Review: A First Course in Linear Algebra: Study Guide for the Undergraduate Linear Algebra Course

A First Course in Linear Algebra: Study Guide for the Undergraduate Linear Algebra Course by Mohammed Kaabar
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

...
Any work that advertises itself as a “first course” should be comprehensive on fundamentals for the topic at hand and self-contained enough to not require additional introductory texts on the same topic. This text reads like unfinished lecture notes that cannot be presented to or relied upon by a student without the preface of detailed lecture or another, more complete text. The subtitle of “study guide” fits better. This could be a checklist for a student looking for self-assessment.
...

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Review: Night of the Grizzlies

Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a quick read, yet a detailed analysis forensic in its investigative detail of an evening when human encroachment and laxity led to two different grizzlies assaulting campers, killing one. I relish the detail and lessons learned that it offers (passively allowing garbage feeding leads to confrontations with humans), but I disagree with Olsen's assessment that this unicorn of events is a presage to more frequent lethal encounters.

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Review: Conservatives Without Conscience

Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have long through that supporting the Republican or Democratic parties in the USA is, basically, a personality test indicating whether one is resistant to change or embraces change. This is as basic and and analogous to have a party for introverts and one for extroverts. What confuses me is why the dichotomy is so all-encompassing to participation in the political process by the electorate. Democracies from Western Europe to India are noisy, boisterous affairs of multiple parties and coalition, a practical expression of the society's diversity.

Social Dominance Orientation supports and clarifies for me a vision of this personality-driven ideology. The book, as good as it is, does nothing for me to understand why America endures such polarization. Not that Dean really drove at that. He does speak of re-balancing trends in the Republican party, such as the rise of the after the persecution policies of McCarthyism. Then, of course we have a move to moderation with Reagan et al post-Watergate. Dean can speak first hand on both revivals of a more practical American conservatism. Dean, from 2006, doesn't offer any hope or signs of a similar thaw and I am not optimistic base don the Trump and Carson prominence in the pre-Primary election season as I read and write. However, I do feel some sanity and self-analysis showing through, hopefully,

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Review: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories by Delmore Schwartz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really want to like this collection of short stories because I like Schwartz's poetry and so does Lou Reed. Even Reed's intro is about the man's poems and tragic biography, not really the stories. (By the way, Lou, it is the "Heavy Bear...", not the "Honey Bear..."). Another intro and afterword try to point away from the misspent life (Maybe a Schwartz biography including some of this best poems would be best) and argue how impactful these stories were in the '30s. I will put this on the shelf, maybe I am not yet of the right vintage and patience to appreciate the subtle values here.

The only one I really liked was the final, short "SCREENO" which I was intrigued by when seeing in the Table of Contents. Some forgotten pop culture trend celebrated with John Waters-esque damaged characters. It was almost that good.

THere are some lines I really like:

From "The World is a Wedding": "I like animals. They are interesting, spontaneous, and sincere."

and,

"In my late adolescence, ... life seemed to me to be Shakespearean. But now as I get older I see that life really resembles the stories of Fyodor Dostoyevsky."

and from "New Year's Eve" on inviting people to parties:

"Since both of them were intellectuals, both resorted to theories about the nature of a party and about each other's characters. A party at which too many of the guests are strangers is likely to fall flat, Arthur argued.
'There is enough alienation in modern life,' he said roundly, 'without installing it in the living room.'"

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Review: Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

John Gilbert "Gil" Winant, former Governor of New Hampshire, served as US Ambassador to the United Kingdom during most of World War II. Depressed by career disappointments, a failed marriage, and heavy debts, he committed suicide in 1947. That summary of a dedicated public servant is expanded to a life examined in Olson's book which also shines a light on W. Averell Harriman, son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's special envoy to Europe and U.S. Ambassador to Britain. For Winant, shoulder-to-shoulder during air raids in the streets with Brits, WWII was an opportunity to show America at its best when America was largely absent. Wealthy playboy businessman Averell found the position all about him, leading to aggrandizement and career advancement. Churchill and FDR get examined, too, but also is Edward R. Murrow, the American broadcast journalist who first came to prominence with a series of radio broadcasts for CBS during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States. Murrow flew in bombers, mixed with the British and with on April 12, 1945 with Bill Shadel was a first reporter at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He met emaciated survivors including Petr Zenkl, dying acquaintances, and "bodies stacked up like cordwood" in the crematorium. This is a different look at WWII more focused on British-American relations through the eyes of these principals than on battles and generals. This highlights the immense distance, not just in miles, that separated the UK and USA at the start of the War and even through the Battle of Britain, unprepared both nations were for war, and how eventual success required cooperation between the not only those two but the Allies of World War II, called the United Nations.

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Review: The Curves of Life

The Curves of Life by Theodore A. Cook
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Theodore Andrea Cook (1867–1928), with a deep background in sport and literature, traveled in Europe during the early Twentieth Century and published authoritative works on French and English history, Leonardo da Vinci, and sculpture among other subjects. In 1910 he became editor of The Field: The County Gentleman’s Newspaper until his death in 1928. In his passionate sleuthing of the open-ended spiral curve in this book he uncovers what he sees as a beautiful truth foundational to the structure of plants, shells, physiology, the periodic table, animal horns, and galaxies. (Sometimes the horns of goats are morphological indications of domestication, a physiological indicator that always strikes me whenever I encounter it.) The Curves of Life explores such significances through 426 illustrations from a Narwhal's tusk to rare seashells to exquisite architecture. No less than Martin Gardner said of this work, "This is the classic reference on how the golden ratio applies to spirals and helices in nature."...

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Review: Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This grab=bag of Vonnegut as avuncular American wit and curmudgeon contains some of the addresses to convocations found in If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young, sad words on the bigot-shadow of Jack Kerouac, lauding reviews of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, self-reviews which gives this a "C" (I agree) and much too much, IMO, genealogy material on the Vonnegut forebears. Some parts that stand out are his adoration for the lyrics of The Statler Brothers and how he continued to exchange letters with convicted murderer Tony Coast.

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