What are you reading?

I just finished reading A Man of Iron; the Turbulent Life and Improbably Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik. His final words "I have tried so hard to do right” (link) sum up his life. He is best known for being the only president to serve two non-contiguous terms, and the first Democrat elected after the Civil War. He is indeed not well known for events or achievements during his presidency.

There is much interesting both about the book and the man. Perhaps a person who serves so many positions without moral blemish should be notable. In those days as now, scandal in one form or another swirls around presidents and other prominent politicians. In fact, by the time his terms of office ended, he was clearly a man of the past. It is unfortunate that nowadays as in his days, such virtue is rewarded backhandedly or not at all. The role of the federal government is vastly expanded from his days, and he was dealt with in the headlines a lot less than modern presidents.

His example and integrity should be better known and rewarded.
 
I just finished reading The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History by Boris Johnson. Yes, that Boris Johnson, who was later a much less long serving or consequential British Prime Minister. Obviously, Winston Churchill was his hero, but he was many other people's heroes. For example, his grandson, who said: "You know, in many ways he was quite a normal sort of family man." After this quote, Boris Johnson states:
Boris Johson said:
Yes, I say, but no normal family man produces more published words than Shakespeare and Dickens combined, wins the Nobel prize for literature, kills umpteen people in armed conflict on four continents, serves in every great office of state including Prime Minister (twice), is indispensable to victory in two world wars and then posthumously sells his paintings for a million dollars. I am trying to grapple with the ultimate source of all this psychic energy.
What, indeed, do we mean by mental energy? Is it something psychological or something physiological? Was he genetically or hormonally endowed with some superior process of internal combustion, or did it arise out of childhood psychological conditioning? Or perhaps it was a mixture of the two. Who knows-depends on your answer to the mind-body problem, I suppose.
I am wavering on whether to give this book 4 or 5 stars. I suppose I will give it 4 stars. The book come of like many other biographies of great leaders, verges on hagiography. I suppose this is inevitable because cover unless you are writing about a criminal or a horrible person, you write it out people who you admire. The book does not have some of the ills of most such books, which is to spend an undue amount of time on early life, which is usually quite unexceptional.

Boris Johnson does an extremely good job of laying out his greatness, without ignoring some of the shortcomings of the subject personally, or the mixed results of some of his initiatives. He obviously“hit the English language to war” (my statement coming at the authors) and earned him himself a place in history. Arguably without him, the world would have been dominated by two ogres, Stalin and Hitler. To that, we owe an immense debt. Is the crystal clear in this book.

The book also makes clear his intense ties to the United States and his love of this country.
 
I just finished reading The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History by Boris Johnson. Yes, that Boris Johnson, who was later a much less long serving or consequential British Prime Minister. Obviously, Winston Churchill was his hero, but he was many other people's heroes. For example, his grandson, who said: "You know, in many ways he was quite a normal sort of family man." After this quote, Boris Johnson states:

I am wavering on whether to give this book 4 or 5 stars. I suppose I will give it 4 stars. The book come of like many other biographies of great leaders, verges on hagiography. I suppose this is inevitable because cover unless you are writing about a criminal or a horrible person, you write it out people who you admire. The book does not have some of the ills of most such books, which is to spend an undue amount of time on early life, which is usually quite unexceptional.

Boris Johnson does an extremely good job of laying out his greatness, without ignoring some of the shortcomings of the subject personally, or the mixed results of some of his initiatives. He obviously“hit the English language to war” (my statement coming at the authors) and earned him himself a place in history. Arguably without him, the world would have been dominated by two ogres, Stalin and Hitler. To that, we owe an immense debt. Is the crystal clear in this book.

The book also makes clear his intense ties to the United States and his love of this country.

If one wanted land and soil in Europe, then by and large this could only be done at Russia's expense...

for such a policy, however, there was only one single ally in Europe: England.

- Adolf Hitler, from Mein Kampf, Volume I, Chapter IV, "Munich"

---------

Winston Churchill deserves more credit for the defeat of Hitler than anyone else. Many in the Labour Party were pacifists. Many in the Conservative Party thought Nazi Germany was the lesser of two evils, with the Soviet Union being the greater evil.
 
Just started this New York Times bestseller. Off to a good start so far, very readable.

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The Armor of Light by Ken Follett
Well written in a style that keeps your interest for over 700 pages. I look forward to reading his other work. As far as this work
the only thing that I didn't like was the ending. But I am sure others will disagree. But I do recommend it.
 
I highly recommend On Wings of Eagles by Follet, it’s non fiction and I read it in 1987, unforgettable book that I still remember quite well. It features Ross Perot before everyone knew who he was.

This book is all about some very brave men.
 
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Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Actually have never read it before... about 50 pages in, definitely old language as it was written in 1927.
So far it is interesting.
 
