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5 stars then + 5 stars today = 5 fingers, I mean 5 stars . . . wait, that’s 10 stars right?
Sorry, this is not really a review, rather a chance to indulge in a bit of cathartic personal protest.

—June 1949 George Orwell’s 1984 is published just after WWII ends when the United States vaporizes a quarter million people (this following WWI which was the war to end all wars). Hitler had convinced Germany that he would make their country #1—whatever it takes. Hirohito made the same promise to Japan. Stalin is throwing in his bid as well for bragging rights—whatever/whomever it takes. In the meantime the one with the biggest bomb wins.

—Late 1960s I read this book for the first time when 1984 was futuristic and some of us were marching against the Vietnam War (the one that followed the Korean War) and the US was still vaporizing, this time with napalm and Pol Pot had his personal version of 1984 going on.

—February 2017 I read it again with GR buddies because it seems timely and I’m curious to see how it holds up after so many years and some of us are still marching (I’m not sure how many more wars have happened but there’s “Always a war somewhere�� because “War Is Peace��). The United States has just elected a man promising to make the county #1 again—whatever it takes.

About now George Orwell would be repeating himself: “Day by day and almost minute by minute the past [is] brought up to date . . . Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again.��
I know I’m bleak, but the war on terrorism is the new normal, Big Brother is watching, and there is no Katniss Everdeen to offer any hope, only bullets.