Mary's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 27 Nov 2024 04:27:57 -0800 60 Mary's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Flowers in the Attic 123106791 0 V.C. Andrews Mary 0 4.00 1979 Flowers in the Attic
author: V.C. Andrews
name: Mary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Swimming in the Dark 49977811 Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism,?a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide¡ªa stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of Andre Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.

When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks camping in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin¡¯s?Giovanni¡¯s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.

Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly-coveted position in the ministry. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.

Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart,?Swimming in the Dark?is a potent blend of romance, post-war politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski has crafted an indelible and thought-provoking literary debut that explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.]]> 191 Tomasz Jedrowski 006289000X Mary 0 to-read, fiction 4.25 2020 Swimming in the Dark
author: Tomasz Jedrowski
name: Mary
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moomin and the Comet (Moomin Colors)]]> 16059661 How will the beloved?residents of Moominvalley survive a comet?

Another classic Moomin story reworked in full color, with a kid-proof but kid-friendly size, price, and format.

It¡¯s getting hotter and hotter in Moominvalley, and all the creatures have taken note of the troubling weather. After a mysterious cloud appears in the sky one day, an exodus begins. The Hattifatteners, the Nibling, Mrs. Fillyjonk (and all her children), and even Mymble pack up to leave the valley. When they realize the mysterious cloud is a comet headed straight for Moominhouse, Moomin, Little My, and Snorkmaiden decide to leave their home too. As the clock ticks down and the comet nears Moominvalley, the plot thickens. Between a tidal wave and a comet-struck Moomin, the end does seem nigh, but the day may yet be saved.
???? Tove Jansson¡¯s flawless cartooning is brought to life in a whole new way within these pages. A delight for the whole family!]]> 40 Tove Jansson Mary 0 to-read 4.13 1946 Moomin and the Comet (Moomin Colors)
author: Tove Jansson
name: Mary
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stalin: A Political Biography 200036 704 Isaac Deutscher 0195002733 Mary 0 3.97 2004 Stalin: A Political Biography
author: Isaac Deutscher
name: Mary
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: russia, biography, to-read, history, ussr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Life of Ian Curtis: Torn Apart]]> 212170057
Over twenty-five years later, the cult surrounding Curtis shows no signs of fading. Fans make regular pilgrimages to his hometown of Macclesfield and to Manchester, where the legacy of Joy Division and Factory Records has passed into legend.

The authors of this biography are uniquely qualified to reveal the extraordinary events surrounding Ian Curtis. Mick Middles was the first journalist to interview Joy Division for the music press and formed a close association with the band. Lindsay Reade was a co-founder of Factory Records along with her then-husband Tony Wilson. Together, Middles and Reade have revisited the legend of Ian Curtis and produced the first full-length account of this troubled man's life, work and relationships in the midst of the unique explosion of pop energy that hit Manchester in the late Seventies.

Includes many previously unpublished photographs from private collections.]]> 469 Lindsay Reade Mary 3
The guys who became Joy Division wanted to be rock stars not knowing if they had talent. Doesn¡¯t appear they had musical lessons. After they saw the Sex Pistols things started moving along. Hooky bought a bass and taught himself to play. Barney already had a guitar. I don¡¯t know how Ian started singing but his voice and the Joy Divion sound was later influenced by their manager/agent,Tony Wilson, and their producer, Martin Hannett. Martin seems to be the main generator of JD¡¯s evocative sound. JD¡¯s music sounds so superior to me than other bands I enjoy from the 80s. Ian wrote lyrics and stored ideas in notebooks then played around to music to see what worked. The interview with Annik was notable.

Ian didn¡¯t have the kind of professional support he could have received in later times. He was also pretty broke. His friends and family did try to care for him. They were clearly fond of him. Seems like he had a pretty nice childhood.

]]> 4.00 The Life of Ian Curtis: Torn Apart
author: Lindsay Reade
name: Mary
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: biography, british-isles, music
review:
Still sad about Ian¡¯s suicide. I think I understand more now about that and how Joy Division got so good.

The guys who became Joy Division wanted to be rock stars not knowing if they had talent. Doesn¡¯t appear they had musical lessons. After they saw the Sex Pistols things started moving along. Hooky bought a bass and taught himself to play. Barney already had a guitar. I don¡¯t know how Ian started singing but his voice and the Joy Divion sound was later influenced by their manager/agent,Tony Wilson, and their producer, Martin Hannett. Martin seems to be the main generator of JD¡¯s evocative sound. JD¡¯s music sounds so superior to me than other bands I enjoy from the 80s. Ian wrote lyrics and stored ideas in notebooks then played around to music to see what worked. The interview with Annik was notable.

Ian didn¡¯t have the kind of professional support he could have received in later times. He was also pretty broke. His friends and family did try to care for him. They were clearly fond of him. Seems like he had a pretty nice childhood.


]]> Wishful Drinking 4961048 Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit. Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play a princess in a little movie called Star Wars when only 19 years old. "But it isn't all sweetness and light sabres." Alas, aside from a demanding career and her role as a single mother (not to mention the hyperspace hairdo), Carrie also spends her free time battling addiction, weathering the wild ride of manic depression and lounging around various mental institutions. It's an incredible tale¡ªfrom having Elizabeth Taylor as a stepmother, to marrying (and divorcing) Paul Simon, from having the father of her daughter leave her for a man, to ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.]]> 163 Carrie Fisher 1439102252 Mary 0 hollywood, memoir 3.80 2008 Wishful Drinking
author: Carrie Fisher
name: Mary
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: hollywood, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie]]> 38220563
In December 2016, the world was shaken by the sudden deaths of Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds, two unspeakable losses that occurred in less than twenty-four hours. The stunned public turned for solace to Debbie¡¯s only remaining child, Todd Fisher, who somehow retained his grace and composure under the glare of the media spotlight as he struggled with his own overwhelming grief.

The son of "America¡¯s Sweethearts" Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, Todd grew up amid the glamorous wealth and pretense of Hollywood. Thanks to his funny, loving, no-nonsense mother, Todd remained down to earth, his own man, but always close to his cherished mom, and to his sister through her meteoric rise to stardom and her struggle with demons that never diminished her humor, talent, or spirit.

Now, Todd shares his heart and his memories of Debbie and Carrie with deeply personal stories from his earliest years to those last unfathomable days. His book, part memoir, part homage, celebrates their legacies through a more intimate, poignant, and often hilarious portrait of these two remarkable women than has ever been revealed before.

With thirty-two pages of never-before-seen photos and memorabilia from his family¡¯s private archives, Todd¡¯s book is a love letter to a sister and a mother, and a gift to countless fans who are mourning the deaths of these two unforgettable stars.]]> 400 Todd Fisher Mary 0 to-read, hollywood, memoir 4.27 2018 My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie
author: Todd Fisher
name: Mary
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read, hollywood, memoir
review:

]]> Unsinkable: A Memoir 17455945
Actress, comedienne, singer, and dancer Debbie Reynolds shares the highs and lows of her life as an actress during Hollywood¡¯s Golden Age, anecdotes about her lifelong friendship with Elizabeth Taylor and her experiences as the foremost collector of Hollywood memorabilia, and intimate details of her marriages and family life with her children, Carrie and Todd Fisher.

A story of heartbreak, hope, and survival, ¡°America¡¯s Sweetheart¡± Debbie Reynolds picks up where she left off in her first memoir, Debbie: My Life.]]> 320 Debbie Reynolds Mary 0 to-read, hollywood, memoir 3.93 2013 Unsinkable: A Memoir
author: Debbie Reynolds
name: Mary
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read, hollywood, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers]]> 58772710 The memoirs of Mary Rodgers Guettel--writer, composer, Broadway royalty, and "a woman who tried everything."



"What am I, bologna?" Mary Rodgers Guettel (1931-2014) often said. She was referring to being stuck in the middle: the daughter of one composer and the mother of another. And not just any composers. Her father was Richard Rodgers, perhaps the greatest American melodist; her son Adam Guettel, a worthy successor. What that leaves out is Mary herself, also a composer, whose musical Once Upon a Mattress remains one of the rare revivable Broadway hits written by a woman.

Shy is the story of how it all happened: how Mary grew from an angry child, constrained by privilege and a parent's overwhelming talent, to become not just a theater star but also a renowned author of books for young people (including the classic Freaky Friday) and, in a final grand turn, a doyenne of philanthropy and the Chairman of the Juilliard School.

But in telling these stories--with copious annotations, contradictions, and interruptions from her coauthor, Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of The New York Times--Shy also tells another, about a woman liberating herself from disapproving parents and pervasive sexism to find art and romance on her own terms.

Both an eyewitness report from the Golden Age of American musical theater and a tale of a woman striving for a meaningful life, Shy is, above all, a chance to sit at the feet of the kind of woman they don't make anymore--and never did. They make themselves.]]> 480 Mary Rodgers 0374298629 Mary 0 4.21 2022 Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
author: Mary Rodgers
name: Mary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: currently-reading, memoir, music, hollywood
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Been There, Done That: An Autobiography]]> 653777
Debbie Reynolds: Debbie's whole life has been an act...When I left her for Elizabeth Taylor, she should have won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the wronged woman. [p. 83]

Elizabeth Taylor: If I had known that first night we spent together how our love was going to help destroy my career and, for a time, my life, if I had known how much pain my love for Elizabeth was going to bring me, I still wouldn't have hesitated. [p. 144]

Connie Stevens: I always wondered how she could work so hard, how she could accomplish to much. Then I took a couple of [her] pills... [p. 269]

Read the explosive memoir everyone's talking about!]]> 408 Eddie Fisher 0312975589 Mary 0 3.02 1999 Been There, Done That: An Autobiography
author: Eddie Fisher
name: Mary
average rating: 3.02
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read, hollywood, music, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir]]> 203708995 400 Griffin Dunne 0593652827 Mary 5 4.01 2024 The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir
author: Griffin Dunne
name: Mary
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: history, hollywood, memoir, new-york, ottoman
review:
A most enjoyable memoir from a guy who knows nearly everyone (his esteemed family members know he rest)! Dunne intrigues w the rise, fall and rebirth of his father. Carrie Fisher is and Dunne¡¯s sister are adorable. His uncle and aunt are cerebral. His mother is something. Dunne¡¯s arc is quite nice. Each beloved character is magnificent and flawed. Filled w laughter and tears. He mentions in the acknowledgements that he removed some details for the sake of the reader. Sounds like a second book! Highly recommend.
]]> Miss Aluminum: A Memoir 45892245 Miss Aluminum is Susanna Moore's revealing and refreshing memoir of Hollywood in the 1970s



In 1963 after the death of her mother, seventeen-year-old Susanna Moore leaves her home in Hawai'i with no money, no belongings, and no prospects to live with her Irish grandmother in Philadelphia. She soon receives four trunks of expensive clothes from a concerned family friend, allowing her to assume the first of many disguises she will need to find her sometimes perilous, always valorous way.

Her journey takes her from New York to Los Angeles where she becomes a model and meets Joan Didion and Audrey Hepburn. She works as a script reader for Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, and is given a screen test by Mike Nichols. But beneath Miss Aluminum's glittering fairytale surface lies the story of a girl's insatiable hunger to learn and her anguished determination to understand the circumstances of her mother's death. Moore gives us a sardonic, often humorous portrait of Hollywood in the seventies, and of a young woman's hard-won arrival at selfhood.]]> 288 Susanna Moore 0374279713 Mary 0 to-read, hollywood, memoir 3.39 2020 Miss Aluminum: A Memoir
author: Susanna Moore
name: Mary
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read, hollywood, memoir
review:

]]> Reading My Father 9759723
In Reading My Father , William Styron¡¯s youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron¡¯s parents¡ªthe Pulitzer Prize¨Cwinning author of Sophie¡¯s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose¡ªwere, for half a century, leading players on the world¡¯s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father¡¯s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind.

A drinker, a carouser, and above all ¡°a high priest at the altar of fiction,¡± Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family¡¯s life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem.

From Styron¡¯s Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist¡¯s life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation¡¯s friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.]]> 304 Alexandra Styron 1416591796 Mary 0 3.71 Reading My Father
author: Alexandra Styron
name: Mary
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read, biography, memoir, writing
review:

]]> The Two Mrs. Grenvilles 18231 384 Dominick Dunne 0345430565 Mary 0 to-read, fiction, new-york 3.94 1985 The Two Mrs. Grenvilles
author: Dominick Dunne
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read, fiction, new-york
review:

]]> The Users 3274499 Joyce Haber 0440192641 Mary 0 to-read, fiction, hollywood 3.22 1976 The Users
author: Joyce Haber
name: Mary
average rating: 3.22
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read, fiction, hollywood
review:

]]> The Princess Diarist 26025989 The last book from beloved Hollywood icon Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist is an intimate, hilarious, and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie.

When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved--plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naivet¨¦, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Before her passing, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon was indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford.

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher's intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time--and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into one of Hollywood's most beloved stars.]]> 257 Carrie Fisher 0399173595 Mary 0 to-read, hollywood, memoir 3.70 2016 The Princess Diarist
author: Carrie Fisher
name: Mary
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read, hollywood, memoir
review:

]]> Shockaholic 6948511 Wishful Drinking¡¯s instant New York Times bestselling success, Shockaholic takes readers on another rollicking ride into her crazy life.

There is no shortage of people flocking to hear what Princess Leia has to say. Her previous hardcover, Wishful Drinking, was an instant New York Times bestseller and Carrie was featured everywhere on broadcast media and received rave reviews from coast to coast, including People (4 stars; one of their top 10 books of the year), Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, and scores of others.

Told with the same intimate style, brutal honesty, and uproarious wisdom that placed Wishful Drinking on the New York Times bestseller list for months, Shockaholic is the juicy account of Carrie Fisher¡¯s life, focusing more on the Star Wars years and dishing about the various Hollywood relationships she¡¯s formed since she was chosen to play Princess Leia at only nineteen years old. Fisher delves into the gritty details that made the movie¡ªand herself¡ªsuch a phenomenal success, admitting, ¡°It isn¡¯t all sweetness and light sabers.¡±]]> 176 Carrie Fisher 0743264827 Mary 0 to-read, hollywood, memoir 3.73 2011 Shockaholic
author: Carrie Fisher
name: Mary
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read, hollywood, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division]]> 401939
Revered by his peers -- Bono described his voice as "holy" -- and idolized by his fans, Ian Curtis left behind a legacy rich in artistic genius. He was a mesmerizing performer on stange, yet also introverted and prone to mode swings. Engimantic to the last, Ian Curtis died by his own hand on 18 May 1980.

Touching from a Distance describes Curtis's life from his early teenage years to his premature death on the eve of Joy Division's first American tour. It tells how, with a wife, child and impending international fame, he was seduced by the glory of an early grave. What were the reasons for his fascination with death? Were his dark, brooding lyrics an artistic exorcism? In Touching from a Distance Curtis's widow, Deborah, explains the drama of his life and the tragedy of his death.

Includes discography, gig list and a full set of Curtis's lyrics, some of which appear in print for the first time.]]> 208 Deborah Curtis 0571207391 Mary 2

]]> 3.93 1995 Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division
author: Deborah Curtis
name: Mary
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1995
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: biography, british-isles, history, memoir, music
review:
Joy Division is probably my #1 band followed closely by/tied w New Order. Debbie Curtis, Ian Curtis¡¯ widow, offered her version of their lives together. They seemed to love each other. She seemed understandably hurt. I don¡¯t think JD/NO had musical training. Wanted rockstar lives. Were inspired to teach themselves after an invigorating Sex Pistols concert in 1976. They couldn¡¯t have known if they had talent before they formed Joy Division (Warsaw back then). Turned out they were super talented. Could¡¯ve gone the other way. I¡¯d like to read more about how they trained and practiced and how Ian developed his voice.



]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Diary of Queen Camilla]]> 218521653 Dear Diary,

Life's been awfully busy since the Coronation. Those tiaras don't choose themselves and managing Charles is a full time job when he's giving it the full King at the drop of a hat. I've barely enough time to watch Bargain Hunt. Is it any wonder I have to smoke so much?

Cheerio for now,
Camilla


From Hilary Rose, the sharp witted writer for The Times, comes her first book, a hilarious royal parody.

Taking us from coronations to overseas tours, from a royally doomed family Christmas to TV dinners with Below Deck Med, Queen Camilla reveals in her personal diary how she keeps it real when life is anything but. With a cast of characters including the King, wily courtier Sir Clive, sidekick sister Annabel and assorted Jack Russell terriers, The Secret Diary of Queen Camilla is a wickedly funny, entirely fictitious, insight into life behind palace walls.]]> 179 Hilary Rose 140872121X Mary 0 3.78 The Secret Diary of Queen Camilla
author: Hilary Rose
name: Mary
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read, british-royal-family, fiction, humor
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World]]> 10253369 351 Najwa bin Laden 1429932333 Mary 0 to-read 4.20 Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
author: Najwa bin Laden
name: Mary
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Comet in Moominland (The Moomins, #2)]]> 23311406
]]> 194 Tove Jansson 1466871571 Mary 0 to-read 4.51 1946 Comet in Moominland (The Moomins, #2)
author: Tove Jansson
name: Mary
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Euphoria 18467802 Inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.

In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives...]]> 256 Lily King 0802122558 Mary 0 to-read, fiction 3.84 2014 Euphoria
author: Lily King
name: Mary
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Beware of Pity 19279189
Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of the barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host¡ªs lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder that will destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health.]]> 393 Stefan Zweig Mary 0 to-read, fiction, hapsburg 4.21 1939 Beware of Pity
author: Stefan Zweig
name: Mary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read, fiction, hapsburg
review:

]]> The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy 10444693 After marrying Count Leo Tolstoy, the renowned author of " Anna Karenina" and " War and Peace," Sofia Tolstoy kept a detailed diary until his death in 1910. Her life was not an easy one: she idealized her husband but was tormented by him. She lived against the background of one of the most turbulent periods in her country's history, as old feudal Russia was transformed by three revolutions and three major international wars.

Yet it is as Sofia Tolstoy's own life story--the study of one woman's private experience--that these diaries are most valuable and moving. They reveal a woman of tremendous vital energy and poetic sensibility who, in the face of provocation and suffering, continued to strive for the higher things in life and to remain indomitable.

