Book Reports

You can't come away from reading this book without realizing that Facebook and Zuckerberg are interchangeable.  Facebook's dichotomous business model... engineer connectivity and profit from it... combined with Zuckerberg's  megalomania about growth.... and now ability, seemingly without consequence, to neuter the ability of a former US president to communicate on its massive platform, raise questions about how much power one man should have.

2. That this particular company met disaster was due to a most unhappy combination of circumstances: they were the first to pass when the war frenzy was at its height; their own attitude was such as to fan that frenzy and provoke added violence. Had they been of the temperament of the group immediately following, they would likely have escaped unharmed, although short of provisions and robbed of their cattle. But the reckless boasts and acts on the part of those who called themselves "Missouri Wildcats" culminated in disaster for the whole train.

Farrell never quite succeeds in his effort to paint the rich man as evil or the "working poor" as being oppressed.

"Truly Like Lightning" has received pretty good reviews. Duchovny, better known as an actor (The X Files), is now being seen as a serious novelist. I recommend reading this novel, not just as escape, but for useful reflection on the impact of evolving cultural and social trends.

Outwardly, what might seem a strongly bonded relationship between two good friends, on another level, can be seen to be a bitter mutual resentment.

You get a science tutorial on the marsh, a great mystery, insights into our human prejudices, and a forthright description of genetic proclivities that push humans, animals, birds, and insects to survive.

While the mass destruction perp, The Saracen, who intends to infect the US public with a genetically engineered, untreatable small pox strain is eventually stopped, so the ancillary New York murder, and a murder of a wealthy US billionaire, vacationing in Bodrum, is also solved by the New York detective and his deep cover agent team mate, Pilgrim.

I had never heard of the forced march, engineered by Carlton, of some three thousand Navahos from their ancestral home in what is today northeastern Arizona, four hundred miles to a reservation east of the Rio Grande.

Jules finds a way to get back at the venal mogul, secure the future of his grandson, and submit to cosmic justice for his own crime.

In "The Order," Silva transitions from previous novels' focus on Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon's fight against Islamic terror, to intrigue within the Catholic Church.

Wilson, reluctantly concluded the US must enter the war on the side of the Entente as war events suggested the real possibility of a dark tyranny sweeping away democracy should the Central Powers prevail.