Wayne B. Norris

One off the most Important books ever written - three flaws

Revisado: 09-30-24

The book was a masterpiece. Full stop. Totally recommended.

However, it ignored three important items…

The first was the history of China, with the exception of a few references here and there. That just seems to be a major flaw in a lot of these types of books.

The second was a complete failure to mention the massive poisoning of children throughout the world that resulted from the use of leaded gasoline and leaded paint, which was responsible for an upswing and violence as the children who absorbed the lead as young children grew into adulthood.

I was also surprised that there was no reference whatsoever to On Killing, Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman’s groundbreaking study of that subject — On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society https://a.co/d/aqb7pNC

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Very good narrative

Revisado: 08-29-24

Very well done. Two missing items:

1) There was no discussion of atmospheric content, notably oxygen levels. It’s hugely significant.

2) There was no discussion of motor neuron left-right crossover and no discussion of handedness, both also hugely significant.

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A very well written piece that did not cover Eastern Europe or direct US Soviet relationships as deeply as it should have

Revisado: 08-17-24

I realize it this book was about the Dulles brothers, but given the context, it should certainly have covered Stalin to his death in 1953 and the nuanced outreaches by Mahlenkov and Khrushchev.

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Welcome to the new reality

Revisado: 02-22-23

In this version of reality, the popular person is the one who talks (loudly) over everyone else, says things that are completely irrelevant to the subject at hand, repeats things to the point of ad nauseam, creates fabulistic stories on an industrial scale, and works self-aggrandizement into literally every nook and corner of a conversation. It’s affectively a monologue where someone else gets to talk only while the monologist is taking a breath.

Make no mistake about it… It’s not just Trump; it was there long before him, and he merrily polished and promoted the art.

The book demonstrated that very well. The important take away is that that style is actually extremely popular with a very large part of the US population. It is, in fact the new reality.

I thought Woodward spent a bit more time than necessary on Trump’s race relations problems, because they were clear at the beginning of that portion of the book, and at some point, it was simply beating a dead horse. By that time, we all knew him.

Aside from that, the book was great, and even with that, it was still great.

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A fascinating historical retrospective

Revisado: 11-13-22

I was about 12 years old when this book came out, and I remember it very well. It clearly ignores a lot of brown, because it’s very simplistic, but it’s strongly annunciate the “hard-core porn bargaining position that is inevitable in any major contest. As such, although it was simplistic pablum, it came out, nonetheless makes for useful reading today, as much for its annunciation of that principle is for providing a backdrop, from which to view the historically identifiable shortcomings of that policy.

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A very interesting take on a very American story

Revisado: 06-22-22

This gave a very good introduction to organize crime in the United States that’s different from the most celebrated books, but fascinating nonetheless.

It spends an inordinate amount of time as more or less a family narrative, and maybe not as much about organized crime per se as one would like, but it’s absolutely worth the listen.

As a result of listening to this, I’ll probably listen to other historical narratives by the author.

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Extremely well written and very timely

Revisado: 06-13-22

Disclaimer: This is a socialist party screed, and thus its preachings in Chapters 29 - 31 are the standard-issue hopelessly, comically naive, intellectually shallow, faux-religious ramblings of 1900s socialism… but it’s nonetheless a grand book!

That’s because it takes the reader on an intensely personal journey with the protagonist thru the seeming insanities of life that probably captures the mindset of a large portion of the human race… Everyman (German “Jederman”). The mishaps, tragedies, missteps, and perceptions ring as true today as then, and maybe as always.

I didn’t read this in high school or college in the 1960s… too busy with theoretical physics at the time to bother… but I finally read it at age 75. So glad I did!

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Extremely well written and well narrated

Revisado: 05-30-22

This was my first in-depth read about this period in history, and it explained things very well. Obviously I’ll want to read more so as to get a broad perspective, but this was a great starter!

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More of the same

Revisado: 04-25-22

I’d heard good things about this book. As an atheist, I wasn’t expecting to get anything life-changing out of it, but at least I thought it would deliver new, intelligent thought.

I thought wrong, as it turns out.

It’s the same old self-serving stuff that’s been written as nauseum since about 350 A.D., explaining the Golden Rule in 150,000 words or more. It’s complete with massive errors of logic, repeated inconsistencies, tautologies, circular reasoning, comical leaps of logic, references to unquestioned authority, arbitrary cultural tastes poorly disguised as universal truths, and completely and arbitrary views.

There are zero references as to how late Bronze Age campfire stories and tall tales about genocidal tribal chiefs and their tales of vengeful deities who have their children murdered are supposed to tell us anything at all.

More of the same.

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You’ve seen the rest… now hear the best

Revisado: 01-04-22

H.G. Wells was an extremely good writer. You’ll enjoy this.

The voice talent was great, but the amplitude modulation range, as with many British speakers, is broad enough so that, except for very quiet areas, turning it up loud enough (about 80 dB) to hear the quiet parts above ambient noise causes the loudest parts to be painful (95+ dB).

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