]]> 658 Sofia Tolstaya 0062029363 Mary 0 to-read 3.93 1984 The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy
author: Sofia Tolstaya
name: Mary
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> §±§Ú§Ü§ß§Ú§Ü §ß§Ñ §à§Ò§à§é§Ú§ß§Ö 25341944 §±§à§ã§Ý§Ö §ß§Ö§Õ§à§Ý§Ô§à§Ô§à §á§â§Ö§Ò§í§Ó§Ñ§ß§Ú§ñ §Ú§ß§à§á§Ý§Ñ§ß§Ö§ä§ñ§ß §ß§Ñ §©§Ö§Þ§Ý§Ö §à§ã§ä§Ñ§Ý§à§ã§î §ß§Ö§ã§Ü§à§Ý§î§Ü§à §©§à§ß, §Ó §Ü§à§ä§à§â§í§ç §á§â§à§Ú§ã§ç§à§Õ§ñ§ä §ä§Ñ§Ú§ß§ã§ä§Ó§Ö§ß§ß§í§Ö §ñ§Ó§Ý§Ö§ß§Ú§ñ, §Ñ §ã §Ý§ð§Õ§î§Þ§Ú §Ú §Ø§Ú§Ó§à§ä§ß§í§Þ§Ú ¨C §ã§ä§â§Ñ§ß§ß§í§Ö §Þ§å§ä§Ñ§è§Ú§Ú. §°§Õ§ß§Ñ §Ú§Ù §ä§Ñ§Ü§Ú§ç §Ù§à§ß, §á§à §á§â§Ö§Õ§Ñ§ß§Ú§ð, §ã§Ü§â§í§Ó§Ñ§Ö§ä §©§à§Ý§à§ä§à§Û §º§Ñ§â ¨C §Ñ§â§ä§Ö§æ§Ñ§Ü§ä, §ã§á§à§ã§à§Ò§ß§í§Û §Ú§ã§á§à§Ý§ß§Ú§ä§î §ã§Ñ§Þ§í§Ö §ã§à§Ü§â§à§Ó§Ö§ß§ß§í§Ö §Ø§Ö§Ý§Ñ§ß§Ú§ñ, §ß§à §Õ§à§Ò§í§ä§î §Ö§Ô§à §Ó§à§Ù§Þ§à§Ø§ß§à §ä§à§Ý§î§Ü§à §â§Ú§ã§Ü§ß§å§Ó §ã§à§Ò§ã§ä§Ó§Ö§ß§ß§à§Û §Ø§Ú§Ù§ß§î§ð.]]> 237 Arkady Strugatsky 5392042945 Mary 0 4.53 1972 §±§Ú§Ü§ß§Ú§Ü §ß§Ñ §à§Ò§à§é§Ú§ß§Ö
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: Mary
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: fiction, humor, history, politics, psychology, russian-lit, russia, ussr, ussr-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War]]> 18919155 #1 New York Times The ¡°riveting¡± account of the 1993 operation in Mogadishu¡ªthe longest sustained firefight involving US troops since Vietnam (The Wall Street Journal). On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite US soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded. Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden¡¯s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written¡ªa true story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle. ¡°One of the most gripping and authoritative accounts of combat ever written.¡± ¡ªUSA Today ¡°Journalistic writing at its best.¡± ¡ªThe Boston Globe ¡°Vivid, immediate, and unsparing.¡± ¡ªThe Washington PostIncludes a new afterword]]> 400 Mark Bowden 1555846041 Mary 5 war 4.46 1999 Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
author: Mark Bowden
name: Mary
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2011/09/01
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: war
review:

]]> How the Irish Became White 305686 248 Noel Ignatiev 0415918251 Mary 0 3.74 1995 How the Irish Became White
author: Noel Ignatiev
name: Mary
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read, history, ireland, usa
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water]]> 200482058 Swimming Pretty finally foregrounds an essential American sport. 60 black-and-white illustrations]]> 432 Vicki Valosik 1324093048 Mary 3 swimming
Although ¡°the foundational movements of synchronized swimming¡­ originated w men¡­ as a way to demonstrate their aquatic prowess.¡± The feminization of swimming began in earnest as an acceptable activity for women. It was also considered a safety issue as more women learned to swim, less drowned. It required skimpier and skimpier bathing attire to accommodate the needs of the swimmers and the interest of the audiences. Synchronized swimmers traditionally made their exertions seems effortless which made it seem less of a hardcore sport.

¡°Just imagine having the lung power of a long-distance runner, the leg strength of a water polo player¡­, the grace and rhythm of a ballet dancer¡­, and a gymnast performing a whole floor exercise underwater holding your breath.¡± ¡°And then¡­ she must do this all in perfect synchronization w a partner¡­.¡± Esther Williams

The US had dominated the sport until the 2000 Olympics, when it became an international sport.


]]> 4.08 Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water
author: Vicki Valosik
name: Mary
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: swimming
review:
Detailed dive into the history of synchronized swimming from show biz to the Olympics. Hard to imagine the huge travelling circus and vaudeville tanks w show girl/swimmers entertaining massive audiences.

Although ¡°the foundational movements of synchronized swimming¡­ originated w men¡­ as a way to demonstrate their aquatic prowess.¡± The feminization of swimming began in earnest as an acceptable activity for women. It was also considered a safety issue as more women learned to swim, less drowned. It required skimpier and skimpier bathing attire to accommodate the needs of the swimmers and the interest of the audiences. Synchronized swimmers traditionally made their exertions seems effortless which made it seem less of a hardcore sport.

¡°Just imagine having the lung power of a long-distance runner, the leg strength of a water polo player¡­, the grace and rhythm of a ballet dancer¡­, and a gymnast performing a whole floor exercise underwater holding your breath.¡± ¡°And then¡­ she must do this all in perfect synchronization w a partner¡­.¡± Esther Williams

The US had dominated the sport until the 2000 Olympics, when it became an international sport.



]]> <![CDATA[Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith]]> 10847
A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

Jon Krakauer¡¯s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America¡¯s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism¡¯s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.]]> 400 Jon Krakauer 0330419129 Mary 0 to-read, cult, religion, usa 4.01 2003 Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Mary
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read, cult, religion, usa
review:

]]> Writers & Lovers 45289222 Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey--a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist--in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.]]> 320 Lily King Mary 4 So glad my daughter leant me this heartening book! Casey is the most likeable protagonist I can remember. She¡¯s 31 in 1997 waiting tables in Boston, writing and trying to figure out what is going on and how life will happen. I, too, was 31 in 1997 trying to figure things out. My now husband was waiting tables in and around Boston in the late 80s trying to figure things out while studying at Brandeis and listening to the Talking Heads (his sister went to RISD). Been back w him to visit a couple of times. I know how it feels to grow up in one¡¯s 30s. Relatable!

I also recommend King¡¯s descriptions of her writing process and feelings.

Having just viewed photos from my 40th HS reunion, finishing ¡°Writers and Lovers¡± during the 2024 DNC w Kamala and Tim on the rise, I¡¯m having quite an unexpected Gen X moment!
]]> 3.98 2020 Writers & Lovers
author: Lily King
name: Mary
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: fiction, bildungsroman, adolescence
review:

So glad my daughter leant me this heartening book! Casey is the most likeable protagonist I can remember. She¡¯s 31 in 1997 waiting tables in Boston, writing and trying to figure out what is going on and how life will happen. I, too, was 31 in 1997 trying to figure things out. My now husband was waiting tables in and around Boston in the late 80s trying to figure things out while studying at Brandeis and listening to the Talking Heads (his sister went to RISD). Been back w him to visit a couple of times. I know how it feels to grow up in one¡¯s 30s. Relatable!

I also recommend King¡¯s descriptions of her writing process and feelings.

Having just viewed photos from my 40th HS reunion, finishing ¡°Writers and Lovers¡± during the 2024 DNC w Kamala and Tim on the rise, I¡¯m having quite an unexpected Gen X moment!

]]> <![CDATA[On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service]]> 207689829 The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents

Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous ¨C and most revered ¨C doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in identifying HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises make him truly an American hero.

His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease?preparedness at home. On Call will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of ¡°speaking truth to power,¡± with dignity and results.]]> 464 Anthony Fauci 0593657470 Mary 4
Fauci is has so many strengths combined in one package: Science, clinical and political skills (works well w Republicans and Democrats), bureaucratic skills, speaking truth to power, networking at many levels, budgeting, administrating, testifying, explaining things to non-scientists, dealing w detractors (first AIDS activists and then MAGAts), empathy and a ¡°nonpathological form of obsessive-compulsive behavior.¡± One of a kind.


]]> 4.47 2024 On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service
author: Anthony Fauci
name: Mary
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: health, history, memoir, science, medicine, politics
review:
Anthony Fauci¡¯s contributions to the global battle against infectious disease is laudable. He has been a force of good for decades, most notably wrt HIV/AIDS. Referring to combination antiretroviral therapy, Fauci confirms, ¡°Without a doubt, this represents one of the greatest achievements in medical research and implementation in the history of medicine.¡± AIDS work established a pathway for dealing w COVID. We owe Fauci a debt of gratitude. What did he get during Trump¡¯s COVID years? Death threats and a security detail in his 80s!

Fauci is has so many strengths combined in one package: Science, clinical and political skills (works well w Republicans and Democrats), bureaucratic skills, speaking truth to power, networking at many levels, budgeting, administrating, testifying, explaining things to non-scientists, dealing w detractors (first AIDS activists and then MAGAts), empathy and a ¡°nonpathological form of obsessive-compulsive behavior.¡± One of a kind.



]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech¡ªand a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

¡°With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.¡± ¡ªShannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the ¡°play-based childhood¡± began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the ¡°phone-based childhood¡± in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this ¡°great rewiring of childhood¡± has interfered with children¡¯s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the ¡°collective action problems¡± that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes¡ªcommunities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children¡ªand ourselves¡ªfrom the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Mary 5 ¡°1. No smartphones before 16
2. No social media before 16
3. Phone-free schools
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.¡±

This book seems to be resonating with federal- and state-level policy makers! I agree w Haidt that, ideally, regulations on children¡¯s screen time at school and on minimum verifiable age for social media platforms should come from the US Congress. This is not a problem to be ameliorated at a local level. Too insidious. Teachers cannot be expected to enforce their own classroom rules when it comes to technology. I¡¯ve seen too many posts of kids beating up their teachers for confiscating phones.

He convincingly posits that;
We have erred w ¡°overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world.¡±
Anonymity and the ability to quit virtual groups with a click have taken a toll in on relationships irl.
Influencers can gain followers but not teach or add anything to our social construct. Kids are following people who add nothing of value but generate ¡°likes.¡±
¡°Living in a world of structureless anomie makes adolescents more vulnerable to on-line recruitment into radical political movements that offer moral clarity and a moral community, thereby pulling them further away from their in-person communities. It was easy to send kids out to play back when everyone was doing I, but in a neighborhood where nobody does that, it¡¯s hard to be the first one.¡± Haidt also points out that parents used to correct or guide other people¡¯s children in public spaces when their own parents were not around, thereby helping kids who were not theirs. I agree from my Gen X perspective, I v rarely correct children when their parents are not around or paying attention. I do praise other people¡¯s children when warranted but I¡¯m mindful of what comes out of my mouth.
Trigger warnings for teaching material are not necessarily helpful. Irl frustrations teach us how to overcome and get on with life. Confronting fears usually helps us get over them.
Social media is more dangerous than on-line video games. Girls use social media more and boys play online more. Girls are faring worse when it comes to mental health.

Idk about the following. Could¡¯ve been underlying all along. Maybe just safer now in some places not to conform to others' expectations/definitions:
¡°the fact that gender dysphoria is now being diagnosed among many adolescents who showed no signs of it as children all indicate that social influence and sociogenic transmission may be at work as well.¡±

Highly recommend, esp to policy makers and caregivers to kids under 16 yo. IF you can afford it, buy a copy for your kids¡¯ schoolmates¡¯ and friends¡¯ parents! Pass them out at orientations or the first day of school!
]]> 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Mary
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/21
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: adolescence, mental-health, parenting, psychology, technology
review:
Gen Z has been hit hard by the introduction of smart phones and the Covid stay-at-home era. I¡¯ve seen it up close and Haidt is correct. Haidt deems it ¡°The Great Rewiring of Childhood¡± 2010-2015. He suggests:
¡°1. No smartphones before 16
2. No social media before 16
3. Phone-free schools
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.¡±

This book seems to be resonating with federal- and state-level policy makers! I agree w Haidt that, ideally, regulations on children¡¯s screen time at school and on minimum verifiable age for social media platforms should come from the US Congress. This is not a problem to be ameliorated at a local level. Too insidious. Teachers cannot be expected to enforce their own classroom rules when it comes to technology. I¡¯ve seen too many posts of kids beating up their teachers for confiscating phones.

He convincingly posits that;
We have erred w ¡°overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world.¡±
Anonymity and the ability to quit virtual groups with a click have taken a toll in on relationships irl.
Influencers can gain followers but not teach or add anything to our social construct. Kids are following people who add nothing of value but generate ¡°likes.¡±
¡°Living in a world of structureless anomie makes adolescents more vulnerable to on-line recruitment into radical political movements that offer moral clarity and a moral community, thereby pulling them further away from their in-person communities. It was easy to send kids out to play back when everyone was doing I, but in a neighborhood where nobody does that, it¡¯s hard to be the first one.¡± Haidt also points out that parents used to correct or guide other people¡¯s children in public spaces when their own parents were not around, thereby helping kids who were not theirs. I agree from my Gen X perspective, I v rarely correct children when their parents are not around or paying attention. I do praise other people¡¯s children when warranted but I¡¯m mindful of what comes out of my mouth.
Trigger warnings for teaching material are not necessarily helpful. Irl frustrations teach us how to overcome and get on with life. Confronting fears usually helps us get over them.
Social media is more dangerous than on-line video games. Girls use social media more and boys play online more. Girls are faring worse when it comes to mental health.

Idk about the following. Could¡¯ve been underlying all along. Maybe just safer now in some places not to conform to others' expectations/definitions:
¡°the fact that gender dysphoria is now being diagnosed among many adolescents who showed no signs of it as children all indicate that social influence and sociogenic transmission may be at work as well.¡±

Highly recommend, esp to policy makers and caregivers to kids under 16 yo. IF you can afford it, buy a copy for your kids¡¯ schoolmates¡¯ and friends¡¯ parents! Pass them out at orientations or the first day of school!

]]> Ride out the dark 15401587 286 Christabel Bielenberg 0839828535 Mary 0 to-read 4.00 1968 Ride out the dark
author: Christabel Bielenberg
name: Mary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Foolish: Tales of Assimilation, Determination, and Humiliation]]> 75670221 ?
As the youngest of four in a tight-knit Jamaican family, Cooper cut her teeth in the mean cornfields of suburban Maryland. Soon she became a charmingly neurotic woman trying to break her worst patterns and reclaim her linen closet. From an early obsession with hair bands to her struggle to escape the immigrant-to-basic-bitch pipeline to her use of the Internet as a marriage counselor (after being fired by two real ones), and the curse of her TED Talk vibe, Cooper invites us to share in her triumphs and humiliations as she tries (and fails) to balance her own dreams with the American dream.
?
With determination and wit, Cooper mines a lifetime of oppressive perfectionism for your laughter and as she moves from tech to comedy, marriage to divorce, smart to foolish, while proving once and for all that being foolish is actually the smartest thing you can do.]]> 272 Sarah Cooper 0593473183 Mary 0 to-read, humor, memoir 3.57 Foolish: Tales of Assimilation, Determination, and Humiliation
author: Sarah Cooper
name: Mary
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: to-read, humor, memoir
review:

]]> The Awakening 58345 The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the confines of her domestic situation.

Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. Edmund Wilson characterized it as a work "quite uninhibited and beautifully written, which anticipates D. H. Lawrence in its treatment of infidelity." Although the theme of marital infidelity no longer shocks, few novels have plumbed the psychology of a woman involved in an illicit relationship with the perception, artistry, and honesty that Kate Chopin brought to The Awakening.]]> 195 Kate Chopin 0543898083 Mary 0 to-read, fiction 3.69 1899 The Awakening
author: Kate Chopin
name: Mary
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1899
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world¡ªuntil the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens¡¯s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Mary 0 to-read, fiction 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Mary
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky]]> 25386716 Oleg Gordievsky was the highest ranking KGB officer ever to work for Britain. For eleven years, from 1974 to 1985, he acted as a secret agent, reporting to the British Secret Intelligence Service while continuing to work as a KGB officer, first in Copenhagen, then in London. He provided Western security organizations with such a clear insight into the mind and methods of the KGB and the larger Soviet government that he has been credited with doing more than any other individual in the West to accelerate the collapse of Communism. In this thrilling memoir, Gordievsky lays out his extraordinary, meticulously planned escape from Russia, a story that has been described as 'one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying.' (Ben Macintyre - The Times) Peopled with bizarre, dangerous and corrupt characters, Gordievsky introduces the reader to the fantastical world of the Soviet Embassy, tells of the British MPs and trade unionists who helped and took money from the KGB, and reveals at last what the author told Margaret Thatcher and other world leaders which made him of such value to the West. Gordievsky¡¯s autobiography gives a fascinating account of life as a secret agent. It also paints the most graphic picture yet of the paranoid incompetence, alongside the ruthless determination, of the all-encompassing and sometimes ridiculous KGB. Praise for Oleg Gordievsky 'Gordievsky's extraordinary courage, mental toughness and self-possession are heroic.' ¨C The Spectator Oleg Gordievsky was born in Moscow in 1938. He attended the Moscow State Institute of International Relations where he specialized in German. He was sent to East Berlin as a diplomatic trainee in August 1961. Two days after his arrival, the Wall went up. In 1962 he joined the KGB and was posted to Copenhagen and London. He worked as a secret agent for eleven years until his dramatic escape to the West in 1985. He is the author of The Inside Story.]]> 440 Oleg Gordievsky Mary 0
I was gonna comment that it is so rare to enjoy history without qualms when the good guys transcend the bad guys. But then I remembered that Gordievsky¡¯s family life and his family were trashed. They all suffered greatly for his successes. I hope they read the book and forgive him. Getting married for love and intentionally having children while a double agent is not the best idea. He could have stuck with his first wife of convenience. Alas, he¡¯s a human being. He did what he did. I hope his daughters can at least visit him. Also, MI6 screwed up royally by ambiguously letting Gordievsky return to Moscow under a cloud of suspicion. This tragic blunder likely incentivized them all the more to extract him later.

What Gordievsky did for MI6 in a nutshell
¡°[H]e opened up the inner workings of the KGB at a pivotal juncture on history, revealing not just what Soviet intel was doing (and not doing), but what the Kremlin was thinking and planning, and in so doing transformed the way the West thought about the Soviet Union. He risked his life to betray his country, and made the world a little safer.¡±
Offered the ¡°single largest ¡®operational download¡¯ in MI6 history, an astonishing meticulous and comprehensive insight into the KGB: its past, present and future plans.¡±
Taught us that ¡°Andropov was serious when he insisted the US was planning to unleash nuclear war¡­.¡± The US thought it was hyperbole.
¡°Gordievsky¡¯s accurate interpretation of Kremlin psychology in 1985 did not cause the collapse of the Soviet Union¡ªbut it probably helped.¡±

MacIntyre vividly describes the different levels of help the KGB gets from Westerners, including, agents of influence or useful idiots. At the least Trump is an agent of influence for Putin and the FSB. He posits a friendly, or benign, version of Russia that is detrimental to our national security. Utterly transparent.

Fun facts
Aldrich Ames gave up Gordievsky to the KGB. MI6 disguised Gordievsky¡¯s intel when he gave them something of high value for the CIA. Very few people inside MI6, fewer still in MI5, knew his identity. The CIA desperately wanted to know who he was, so they put Ames on the task of finding him out!!! He quickly shared his research with his KGB handler.
Viktor Budanov, who led the [KGB] investigation [on Gordievsky], was appointed head of Directorate K [after he lost his man in Moscow!!!] and rose to the rank of general. After the collapse of communism, Budanov founded Elite Security. In 2017, it was announced that Elite had won a $2.8 million contract to guard the US Embassy in Moscow¡­.¡±
An execution order is still hanging over Gordievsky¡¯s head. I suppose the Skripal poisoning was terrifying for him and his daughters.

I did note some unnecessary repetitions and unclear wording. I do not understand how MacIntyre could know the thoughts of Gordievsky¡¯s father and older brother, also KGB. Surmise, yes. State their thoughts, no. Either or both may have had doubts about the brutality of Bolshevism but kept them silent so as not to jeopardize themselves nor their family. Gordievsky¡¯s brother drank himself to death at an early age. That could be perceived as a slow suicide by a thinking man with heavy doubts. The fifth star will not sacrificed from my rating.
]]> 4.21 1995 Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky
author: Oleg Gordievsky
name: Mary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: cold-war, espionage, history, politics, russia, ussr, british-isles, communism
review:
** spoiler alert ** KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky¡¯s story is as improbable as it is fascinating and even suspenseful despite knowing a bit about how it all turned out. This is one helluva complicated story. MacIntyre is the man for the job. Top-shelf research, synthesis and framework. The effort and brainpower that went into this is commendable. MacIntyre spoke with the protagonist spy, all of his MI6 handlers and helpers (who remain anonymous, to me anyway), and several former KGB involved. He claims he did not have access to MI6 nor KGB files but he certainly scrutinized reams of documents. A must-read for anyone interested in espionage, including professionals. I had trouble putting it down. I¡¯ve read ¡°A Spy Among Friends¡± and ¡°Double Cross¡± perhaps ¡°Agent Mincemeat¡± next. MacIntyre thanks David Cornwell in his acknowledgements and runs a complimentary blurb from John le Carre on the book cover. How fun would it be to hang out with those two?

