Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
At first I wasn’t sure, “The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum” didn’t sound like my type of book. I had never heard of this women and certainly had no idea about the talented part. But the subtitle “The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss” got me interested.
Then I read the description on Netgalley and it made me give it a try. It starts like this:
Continue reading “Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum, crime in old New York”
Both my parents grew up in New York City while Fiorello La Guardia was mayor. I can remember them talking about Mayor La Guardia when I was growing up. He seemed interesting but I never got around to learning much more about him. This book fixed that problem.
The book is “I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America’s Mayor, and Why He Still Matters” by Terry Golway.
Continue reading “I Never Did Like Politics”
Tightwads and Spendthrifts by Scott Rick is a very good book. Some people are extremely tight with money (tightwads) and others spend freely, sometimes excessively (spendthrifts). Others combine these traits in various ways.
I enjoyed Tightwads and Spendthrifts for many reasons. It is a science-based guide to understanding our sometimes complicated relationship with money. Scott Rick is a behavioral scientist and this might make some hesitate to give this book a try. But have no fear, the writing style is very informal and non-judgmental. Not the dry, complex style one might expect. I appreciated his explanation of his methods as well as the discussion of the work of others. I also enjoyed his discussions of the various approaches to understanding our financial decisions.
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Benedict Arnold was a hero and General in the American Revolution before he became a traitor late in the war. Why did he do this? Most of us may know little but his treason. This book fills in all those details of what came before the treason and discusses possible reasons why he became a traitor. The full title is God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America’s Most Hated Man.
Continue reading “God Save Benedict Arnold by Jack Kelly”
I liked The Ferry Port Mystery by David Pearson. For the first few chapters I was not sure I would. There seemed to be just enough to keep you reading and I was unsure how long I would continue but things got much better. But I am getting ahead of myself so I’ll go back to the beginning.
Continue reading “The Ferry Port Mystery by David Pearson”
First of all, I think this is a really good book. It is also an important book. The book is “American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress” by Wesley Lowery
Whitelash may not be a term familiar to all. Slang.net defines it this way:
Whitelash is a political term that refers to a resistance by white voters against social progress among minority groups.
I have long enjoyed David Von Drehle’s writing via several books, Time magazine, and the Washington Post. So when I read about The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man, I figured I’d like it.
To my surprise, it was available from Netgalley, my usual source for advanced readers, so I do thank Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for allowing me to read this book after publication.
David Von Drehle was thinking about writing another book and this neighbor proved to be a remarkable subject for many reasons. The neighbor was Charlie White MD whose long and remarkable life contains many useful life lessons for us younger folks. (The Retired Guy doesn’t get to include himself in that group very often.)
It is not a very long book (about 200 pages) and well worth your time. I recommend this book as an interesting blend of history as seen by Dr White and his philosophy of life in dealing with both change and challenges.
I’ll start by saying this is a frightening book. But then we do live in frightening times. The title is They Want to Kill Americans by Malcolm Nance. When I first saw the title, I immediately thought of foreign terrorists.
But I quickly realized a was wrong. The subtitle (The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency) gives that away. This book is about Americans who wanted to kill other Americans who disagree with them.
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The full title is Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes: The unofficial guide to Google Drive, Docs, Sheets & Slides by Ian Lamont. I think this is an excellent introductory guide and reference book.
I’ve used Google Drive a little bit, especially Google Docs and I find 30 minutes to be overly optimistic. In 30 minutes you can enjoy the author’s overview which I found helpful and well done.
The explanations on using the various applications and how they fit together are also very helpful but I think being able to do a good job with any of them would require much more than 30 minutes He is very clear that these are free applications and someone may need a more polished product for presentations.
But there is much that can be done and done well with these free tools.
They may be more than adequate for many purposes. And why pay when free does the job. Many of us learn by trial and error and that takes time. Quite often a good reference is well worth the price.
The FBI Way is about integrity of an organization. The full title is The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence by Frank Figliuzzi. It is specifically about the FBI and how they maintain high standards which is interesting in itself but the lessons can be applied to other organizations.
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As a retired geneticist myself, I found Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality by David J. Linden fascinating.
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I am glad I read On Fascism: 12 Lessons from American History by Matthew C. MacWilliams
Dr MacWilliams starts with survey data indicating that 46% of Americans inconsistently support democracy (https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/follow-the-leader) and explores surveys that indicate support for various ideas inconsistent with democracies.
Continue reading “On Fascism: 12 Lessons from American History”
The full title is Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood and it is by Robin Hemley.
The author discusses being a citizen of the world, what that means, and the meaning of travel. The book is a mix of travel writing (dispatches), philosophy, and political thoughts with a bit of autobiography.
I found most parts of the book very interesting and a few parts not so much. The latter were towards the end of the book so I suspect I was just a bit tired of some longer dispatches.
As usual, my thanks to https://www.netgalley.com/ for letting me read this before publication.
I liked The Death of Expertise but I was a bit concerned. The full title is The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters and it is by Thomas M. Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College .
Continue reading “The Death of Expertise: …and Why it Matters”
Thanks to Netgalley I was able to start an advanced reading copy (ARC) of “Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal” by Joseph Alexiou before the book was in the stores. Unfortunately I am not a particularly fast reader and so the review is just coming out now, almost a month after the publication date. I grew up in the New York City (NYC) area and enjoy reading about New York City and surrounding areas. I’m also a history fan so this book seemed right up my alley.
I’ve read several books on the history of NYC and Brooklyn is usually mentioned but not in any great detail. This differs from others I have read in that the focus was on Brooklyn. The focus is the canal but there is much about Brooklyn in general but more on the area known as South Brooklyn. Continue reading “Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal”