tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9931248988889012012024-03-05T06:52:50.105-08:00Dr. Bill's Book BazaarThis blog is a companion to my book publishing sites at: http://thehomeplaceseries.blogspot.com/ (fiction) and
http://stores.lulu.com/drbillshares (non-fiction).
For this blog I will provide regular commentary of activity at the Book Bazaar, upcoming events, and related comments of interest to readers of the Book Bazaar. Book reviews and book giveaways will be included, as well. Become a follower so you get the updates, as they are posted.Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.comBlogger334125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-33317907689831438332022-02-07T01:00:00.001-08:002022-02-07T01:00:00.194-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? Our First Civil War<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading?</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By H.W. Brands</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHkwrAxqsYPCO5NMpsr4wFlcQkLOixY5MXPHxQb8KnuYrNgqjxmKra-D1dGty3gumRj-OHecmqDj3tT7Ey-t_SjMt_R2UU4OqIfdxyEojQggluJqCjfKfNSr3DKKwWYf4jusgDgF8aT-TkKBMlJNtjQvt-LIoBPeNRcLkG9gxzkMpQxO-KDmXYCya7=s436" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="285" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHkwrAxqsYPCO5NMpsr4wFlcQkLOixY5MXPHxQb8KnuYrNgqjxmKra-D1dGty3gumRj-OHecmqDj3tT7Ey-t_SjMt_R2UU4OqIfdxyEojQggluJqCjfKfNSr3DKKwWYf4jusgDgF8aT-TkKBMlJNtjQvt-LIoBPeNRcLkG9gxzkMpQxO-KDmXYCya7=s320" width="209" /></a></div><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Our-First-Civil-War-Revolution/dp/0385546513/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Our-First-Civil-War-Revolution/dp/0385546513/</span></a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Another view of the American Revolution in one volume. I am looking forward to see how Brands treats of Loyalist viewpoint alongside the Patriot viewpoint in this book.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Amazon Description: </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>“Americans tend to forget that we have always been at war with one another—even in the beginning…. Brands tells the story of the American Revolution as it really unfolded—as a civil war between colonial patriots and those loyal to the British Crown and Parliament. Division, Brands reminds us, is as American as unity.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of <i>His Truth Is Marching On</i></b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>From best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands comes a gripping, page-turning narrative of the American Revolution that shows it to be more than a fight against the British: it was also a violent battle among neighbors forced to choose sides, Loyalist or Patriot.</b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels? That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels. Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society. Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, being of cantankerous temperament. Even so, he revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British Empire that fostered their success.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Others in the same circle of family and friends chose differently. William Franklin might have been expected to join his father, Benjamin, in rebellion but remained loyal to the British. So did Thomas Hutchinson, a royal governor and friend of the Franklins, and Joseph Galloway, an early challenger to the Crown. They soon heard themselves denounced as traitors--for <i>not</i> having betrayed the country where they grew up. Native Americans and the enslaved were also forced to choose sides as civil war broke out around them.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">After the Revolution, the Patriots were cast as heroes and founding fathers while the Loyalists were relegated to bit parts best forgotten. <i>Our First Civil War</i> reminds us that before America could win its revolution against Britain, the Patriots had to win a bitter civil war against family, neighbors, and friends.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-35146021206033211492022-01-31T01:00:00.001-08:002022-01-31T01:00:00.273-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? The American Story<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading?</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By David M. Rubenstein</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjbChbERHvjy6aMubnZ0194ux0K6ioV0jaIgC1g99yvv1BqXO6YtsYzoHIEhcj48S_M-4rA16CMv9kyJs8ey0dHqWPoRxfShbTWTF0ge_FefAofW66fel5pIHNtOI17T-kGSrqidq39Cbd4xWIiOnqe9K6vYnVp4SEJvd5c9BUZAUUbNCSz-vfjCb0H=s436" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="436" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjbChbERHvjy6aMubnZ0194ux0K6ioV0jaIgC1g99yvv1BqXO6YtsYzoHIEhcj48S_M-4rA16CMv9kyJs8ey0dHqWPoRxfShbTWTF0ge_FefAofW66fel5pIHNtOI17T-kGSrqidq39Cbd4xWIiOnqe9K6vYnVp4SEJvd5c9BUZAUUbNCSz-vfjCb0H=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Story-Conversations-Master-Historians/dp/1982120258/">https://www.amazon.com/American-Story-Conversations-Master-Historians/dp/1982120258/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Interviews with many of my favorite authors and historians… how could I pass it up!!?</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Amazon Description: </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Co-founder of The Carlyle Group and patriotic philanthropist David M. Rubenstein takes readers on a sweeping journey across the grand arc of the American story through revealing conversations with our greatest historians.</b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In these lively dialogues, the biggest names in American history explore the subjects they’ve come to so intimately know and understand.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>David McCullough</b> on John Adams</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>Jon Meacham</b> on Thomas Jefferson</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>Ron Chernow</b> on Alexander Hamilton</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>Walter Isaacson</b> on Benjamin Franklin</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>Doris Kearns Goodwin</b> on Abraham Lincoln</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>A. Scott Berg</b> on Charles Lindbergh</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>Taylor Branch</b> on Martin Luther King</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>Robert Caro</b> on Lyndon B. Johnson</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— <b>Bob Woodward</b> on Richard Nixon</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">—<b>And many others, including a special conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts </b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Through his popular program <i>The David Rubenstein Show</i>, David Rubenstein has established himself as one of our most thoughtful interviewers. Now, in <i>The American Story,</i> David captures the brilliance of our most esteemed historians, as well as the souls of their subjects. The book features introductions by Rubenstein as well a foreword by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead our national library. Richly illustrated with archival images from the Library of Congress, the book is destined to become a classic for serious readers of American history.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Through these captivating exchanges, these bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning authors offer fresh insight on pivotal moments from the Founding Era to the late 20th century.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-53321910500509185542022-01-24T01:00:00.002-08:002022-01-24T01:00:00.201-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? Boone<p><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? Boone</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Boone: An Unfinished Portrait</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Daniel Firth Griffith</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-e034DNwU_roLr0qkCqO9VrEr30MJ4NxGbbrFXKhRj_KZc3F9lAitQWXgoJUEeVAAsKpMcaPkescIqnz_9qsUBKGNBgCFQMgQEV3ALTpiX2oSRzxk-694XyAnvWzmly9TfQY06hq9-bwUGZ93GUPQ3r2A3gxJpgWPAE8fcN9kH3fKvDZrBMRwxv4g=s436" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="296" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-e034DNwU_roLr0qkCqO9VrEr30MJ4NxGbbrFXKhRj_KZc3F9lAitQWXgoJUEeVAAsKpMcaPkescIqnz_9qsUBKGNBgCFQMgQEV3ALTpiX2oSRzxk-694XyAnvWzmly9TfQY06hq9-bwUGZ93GUPQ3r2A3gxJpgWPAE8fcN9kH3fKvDZrBMRwxv4g=s320" width="217" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Boone-Unfinished-Daniel-Firth-Griffith/dp/1735492205/">https://www.amazon.com/Boone-Unfinished-Daniel-Firth-Griffith/dp/1735492205/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A short read… and takes a very different perspective on a fascinating man.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Amazon Description: </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;"><b>A wild biography of Daniel Boone that seeks to define and examine the figurehead of the American Man through a rich inspection of the complex and problematic context of American frontier history.</b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">Acclaimed Biographer and Emergent Conservationist Daniel Firth Griffith provides a wild and engaging portrait of a great American Icon, Daniel Boone. Delivered with the challenging nuance of a historian and the arresting style of a poet, Griffith's work seeks to reignite and engage the soul of American wildness. <i>Boone: An Unfinished Portrait</i> is a search party to find Daniel Boone, its journey is that of his story's canvas, and its purpose is to uncover a man to unfurl a hope built in reciprocity, connection, and understanding.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">***</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">We know the name, but do we know the man? Was Daniel Boone a woodsman-philosopher or American Patriot? Boone was and is still today a convenient symbol, employed by anyone who thinks they are an American. But what if he wasn't an American? And what if he doesn't want our employment?</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">In this sensitive and philosophical work, we dive into the rich mythology of American literature, poetry, and history alongside Indigenous mythology and wisdom to find the man of Daniel Boone. From Whitman to Emerson, Muir to Turner, we peel back Daniel's forest - gently of course, for leaves are fragile and we don't want to disturb that beaver to your left as he creates an ecologically-rich wetland - and attempt to see him as he saw himself. Perhaps, in the naivety and purity of this place, we may also learn something about ourselves.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">If history is the art of trying to know better, then this book is written for those who are ready for the task-to unveil the woods of our mythology and discover a story that we may not be entirely comfortable with. The lesson of this story is not progress, but pain, not empire, but empathy. This is the story of just a man-a great man but a man nonetheless. Perhaps, that makes it the very best kind of American story.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-79524744940636158962022-01-17T01:00:00.001-08:002022-01-17T01:00:00.206-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Cause<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">It is Monday, What are you Reading? </span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">The Cause</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">: The American Revolution and its Discontents</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Joseph J. Ellis</span></p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhdq_58qFUoeoxW7AhFx1eMHR7iBz8Gwxf8ECcG2Oe1r6beAHPhO4kkoYKAWt-Ie5ps1aaiWZYbvuONtoiSVjTeEUCfTme7iZqxvNAt17pK3jI7tq65ITiAVqZY0vV6kN8e-aVGu4aJ1XRph7lozxY7LxZcDMzhgJTor8F2Br98Qe6t68SXLyxJiRBf=s436" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="289" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhdq_58qFUoeoxW7AhFx1eMHR7iBz8Gwxf8ECcG2Oe1r6beAHPhO4kkoYKAWt-Ie5ps1aaiWZYbvuONtoiSVjTeEUCfTme7iZqxvNAt17pK3jI7tq65ITiAVqZY0vV6kN8e-aVGu4aJ1XRph7lozxY7LxZcDMzhgJTor8F2Br98Qe6t68SXLyxJiRBf=s320" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983/</span></a></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize was the book, many years ago, that piqued my interest in the founding stories of our country and that period in our history. This book is said to put in one volume his summation of that period. Have to read it!! ;-)</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;"><b><i>New York Times Book Review</i> ― Editors’ Choice • <i>Chicago Tribune</i> ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • <i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</i> ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading"</b></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;"><b>A culminating work on the American Founding by one of its leading historians, <i>The Cause</i> rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it.</b></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America’s revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War.</p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with <i>Founding Brothers</i>, <i>The Cause</i> returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black.</p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">Taking us from the end of the Seven Years’ War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, <i>The Cause</i> interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.</p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of ’76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best.</p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Written with the vivid and muscular prose for which Ellis is known, and with characteristically trenchant insight, <i>The Cause</i> marks the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the founding era. A landmark work of narrative history, it challenges the story we have long told ourselves about our origins as a people, and as a nation.</p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">6 illustrations; 7 maps</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-38400427170820069342022-01-10T01:00:00.001-08:002022-01-10T01:00:00.219-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? First Friends<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">It is Monday, What are you Reading? </span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-large;">First Friends: </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-large;">The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents</span></p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqibojHNOaWFEFwjDgrtxTpgfdQXaHs8mTvJby3MvYkfKv9PTc9UeAG7TGSDMVMUPRbyLPb-kcOO047_tKHH8TF7sQtTY-MMw7zeCi_im_B6fvU7h7SyOjeg88a58FymA4NM93Jf0TQHQRd33Ic1GlHCJHWiqLa8M6PxC3ahv_ZoLUQij5gmSBR2QW=s436" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="289" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqibojHNOaWFEFwjDgrtxTpgfdQXaHs8mTvJby3MvYkfKv9PTc9UeAG7TGSDMVMUPRbyLPb-kcOO047_tKHH8TF7sQtTY-MMw7zeCi_im_B6fvU7h7SyOjeg88a58FymA4NM93Jf0TQHQRd33Ic1GlHCJHWiqLa8M6PxC3ahv_ZoLUQij5gmSBR2QW=s320" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/First-Friends-Powerful-Unelected-Presidents/dp/1538702924/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/First-Friends-Powerful-Unelected-Presidents/dp/1538702924/</span></a></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This came out last summer, and I was happy to get it for Christmas. I’m always interested, of course, in new information that informs our understanding of our Presidents, who influences them and how they relate. This promises to provide many of those answers.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>AN INSTANT <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BESTSELLER! </b></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>A <i>USA TODAY </i>"BEST BOOKS OF 2021" PICK! </b></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>In the bestselling tradition of <i>The Presidents Club</i> and <i>Presidential Courage</i>, White House history as told through the stories of the best friends and closest confidants of American presidents.</b></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Here are the riveting histories of myriad presidential friendships, among them:</p>
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<li style="color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b></b><span style="background-color: white;"><b>Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed</b>: They shared a bed for four years during which Speed saved his friend from a crippling depression. Two decades later the friends worked together to save the Union. </span></li>
<li style="color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b></b><span style="background-color: white;"><b>Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson:</b> When Truman wavered on whether to recognize the state of Israel in 1948, his lifelong friend and former business partner intervened at just the right moment with just the right words to steer the president’s decision. </span></li>
<li style="color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b></b><span style="background-color: white;"><b>Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Daisy Suckley</b>: Unassuming and overlooked during her lifetime, Daisy Suckley was in reality FDR’s most trusted, constant confidant, the respite for a lonely and overworked President navigating the Great Depression and World War II</span></li>
