Reading List

[Chief]

I believe you can tell a lot about a person by examining what they read. I read enough that one of the projects I completed earlier this year is a set of built-in book cases in our living room. I'm almost out of room in it already... I'm fortunate to have inherited a lot of books from family, and my collection grows in direct proportion to the number of times my wife allows me unrestricted access to Powell's...

Here is my reading over the last year or so...

On Deck now.

“The Looming Tower A-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11", Lawrence Wright

"Biggest Ever Bathroom Reader, volume II" Uncle John ( in the guest can...)

In Waiting

“Skinny Dip” Carl Hiaasen
“Chapterhouse Dune” Frank Herbert
“Will” the autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy

On the Bookshelf (already read and available for loan...)

“Eaters of the Dead”. Michael Crichton

“Breakdown” Bill Gertz

“Scimitar SL-2” Patrick Robinson

“My FBI” Judge Louis J. Freeh

“The Gathering Storm” Sir Winston S. Churchill
“The Grand Alliance” ditto
“Their Finest Hour” ibid

If you read nothing else this year, you should read "The Gathering Storm". I will lend the hardcover on request to responsible parties.

The Ezekiel Option” Joel C. Rosenberg
“The Copper Scroll” ditto

“31 Days, The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today” Barry Werth (Good read on the Ford transition after Nixon stepped down.. I was on a carrier, the USS Ranger, off of Yankee Station when Nixon resigned, and the specifics of how Ford succeeded to the Presidency were a mystery until I read this book.)

“1776” David McCullough Washington's worst year of the revolution.

“The Pillars of Creation” Terry Goodkind

“Shibumi” Trevanian

“The Arms of Krupp” William Manchester (Incredible story of the family that single handedly supplied arms to nearly every warring party in Europe for several centuries....)

"American Caesar” ditto The definitive biography of General Douglas MacArthur.

Periodicals

I read both the Oregonian and the Columbian every day; some consider that a merit, others apostasy...

National Geographic Magazine

Smithsonian Magazine

On line subscriptions

US Naval Institute’s “Proceedings”

The American Spectator

Just presented for reference, folks. I'll update as I find other interesting things to add....

Chief

[psumom]

I have started listening to audio books, while I work. Unabridged.

I just finished Avenger, by Frederick Forsyth. I loved it. I may have to listen again to get all of the details.

I also loved Watchers by Dean Koontz. Easy to follow along.

I have listened to most of Stephen Kings Dark Tower books. I love Stephen King.

While I try to discipline myself to only listening while I am working, I broke down and listened to Dreamcatcher (Stephen King) 24/7, until it was finished.

Oh.. The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell was delightful! I listened to it twice.

[Chief]

Made a new find today, at costco of all places.

"Pearson Field, Pioneering Aviation in Vancouver and Portland", by Bill Alley. It's paperback, and only 128 pages, but it is packed full of vintage pictures of this area from the 1920's on, when Pearson field was about the only thing in Vancouver. Pretty nice little coffee table book.

[Chief]

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb", Richard Rhodes, Simon and Shuster, 1986

I stumbled across this in Powells last week, and I haven't been able to put it down! It's a thick book; 885 pages, and just fascinating.

The books I've read on this subject in the past usually cover the Manhattan Project onward. This starts much earlier than that. Mr. Rohodes documents the earliest discoveries and experiments that were done from the mid 1800's ("Why does that stuff glow??), and documents the earliest efforts of some of the greatest minds in the world to understand nuclear energy, and their flight from Nazi Germany and the struggle to prevent Hitler from getting the atomic bomb first. The pictures include a lot of photos that I've never seen before, as well as the actual sketches, and drawings of the earliest test devices that ultimately changed the world.

Certainly not a subject that eveyone can appreciate, but those with a technical or math background will enjoy this immensely...

[Chief]

Good Lord!!

I'm to the point in "Making of the Atomic Bomb" where they are starting to get nervous about the potential energies that could be released by neutron bombardment of Uranium, and they are trying to determine the differences between U-238, which is relatively stable, and U-235 which is highly un-stable, (and which eventually will become the primary "weaponized" isotope of Uranium).

So the first scientist to actually separate out a sample of U-235, tapes the sample to a letter, and frickin' mails it to his associate across the Country for testing!!! Regular mail, no shielding whatsoever. He just dropped the letter in the mailbox and sent it on it's way...

