William A. Horne

Well writen, well narrated but a failure

Revisado: 04-30-25

This book is well written and well narrated by the author but it fails to attain the deeper meaning the author strives for. It is essentially boring, The characters who could have been interesting are not really developed.

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Essentially Boring

Revisado: 10-02-24

The publisher says its a novel about an "American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive thriller of glittering insights and dark humor."

There is nothing propulsive about this book. It is slow and boring. I looked for dark humor and found none, Relationships are described but don't happen. Some of the background is fascinating, like the discussion of Neanderthals, but it does not sustain a reader very long. The author had a knack for metaphor but it is incidental to the story rather than resonant. Her writing is often excellent.

I found none of the characters interesting or compelling. Sometimes I felt as if I were trapped in a cult. Maybe that's the author's point. But it was not a destination I wanted to approach.

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Insightful

Revisado: 11-09-23

Much insight, much understanding on the author’s part. One seeming omission. Bloland does not discuss how her father is enmeshed in the same issues she focuses on in Young Man Luther and Gandhi’s Truth. His insight and attraction to charisma and fame are a theme of these exceptional works.

Food for thought: what makes Luther and Gandhi charismatic also I think applies to other leaders of much less benign impact. This is a human problem and weakness.

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Well Written but Why Care about the Characters

Revisado: 05-08-22

The book is well written. The author has a knack for dialogue, accents, and local culture and milieu. But I did not care for any of the characters. They were offensive and reprehensible or in the case of the women doormats. Loyalty above character. Family above all else. I know that this is the point of the book but it does not make it a worthy read.

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Overstated Thesis

Revisado: 02-22-22

Professor Feldman I believe overstates and hypes his thesis, perhaps because this will make for better sales. There is a more measured approach to this topic.

I was surprised however by Professor Feldman's omission of the status of West Virginia. Here is an example of a clear constitutional violation of Article IV, Section 3 implemented by the Union to form a new state from the territory of Virginia.

Close to the end of his book (p. 322) Professor Feldman states in passing without comment that the Republicans who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment forced the South to ratify it as a condition of being once more represented in Congress. Where in the constitution was the authority to do this? For all of Professor Feldman's thesis of Lincoln's breaking the constitution, this departure from constitutional norms was arguably more significant than any of those mentioned in his book. But these actions took place after Lincoln's death and therefore cannot advance the author's argument that Lincoln broke the constitution.

And in 1864, the Union held a presidential election in which our "constitutional dictator," Lincoln, as the author describes him, had the distinct prospect of being turned out of office.

Ultimately, Professor Feldman's paradigm of a broken constitution is simply not a helpful approach to understanding history or explaining the changes of the civil war period. Much more was going on than the legalisms of constitutional law. The question is not one of the compromise constitution vs. a moral constitution. The question is whether our country more closely approached in the largest sense the ideal of social justice.

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Not Enough Depth

Revisado: 09-23-17

What did you like best about An Introduction to Infectious Diseases? What did you like least?

The course (like many in the Great Courses Series) tries to cover too much at the expense of sacrificing explanations in depth. For example the lecturer only mentions prion diseases like spongiform encephalopathy without much expansion on how the disease causes illness, how it is caught and perhaps most importantly how it differs from bacterial and viral diseases. While rare, it is fatal in a short period.

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