<li style="color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b></b><span style="background-color: white;"><b>John Kennedy and David Ormsby-Gore: </b>They met as young men in pre-war London and began a conversation over the meaning of leadership. A generation later the Cuban Missile Crisis would put their ideas to test as Ormsby-Gore became the president’s unofficial, but most valued foreign policy advisor.</span></li>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">These and other friendships—including <b>Thomas Jefferson and James Madison</b>, <b>Franklin Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne</b>, and <b>Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan</b>—populate this fresh and provocative exploration of a series of seminal presidential friendships.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Publishing history teems with books by and about Presidents, First Ladies, First Pets, and even First Chefs. Now former Clinton aide Gary Ginsberg breaks new literary ground on Pennsylvania Avenue and provides fresh insights into the lives of the men who held the most powerful political office in the world by looking at the friends on whom they relied.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>First Friends</i> is an engaging, serendipitous look into the lives of Commanders-in-Chief and how their presidencies were shaped by those they held most dear.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-33161022746599534292022-01-03T13:26:00.001-08:002022-01-03T13:26:13.150-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 3: The Ozarkers<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">It is Monday, What are you Reading?</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 3: </span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">The Ozarkers</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">By Brooks Blevins</span></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbRE8BjHB-349T3byGxXxymB4SVP_-7cJXqK708rFxMmvuTK2MnAoBzPE3Fkiwi-V_TNvXBV3qHahlYFmHKyVNE_dY8KT9R57vzocXb402hXaSTW4PLyx-iPpu6-W7ikRcGkhze1LTqMZtSd-oB6_3TA_yXmFTFLoQIWLIlZDICqzIqWgON68N09TU=s436" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="291" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbRE8BjHB-349T3byGxXxymB4SVP_-7cJXqK708rFxMmvuTK2MnAoBzPE3Fkiwi-V_TNvXBV3qHahlYFmHKyVNE_dY8KT9R57vzocXb402hXaSTW4PLyx-iPpu6-W7ikRcGkhze1LTqMZtSd-oB6_3TA_yXmFTFLoQIWLIlZDICqzIqWgON68N09TU=s320" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Ozarks-Ozarkers-Brooks-Blevins/dp/0252044053/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/History-Ozarks-Ozarkers-Brooks-Blevins/dp/0252044053/</span></a></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This is the third of the 3 books series… had to have it. It speaks to moderns times, so should be an interesting read.</p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Between the world wars, America embraced an image of the Ozarks as a remote land of hills and hollers. The popular imagination stereotyped Ozarkers as ridge runners, hillbillies, and pioneers - a cast of colorful throwbacks hostile to change. But the real Ozarks reflected a more complex reality.</p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Note:</b> This reality is the basis for my first novel, “<a href="http://thehomeplaceseries.blogspot.com/p/back-to-homeplace.html" target="_blank">Back to the Homeplace</a>,” and what has become <a href="http://thehomeplaceseries.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-origin-of-homeplace.html" target="_blank">“The Homeplace Saga”</a> series of family saga, historical fictions stories spanning the period of 1833 into the 21st Century set in this region incorporating nearly ten generations of some original settler’s families on multiple reading platforms: novels, ebooks and hundreds of short stories and compilations, in print and online. Watch for a <i>new blog and posts on Facebook</i> for updates on current and new content in this series.</p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-58768805452568412762021-12-13T01:00:00.002-08:002021-12-13T01:00:00.204-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? Midnight in Washington<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading?</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Midnight in Washington: </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">How we almost lost our democracy and still could</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Adam Schiff</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqaSUS-cQ6hHtCbIShEfZ3dm35YwMvf6hDo0G8XloxDIiOyn1_XEm11SMNfEBKrd7ocNMkHMQm6q5BGR-ttIWVJzN6OUlJWfneTkPaAlLcqA6-vL89yDwfWyI2pcuYqWueJxg14Nb23bLzpp0hOZINA323wpkj1AlrxbeEFtWHjo9CLACyIKRiAV5m=s436" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="287" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqaSUS-cQ6hHtCbIShEfZ3dm35YwMvf6hDo0G8XloxDIiOyn1_XEm11SMNfEBKrd7ocNMkHMQm6q5BGR-ttIWVJzN6OUlJWfneTkPaAlLcqA6-vL89yDwfWyI2pcuYqWueJxg14Nb23bLzpp0hOZINA323wpkj1AlrxbeEFtWHjo9CLACyIKRiAV5m=s320" width="211" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Washington-Almost-Democracy-Still/dp/059323152X/">https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Washington-Almost-Democracy-Still/dp/059323152X/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>#1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>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</b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><b></b><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>“Engaging and informative . . . a manual for how to probe and question power, how to hold leaders accountable in a time of diminishing responsibility.”—<i>The</i> <i>Washington Post</i></b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In <i>Midnight in Washington</i>, 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.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-86138467271172887942021-12-06T01:00:00.016-08:002021-12-06T01:00:00.202-08:00 It is Monday, What are you Reading? State of Terror: A Novel<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">It is Monday, What are you Reading? </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">State of Terror: A Novel</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlY4798svT0apmManzZ0jkTy8ohQ1QgJhWyS9BhX_9zvYZ_r2UoAamEnNdrgBZPZ-GINadE_IvP2neRg4UE-lhcthg0YpHTGWzeiIbXGL3cJ0-vfnGH8HKf9s_Z9iOkedtH-bbqatrjyc/s436/Terror.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="436" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlY4798svT0apmManzZ0jkTy8ohQ1QgJhWyS9BhX_9zvYZ_r2UoAamEnNdrgBZPZ-GINadE_IvP2neRg4UE-lhcthg0YpHTGWzeiIbXGL3cJ0-vfnGH8HKf9s_Z9iOkedtH-bbqatrjyc/s320/Terror.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/State-Terror-Novel-Louise-Penny/dp/198217367X/">https://www.amazon.com/State-Terror-Novel-Louise-Penny/dp/198217367X/</a></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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… </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon Description:</b></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>AN INSTANT #1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER </b></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Named one of the most anticipated novels of the season by <i>People</i>, Associated Press, <i>Time</i>, <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, <i>Parade</i>, <i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</i>, <i>The Guardian</i>, <i>Publishers Weekly</i>, and more.