How times have changed, eh??! Try that today and you'll end up in Guantanamo...

[Chief]

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It

http://www.amazon.com/America-Alone-End-World-Know/dp/0895260786

Book Description
In this, his first major book, Mark Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.

From the Inside Flap
It’s the end of the world as we know it…

Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are.

And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"—while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn’t violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.

If you think this can’t happen, you haven’t been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn—the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world—shows to devastating effect in this, his first and eagerly awaited new book on American and global politics.

The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West—wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion—is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.

Europe, laments Steyn, is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America alone—with maybe its cousins in brave Australia. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world’s last best hope.

Steyn argues that, contra the liberal cultural relativists, America should proclaim the obvious: we do have a better government, religion, and culture than our enemies, and we should spread America’s influence around the world—for our own sake as well as theirs.

Mark Steyn’s America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny—but it will also change the way you look at the world. It is sure to be the most talked-about book of the year.


Let me tell you, I finally got to this last night, and I can hardly put it down! This isn't a long book at all; more of an extended Essay, and it is captivating reading!

Just go get a copy and read it now!

[Chief]

Just in time for Christmas!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Hannibal-Rising-Thomas-Harris/dp/0385339410
Thomas Harris' "Hannibal Rising"

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Discover the origins of one of the most feared villains of all time in Thomas Harris's Hannibal Rising, a novel that promises to reveal the "evolution of Hannibal Lecter's evil." Thomas Harris first introduced readers to Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon, a tale wrapped around FBI agent Will Graham (the man who hunted Lecter down) and his ability to "get inside the mind of the killer." Graham consults Dr. Lecter (the man who nearly killed him) on the case, and the legend of the nefarious Dr. Lecter was born. Harris's masterful and mesmerizing follow up, The Silence of the Lambs wowed fans, but it was Jonathan Demme's terrifying, Oscar-winning (Best Actor, Actress, Director, Picture and Adapted Screenplay) film, and Anthony Hopkins's extraordinary (and arguably over the top) performance that made "Hannibal the Cannibal" a household name. Hannibal, the third book in the Lecter saga made Lecter the prey and seemingly wrapped up the tale of the cannibalistic psychiatrist, but never revealed the source of the doctor's...gifts. Fans have been waiting decades to find out how the good doctor became "death's prodigy," making Hannibal Rising one of the most anticipated books of 2006 (and movies of 2007). --Daphne Durham



Fifteen bucks at Costco.
;D

[Chief]

I pickied up somehting new at Costco today (but I'll show that data Amazon has)

"The White Cascade: The Great Norhtern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche" by Gary Krist

We hear of avalanches now and then, taking to their deaths skiers or climbers, but as disasters they are these days relatively small scale. That was not the case on the night of 1 March 1910, when bizarre weather in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State brought down an avalanche that was half a mile wide. In its path were two trains pinned in by the snowstorms, and the cars were hurled down a mountain. The official death count was 96, although the number is an estimate, and the toll on the wounded and on the rescuers cannot be tallied. Gary Krist, whose previous books have been fiction, has become a historian of this disaster, telling it with a novelist's skill in _The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche_ (Henry Holt). The disaster was not, as Krist modestly admits, the "Avalanche That Changed America", because it was in many ways just one aspect of changes that were happening in railroading at the time anyway. It remains, however, a gripping tale of human endeavor against natural forces; it is all historical fact, but Krist has produced a page-turner.

[dlarn]

READINGS SUGGESTED BY *THOMAS SOWELL, PhD* - AUTHOR, ECONOMIST, PROFESSOR, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER

(from his web-site: http://www.tsowell.com/SuggestedRead.htm)

** People who want to get a basic understanding on a particular subject, or who simply want to educate themselves more generally, often ask for a list of suggested readings. There are innumerable outstanding writings on many subjects but plainly written books that can take the reader from square one — little or no previous knowledge of the subject — to a fundamental understanding of the issues involved are all too rare. Here are some that I would recommend.**

(Of the books on this list, I have read "Choosing the Right College," FDR's Folly," "History of the American People," "Mexifornia," and "Modern Times"--all excellent!)


The Americans by Daniel Boorstin

A very readable history of the social and economic evolution of the American people, from colonial times to the twentieth century.


Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

An easy to read introduction to economics without graphs, equations or jargon.


Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell

A collection of long essays challenging prevailing beliefs about blacks, Jews, slavery, Germans, and education.


Choosing the Right College by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute

By far the best guide to colleges, including the presence or absence of political correctness. Shows little-known colleges with outstanding education and big-name institutions with little or no curriculum.


City Economics by Brendan O'Flaherty

An excellent and very readable introduction to the use of economic analysis in general, with urban problems as the focus. A few graphs and a few technical terms may bother some people with no knowledge of economics but even they can get something from this book.


Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies by Gregory Jackson

Devastating facts contradicting popular liberal notions. Ideal for de-programming students who have been indoctrinated in schools and colleges.

Equality, Delusion, and the Third World by Peter Bauer

One of the best debunkings of fashionable beliefs about Third World countries and foreign aid by an economist with both sharp insights and personal experience.


FDR's Folly by Jim Powell

A factual study of the actual consequences of New Deal welfare state programs, in painful contrast to their rhetoric.


The Federalist by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay

Essays explaining in plain English the reasons for the various provisions in the Constitution of the United States by three men who helped write the Constitution. A rare combination of wisdom, knowledge and common sense.


The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill

A history of the events and misconceptions that led to World War II. Very relevant to the misconceptions of our own time, which are remarkably similar.


History of the American People by Paul Johnson

A complete history of the United States, political and economic, foreign and domestic by one of the best writers and best minds of our time.


Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple

An incisive and brutally honest eye-witness account of the social degeneracy created by the welfare state among the white underclass in Britain-- remarkably similar to the social pathology in American ghettoes but without such supposed causes as slavery or racism.


Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson

A must-read book for anyone who wants to understand the actual consequences of our policies toward Mexican immigration and toward people of Mexican ancestry in the United States. A gem for its combination of knowledge, insight, compassion, and utter frankness on a subject too often discussed elsewhere in political spin and media cant.


Modern Times by Paul Johnson

A wise and knowledgeable international history of the past two centuries by one of the most readable and accomplished writers of our time.


The Rise of the West by William H. McNeill

A scholarly but readable history of the rise of both Western and non-Western civilizations from ancient times to the present.


They Made America by Harold Evans

An illustrated coffee-table book with the inspiring story of the American inventions that revolutionized life in the United States and beyond.


Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind by Lawrence E. Harrison

An account of the reasons for Latin America's economic lags far behind the United States, Western Europe or Japan. Written by a man who once believed conventional explanations before he went to live in Latin America as an official trying to help its economic development.


What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis

A small book presenting a top scholar's very readable account of the history that led the Islamic world from its pinnacles of achievement in the past to its present pathology and poisonous and dangerous hatreds.

[Chief]

My latest addition (from the Costco cheep books aisle, of course!) is The Clinton Crack-up   the boy president's life after the white house  by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

Mr. Tyrrell is the Executive Editor and Founder of the American Spectator, and has long been a chronicaler of everything Clintonian, and this book is nothing less.  As it turns out, Tyrrell's Great-Great-Grandfather was a Secret Service Agent himself, and was personally responsible for apprehending a group of men who were attempting to seize the body of Abraham Lincoln, and hold it hostage for $200,000 and other favors; for which he received personal recognition from the Lincoln family.  That fact has garnered a great deal of respect for the USSS by Mr. Tyrrell, and they for him.  That kind of close familial relationship makes him the channel for a lot of experienced former and current Secret Service personnel and Clinton military support people to vent their collective frustrations about how badly they have been treated, and are being treated by both of the Clintons during his presidency, and after.

This book is almost a treatise of reasons why Hillary both doesn't deserve a shot at the Presidency, and a preview of how she will likely be shot down in flames when she tries...I'm only up to Chapter 4, "Pardongate", and I'm already highlighting passages to talk about later. The Prologue, entitled "O! Canada" is screamingly funny, sad, and serious all at once.

This book is a must read.  R. Emmett Tyrrell has been my favorite Political author, as well as the most handsomely articulate and funny user of the English Language that it has been my pleasure to read for decades, and I would never give you a steer to a bad book....

Pick this one up....

;D

[Chief]

Today's new addition is courtesy of Costco's book table...

"The Children of Hurin" by J.R.R. Tolkien edited by Christopher Tolkien

Anyone who has read Tolkien extensively (like I have...) will recognize this book from the Notebooks of J.R.R. Tolkien that his son previously published in some 12 Volumes.....from the Preface:

" This book is thus primarily addressed to such reades as may perhaps recall that the hide of Shelob was so horrendously hard that it 'could not be pierced by any strength of men, not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the hand of Beren or of Turin wield it", or that Elrond named Turin to Frodo at Rivendell as one of "the mighty Elf friends of old'; but know no more of him"

Top of my reading list....

;D

[Charlie]

My Reading List
Currently working on medical book called “Stupid Reason People Die” by Dr Corso, Religious book call “My Way of Life” pocket edition of the Summa by St. Thomas, and “Words that Work” by Dr. Frank Luntz. Have Office 2007 so have been working on learning the system using step by step guides. Need to find a good fiction book for summer reading.

[Chief]

I have 2 recommendations for you, both available at Costco...

"Strike Force" Dale Brown...his latest in the continuing saga of Gen. Patcick McLanahan, sole survivor of the "Flight of the Old Dog", in a new novel with the latest hi-tech Air Force hardware, against the Iraninas...it's a page-burner.... ;D

The second is not Fiction....

"Scorpion Down...Sunk by the Soviets, buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion" by Ed Offley

USS Scorpion is the 2nd US Navy Subamarine to be lost, after USS Thresher. I haven't started it yet, but I did scan through some of the tables and photos....this is also going to be a page burner....

Enjoy!

;D

[Charlie]

Thanks will look for them

[Chief]

Ronald Reagan, unvarnished

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0507/4078.html

Hell is “h—l.” Damn is “d—n.” Nancy Reagan is “Mommie,” and “my guardian angel.” The vice president is “George B.,” and occasionally “Geo. B.”

“The Reagan Diaries,” a 767-page flashback to be published Tuesday, shows the 40th president as few people knew him, jotting with blunt candor and clarity during quiet times on Air Force One and in the privacy of the second-floor study off his White House bedroom.

The meticulous handwritten entries in five leather-bound volumes, now condensed to one for publication, provide thought bubbles for the iconic photographs of the Reagan presidency, showing what he was really thinking day by day through two terms of self-styled sunny optimism and peace through strength, with his trademark jelly beans on the side.

Essentially, a long letter the president wrote to himself, the diaries ran 450,000 words. Edited into one hardback volume by historian Douglas Brinkley, they also capture a Ronald Wilson Reagan who was more engaged in the details of summits and budget talks than has usually been portrayed, and who was remarkably emotional about the youngsters and grieving families who so regularly cross a president’s path.

“Met with High School Honor students from all over the country who are winners in a competition sponsored by Hearst people,” he wrote. “Did Q&A. I hated to leave.”

About an encounter with families of those who died in the 1983 terrorist bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut, he noted he could only “grip their hands – I was too choked up to speak.”

And during a trip to Moscow in 1988, he wrote: “Our people had an idea about us going out on the street to be seen by the people – our goal a kind of set up where children could be photo’d with Disney type animals. It was amazing how quickly the street was jammed curb to curb with people – warm, friendly people who couldn’t have been more affectionate. In addition to our S.S. [Secret Service] the KGB was on hand & I’ve never seen such brutal manhandling as they did on their own people who were in no way getting out of hand.”

Reagan was 93 when he died on June 5, 2004. Brinkley writes in an introduction that Reagan “had neat, rounded handwriting, done in ink that is variously blue or black.” Brinkley calls Reagan “a master of the art of summary,” and recalls that that when he began reading the entries, the late president’s “familiar, plain-spoken, direct tones were back.”

To ready the books for Brinkley’s editing, Michael J. Duggan, the supervisory archivist of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, typed one of the volumes into a Dell computer in the library’s vault. Kathy Osborne, who had been Reagan’s private assistant, did the other four. Proofreading took three months. And the National Security Council at the White House took about two months to determine how much had to remain classified – only about six or seven pages of text, sprinkled a sentence here and there over more than 800 pages.

Duggan said the first two volumes were covered in slightly different material than the last three, which clearly had been ordered together once Reagan’s staff realized he was going to be so faithful about his writing.

“He didn’t waste any paper,” Duggan said in a telephone interview. “He usually wrote down to the bottom of the page, and as he started getting to the end of a volume, he started writing smaller and smaller to get more in.”