I was gonna comment that it is so rare to enjoy history without qualms when the good guys transcend the bad guys. But then I remembered that Gordievsky¡¯s family life and his family were trashed. They all suffered greatly for his successes. I hope they read the book and forgive him. Getting married for love and intentionally having children while a double agent is not the best idea. He could have stuck with his first wife of convenience. Alas, he¡¯s a human being. He did what he did. I hope his daughters can at least visit him. Also, MI6 screwed up royally by ambiguously letting Gordievsky return to Moscow under a cloud of suspicion. This tragic blunder likely incentivized them all the more to extract him later.

What Gordievsky did for MI6 in a nutshell
¡°[H]e opened up the inner workings of the KGB at a pivotal juncture on history, revealing not just what Soviet intel was doing (and not doing), but what the Kremlin was thinking and planning, and in so doing transformed the way the West thought about the Soviet Union. He risked his life to betray his country, and made the world a little safer.¡±
Offered the ¡°single largest ¡®operational download¡¯ in MI6 history, an astonishing meticulous and comprehensive insight into the KGB: its past, present and future plans.¡±
Taught us that ¡°Andropov was serious when he insisted the US was planning to unleash nuclear war¡­.¡± The US thought it was hyperbole.
¡°Gordievsky¡¯s accurate interpretation of Kremlin psychology in 1985 did not cause the collapse of the Soviet Union¡ªbut it probably helped.¡±

MacIntyre vividly describes the different levels of help the KGB gets from Westerners, including, agents of influence or useful idiots. At the least Trump is an agent of influence for Putin and the FSB. He posits a friendly, or benign, version of Russia that is detrimental to our national security. Utterly transparent.

Fun facts
Aldrich Ames gave up Gordievsky to the KGB. MI6 disguised Gordievsky¡¯s intel when he gave them something of high value for the CIA. Very few people inside MI6, fewer still in MI5, knew his identity. The CIA desperately wanted to know who he was, so they put Ames on the task of finding him out!!! He quickly shared his research with his KGB handler.
Viktor Budanov, who led the [KGB] investigation [on Gordievsky], was appointed head of Directorate K [after he lost his man in Moscow!!!] and rose to the rank of general. After the collapse of communism, Budanov founded Elite Security. In 2017, it was announced that Elite had won a $2.8 million contract to guard the US Embassy in Moscow¡­.¡±
An execution order is still hanging over Gordievsky¡¯s head. I suppose the Skripal poisoning was terrifying for him and his daughters.

I did note some unnecessary repetitions and unclear wording. I do not understand how MacIntyre could know the thoughts of Gordievsky¡¯s father and older brother, also KGB. Surmise, yes. State their thoughts, no. Either or both may have had doubts about the brutality of Bolshevism but kept them silent so as not to jeopardize themselves nor their family. Gordievsky¡¯s brother drank himself to death at an early age. That could be perceived as a slow suicide by a thinking man with heavy doubts. The fifth star will not sacrificed from my rating.

]]> <![CDATA[On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century]]> 33917107
On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.

Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, ¡°Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.¡±

Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]> 127 Timothy Snyder 0804190119 Mary 0 4.24 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Mary
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read, politics, usa, cult, mendacity, revolution, terrorism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren¡¯s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren¡¯s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Mary 0 4.21 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Mary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read, dystopia, fiction, usa
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gilgamesh: A New English Version]]> 138371 In the ancient city of Uruk, the tyrannical King Gilgamesh tramples citizens "like a wild bull". The gods send an untamed man named Enkidu to control the ruthless king, but after fighting, Enkidu and Gilgamesh become great friends and embark on a series of adventures. They kill fearsome creatures before Enkidu succumbs to disease, leaving Gilgamesh despondent and alone. Eventually, Gilgamesh moves forward, and his quest becomes a soul-searching journey of self-discovery.

Mitchell's treatment of this extraordinary work is the finest yet, surpassing previous versions in its preservation of the wisdom and beauty of the original.

?2004 Stephen Mitchell (P)2004 Recorded Books LLC]]> 290 Anonymous Mary 0 3.87 -1200 Gilgamesh: A New English Version
author: Anonymous
name: Mary
average rating: 3.87
book published: -1200
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves: to-read, bildungsroman, middle-east, epic
review:

]]> A Susan Sontag Reader 119678 446 Susan Sontag 0394715691 Mary 0 art, culture, essays
She makes rules when none are need IMO.
¡°A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot¡ªwhatever the artist¡¯s personal intentions¡ªadvocate anything at all.¡±
Reacting to a work of art ¡°must be detached, restful, contemplative, emotionally free beyond indignation and approval.¡±

These observations worry me.
¡°interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art¡±
She indicates that we are attracted to many of the Great Writers due to their ¡°unhealthiness.¡± I¡¯ve been concerned about creators and celebrities who seem mentally ill, have not overcome and are lauded for it or tolerated. I¡¯m guilty of it myself but I try to stay aware. In politics, I observe Trump in a mental health decline yet he is revered by so many.
¡°The exemplary modern artist is a broker in madness.¡±

These observations resonate.
If we see our own lives ¡°from the outside. As the influence and popular dissemination of the social sciences and psychiatry has persuaded more and more people to do, we view ourselves as instances of generalities, and in so doing become profoundly and painfully alienated from our own experience and our humanity.¡±
¡°Dividing time into Past, Present and Future suggests that reality is distributed equally among the three parts, but in fact the past is the most real of all.¡±

]]> 4.17 1982 A Susan Sontag Reader
author: Susan Sontag
name: Mary
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: art, culture, essays
review:
Sontag confuses me. I feel like she contradicts herself. Her essays and short stories are not for me so I won¡¯t rate this book. I¡¯ve been curious about her for decades and finally got around to a bio and these essays. Mission accomplished.

She makes rules when none are need IMO.
¡°A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot¡ªwhatever the artist¡¯s personal intentions¡ªadvocate anything at all.¡±
Reacting to a work of art ¡°must be detached, restful, contemplative, emotionally free beyond indignation and approval.¡±

These observations worry me.
¡°interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art¡±
She indicates that we are attracted to many of the Great Writers due to their ¡°unhealthiness.¡± I¡¯ve been concerned about creators and celebrities who seem mentally ill, have not overcome and are lauded for it or tolerated. I¡¯m guilty of it myself but I try to stay aware. In politics, I observe Trump in a mental health decline yet he is revered by so many.
¡°The exemplary modern artist is a broker in madness.¡±

These observations resonate.
If we see our own lives ¡°from the outside. As the influence and popular dissemination of the social sciences and psychiatry has persuaded more and more people to do, we view ourselves as instances of generalities, and in so doing become profoundly and painfully alienated from our own experience and our humanity.¡±
¡°Dividing time into Past, Present and Future suggests that reality is distributed equally among the three parts, but in fact the past is the most real of all.¡±


]]> <![CDATA[All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way]]> 213940624 With revealing, never-before-told stories, Fred C. Trump III, nephew of President Donald Trump, breaks his decades-long silence in this honest memoir and sheds new light on the family name.

For the record, Fred Trump never asked for any of this. The divisive politics. The endless headlines. A hijacked last name. The heat-seeking uncle, rising from real-estate scion to gossip-column fixture to The Apprentice host to President of the United States. Fred just wanted a happy life and a satisfying career¡ªbut a fight for his son¡¯s health and safety forced him onto center stage, and now, at a crucial point in American history, he is stepping forward again.

In All in the Family, Donald Trump's nephew delves into his journey to become a ¡°different kind of Trump,¡± detailing his passionate battle to protect his wife and children from forces inside and outside the family. From the Trump house to the White House, Fred comes to terms with his own complex legacy and faces some demons head-on. It¡¯s a story of power, love, money, cruelty, and the unshakable bonds of family, played out in a glaring media spotlight.]]> 351 Fred C. Trump Mary 0 to-read, biography, trump 3.68 All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way
author: Fred C. Trump
name: Mary
average rating: 3.68
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: to-read, biography, trump
review:

]]> Taste: My Life Through Food 55360284
Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.

Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.

Written with Stanley's signature wry humour and nostalgia, Taste is a heartwarming read that will be irresistible for anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.]]> 291 Stanley Tucci 1982168013 Mary 0 to-read, cooking, food 4.19 2021 Taste: My Life Through Food
author: Stanley Tucci
name: Mary
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read, cooking, food
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School]]> 880773
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the touching and remarkably funny account of Flinn¡¯s transformation as she moves through the school¡¯s intense program and falls deeply in love along the way. Flinn interweaves more than two dozen recipes with a unique look inside Le Cordon Bleu amid battles with demanding chefs, competitive classmates, and her ¡°wretchedly inadequate¡± French. Flinn offers a vibrant portrait of Paris, one in which the sights and sounds of the city¡¯s street markets and purveyors come alive in rich detail.

The ultimate wish fulfillment book, her story is a true testament to pursuing a dream. Fans of Julie & Julia, My LIfe in France, and Eat, Pray, Love will be amused, inspired, and richly rewarded by this seductive tale of romance, Paris, and French food.]]> 278 Kathleen Flinn 0670018228 Mary 0 to-read, cooking, food 3.70 2007 The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School
author: Kathleen Flinn
name: Mary
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read, cooking, food
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking]]> 30753841
In the tradition of The Joy of Cooking and How to Cook Everything comes Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, an ambitious new approach to cooking by a major new culinary voice. Chef and writer Samin Nosrat has taught everyone from professional chefs to middle school kids to author Michael Pollan to cook using her revolutionary, yet simple, philosophy. Master the use of just four elements¡ªSalt, which enhances flavor; Fat, which delivers flavor and generates texture; Acid, which balances flavor; and Heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food¡ªand anything you cook will be delicious. By explaining the hows and whys of good cooking, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will teach and inspire a new generation of cooks how to confidently make better decisions in the kitchen and cook delicious meals with any ingredients, anywhere, at any time.

Echoing Samin¡¯s own journey from culinary novice to award-winning chef, Salt, Fat Acid, Heat immediately bridges the gap between home and professional kitchens. With charming narrative, illustrated walkthroughs, and a lighthearted approach to kitchen science, Samin demystifies the four elements of good cooking for everyone. Refer to the canon of 100 essential recipes¡ªand dozens of variations¡ªto put the lessons into practice and make bright, balanced vinaigrettes, perfectly caramelized roast vegetables, tender braised meats, and light, flaky pastry doughs.

Featuring 150 illustrations and infographics that reveal an atlas to the world of flavor by renowned illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will be your compass in the kitchen. Destined to be a classic, it just might be the last cookbook you¡¯ll ever need.

With a foreword by Michael Pollan.]]> 480 Samin Nosrat 1476753830 Mary 0 4.39 2017 Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
author: Samin Nosrat
name: Mary
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read, how-to, cooking, food
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions]]> 61724281
¡°Immensely emotional and unforgettably haunting.¡± ¡ª Wall Street Journal

Acclaimed author Jonathan Rosen¡¯s haunting investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood friend, Michael Laudor, from the heights of brilliant promise to the forensic psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. A story about friendship, love, and the price of self-delusion, The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand¡ªand fail to understand¡ªmental illness.

When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable.?Both children of college professors, the boys were best friends and keen competitors, and, when they both got into Yale University, seemed set to join the American meritocratic elite.

Michael blazed through college in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. But all wasn¡¯t as it seemed. One day, Jonathan received the Michael had suffered a serious psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital.

Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Michael was still in the hospital when he learned he'd been accepted to Yale Law School, and still battling delusions when he decided to trade his halfway house for the top law school in the country. He not only managed to graduate, but after his extraordinary story was featured in The New York Times , sold?a memoir for a large sum. Ron Howard bought film rights, completing the dream for Michael and his tirelessly supportive girlfriend Carrie. But then Michael, in the grip of an unshakeable paranoid fantasy, stabbed Carrie to death with a kitchen knife and became a front-page story of an entirely different sort.

The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen's brilliant and heartbreaking account of an American tragedy. It is a story about the bonds of family, friendship, and community; the promise of intellectual achievement; and the lure of utopian solutions. Tender, funny, and harrowing by turns, at times almost unbearably sad, The Best Minds is an extreme version of a story that is tragically familiar to all too many.?In the hands of a writer of Jonathan Rosen's gifts and dedication, its significance will echo widely.]]> 576 Jonathan Rosen 1594206570 Mary 4
Rosen hits hard. I was worried about the length when I first picked it up but I think the various subjects and details he weaves into this memoir/biography is justified. He grew up close with the main subject, Michael Laudor, who later becomes celebrated for his intelligence and wherewithal to get through Yale Law School while experiencing devastating schizophrenia. The two men are close to my age and I was able to reexperience 1970s suburbia and the deinstitutionalization of scores of mentally ill Americans without a plan for their future. Rosen¡¯s desire to figure out what went wrong is palpable. Laudor¡¯s likability, intelligence, knowledge, seeming ease with life all contributed to his support among influential people who tried to work with his mental illness. Or maybe ignore it. There are suggestions of guilt. ¡°[B]rilliance could be mistaken for sanity...¡±

A movie was being made about Laudor but was shelved when the happy ending was replaced by tragedy. The movie and the memoir were accolades to him and to Yale. Maybe it was all too much despite the positivity. He stopped taking his meds. Perhaps Hollywood could try again based on this ¡°Best Minds¡± book. Laudor had dreamed of ultimately being a writer and was tasked with his memoire before it all slipped away. Ironically and sadly, Rosen, deeply identified w Laudor, stepped in years later to write his version of things. The time he took to do the research and interviews bolsters this incredible story. ¡°Identification, ¡­ like empathy, can displace understanding and obligation as well as encourage it.¡±

Deconstruction/Postmodernism
Ideas formed in post-Vichy France were used in 1968 and became popular in US academia in the late 1980s ¡°¡­while most Americans didn¡¯t give a crap about deconstruction, it was also true that the people who did give a crap would be teaching the children of those who didn¡¯t for years to come.¡± It has been suggested elsewhere that the popularity of postmodernism among academies was part of a Soviet and Russian operation to confuse us into not believing in truth. ¡°If meaning was just a metaphor, there could be no line drawn between truth and falsehood, madness and sanity, and ultimately between right and wrong.¡±

The book is a bit disordered (like its subject).]]> 3.99 2023 The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
author: Jonathan Rosen
name: Mary
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/09
date added: 2024/05/22
shelves: homelessness, biography, mental-health, psychology, memoir
review:
SPOILER

Rosen hits hard. I was worried about the length when I first picked it up but I think the various subjects and details he weaves into this memoir/biography is justified. He grew up close with the main subject, Michael Laudor, who later becomes celebrated for his intelligence and wherewithal to get through Yale Law School while experiencing devastating schizophrenia. The two men are close to my age and I was able to reexperience 1970s suburbia and the deinstitutionalization of scores of mentally ill Americans without a plan for their future. Rosen¡¯s desire to figure out what went wrong is palpable. Laudor¡¯s likability, intelligence, knowledge, seeming ease with life all contributed to his support among influential people who tried to work with his mental illness. Or maybe ignore it. There are suggestions of guilt. ¡°[B]rilliance could be mistaken for sanity...¡±

A movie was being made about Laudor but was shelved when the happy ending was replaced by tragedy. The movie and the memoir were accolades to him and to Yale. Maybe it was all too much despite the positivity. He stopped taking his meds. Perhaps Hollywood could try again based on this ¡°Best Minds¡± book. Laudor had dreamed of ultimately being a writer and was tasked with his memoire before it all slipped away. Ironically and sadly, Rosen, deeply identified w Laudor, stepped in years later to write his version of things. The time he took to do the research and interviews bolsters this incredible story. ¡°Identification, ¡­ like empathy, can displace understanding and obligation as well as encourage it.¡±

Deconstruction/Postmodernism
Ideas formed in post-Vichy France were used in 1968 and became popular in US academia in the late 1980s ¡°¡­while most Americans didn¡¯t give a crap about deconstruction, it was also true that the people who did give a crap would be teaching the children of those who didn¡¯t for years to come.¡± It has been suggested elsewhere that the popularity of postmodernism among academies was part of a Soviet and Russian operation to confuse us into not believing in truth. ¡°If meaning was just a metaphor, there could be no line drawn between truth and falsehood, madness and sanity, and ultimately between right and wrong.¡±

The book is a bit disordered (like its subject).
]]> Mr. & Mrs. American Pie 36411207
After a public meltdown at Thanksgiving, Maxine finds herself not only divorced, but exiled to Scottsdale, Arizona. However, these desert boondocks will not be her end¨Donly her Elba. The former beauty queen sets her eyes on a new crown: that of the Mrs. American Pie pageant, awarded to the nation¡¯s best wife and mother.

Maxine only has one problem: to win the crown she¡¯ll need to find¨Dor build¨Da family of her own.]]> 368 Juliet McDaniel 1942645864 Mary 0 to-read, fiction 3.81 2018 Mr. & Mrs. American Pie
author: Juliet McDaniel
name: Mary
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/10
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness]]> 1098486
Saks was only eight, and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in sunny 1960s Miami, when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it was not until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital.

Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night, during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent the next five months in a psychiatric ward.

So began Saks's long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. She is married to a wonderful man.

In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks discusses frankly and movingly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today. It is destined to become a classic in the genre.]]> 340 Elyn R. Saks 140130138X Mary 0 4.29 2007 The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
author: Elyn R. Saks
name: Mary
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves: to-read, memoir, mental-health, psychology
review:

]]> My Dark Places 36061 L.A. Confidential comes My Dark Places, an investigative autobiography by James Ellroy. In 1958, Ellroy's mother, Jean, was raped, killed, and dumped off a road in El Monte, California, a rundown L.A. suburb. The killer was never found, and the case was closed. It was a sordid, back-page homicide that no one remembered. Except her son.

James Ellroy was ten years old when his mother died. His bereavement was complex and ambiguous: "I cried. I cranked tears out all the way to L.A. I hated her. I hated El Monte. Some unknown killer just bought me a brand-new beautiful life." He grew up obsessed with murdered women and crime. He ran from his mother's ghost.

Ellroy became a writer of radically provocative and bestselling crime novels. "I wear obsession well," he says. "I've turned it into something." He tried to reclaim his mother through fiction. It didn't work. He quit running and wrote this memoir.

My Dark Places is Jean and James Ellroy's story¡ªfrom 1958 to all points past and up to this moment. It is the story of a brilliant homicide detective named Bill Stoner and of the investigation he and Ellroy undertook. It is also an unflinching autobiography with vivid reportage. This is James Ellroy's journey through his most forbidding memories.]]> 427 James Ellroy 0517288990 Mary 0 3.87 1996 My Dark Places
author: James Ellroy
name: Mary
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: to-read, biography, crime, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Very Private School: A Memoir]]> 176442861 In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school.

A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.]]> 304 Charles Spencer 1668046385 Mary 4
Although I have long been curious about the dreadful conditions at some British boarding schools, I never thought much about why, other than tradition. Spencer reasonably explains that at the height of the British Empire this peculiar system was used to ¡°populate and replenish the ranks of those who administered, controlled and expanded the global mission.¡± The Empire needed teams of men ripped from their families and treated harshly to toughen them up for challenging posts abroad.
]]> 3.94 2024 A Very Private School: A Memoir
author: Charles Spencer
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: british-isles, british-royal-family, giveaways, memoir
review:
Charles Spencer, Diana¡¯s brother, has written this important book about the crimes and horrors at his boarding school, Maidwell Hall during the 1970s He shares a surprisingly high-level of self-awareness and understanding of his childhood, both privileged and ghastly. It never occurred to him to report back to his parents. A fellow student remarks that ¡°Being prisoners there, I think we were the last of the Victorians in many ways, We were parked there out of tradition, and not for education.¡±

Although I have long been curious about the dreadful conditions at some British boarding schools, I never thought much about why, other than tradition. Spencer reasonably explains that at the height of the British Empire this peculiar system was used to ¡°populate and replenish the ranks of those who administered, controlled and expanded the global mission.¡± The Empire needed teams of men ripped from their families and treated harshly to toughen them up for challenging posts abroad.

