Review: The Beatles Play Shea

The Beatles Play Shea by James Woodall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This concise Kindle Single would have been good prep for my interview with Sid Bernstein. However, I came across this now doing research for my interview anthology including this conversation I came across this and got to read. Great idea to add to the Beatles bookshelf: background and details using the historic Shea Stadium concert setlist. This does a good job of a brisk telling of the Beatles during that pivotal time cresting in their concert-giving career and pre-LSD, pot.

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Review: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This edition features an insightful, four-age intro from Roger Zelazny who praises this "writer's writer" and covers a gamut of works beyond this one.

In the book, Deckard's obsession with buying a living animal plays into an emotional and philosophical landscape that has a magnitude of dimension as great at the gritty stylism of Scott's gritty, post-noir vision. Really the idea of lacking control and ceding personal choice through Mercerism, “better living through the mood synthesizer” and the ever-running television puts the books more in the league of Brave New World as a dark musing on a dystopic possibility where free will sublimates to numbing comfort in the absence of hope. Also, these mind- and emotion-controlling devices are springboards for effective, hallucinogenic passages as Deckard looks into the abyss of monstrous androids and looking back at him, it infects him with an existential panic.

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Review: The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy

The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy by Greg Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Andy Thomas has updated his hugely popular painting of Republican presidents by adding Donald Trump in. I think, after reading this detailed exploration of the pro-Trump meddling by Russians of the 2016 Election, that he should do one of Trump at the Resolute desk sharing a laugh with Putin and Julian Assange.

That aside, is fascinating and detailed account of how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was first infiltrated by the Russian hacker groups Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear as well as Facebook ads buys in rubles, etc. Of course, Trump found this quite helpful:

Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

— Donald J. Trump

Along with "shithole countries" and other things I have heard, it seems this exchange in here is just as revealing about the man:

McMaster had recruited an internal ally on Russia in March with the hiring of Fiona Hill as the senior Russia adviser on the NSC. Hill shared McMaster’s distrust of the Kremlin and had even written a critical biography of Putin. Her relationship with Trump couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start. In one of her first visits with the president in the Oval Office—a planning session for a call with Putin on Syria—Trump appeared to mistake Hill for a member of the White House clerical staff and handed her an edited document to type up. When she responded with an arched brow, Trump lashed out at what he perceived to be insubordination. “What’s the matter with this one?” he shouted, motioning for McMaster to intervene. McMaster followed Hill out the door and scolded her. Later, he and others explored ways to repair her damaged relationship with the president. As it turned out, she was still in the White House long after McMaster had been fired.

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Review: There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say

There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say by Paula Poundstone
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really enjoy Paula's perky comedic and quick answers on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and that prompted me to read this book for hopefully more than that. One thing I learned there is that promptness in answering helped her on Celebrity Jeopardy! Game 3 even if she didn't do well for not knowing the answers. Well, she entertains me for the answers she imagines on NPR... There was a darker element to this as I had not known of Paula's battles with alcohol and "lewd act" charges (later dropped) made against her by one of her many foster children. We also hear of her many pets, including a bearded dragon, and OCD habits such as excessive vacuuming, etc.

The overall structure of the book is apparently, she takes an outline for each chapter a synopsis of a famous life (Joan of Arc, Sitting Bull, Abraham Lincoln, The Wright Brothers, etc.) and then riffs off the telling of that life with whatever a bit of biographical trivia triggers her to think of.

I laughed out loud a couple of times, and at times I felt her brave.

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Review: Charter Storm: Waves of Change Sweeping Over Public Education

Charter Storm: Waves of Change Sweeping Over Public Education by Mary Searcy Bixby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Storm" in the title makes one thinks could be coloring the charter school movement as a destructive event. Possibly, this is partly true as the author details the "pushback" from traditional school systems and the disruptive effect these institutions can be seen to have at some times in over a decade of existence. Still, Bixby is an overt supporter of the movement and calls out plans and approaches for those wanting charter schools to succeed. There is also much history of the movement drawn from an apparent national tour of various institutions.