</b></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>From the</b> <b>#1 bestselling authors Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny comes a novel of unsurpassed thrills and incomparable insider expertise—<i>State of Terror</i>.</b></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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<b> </b>in the places where it counts the most.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>State of Terror </i>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 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling novelist.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-12045468584749127132021-11-29T01:00:00.003-08:002021-11-29T01:00:00.218-08:00 It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Foundlings<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">It is Monday, What are you Reading?</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-large;">The Foundlings (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 9)</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">by Nathan Dylan Goodwin</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYTjxbMm2PTSQjJoNkYGBXNubcRH-YBXmfpHWgISvYjmbkO41CscirbWoArlHk7_E9dM37XS4PPb3ZHcKKHDTazZ1IpJk5d1y50_psHL6l9jLtVnSNJGlRSSxrsTo4uTJuCGcOi0cgD4E/s436/foundlings.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="291" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYTjxbMm2PTSQjJoNkYGBXNubcRH-YBXmfpHWgISvYjmbkO41CscirbWoArlHk7_E9dM37XS4PPb3ZHcKKHDTazZ1IpJk5d1y50_psHL6l9jLtVnSNJGlRSSxrsTo4uTJuCGcOi0cgD4E/s320/foundlings.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Foundlings-Forensic-Genealogist-Book-ebook/dp/B09JG6RB3V/">https://www.amazon.com/Foundlings-Forensic-Genealogist-Book-ebook/dp/B09JG6RB3V/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Reading Book 9 on Kindle. Set in England, always an interesting read.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Amazon Description:</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>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 <i>not</i> to read his concluding report.</b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This is the ninth novel in the Morton Farrier genealogical crime mystery series, although it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;">For updates on Nathan Dylan Goodwin's releases:<br />
Website & newsletter: www.nathandylangoodwin.com<br />
Twitter: @NathanDGoodwin<br />
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nathandylangoodwin<br />
Instagram: www.instagram.com/NathanDylanGoodwin<br />
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/dylan0470/</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #0d0e0e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 14px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-39720977443846176692021-06-21T01:00:00.001-07:002021-06-21T01:00:00.208-07:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? After the Fall<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? After the Fall:</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Being American in the World We’ve Made</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Ben Rhodes</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-cjGs5dRs-4EFdfgeNDs3uzb9C30kp4DPaA0TPk-EXPd-LYlT9QMBnmtrqZ2hTo6wCMAnNSUbdjWYgkJOng3tRDldxHnwJSpmXRhMOxDmVuYyxS-PhFAxrAK_mqz-49SfFqzkW_055A/s436/AftertheFall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="436" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-cjGs5dRs-4EFdfgeNDs3uzb9C30kp4DPaA0TPk-EXPd-LYlT9QMBnmtrqZ2hTo6wCMAnNSUbdjWYgkJOng3tRDldxHnwJSpmXRhMOxDmVuYyxS-PhFAxrAK_mqz-49SfFqzkW_055A/s320/AftertheFall.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Being-American-World/dp/1984856057/">https://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Being-American-World/dp/1984856057/</a></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>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 <i>The World as It Is</i>—travels the globe in a deeply personal, beautifully observed quest for answers.</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Part memoir and part reportage, <i>After the Fall </i>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.</p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-10713071660154179322021-06-14T01:00:00.003-07:002021-06-14T01:00:00.260-07:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? Voices Waiting to be Heard<p><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Voices Waiting to be Heard:</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nineteen Eyewitness Accounts of Arnold’s 1775 March to Quebec</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Stephen Barley</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLo244pZEqE_ZL43EH3GS0ZXF9HVzazIzoM4NK_IVjKLfSSMxliV_LwpRRrsAEOVJcVUuxlJcs5dmc1-k7AaTMZ4QNf_W8n9wgeRwGbZNaSaOtXexvhV0Ec5QfS36L4yND18LUSLc7szw/s436/voices.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="291" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLo244pZEqE_ZL43EH3GS0ZXF9HVzazIzoM4NK_IVjKLfSSMxliV_LwpRRrsAEOVJcVUuxlJcs5dmc1-k7AaTMZ4QNf_W8n9wgeRwGbZNaSaOtXexvhV0Ec5QfS36L4yND18LUSLc7szw/s320/voices.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Waiting-Be-Heard-Eyewitness/dp/1665526092/">https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Waiting-Be-Heard-Eyewitness/dp/1665526092/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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!! ;-)</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-16310344995855564722021-06-07T01:00:00.001-07:002021-06-07T01:00:00.205-07:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? Amazon Unbound<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading?</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Amazon Unbound: </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Brad Stone</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY_RsmOihLrftyZbmwSRZiXAlxz1tzaKWe7gzQkfrqTvpmYztjuKx0SzMYREE6kZv442_Uj_LVQVHFQvkO_lIaX7c14dD3fCWPAOAyGpMQhqa3FxneUlDW-cVYCT729SVs4vOuAOe1Rtc/s436/Amazon+Unb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="436" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY_RsmOihLrftyZbmwSRZiXAlxz1tzaKWe7gzQkfrqTvpmYztjuKx0SzMYREE6kZv442_Uj_LVQVHFQvkO_lIaX7c14dD3fCWPAOAyGpMQhqa3FxneUlDW-cVYCT729SVs4vOuAOe1Rtc/s320/Amazon+Unb.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Unbound-Invention-Global-Empire/dp/1982132612/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Unbound-Invention-Global-Empire/dp/1982132612/</span></a></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Fascinated by Jeff Bezos, so a must read…</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>“A masterful book.” —Marc Levinson, <i>The Washington Post </i></b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>“A juicy tour of the company Bezos built.”<i>—The New York Times Book Review</i></b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>From the bestselling author of <i>The Everything Store</i>, an unvarnished picture of Amazon’s unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time.</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Almost ten years ago, <i>Bloomberg </i>journalist Brad Stone captured the rise of Amazon in his bestseller <i>The Everything Store</i>. 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 <i>The Washington Post</i>, 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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In <i>Amazon Unbound</i>, 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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Definitive, timely, and revelatory, Stone has provided an unvarnished portrait of a man and company that we couldn’t imagine modern life without.</p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-51620352374274728412021-03-15T11:21:00.000-07:002021-03-15T11:21:14.800-07:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Code Breaker<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Walter Isaacson</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaBkx0n9jkSBMMBc5Qk6QNrUp-tcyMra-SPEMmZnI10kU55XrlSIXpH5ANTNrQc6b2kl2vCaHKLI2GIL_4ytk4bQEVNHDn4UDUBczb0B89E0SolCg-eDdRHBZ_lSSeNZn9YbYJl5zu8S0/s499/codebreaker_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="329" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaBkx0n9jkSBMMBc5Qk6QNrUp-tcyMra-SPEMmZnI10kU55XrlSIXpH5ANTNrQc6b2kl2vCaHKLI2GIL_4ytk4bQEVNHDn4UDUBczb0B89E0SolCg-eDdRHBZ_lSSeNZn9YbYJl5zu8S0/s320/codebreaker_.jpg" /></a></div><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Code-Breaker-Jennifer-Doudna-Editing/dp/1982115858/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Code-Breaker-Jennifer-Doudna-Editing/dp/1982115858/</span></a></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A book for our times. Should be very interesting.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>The bestselling author of <i>Leonardo da Vinci</i> and <i>Steve Jobs</i> 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.</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled <i>The Double Helix</i> 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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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?</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-13271941013292070622021-02-01T01:00:00.001-08:002021-02-01T01:00:03.816-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? The FBI Way<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? The FBI Way: </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Inside the Bureaus’ Code of Excellence</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Frank Figliuzzi</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv6oMrcSJJoT3BNqvVWiqaewnJgZKUwZAu7Y-K-3SVz9Sq00tlqgmD-cOD3Kfjz7KSi9veDoh3-l3IAvp5I_q9YcLOJMPST_ncs2_8bGrmJLKoKAkC7lIkyr5ZjiQ7h94jBlmTQKETY2Q/s436/FBI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="297" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv6oMrcSJJoT3BNqvVWiqaewnJgZKUwZAu7Y-K-3SVz9Sq00tlqgmD-cOD3Kfjz7KSi9veDoh3-l3IAvp5I_q9YcLOJMPST_ncs2_8bGrmJLKoKAkC7lIkyr5ZjiQ7h94jBlmTQKETY2Q/s320/FBI.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/FBI-Way-Inside-Bureaus-Excellence/dp/006299705X/">https://www.amazon.com/FBI-Way-Inside-Bureaus-Excellence/dp/006299705X/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>"A must read for serious leaders at every level." —General Barry R. McCaffrey (Ret.)</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>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 </b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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. </p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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, <i>The FBI Way</i> shows readers how to apply the lessons he’s learned to their own lives: in business, management, and personal development.</p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-9913702214327874192021-01-25T01:00:00.001-08:002021-01-25T01:00:05.289-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Chester Creek Murders<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Chester Creek Murders </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Venator Cold Case Series Book 1) Kindle Edition</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Nathan Dylan Goodwin</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHzNlHauCfbH6Nnx5XWSs5WdOlvYf8MLSUHjvIC-gw0n8KZzGHGBsFy9s3hDJHCrERhuoz5wa9avumGvwX9gItxhTYXvdluI80Yyk7C20isTaEhQNs-9bMSNEJLK_KbWru4WKQE0JXu68/s436/Chester+Creek.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="299" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHzNlHauCfbH6Nnx5XWSs5WdOlvYf8MLSUHjvIC-gw0n8KZzGHGBsFy9s3hDJHCrERhuoz5wa9avumGvwX9gItxhTYXvdluI80Yyk7C20isTaEhQNs-9bMSNEJLK_KbWru4WKQE0JXu68/s320/Chester+Creek.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Chester-Creek-Murders-Venator-Cold-ebook/dp/B08PFYYW3J/">https://www.amazon.com/Chester-Creek-Murders-Venator-Cold-ebook/dp/B08PFYYW3J/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I’ve read each of Nathan’s previous books, on Kindle, and enjoyed them very much. This recent book should be no exception.