Readers of “The Reagan Diaries” (HarperCollins, $35) will learn that the president and Nancy Reagan often watched CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Diplomatic mumbo jumbo is stripped away: “Kadafi must be insane.” There are occasional misspellings (“familys” for “families”), but they are rare.

And Reagan could be thorough. When he’s in Bethesda Naval Hospital having polyps removed in 1985, he notes a 5:15 a.m. “bathroom call.”

Once in awhile, the reader sees the flicker of conflict. One Sunday in 1983, he wrote, “Went to church. We kept it a secret until the very last minute. It felt good. … Nancy phoned – very upset. Ron casually told the S.S. he was going to Paris in a few days. I don’t know what it is with him. He refuses to cooperate with them. … I’m not talking to him until he apologizes for hanging up on me.”


**SCHNIPP**

Maybe I can finally cash in that Barnes & Noble gift card I still have from Christmas....

;D

[Chief]

Newest addition, courtesy of the Costco Book Aisle...

"Legacy of Ashes The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner

Weiner takes the CIA all the way back to it's inception after WWII, in the Truman Administration, and progresses forward by President...

He is merciless in his review of the long, long, turbulent history, and details out the many fatally flawed Operations that the CIA undertook. I'm only in the Eisenhower Administration right now, and already the body count is too high to keep track of...

A lot of his material is based upon the recently declassified CIA documents, and it is a grim recital of what it took to defeat Communism...

Worth a read...

[Chief]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This is one of the darkest books in the series yet. I'm only on page 78, and JK Rowling has already killed her third character!! I have avoided all of the spoilers on the internet, and I refuse to read ahead, and I intend to enjoy the entire book...this one is definitely a step beyond where all of the previous books have gone.

And I don't believe this is the end of the series for a moment...

;D

[Chief]

I just pulled this book back out a couple of weeks ago, and finished rereading it over the weekend. It's been several years since I first read this tale, and wanted to brush up on Cuba a little.

"Bay of Pigs the Untold Story" by Peter Wyden, first published in 1979.

This book tells the story about the entire evolution of the Bay of Pigs disaster, from it's inception under Allen Dulles at CIA during the Eisenhower Administration, to the disastrous invasion itself, 90 days into the new Kennedy Administration, to the release of the last of the Brigade from Cuban prisons in the late 1970's.

This is why relations with Cuba are the way they are, and why the United States will never reconcile with Cuba as long as Fidel Castro still draws breath.

Well worth reading, and should be easily found at Powell's or at Amazon.com.

[Waterbuffalo]

Is that Author a relation to the our Esteemed Oregon Senator?

[Chief]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/51Wk5WfPSL._SS500_.jpg

:o




Our Ann...

;D

[Chief]

While I was at Costco today, I picked up a cop of Gonn and Hal Iggledon's "The Dangerous Book for Boys".

What a book!! they have a website, so please go check this out, I simply cannot do it justice with my own words. This book is probably the best gift that you could ever give a son, nephew, grandson, or any young man of your acquaintance...

http://www.dangerousbookforboys.com/

;D

[Waterbuffalo]

Ive heard of this book some where before and from what i remember, I'll add my sentiments in the same way..

[Chief]

My newest addition, once again courtesy of the Costco book aisle, is the long anticipated sequel to "Pillars of the Earth"....

"World Without End" by Ken Follett...1014 pages...

This picks up 2 centuries after the citizens of the Priory of Kingsbridge finished building thier massive Cathedral in twelfth centurey England, and that's all I know for now. Good thing this was finally published as I was in need of something hefty to read...

;D

[Waterbuffalo]

1000 pages? eeks..

Is that book double spaced? Have a happy and long read.. I'll get back to my google searches.

[Chief]

No; that's kind of the attraction to Ken Follett novels, long, and intricately woven tales...

[Waterbuffalo]

"Men" books eh? Some thing that will keep you enrapted until the very last page. Sounds like a good choice of reading.

[Chief]

Another addition from the Airport Way Costco...."Bridges of Portland" by Ray Bottenberg, $12.95.

This is a small paperback book of 127 referenced pages, and is mostly pictures of the construction of the bridges across the Willamette and the Columbian in this area. there are some excellent pictures of the Interstate Nridges (both of them) under construction, and I think could really benefit people who are trying to understand the scope of the replacement bridge project.

Fascinating reading with a ton of period photographs that document how one goes about constructing these bridges we take so much for granted...