]]> <![CDATA[Nice White Ladies: The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It]]> 57007984
An acclaimed?expert?illuminates?the distinctive role that white women play in perpetuating racism,?and?how?they can?work?to fight?it?

In a nation deeply divided by race, the ¡°Karens¡±?of the world are easy to villainize. But in? Nice White?Ladies , Jessie Daniels addresses the?unintended?complicity of?even?well-meaning?white women.?She?reveals?how their everyday choices?harm communities of color.?White mothers, still expected to be the primary parents, too often uncritically?choose?to send their kids to the ¡°best¡± schools, collectively leading to a return to segregation.?She?addresses?a feminism that pushes women of color aside, and a wellness industry that insulates white women in a bubble of their own privilege.

Daniels then charts a better path forward. She looks to the white women who fight neo-Nazis online?and in the streets, and who challenge all-white spaces from workplaces to schools to?neighborhoods.?In the?end,?she shows how her fellow white?women?can?work toward?true?equality for all.]]> 304 Jessie Daniels 154167586X Mary 3 racism
White women need to wake up, turn attention outward listen and stay in the background. As Daniels suggests, watch Toni Morrison with Charlie Rose on his eponymous show.

I would also suggest watching District Attorney Sandra Doorley (not) get pulled over for speeding. She calls on a presumably white male for help. Also, imagine this scenario if she were a Black male.

At a BLM protest years ago on the Golden Gate Bridge, I witnessed a ww place herself between the protestors and the cops thereby centering herself in that moment and increasing the drama.

Karens
¡°The sadism that summons death by dialing 911, the callous disregard for suffering and the and the bounty of white wealth. Slavery remains with us in the here and now.¡±
Emmitt Till Carolyn Bryant

Wellness industry
Confers moral authority on white women (eat this, not that; use this product, not that¡­.)
Relies on the ww need to focus inward so as not to see what really needs fixing for the benefit of others. It occupies ww¡¯s time and pocketbook for the self only. Ignores the actual things people need to be healthy (universal, quality health care and education, access to healthy food and water, etc)

Cultural Appropriation
Can¡¯t stand being white? Definitely a need for attention. Rachel Dolezal (ww who passed as Black) was recently fired from her teaching job under a new name for being on OnlyFans.
New Age Practices and Yoga extract native and Hindu traditions from their roots.
I also think that American Black Culture is appropriated by white people (racist or not) because it¡¯s so good.

White feminism
¡°In a way, the women¡¯s movement was a response by privileged, well-educated white housewives dissatisfied with living in suburban homes and doing housework the post-World War II advertisements told them made up the American dream.¡± Ww feminism seems performative at times in short-lived bursts.

The Internet
has both spread white nationalism and called out the Karens and the police abusing and murdering Black victims.

White mediocrity
MAGA is the ultimate example of it. There are so many more.]]> 3.94 Nice White Ladies: The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It
author: Jessie Daniels
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/29
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves: racism
review:
Daniels convincingly explains how white women in the US are trained as children to uphold the white patriarchy for their own gains and to the detriment of Black and Brown people, especially Black women. At the same time, ww Trump voters uphold the white patriarchy contrary to their overall benefit. Just longing backward to a time when ww were ¡°protected¡± by white men who were unquestioned and in charge. Among many MAGA wrongs, banning abortion is certainly not in ww¡¯s interest.

White women need to wake up, turn attention outward listen and stay in the background. As Daniels suggests, watch Toni Morrison with Charlie Rose on his eponymous show.

I would also suggest watching District Attorney Sandra Doorley (not) get pulled over for speeding. She calls on a presumably white male for help. Also, imagine this scenario if she were a Black male.

At a BLM protest years ago on the Golden Gate Bridge, I witnessed a ww place herself between the protestors and the cops thereby centering herself in that moment and increasing the drama.

Karens
¡°The sadism that summons death by dialing 911, the callous disregard for suffering and the and the bounty of white wealth. Slavery remains with us in the here and now.¡±
Emmitt Till Carolyn Bryant

Wellness industry
Confers moral authority on white women (eat this, not that; use this product, not that¡­.)
Relies on the ww need to focus inward so as not to see what really needs fixing for the benefit of others. It occupies ww¡¯s time and pocketbook for the self only. Ignores the actual things people need to be healthy (universal, quality health care and education, access to healthy food and water, etc)

Cultural Appropriation
Can¡¯t stand being white? Definitely a need for attention. Rachel Dolezal (ww who passed as Black) was recently fired from her teaching job under a new name for being on OnlyFans.
New Age Practices and Yoga extract native and Hindu traditions from their roots.
I also think that American Black Culture is appropriated by white people (racist or not) because it¡¯s so good.

White feminism
¡°In a way, the women¡¯s movement was a response by privileged, well-educated white housewives dissatisfied with living in suburban homes and doing housework the post-World War II advertisements told them made up the American dream.¡± Ww feminism seems performative at times in short-lived bursts.

The Internet
has both spread white nationalism and called out the Karens and the police abusing and murdering Black victims.

White mediocrity
MAGA is the ultimate example of it. There are so many more.
]]> The Red Record 25896953 A shocking and powerful account of lynching written by activist, journalist, and former slave Ida B. Wells

In the postbellum American South, lynching was a frightfully common occurrence, perpetrated so frequently that most Southern politicians and leaders turned a blind eye to the practice. This vicious form of vigilante ¡°justice¡± was in truth a thinly veiled racist justification for murderous violence. In 1892 alone, more than two hundred African Americans were lynched, with alleged offenses ranging from ¡°attempted stock poisoning¡± to ¡°insulting whites.¡±
?
The Red Record tabulates these scenes of brutality in clear, objective statistics, allowing the horrifying facts to speak for themselves. Alongside the tally, author Ida B. Wells describes actual occurrences of lynching, and enumerates the standard rationalizations for these extrajudicial killings, her original intent for the pamphlet to shame and shock the apathetic public¡ªand spark change.?
?
This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
]]> 78 Ida B. Wells-Barnett Mary 0 4.51 1895 The Red Record
author: Ida B. Wells-Barnett
name: Mary
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1895
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: to-read, history, racism, usa, white-supremacists
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America]]> 53056522 From the author of the New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, a history of white male America and a scathing indictment of what it has cost us socially, economically, and politically

After the election of Donald Trump, and the escalation of white male rage and increased hostility toward immigrants that came with him, New York Times-bestselling author Ijeoma Oluo found herself in conversation with Americans around the country, pondering one central question: How did we get here?

In this ambitious survey of the last century of American history, Oluo answers that question by pinpointing white men's deliberate efforts to subvert women, people of color, and the disenfranchised. Through research, interviews, and the powerful, personal writing for which she is celebrated, Oluo investigates the backstory of America's growth, from immigrant migration to our national ethos around ingenuity, from the shaping of economic policy to the protection of sociopolitical movements that fortify male power. In the end, she shows how white men have long maintained a stranglehold on leadership and sorely undermined the pursuit of happiness for all.]]> 278 Ijeoma Oluo 1580059511 Mary 0 4.40 2020 Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
author: Ijeoma Oluo
name: Mary
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: to-read, history, misogyny, usa, white-supremacists
review:

]]> Susan Sontag: A Biography 18774368 280 Daniel Schreiber 0810125838 Mary 3 biography, culture, new-york 3.72 2007 Susan Sontag: A Biography
author: Daniel Schreiber
name: Mary
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: biography, culture, new-york
review:
Sontag was an influencer in her day. She had the intellect, knowledge, connections, drive and charisma to get, and stay, noticed. She was also into both high and pop culture. She championed the arts and film. Seems to have enjoyed controversy and conflict. Her opinions evolved over her lifetime. Schreiber indicates that Sontag did not care to admit that. On to ¡°A Susan Sontag Reader.¡±
]]> Summer in Baden-Baden 816971 here.

Summer in Baden-Baden was acclaimed by The New York Review of Books as "a short poetic masterpiece" and by Donald Fanger in The Los Angeles Times as "gripping, mysterious and profoundly moving."


A complex, highly original novel, Summer in Baden-Baden has a double narrative. It is wintertime, late December: a species of "now." A narrator¡ªTsypkinis on a train going to Leningrad. And it is also mid-April 1867. The newly married Dostoyevskys, Fyodor, and his wife, Anna Grigor'yevna, are on their way to Germany, for a four-year trip. This is not, like J. M. Coetzee's The Master of St. Petersburg, a Dostoyevsky fantasy. Neither is it a docu-novel, although its author was obsessed with getting everything "right." Nothing is invented, everything is invented. Dostoyevsky's reckless passions for gambling, for his literary vocation, for his wife, are matched by her all-forgiving love, which in turn resonates with the love of literature's disciple, Leonid Tsypkin, for Dostoyevsky. In a remarkable introductory essay (which appeared in The New Yorker), Susan Sontag explains why it is something of a miracle that Summer in Baden-Baden has survived, and celebrates the happy event of its publication in America with an account of Tsypkin's beleaguered life and the important pleasures of his marvelous novel.]]> 146 Leonid Tsypkin 0811215482 Mary 0 to-read, fiction, russia 3.70 1981 Summer in Baden-Baden
author: Leonid Tsypkin
name: Mary
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: to-read, fiction, russia
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon]]> 119672 448 Carl Rollyson 0393049280 Mary 0 to-read, biography 3.45 2000 Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon
author: Carl Rollyson
name: Mary
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: to-read, biography
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Caracole (Vintage International)]]> 109720
"A seduction through language, a masque without masks, Caracole brings back to startling life a dormant strain in serious American the idea of the romantic."--Cynthia Ozick]]> 352 Edmund White 067976416X Mary 0 to-read, fiction, new-york 3.21 1985 Caracole (Vintage International)
author: Edmund White
name: Mary
average rating: 3.21
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: to-read, fiction, new-york
review:

]]> The Moon's a Balloon 57778 One of the bestselling memoirs of all time, David Niven's The Moon's a Balloon is an account of one of the most remarkable lives Hollywood has ever seen.

Beginning with the tragic early loss of his aristocratic father, then regaling us with tales of school, army and wartime hi-jinx, Niven shows how, even as an unknown young man, he knew how to live the good life.

But it is his astonishing stories of life in Hollywood and his accounts of working and partying with the legends of the silver screen - Lawrence Oliver, Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, James Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward and dozens of others, while making some of the most acclaimed films of the last century - which turn David Niven's memoir into an outright masterpiece.

An intimate, gossipy, heartfelt and above all charming account of life inside Hollywood's dream factory, The Moon is a Balloon is a classic to be read and enjoyed time and again..]]> 327 David Niven 0140239243 Mary 4 hollywood, memoir 4.06 1971 The Moon's a Balloon
author: David Niven
name: Mary
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: hollywood, memoir
review:
David Niven shares some great (likely apocryphal) stories from his amazing life. Growing from a boy who got into trouble, had authority figure issues and a prostitute girlfriend and was himself abused, Niven eventually graduates from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst(!), conquers Hollywood, volunteers for the UK in WWII, drops into Normandy just after D-Day and has affairs with beautiful Hollywood ladies. He lived a full life of ups and downs. He comes across as the perfect guest with wit and charm to spare, an accomplished raconteur and high-end sportsman. He was also very flexible about comfort on his way up. Naturally, he was invited everywhere by tout le monde. Then, he, himself, got rich and made his own fun. I doubt anything in the book is entirely accurate but didn¡¯t much care. Amusing read despite the out-of-date attitudes toward women and children.
]]> Sociopath: A Memoir 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn¡¯t understand. She suspected it was because she didn¡¯t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn¡¯t like the way that ¡°nothing¡± felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she¡¯d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified¡ªwell over 200 years ago¡ªsociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she¡¯s capable of love, it must mean that she isn¡¯t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren¡¯t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Mary 0 3.74 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: Mary
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read, memoir, psychology, mental-health
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster]]> 392640 Man Without a Face is the result. It details all of Wolf's major successes and failures and illuminates the reality of espionage operations as few nonfiction works before it. Wolf tells the real story of Gunter Guillaume, the East German spy who brought down Willy Brandt. He reveals the truth behind East Germany's involvment with terrorism. He takes us inside the bowels of the Stasi headquarters and inside the minds of Eastern Bloc leaders. With its high-speed chases, hidden cameras, phony brothels, secret codes, false identities, and triple agents, Man Without a Face reads like a classic spy thriller¡ªexcept this time the action is real.]]> 411 Markus Wolf 1891620126 Mary 4
In addition to sifting through raw intelligence and bureaucratic duties, Wolf ran his own spies to keep a hand in things. He used ideology over money to turn West Germans. Money and sex were available as needed. One of his spies in the West German government helped bring down Willy Brandt who was, ironically, eager for rapprochement with the East. Wolf and many East Germans liked Brandt and benefited from his more open policies. Wolf claims it was ok to end Brandt¡¯s career as the East didn¡¯t really didn¡¯t know how serious he was until they spied on him at a high level.

He claims the East Germany was not involved in ¡°wet jobs.¡± If a kidnapped spy died in transit it was due to accidental overmedication. As we know from history, Moscow doesn¡¯t treat it¡¯s Western spies well, especially after they have gained asylum. I keep thinking I¡¯ll read about Ed Snowden¡¯s demise any day. Wolf agrees with me that the US psy ops were successful (and affordable) with Radio Free Europe. We should be doing more of this and less invading.

¡°My role as head of foreign intelligence, with a good knowledge of the political climate in Western Europe, was to concentrate on the effect of the disarmament campaign on the foreign policies of NATO countries and to work out how the East could profit from decisions within the Western alliance on this emotional issue.¡± Situation unchanged under Putin with Trump as his guy. The Soviets and now the Russians are determined to break up the West. Trump and other fascists here and abroad are wittingly trying to make this happen.

East Germany ¡®s top intelligence service was unable to penetrate Israeli intelligence during Wolf¡¯s tenure. Moscow wanted it so they got what they could through US and Western European sources.

The eye-popping masses of Stasi files found after reunification were thus as Wolf would not commit to electronic storage and would not allow individual files to contain everything on a spy. He believed the CIA had gobs of files too, but they went electronic so were physically condensed.

Rightly, in my opinion and his, Wolf was not ultimately convicted of treason or espionage as he was working for a different country during the Cold War than the united Germany where charges were drawn. I¡¯m not so sure about terrorism charges as the Stasi did train and harbor terrorists like the PLO and Red Army Faction. Wolf maintains his distance from this nastiness but I¡¯m not so sure.

Outside of this book Wolf has indicated the John Le Carre¡¯s portrayals of Stasi operations was very accurate. Le Carre claimed that none of his characters were based on Wolf.
]]> 3.96 1997 Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster
author: Markus Wolf
name: Mary
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/04
date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: espionage, germany, cold-war, ussr
review:
Wolf was the successful, long-serving (33 years) head of East Germany¡¯s state foreign intelligence service during much of the Cold War. He was a true believer since childhood. He and his brother were brought up by German communist parents before and during the Third Reich. His dad was Jewish, further solidifying his antifascism. Before they could be rounded up and sent to the camps, his family fled Germany for Moscow. The USSR saved his family and he would prove loyal and grateful, possessed of ¡°unquestioning discipline¡± despite the atrocities within. Wolf seemed focused on a better future and, thus, able to compartmentalize. In the end, he joined protest movement for reforming the DDR¡¯s sclerotic policies. He did not want the end of communism.

In addition to sifting through raw intelligence and bureaucratic duties, Wolf ran his own spies to keep a hand in things. He used ideology over money to turn West Germans. Money and sex were available as needed. One of his spies in the West German government helped bring down Willy Brandt who was, ironically, eager for rapprochement with the East. Wolf and many East Germans liked Brandt and benefited from his more open policies. Wolf claims it was ok to end Brandt¡¯s career as the East didn¡¯t really didn¡¯t know how serious he was until they spied on him at a high level.

He claims the East Germany was not involved in ¡°wet jobs.¡± If a kidnapped spy died in transit it was due to accidental overmedication. As we know from history, Moscow doesn¡¯t treat it¡¯s Western spies well, especially after they have gained asylum. I keep thinking I¡¯ll read about Ed Snowden¡¯s demise any day. Wolf agrees with me that the US psy ops were successful (and affordable) with Radio Free Europe. We should be doing more of this and less invading.

¡°My role as head of foreign intelligence, with a good knowledge of the political climate in Western Europe, was to concentrate on the effect of the disarmament campaign on the foreign policies of NATO countries and to work out how the East could profit from decisions within the Western alliance on this emotional issue.¡± Situation unchanged under Putin with Trump as his guy. The Soviets and now the Russians are determined to break up the West. Trump and other fascists here and abroad are wittingly trying to make this happen.

East Germany ¡®s top intelligence service was unable to penetrate Israeli intelligence during Wolf¡¯s tenure. Moscow wanted it so they got what they could through US and Western European sources.

The eye-popping masses of Stasi files found after reunification were thus as Wolf would not commit to electronic storage and would not allow individual files to contain everything on a spy. He believed the CIA had gobs of files too, but they went electronic so were physically condensed.

Rightly, in my opinion and his, Wolf was not ultimately convicted of treason or espionage as he was working for a different country during the Cold War than the united Germany where charges were drawn. I¡¯m not so sure about terrorism charges as the Stasi did train and harbor terrorists like the PLO and Red Army Faction. Wolf maintains his distance from this nastiness but I¡¯m not so sure.

Outside of this book Wolf has indicated the John Le Carre¡¯s portrayals of Stasi operations was very accurate. Le Carre claimed that none of his characters were based on Wolf.

]]> The Tattooist of Auschwitz 205030496
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a T?towierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.

Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism¡ªbut also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.

One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.]]> 288 Heather Morris 0063413108 Mary 0 to-read 4.34 2018 The Tattooist of Auschwitz
author: Heather Morris
name: Mary
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood]]> 176443727 Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall, About Last Night, and Glory, creator of the show thirtysomething, and executive producer of My So-Called Life, gives a dishy, behind-the-scenes look at working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

¡°I¡¯ll be dropping a few names,¡± Ed Zwick confesses in the introduction to his book. ¡°Over the years I have worked with self-proclaimed masters-of-the-universe, unheralded geniuses, hacks, sociopaths, savants, and saints.¡±

He has encountered these Hollywood types during four decades of directing, producing, and writing projects that have collectively received eighteen Academy Award nominations (seven wins) and sixty-seven Emmy nominations (twenty-two wins). Though there are many factors behind such success, including luck and the contributions of his creative partner Marshall Herskovitz, he¡¯s known to have a special talent for bringing out the best in the people he¡¯s worked with, especially the actors. In those intense collaborations, he¡¯s sought to discover the small pieces of connective tissue, vulnerability, and fellowship that can help an actor realize their character in full.

Talents whom he spotted early include Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Denzel Washington, Claire Danes, and Jared Leto. Established stars he worked closely with include Leonardo DiCaprio, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Daniel Craig, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Jennifer Connelly. He also sued Harvey Weinstein over the production of Shakespeare in Love ¡ªand won. He shares personal stories about all these people, and more.

