Charlotte A. Hu

Op art is the balance of space, force & time

Revisado: 03-08-25

This book defines Operational Art as the space between tactics and strategy. That is operations. It is not operational art

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

My 8yo falls asleep to this book daily

Revisado: 11-12-24

Paige takes us all on an adventure with her as she learns what she and her neighbors didn't know about Americas bees. This is a fun, frequently humorous and light-hearted journey into the world of the citizen scientist. As homeschoolers, we found it to be a perfect view of the world around around us chocked full of elementary facts about life science and learning science. It's written for non-scientific readers.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Best Graphic Novel Audio book - Describes Action

Revisado: 09-20-24

My 8yo loves this series and loves audiobooks. She reads Kindle books from this series every night but rereads the first 2 books more often because she likes to listen to the audiobook while she follows along on the Kindle, frequently reading until she falls asleep.
This isn't a standard audiobook. It doesn't only read the text. It adds descriptions of the action in the graphic novel (modern-day comic book) so even if you don't have the book, you can still understand the flow of the story. It also has unique voices for characters and a great narrative style.
We love it!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Fascinating under recognized and brilliant leader

Revisado: 08-30-24

I hadn’t studied naval leaders even though I served 13 years in the Marines. Of course I have long been fascinated with military history and leadership, military strategy and technology. So it surprised me to discover that Admiral Nimitz is such a pivotal person in the success of our World War II efforts and an inspirational example of exemplary leadership.
This love the marvelous journey experience I had while listening to this book and the delightful delivery. The narration is spot on. I will read/listen to it again.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Classic strategy

Revisado: 08-20-24

Required reading for Marines. I read it the 1st time when I was 19 and have been rereading it every 5 years or so ever since. Short, pithy and powerful.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Made me Think about Possibilities of Our Future

Revisado: 07-22-24

JD's description of his childhood characterized by domestic violence, substance abuse and although he doesn't specifically mention it most probably debilitating mental illness including PTSD, is jarring and painful. Mostly because it mirrors my own. My earliest coherent memory from Kellogg, Idaho, a mining community of hillbillies, although not Appalachian descended, was of my mom's 3rd husband coming home drunk and throwing food and screaming. Of course, she was crying.

J Dot's blow-by-blow descriptions of toxic masculinity resonate with me. Although he is a generation behind me since I was on the verge of graduating high school when I was born.

Like JD I was also raised at the lowest economic level of the US and it wasn't until many years later that I realized that people as poor as we were are, thankfully, a relatively small minority in the U.S. Also, like JD, I grew up in a household with an irrational relationship with the material world, spending money we didn't have for a pile of Christmas presents when I didn't have a warm winter jacket and Idaho/Washington was overwhelmingly cold in the winter.
Like JD, I never knew my father and my mother moved frequently for no apparent reason. My childhood was also marred by instability and a lack of predictability which added to the food and housing insecurity as well as frequent explosions making it impossible to focus on studies.
We both escaped hellish childhoods by enlistment in the Marines and by luck, we both ended up in the same career field. Funny.

His book ends with a couple of conclusions. He restates the famous ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, from JFK, another Catholic in US history related to the executive branch. He also talks about child hunger in the richest nation in the world. Throughout the book, I have the impression that JD is trying to understand and solve a problem. So am I. Why did my neighbor and JD’s neighbors destroy our own lives, and undermine our potential? And what could we do about it?
Like me, JD realized that it wasn’t just trailer park trash and White trash like us that suffered. The series The Wire triggers me, especially the series focused on the kids. JD comments in his book on a sociological examination he read in high school about families that were city, not rural, and that black and brown, not only white, also suffered from the misery of poverty. And what can we do about it?


UBI?
JD doesn't talk about UBI although he hints that "we need to solve problems ourselves." Still while reading his book, I reflected on how Universal Basic Income is often brought up to resolve the problems of the poor. I don't believe it would have helped me as a child. I doubt if JD would think so either. No one in my family or neighborhood understood personal finance, investment, or ROI. JD talks about a neighbor bothering his Mamaw for money which they later learned she spent on drugs. I had a similar problem with an extended member of my own family.
My childhood problem wasn't simply a lack of resources but how they were managed. I saw an article a couple of years ago said: that people who purchased cheap beer, cigarettes, low-priced tattoos, and gaudy costume jewelry were the people most likely to miss a required payment on a credit card within the following year. One of the other major purchases the poor often spend too much on and select irrationally is cars. My husband does extensive research and buys vehicles with the lowest cost of ownership.
My Beijing-born husband hates debt and credit cards and loans. But here in the good ol’ USA, we’re a nation of people in huge debt with a huge national debt. We lack knowledge of personal finance on both the micro and macro levels. My conclusion is that a UBI wouldn't get more food into kiddos’ bellies but would increase an already massive problem of mismanagement of resources. If UBI won’t work, what will?

