5.0 out of 5 starsUPLIFTING – Blends Science, Spiritual, Practical, May 19, 2015
I first encountered Lisa Garr when she reached out to interview me about my Open Source Everything Manifesto, and I found her to be one of the most charming as well as versatile (beyond intelligent – open and creative) interviewers I have ever met. That secured my attention going into the future and now I follow her offerings with great interest.
This book could not be timelier as America the Beautiful – and tens of millions of families — enter a time of great stress and general dysfunction.
I am a huge fan of Ralph Peters, who in addition to his civil war series under his own name and as Owen Parry, is a master strategist and intelligence professional who can find enemy special forces just by looking at a map and thinking. I am not sure he will ever match Cain at Gettysburg 1st (first) Edition by Peters, Ralph published by Forge Books (2012) Hardcover — that book set a new gold standard surpassing The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War (Civil War Trilogy) by six [and I hasten to add, I consider Michael Shaara gifted and only surpassed by Ralph] but I will say this: every book Ralph write surprises and delights, not just with how he delivers intimate details not found in other histories, but how he rights history — his books correct the less than accurate record and magnify what others have missed. His treatment of Early's last stand and Custer's best moment will stand for a very long time as yet another “first” for the author as historian.
This is a five star book with one major point: revolutions don't succeed from mass power, they succeed when mass power is no longer confronted by the armed power of the state because the individual soldiers and police stop defending the status quo. Since I myself have studied revolution extensively, and < Graphic: Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today > is easily found online, I am both impressed by the author's blend of journo-scholarship, and a tad disappointed that he missed some key bits.
5.0 out of 5 starsBEYOND First Aid, Comprehensive It Is March 29, 2015
I've been an offshore sailor since 1988, off and on, and in all that time I have been very frustrated by a wide range of largely mediocre medical references, to the point that I created my own First Aid Afloat reference (one page per issue, description/diagnosis, treatment, photo).
Prior to this book (WARNING NOTICE: this is a small book with SMALL print), my preference has been for The Onboard Medical Guide: First Aid and Emergency Medicine Afloat, in part because it comes with large pages, large print, and lots of white space. While this is the first NEW maritime medicine reference that meets my standards, I would have preferred a larger layout with larger print. This is a cargo pocket book.
Thank having been said, yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Jacobs lecture the US Safety at Sea Seminar in Annapolis — this is the premier US Sailing event of the year — and today I had the further pleasure of an interactive session with the good doctor. I found him to not only be a superb professional, but the perfect gentleman whom I would recommend as a lecturer, mentor, and hands-on trainer.
Use Amazon's “Look Inside the Book” to review the extraordinary table of contents. Books such as Advanced First Aid Afloat, do not satisfy m; while I like the Red Cross online PDF including the color photographs, that could still do with some improvement. What wins me over completely, the small size and print aside, is the very long list of specifics (including multiple pages on fractures and multiple pages on internal injuries) along with the concluding appendices on drugs and assistance sources.
What intense pleasure this book gave me, despite the dull topic: bureaucracy. Anthropologist David Graeber is perhaps best known for Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), which became required reading for the Occupy Wall Street movement. In that book, Graeber showed that the standard explanation for the origins of money, rehearsed in dozens of economics textbooks, was a fairy tale.
Author Steven Druker raises an interesting parallel between computer systems and genetic manipulation. While computer systems – especially those that are life-dependent and life-sustaining – are carefully tested and retested to make sure that no “glitch” or “bug” could cause catastrophic harm, alterations to the far more complex genetic code of plants are made without similar precautions. These novel plants are grown, harvested, and consumed with little or no independent testing.
EDIT: I have placed in bold the paragraph everyone is missing.
Alan Ryan
5.0 out of 5 starsGem of a Book, Author's Synthesis is Priceless, March 6, 2015
I picked this up at Powell's Bookstore in Portland (10 times bigger than Tattered Cover in Denver, both worth going out of your way to visit) and it is a GEM of a book in two ways: the author provides a summary overview of Marxism that is hugely beneficial to anyone looking for a sound critique of capitalism as we know it today; and the author has selected a few pieces by Marx to be read in the original.
Peter Linebaugh's Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance (Spectre) is what forced me to reconsider Marx's critique of capitalism and I recommend that 2014 publication to anyone who wishes to think critically about capitalism today, with this book as a very fine follow-on.
QUOTE (64): “The modern republic attempts to impose political equality upon an economic inequality it has no way of alleviating.
