Book Reports

When Harold found himself inside a tesseract after having entered a cave, I was reminded of the film "Interstellar." "Interstellar's" Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) traveled millions of lightyears from an outlying star system, via tesseract, to the wall outside of his daughter Murphy's bedroom on earth.

In the next box was the UCLA student paper, The Daily Entity. It had been the Daily Bruin until a few years before when a student from Marin County, who claimed to be part Cherokee, demanded the name be changed because bears were sacred to his people.

The Russian conspirators are confident of prevailing. Why? The US is culturally weak. Says a Russian conspirator, "While the Americans are fighting over their pronouns, digital passports, and a social credit system, we will change the world order."

Whatever the level of stress that arises to challenge a community, the example of the Mountain Meadows Massacre highlights the need for all citizens to be able to think critically... to hold fast, even if it requires challenging authority, to timeworn moral principles during times when the social contract is taxed.

Bryson's prose is easy and breezy. This short book reads incredibly fast. There is so much mystery to Shakespeare's life... so little documentation. Bryson recounts numerous stories of the tedious research of parish and City of London records by Shakespeare-philes (sic) to better document the bard's life.

Brown's account of this thirty-two-day snowshoe trek, abbreviated in most Donner Party accounts, is riveting.

"A Farewell to Arms" reflects reality in its depiction of a male and female relationship, where, though Henry is stronger physically, Catharine compensates with her clever, capable womanly wiles and female seductive qualities. The male/female dynamic in "A Farewell to Arms" offers a welcome dose of verisimilitude in contrast to modern male/female narratives where culture seems to force women to adopt male traits at the expense of women optimizing their feminine differences.

Speculating about whether a divided nation can survive, El Akkad tells an audacious but credible tale of America's coming apart. Recommend.

"Steve, all your preparations for "doomsday" are all well and good, but do you really think that you'll be able to resist, or keep at bay, "The Book of Eli People?"

"Endurance," published in 1959 and reissued frequently is a well told tale about how a leader can effectively manage a group under circumstances unimaginable to most people. It is a great book for young people to read in an age where there are more incentives to be narcissistic than to be selfless, where selflessness and not narcissism remains a key trait required to enable human progress.

...a sniper duel with the cocky - and skilled - Syrian in Montenegro. Carr's ability to depict Reece in the worst possible situation while saving him in a surprise deus ex machina kept this reader on the edge of his seat.

Reading this book isn't so much like reading as taking part in a myriad of simultaneous conversations as the characters argue, debate, fall in and out of love, drink champagne in cellar bars, and go dancing till the early hours of the Paris morning.