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Monday, December 13, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? Midnight in Washington

 

It is Monday, What are you Reading?

Midnight in Washington: 

How we almost lost our democracy and still could


By Adam Schiff



https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Washington-Almost-Democracy-Still/dp/059323152X/



I do support Adam Schiff and his efforts in Congress. Whether or not I ever actually read this book is irrelevant...  I have lived through most of it, and am hopeful, but not overly optimistic.



Amazon Description:


#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, from the rise of autocracy unleashed by Trump to the January 6 insurrection, and a warning that those forces remain as potent as ever—from the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump


“Engaging and informative . . . a manual for how to probe and question power, how to hold leaders accountable in a time of diminishing responsibility.”—The Washington Post


In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trump’s Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within.

 

In Midnight in Washington, Schiff argues that the Trump presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the peril will last for years, requiring unprecedented vigilance against the growing and dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. The congressman chronicles step by step just how our democracy was put at such risk, and traces his own path to meeting the crisis—from serious prosecutor, to congressman with an expertise in national security and a reputation for bipartisanship, to liberal lightning rod, scourge of the right, and archenemy of a president. Schiff takes us inside his team of impeachment managers and their desperate defense of the constitution amid the rise of a distinctly American brand of autocracy.

 

Deepening our understanding of prominent public moments, Schiff reveals the private struggles, the internal conflicts, and the triumphs of courage that came with defending the republic against a lawless president—but also the slow surrender of people that he had worked with and admired to the dangerous immorality of a president engaged in an historic betrayal of his office. Schiff’s fight for democracy is one of the great dramas of our time, told by the man who became the president’s principal antagonist. It is a story that began with Trump but does not end with him, taking us through the disastrous culmination of the presidency and Schiff’s account of January 6, 2021, and how the anti-democratic forces Trump unleashed continue to define his party, making the future of democracy in America more uncertain than ever.



Monday, December 6, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? State of Terror: A Novel

It is Monday, What are you Reading? 

State of Terror: A Novel


By Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton



https://www.amazon.com/State-Terror-Novel-Louise-Penny/dp/198217367X/



Was going to skip this one, but after seeing interview on Rachel Maddow Show, felt I had to give it a try. Not disappointed. Very well written. Several chapters in, it is compelling… 


Now finished, very quickly, actually... excellent thriller. [not without usual edit errors and some questions, but doesn't need to distract, as with all thrillers, from good writing and good story] When you read it, be sure to include reading the acknowledgement pages at the end. Good stuff about how the worked together and what each was thinking when approached about working together on a fiction novel.



Amazon Description:


AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 


Named one of the most anticipated novels of the season by People, Associated Press, Time, Los Angeles Times, Parade, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more.


From the #1 bestselling authors Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny comes a novel of unsurpassed thrills and incomparable insider expertise—State of Terror.


After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state.


There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it’s a canny move on the part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate.


As the new president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young foreign service officer (FSO) on the Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a baffling text from an anonymous source.


Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning.


What begins as a series of apparent terrorist attacks is revealed to be the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and Byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; a burgeoning rogue terrorist organization; and an American government set back on its heels in the international arena.


As the horrifying scale of the threat becomes clear, Secretary Adams and her team realize it has been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most.


To defeat such an intricate, carefully constructed conspiracy, it will take the skills of a unique team: a passionate young FSO; a dedicated journalist; and a smart, determined, but as yet untested new secretary of state.


State of Terror is a unique and utterly compelling international thriller cowritten by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling novelist.



Monday, November 29, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Foundlings

It is Monday, What are you Reading?

The Foundlings (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 9)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin



https://www.amazon.com/Foundlings-Forensic-Genealogist-Book-ebook/dp/B09JG6RB3V/



Reading Book 9 on Kindle. Set in England, always an interesting read.



Amazon Description:


Forensic genealogist, Morton Farrier, agrees to take on a case to identify the biological mother of three foundlings, abandoned in shop doorways as new-born babies in the 1970s. He has just one thing with which to begin his investigation: the three women’s DNA, one of whom is his half-aunt. With just six days of research time available to him, his investigation uncovers some shocking revelations and troubling links to his own grandfather; and Morton finds that, for the first time in his career, he is advising his clients not to read his concluding report.


This is the ninth novel in the Morton Farrier genealogical crime mystery series, although it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story.

