Book Reports

I enjoyed the novel as a riveting page turner, as a compelling study into the nature of invention, as a cogent review of the intricacies of patent law, as a comprehensible tutorial on electricity, for raising the question in my mind about the role of skullduggery and subterfuge in business, and for fostering vigorous reflection on the nature of technological progress.

In the book he declares that the government response to coronavirus was the worst failure of public policy since World War I.

I believe civilizational success and religion are intertwined, like a double helix, mutually dependent, one upon the other. Cultures which abandon religion fail. Russia learned that lesson under eighty years of failed Bolshevik rule. Ironically, as religious belief in the west atrophies, Russia, today, is reviving its Orthodox Christian traditions hoping to shore up Russian cultural vitality.

There is a colorable argument that the real culpability for this corporate tragedy lies with sophisticated investors who were beguiled by the hype of young geniuses who refused to embrace long accepted corporate governance practices. Where was the due diligence?

The book is a morality tale. Though Hoenig was roundly criticized as sort of a cranky, failed Old Testament prophet for the three or four years after he resigned from the Fed in 2011, virtually all of the predictions Hoenig made about quantitative easing, and 0 percent interest rates, would come true over the next decade. Income inequality had increased, the Fed's actions had stoked dangerous asset bubbles, social instability had worsened, and the big banks became enriched while the incomes of the poor and middle class had stagnated.

When Harold found himself inside a tesseract after having entered a cave, I was reminded of the film "Interstellar." "Interstellar's" Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) traveled millions of lightyears from an outlying star system, via tesseract, to the wall outside of his daughter Murphy's bedroom on earth.

In the next box was the UCLA student paper, The Daily Entity. It had been the Daily Bruin until a few years before when a student from Marin County, who claimed to be part Cherokee, demanded the name be changed because bears were sacred to his people.

The Russian conspirators are confident of prevailing. Why? The US is culturally weak. Says a Russian conspirator, "While the Americans are fighting over their pronouns, digital passports, and a social credit system, we will change the world order."

Whatever the level of stress that arises to challenge a community, the example of the Mountain Meadows Massacre highlights the need for all citizens to be able to think critically... to hold fast, even if it requires challenging authority, to timeworn moral principles during times when the social contract is taxed.

Bryson's prose is easy and breezy. This short book reads incredibly fast. There is so much mystery to Shakespeare's life... so little documentation. Bryson recounts numerous stories of the tedious research of parish and City of London records by Shakespeare-philes (sic) to better document the bard's life.

Brown's account of this thirty-two-day snowshoe trek, abbreviated in most Donner Party accounts, is riveting.

"A Farewell to Arms" reflects reality in its depiction of a male and female relationship, where, though Henry is stronger physically, Catharine compensates with her clever, capable womanly wiles and female seductive qualities. The male/female dynamic in "A Farewell to Arms" offers a welcome dose of verisimilitude in contrast to modern male/female narratives where culture seems to force women to adopt male traits at the expense of women optimizing their feminine differences.