Written mostly with love, sometimes with rue, this memoir is also a meditation on working, sprinkled throughout with tips for anyone who has ever imagined writing, directing, or producing for the screen. Fans with an appreciation for the beautiful mysteries¡ªas well as the unsightly, often comic truths¡ªof crafting film and television won¡¯t want to miss it.]]> 304 Ed Zwick 1668046997 Mary 0 hollywood, memoir, to-read 3.97 2024 Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood
author: Ed Zwick
name: Mary
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: hollywood, memoir, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting]]> 459744 Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays. You get a firsthand look at why and how films get made and what elements make a good screenplay. Says columnist Liz Smith, "You'll be fascinated.]]> 608 William Goldman 0446391174 Mary 0 to-read, hollywood, memoir 4.11 1983 Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting
author: William Goldman
name: Mary
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read, hollywood, memoir
review:

]]> The Penkovsky Papers 22107592 400 Oleg Penkovskiy Mary 0
The Penkovskiy Papers are his musings on what made him tick and purloined intelligence. The entries are preceded by editorial context provided by a knowledgeable American journalist. Penkovsky comes across as informed, righteous and angry. He really did not care for Khrushchev! Somehow the papers got to the West and were published as the author had wished. Penkovsky wanted to warn the West to stay vigilant with the Soviets and push back hard against their war machine. We should be doing this today in support of the Ukrainian bulwark. Letting Berlin be closed off was an invitation to the Soviets to test the West further. He also points out that by inviting the Soviet leadership to international summits unwisely boosts their prestige. Adding Russia to the G7 in the 90s was a mistake rectified after the Russian invasion of Crimea. Penkovsky describes how behind the Soviet fa?ade of calling for peace and disarmament, they were all along building theirs, stealing technology and trying to catch up. They were also sabotaging even their allies and recruiting spies. The breakup of NATO has been a Soviet and Russian goal since its creation. If Trump were to miraculously become president again, our membership to NATO would be jeopardized at best. Penkovsky also warns the West not to project. The Soviet, and now Russian, mindset is not like ours.
]]> 3.90 1965 The Penkovsky Papers
author: Oleg Penkovskiy
name: Mary
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/28
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves: espionage, history, memoir, russia, ussr
review:
Oleg Penkovsky was a well-respected colonel in the Soviet GRU in the late 50s and early 60s. His cover had him leading a state scientific group which gave him access to Westerners and travel abroad. He ostensibly experienced a crisis as he realized the USSR and communism were terrible for him and his fellow Russians. He volunteered to spy for the US and UK leading to them to better understand Russian military capabilities and Khrushchev¡¯s reckless personality. This information helped JFK understand the Cuban Missile Crisis and potentially avoid a military conflict. Penkovsky was arrested 6 days before Khrushchev relented on the Cuban missiles and eventually was tried , convicted and executed.

The Penkovskiy Papers are his musings on what made him tick and purloined intelligence. The entries are preceded by editorial context provided by a knowledgeable American journalist. Penkovsky comes across as informed, righteous and angry. He really did not care for Khrushchev! Somehow the papers got to the West and were published as the author had wished. Penkovsky wanted to warn the West to stay vigilant with the Soviets and push back hard against their war machine. We should be doing this today in support of the Ukrainian bulwark. Letting Berlin be closed off was an invitation to the Soviets to test the West further. He also points out that by inviting the Soviet leadership to international summits unwisely boosts their prestige. Adding Russia to the G7 in the 90s was a mistake rectified after the Russian invasion of Crimea. Penkovsky describes how behind the Soviet fa?ade of calling for peace and disarmament, they were all along building theirs, stealing technology and trying to catch up. They were also sabotaging even their allies and recruiting spies. The breakup of NATO has been a Soviet and Russian goal since its creation. If Trump were to miraculously become president again, our membership to NATO would be jeopardized at best. Penkovsky also warns the West not to project. The Soviet, and now Russian, mindset is not like ours.

]]> <![CDATA[Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon]]> 149105520 The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of FTX¡¯s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world¡¯s youngest billionaire and crypto¡¯s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own¨Duntil it all came undone.]]> 272 Michael Lewis 1324074337 Mary 3
Lewis seems fond of his hard-to-love subject. He and SBF believe the lost money is not gone and the SBF is innocent of crime. I just read that most of the money will be returned to investors after all. Well, most of the money that Bernie Madoff stole was also returned to investors but he died in jail. I do think SBF committed crimes. He is scheduled for sentencing in March 2024. Experts predict that the found money will positively affect his sentence.

SBF is/was an adherent of effective altruism which calls on followers to earn as much money as possible over a lifetime in order to fund charities and maximize their potential for doing good. SBF wasn¡¯t greedy for himself but he did have enormous (infinite, as in the book¡¯s title) monetary goals. I think these goals plus his desire for success contributed to his recklessness with other people¡¯s money. At best he was grossly incompetent.

In 2022 his futures exchange, FTX, lost $8 bn. It/he illegally lent to SBF¡¯s other trading arm, Alameda Research, which SBF seemed to use as his personal bank account. SBF thought of it as an ¡°accounting error¡± and claimed the money was still there it just had to be found. Three of his closest colleagues plead guilty to US Government charges. SBF was found guilty on all seven charges against him.

Origins of cryptocurrency were centered around not trusting government and big banks. Ironically, as it evolved it required total trust in an unregulated market.

Asked why SBF was able to get away with his crimes, an employee responded, ¡°Sam¡¯s oddness. His oddness mixed with just how smart he was allowed to you to wave away a lot of concerns. The question of why just goes away.¡±]]> 3.72 2023 Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
author: Michael Lewis
name: Mary
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/19
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: biography, business, history, technology
review:
Lewis got all the access. San Bankman-Fried (SBF) didn¡¯t seem to hold anything back, including his psychiatrist! The portrait that emerges is something. I see a solipsistic guy, like other tech bros, unattuned to other humans with a single-minded pursuit of profit.

Lewis seems fond of his hard-to-love subject. He and SBF believe the lost money is not gone and the SBF is innocent of crime. I just read that most of the money will be returned to investors after all. Well, most of the money that Bernie Madoff stole was also returned to investors but he died in jail. I do think SBF committed crimes. He is scheduled for sentencing in March 2024. Experts predict that the found money will positively affect his sentence.

SBF is/was an adherent of effective altruism which calls on followers to earn as much money as possible over a lifetime in order to fund charities and maximize their potential for doing good. SBF wasn¡¯t greedy for himself but he did have enormous (infinite, as in the book¡¯s title) monetary goals. I think these goals plus his desire for success contributed to his recklessness with other people¡¯s money. At best he was grossly incompetent.

In 2022 his futures exchange, FTX, lost $8 bn. It/he illegally lent to SBF¡¯s other trading arm, Alameda Research, which SBF seemed to use as his personal bank account. SBF thought of it as an ¡°accounting error¡± and claimed the money was still there it just had to be found. Three of his closest colleagues plead guilty to US Government charges. SBF was found guilty on all seven charges against him.

Origins of cryptocurrency were centered around not trusting government and big banks. Ironically, as it evolved it required total trust in an unregulated market.

Asked why SBF was able to get away with his crimes, an employee responded, ¡°Sam¡¯s oddness. His oddness mixed with just how smart he was allowed to you to wave away a lot of concerns. The question of why just goes away.¡±
]]> <![CDATA[Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America]]> 150065063
MSNBC's legal expert breaks down the ways disinformation has become a tool to drive voters to extremes, disempower our legal structures, and consolidate power in the hands of the few.

"One of the most acute observers of our time shares . . . a compelling work about a challenge that¡ªleft unexamined and left unchecked¡ªcould undermine our democracy." ¡ªEric H. Holder Jr, 82nd Attorney General of the United States

American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation¡ªthe deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth¡ªand it comes at us from all opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It's endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including rapid developments in artificial intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility.

In Attack from Within , legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade, shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it. The book


Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2020 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country¡¯s hard-won democracy.]]> 384 Barbara McQuade 164421363X Mary 0 4.11 2024 Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America
author: Barbara McQuade
name: Mary
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: to-read, espionage, politics, russia, usa
review:

]]> Kaddish for an Unborn Child 47184
As Kertesz¡¯s narrator addresses the child he couldn¡¯t bear to bring into the world he ushers readers into the labyrinth of his consciousness, dramatizing the paradoxes attendant on surviving the catastrophe of Auschwitz. Kaddish for the Unborn Child is a work of staggering power, lit by flashes of perverse wit and fueled by the energy of its wholly original voice.
Translated by Tim Wilkinson]]> 128 Imre Kert¨¦sz 1400078628 Mary 0 3.85 1990 Kaddish for an Unborn Child
author: Imre Kert¨¦sz
name: Mary
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read, fiction, holocaust, wwii
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)]]> 859240
Part of a series of Penguin Classics editions of Henry James's works, this edition contains a chronology, further reading, notes and an introduction by Philip Horne, exploring the sources in life and fiction from which James determined to make his Portrait.]]> 718 Henry James 0141441267 Mary 3 fiction, literature, usa Great novel with flaws. America goes back to Europe in the form of Isabel Archer and her friends and relatives. Isabel is a charming, nubile, penniless, ¡°intellectual¡± woman ripe for the pickin¡¯ yet determined to live her life and find her own way. ¡°Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar.¡± ¡°[S]he was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; impulsively, she often admired herself.¡± And, man, is she gonna pay for that later! She ends up, as do we all, creating the conditions she most fears by marrying badly and ignoring the advice of those who truly love her. Isabel¡¯s well-meaning cousin, Ralph, decides to interfere in her life in a big, unexpected, secret way. Unintended consequences await. Isabel is described as ¡°natural¡± or guileless. She unlike, her nemesis, is not a master of the unspoken. ¡°The real offense¡­ was her having a mind of her own at all.¡± Isabel¡¯s cousin warns her that she will be ¡°caged¡± once she decides on the wrong man. Ralph to Isabel: ¡°You wanted to look at life for yourself ¨C but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!¡±

Ralph to his father: ¡°¡­you have lived with the English for thirty years, and you have picked up a good many of the things they say. But you have never learned the things they don¡¯t say!¡±

The sentences are long, the ideas elevated, the characters realistic, the setting marvelous, the dialogue witty yet replete with the unsaid. We never get to see Isabel in love with Osmond. He charms her but I can¡¯t understand why she falls for it. Isabel loses a young son with hardly a mention.

]]> 4.07 1881 The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)
author: Henry James
name: Mary
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1881
rating: 3
read at: 2019/07/18
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: fiction, literature, usa
review:
***SPOILER***
Great novel with flaws. America goes back to Europe in the form of Isabel Archer and her friends and relatives. Isabel is a charming, nubile, penniless, ¡°intellectual¡± woman ripe for the pickin¡¯ yet determined to live her life and find her own way. ¡°Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar.¡± ¡°[S]he was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; impulsively, she often admired herself.¡± And, man, is she gonna pay for that later! She ends up, as do we all, creating the conditions she most fears by marrying badly and ignoring the advice of those who truly love her. Isabel¡¯s well-meaning cousin, Ralph, decides to interfere in her life in a big, unexpected, secret way. Unintended consequences await. Isabel is described as ¡°natural¡± or guileless. She unlike, her nemesis, is not a master of the unspoken. ¡°The real offense¡­ was her having a mind of her own at all.¡± Isabel¡¯s cousin warns her that she will be ¡°caged¡± once she decides on the wrong man. Ralph to Isabel: ¡°You wanted to look at life for yourself ¨C but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!¡±

Ralph to his father: ¡°¡­you have lived with the English for thirty years, and you have picked up a good many of the things they say. But you have never learned the things they don¡¯t say!¡±

The sentences are long, the ideas elevated, the characters realistic, the setting marvelous, the dialogue witty yet replete with the unsaid. We never get to see Isabel in love with Osmond. He charms her but I can¡¯t understand why she falls for it. Isabel loses a young son with hardly a mention.


]]> <![CDATA[Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare]]> 45892235 This revelatory and dramatic history of disinformation traces the rise of secret organized deception operations from the interwar period to contemporary internet troll farms



We live in the age of disinformation--of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. More than four months before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was "carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new.

The story of modern disinformation begins with the post-Russian Revolution clash between communism and capitalism, which would come to define the Cold War. In Active Measures, Rid reveals startling intelligence and security secrets from materials written in more than ten languages across several nations, and from interviews with current and former operatives. He exposes the disturbing yet colorful history of professional, organized lying, revealing for the first time some of the century's most significant operations--many of them nearly beyond belief. A White Russian ploy backfires and brings down a New York police commissioner; a KGB-engineered, anti-Semitic hate campaign creeps back across the Iron Curtain; the CIA backs a fake publishing empire, run by a former Wehrmacht U-boat commander, that produces Germany's best jazz magazine. Rid tracks the rise of leaking, and shows how spies began to exploit emerging internet culture many years before WikiLeaks. Finally, he sheds new light on the 2016 election, especially the role of the infamous "troll farm" in St. Petersburg as well as a much more harmful attack that unfolded in the shadows.

Active Measures takes the reader on a guided tour deep into a vast hall of mirrors old and new, pointing to a future of engineered polarization, more active and less measured--but also offering the tools to cut through the deception.]]> 528 Thomas Rid 0374287260 Mary 4
The OG deza was the tsarist ¡°Protocols of the Elders of Zion,¡± which is still used against Jews today. For much of the 20th century the Soviets, and then the Russians, had to rely on journalists and activists (antiwar, anti-weapon systems defense, anti-Israel) to disseminate their lies mixed with truth. Groups and influencers critical of the USG ¡°environmentalists, anti-globalization activists, human rights organizations would receive the classic mix of fact and forgery to strengthen existing contradictions.¡± Russian intelligence influences both the witting and unwitting. The unwitting are cheaper and easier to run. Not belonging to a local communist party was prized as well. Less scrutiny. Techniques include ¡°feigned concern for others, creativity, (perhaps demonstrated by a witty slogan), the invocation of familiar and comforting stereotypes, and the appearance of connection to established and credible persons or organizations.¡± ¡°[Their] goal was to cause dissension and unrest inside the US and anti-American feelings abroad.¡± ¡°[M]ore competitive and polarized media outlets presented a major opportunity,¡± like Fox today. Now they can cut out the middlemen and post stuff on the internet. In 2010, The Manning documents on WkiLeaks made Assange and his site famous. Trolls continue to post today. ¡°The internet seemed custom designed for disinformation, even before social media came of age.¡± In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, ¡°Unbridled optimism predominated in Silicon Valley; pessimism came to dominate the Beltway. Both extremes would benefit active measures operations¡­. Utopianism made it easy to run operations undetected; dystopianism made it easy to exaggerate the results.¡±

We used to employ disinformation against the Soviets but wound it down in the 1960s. Operating under the rule of law makes these ops difficult. The CIA ultimately gave up on active measures once the permanent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was created in the 70s. We even dissolved the US Information Agency in 1999.

Rid seems to conclude that Russian active measures haven¡¯t been as ¡°successful¡± across the West as I do. I believe that Russian intelligence was wildly successful in getting Trump to the White House. I also think they are running members of Congress. Holding up aid to Ukraine is otherwise inexplicable. Active measures are behind at least some of the antisemitic protests across the US and elsewhere. If Trump makes it back to the WH, I believe he will propose that we leave NATO, the Russian holy grail. Active measures are still being used against Ukraine and possibly in the recent NSA hack and even the concept of postmodernism. Russian defectors in-the-know have claimed that the Soviets were behind the nuclear winter scare. ¡°As a young KGB office, Putin had served in the Dresden rezidentura that had been opened specifically to run active measures against West Germany at a time when active measures were at their most cunning.¡± Putin used the release of a sex tape (exposure, kompromat) implicating a potential competitor during his rise to the top post-USSR. I think they have kompromat on Trump and have laundered money through his businesses. His greed and vanity/insecurity, combined with a lack of intelligence and curiosity make him the perfect mark.
]]> 4.14 2020 Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare
author: Thomas Rid
name: Mary
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/04
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: espionage, history, russia, ussr, disinformation
review:
¡°The goal of disinformation (dezinformatsiya/deza, active measures, exposure, kompramat, psychological warfare) is to engineer division by putting emotion over analysis, division over unity, conflict over consensus, the particular over the universal.¡± And to ¡°exacerbate existing tensions and contradictions within the adversary¡¯s body politic, by leveraging facts, fakes, and ideally a disorienting mixture of both.¡± ¡°The more an intelligence agency engages in organized and persistent disinformation operations, the more disinformation is likely to have been deposited int official, archives and the memories of former officers.¡±

The OG deza was the tsarist ¡°Protocols of the Elders of Zion,¡± which is still used against Jews today. For much of the 20th century the Soviets, and then the Russians, had to rely on journalists and activists (antiwar, anti-weapon systems defense, anti-Israel) to disseminate their lies mixed with truth. Groups and influencers critical of the USG ¡°environmentalists, anti-globalization activists, human rights organizations would receive the classic mix of fact and forgery to strengthen existing contradictions.¡± Russian intelligence influences both the witting and unwitting. The unwitting are cheaper and easier to run. Not belonging to a local communist party was prized as well. Less scrutiny. Techniques include ¡°feigned concern for others, creativity, (perhaps demonstrated by a witty slogan), the invocation of familiar and comforting stereotypes, and the appearance of connection to established and credible persons or organizations.¡± ¡°[Their] goal was to cause dissension and unrest inside the US and anti-American feelings abroad.¡± ¡°[M]ore competitive and polarized media outlets presented a major opportunity,¡± like Fox today. Now they can cut out the middlemen and post stuff on the internet. In 2010, The Manning documents on WkiLeaks made Assange and his site famous. Trolls continue to post today. ¡°The internet seemed custom designed for disinformation, even before social media came of age.¡± In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, ¡°Unbridled optimism predominated in Silicon Valley; pessimism came to dominate the Beltway. Both extremes would benefit active measures operations¡­. Utopianism made it easy to run operations undetected; dystopianism made it easy to exaggerate the results.¡±

We used to employ disinformation against the Soviets but wound it down in the 1960s. Operating under the rule of law makes these ops difficult. The CIA ultimately gave up on active measures once the permanent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was created in the 70s. We even dissolved the US Information Agency in 1999.

Rid seems to conclude that Russian active measures haven¡¯t been as ¡°successful¡± across the West as I do. I believe that Russian intelligence was wildly successful in getting Trump to the White House. I also think they are running members of Congress. Holding up aid to Ukraine is otherwise inexplicable. Active measures are behind at least some of the antisemitic protests across the US and elsewhere. If Trump makes it back to the WH, I believe he will propose that we leave NATO, the Russian holy grail. Active measures are still being used against Ukraine and possibly in the recent NSA hack and even the concept of postmodernism. Russian defectors in-the-know have claimed that the Soviets were behind the nuclear winter scare. ¡°As a young KGB office, Putin had served in the Dresden rezidentura that had been opened specifically to run active measures against West Germany at a time when active measures were at their most cunning.¡± Putin used the release of a sex tape (exposure, kompromat) implicating a potential competitor during his rise to the top post-USSR. I think they have kompromat on Trump and have laundered money through his businesses. His greed and vanity/insecurity, combined with a lack of intelligence and curiosity make him the perfect mark.

]]> Jerusalem: The Biography 9477628 The epic story of Jerusalem told through the lives of the men and women who created, ruled and inhabited it.

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today¡¯s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence.

How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the ¡®centre of the world¡¯ and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem¡¯s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women ¨C kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores ¨C who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem.

Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime¡¯s study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice ¨C in heaven and on earth.]]> 752 Simon Sebag Montefiore 0297852655 Mary 0 4.07 2011 Jerusalem: The Biography
author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
name: Mary
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/23
shelves: to-read, history, israel, judaism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival]]> 70237023 416 Omid Scobie 0063258668 Mary 3
Harry and Meghan wanted change and were denied or ignored. I think they genuinely tried to hold up tradition and work hard. They would¡¯ve been major assets to The Firm, but they were indirectly run out by their own family and staff. Same tragic mishandling of Diana all over again. Scuzzy criminal Andrew is favored over these three more popular yet shunned royals. The ridiculous notion that Meghan is a bully and was sent packing while Andrew keeps his lavish place and security is not going to help the monarchy. I get that Charles and William are jealous and petty, but they really need to look at the bigger picture if they wish to hold on to those crowns and other loot.