I just finished reading The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People by Walter Russell Mead. Arc is a tour d' force of greatness, no question. Mead seeks to take the course of U.S. history as it relates to Jews and then Israel from just after the Civil War through 2022. Without serving as a spoiler, Mead effectively makes the argument that Israel's importance to the U.S. stems more from its military and economic success and power than it does to the impact of the "Jewish" or "Israel" lobby. Indeed, he very effectively belittles the impact of the lobbies asa being the equivalent of Star Trek's "vulcans;" an imaginary force thought to be creating a wobble in Mercury's or Venus's orbit. He states: "Not only does Israel occupy a "continent" in the American mind; Jews, at 1.9 % of the population...." in arguing that the focus on Israel is out of proportion to Jewish numbers. The contrast is even starker when compared to an estimated worldwide population at 15.7 million, 0.2% of the 8 billion worldwide population. What the author leaves out is that the Jews, historically, have had a disproportionate pull on the world psycho.

I do have my quibbles with the book: 1) there are lots of run-on and awkwardly constructed sentences; 2) the book illustrates the dictum in intro to Practicing History: Selected Essays by Barbara W. Tuchman, that it is hard to write good history close to the occurrence of events. It certainly was, and is; and 3) part of point II, the last two chapters, on the history of the relationship under Obama, Trump and Biden are not yet history given how recent they are.

While I do not accept 100% of the author's opinions, the book is an indispensable starting point of any serious analysis and understanding.
 
I just finished reading The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People by Walter Russell Mead. Arc is a tour d' force of greatness, no question. Mead seeks to take the course of U.S. history as it relates to Jews and then Israel from just after the Civil War through 2022. Without serving as a spoiler, Mead effectively makes the argument that Israel's importance to the U.S. stems more from its military and economic success and power than it does to the impact of the "Jewish" or "Israel" lobby. Indeed, he very effectively belittles the impact of the lobbies asa being the equivalent of Star Trek's "vulcans;" an imaginary force thought to be creating a wobble in Mercury's or Venus's orbit. He states: "Not only does Israel occupy a "continent" in the American mind; Jews, at 1.9 % of the population...." in arguing that the focus on Israel is out of proportion to Jewish numbers. The contrast is even starker when compared to an estimated worldwide population at 15.7 million, 0.2% of the 8 billion worldwide population. What the author leaves out is that the Jews, historically, have had a disproportionate pull on the world psycho.

I do have my quibbles with the book: 1) there are lots of run-on and awkwardly constructed sentences; 2) the book illustrates the dictum in intro to Practicing History: Selected Essays by Barbara W. Tuchman, that it is hard to write good history close to the occurrence of events. It certainly was, and is; and 3) part of point II, the last two chapters, on the history of the relationship under Obama, Trump and Biden are not yet history given how recent they are.

While I do not accept 100% of the author's opinions, the book is an indispensable starting point of any serious analysis and understanding.
The Ashkenazi Jews, with their IQ average of 110 to 115, are the most superior racial group on earth. I am unaware of anything wrong with those wonderful people at all.
 
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From the book under review, by Canada's former PM, Stephen J. Harper,Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age or Disruption, an excerpt:
Stephen Harper said:
One can call this "populist conservatism" or "applied conservatism," but, to my mind, it is really just conservatism. Conservatism, dating back to Edmund Burke, was never about ideological rigidity.

In fact, Burke was rejecting the philosophical dogmatism that marked other thinkers and thinking in his era-including, by the way, those who reflexively defended the status quo. Conservatism is about seeing the world as it is and applying the lessons of experience to new challenges. It is inherently populist in the sense that it is necessarily concerned with people rather than theories.
Quite the tour d' force, the book amply reviews and summarizes American and, to a lesser extent Canadian sociology, philosophy and political history from approximately 1980 through a portion of the Trump era. He clearly styles himself as a latter-day Edmund Burke, an eminent political philosopher from shortly before the American Revolution through the late 1790's. Harper sees conservatism as pragmatic and flexible as opposed to atavistic.

This book is a short but highly accurate guide to the modern political era, and aptly explains how we wind up with Trump, for better or worse. I reluctantly give "five stars" and this is one such occasion.
 
I did not finish reading Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy by Peter Schweizer. Not that it was a bad book. I read selected chapters. Much of it is out of date, so that is not "on" the author. The problem with the book is it discusses the fact that many politicians, philanthropist and public figures are warm-hearted towards the poor verbally but live the lives of the rich and famous. To me there is nothing wrong with that. One of the examples that hits a bit closer to target is Edward Kennedy. He was an environmental advocate, except when the wind farms would sully his sight-line or sailing playground.

I would appreciate an updated version, if the author writes one. For example, BLM leaders do not truck with their constituency.
 

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