Book Reports

The novel's timely account of the fake art Ponzi scheme coincides with the ongoing FTX scandal, very much a similar tale where investor payouts were funded from new investments and new borrowing secured by wildly overvalued assets. There's a valuable cautionary tale in this novel about whom you should trust with your money if nothing else.

It became clear to me, and to Dr. McCullough, that the use of hydroxychloroquine - and ivermectin - had become politicized as an anti-Trump trope.

Central to the story, of course, is how far Elizabeth Holmes could take her act of deceit and lies without being exposed.

Winston Churchill memorably said about the Battle of Britain, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

While "For Whom the Bell Tolls," is a love story, a war adventure story, and a story about Spanish peasants fighting for their lives. it is a story about death. It is a story about stymied idealism. You cannot appreciate the fullness of the American literary canon without reading this book. Sadly, I read the book too late in life.

We have some work to do, as existing in a dumbed down state seems to be the operative paradigm for too many of us today.

Being exposed to numerous of these brilliant, groundbreaking, idiosyncratic innovators, like Palmer Luckey, enabled my understanding of what Peter Thiel's real contribution to our world was: distinctively successful identification of talented visionaries with ideas that would change the world and taking the financial risk of underwriting their dreams. Sadly, this wasn't the focus of Chafkin's book.

"The Sun Also Rises" is a compelling, beautiful book, leaving one to wonder about life's meaning in a world of, tension, complexity and beauty.

This extraordinarily well documented book is an expose on How Anthony Fauci has for decades schemed to impose a vaccine tyranny on America and the rest of the world.

I wondered, while reading the Sebestyen's biography of Lenin, if it was a handbook for Bolshevik heirs, today's American progressives, to hold onto power.   A careful reader of this book will easily recognize political tactics used by Lenin such as lying, intimidation, show trials, prison camps, assassination encouragement, etc. to hold on to power... all this accompanied by a Lenin-like, dogged, go-to-work-early, stay-at-work-until-late relentlessness in being committed to the mission.   "There is nothing new under the sun."

When a writer uses terms like "ersatz bonhomie" to describe the interactions of patrons of a Paris cafe, you know you have found a writer with a superior ability to describe the human condition.

A reader of this book will be reminded that good times are not inevitable.