Charles, William and, especially, Camilla seems currently adept at manipulating the press against their targets. Camilla¡¯s public transformation is a downright PR miracle. She can direct and schmooze them. But whining and leaking obvious lies to the media is not savvy for a monarch or heir. Elizabeth put out the notion of looking backward to move forward, while getting the populace to embrace the royals as part of their national identity. Times have changed and Charles is no Elisabeth. Reimagining the remnants of a colonial empire as a commonwealth of nations was quite the ploy. ¡°Rather than a token of colonial power, the Crown was repositioned as a symbol of stability and continuance, even as it shape-shifted to assume its diminished position in the new Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth is a pretty weak concept now. William and Kate¡¯s visit to the Caribbean was a flop and just reminded people of colonization, slavery and reparations.

Massive pomp is a 20C thing, made for TV. These lavish ceremonies ¡°kept the plebs reverential and society hierarchical, and propped it up.¡± Charles is said the have wanted a much simpler coronation but the Conservative government convinced him that a big blowout would distract the populace from their woes after Brexit and Covid. Bleak outlook for House of Windsor longevity at the current opulent level.

I¡¯ve noticed the ¡°great,¡± long-serving monarchs are in competition with their heirs and do not prepare them for the throne. Sometimes they even have them killed or jailed. Charles doesn¡¯t have what his mother did with royal fans but I doubt William is going to be much more alluring. He did find the perfect partner for the queen roll. The kids will be young cute for a bit longer. OTOH, people may wonder why the royals get such special treatment if commoners (and Americans!) can get into the club¡­.

On the bright side, Harry and Megahn¡¯s self-imposed task to achieve reform within the British media may not be approved by the royals, but I¡¯m certainly rooting for them! Could be more impactful than if they stayed on the inside.]]> 3.25 2023 Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival
author: Omid Scobie
name: Mary
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/01/18
shelves: british-isles, british-royal-family, history, biography
review:
knew much about the royals covered in ¡°Endgame¡± but it was helpful to have it unfold in one place. Unlike ¡°The Crown¡±, Charles and William are not presented here as better versions of themselves. I think we can ascertain who Chales, Diana, William, Harry and Meghan are as people. They let us know too much about them. Kate has done well remaining enigmatic as did Elizabeth before her.

Harry and Meghan wanted change and were denied or ignored. I think they genuinely tried to hold up tradition and work hard. They would¡¯ve been major assets to The Firm, but they were indirectly run out by their own family and staff. Same tragic mishandling of Diana all over again. Scuzzy criminal Andrew is favored over these three more popular yet shunned royals. The ridiculous notion that Meghan is a bully and was sent packing while Andrew keeps his lavish place and security is not going to help the monarchy. I get that Charles and William are jealous and petty, but they really need to look at the bigger picture if they wish to hold on to those crowns and other loot.

Charles, William and, especially, Camilla seems currently adept at manipulating the press against their targets. Camilla¡¯s public transformation is a downright PR miracle. She can direct and schmooze them. But whining and leaking obvious lies to the media is not savvy for a monarch or heir. Elizabeth put out the notion of looking backward to move forward, while getting the populace to embrace the royals as part of their national identity. Times have changed and Charles is no Elisabeth. Reimagining the remnants of a colonial empire as a commonwealth of nations was quite the ploy. ¡°Rather than a token of colonial power, the Crown was repositioned as a symbol of stability and continuance, even as it shape-shifted to assume its diminished position in the new Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth is a pretty weak concept now. William and Kate¡¯s visit to the Caribbean was a flop and just reminded people of colonization, slavery and reparations.

Massive pomp is a 20C thing, made for TV. These lavish ceremonies ¡°kept the plebs reverential and society hierarchical, and propped it up.¡± Charles is said the have wanted a much simpler coronation but the Conservative government convinced him that a big blowout would distract the populace from their woes after Brexit and Covid. Bleak outlook for House of Windsor longevity at the current opulent level.

I¡¯ve noticed the ¡°great,¡± long-serving monarchs are in competition with their heirs and do not prepare them for the throne. Sometimes they even have them killed or jailed. Charles doesn¡¯t have what his mother did with royal fans but I doubt William is going to be much more alluring. He did find the perfect partner for the queen roll. The kids will be young cute for a bit longer. OTOH, people may wonder why the royals get such special treatment if commoners (and Americans!) can get into the club¡­.

On the bright side, Harry and Megahn¡¯s self-imposed task to achieve reform within the British media may not be approved by the royals, but I¡¯m certainly rooting for them! Could be more impactful than if they stayed on the inside.
]]> The Covenant of Water 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India¡¯s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning¡ªand in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl¡ªand future matriarch, Big Ammachi¡ªwill witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 715 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 Mary 4 fiction, medicine, india
The books is long but it is wisely divided up into short, manageable chapters. ]]> 4.34 2023 The Covenant of Water
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Mary
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/18
shelves: fiction, medicine, india
review:
If I hadn¡¯t received this book as a gift, I would have read it. I¡¯m happy I did! Verghese is a medical doctor with roots in India and his descriptions of related scenes are compelling. Despite tragedy and shortcomings, his characters are extremely likeable. He provides much appreciated depth to his lead female characters. Oprah owns the rights. Hope to see it on a screen someday.

The books is long but it is wisely divided up into short, manageable chapters.
]]> <![CDATA[Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family]]> 53357123
When news of the budding romance between a beloved English prince and an American actress broke, it captured the world¡¯s attention and sparked an international media frenzy.
But while the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have continued to make headlines ¨C from their engagement, wedding, and birth of their son Archie to their unprecedented decision to step back from their royal lives ¨C few know the true story of Harry and Meghan.

For the very first time, FINDING FREEDOM goes beyond the headlines to reveal unknown details of Harry and Meghan¡¯s life together, dispelling the many rumours and misconceptions that plague the couple on both sides of the pond. As members of the select group of reporters that cover the British Royal Family and their engagements, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand have witnessed the young couple¡¯s lives as few outsiders can.

With unique access and written with the participation of those closest to the couple, FINDING FREEDOM is an honest, up-close, and disarming portrait of a confident, influential, and forward-thinking couple who are unafraid to break with tradition, determined to create a new path away from the spotlight, and dedicated to building a humanitarian legacy that will make a profound difference in the world.]]> 354 Omid Scobie 0063046105 Mary 0 3.17 2020 Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family
author: Omid Scobie
name: Mary
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read, british-isles, british-royal-family, biography, history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir]]> 123262219
As the front man for the sixties pop-rock-funk band Sly and the Family Stone, a songwriter who created some of the most memorable anthems of the 1960s and 1970s (¡°Everyday People,¡± ¡°Family Affair¡±), and a performer who electrified audiences at Woodstock and elsewhere, Sly Stone¡¯s influence on modern music and culture is indisputable. But as much as people know the music, the man remains a mystery. After a rapid rise to superstardom, Sly spent decades in the grips of addiction.

Now he is ready to relate the ups and downs and ins and outs of his amazing life in his memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) . The book moves from Sly¡¯s early career as a radio DJ and record producer through the dizzying heights of the San Francisco music scene in the late 1960s and into the darker, denser life (and music) of 1970s and 1980s Los Angeles. Set on stages and in mansions, in the company of family and of other celebrities, it¡¯s a story about flawed humanity and flawless artistry.

Written with Ben Greenman, who has also worked on memoirs with George Clinton and Brian Wilson, and in collaboration with Arlene Hirschkowitz, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a vivid, gripping, sometimes terrifying, and ultimately affirming tour through Sly¡¯s life and career. Like Sly, it¡¯s honest and playful, sharp and blunt, emotional and analytical, always moving and never standing still.]]> 320 Sly Stone 0374606978 Mary 0 3.50 2023 Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir
author: Sly Stone
name: Mary
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: to-read, drugs, los-angeles, memoir, music, san-francisco
review:

]]> <![CDATA[60 Songs That Explain the '90s]]> 123204507 Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.]]> 288 Rob Harvilla 1538759462 Mary 0 to-read, music, usa 3.88 2023 60 Songs That Explain the '90s
author: Rob Harvilla
name: Mary
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: to-read, music, usa
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World]]> 55502857 A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women's health--from the earliest medical ideas about women's illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases--brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative.

Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis.

In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the wandering womb of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis.

Packed with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged, and rewritten medical orthodoxy--and the men who controlled their fate--this is a revolutionary examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine. With these case histories, Elinor pays homage to the women who suffered so strides could be made, and shows how being unwell has become normalized in society and culture, where women have long been distrusted as reliable narrators of their own bodies and pain. But the time for real change is long overdue: answers reside in the body, in the testimonies of unwell women--and their lives depend on medicine learning to listen.]]> 386 Elinor Cleghorn 0593182952 Mary 0 4.13 2021 Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World
author: Elinor Cleghorn
name: Mary
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/22
shelves: to-read, feminism, health, history, medicine, usa
review:

]]> Prophet Song 158875813
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland¡¯s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what ¨C or who ¨C is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother¡¯s fight to hold her family together.]]> 259 Paul Lynch Mary 0 4.03 2023 Prophet Song
author: Paul Lynch
name: Mary
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/26
shelves: to-read, dystopia, fiction, ireland
review:

]]> Fathers 4338788 308 Herbert Gold 0877955492 Mary 0 3.32 1967 Fathers
author: Herbert Gold
name: Mary
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/26
shelves: to-read, fiction, judaism, usa
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir]]> 78292253 Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of his epic artistic career in a long-awaited memoir that is as inventive and daring as anything he has done before

Werner?Herzog?was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the?Second?World?War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids,?Herzog¡¯s mother took him and his older brother?to?a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood?hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there,?as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed. ?

Until age 11,?Herzog?did not even know of the existence of cinema. His interest in films began at age 15, but since no one was willing to finance them, he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory. He started to travel on foot. He made his first phone call at age 17, and his first film in 1961 at age 19. The wildly?productive working life that followed¡ªspanning the seven continents and encompassing both documentary and fiction¡ªwas an adventure as grand and?otherworldly as any depicted in his many classic films.

Every Man for Himself and God Against All is at once a personal record of one of the great and self-invented lives of our time, and a singular literary masterpiece that will enthrall fans old and new alike. In a hypnotic swirl of memory,?Herzog?untangles and relives his most important experiences and inspirations, telling his story for the first and only time.]]> 367 Werner Herzog 0593490290 Mary 0 4.24 2022 Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir
author: Werner Herzog
name: Mary
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/21
shelves: to-read, cinema, germany, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human¨CCanine Connection]]> 101144545 Un libro per chi conosce bene la gioia di accogliere un cucciolo, per chi si ¨¨ sempre chiesto se ne valga davvero la pena, ma anche per chi, semplicemente, non riesce a resitere alla felicit¨¤ contagiosa di una coda che scodinzola.

Il cane ¨¨ considerato da sempre il miglior amico dell'uomo, ma oggi pi¨´ che mai il legame tra le due specie assume un'importanza cruciale. Di fronte ai mutamenti epocali che stanno cambiando il volto del mondo ha preso infatti forma qualcosa di tante persone hanno accolto per la prima volta un amico a quattro zampe nella loro vita, o hanno approfittato dell'occasione per consolidare il legame con i cani che gi¨¤ avevano. Ci¨° non sorprende, visto che molte ricerche hanno evidenziato come la presenza di questi magnifici compagni migliori la salute mentale, riducendo notevolmente la solitudine e giocando un ruolo cruciale nell'alleviare depressione, ansia e irritabilit¨¤. I cani sono animali di supporto emotivo per tutti noi. ? stato dimostrato che chi ne ha uno ¨¨ pi¨´ felice di chi ha un gatto o non ha nessun animale. Affezionate "dog moms", con una passione pari alla loro competenza, le autrici ci spiegano la magia di questa relazione cos¨¬ unica e profonda. Attraverso storie toccanti di vita reale, testimonianze, aneddoti personali e studi scientifici, ci conducono a scoprire in modo istruttivo e divertente come i cani portino benefici dal punto di vista della socialit¨¤ e della nostra salute emotiva, fisica e persino cognitiva ricordandoci tutto quello che c'¨¨ di giusto al mondo ¨C amore, fiducia, affetto, gioco, aria fresca e sole ¨C anche quando tante cose sembrano andare storte.]]> 256 Jen Golbeck 1668007843 Mary 0 4.22 The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human¨CCanine Connection
author: Jen Golbeck
name: Mary
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/09
shelves: to-read, animals, dogs, health
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History]]> 103487441
BREAKING TWITTER takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time¡ªElon Musk¡ªand the company that represents our culture¡¯s dearest hope for a shared global conversation. From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides. Can Musk miraculously succeed or will he spectacularly fail?? What will that mean to the global town hall that is Twitter? ?What, really, is Elon¡¯s end goal? ?The whole world is watching.? BREAKING TWITTER will provide ringside seats.?

Elon Musk didn't break Twitter. Twitter broke Elon Musk.?
?]]> 336 Ben Mezrich 1538707594 Mary 0 3.58 2023 Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History
author: Ben Mezrich
name: Mary
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: to-read, business, history, leadership, technology
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease]]> 6955186 A powerful account of how cultural anxieties about race shaped American notions of mental illness

The civil rights era is largely remembered as a time of sit-ins, boycotts, and riots. But a very different civil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American protesters at Ionia¡ªfor political reasons as well as clinical ones. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents, Metzl shows how associations between schizophrenia and blackness emerged during the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s¡ªand he provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions in our seemingly postracial America.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 246 Jonathan M. Metzl 0807085928 Mary 0 4.16 2010 The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
author: Jonathan M. Metzl
name: Mary
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/26
shelves: to-read, medicine, psychology, usa, racism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland]]> 40697553
In the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death.

Physician Jonathan M. Metzl's quest to understand the health implications of "backlash governance" leads him across America's heartland. Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, he examines how racial resentment has fueled pro-gun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. And he shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, rising dropout rates, and falling life expectancies. White Americans, Metzl argues, must reject the racial hierarchies that promise to aid them but in fact lead our nation to demise.]]> 341 Jonathan M. Metzl 1541644980 Mary 0 4.10 2019 Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland
author: Jonathan M. Metzl
name: Mary
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/26
shelves: to-read, politics, psychology, racism, usa, white-supremacists
review:

]]> Men Who Hate Women 48635408
Men Who Hate Women examines the rise of secretive extremist communities who despise women and traces the roots of misogyny across a complex spider web of groups. It includes eye-opening interviews with former members of these communities, the academics studying this movement, and the men fighting back.

Women's rights activist Laura Bates wrote this book as someone who has been the target of many hate-fueled misogynistic attacks online. At first, the vitriol seemed to be the work of a small handful of individual men... but over time, the volume and consistency of the attacks hinted at something bigger and more ominous. As Bates went undercover into the corners of the internet, she found an unseen, organized movement of thousands of anonymous men wishing violence (and worse) upon women.
In the book, Bates explores:

Extreme communities like incels, pick-up artists, MGTOW, Men's Rights Activists and more
The hateful, toxic rhetoric used by these groups
How this movement connects to other extremist movements like white supremacy
How young boys are targeted and slowly drawn in
Where this ideology shows up in our everyday lives in mainstream media, our playgrounds, and our government

By turns fascinating and horrifying, Men Who Hate Women is a broad, unflinching account of the deep current of loathing toward women and anti-feminism that underpins our society and is a must-read for parents, educators, and anyone who believes in equality for women.]]> 366 Laura Bates Mary 4
¡°Dr. Firman explained, those who exploit young people ¡¯will tend to work with them, offering children ¡°a sense of risk or going against the grain, focus on short-term gains, what in means in the here and now, and put aside the potential negative long-term consequences¡­ They will provide means by which you can be very emotionally driven and passionate¡­ and also validate those emotions as authentic when other adults are saying, Don¡¯t get so worked up.¡±
]]> 4.34 2020 Men Who Hate Women
author: Laura Bates
name: Mary
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/19
date added: 2023/10/19
shelves: history, media, politics, racism, misogyny
review:
Bates has knows her subject well and has been on the receiving end of misogynistic hate. She illustrates how hate fueled groups of men on line and irl attract new follows with milder views and indoctrinate them against women. She sites several examples of the indoctrinated harassing and murdering women. These men who hate women are obsessed with women and seemingly communicate about little else. They use more mild mannered spokesmen to joke around about violence against woman (Trump) to get the general public more accustomed to the rhetoric and to lure the uninitiated. Eventually, it all gets said out loud like at Charlottesville where they were chanting about not being replaced. These groups are allied and intertwined w white nationalists and are utterly detrimental to the men who they claim to help. They are convinced they are victims who have created a group identity against the other (women). Social media is used, especially YouTube, and the sites¡¯ algorithms take the users further down the rabbit hole. Then more mainstream media picks up these misogynistic tropes as legitimate stories about social media, further normalizing the vilification of women.

¡°Dr. Firman explained, those who exploit young people ¡¯will tend to work with them, offering children ¡°a sense of risk or going against the grain, focus on short-term gains, what in means in the here and now, and put aside the potential negative long-term consequences¡­ They will provide means by which you can be very emotionally driven and passionate¡­ and also validate those emotions as authentic when other adults are saying, Don¡¯t get so worked up.¡±

]]> <![CDATA[The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace]]> 45046681 Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return."

In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group¡ªunlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts¡ªhas remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region.

In The War of Return, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf¡ªboth liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution¡ªreveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent ¡°refugee¡± problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a ¡°right of return¡± has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.]]> 304 Adi Schwartz 1250252768 Mary 0 4.36 The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace
author: Adi Schwartz
name: Mary
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/13
shelves: to-read, history, israel, middle-east, terrorism, war
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI]]> 193388249
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.]]> 338 David Grann 0593470834 Mary 0 to-read 4.12 2017 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
author: David Grann
name: Mary
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cats of Ireland: An Irish Gift for Cat Lovers, with Legends, Tales, and Trivia Galore (The Cats of The World)]]> 57390847 DO YOU ABSOLUTELY LOVE CATS??Did you know they played a huge role in Irish history? Like to know more...?This funny, informative book has tons of the kinds of fun stories and fascinating trivia that cat lovers can't get enough of...It tells you EVERYTHING you might possibly like to know about how cats shaped Irish history and culture...DID YOU KNOW?--There¡¯s a luxury Irish hotel that gives plain old kitties the 5-Star treatment?--That Irish pop star Enya hides from the world in a castle by the sea--that¡¯s packed full of felines?--That in medieval times any Irish cat was worth a whopping three times as much as a cow?This one-of-a-kind book has TONS of fun cat stories, unusual trivia and quirky feline facts that are sure to entertain and educate you.

NOW YOU CAN DISCOVER...--How you can say goodbye to the rat race and move to Ireland with your cat--How catnip farming could be the future for Irish agriculture.--The very best Irish cat names for your brand-new kitten.

AND.. much, much more!

This unique book features Irish cat stories, historical Irish trivia and fun feline facts from Ireland that are sure to entertain and intrigue you.WHY DON'T YOU CLICK "ADD TO CART" OR "BUY NOW"? -- for you or as the perfect gift for a cat lover?

Stock up on The Cats of Ireland

BirthdaysChristmasThank-you giftsAnd of course--for St. Patrick¡¯s Day...My name is Seamus Mullarkey. For years upon years, I've been looking up old newspapers, leafing through out-of-print books, and scouring the Internet to get to the heart of just how those darn kitties have won the world's hearts. I've collected all of that fascinating information within the covers of this entertaining and intriguing little book.

--I know EVERYTHING there is to know about Ireland's incredible cats. Now, you can too!]]> 99 Seamus Mullarkey Mary 0 3.95 The Cats of Ireland: An Irish Gift for Cat Lovers, with Legends, Tales, and Trivia Galore (The Cats of The World)
author: Seamus Mullarkey
name: Mary
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/04
shelves: to-read, animals, cats, history, ireland
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928]]> 20821221 A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding?of Stalin and his world

It has the quality of myth: A poor cobbler¡¯s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a revolutionary and finds a leadership role within a small group of marginal zealots. When the old world is unexpectedly brought down in a total war, the band seizes control of the country, and the new regime it founds as the vanguard of a new world order is ruthlessly dominated from within by the former seminarian until he stands as the absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. But the largest country in the world is also a poor and backward one, far behind the great capitalist countries in industrial and military power, encircled on all sides. Shortly after seizing total power, Stalin conceives of the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted: the root-and-branch uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and industry across the entire Soviet Union. To stand up to the capitalists he will force into being an industrialized, militarized, collectivized great power is an act of will. Millions will die, and many more will suffer, but Stalin will push through to the end against all resistance and doubts. Where did such power come from? We think we know the story well. Remarkably, Stephen Kotkin¡¯s epic new biography shows us how much we still have to learn.