;D

[Chief]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465002420?tag=theradioequal-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0465002420&adid=1HYR30FFBVSKS7ST6DQ1&

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from the National Review (Hardcover)
by William F. Buckley (Author)

Book Description
Four decades of William F. Buckley Jr.'s famous (and infamous) wit in a volume that will be the political gift book of the season.

Who knew that William F. Buckley Jr., the quintessential conservative, invented the blog decades before the World Wide Web came into existence? National Review, like nearly all magazines, has always published letters from readers. In 1967 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and Buckley, the editor, began a column called "Notes & Asides," in which he personally answered the most notable and outrageous letters.

The selections in this book, culled from four decades of these columns, include exchanges with such figures as Ronald Reagan, Eric Sevareid, Richard Nixon, A. M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies.

About the Author
William F. Buckley Jr. is the author of fifty previous works of fiction and nonfiction. The founder and former editor-in-chief of National Review and former host of "Firing Line," he has been one of the intellectual leaders of the right since the 1950s. His syndicated column, "On the Right," began in 1962 and appears in newspapers around the country. He served as a CIA agent in the early 1950s, helped found the Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H.W. Bush in 1991. An avid sailor and harpsichordist, he lives in Stamford, Connecticut, and New York City.

;D

[Chief]

http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12230

The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington
By Robert D. Novak
(Crown Forum, 662 pages, $29.95)

"I am not a person who is easy for a lot of people to like," Bob Novak writes early in this not-massive-enough memoir. But how can anyone ever dislike someone who never fails to make an impression, and always with an economy of words and never by shooting his mouth off?

I remember the first time I met him. It was early June 1983, in a conference room at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, where my magazine was hosting a dozen or so visiting British and European journalists and such eminences as Novak, Chris Matthews, and Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post had kindly come by to brief them on U.S. politics. One problem: the visitors were nowhere to be found. "I'm getting angry, I'm getting angry," Novak soon enough let on, drumming his fingers on the table in front of his chair and giving me a look that could kill. The session was to have begun promptly at 1 p.m. Our visitors didn't stagger in from their three-beer lunches until about 10-15 minutes later, oblivious to the insult they'd caused. Fortunately, the storm clouds lifted, Novak gave an expert presentation (certainly better than Matthews's hammering away at "the gender gap"), answered questions, and soon was off to his next designation.

One thing was immediately clear. This was a no-nonsense professional, someone who works very hard, can't afford to waste time, yet is also generous with it, as I've had occasion to observe many times since. Whenever I come across Michael Kinsley's famous slam at Novak, "Underneath the ass---- is a nice guy, but underneath the nice guy is another ass----," I cringe, not just for Kinsley's sake, who for all we know was projecting, but for Novak's, who has probably suffered more abuse than any journalist in Washington history, the recent Plame nonsense being merely the latest example. Typically, though, in a memoir that has some wonderfully blunt things to say about numerous Washington personages, Novak never responds to Kinsley in kind. Not even close. Underneath it all is a well-mannered gentleman.

[Chief]

They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books (Hardcover)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/41CHDY8VARL_SS500_.jpg

The London Review of Books began accepting personal ads in 1998, and immediately began attracting some of the most unusual people, including a man who was "On the lookout for a contortionist who plays the trumpet". They published a hilariously funny collection of the best of those ads under the sbuject title earlier this year, and I think the book will make an excellent gift for a reader with a sense of humor on my Christmas List this year...

A sampling:

"They call me Naughty Lola. Run-of-the-mill beardy phsicist (M, 46). Box no. 4023"

"Virtually complete male, 63, seeks woman with spares and shed. Box no. 7923"

"Grave disappointment all round would like to meet serious mistake in a nightie. Box no. 6453"

"Blah, blah, whatever. Indifferent woman. Go ahead and write. Box no. 3253. Like I care."

"Unashamed triumphalist male for the past 46 years. Will I bore you? Probably. Do I care? Probably not. Box no.4321"

Buy the book...

;D

[Waterbuffalo]

<Evil Snerk and grin..>

Boy that sounds like a hoot!

[Chief]

My daughter gave me a book for my birthday called "The Book of Bad Habits", (which is where the evil Nun pics come from...) so I owe her one. She's still single and has a twisted sense of humor like I do, so she can appreciate the humor in this one...

