Todd

Fantastic follow up.

Revisado: 08-16-24

it's been about 25 years maybe a little more since I first read handmaid's tale. I reread it a few years back, and had that experience I've had as a adult rereading things I read as a much younger person. my initial read was fairly faithful, and I captured much of the story, but I didn't understand everything, and didn't have the depth or breadth of current or historic events and stories, to which I could tie elements of this fantastic and durable cautionary tale.
So I can say with Shear amazement that this sequel, written many years later, and likely a product of the work that was done around the television series has truly come out shining. like any Margaret Atwood book written in the last 40 years, it's a fantastic read. entertaining, witty, innovative. I think anyone could see that I recommend it.

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Fans of the Amazon series - don't forget to read!

Revisado: 01-04-23

Third time through, with 3 or 4 years in between. This one really holds up. (I am also a fan of the sequel, set in a slightly earlier future - 'Agency', and will likely read it again a second time.)

Apart from great storytelling, there's a ton to like here. Superbly fun conceptual bits, and top-of-their-game writing from one of the all-time faves.

Writing this review to compel fans of the Amazon Video series to consider taking a spin through on the literary route. (Read a Book!) - The series is visually stunning, and captures much of the feel of the story's set up. But the plot lines diverge almost immediately, with the screenwriter's version quickly becoming something much more Dramatic and dare-I-say 'Soap Opera-y' than die hard William Gibson fans might be comfortable with. It is great, in my view, as eye candy, with 3 or 4 season potential.

But it will not be hard for you to spot the cleaner work, or the more complete tale, if you do pick up this wonderful book.

I was so excited to see that it had become television. Now I am both a bit perplexed, but and also still excited about the second season/series. Expect it to be pretty enjoyable as well.

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A suitable follow-up for Ready Player One

Revisado: 02-22-22

once I get there and that this was going to be kind of a round 2, remake oh, I settled down to enjoy it. I think it's a suitable second and Final Chapter for Our Heroes.

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Most amazing book based on mountains of work

Revisado: 12-20-21

Spoiler alert: our ideas about humanity are myths. Flimsy myths based on the fanciful ideals of guys in the 1700s who were unwitting beneficiaries of social rank and privilege. Guys for whom the exceptional culture of the world is male, white, European. Guys names Rousseau and Hobbes.

If this sounds like the intro to an indignant populist screed of over 700 pages, it's my fault, and not the authors.
Throughout this book, Graeber and Wengrow usher the reader gently outside of the all encompassing set of ideas that uniformly shapes our world culture. David Graeber's writing style manages to carry the same light-hearted, insousciant tone that pours out the charm from the work of social critic and sci-fi humorist Douglas Adams, while at the same time covers the bases of for the knee-jerk reactions from the stolid traditionalist set, or from critics in the peanut gallery.

The work introduces us to the idea that (based on mountains of evidence from anthropology and archeology of the last several decades) human beings who were just like us in interests, and capacities have typically managed for roughly 30,000 (thirty thousand) years to avoid having social systems with rulers, or governments. In the interest of Freedom.
This is big. Big-time.
The authors suggest, then show, then establish that the cultures of the world go back to sophisticated groups throughout mesoamerica (Central and South America) China, Africa and the Middle East, as well as the Mammoth hunting Culture of the Eurasian steppes.. These groups experimented with a broad variety of cultures, including some with kings and rulers. But far from the mythical truism that seems to be 'true and self-evident' to us indoctrinated westerners, there is nothing inevitable about rulers, or the sad sacrifice that people have to make in being ruled. In fact, there seems to be ample evidence to support the authors' claim that the majority of human cultures devised societies where the inequalities of rulers and the ruled can not arise. In many places, Authority seems clearly to have been rejected, and people have returned to egalitarianism.

What does all this mean? Hidden in this review are the seeds of description that could grow into a clear and wonderful depiction of this book, how amazing it is, and how well it succeeds in its attempt to bust myths, and make a new start in the way we talk about our past. But this review misses the mark by miles.

I strongly recommend that you listen to this audiobook. Be suitably amazed. For the book is wonderful, and the work of it is amazing.

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esto le resultó útil a 9 personas

Better than the sum of its parts!

Revisado: 02-27-21

Flush with fine ideas and warm feeling, personal, moving!

If This Were just a book about the challenges faced quite a successful philanthropist and her organization, or a description of their mission, and the things they encounter in the world, that would be enough to make this a good book.

But the book is incredibly moving, inspiring, and trend setting.
It is

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I am reading this at long last, and liking it sur

Revisado: 10-12-20

I'm a fan of science fiction and speculative fiction. Even some Fantasy. So, of course I have known of these novels for years. I always imagined that this would be a story along the lines of Starship Troopers (which was not my favorite of the 3 or 4 Heinlein books I read - although Verhoven made it into a hell of a movie) and something like HG Wells' War of the World's, or the movie Independance day.

So I didn't look forward to reading it.
But a fellow Sanderson fan recommended this, and I took the recommendation.

I was pleased with this book throughout my read, but had reservations. So let me mention this: The ending gives everything in this story. It is worth riding to the last stop, because the story is transformed. Transformed from something with the shape of a cold-war-justification tale (telling why we had to dream the bad dream, and do all the horrible things it told us, and how we still reckon that we're the good guys) into a thing of flowing kindness and goodness and promise. The ending makes the story belong in the annals of conservationist culture, or on the shelves of books written to precipitate goodness into stories. The ending makes everything in this book, except perhaps the adults, great.

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FANTASTIC SPEC FICTION FROM THE EARLY 90'S

Revisado: 10-05-20

This book does work in 1992 that nobody else has done since until quite recently. It's definitely very forward-looking, and fun to read today.
Creating a many faceted world of only women with depth and authenticity - this should perhaps not be too challenging for an author of today. But believe me, 30 years ago there was no place on the shelves for such a story. The sci-fi shelves were relatively well stocked with Male-Dom-Female-Slave pulp a'la the puerile fantasy of Roger Zelazny. Griffith'snovel is as genuine and as diametrically opposite to this common sordid style.
The world of Grenchstom’s Planet - known to all as Jeep - is a complex world that is effectively being settled in the most recent subsequent wave by humans. An indigenous virus seems to infect all who come to the world, killing all men, and many women. The virus conveys subtle but also powerful changes in the minds of survivors, allowing them to enter a trance state (which can be shared) that opens access to ancestral memory and plays a role in the mysterious capacity of these women to reproduce - bearing children who are not mere clones of their mothers. What is the history of now indigenous population? How can they procreate? Do they have anything that will contribute to profits for The Company - a self serving mega corporation that has the sector in its pocket.
These questions revolve around in the thoughts of Marguerite Angelica Taishan, as she contemplates taking the vaccine - and the associated plunge - into the deep & interwoven mysteries of the world Jeep.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

A very good very much needed book. The best analys

Revisado: 09-04-20

If Professor Bacevich is best known as a war historian, and is probably the best known war historian, you'll probably expect this to be a book about war... And it is true what the book's dust jacket says: the primary thesis of this book is that the United States has squandered it's triumph over Russia in the cold War. Bacevich illustrates this claim amply, and it is very interesting, and sobering.
But the book is so much more: a nearly up-to-the-moment analysis of the intersection of international policy and politics in a blow-by-blow president by president rundown of the post cold war Era.
His takes on all contemporary politicians are well informed, realistic and right on point.

While this is a quick read, it carries more than its weight in valuable insights. I am pretty convinced.


Give 'The Age of Illusions' a try. I recommend it. £

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Some incredible writing in many phases.

Revisado: 08-29-20

This book can be demoralizing and inspiring by turns, but it is always constructed to continuously build an organic argument that supports the claim claim: American Empire is about to fail.

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All should read this book

Revisado: 08-28-20

This book rights a great wrong, and so doing Sets the world straight by debunking a myth that has become a sort of foundation superstition for Americans and others about the economy.

The government is not broke. It cannot go broke. And managing the federal budget like a household budget, while a universally relatable trope, is actually just flat wrong. Demonstrably wrong.
And Professor Kelton does a great job of explaining in several cuts - from simple to complex - how this is so.
For Americans, and citizens of other countries that issue their own fiat currency, like the dollar, the yen, the pound, this is. Concept that has been completely missing. We've been economically rudderless without it. But having people understand this will make a difference in governance going forward.

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