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Review: Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House

Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House by April Ryan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another entry in the Trump bookshelf. Here, a reporter's 15 Minutes and becoming the story comes from asking Donald J. if he is a racist. Mostly, the reporter's memoir is about a running Cold War with the apparently duplicitous chameleon Omarosa Manigault. So now I have to read that side in Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House.

More of an aside, it seems this African-American is writing her own "dog whistles". Maybe I am too white, but I need help understanding why Black History Month, referred to as a "African-American History Month" at least sometimes by Reagan and Obama, is problematic when referred to as a "African-American History Month" by Trump. Ryan does go this extra distance to help me understand more about the history and role of Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and the rocky initial meeting between HBCU leaders and Trump.

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Review: The Left-Hander Syndrome: The Causes and Consequences of Left-Handedness

The Left-Hander Syndrome: The Causes and Consequences of Left-Handedness by Stanley Coren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I think I was the last American southpaw to be forced in kintegarten to be forced to write right-handed. I have met others that went through it. But, I recall being the only one in my class and I've never met anyone younger than I that went through it. It means I will never forget the name of that insistent teacher: Mrs. Cole. So, I thought from the title maybe this was related to that. Forcing right-handedness on students is really a footnote to the main thrust of this book: left-handedness as a deadly pathology. That is, birth stressors causing left-handedness land the person in a world of dangerous right-handed power tools and carrying the seeds of destruction from those same stressors so that when 10% or so children are lefties, but only something like 0.5% of octogenarians. Apparently, Coren's research was quite controversial back in the day and I suppose if it were as widely read now it'd be at least as controversial as the bell curve. Some of the minor facts are real groaners, like suggesting the etymology of "footman" is from Roman servants posted to observe that the propitious foot leads into the house, etc. So, that makes me have to take with a grain of salt what I am not taking the time to research. Still, as science writing for a popular audience, I greatly appreciate the author's success is engaging, clear material distilled from many studies and research.

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Review: The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality

The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Engaging, even enlightening overview of the growth of cosmology from the 1964 accidental discovery of background radiation echoes of The Big Bang through the solidification of Dark Matter & Dark Energy as that mysterious 96%; the non-baryonic reality of our universe. This telling seems to highlight the unfortunate fact that even among scientists exploring nature, human nature's saddest aspects are in full display: sexism, pettiness, envy, vanity, etc.

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Review: Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of WWII's OSS

Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of WWII's OSS by Patrick K. O'Donnell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Once again, O'Donnell presents a collage of oral history, collecting first-hand recollections on the WW II pre-CIA clandestine operations. Drawn from interviews and memories, the scope tends to be at the individual operation level. There are many underwater frogmen ventures that standout, as they obviously did to Ian Fleming who drew inspiration from the training for them. Of course, not all succeeded and several operatives from the division-strength organization ended in Nazi hands, at times eyeless and hanging from meat hooks.

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Review: Point Counter Point

Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I bought his paperback in 1995, coming off the high of Brave New World. I haven't read it yet because, well, I just am not drawn to fiction that much. But, it is Huxley and after all I was pleased with Crome Yellow. On top of that, in 1998, the Modern Library ranked this 44th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Still, after a couple hundred pages into this tome I was really pushing myself following the interlinked storylines such as young journalist Walter Bidlake living with Marjorie Carling, a married woman whose husband refuses to grant her a divorce. Marjorie is pregnant with Walter's child, but their relationship is disintegrating, largely because Walter has fallen desperately in love with the sexually aggressive and independent Lucy Tantamount...

Is this a soap opera? I rarely enjoy stories and movies about people who seems to have no daily obligations and just flop about acting out their character defects.