For updates on Nathan Dylan Goodwin's releases:
Website & newsletter: www.nathandylangoodwin.com
Twitter: @NathanDGoodwin
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nathandylangoodwin
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Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/dylan0470/


Monday, June 21, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? After the Fall

 

It is Monday, What are you Reading? After the Fall:

Being American in the World We’ve Made

By Ben Rhodes





https://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Being-American-World/dp/1984856057/



Ben’s first book was excellent. I find him to be a very good source of foreign affairs information. I had wondered what he had been doing… this book is also part of the answer to that question. 


Amazon’s Description:


NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Why is democracy so threatened in America and around the world? And what can we do about it? A former White House aide and close confidant to President Barack Obama—and the author of The World as It Is—travels the globe in a deeply personal, beautifully observed quest for answers.


In 2017, as Ben Rhodes was helping Barack Obama begin his next chapter, the legacy they had worked to build for eight years was being taken apart. To understand what was happening in America, Rhodes decided to look outward. Over the next three years, he traveled to dozens of countries, meeting with politicians, activists, and dissidents confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that was tearing America apart. Along the way, a Russian opposition leader he spoke with was poisoned, the Hong Kong protesters he came to know saw their movement snuffed out, and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a second chance.


Part memoir and part reportage, After the Fall is a hugely ambitious and essential work of discovery. In his travels, Rhodes comes to realize how much America’s fingerprints are on a world we helped to shape, through our post–Cold War embrace of unbridled capitalism and our post-9/11 nationalism and militarism; our mania for technology and social media; and the racism that fueled the backlash to America’s first Black president. At the same time, Rhodes learns from the stories of a diverse set of characters—from Barack Obama himself to Cuban rebels to a rising generation of international leaders—that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong makes clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world.

Monday, June 14, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? Voices Waiting to be Heard


It is Monday, What are you Reading? 

Voices Waiting to be Heard:

Nineteen Eyewitness Accounts of Arnold’s 1775 March to Quebec

By Stephen Barley





https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Waiting-Be-Heard-Eyewitness/dp/1665526092/



A personal family history book for Father’s Day and Birthday from daughter Annette Lamb who is mentioned a couple of times in the credits in the book. She had done extensive research on our 4-5 great-grandfather, William Preston, whose journal is one of the 19 accounts included in this book. She had shared her research with the author. Pretty neat!! ;-)


Amazon’s Description:


Lengthy eyewitness accounts of events in the Revolutionary War are rare. The expedition to Quebec led by Benedict Arnold is an exception with 35 such accounts. In this book, Stephen Darley has compiled 13 unknown journals and 6 pension applications written by men who were participants on that famous march. These accounts provide details of the trek through the untamed wilderness of Maine and Canada, the New Years Eve assault on Quebec and being held as prisoners in Quebec. These personal narratives present the extreme hard ships and difficulties each writer experienced being part of a unique and historic march from Cambridge to make Canada the 14th American Colony and deprive the British of its North American base of operations. One historian concludes that "the march of Hannibal over the Alps has nothing in it of superior merit to the March of Arnold.'" he goes on to conclude that the men who were on the march have "been left an heir to oblivion, almost unwept, unhonored and sung only in a minor key." This book will help to understand and appreciate the sacrifices made by its participants.

Monday, June 7, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? Amazon Unbound

 

It is Monday, What are you Reading?

Amazon Unbound: 

Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

By Brad Stone






https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Unbound-Invention-Global-Empire/dp/1982132612/




Fascinated by Jeff Bezos, so a must read…


Amazon’s Description:


“A masterful book.” —Marc Levinson, The Washington Post 

“A juicy tour of the company Bezos built.”—The New York Times Book Review


From the bestselling author of The Everything Store, an unvarnished picture of Amazon’s unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time.


Almost ten years ago, Bloomberg journalist Brad Stone captured the rise of Amazon in his bestseller The Everything Store. Since then, Amazon has expanded exponentially, inventing novel products like Alexa and disrupting countless industries, while its workforce has quintupled in size and its valuation has soared to well over a trillion dollars. Jeff Bezos’s empire, once housed in a garage, now spans the globe. Between services like Whole Foods, Prime Video, and Amazon’s cloud computing unit, AWS, plus Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post, it’s impossible to go a day without encountering its impact. We live in a world run, supplied, and controlled by Amazon and its iconoclast founder.


