It Had to be Her

NY Review

I want this blog to only refer to the best. This is second-best, but it will do.

She spent part of her time in Hollywood, which also made second-best good enough.

Who am I talking about? Click here to find out.

Tools and Weapons

This book just came out today, and I got the Kindle version for my Fire tablet.

I just highlighted this "Companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future."

It was written by Microsoft.

The next chapter is about the Cloud, and the Data it contains. This is Big Stuff.

BullShit Jobs

I just got this book, in the Kindle version.

I probably won't read it much, because it merely confirms my personal job experiences.

I have had plenty of these jobs myself and wondered why more people were not complaining about them.

They were not complaining about them, because they were so common. And people know better than bitch about them, for reasons you and I know instinctively.

But I want to add to his analysis, that did not include the Computer industry where I toiled for 20 years (1980-2000). This industry not only created useless jobs no one had imagined before.

It destroyed computer companies in numbers never imagined before. This was not bullshit (that came out of the rear end of a cow) it was a slaughterhouse where the entire bull was consumed, for no apparent reason.

The Dominion of the Dead

This book begins with this introduction::

If I were to try to phrase the principal thesis of this study—a hazardous proposition, to be sure, since a number of diverse theses come together here—I would say that humans bury not simply to achieve closure and effect a separation from the dead but also and above all to humanize the ground on which they build their worlds and found their histories. And since I will be referring to the human rather often in these pages, let me put forward a premise here to the effect that humanity is not a species (Homo sapiens is a species); it is a way of being mortal and relating to the dead. To be human means above all to bury. Vico suggests as much when he reminds us that "humanitas in Latin comes first and properly from humando,burying" (New Science§12). By properly he means essentially and irreducibly. And if I have mentioned Vico more than once already it is because his New Science(1744) is the major inspiration for this study. Certainly it was Vico who first helped me understand how the human is bound up with the humus and why burial figures as the generative institution of human nature, taking the word nature in its full etymological sense (from nasci,"to be born"). As Homo sapiens we are born of our biological parents. As human beings we are born of the dead—of the regional ground they occupy, of the languages they inhabited, of the worlds they brought into being, of the many institutional, legal, cultural, and psychological legacies that, through us, connect them to the unborn.

Hollywood Godfather

I am reading this book on my Fire tablet. highlighting the interesting parts as I go along. This book has quite a few of them.

It begins when he was cut by a champagne bottle in his nightclub in Las Vegas, and he responds by shooting him dead.

Quite a start, huh?

From Bible-Belt to Bellhop

I am referring to the Audio Book An American Tragedy

An innocent young man is raised in an extremely religious family And then becomes a bellhop in a fancy hotel, and grows up fast, encouraged by some active young women who want to teach him the ropes.

An American Tragedy

erican Tragedy

An American TragedyAn American Tragedy

America's first First Lady

This was Dolley Madison and her rise is well documented in The Madisons: America's First Power Couple.

A book I got for nothing as part of my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

The Kindle technology is a miracle, but to benefit from the books you get, you have to read them!

I have since wondered how to understand Dolley. The definition of Emotional intelligence was a big help to my thinking.

Frederic Wehrey

NY Review of Books

This is about Libya, a country I know nothing about, and never want to visit.

But I do like to read, and this is good reading.

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

Amazon

This is a great book, even though at first glance it looks boring. How can algorithms be interesting?

There have been times in my life (more than I care to remember) when I relied on an algorithm when I shouldn't have.

Becoming an Engineer, for example, because everyone thought it was a smart idea, doomed me to a wasted life.

I had a therapist in Silicon Valley, who said I was depressed and recommended Prozac to cure me. And more therapists kept increasing the dosage.

This was a case of the blind leading the blind, and I was fortunate no lasting damage was done.

The History of the Future

Amazon

This book is the War and Peace of our time.

It has a huge cast of characters and enough scene changes to make Tolstoy envious.

It is however very technical, with computers having the best parts.

Addicted to the Military

The Brave Ones

This guy says it all, upfront - being a member of the American Military is not for those completely in their senses, but it is the only life for some.

Or for those who want to write about it later. If you like to read, this book will be hard to put down.

But he overlooks one thing - the military (any military) is built to destroy. Any member of any military is a criminal. And he (or she) knows it.

I knew one of these unfortunates when I was working in Silicon Valley in the Nineties. He had been in Vietnam, leading his platoon through the jungles, and witnessed plenty of atrocities on both sides.

He was suffering from PTSD, but no one in our therapy group knew what that was. We just knew he had some serious problems, that our therapist could not solve.

Finding Dorothy

Amazon

This book speaks to me personally. I read The Wizard of Oz. in the children's section of our local library - with its small furniture, made for young readers.

Back then, children were encouraged to become addicted to reading. And I formed an addiction that has lasted all my life.

Paul Collier and His Vision of How Capitalism Could Be

He wrote The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties

He begins with an honest evaluation of how Capitalism is now, and then proceeds to describe how it could be, if people understood it properly.

I agree with everything he says. And his analysis of Capitalism now is especially acute and original.

He says nothing about the Computer, however, probably because he knows nothing about it. But he should.

It is causing some of our biggest anxieties, and hopes. Unknown to almost everyone.

Almost everyone is pleased to know nothing about everything, and see no reason to change.

A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888–1889

Amazon

This book is about the final days of the Hapsburg empire.

This is what the publisher says about it:

A Nervous Splendor deftly tells the haunting story of the prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten months, “the Western dream started to go wrong.” Other young men with striking intellectual and artistic talents, all as frustrated as the prince, moved through Vienna during this period—among them a young Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siècle. In this book, the bestselling author of The Rothschilds and Thunder at Twilight creates a portrait of a time and place that is “as lush, beguiling, and charming as an emperor’s waltz".

At Home in the World

This is a review, of a book that I have greatly enjoyed.

It could also be considered a exposé, concerning events in her life, and that of her father (an alcoholic) and her mother (who married him to the intense disapproval of her Jewish family).

I just finished reading about how she snuggled into her mother's bed, and exchanged passionate kisses with her.

She was also married to J.D.Salinger, who wrote The Catcher in the Rye.

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Amazon

This was a New York Times Best Seller.

Because the translator give us some excellent English.

She begins by listing the many endings of the Cold War, that preoccupied the USSR, and the US - from 1953 (when Stalin died) to 2014, when Putin became dictator for life.

She is concerned with what really happened to ordinary people.

A Terrible Country

I heard about this months ago, but found, this morning - I had bought it, and downloaded it to my Amazon Fire!

It's about a young man who had once immigrated from the USSR, but has returned to Russia to take care of his Grandmother, who is 89, and senile. 

I recommend it.

Histoty written like a novel

Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

Peter Ackroyd, who wrote this. was someone I never heard of before. and he cleverly wrote his name, in large letters, below an image we could all recognize.

And I must say, he does a job of doing just that.