;D

[Chief]

http://www.tosettherecordstraight.com/

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/cover2.jpg

To Set The Record Straight

How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the
New Media Defeated John Kerry

by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler

Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid became the catalyst for an unprecedented political movement by Vietnam veterans who had long resented his false 1971 testimony that U.S. troops were routinely committing war crimes.

Despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party and its media affiliates, they succeeded in reaching out to the public and turning the presidential campaign upside down.

Here, for the first time, is the complete story of how - and why - they did it.

During the Vietnam War, the original television networks and the leading liberal newspapers were near the peak of their formidable persuasive powers, able to dominate public opinion to an extent difficult to imagine today. In an age without cable news networks, popular conservative radio shows or the Internet, they were the only game in town. What these organizations chose to cover became news, and what they ignored did not. They used that power to instill Kerry's false portrait of American veterans as misfits, drug addicts and baby killers into the popular culture.

When John Kerry made his service in Vietnam the cornerstone of his presidential campaign in 2004, the wounds he had inflicted on millions of Vietnam veterans were re-opened. Many decided they could no longer stand by in silence while a man who had repeated the propaganda of America's enemies rose to the position of Commander-in-Chief.

Kerry and his advisors believed that their old media allies would suppress any challenge to their version of what Kerry had done during his time in Vietnam and in the antiwar movement. It didn't work out that way.

----------

To Set the Record Straight is the inside story of how an ad hoc collection of veterans and activists overcame their opponents' efforts to silence and marginalize them, and delivered the explosive truth about John Kerry's past to the public. It is a story of justice and vindication long delayed, of an insurgent assault on the old media by a new wave of online reporters, and of the long struggle of America's Vietnam veterans to make their way home.


Buy the book...

[Chief]

Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card--and Lose (Hardcover)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/21G8HNec7L_AA180_.jpg

I don't know if you're familiar with Larry Elder, but he's a conservative, leaning Liberatarian, but he has some very strong things to say about Black Men in this country, and how different groups of them act stupidly...

Hannity interviewed Larry Elder today, and hearing what he had to say is what sparked my interest in this book.

On order...

[Chief]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/retribution.jpg

"RETRIBUTION The Battle for Japan, 1944-45" Max Hastings, 615pp, Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York, Costco Books, $15.00

Much has been written about the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Empire on December 7th, 1941, but few people realize that the Pacific war largely languished as a series of holding actions, retreats, and surrenders by Allied forces from Burma through China to the Phillipines, until after Adolph Hitler's suicide in April of 1944.

Unitl then the Allies had waged war using a "Europe First" focus, largely at the insistence of Winston Churchill, and once the Reich surrendered the full force of the Allied war machine came to bear upon the Japanese. This book is about that final year, from April 1944 until August of 1945.

[Chief]

I guess now that it's Fall, I should update my Summer reading list.

I went on Amazon last Spring and ordered half of Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharp series, and ended up ordering the other half a couple of months later.

Cornwell takes his hero Richard Sharp, and starts him off in the first novel as a Private in His Majesty's British Army, serving in India, and gets him flogged nearly to death, saved at the last moment for a special mission, and ends up promoted to Sargent.

From there, Sharp is promoted to Lieutenant for saving the life of Lord Wellington, and is promoted on up the ranks in the British Officer Corps, fighting at every major battle during the Napoleonic Wars along the way, concluding at the Battle of Waterloo, with every new novel. Part of the attraction of these novels is that Cornwell includes significant historical details of major battles that really were fought against Napoleon during this timeframe.

The BBC made 14 mini-movies based upon the Sharp novels, starring Sean Bean in the leading role. Yhey aren't the greatest movies ever made, but if you're familiar with the books you can appreciate the movies even more.

Here's the list of the novels, in order, if you care to look into this series.