In Amazon Unbound, Brad Stone presents a deeply reported, vividly drawn portrait of how a retail upstart became one of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy. Stone also probes the evolution of Bezos himself—who started as a geeky technologist totally devoted to building Amazon, but who transformed to become a fit, disciplined billionaire with global ambitions; who ruled Amazon with an iron fist, even as he found his personal life splashed over the tabloids.


Definitive, timely, and revelatory, Stone has provided an unvarnished portrait of a man and company that we couldn’t imagine modern life without.

Monday, March 15, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Code Breaker

 

It is Monday, What are you Reading? 

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

By Walter Isaacson





https://www.amazon.com/Code-Breaker-Jennifer-Doudna-Editing/dp/1982115858/




A book for our times. Should be very interesting.


Amazon’s Description:


The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.


When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.


Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.


The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code.


Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids?


After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.

Monday, February 1, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? The FBI Way

 

It is Monday, What are you Reading? The FBI Way: 

Inside the Bureaus’ Code of Excellence

By Frank Figliuzzi




https://www.amazon.com/FBI-Way-Inside-Bureaus-Excellence/dp/006299705X/



One of my favorite MSNBC Contributors. Always enjoy the Tucson background when he is on. Knows this topic inside out. It will be a fast read.



Amazon’s Description:


"A must read for serious leaders at every level." —General Barry R. McCaffrey (Ret.)

The FBI’s former head of counterintelligence reveals the Bureau's field-tested playbook for unlocking individual and organizational excellence, illustrated through dramatic stories from his own storied career 

Frank Figliuzzi was the "Keeper of the Code," appointed the FBI’s Chief Inspector by then-Director Robert Mueller. Charged with overseeing sensitive internal inquiries and performance audits, he ensured each employee met the Bureau's exacting standards. Now, drawing on his distinguished career, Figliuzzi reveals how the Bureau achieves its extraordinary track record of excellence—from the training of new recruits in "The FBI Way" to the Bureau's rigorous maintenance of its standards up and down the organization. 

All good codes of conduct have one common trait: they reflect the core values of an organization. Individuals, companies, schools, teams, or any group seeking to codify their rules to live by must first establish core values. Figliuzzi has condensed the Bureau’s process of preserving and protecting its values into what he calls “The Seven C’s”. If you can adapt the concepts of Code, Conservancy, Clarity, Consequences, Compassion, Credibility, and Consistency, you can instill and preserve your values against all threats, internal and external. This is how the FBI does it.

Figliuzzi’s role in the FBI gave him a unique opportunity to study patterns of conduct among high-achieving, ethical individuals and draw conclusions about why, when and how good people sometimes do bad things. Unafraid to identify FBI execs who erred, he cites them as the exceptions that prove the rule. Part pulse-pounding memoir, part practical playbook for excellence, The FBI Way shows readers how to apply the lessons he’s learned to their own lives: in business, management, and personal development.

Monday, January 25, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Chester Creek Murders

 

It is Monday, What are you Reading? 

The Chester Creek Murders 

(Venator Cold Case Series Book 1) Kindle Edition

By Nathan Dylan Goodwin





https://www.amazon.com/Chester-Creek-Murders-Venator-Cold-ebook/dp/B08PFYYW3J/



I’ve read each of Nathan’s previous books, on Kindle, and enjoyed them very much. This recent book should be no exception.



Amazon’s Description:


When Detective Clayton Tyler is tasked with reviewing the formidable archives of unsolved homicides in his police department’s vaults, he settles on one particular cold case from the 1980s: The Chester Creek Murders. Three young women were brutally murdered—their bodies dumped in Chester Creek, Delaware County—by a serial killer who has confounded a slew of detectives and evaded capture for over thirty-eight years. With no new leads or information at his disposal, the detective contacts Venator for help, a company that uses cutting-edge investigative genetic genealogy to profile perpetrators solely from DNA evidence. Taking on the case, Madison Scott-Barnhart and her small team at Venator must use their forensic genealogical expertise to attempt finally to bring the serial killer to justice. Madison, meanwhile, has to weigh professional and personal issues carefully, including the looming five-year anniversary of her husband’s disappearance.


