Charles

Among Burke’s Very Best

Revisado: 04-12-20

By limiting the number of characters and subplots the author tells a tale with great clarity and power. The sensuous descriptions of sights and smells support intensify the narrative without overwhelming it. Just as a great chef blends a few flavors each discernible and adds exactly the right amount of seasoning, Mr Burke has produced a wonderfully balanced dish.

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Dazzling Scholarship

Revisado: 08-16-18

This title is a primer about Fascism, what it is, where it comes from, and how it can overtake more thought-out forms of government. The perspective spans about a century from sufficient altitude to see most societies and is fairly unbiased, given Dr Albright's childhood escape from the Nazis. Her fund of knowledge is gigantic and the landscapes she paints with that knowledge are presented without telling the listener what to think. Opening eyes and teaching students to do their own thinking is, after all, the pinnacle of the educator's art.
If you are bone-weary of being told daily of the next thing to be outraged about, treat yourself to this title.

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As Realized in the Fullness of Time

Revisado: 08-07-18

The very best storytelling frequently illuminates relationships and values and the struggles between them. Jerry Merritt accomplishes this beautifully, tackling mind-numbing complexity, paradox and causality, by following well developed and lovable characters as they struggle with the bad guys. The stories flow and each moves along with just the right amount of leaping back and forth. Travel in 4 dimensions can be thorny to explain, unless the alien ship comes with it as standard equipment. Immortality and evolution of life from biologic systems to digital systems herein is a smooth transiition.

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Elegant Rendering of Eleanor

Revisado: 07-02-18

Once begun I could not put this title down. Eleanor's internal dialogue is so authentic and so well written that the reader experiences her peculiar life with her. For all those struggling with the isolation of the digital age, Eleanor provides a person to cheer on. Marvelous and I hope someone sends the author flo2ers regularly.
Enjoy, R

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Speculative Technological Future History

Revisado: 06-18-18

Well written and well read potential future built on extrapolation of current tech and milieu. Good character develpment and careful adherence to the confines of the physics of spacetime. Worthwhile explorations into interactions of philosophy and psychology and into possibilities of hive minds and nanotechnology. Just as Jules Verne prepared us for the helicopter and submarine Taylor explores AI singularities and first contact with tech left behind by et's with vast lifespans and tech vastly ahead of our own.

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Tyson's Teaching Tour de Force

Revisado: 10-04-17

Dr Tyson organizes an enormous amount of humanity's best thinking into a fascinating story of the cosmos, told without technical gibberish. He powers this story with the thrill of the hunt for answers and neither apologies nor speculates much about what we do not yet know, . Difficult concepts like open vs closed universes and the positive vs negative curvature of space, he illuminates beautifully. I would not be surprised to hear a trucker intelligently discussing vacuum energy on the CB radio after he listened to this book (or read it). Neil deGrasse Tyson with this book takes his rightful place alongside Carl Sagan that other masterful teacher who dragged Science out of the dark to be shared with all mankind.

DO NOT MISS THIS ONE.

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Of Bumble Bees, Butterflies, and the Upper Crust

Revisado: 09-06-16

I almost passed on this wonderful book because the awful title (Sorry Leil) made me think of a boring list of sales pitch techniques. Here is the WiIFY (what's in it for you); if you have felt for years like a social bumble bee among the beautiful people, the social butterflies,or if you feel like a social butterfly forever stuck below a glass ceiling that prevents you from breaking through to the upper crust, this book will show you how you got where you are and how to move up by improving your people skills. Leil Lowndes organizes hundreds of observations in the fields of body language, skillful conversation, board room manners, telephone manners, interactive psychology into a series of habits to be acquired (some as simple as never answering the dastardly 'what do you do?' question with a naked job title) or as complex as operating in the favor bazaar of corporate leadership. These habits or tricks are organized into groups of related items and illuminated with examples of both successes and failures. The content is easily inhaled on auto or airline trips (as long as you don't mind fellow travelers asking what all the laughing and smiling were about).
Final comment, I have never heard an angel read a book, but Leil's reading is more like music than prose with its crescendos, de-crescendoes, tempo variations, indeed all of the flowers of rhetoric sprinkled about. Angels wish they could read like that!
Thank you from a third generation social bumble bee who is making progress at last.crc

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Fast-Paced, Funny, and Passionate Hero-smithing A+

Revisado: 03-10-16

Marked it finished before the sample of book 2 because I couldn't wait to start the second-in-series. Sophisticated, sarcastic humor and up-beat dynamic plot with good guys to love and bone head bad guys tripping all over their cop shoes. None of the foggy, gloomy excessively wordy scenery syrup but excellent context backdrop woven in to support suspension of disbelief and make this one a 'stay up at night to see what happens' peice. If it were a painting I'd think impressionistic. ABSOLUTELY TRY IT !

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Fast Tour Through Particle Physics to God Particle

Revisado: 01-20-16

Ever wonder why Humanity spent upwards of $8 Billion to find evidence of a particle that should have been called the ether-wave-particle but got misnamed the God particle. Fasten seat belt and get the pdf printout (really helpful) in your hand. In about 9 hrs you'll understand, in a general but coherent way, why 2 generations of the smartest physicists on planet earth invested entire lives hunting the Higgs Boson. Not easy listening but what a story well told!

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Monomaniacal, evangelical, GI Joe propaganda.

Revisado: 11-08-15

Predictable but very entertaining and very well done. Teabagger tour D'force and perfect entertainment for the endtimes of homo sapiens as a species,

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