Review: Contents Under Pressure: 30 Years of Rush at Home and Away

Contents Under Pressure: 30 Years of Rush at Home and Away by Martin Popoff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



In the midst of Rush's 40-city tour to promote its 30th anniversary, this book looks back on the progressive rock bands progress through intertwining discography with gigography. This authorized tour overview is replete with candidate remarks and insight garnered from interviews with Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. The book also features many photographs from official band photographer Andrew MacNaughtan. Conveniently broken into a chapter dedicated for each release and the corresponding tour, this book serves not only as band biography, but also excellent reading while enjoying classic albums from the Canadian prog rock trio.



View all my reviews

Review: Of Grunge & Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy!

Of Grunge & Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy! by Krist Novoselic

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



In the last paragraph of Section IV of the classic Civil Disobedience, Thoreau asserts the supremacy of the individual in relation to the State, and further insists that democracy is not the last step in the evolution of government, as there is still greater room for the State to recognize the freedom and rights of the individual. Thoreau concludes saying such a State is one he has imagined "but not yet anywhere seen." This work became a bible for the future international non-violence movement and other progressive movements. Krist Novoselic's Of Grunge and Government taps the same vein and conjures the same ideas of the hope for and promise of a more enlightened democracy. The down-to-earth language can reach any of those that know him from Nirvana while the closer look at instant-runoff voting (IRV) and full representation offer real grist for the political junkie to chew on.



View all my reviews

Review: Unholy Messenger: The Life and Crimes of the Btk Serial Killer

Unholy Messenger: The Life and Crimes of the Btk Serial Killer by Stephen Singular

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is an amazing detailed and revealing study of the psychopath next door - or maybe hiding in the closet - drawn from extensive interviews with Rader's pastor, congregation, detectives, and psychologists who worked the case, and from his detailed thirty-two-hour confession. The true bogeyman of homicidal home invasion while also working at ADT and (later) a canine officer and even Lutheran congregation chief officer is all too much and very American, somehow. This is the kind of monster that is truly fearsome: fitting in and hiding in plain sight.

For the closing material, I think some where-are-they-now stories would have been good, since the crimes are so recent. However, a lot was given over to discuss the possible physiological basis for criminal motivation without being able to connect it to BTW, like it was successfully to Arthur J. Shawcross in [b:The Misbegotten Son|230864|The Misbegotten Son|Jack Olsen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388771585s/230864.jpg|1520133]. This is a needed line of inquiry and makes me think of Kurt Vonnegut ('Dwayne's bad chemicals made him take a loaded thirty-eight caliber revolver from under his pillow ...), but possibly more relevant and related here is the popular Christian mysticism that allowed him to self-justify within a matrix of demonic possession and acceptable levels of repentance.



View all my reviews

Review: The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet

The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina Teicholz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Wow, so cooking in the vegetable oils is worse than eating lard, and a bowl of beets is worse than a plate of bacon and eggs ... Well, it looks like giving moneyed interests and politicians control of the application of food science benefits their pocketbooks at the cost of our quality of life. That's congress for you, give them disputed science based on less then three dozen post-WWII Cretans around Lent and they call it a food pyramid like industry wants. (Give them rarely disputed science in contradiction to industry and they go against it, of course...)

This is a cogent, well-researched and detailed attack on the foundations of the Western low-fat, carb-encouraging diet



View all my reviews

Review: Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives' Tales

Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives' Tales by Robert Root-Bernstein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a fascinating overview of the scientific basis and potential benefits of such folk remedies as honey-sugar wound bandaging, geophagy, circumcision, maggots, wound-licking (even cross-species!), leeches, and more. I wish the section on quackery was more in depth, but the section on how the economics of health care in American means low-cost and proven folk remedies can never be offere on scale as their is not the profit possibility to support approval. One potential example is Dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB), a chemical used in color photography processing, that could be beneficial to those dealing with AIDS.



View all my reviews

Review: I Was Dreaming to Come to America: Memories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project

I Was Dreaming to Come to America: Memories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project by Veronica Lawlor

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This was a quick easy read. Pages alternate with paragraph-length remembrances and full-page art inspired by that recollection. Golda Meir is one of the contributors and a final page offers a brief bio on each Ellis Island immigrant from all walks of life, most of which came to the country as tweens.



View all my reviews

Review: Mathematics for the Life Sciences

Mathematics for the Life Sciences by Erin N Bodine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



...Students will maximize the value of the text with an earlier introduction to calculus fundamentals, or being introduced at the same time with additional material. The textbook also covers basic analysis of bivariate data (histograms, linear regression, correlation, etc.), allometry (exponential and logarithmic modeling), sequence, vectors and matrices to eigenvalues, probability. Adding to this three chapters on differential equations provides this introductory text with wide scope. Undergraduate life science students will find here a single volume covering the basic requirements for attaining mathematical literacy in the study of modern biology. The authors took on an ambitious challenge to incorporate fundamentals essential for analyzing biological systems into a single volume. The result is a cogent, thorough, and largely self-contained introductory textbook for undergraduate biology students.

(Look for my full review at MAA Reviews



View all my reviews