What are you reading?

[JBG]

I just finished reading Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue by Buddy Levy. This is my second of his books, having recently read American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett. Realm is a more recent book and as one Goodreads reviewer wrote Buddy Levy keeps getting better. This one was spellbinding.

Like many of its genre, much of the dialogue among the various adventurers has to have been invented, as I doubt that even a cassette dictation machine made polar exploration journeys between 1900 and 1928. All the same, it read like a spellbinding adventure novel, based on true events and things we do know. The book focuses on Arctic travel of Walter Wellman, underestimated and under-covered, Roald Amundsen, the most well-known Arctic (and Antarctic) explorer and Umberto Nobile was an Italian aeronautical explorer. The latter, sponsored by Benito Mussolini, was vilified both because of his connections to Mussolini and eventually by the dictator when his journeys were not a Fascist success story. All the same, a solid "five star."

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading Reagan: The American President by Larry Schweikart. If 3 1/2 were available I would’ve given it a 3 1/2 rather than a three. To be sure, the book was extremely moving. It described quite well a person who was decent, but imperfect. He was a lousy parent and a great president. When he was elected, I thought he was a joke. As President he was anything but.

Now my quibbles. Many pages and short passages of the book were out of chronological order. This makes a jarring read for anything of a historical historical nature. Also, there were a few obvious fact checking errors. He skillfully avoided, writing a hagiography, despite his admiration for Mr. Reagan.

The lack of an index was a definite drawback. The book is well worth reading, but do not expect a masterpiece.

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading George Orwell‘s Animal Farm. This book, obviously a classic, is a parody Communist takeover and of life under Communism. I am surprised that I had never read this book before. It was not assigned to me in middle school or in high school. I found it sitting on my shelf, but evidently it had belonged to my stepsister. She had written her name and our home phone, in the old "SC3-xxxx" format

Many people are no doubt familiar with the basic story line. All that I can say is at some point in most peoples lives they should read it. My one quibble; their should have been an appendix listing the animal's species and names. I often had to return to the book's beginning to remember who the pigs were, etc.

What Orwell would say is it all books are equal, but some are more equal than others.

 

[Darkwind]

I don't really have much time to read for pleasure anymore.

I'm currently reading "SolidWorks 2025 Guide for Beginners".

I am rereading "The Wheel of Time" series but through audio and only when I'm traveling back and forth to work.

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View on War and Morality by Shlomo M. Brody. It was an important book but by no means an easy read. It's material was utterly unfamiliar to me. The 30,000 foot view is that Israel in particular and the civilized Western world in general is fighting asymetrical battles with terrorist groups or on rare occasions countries that consider their own civilians to be cannon fodder. This puts liberal democratic societies at a grave disadvantage since there are daily images of carnage and slaughter. The obvious fact is that October 7, 2023 and September 11, 2001, as well as suicide bombings are themselves carnage and slaughter.

The book attempts the difficult task of untangling the resulting ethical conundrums and concludes that the decision-makers must steel themselves to the blowback.

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading Battle for the Jewish State by Victoria Coates. The book is an extremely good summary of the history of Israel’s struggle for existence, recognition, and normalcy. The author also aptly describes the evolution of the relationship between Israel and the United States from a guarded neutrality to one of deep alliance. The book ends in 2024 and thus does not cover the current struggle with Iran. My quibbles, as a frequently are, are a sprinkling of factual error errors. This tends to lesson readers confidence in the rest of the book. However, I have my own positive beliefs as to the validity of the book’s overall position.

The writing, however, appears prophetic, given the development of a deep injured dependence between our two countries.

 

[lg325]

Poisoned IVIES by Elise Stefanik

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading Maps and Meaning: Levitical Models for Contemporary Care by Rabbis Nancy H. Wiener and Jo Hirschmann. This book was recommended to me by one of the cantors at my synagogue. I must admit it was a difficult read, but I am glad that I read it.