A Living Wage
JD’s book talks about manufacturing jobs that used to be able to support families. The problem is when my mom, born in 1948 was a kid, the most common job in the USA was farming. The era of farmwork as the primary employment opportunity was followed by industrial/manufacturing, and the world we are living in is transitioning out of the service industry where the most common employment is in the retail economy or commercial driver. We’re on the verge of the idea/information economy. A sizable percentage of the U.S. employment community is already transitioning to the new economy.
We don’t need to go backward to a historical golden age of everyone plugging a part on a car, but forward to a world where we break down the barriers to a living wage. We need to find out what those barriers are so we can remove them. But how?
A decade ago, I toured the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Antonio and learned that some 80% to 90% of the sight-impaired community was unemployed or underemployed. Then I met a Microsoft MVP-certified IT expert who wrote the book on the technology I needed to use. He was completely deaf, and his eyesight was so bad that we had to project the code from a computer onto a wall-sized computer screen so he could work through the erroneous elements. The wonder of our current world is that using assistive technologies, he was able to pack his brain full of critical information so that he was the only expert on the IT interface I needed. He’s not alone. Assistive technology is breaking barriers for lots of people who have been excluded from our economy in the past.
A living wage isn’t just a meal, housing, and clothes. Unlike UBI, it’s a place in society where people can respect and admire the individual. It’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose to steal from the book Drive. People need pride.
My Chinese immigrant husband worked in the banking industry and professional photography in Beijing, both careers require a precise level of communication. In his broken English, those weren’t options for him. He worked at WalMart and Lowes to level up his English. Then he tried repeatedly to take a half dozen written exams to become fully certified as a CDL B hazmat driver. He made it. And he loves the view from his “office window,” as he drives heating fuel oil to the rural areas of central and western Maryland and Pennsylvania. I wrote to the governor of Maryland asking if they could provide the CDL exams in non-English languages to break down the barriers to entry for this critically important job. Our schools are still posting signs about the lack of bus drivers and my husband’s company is constantly trying to recruit commercial drivers, but there aren’t enough.
What other barriers can we remove?
What about allowing unemployed people to take CDL exams for free?
But the point is, this book triggered my imagination. It made me wonder, I think like JD, what can we do differently not only to engage more people with a living wage but also to connect our citizens to the corporations so both can empower each other.
JD's book reflects the reality that most Americans don't understand the worldview of a hillbilly. It’s also true that most of us also don't understand the realities of being Asian-American like JD's wife and my husband. Most Americans don't know the realities of living in a household characterized by substance abuse. Most Americans don't know what it's like to grow up with abusive adults. Each of us lives in our little universe; we're a nation of parallel universes. While Hillbilly Elegy gave a voice to hillbillies like me, #Metoo gave a voice to victims of sexual assault, like me. And #BlackLivesMatter gave a voice to a community that has never shared equal time for equal crime. JD's slice of American life contributes to the growing choir of voices sharing their slice and we need to find our common foes like substance abuse and poverty and look for common solutions. How can we break down the division between the various communities in the US and join together to fight our common foes?

One of our many challenges is that advanced education is a super expensive crap shoot. In other countries like South Korea, major corporations select the talent they want to develop and give them the option of attending a specially selected, fully paid program such as a masters degree. Of course, they have a contract with a certain amount of years required. One advantage to this corporate paid advanced education is the job is guaranteed. Can corporations in the USA step up and pay for education?

I disagree with the idea that we can solve these problems ourselves. While JD's grandparents were a great source of support and sanity, there's a lotta kids out there who have no such lifelines. We have friends who are resource parents in the foster system and I marvel at my daughter running and jumping and playing with a girl her age who should be as miserable as I was, but thanks to her foster family, she has clean, new clothes, professionally cut silky freshly brushed hair and the carefree smile at that all elementary school girls should have. She couldn't have done this herself and her mother was no more capable than JD's mom of providing a calm, stable environment for intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth to happen. What can we do about giving kids in traumatic environments a stable, calm one to develop in?

Note: Unlike JD, I'm a member of the LGBTQ+ community and as a bisexual woman, I noticed with pain the areas where JD's family confused criminal child predators with adults who engage in consensual sex that isn't between a man and woman.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Extraordinary Information. I'm going to get tested

Revisado: 04-09-24

My 8yo struggles with debilitating effects from her mind and a huge part of the challenge is ADHD. As we worked through this book and adapted some of the ideas, my daughter said, mom, why aren't you taking ADHD medicine? Indeed, much of this book applies to me and I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but my daughter is right. So I've schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist to see if I also fit the DSM. Regardless of the doctor's conclusion, much of this book has been helpful for both of us.
Extraordinary information. The TED talk and YouTube channel are also super helpful. Thank goodness Jessica wrote this book for us.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A handful of different berries, peanuts, yogurt and dark grape juice w dark chocolate daily

Revisado: 03-31-24

There is excellent evidence and information in this book to help take reasonable action to protect your memory including short daily after lunch naps followed by a small amount of dark chocolate. Also 4 foods to eat daily including different colors of berries, legumes including peanuts, fermented foods and leafy greens daily.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Hollywood thriller feel

Revisado: 01-09-24

This tells an amazing and terrifying story with a a myriad of shocks and surprises. I had no idea. This book has challenged me to completely rethink the history of the Midwest

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Govt Regs are Clear as Mud - this book clarifies

Revisado: 07-12-23

This book is a breath of fresh air in a dank, dark dungeon of government regulatory labyrinth. I can't thank Bruce enough for helping make the obvious obvious. The regs are actually important and this book provides concrete, tangible examples for why as well as illustrating what I need to think and do and write to get further down the road toward a successful Authority to Operate/ System Security Plan package.
It's also hilarious. I'm a former Marine, so some of the low brow jokes like POAMs are like herpes, they just keep coming back it's at all offensive. I love it. And be aware that the sarcastic, flippant, politically in correct (I hate all political parties and that's all I have to say about that.) might not be for everyone but for me, I LOVE it. It speaks directly to my world.
I've encouraged everyone on my team to read this book and I'll be buying more wisdom and enlightenment from the suite of Bruce books.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña