I am sorry. I falling farther and farther behind in my reviews. I seemingly have time to read but no time to sit down and review what I read. I have 7 or 8 book reviews I need to write.
I am not making any promises for the next few weeks but I just thought I would offer this mea culpa just to let you know I haven’t forgotten about you.
Best,
Kevin
Publishers Weekly
At the start of this gripping suspense novel from Gussin (The Test), two out of three identical girl triplets, nine-year-olds Sammie and Alex Monroe, disappear from a movie theater at a suburban Detroit mall after leaving their sister, Jackie, and a cousin, who go to the theater next door. An FBI team quickly steps in and works closely with the triplets’ sports commentator father, Scott, and his African-American wife, Katie, a physician who investigates child sexual abuse. The red herrings multiply as Scott and Katie try to recall who would want to harm them by taking their daughters. The fear and anguish the Monroes feel as they search for their missing children will resonate with many readers, but others may have trouble with some clumsy prose (“The evil he’d seen in human beings defied logic and exceeded the worst horrors that most people could not even dream”).
The Roots of Obama’s Rage by Dinesh D’Souza
From the Publisher
He’s been called many things: a socialist, a radical fellow traveler, a Chicago machine politician, a prince of the civil rights movement, a virtual second coming of Christ, or even a covert Muslim.
But as New York Timesbestselling author Dinesh D’Souza points out in this shockingly revealing book, these labels merely slap our own preconceived notions on Barack Obama.
The real Obama is a man shaped by experiences far different from those of most Americans; he is a much stranger, more determined, and exponentially more dangerous man than you’d ever imagined. He is not motivated by the civil rights struggles of African Americans in the 1960s—those battles leave him wholly untouched. He is not motivated by the socialist or Marxist propaganda that hypnotized a whole generation of wooly-minded academics and condescending liberals—those concepts also leave him cold.
What really motivates Barack Obama is an inherited rage—an often masked, but profound rage that comes from his African father; an anti-colonialist rage against Western dominance, and most especially against the wealth and power of the very nation Barack Obama now leads. It is this rage that explains the previously inexplicable, and that gives us a startling look at what might lie ahead.
I have read a little about “The Few” – the small band of Royal Air Force fighter pilots who defended Britain against the German Luftwaffe – and have come away with a deep respect for these men. Stephen Bungay’s The Most Dangerous Enemy: An Illustrated History of the Battle of Britain is a wonderful narrative and analysis of the Battle of Britain. This book is a pictorial follow-up of his earlier book entitled The Most Dangerous Enemy: The Definitive History of the Battle of Britain.
The book is 261 pages with roughly 150 b&w and color photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and charts scattered throughout the book. It is divided into three parts: Build-Up; Battle; and Aftermath. Bungay crams a plethora of information into the book. Without going into too much detail, he describes the commanders on both sides and their strategies and tactics to be used in the Battle; how the Battle unfolded, including important events and critical periods for both sides; and the ramifications of the Battle on the rest of the war.
Bungay thoroughly explains each phase of the Battle and how the decisions made in the 1930s affected the Battle. For example, the British made a conscious decision to increase its aircraft production beginning in the mid-1930s. However, the German aircraft industry was not as efficient as the British and the German planners were ill-prepared for the coming war. As a result, the British had more fighters than the Germans and they were able to replace their losses more easily than the Germans – German aircraft manufacturing did not hit its stride until 1943 and 1944.
Bungay’s writing is superb and easy to follow. He does not get too detailed or too broad with his descriptions. A novice of the subject will get a lot from this book, but I think an expert will learn a thing or two.
I highly recommend this wonderful narrative of the Battle of Britain.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discusses City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson and Commentary’s Peter Wehner.
I have the book on my new Kindle and hope to review it here (hope springs eternal, right?) but I wanted to point out Ed’s interesting perspective on the Kindle:
After seven years of blogging, I had almost stopped book reading entirely. Blogging is a process that takes up a considerable amount of attention, and I used to tell myself and others that I had no time left for book reading. Three weeks ago, I bought a Kindle for the First Mate, mainly because the selection of audio books for her was small and the commercial titles rather expensive in CD or cassette format; even the Braille Library is limited in newer releases. The Kindle has a text-to-speech function that works with most Kindle books, and since she’s already used to the computer-generated voice with her PC, she took to it enthusiastically.
After playing with it for a couple of days to get it set up for her use, I decided to buy one for myself — and I love it. In the past couple of weeks, I have read The Road to Serfdom, City of Man, Peter Ferrara’s President Obama’s Tax Piracy, re-read The Three Musketeers, The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, and bought the subscription to Reason. (The classics can usually be found for free or for under a dollar.) It’s been a wonderful experience in diving back into what had once been my passion as a child and younger man, and I can’t recommend the experience more highly. Right now, I’m in the middle of A Shattered Peace by David Andelman, a book about the Versailles Treaty and its repercussions all the way to today.
I chose the Kindle mainly because of the price and the text-to-speech feature, which the Sony and the Barnes & Noble devices didn’t have. Occasionally I get asked about the iPad, which also serves well as an e-book reader, but the iPad is more costly (around $600 to the Kindle’s $139) and has the backlighting that tires out my eyes. The 6″ Kindle is more portable and more convenient, at least for me.