The product of a decade of scrupulous and intrepid research, Stalin contains a host of astonishing revelations. Kotkin gives an intimate first-ever view of the Bolshevik regime¡¯s inner geography, bringing to the fore materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. He details Stalin¡¯s invention of a fabricated trial and mass executions as early as 1918, the technique he would later impose across the whole country. The book places Stalin¡¯s momentous decision for collectivization more deeply than ever in the tragic history of imperial Russia. Above all, Kotkin offers a convincing portrait and explanation of Stalin¡¯s monstrous power and of Russian power in the world. Stalin restores a sense of surprise to the way we think about the former Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.
]]> 976 Stephen Kotkin 1594203792 Mary 3 ¡°Single most important relationship in Stalin¡¯s life, a relationship of [Lenin¡¯s] prot¨¦g¨¦, not merely in fact but, crucially, in self-conception.¡± Which ¡°raised the stakes of the¡± Testament attributed to Lenin against Stalin as he was consolidating power.

Stalin, by the standards of his time and place, seemed to have a pretty normal childhood. He does not exhibit much psychopathology until well into his work as Lenin¡¯s successor. From the beginning, echoing Lenin, ¡°he championed not the worker members but the demi-intelligentsia members¡ªthat is, types like himself¡­¡± ¡°[H]is sense of violated social justice linked with what appears to be his ambition for leadership¡±. I still have to be reminded that communism was intended to help people. From a contemporary of Stalin: ¡°¡­by his unquestionably greater energy, indefatigable capacity for hard work, unconquerable lust for power, and above all, his enormous, particularistic organizational talent¡±
As a young man, Stalin¡¯s ¡°¡­contemporaries found him enigmatic,: ¡°brooding, touchy¡¯¡± but not a ¡°sociopath.¡± He was a ¡°quintessential autodidact¡±

¡°Stalin¡¯s marked personal traits, which colored his momentous political decisions, emerged as a result of politics.¡±
¡°victimhood and self-pity¡± ¡°merciless¡± ¡°prickly, self-centered, often morose, vindictive¡± ¡°indomitable¡± ¡°utterly dedicated¡± ¡°able to carry the cause of world revolution on his back¡± ¡°seizing the advantage¡±

¡°Closed and gregarious, vindictive and solicitous, Stalin shatters any attempt to contain him within binaries. He was by inclination a despot who, when he wanted to, was utterly charming. He was an ideologue who was flexibly pragmatic. He fastened obsessively on slights yet he was a precocious geostrategic thinker¡ªunique among Bolsheviks¡ªwho was, however, prone to egregious strategic blunders. Stalin was a ruler both astute and blinkered, diligent and self-defeating, cynical and true-believing. The cold calculation and the flights of absurd delusion were the products of a single mind. He was shrewd enough o see right through people, but not enough to escape a litany of non-sensical beliefs¡­.. But Stalin¡¯s increasing hyper-suspiciousness bordering on paranoia was fundamentally political¡ªand it closely mirrored the Bolshevik revolution¡¯s built-in structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded by, penetrated by enemies.¡±

¡°Stalin lived immersed in the grim OGPU summaries of the country¡¯s political mood, which his world-view shaped in a feedback loop, and which brimmed with antiregime quotations from eavesdropped conversations and other reminders the USSR was encircled by hostile forces and honeycombed with internal enemies.¡± ¡°[G]lobal inevitability of the revolutionary cause amid perilous capitalist encirclement¡± help shape Stalin¡¯s personality. ¡°[S]tructural paranoia, triumphant yet enveloped by ill-wishers and enemies.¡± ¡°Stalin¡¯s mind and the country¡¯s political atmosphere were melding.¡± ¡°The whole Trotsky business had left a nasty imprint on Stalin¡¯s character.¡±

Fun fact: Fathered illegitimate children with peasant girls during exile. His descendants live in Russia and the US. I would love to read more in-depth interviews with them. I¡¯ve searched.

The Death of Expertise
Stalin was strictly a class warfare guy. He wanted to rid the State of all bourgeois elements, regardless of the desperate need for expertise. He fought with Trotsky about the latter¡¯s willingnesss to incorporate former Tsarist mitary men in the Red Army. Lenin and Trotsky were willing to compromise on using non-Bolshevik experts which resulted in ¡°the implantation of political commissars.¡± AKA ¡°¡­ an added scourge of beauraucratic proliferation and waste.¡±

Stalin saw the world threw Leninism, especially the class struggle. Ideology was everything.

Local Autonomy (nationalism)
¡°The unexpected significance of the national question in the civil war proved to be yet another issue that empowered Stalin, and brought him into a close working relationship with Lenin. Stalin ¡°¡­ concluded that nationalism could server the worldwide proletariat¡¯s emancipation by helping win over workers susceptible to nationalist appeals.¡±

As the Civil War was ending, Stalin became ever more interested in self-determination within a strong state. ¡°he recognized the necessity of fashioning appeals and institutions to accommodate different nations.¡± ¡°[As the] Georgian reincarnation of Stolypin [with regard to nationalism] Stalin pursued a statist agenda that sought to combine retention of a grand unitary state with provisions for national difference, and an iron fist for separatism, even though Stalin, both in appearance and fact, was a quintessential man of the borderlands.¡±

OTOH, ¡°¡­ Stalin worried about non-Russian backwardness and came to see Russian tutelage as a lever to lift other nations up¡ªan echo, perhaps, of his experience in Russsian Orthodox schools. This difference would prove consequential.¡± ¡°Stalin emerged as the most significant figure in determining the structure of the Soviet state. It was no accident that the first Bolshevik government included an commissariat of nationalities, headed by him.¡± Stalin promoted education and propaganda in the native languages of non-Russians. Like a missionary, her wanted them to read his materials and convert.

Also, there¡¯s this angle: ¡°the national Soviet republics¡­ will be able to defend their existance and conquer the united forces of imperialism only by joining in a close political union¡­¡± At the 10th Party Congress, Stalin ¡°grasped the nettle of one of the most consequential isseus before the party---the ambiguous relationship among the various Soviet republics¡ªand showed himself ready to force those relations toward a more integrated structure.¡±

Climbing the ladder
¡°Appealing to Lenin, Stalin managed during the Civil War to escape subordination to Trotsky, despite the latter¡¯s position as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. Going forward¡­ Trotsky would find himself appealing to Lenin to try to escape subordination to Stalin in the party. Stalin¡¯s aggrandizement was already well advanced, yet only really beginning.¡±

At 10th Party Congress, ¡°Thanks to Trotsky¡¯s relentless propensity to polemicize and exasperate, Lenin was helping to form an anti-Trotsky faction at the pinnacle of power that would fall into Stalin¡¯s hands.¡±

¡°¡­Stalin was one of two people whom Lenin gave permission to enter his private apartment in Bolshevik headquarters at Smolny, a proximity and confidence that would prove pivotal.¡± Stalin was one of the few people who had access to Lenin at his dacha whiles he was dying. He worked it!

Transfer of Power
Although Lenin, didn¡¯t anoint a successor he did create the post of ¡°general secretary¡± for Stalin. He held him in close confidence at the end. Stalin was very senior. ¡°Stalin was well-positioned as Lenin¡¯s right hand and all-purpose fixer.¡± Lenin knew he was morbidly ill and kept Stalin close in. Also, I¡¯m not sure Kotkin buys Lenin¡¯s so-called ¡°Testament¡± supposedly dictated by Lenin warning the politburo about Stalin¡¯s personality and power mongering. I¡¯m not so sure myself. Regardless, Kotkin sites it over and over as wrecking Stalin who seemed to have possible filial affection for and total devotion to Lenin and Leninism. He even suggests the ¡°Testament¡± fueled some of Stalin¡¯s nastiness, ¡°his sense of persecution and victimhood.¡± Even if the Testament was not authentic, ¡°[Stalin] could not escape the fact that Lenin¡¯s dictation¡ªhowever it was produced¡ªcomported with a widespread view of his own character [failings].¡± ¡°Stalin¡¯s leadership¡­went a long way toward holding the whole sprawling regime together, but he could be malevolent and possessed too much power.¡±

¡°Stalin had a phenomenal memory¡­ Stalin banged heads and brought order. He liked the job. Above all, he did the job.¡±

Stalin outmatched any would-be rivals. It was assumed Lenin would be followed by a team, but they never coalesced. He excelled at enemy generation: Foremost, Trotsky and the capitalists, eventually to include his Old Bolshevik comrades and any potential rivals, peasants (in other words, nearly the entire country). Much needed specialists trained under the tsarist regime, (moderately) successful peasants (kulaks).

¡°Stalin could be the representative of the middling sort, whose aspirations he captured like a tuning fork. Stalin walked into a golden opportunity to become the orthodox Leninist as well as a household name by battling, and besting, the world-renowned Trotsky [a Jewish intellectual].¡± He spoke of his ¡°mystical calling¡± ¡°within days of Lenin¡¯s death, the ex-seminarian had unveiled the winning formula would pursue: zealously dedicating his life and the entire party to fulfilment of Lenin¡¯s sacred ¡®behest¡¯.¡± ¡°Stalin¡¯s position was a Lenin-style combination of flexible tactics [embracing, then rejecting, the NEP was among the most glaring] and unshakable core beliefs.¡±

¡°¡­Stalin¡­ formed the USSR, helped make the recuperative NEP work, and spelled out the nature of Leninism for the party mass. Stalin not only managed to implant and cultivate large numbers of loyalists, but also to invent for himself the role of Lenin¡¯s faithful pupil. Stalin¡¯s role as guardian of the ideology was as important in his ascendancy as brute bureaucratic force.¡±

¡°¡­[H]e demonstrated surpassing organizational abilities, a mammoth appetite for work, a strategic mind, and an unscrupulousness that recalled his master teacher, Lenin. Stalin proved capable of wielding the levers he inherited, and of inventing new ones¡­. Stalin had a deft political touch¡­. A ward-boss-style politician, albeit one in command of instruments beyond a ward boss¡¯s dream¡ªthe Communist party¡¯s reach, discipline, and radiant-future ideology.¡±

¡°He implanted his loyalists.. and found, or cultivated, enemies for them, too, in order to keep the loyalists under watch.¡± ¡°Stalin would have had to show uncommon restraint, deference, and lack of ambition not to build a personal dictatorship within the dictatorship.¡± These connections were especially important with the secret police and the ¡°subordination of the military¡±. ¡°Lubyanka was effectively subordinated not to the civilian government, but to Lenin and the politburo, which meant that this instrument, too, fell under Stalin¡¯s purview in his capacity as head of the party apparatus.¡± ¡°Hyper secrecy became an unquenchable thirst that strengthened Stalin¡¯s grip.¡± ¡°Stalin [looked] for personal animosities to manipulate to his benefit; officials appealing for his favor against political rivals.¡±

Mode of Operation (¡°class-inflected modus operandi¡±)
¡°Stalin dominated all official channels and established informal sources of information, while his personal functionaries performed tasks often not formally specified. No one else could verify which materials had been received or gather by the Central Committee yet not made available for politburo members or what instructions had been given to various agencies in the name of the Central Committee. Above all, Stalin alone had the means to secretly monitor the other top officials for the own ¡®security¡¯ and to recruit their subordinates as informants, because he alone, in the name of the Central Committee, liaisoned with the OGPU.¡±

With the Shakhy trial (war on experts), ¡°He was unleashing a new topsy-turvy of class warfare to expand the regime¡¯s social base and his own political leverage in order to accelerate industrialization and to collectivize agriculture.¡±
On collectivization: ¡°The Bolsheviks desperately needed the peasants to produce good harvests, but the better the peasants did, the more they turned into class enemies, kulaks. To put it another way, a non-collectivized countryside was politically unthreatening only if the peasants were poor, but if the peasants were poor they produced insufficient grain to feed the northern cities or the Red Army and to export..¡± ¡°Stalin had connected the ideological dots, reaching the full logic of a class-based outlook.¡±

Stalin forced the peasants to pay for industrialization (taxes and requisition finally resulting in collectivization). ¡°Stalin was going to wager on young male strivers from the urban lower orders to spearhead a socialist remake of the village many of them had only recently left behind.¡±

¡°Stalin was loyal as well as effective: he could get things done.¡± He was a ¡°strategist, improvising dexterously¡± ¡°usually play[ing] his cards close to his chest¡±

Tsaritsyn: ¡°provided a preview of Stalin¡¯s recourse to publicizing conspiracies by ¡®enemies¡¯ and enacting summary executions in order to enforce discipline and rally political support.¡±

Bukharin on Stalin regarding Trotsky¡¯s acclaim and honor: ¡°Stalin can¡¯t live unless he has what someone else has.¡± ¡°Trotsky¡¯s rage was Stalin¡¯s inspiration.¡±

He did not understand market economics.

Circumstances and History
Perhaps more than anything , ¡°The tsarist political system and conditions in the empire promoted militancy.¡± ¡°¡­Russia¡¯s autocracy was deliberately archaic. Tsarism chocked on the very modernity that it desperately needed, and, to an extent, pursued in order to compete as a great power.¡± ¡±¡­ Russia¡¯s tensions were magnified by the autocratic system¡¯s refusal to incorporate the masses into the political system, even by authoritarian means.¡± ¡°Autocratic Russia¡¯s discouragement of modern mass politics would leave the masses¡ªand the profound, widespread yearning among the masses in Russia for social justice¡ªto the leftists.¡± Stalin on Stalin: ¡°The Russian people are tsarist. For many centuries the Russian people, especially the Russian peasants, have been accustomed to one person being at the head. And now there should be one.¡±

Bolshevism: A brutal intensification of tsarism¡¯s many debilitating features: emasculation of parliament, metastasizing of parasitic state functionaries, persecutions and shakedowns of private citizens and entrepreneurs¡ªin short, unaccountable executive power, which vastly enhanced in its grim arbitrariness by a radiant ideology of social justice and progress. But then Lenin fell fatally ill.¡±

¡°Thanks to Stalin¡¯s shrewd analysis as well as his generally high regard for Russia, which Lenin did not share, Lenin¡¯s militancy was ascendant even in his absence.¡± In fact, the Bolsheviks would have laid claim to power anyway¡ªnothing stood in their way. They managed to be thoroughly confused and still seize power because the Provisional Government simply vanished, just as the vaunted autocracy had vanished.¡±

¡°But whereas the revolution of the soldiers and sailors consciously linked up with Bolshevism, the peasant revolution only happened to coincide with it. Soon enough the peasant revolution and Bolshevism would collide.¡±

The world¡¯s misfortune (Great Depression) was Stalin¡¯s great unforeseen fortune.¡± ¡°The Depression offered Stalin unprecedented leverage: suddenly the capitalists needed the Soviet market as much as the Soviets needed their advanced technology.¡±

Can¡¯t Argue with Kotkin
¡°Stalin made history, rearranging the entire socioeconomic landscape of 1/6 of the earth.

Assessment
I feel like an jerk, but I didn¡¯t enjoy the book. I do truly appreciate the research and dedication. But, it¡¯s just too long and unwieldy. It¡¯s a book for the home or office library to be used as reference material, rather than a book to be read through for self-edification. Stalin comes of as a bit of a bore. Lots of soporific procedural and archival details. Long on presentation, short on analyses and conclusions. No good anecdotes to help crack the nut that is Joe Stalin. OTOH, this got me thinking a lot, trying to figure out Kotkin¡¯s points. I am no scholar so I can¡¯t appreciate some of his reveals. Scholars may love this book. I just don¡¯t know. I got to travel to the fSU in the early 90s when I had no time to read up. Now I¡¯m learning all I can about the amazing places I visited. This is not the book for my intent.]]> 3.94 Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
author: Stephen Kotkin
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2018/02/03
date added: 2023/09/29
shelves: biography, ussr, russia, history, communism, revolution, terrorism
review:
Personal Characteristics (increasingly reinforced by his role as General Secretary)
¡°Single most important relationship in Stalin¡¯s life, a relationship of [Lenin¡¯s] prot¨¦g¨¦, not merely in fact but, crucially, in self-conception.¡± Which ¡°raised the stakes of the¡± Testament attributed to Lenin against Stalin as he was consolidating power.

Stalin, by the standards of his time and place, seemed to have a pretty normal childhood. He does not exhibit much psychopathology until well into his work as Lenin¡¯s successor. From the beginning, echoing Lenin, ¡°he championed not the worker members but the demi-intelligentsia members¡ªthat is, types like himself¡­¡± ¡°[H]is sense of violated social justice linked with what appears to be his ambition for leadership¡±. I still have to be reminded that communism was intended to help people. From a contemporary of Stalin: ¡°¡­by his unquestionably greater energy, indefatigable capacity for hard work, unconquerable lust for power, and above all, his enormous, particularistic organizational talent¡±
As a young man, Stalin¡¯s ¡°¡­contemporaries found him enigmatic,: ¡°brooding, touchy¡¯¡± but not a ¡°sociopath.¡± He was a ¡°quintessential autodidact¡±

¡°Stalin¡¯s marked personal traits, which colored his momentous political decisions, emerged as a result of politics.¡±
¡°victimhood and self-pity¡± ¡°merciless¡± ¡°prickly, self-centered, often morose, vindictive¡± ¡°indomitable¡± ¡°utterly dedicated¡± ¡°able to carry the cause of world revolution on his back¡± ¡°seizing the advantage¡±

¡°Closed and gregarious, vindictive and solicitous, Stalin shatters any attempt to contain him within binaries. He was by inclination a despot who, when he wanted to, was utterly charming. He was an ideologue who was flexibly pragmatic. He fastened obsessively on slights yet he was a precocious geostrategic thinker¡ªunique among Bolsheviks¡ªwho was, however, prone to egregious strategic blunders. Stalin was a ruler both astute and blinkered, diligent and self-defeating, cynical and true-believing. The cold calculation and the flights of absurd delusion were the products of a single mind. He was shrewd enough o see right through people, but not enough to escape a litany of non-sensical beliefs¡­.. But Stalin¡¯s increasing hyper-suspiciousness bordering on paranoia was fundamentally political¡ªand it closely mirrored the Bolshevik revolution¡¯s built-in structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded by, penetrated by enemies.¡±

¡°Stalin lived immersed in the grim OGPU summaries of the country¡¯s political mood, which his world-view shaped in a feedback loop, and which brimmed with antiregime quotations from eavesdropped conversations and other reminders the USSR was encircled by hostile forces and honeycombed with internal enemies.¡± ¡°[G]lobal inevitability of the revolutionary cause amid perilous capitalist encirclement¡± help shape Stalin¡¯s personality. ¡°[S]tructural paranoia, triumphant yet enveloped by ill-wishers and enemies.¡± ¡°Stalin¡¯s mind and the country¡¯s political atmosphere were melding.¡± ¡°The whole Trotsky business had left a nasty imprint on Stalin¡¯s character.¡±

Fun fact: Fathered illegitimate children with peasant girls during exile. His descendants live in Russia and the US. I would love to read more in-depth interviews with them. I¡¯ve searched.

The Death of Expertise
Stalin was strictly a class warfare guy. He wanted to rid the State of all bourgeois elements, regardless of the desperate need for expertise. He fought with Trotsky about the latter¡¯s willingnesss to incorporate former Tsarist mitary men in the Red Army. Lenin and Trotsky were willing to compromise on using non-Bolshevik experts which resulted in ¡°the implantation of political commissars.¡± AKA ¡°¡­ an added scourge of beauraucratic proliferation and waste.¡±

Stalin saw the world threw Leninism, especially the class struggle. Ideology was everything.

