Review: The Killer Angels

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is an excellent bit of historical fiction centered on the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War. Plenty of maps and character insights into the leaders of both sides.



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Review: EVEN KEEL: Life On The Streets Of Rock & Roll

EVEN KEEL: Life On The Streets Of Rock & Roll by Ron Keel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



It is interesting to me how many lives of successful musicians have an Act I of privation, poverty, and pain. Ron survived that to go from Steeler to KEEL and 80s metal success, all documented here with salacious tales and name-dropping. The country years seem rushed at the end, for instance IronHorse is just the balance of one, short chapter.



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Review: A Rage to Live

A Rage to Live by John O'Hara

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Ah, such excruciating detail on the small-town elite of imagined Fort Allen, PA! O'Hara deserves credit for this detailed setting, and I was surprised for the matter-of-fact and fairly explicit sex scenes of an early 60s book. Was O'Hara ahead of his time? Did the work get banned here and there?

I thought from the movie Grace would be an unbridled nymphomaniac, more just someone that seemed damaged in a way and gave in to the expectation that she would "put out"... She seemed slightly tragic, her husband Sidney dying of a broken heart lamely so, and Richard Bannon like Greek tragedy.

I thought the ending with documentary-style where-are-they-now of the key dramatis personae was weak and the book overlong and slow.



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Review: See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I have seen and enjoyed Baer as a talking head on cable news. That got my interest and I came to see him as really not in the stereotypical spy mold when I read [b:The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story|8576188|The Company We Keep A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story|Robert Baer|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320452743s/8576188.jpg|13445106]. Here he really has a screed against the CIA and a leadership and gov't (NSC, especially) cowed by big business putting profit above national security. Incompetence is a real prominent thread: "...a headquarters staffed with officers [who] so badly misidentified the Chinese embassy in Belgrade that we sent a missile into it."

Baer's behind the scenes story on a failed Kurdish coup in Iraq and lack of CIA interest in Bin Laden linkages to Iran paint an intriguing back story to the Beirut embassy bombing that one of the first salvos in the war with Islamic jihad. Along with Clinton admin influence peddling, this edition is updated with post-9/11 observations by the veteran spy.

Among the most interesting things to me here, though is all the fits and starts and details to the beginning of his career - what it's like to be a spy noob - and similarly learning to recruit agents and then have to pass them on as a veteran to another new-hire.



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Review: Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando by Patricia Bosworth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this biography that drew on Brando's autobiography and other accounts to chart his life from stage and screen, gigolo to AIM activist, and public figure to recluse. The commentary and analysis of the films has prompted me to revisit or discover many of them. For instance, I have now seen and enjoyed Brando's "Julius Caesar". I liked that is was so close to the Shakespeare original and helped support this book's revelation that Brando began as a very successful stage actor.



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Review: Handbook Of Graph Drawing And Visualization

Handbook Of Graph Drawing And Visualization by Roberto Tamassia

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



In the topological and geometric foundations to graph drawing, this collections goes beyond defining planarity or even minimizing edge crossings. This handbook also covers spine, radial, circular, tree, and rectangular drawing definitions and algorithms. There is much content on formally defining and approaching such subjective and even aesthetic areas as legibility in name placement and labeling as well as maximizing pleasing symmetries and other methods related to edge lengths and linearity research has shown to impart information to humans effectively. Many chapters touch on history and open problems in this well-arranged compendium weighted toward content ripe for practical implementation.

[See my entire review on MAA Reviews]



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Review: Travels with Charley

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I heard about this from comparisons made to [b:The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America|16148950|The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America|Shane Bugbee|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1364529264s/16148950.jpg|21983928]. I was intrigued, especially since I didn't know Steinbeck wrote non-fiction. Somewhat rambling and discursive, Steinbeck's cursory review of America thru random encounters coalesces around some themes, like how West Coast immigration & transformation has made Cannery Row into something artificial (he would really wince at the theme park it has now become), the uniqueness of Texas, and the race flash points he encountered, especially the New Orleans "Cheerleaders".



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