Review: Is Iran a Threat to Global Security?

Is Iran a Threat to Global Security? by Julia Bauder

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This slim volume is a collection of short essays alternating in answer "Yes" and "No" to the question posed in the title. These brief pieces include some crazy: Ahmadinejad and a California attorney pulling for invasion and occupation which he thinks would go easier than Iraq...

The space forces variety to lack depth, resulting in a shallow, muddy puddle of conflicting points of view ... with bibliography.



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Review: The Humanist In the Bathtub

The Humanist In the Bathtub by Mary McCarthy

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I have to respect McCarthy's accomplishments as a novelist. But, her lengthy forays into collegiate women ("The Vassar Girl"), sexual politics in an evasive if not pointless rambling ("Tyranny of the Orgasm") and exegesis of the mechanics of novel writing ("The Fact in Fiction", "Characters in Fiction") is for a reader of another time and another mind, if not another gender.



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Review: The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time

The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time by Phil Hall

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A delight for any movie buff, this is an alphabetical arrangement of 100 films from the so-bad-they're-good category ("Plan 9 From Outer Space") to the it-never-should-have-been-made category (Linda Lovelace's per-"Deep Throat" venture into bestiality). There are feature films, knock-offs, dud career-enders, and a 1925 version of "Wizard of Oz" previously unknown to me. Personally, I think he should have swapped out Disney's technically innovative "The Black Cauldron" with Drew Barrymore's "Doppleganger", but any list like this is subjective.

I'll be talking w/the author on my show today.



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Review: American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood & the Crime of the Century

American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood & the Crime of the Century by Howard Blum

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A complicated and encompassing overview of ~1910 when Clarence Darrow returned to the courtroom with a defence of "justifiable dynamiting" for bomb-planting unions past frustration in their war with plutocrat industrialists. The work of "American Sherlock Holmes" PI Billy Burns to suss out the miscreants and invent bugging devices along the way. That part would make a great movie. As a side plot, D. W. Griffith invents feature films and then goes awry from the long trial and goes all "Birth of a Nation". Why was the trial such a stunner? Somthing about the need to re-align politicals and skew political opinion due to something to do with people locking up land to own the waterway to a thirsty Los Angeles, ala "Chinatown".

Well, I enjoyed it even if I don't understand all of it.



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Review: Honor Thy Father

Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Talese needs to back off on the dry, complete courtroom testimony reprints, but the picture of real-life mafiosi living largely boring, uneventful if stressful and anxious lives while scrabbling for peanuts is revealing showing the emotional turths on the level of the economic revelations of [b:Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets|1491906|Gang Leader for a Day A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets|Sudhir Venkatesh|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347568042s/1491906.jpg|1483174].

As for other books, the mysterious bombing that disrupted the Arizona retirement of Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno is plumbed to a deeper depth in [b:Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel|16144299|Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel|Chauncey Holt|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1356068760s/16144299.jpg|21977248].



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Review: Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel

Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel by Chauncey Holt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Really an amazing tale of an underworld Zelig renaissance man that was every wear: So. American & Caribbean coups, CIA wars in Indochina, keeping the books for Meyer Lansky, standing by Oswald while he passed out Fair Play for Cuba flyers and, of course, behind the Grassy Knoll on that fateful day in Dallas. He also could do anything: creative accounting with the best of them, military aviation, expert marksmanship, portraiture, document forgery, and more. Is it all true? I don't know, but it is a fascinating read full of facts on crime and cop figures that could be verified with lots of photos and documents and appendices with two lengthy interviews and more that purport to support his role as an unwilling bit player in an American coup by scorned Mafia-CIA-AntiCastro forces that all had it in for Kennedy.

This book is packed with false flag ops, dark ops, and the criminal underworld including insight in the nighttime bombing that disrupted Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno's Arizona retirement and was a mystery in [b:Honor Thy Father|1159133|Honor Thy Father|Gay Talese|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1212100268s/1159133.jpg|109625].

I did an interview on my program related to this book and the interview transcripts.



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Review: Math, Better Explained: Learn to Unlock Your Math Intuition

Math, Better Explained: Learn to Unlock Your Math Intuition by MR Kalid Azad

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



...Parents can find their own path to insight here while teachers may find some classroom capsules to enliven lectures. The author tries very hard, almost with exasperation, to avoid any definition without motivation, any explanation with linkage to intuition. Azad excitedly brings light to imaginary numbers as the arithmetic of rotation, natural logarithms in terms of time to grow, and exponentials as growth over time...

[see my entire review up at MAA Reviews]



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