Local Autonomy (nationalism)
¡°The unexpected significance of the national question in the civil war proved to be yet another issue that empowered Stalin, and brought him into a close working relationship with Lenin. Stalin ¡°¡­ concluded that nationalism could server the worldwide proletariat¡¯s emancipation by helping win over workers susceptible to nationalist appeals.¡±

As the Civil War was ending, Stalin became ever more interested in self-determination within a strong state. ¡°he recognized the necessity of fashioning appeals and institutions to accommodate different nations.¡± ¡°[As the] Georgian reincarnation of Stolypin [with regard to nationalism] Stalin pursued a statist agenda that sought to combine retention of a grand unitary state with provisions for national difference, and an iron fist for separatism, even though Stalin, both in appearance and fact, was a quintessential man of the borderlands.¡±

OTOH, ¡°¡­ Stalin worried about non-Russian backwardness and came to see Russian tutelage as a lever to lift other nations up¡ªan echo, perhaps, of his experience in Russsian Orthodox schools. This difference would prove consequential.¡± ¡°Stalin emerged as the most significant figure in determining the structure of the Soviet state. It was no accident that the first Bolshevik government included an commissariat of nationalities, headed by him.¡± Stalin promoted education and propaganda in the native languages of non-Russians. Like a missionary, her wanted them to read his materials and convert.

Also, there¡¯s this angle: ¡°the national Soviet republics¡­ will be able to defend their existance and conquer the united forces of imperialism only by joining in a close political union¡­¡± At the 10th Party Congress, Stalin ¡°grasped the nettle of one of the most consequential isseus before the party---the ambiguous relationship among the various Soviet republics¡ªand showed himself ready to force those relations toward a more integrated structure.¡±

Climbing the ladder
¡°Appealing to Lenin, Stalin managed during the Civil War to escape subordination to Trotsky, despite the latter¡¯s position as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. Going forward¡­ Trotsky would find himself appealing to Lenin to try to escape subordination to Stalin in the party. Stalin¡¯s aggrandizement was already well advanced, yet only really beginning.¡±

At 10th Party Congress, ¡°Thanks to Trotsky¡¯s relentless propensity to polemicize and exasperate, Lenin was helping to form an anti-Trotsky faction at the pinnacle of power that would fall into Stalin¡¯s hands.¡±

¡°¡­Stalin was one of two people whom Lenin gave permission to enter his private apartment in Bolshevik headquarters at Smolny, a proximity and confidence that would prove pivotal.¡± Stalin was one of the few people who had access to Lenin at his dacha whiles he was dying. He worked it!

Transfer of Power
Although Lenin, didn¡¯t anoint a successor he did create the post of ¡°general secretary¡± for Stalin. He held him in close confidence at the end. Stalin was very senior. ¡°Stalin was well-positioned as Lenin¡¯s right hand and all-purpose fixer.¡± Lenin knew he was morbidly ill and kept Stalin close in. Also, I¡¯m not sure Kotkin buys Lenin¡¯s so-called ¡°Testament¡± supposedly dictated by Lenin warning the politburo about Stalin¡¯s personality and power mongering. I¡¯m not so sure myself. Regardless, Kotkin sites it over and over as wrecking Stalin who seemed to have possible filial affection for and total devotion to Lenin and Leninism. He even suggests the ¡°Testament¡± fueled some of Stalin¡¯s nastiness, ¡°his sense of persecution and victimhood.¡± Even if the Testament was not authentic, ¡°[Stalin] could not escape the fact that Lenin¡¯s dictation¡ªhowever it was produced¡ªcomported with a widespread view of his own character [failings].¡± ¡°Stalin¡¯s leadership¡­went a long way toward holding the whole sprawling regime together, but he could be malevolent and possessed too much power.¡±

¡°Stalin had a phenomenal memory¡­ Stalin banged heads and brought order. He liked the job. Above all, he did the job.¡±

Stalin outmatched any would-be rivals. It was assumed Lenin would be followed by a team, but they never coalesced. He excelled at enemy generation: Foremost, Trotsky and the capitalists, eventually to include his Old Bolshevik comrades and any potential rivals, peasants (in other words, nearly the entire country). Much needed specialists trained under the tsarist regime, (moderately) successful peasants (kulaks).

¡°Stalin could be the representative of the middling sort, whose aspirations he captured like a tuning fork. Stalin walked into a golden opportunity to become the orthodox Leninist as well as a household name by battling, and besting, the world-renowned Trotsky [a Jewish intellectual].¡± He spoke of his ¡°mystical calling¡± ¡°within days of Lenin¡¯s death, the ex-seminarian had unveiled the winning formula would pursue: zealously dedicating his life and the entire party to fulfilment of Lenin¡¯s sacred ¡®behest¡¯.¡± ¡°Stalin¡¯s position was a Lenin-style combination of flexible tactics [embracing, then rejecting, the NEP was among the most glaring] and unshakable core beliefs.¡±

¡°¡­Stalin¡­ formed the USSR, helped make the recuperative NEP work, and spelled out the nature of Leninism for the party mass. Stalin not only managed to implant and cultivate large numbers of loyalists, but also to invent for himself the role of Lenin¡¯s faithful pupil. Stalin¡¯s role as guardian of the ideology was as important in his ascendancy as brute bureaucratic force.¡±

¡°¡­[H]e demonstrated surpassing organizational abilities, a mammoth appetite for work, a strategic mind, and an unscrupulousness that recalled his master teacher, Lenin. Stalin proved capable of wielding the levers he inherited, and of inventing new ones¡­. Stalin had a deft political touch¡­. A ward-boss-style politician, albeit one in command of instruments beyond a ward boss¡¯s dream¡ªthe Communist party¡¯s reach, discipline, and radiant-future ideology.¡±

¡°He implanted his loyalists.. and found, or cultivated, enemies for them, too, in order to keep the loyalists under watch.¡± ¡°Stalin would have had to show uncommon restraint, deference, and lack of ambition not to build a personal dictatorship within the dictatorship.¡± These connections were especially important with the secret police and the ¡°subordination of the military¡±. ¡°Lubyanka was effectively subordinated not to the civilian government, but to Lenin and the politburo, which meant that this instrument, too, fell under Stalin¡¯s purview in his capacity as head of the party apparatus.¡± ¡°Hyper secrecy became an unquenchable thirst that strengthened Stalin¡¯s grip.¡± ¡°Stalin [looked] for personal animosities to manipulate to his benefit; officials appealing for his favor against political rivals.¡±

Mode of Operation (¡°class-inflected modus operandi¡±)
¡°Stalin dominated all official channels and established informal sources of information, while his personal functionaries performed tasks often not formally specified. No one else could verify which materials had been received or gather by the Central Committee yet not made available for politburo members or what instructions had been given to various agencies in the name of the Central Committee. Above all, Stalin alone had the means to secretly monitor the other top officials for the own ¡®security¡¯ and to recruit their subordinates as informants, because he alone, in the name of the Central Committee, liaisoned with the OGPU.¡±

With the Shakhy trial (war on experts), ¡°He was unleashing a new topsy-turvy of class warfare to expand the regime¡¯s social base and his own political leverage in order to accelerate industrialization and to collectivize agriculture.¡±
On collectivization: ¡°The Bolsheviks desperately needed the peasants to produce good harvests, but the better the peasants did, the more they turned into class enemies, kulaks. To put it another way, a non-collectivized countryside was politically unthreatening only if the peasants were poor, but if the peasants were poor they produced insufficient grain to feed the northern cities or the Red Army and to export..¡± ¡°Stalin had connected the ideological dots, reaching the full logic of a class-based outlook.¡±

Stalin forced the peasants to pay for industrialization (taxes and requisition finally resulting in collectivization). ¡°Stalin was going to wager on young male strivers from the urban lower orders to spearhead a socialist remake of the village many of them had only recently left behind.¡±

¡°Stalin was loyal as well as effective: he could get things done.¡± He was a ¡°strategist, improvising dexterously¡± ¡°usually play[ing] his cards close to his chest¡±

Tsaritsyn: ¡°provided a preview of Stalin¡¯s recourse to publicizing conspiracies by ¡®enemies¡¯ and enacting summary executions in order to enforce discipline and rally political support.¡±

Bukharin on Stalin regarding Trotsky¡¯s acclaim and honor: ¡°Stalin can¡¯t live unless he has what someone else has.¡± ¡°Trotsky¡¯s rage was Stalin¡¯s inspiration.¡±

He did not understand market economics.

Circumstances and History
Perhaps more than anything , ¡°The tsarist political system and conditions in the empire promoted militancy.¡± ¡°¡­Russia¡¯s autocracy was deliberately archaic. Tsarism chocked on the very modernity that it desperately needed, and, to an extent, pursued in order to compete as a great power.¡± ¡±¡­ Russia¡¯s tensions were magnified by the autocratic system¡¯s refusal to incorporate the masses into the political system, even by authoritarian means.¡± ¡°Autocratic Russia¡¯s discouragement of modern mass politics would leave the masses¡ªand the profound, widespread yearning among the masses in Russia for social justice¡ªto the leftists.¡± Stalin on Stalin: ¡°The Russian people are tsarist. For many centuries the Russian people, especially the Russian peasants, have been accustomed to one person being at the head. And now there should be one.¡±

Bolshevism: A brutal intensification of tsarism¡¯s many debilitating features: emasculation of parliament, metastasizing of parasitic state functionaries, persecutions and shakedowns of private citizens and entrepreneurs¡ªin short, unaccountable executive power, which vastly enhanced in its grim arbitrariness by a radiant ideology of social justice and progress. But then Lenin fell fatally ill.¡±

¡°Thanks to Stalin¡¯s shrewd analysis as well as his generally high regard for Russia, which Lenin did not share, Lenin¡¯s militancy was ascendant even in his absence.¡± In fact, the Bolsheviks would have laid claim to power anyway¡ªnothing stood in their way. They managed to be thoroughly confused and still seize power because the Provisional Government simply vanished, just as the vaunted autocracy had vanished.¡±

¡°But whereas the revolution of the soldiers and sailors consciously linked up with Bolshevism, the peasant revolution only happened to coincide with it. Soon enough the peasant revolution and Bolshevism would collide.¡±

The world¡¯s misfortune (Great Depression) was Stalin¡¯s great unforeseen fortune.¡± ¡°The Depression offered Stalin unprecedented leverage: suddenly the capitalists needed the Soviet market as much as the Soviets needed their advanced technology.¡±

Can¡¯t Argue with Kotkin
¡°Stalin made history, rearranging the entire socioeconomic landscape of 1/6 of the earth.

Assessment
I feel like an jerk, but I didn¡¯t enjoy the book. I do truly appreciate the research and dedication. But, it¡¯s just too long and unwieldy. It¡¯s a book for the home or office library to be used as reference material, rather than a book to be read through for self-edification. Stalin comes of as a bit of a bore. Lots of soporific procedural and archival details. Long on presentation, short on analyses and conclusions. No good anecdotes to help crack the nut that is Joe Stalin. OTOH, this got me thinking a lot, trying to figure out Kotkin¡¯s points. I am no scholar so I can¡¯t appreciate some of his reveals. Scholars may love this book. I just don¡¯t know. I got to travel to the fSU in the early 90s when I had no time to read up. Now I¡¯m learning all I can about the amazing places I visited. This is not the book for my intent.
]]> Enough 140200356
Ever since a childhood visit to Washington, DC, Cassidy Hutchinson aspired to serve her country in government. Raised in a working-class family with a military background, she was the first in her immediate family to graduate from college. Despite having no ties to Washington, Hutchinson landed a vital position at the center of the Trump White House.

Her life took a dramatic turn on January 6th, 2021, when, at twenty-four, she found herself in one of the most extraordinary and unprecedented calamities in modern political history.

Hutchinson was faced with a choice between loyalty to the Trump administration or loyalty to the country by revealing what she saw and heard in the attempt to overthrow a democratic election. She bravely came forward to become the pivotal witness in the House January 6 investigations, as her testimony transfixed and stunned the nation. In her memoir, Hutchinson reveals the struggle between the pressures she confronted to toe the party line and the demands of the oath she swore to defend American democracy.

Enough reaches far beyond the typical insider political account. It¡¯s the saga of a woman whose fierce determination helped her overcome childhood challenges to get her dream job, only to face a crisis of conscience¡ªone that more senior White House aides tried to evade¡ªand, in the process, find her voice and herself. This is a portrait of how the courage of one person can change the course of history.]]> 379 Cassidy Hutchinson Mary 0 4.19 2023 Enough
author: Cassidy Hutchinson
name: Mary
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/25
shelves: to-read, memoir, presidency, trump, washington-dc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch]]> 4846256 464 Michael Wolff 0385526121 Mary 0 3.25 2008 The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
author: Michael Wolff
name: Mary
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/25
shelves: to-read, biography, journalism, media, politics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch]]> 61890743 A book about power, apprenticeship, and succession in the first family of media

An heir apparent to the first global media dynasty, Lachlan Murdoch has been waiting to run his father Rupert¡¯s empire all his life. In this riveting first biography of a little-understood but hugely influential figure, acclaimed journalist Paddy Manning can the dutiful son hang onto the empire, or will the third generation of Murdoch moguls prove the last?

Despite a life in the spotlight, Lachlan¡¯s personality, politics, and business acumen remain enigmatic. Is he the ultra-conservative ideologue media reports maintain, or a free-thinking libertarian, as some friends suggest?


After emerging victorious from the Murdoch family¡¯s turbulent succession wars, Lachlan is stepping up at a time of unprecedented instability. What can we expect from his time at the helm, and does he have what it takes to chart a future for this century-old company? This is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the global media world, and about America in the age of Trump and Murdoch. It is a book about power, apprenticeship, and succession.]]> Paddy Manning Mary 0 3.84 The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch
author: Paddy Manning
name: Mary
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/22
shelves: to-read, biography, business, journalism, media, politics, usa
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us]]> 156479403 ?
¡°One of this year¡¯s finest works of narrative nonfiction.¡±¡ª Oprah Daily

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader¡¯s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine , Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail,?Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth¡¯s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile¡¯s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover¡¯s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.

Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called ¡°the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.¡±

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL ? FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE ? FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ? LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD]]> 480 Ed Yong 0593133250 Mary 0 animals, communication 4.43 2022 An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
author: Ed Yong
name: Mary
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/09/19
date added: 2023/09/19
shelves: animals, communication
review:

]]> <![CDATA[End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood]]> 123088295 310 Patty Lin 1958506060 Mary 0 to-read, hollywood 3.74 2023 End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood
author: Patty Lin
name: Mary
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/02
shelves: to-read, hollywood
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy]]> 41150556 The New York Times bestselling account of corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of the Vatican.

In the Closet of the Vatican exposes the rot at the heart of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church today. This brilliant piece of investigative writing is based on four years' authoritative research, including extensive interviews with those in power.

The celibacy of priests, the condemnation of the use of contraceptives, countless cases of sexual abuse, the resignation of Benedict XVI, misogyny among the clergy, the dramatic fall in Europe of the number of vocations to the priesthood, the plotting against Pope Francis - all these issues are clouded in mystery and secrecy.

In the Closet of the Vatican is a book that reveals these secrets and penetrates this enigma. It derives from a system founded on a clerical culture of secrecy which starts in junior seminaries and continues right up to the Vatican itself. It is based on the double lives of priests and on extreme homophobia. The resulting schizophrenia in the Church is hard to fathom. But the more a prelate is homophobic, the more likely it is that he is himself gay.

"Behind rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life." These are the words of Pope Francis himself and with them, the Pope has unlocked the Closet.

No one can claim to really understand the Catholic Church today until they have read this book. It reveals a truth that is extraordinary and disturbing.]]> 576 Fr¨¦d¨¦ric Martel? 1472966147 Mary 0 religion 3.74 2019 In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy
author: Fr¨¦d¨¦ric Martel?
name: Mary
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/31
date added: 2023/08/31
shelves: religion
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Our Gang (Vintage International)]]> 8384120 From the Pulitzer Prize¨Cwinning author of American Pastoral comes a brilliantly indignant response to the phenomenon that was Richard M. Nixon. ? ¡°Disturbing, logical...and very funny.... In short, a masterpiece" ¡ªThe New York Times Book Review In the character of Trick E. Dixon, Roth shows us a man who outdoes the severest cynic, a peace-loving Quaker and believer in the sanctity of human life who doesn¡¯t have a problem with killing unarmed women and children in self-defense. A master politician with an honest sneer, he finds himself battling the Boy Scouts, declaring war on Pro-Pornography Denmark, all the time trusting in the basic indifference of the voting public.]]> 224 Philip Roth 0307539482 Mary 0 fiction, politics, usa 3.67 1971 Our Gang (Vintage International)
author: Philip Roth
name: Mary
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/31
shelves: fiction, politics, usa
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn¡¯t she? She¡¯s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn¡¯t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It¡¯s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 Mary 2 fiction, new-york
Dr. Tuttle, the indulgent therapist is wonderfully revealed. Reva, her frenemy, is pretty well fleshed out, too.

I assume readers will hate or love this one.]]> 3.62 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Mary
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: fiction, new-york
review:
My daughter recommended this to me. It is both repulsive and captivating. I was eager to keep reading it yet I kind of hated it. I took it as an indictment of late fin de ciecle upper class, NYC culture leading up to 9/11. The ultimate in unearned privilege. The narrator presents herself in many ways as confident, employing humor and condescension to get through pain she doesn¡¯t necessarily acknowledge. OTOH, she can¡¯t manage her love life, nor can she exist, nor can she kill herself. So she drugs herself mostly into a stupor or sleep for a year or so until she can emerge as a different person. She seems to think she's stronger and done with mourning the death of bother her parents. She may think she¡¯s changed but the ending indicates she has not.

Dr. Tuttle, the indulgent therapist is wonderfully revealed. Reva, her frenemy, is pretty well fleshed out, too.

I assume readers will hate or love this one.
]]> Oblomov 254308 586 Ivan Goncharov 1933480092 Mary 5 russian-lit, fiction 4.09 1859 Oblomov
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: Mary
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1859
rating: 5
read at: 2014/12/04
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: russian-lit, fiction
review:
Beautifully written, deep yet digestible and very Russian. More Russian than Dostoyevsky in many ways. We've all got a little Oblomovshchina in our lives. Some more than others. The translation was accessible. I prefer real English, not American, with European classics. The translator made a good case for why he did what he did. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.
]]> Mr. Nice 230543 560 Howard Marks 1841953199 Mary 0 memoir, to-read 3.91 1996 Mr. Nice
author: Howard Marks
name: Mary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves: memoir, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison]]> 129964156
¡°Macintyre so seamlessly fuses so many different accounts?that their compilation creates?something more profound than a simple escape yarn.¡±¨D The?Washington Post

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre¡¯s telling, Colditz¡¯s most famous names¡ªlike the indomitable Pat Reid¡ªshare glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America¡¯s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

Prisoners of the Castle traces the war¡¯s arc from within Colditz¡¯s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler¡¯s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.]]> 384 Ben Macintyre 0593136357 Mary 0 to-read 4.08 2022 Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Mary
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Struwwelpeter 641841 Written in rhyming couplets and illustrated by the author, the book was an immediate success. It has since gone through hundreds of editions and been published in almost every European language. The present volume reprints 25 color plates from a German edition (including a bonus plate done for the 100th edition in 1876) with the reset text of a standard English translation. Also included are the full German text and an afterword with a brief biography of the author and note on how the book came to be written.
Children, bibliophiles, antiquarians ¡ª any lover of time-honored tales for children ¡ª will welcome this new edition of the classic German story.]]> 32 Heinrich Hoffmann 0486284697 Mary 5 children-s 4.15 1845 Struwwelpeter
author: Heinrich Hoffmann
name: Mary
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1845
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/21
shelves: children-s
review:

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