I also must admit that I did not expect the subject to be what it was. I thought it was going to involve geographical maps.The subject was the boundaries between, in Biblical times, the “camp“ and areas “outside the camp“ where people who had certain illnesses were banished until they recovered. The illness is often mistranslated as “leprosy," now known as Hansen's Disease, but the author is pretty clear that it was not leprosy. The parallel story in the book is the modern journey between the world of the well, the world of the hospital and facilities in between. The story of both is largely spiritual, because we do not know the details of the biblical transitions in ancient times.

Maps and Meanings resonated with me for several reasons. The first and most obvious is that I had a very serious health scare as 2024 drew to close and 2025 began. For the first New Year’s Eve since I was married in 1991, I was not at home with my wife. I was in the hospital, where my gastroenterologist was implanting a bile duct stench. He suspected that I was ill with pancreatic cancer, and fortunately, the biopsies proved otherwise. There were definitely spiritual aspects to the journey. I was visited at the hospital by the Jewish chaplain. Two days later, after my discharge, I had a 1/2 hour long session with the Rabbi, before Shabbat services, where we discussed treatment or non-treatment alternatives in the event of an unfavorable outcome.

I will leave it to people to read and try to absorb the book. It was very worthwhile. even if I did not totally understand everything.

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt. I will echo the usual unremediable criticisms such as speculating on what was said and by whom a half-millennium ago. The book was replete with "might have," "likely," and similar cautionary terms. This to me is a refreshing reminder that the author can have very broad knowledge and performed deep research, but is stuck with speculation. This was book was a rare opportunity for a work of nonfiction about the English Renaissance to be a gripping page turner. It seemed to give again me the rare privilege of reading English classical plays with the help of a smart high school teacher. Obviously I have not had this pleasure since the early 1970s when I was a high school student.

Mr. Greenblatt focused on one problem of higher education that stubbornly exists to this day. An excerpt:

Elizabethan Oxford and Cambridge were witnessing an influx of the wealthy. The change was noticed and lamented by contemporaries. Colleges, an Elizabethan observer wrote in 1577, "were erected... at the first, only for poor men's sons...: but now they have the least benefit of them, by reason the rich do so encroach upon them." A visitor to Oxford and Cambridge colleges today sees some surviving medieval quadrangles but also many far more than serving as parish priests, local clerks, schoolmasters, or college tutors. The tantalizing fantasy of secular advancement was still there—the dream of emerging from nowhere to become an imposing figure in the state-but it functioned largely to produce a lingering sense of disappointment and bitterness among those whose imaginations it had seized. A class of alienated intellectuals was in the making.

I had earlier read this author's book The Swerve. Both books are great, meriting either a four or five stars, though they could not be more different. This book was about a specific author and some satellite authors; the other book was a "big history" book about the emergence of Europe from the dark days in the Middle Ages.

Both were educating and illuminating.

 

[lg325]

Just started Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State of America, by Heather Cox Richardson

 

[Zavulon]

"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. So far it's a nice masterpiece of the "advanced imperialism" literature.

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America's Elite Universities by Elise Stefanik. Congresswoman Stefanie laid out the recent history of deterioration of Ivy League and similar colleges. These colleges out tolerated violence and bullying against Jewish people, and political conservatives. This book is a brilliant expose specifically of the mishandling of the wave of anti-Jewish campus activity in the wake of the October 7, 2023 massacres and generally of rising discrimination against Jews and other successful minority groups.

The book focused on Harvard, Columbia and university of Pennsylvania,whose presidents she questioned under oath before her Congressional committee. They were shorter segments on other colleges such as Yale and Brown. It was also a discussion of colleges that have handled matters well, including Dartmouth and Vanderbilt.

As many know, Congresswoman Stefanik asked questions of college presidents as to whether or not antisemitic bullying and violence would violate campus codes of conduct. The president uniform said “it depends on the context.“ The thesis of her book is that there is an absence of any concept of right or wrong on many, but not all campuses.

My criticism of the book is that in my view, having gone to an Ivy League college in the second half of the 1970s, there were similar problems. Without a functioning Internet, they just were not as well known. Additionally, the book lays out societal suggestions, but no guidance for parents whose children are approaching college age. I give this book a 4 1/2, rounded down to four.