Review: The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills

The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills by Tristan Gooley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The author did a talk on his book just walking distance from my home. While I missed the event, it made me aware of the book. Come to learn, it was not a local author but a globetrotting walker who has walked from Edinburgh to London and over days with natives in some Asian wilds. Gooley's years of experience coalesces celestial navigation, geological clues reaching back to the Ice Age, animal behavior in sight and sound, trees pushed back by the harsher Northern weather, and more. Even for someone just interested in a walk of a few miles or curious about the regularity of the moon, this book holds a wealth of details applicable to ones on backyard, especially the backyards of North America and England on both sides of the upper Atlantic.

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Review: Thunderstruck

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first took this in shortly after the audiobook became available. I noticed I somehow did not record a review for it. Since I recollected so much enjoying it, I decided to give it another read. I really like the narration by Bob Balaban while I find what I really like the most -- the wireless messages about fleeing murderer Hawley Crippen -- is really a brief final act to the book. Most of the content is really about entrepreneur inventor Marconi. I say "entrepreneur inventor" because like Edison Marconi relied on instinct, trial-and-error, and perseverance combined with a business acumen. This is unlike, say, Tesla, who had the science and innovation without the business mind. Anyway, like Edison couldn't see past DC, Marconi was almost blinded by his adherence to long waves, etc. However, while some of his tech could have been improved with basic science, he know how to patent and fight for market share with his competitors.

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Review: Krieg dem Kriege! Guerre à la Guerre! War against War! Oorlog aan den Oorlog!

Krieg dem Kriege! Guerre à la Guerre! War against War! Oorlog aan den Oorlog! by Ernst Friedrich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This indictment on war is a radicalist pacifist's attack on militarism based largely on WW I photographs. The material, mostly visual, is basically three acts: I don't start children off with war games, II photographs of the horrors of war often contrasted with morale-boosting shots, and III the ravages left behind in mutilated faces and full cemeteries.

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Review: The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump by Andrew G. McCabe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Threat: How the FBI Protects America... is less about FBI methods than McCabe's experiences living out his shortened career under Trump's Reign of Terror. There are revealing experiences here naturally reflecting those of effective predecessor James Comey in A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. Between both we see a world where Trump goes so far to try and truncate FBI investigations that may get close to his campaign and business management they will turn a career-destroying vindication on FBI leadership.

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Review: The Magic Of Theater

The Magic Of Theater by David Black
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This books is the transcriptions of a cavalcade of theatre stars interviewed before a student audience. They discuss their craft and the realities of their industry in time and place: film vs. stage, the limiting nature of high Broadway seat prices, and how to exhibit emotion on command. Unfortunately, the text is laid out in an unusual way for Q&A: there are no line breaks between questions and not typographical indication of when the interview is paraphrasing, describing, or being quoted. (We really have no idea exactly what question is being asked.) While reading this book, I was attending a conference and Rachel Levy of the Mathematical Association of America mentioned that "everyone has a math story." This primed, I noticed apropos of nothing, three actors alluded to their math story without prompting:

Eli Wallach --

"I hated mathematics," Eli said, "and I knew I could get out of trouble by acting my way out."

Judith Ivey --

"I was a painter long before I ever began acting," said Judith. "But obviously expressing myself artistically was my bent rather than mathematics."

and then more generally but with no less negativity:

Zoe Caldwell --

"I am hopeless with numbers, so I choose to ignore their existence, I don't learn telephone numbers. I don't even know my own. I don't take them into my life."

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Review: Anthem

Anthem by Ayn Rand
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ayn Rand tried so hard to be so emphatic and lacking in subtlety in creating her heavy-handed tales of state conspiracies in hyper-socialism that this novel lacks anything moving or alive. This is fiction as screen, not story.

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Review: The Nashville Sound

The Nashville Sound by Paul Hemphill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This bit of investigative journalism on Nashville reeling from the rise of rock with Music Row largely vacants and in decline touts itself on the cover name-dropping luminaries covered here including George Jones, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, etc. However, much more ink is spent on and insight gathered from such key figures slugging away in the trenches of transformation such as Whisperin’ Bill Anderson, Billy Dilworth, and John Wesley Ryles. This is a must read for the serious fan of post-hillbilly popular country music.

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