Well, so Tantamount is based on Nancy Cunard with whom Huxley had a similarly unsatisfactory affair. I have heard that among the recurring themes (as in musical "counterpoint"), we have many autobiographical passages like Everard Webley, a political demagogue and leader of his own quasi-military group often assumed to be based on Oswald Mosley, and Mark Rampion, a writer and painter based on D. H. Lawrence whom Huxley admired greatly, etc. That wasn't sustaining me -- and it often doesn't. How do I know what is true? I liked more the frequent references to other books, adding to my to-read list.

There is a pay-off at the end, of sorts with murder and some sort of suffering child, I guess gnashing its teeth over some adult sour grapes. Some sort of exorcism; catharsis?

Interesting if not fascinating two-dimensional people spewing thoughts on love, religion, science, politics, etc.

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Review: Unopened

Unopened by Doug Hoekstra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Back in 1999, when I began with the whole Internet radio thing with collegemusic.com there was a period where interviews only happened in chat (all typing, no audio), or with the lo-fi quality of a telephone microphone suction cup pickup. It was during this time I came across compelling songwriter Doug Hoekstra and his album Make Me Believe ‎(One Man Clapping Records OMC 0018, 1999) with its memorable opener “Sam Cooke Sang The Gospel”. Hoping to get some recollection or saved artifact from this, possibly, very first interview on my show for my book, I reached out to Doug. While no 1999 traces emerged, such is the font of talent and creativity from Doug that I found instead an opportunity to enjoy his latest collection of poetry: Unopened (Five-Minute Books, 2019).

The title piece begins recalling his father and artfully dodges into a forgotten, left behind, unopened vinyl LP. “Vinyl” from a concluding section in this triptych also explores the magic of those spinning time capsules. That final set of poems explores the mysteries of interactions after groups of pieces on the personal and greater worlds. Broadly, there is little form here in the sense of rhyme and meter in these prose pieces while there is an intriguing similarity to a style of rigid form: the haiku. Know you the typical characteristic of the haiku, that there is a division somewhere in the tiny poem, so that the focus on the first, obvious thing, switches to another exposing a subtle relationship between the two in a that is insightful and sometimes surprising? These pieces tend to end that way, drawing me from first line to the last.


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Review: The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

2 Peter 3: 5-7:

For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

From this New Testament qualification to God's Old Testament promise to Noah comes the implied threat in Baldwin's title. Such a dire prophecy fits with the historically interesting recollection of Baldwin's meetings with Elijah Muhammad and his Nation of Islam followers.

The real core of this book, though, is the examination of the formative times of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a deep, philosophical consideration examination of the consequences of racial injustice. This work, which The New York Times Book Review described as "sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle...all presented in searing, brilliant prose," is a compelling and forceful classic of American literature which is almost disturbing in the way it still feels accurate in describing the plight of non-White Americans seeking integration and control of their own destinies.

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Review: Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia

Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia by Carmen Bin Ladin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Carmen married a Bin Laden - brother to Osama. I am not sure how much "inside" the kingdom this is. However, it is inside the marriage of a non-Saudi to a prominent Saudi and living some years in The Kingdom. Carmen covers being veiled, the harem-like existence of breeder wives for the distracted oligarchy, and day to day existence in a sort of gilded cage where you can't really run your house (can't interact with male workers, etc) or even socialize and explore.

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Review: Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean Wars Greatest Untold Story - The Epic Stand of the Marines of George Company

Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean Wars Greatest Untold Story - The Epic Stand of the Marines of George Company by Patrick K. O'Donnell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With the detail of Band of Brothers, this is a company-level recollection drawn from interviews of the bitter and contests, often bloody and at close range, leading to the breakout from the Chosin Reservoir by G Company of the 1st Marine Regiment, led by Col. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. While this is a very personal, low-level account, some higher level features of the Korean War emerge, such as the threat to the very existence of the Marines as an organization under Truman and the extent to which General MacArthur's hubris led to a mistaken battle with the underestimated and determined Chinese forces.

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