Monday, January 18, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? Saving Freedom

 


It is Monday, What are you Reading? Saving Freedom:

Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization

By Joe Scarborough





https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Freedom-Truman-Western-Civilization/dp/0062950495/



This book gets me back a Presidential Bio. Also, it describes the time when the powers that be set up the foreign policy precedents that lasted for 70 years. Great reminders of what was set up and why.


Amazon’s Description:


New York Times Bestseller!

History called on Harry Truman to unite the Western world against Soviet communism, but first he had to rally Republicans and Democrats behind America’s most dramatic foreign policy shift since George Washington delivered his farewell address. How did one of the least prepared presidents to walk into the Oval Office become one of its most successful?

The year was 1947. The Soviet Union had moved from being America’s uneasy ally in the Second World War to its most feared enemy. With Joseph Stalin’s ambitions pushing westward, Turkey was pressured from the east while communist revolutionaries overran Greece. The British Empire was battered from its war with Hitler and suddenly teetering on the brink of financial ruin. Only America could afford to defend freedom in the West, and the effort was spearheaded by a president who hadn’t even been elected to that office. But Truman would wage a domestic political battle that carried with it the highest of stakes, inspiring friends and foes alike to join in his crusade to defend democracy across the globe.

In Saving Freedom, Joe Scarborough recounts the historic forces that moved Truman toward his country’s long twilight struggle against Soviet communism, and how this untested president acted decisively to build a lasting coalition that would influence America’s foreign policy for generations to come. On March 12, 1947, Truman delivered an address before a joint session of Congress announcing a policy of containment that would soon become known as the Truman Doctrine. That doctrine pledged that the United States would “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” The untested president’s policy was a radical shift from 150 years of isolationism, but it would prove to be the pivotal moment that guaranteed Western Europe’s freedom, the American Century’s rise, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Truman’s triumph over the personal and political struggles that confronted him following his ascension to the presidency is an inspiring tale of American leadership, fierce determination, bipartisan unity, and courage in the face of the rising Soviet threat. Saving Freedom explores one of the most pivotal moments of the twentieth century, a turning point when patriotic Americans of both political parties worked together to defeat tyranny.



Monday, January 11, 2021

It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Last American Aristocrat

 

It is Monday, What are you Reading? 

The Last American Aristocrat:

The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams

By David S. Brown





https://www.amazon.com/Last-American-Aristocrat-Brilliant-Improbable/dp/1982128232/




This Christmas book is not a Presidential Bio, but it shares many first hand and well researched 

Presidential stories by a distinguished descendant of two of them. Should be a good one! ;-)


Amazon’s Description:


A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice


A revelatory biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals of his era, who witnessed and contributed to the United States’ dramatic transition from a colonial society to a modern nation.


Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family—after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams—to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist.


Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted powerful figures, including Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era.


The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence.


Presenting intimate and insightful details of a fascinating and unusual American life and a new window on nineteenth century US history, The Last American Aristocrat shows us a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before.



Monday, January 4, 2021

It's Monday, What are you Reading? The Patriots

 

It's Monday, What are you Reading? The Patriots:

Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America

by Winston Groom





https://www.amazon.com/Patriots-Alexander-Hamilton-Jefferson-America/dp/1426221495/



The next Christmas book fits well with the first. Different views of several of the Founding Fathers. These three are a curious mix. It will be interesting to see how he weaves their stories together.



Amazon’s Description:


When the Revolutionary War ended in victory, there remained a stupendous problem: establishing a workable democratic government in the vast, newly independent country. Three key founding fathers played significant roles: John Adams, the brilliant, dour New Englander; Thomas Jefferson, the aristocratic Southern renaissance man; and Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Nevis. In this riveting narrative, best-selling author Winston Groom illuminates these men as the patriots fundamentally responsible for the ideas that shaped the emerging United States. Their lives could not have been more different, and their relationships with each other were often rife with animosity. And yet they led the charge--two of them creating and signing the Declaration of Independence, and the third establishing a national treasury and the earliest delineation of a Republican party. The time in which they lived was fraught with danger, and their achievements were strained by vast antagonisms that recall the intense political polarization of today. But through it all, they managed to shoulder the heavy mantle of creating the United States of America, putting aside their differences to make a great country. Drawing on extensive correspondence, Groom shares the remarkable story of the beginnings of our great nation.