Sharpe's Tiger, Richard Sharp and the Siege of Serringapatam, 1799

Sharpe's Triumph, Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

Sharpe's Fortress, Richard Sharpe and the Seige of Gawilghur, December 1803

Sharpe's Trafalgar, Richard Sharp and the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805

Sharpe's Rifles, Richard Sharpe and the French invasion of Galicia, January 1809

Sharpe's Eagle, Richard Sharpe and the Talavera Campaign, July 1809

Sharpe's Gold, Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida, August 1810

Sharpe's Battle, Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, May 1811

Sharpe's Company, Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812

Sharpe's Sword, Richard Sharp and the Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812

Sharpe's Enemy, Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812

Sharpe's Honour, Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813

Sharpe's Regiment, Richard Sharpe and the Invasion of France, June to November 1813

Sharpe's Siege, Richard Sharpe and the Winter Campaign, 1814

Sharpe's Revenge, Richard Sharpe and the Peace of 1814

Sharpe's Waterloo, Richard Sharpe and the Waterloo Campaign, June 15 to June 18, 1815

Sharpe's Devil, Richard Sharpe and the Emperor, 1820-21

[Chief]

I'm almost done re-reading Tom Clancy's outstanding "Red Storm Rising" from 1984. I was reflecting on how much things may have really changed with Russia and Clancy's tale is about a classic Soviet land war against NATO. It's one of Clancy's best and I've read it at least in part several times....

I also added a few new arrivals to the "to be read' list...in no particular order...

"More information Than You Require" by John Hodgman. This fellow plays "PC" on those Macintosh commercials, and this book is based on the premise that there is always something left to be learned, and covers subjects as diverse as The Past (there is always more of it), The Future (there is still some left), Strange encounters with aliens, how to cook an owl, how to buy a computer from a street vendor; Gambling, the Sport of the Asthmatic man; and The Mole-Men: Are they the new Hoboes?

The ultimate book for the bathroom...mrgrn

Next, David McCullough's "The Great Bridge, The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge". I've read a couple ot McCullough's books including "1776" which I've talked about here before, and his "The Path Between the Seas" about the digging of the Panama Canal. This one promises to be a fascinating study of post Civil War New York, which is the time period that the bridge was built.

And last but not least I picked up a copy of James Patterson's "Against Medical Advice". Mrs. Chieftain and I are both big fans of Patterson's writings and we have all of his Alex Cross novels. This book is the one that Rush has been talking about too...

Once again, many thanks to the Costco book buyer. I've purchased more books at Costco over the years than any other source I can think of....

;)

[Chief]

And for the leftist and media lurkers here, there is this for you...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/BLOG%20IMAGES/BinLaden_BookClub.jpg

;)

[Chief]

I'm almost finished reading "Stormy Weather" by Carl Hiaasen...

My wife and I have read a number of his novels and they are just screamingly funny, and this one is no exception. Carl writes about life in Southern Florida, and his characters are elaborated people from real life that he has met or heard of through his contacts at the Miami Herald. One of his best friends is writer Dave Barry (whom I quote here frequently...) and that should tell you something about Hiaasen's style...

This novel continues the saga of the former Governor of Florida, now known as "Skink" and who subsists on road kill, lives in and around the Everglades, and who has himself tied to a bridge at the exact point where Hurricane Andrew strikes Southern Florida because "...a hurricane is a holy thing..." . There is a corrupt building inspector and a double-wide salesman who ends up dead, and a whole group of people who are trying to rip each other off over the insurance settlement on the dead guy's house, while hiding from the irate hitman whose mother died in one of the trailers that the Salesman sold her after guaranteeing it was hurricane proof, and who is also hunting for the building inspector that certified the grossly deficient tiedown straps on his Mom's trailer...who is busy bloodily botching Santaria animal sacrifices in his garage to his personal god "Chango"...there's even a live cudamundi involved in there someplace, but I don't want to spoil it for you....

I have to refrain from reading this at night, because at times I get to laughing so hard I shake the bed and wake up my wife...

Two thumbs up!!

mrgrn

[Chief]

I picked up another addition to the collection at Costco the other day, and this one is a tremendous find.

It's called "Looking for Lincoln the making of an American Icon" byPhilip Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. with an introduction by Doris Kearns Goodin and a Forward by David Herbert Donald. These are fouth and fifth generation Lincoln Scolars...

This book is the companion piece to a two hour PBS special of the same name that will be aired in the Winter of 2009.

It's an oversized book of 494 pages, and it has hundreds of pictures that have never been seen before, along with hundreds of letters and testimony given by people who knew Lincoln, and who directly witnessed different aspects of the assassination.

This book starts with "Black Easter", the Good Friday murder of President Lincoln, and proceeds from that point to document the enormous National Legend that grew up surrounding Abraham Lincoln.

I'm taking my time reading and absorbing this book and I highly recommend you add this to your collection too...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/Library/lincoln.jpg