesh of reinforcing causes. The actual details of the War seem distracting minutiae: The stabilizing role of The Commission, once eroded led to internal violence and violence leaking out, eventually effectively destroying the institution. Part of this reminds me of a book a read looking at some L.A. street gangs - when run "well", violence was kept internal. Here, the eroding of the Mafia (in this few) from external causes (RFK, where he sees a mob conspiracy around Thane Eugene Cesar and an unleased FBI (author claims to have seen and identify the source of the JEH in drag pics that kept him in line) and eventually the presidential assassination from an untethered Traficante etc. mixed with miffed anti-Castro forces all from a talkative sewer darin shooter Johnny Roselli.

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Review: Frank: The Voice

Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fascinating, in-depth exploration of the philandering, macrophallic, Mafia groupie saloon singer covering really his career's first two acts: (I) leading the crooner wave where "bobby soxers" swooned over the emotional controlled phrasing made possible by new electronic amplification, and (II) an inauspicious acting career culminating in triumph with From Here to Eternity. Lots here about Marilyn Maxwell, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, etc. The career exploration ends at the dawn of Sinatra's Capitol Records era.

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Review: Introduction to Cutting and Packing Optimization: Problems, Modeling Approaches, Solution Methods

Introduction to Cutting and Packing Optimization: Problems, Modeling Approaches, Solution Methods by Guntram Scheithauer
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

"Here is an encompassing cutting and packing optimization overview featuring modelling approaches and algorithms by problem type. Models vary in basis: IP, LP, set-theoretic, graphical and more. Pseudocode presentation of algorithms makes for suggestions ready to implement. While exercises and solutions complete the needs as a textbook, the pseudocode and real-world basis of the models complete this as a basic field manual. Further on the practical side, there is much advice on implementing heuristics, bounding, relaxations, pruning and other simplification approaches to taming such NP-hard problems when they appear in the wild."...

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]



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