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-13021634663470274882021-01-18T01:00:00.001-08:002021-01-18T01:00:09.702-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? Saving Freedom<p> </p><p><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? Saving Freedom:</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Joe Scarborough</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgstR06f7yby0zbi8R1soP9waT1gnRPhtjttE7TFzMRJrJR9pac7XWf3Cygm3VTV1hqOxMMYtRzc-eIp1re5vmxwcC6qF80tm-C9pOtfbxvYpzTdHDj9bvsMLrZru4PDDYjiIcWDNf2t4A/s436/Saving+Freedom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="289" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgstR06f7yby0zbi8R1soP9waT1gnRPhtjttE7TFzMRJrJR9pac7XWf3Cygm3VTV1hqOxMMYtRzc-eIp1re5vmxwcC6qF80tm-C9pOtfbxvYpzTdHDj9bvsMLrZru4PDDYjiIcWDNf2t4A/s320/Saving+Freedom.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Freedom-Truman-Western-Civilization/dp/0062950495/">https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Freedom-Truman-Western-Civilization/dp/0062950495/</a></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><i>New York Times</i> Bestseller!</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>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?</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In <i>Saving Freedom</i>, 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. </p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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. <i>Saving Freedom </i>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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-59429648345768544452021-01-11T01:00:00.001-08:002021-01-11T01:00:00.650-08:00It is Monday, What are you Reading? The Last American Aristocrat<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is Monday, What are you Reading? </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Last American Aristocrat:</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By David S. Brown</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifbqsRkCMq803BKoHgP9rr81K2KTn6W7NwylVTltfP1htHVb075RKmJkh0D43QODAhV7JIlkQdzBvwnTDobYY68UP2WDSVxlebj_Zv5h_HGOyz0N4yOU7p5jlqtowYWVS3TaAcF-8x70A/s436/Aristocrat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="289" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifbqsRkCMq803BKoHgP9rr81K2KTn6W7NwylVTltfP1htHVb075RKmJkh0D43QODAhV7JIlkQdzBvwnTDobYY68UP2WDSVxlebj_Zv5h_HGOyz0N4yOU7p5jlqtowYWVS3TaAcF-8x70A/s320/Aristocrat.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Last-American-Aristocrat-Brilliant-Improbable/dp/1982128232/">https://www.amazon.com/Last-American-Aristocrat-Brilliant-Improbable/dp/1982128232/</a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This Christmas book is not a Presidential Bio, but it shares many first hand and well researched </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Presidential stories by a distinguished descendant of two of them. Should be a good one! ;-)</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>A <i>New York Times Book Review </i>Editors' Choice</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>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.</b></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic <i>The Education of Henry Adams</i> 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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>The Last American Aristocrat </i>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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Presenting intimate and insightful details of a fascinating and unusual American life and a new window on nineteenth century US history, <i>The Last American Aristocrat</i> shows us a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-57466617213236220642021-01-04T01:00:00.003-08:002021-01-04T01:00:02.867-08:00It's Monday, What are you Reading? The Patriots<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's Monday, What are you Reading? The Patriots:</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">by Winston Groom</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1GYGWtR5LdM51dQ9qwas-U1-j2OL8DBkVRuqW31qEc8i8SwFgQ8TPVElPMT-7OjWf1jZ9dm0ckE0R7Bf-GGHX2K5ZsZ8U83gHep2ae91CNiFb1wfr-7uLZPkaFeJ8BMvjC0zIXtxABq0/s436/THe+Patriots.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="291" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1GYGWtR5LdM51dQ9qwas-U1-j2OL8DBkVRuqW31qEc8i8SwFgQ8TPVElPMT-7OjWf1jZ9dm0ckE0R7Bf-GGHX2K5ZsZ8U83gHep2ae91CNiFb1wfr-7uLZPkaFeJ8BMvjC0zIXtxABq0/s320/THe+Patriots.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Patriots-Alexander-Hamilton-Jefferson-America/dp/1426221495/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Patriots-Alexander-Hamilton-Jefferson-America/dp/1426221495/</span></a></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">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.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-64672647929829282412020-12-28T01:00:00.003-08:002020-12-28T01:00:00.127-08:00It's Monday, What are you Reading? George Washington, Entrepreneur<p> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's Monday, What are you Reading? </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">George Washington, Entrepreneur: </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">By John Berlau</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCFHnuY3qM61-Npq7Jr_HzkxxknrOFSIePGTv9S6G6PEMgQq1L0aIvEBl7xnChcDr389kdP5aApnSyjTnAUTFKeW-aImCeVnCo-HBRuImZEK3NLjLjCAonlz0z_rII8gdMOCDVxSJDhY/s436/GW+Ent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="282" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCFHnuY3qM61-Npq7Jr_HzkxxknrOFSIePGTv9S6G6PEMgQq1L0aIvEBl7xnChcDr389kdP5aApnSyjTnAUTFKeW-aImCeVnCo-HBRuImZEK3NLjLjCAonlz0z_rII8gdMOCDVxSJDhY/s320/GW+Ent.jpg" /></a></div><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/George-Washington-Entrepreneur-Founding-Business/dp/1250172608/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/George-Washington-Entrepreneur-Founding-Business/dp/1250172608/</span></a></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The first of three more Christmas books. I’m always interested in new approaches to these bios of the Presidents and Founding Fathers. I’m now especially interested to see how this one compares to others I have read. Usually learn new tidbits, from the different slants the authors use. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Amazon’s Description:</b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A business biography of George Washington, focusing on his many innovations and inventions.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">George Washington: general, statesman...businessman? Most people don't know that Washington was one of the country's first true entrepreneurs, responsible for innovations in several industries. In <i>George Washington, Entrepreneur</i>, John Berlau presents a fresh, surprising take on our forefather's business pursuits.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">History has depicted Washington as a gifted general and political pragmatist, not an intellectual heavyweight. But he was a patron of inventors and inveterate tinkerer, and just as intelligent as Jefferson or Franklin. His library was filled with books on agriculture, history, and philosophy. He was the first to breed horses with donkeys to produce the American mule. On his estate, he grew countless varieties of trees and built a greenhouse full of exotic fruits, herbs, and plants. Unlike his Virginia neighbors who remained wedded to tobacco, Washington planted seven types of wheat. His state-of-the-art mill produced flour which he exported to Europe in sacks stamped "G. Washington"―one of the very first branded food products. Mount Vernon was also home to a distillery and became one of the largest American whiskey producers of the era.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Berlau's portrait of Washington, drawn in large part from his journals and extensive correspondence, presents a side of him we haven't seen before. It is sure to delight readers of presidential biography and business history.</p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-72712515505313392112020-12-14T01:00:00.001-08:002020-12-14T01:00:05.804-08:00It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Franklin & Washington<p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Franklin & Washington</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson</span><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_hkoWBX7k_cZFMtHBkDCrK3xyg0OZpRbb-INkesZtsnq1zEgZqZIbS21Vh1z9O2rz7gfiJ6CBcFlHiPrzdLATFXx-kAEg0dX8On5EYNQR1wsIdWFyM0rd-7N0aUpBuOUZGQINjD_nIYE/s218/Franklin%2526Wash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_hkoWBX7k_cZFMtHBkDCrK3xyg0OZpRbb-INkesZtsnq1zEgZqZIbS21Vh1z9O2rz7gfiJ6CBcFlHiPrzdLATFXx-kAEg0dX8On5EYNQR1wsIdWFyM0rd-7N0aUpBuOUZGQINjD_nIYE/s0/Franklin%2526Wash.jpg" /></a><br /></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Washington-Partnership-Edward-Larson-ebook/dp/B07RNL7LY5/"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Washington-Partnership-Edward-Larson-ebook/dp/B07RNL7LY5/</span></a></p><p><br /><br />Got a Kindle recommendation I could no refuse. Not sure why I had missed this one earlier, but it definitely fits my reading preferences. Thanks, Amazon, you did it again… even tho’ it only cost me $1.02 with credits… Good start to it…<br /><br /><b>Amazon Description:</b><br /><br /><b>"Larson's elegantly written dual biography reveals that the partnership of Franklin and Washington was indispensable to the success of the Revolution." —Gordon S. Wood </b></p><p><b> </b><br />From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a masterful, first-of-its-kind dual biography of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, illuminating their partnership's enduring importance. </p><p><br />NATIONAL BESTSELLER • One of Washington Post's "10 Books to Read in February" • One of USA Today’s “Must-Read Books" of Winter 2020 • One of Publishers Weekly's "Top Ten" Spring 2020 Memoirs/Biographies</p><p><br />Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Vastly different men, Benjamin Franklin—an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north—and George Washington—a slaveholding general from the agrarian south—were the indispensable authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention, held in Franklin’s Philadelphia and presided over by Washington. And yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since.<br />Illuminating Franklin and Washington’s relationship with striking new detail and energy, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Edward J. Larson shows that theirs was truly an intimate working friendship that amplified the talents of each for collective advancement of the American project.<br />During the French and Indian War, Franklin supplied the wagons for General Edward Braddock’s ill-fated assault on Fort Duquesne, and Washington buried the general’s body under the dirt road traveled by those retreating wagons. After long supporting British rule, both became key early proponents of independence. Rekindled during the Second Continental Congress in 1775, their friendship gained historical significance during the American Revolution, when Franklin led America’s diplomatic mission in Europe (securing money and an alliance with France) and Washington commanded the Continental Army. Victory required both of these efforts to succeed, and success, in turn, required their mutual coordination and cooperation. In the 1780s, the two sought to strengthen the union, leading to the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the founding document that bears their stamp.<br />Franklin and Washington—the two most revered figures in the early republic—staked their lives and fortunes on the American experiment in liberty and were committed to its preservation. Today the United States is the world’s great superpower, and yet we also wrestle with the government Franklin and Washington created more than two centuries ago—the power of the executive branch, the principle of checks and balances, the electoral college—as well as the wounds of their compromise over slavery. Now, as the founding institutions appear under new stress, it is time to understand their origins through the fresh lens of Larson’s Franklin & Washington, a major addition to the literature of the founding era.</p><p></p><p><br /> </p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-58077115404703312662020-12-07T01:00:00.001-08:002020-12-07T01:00:05.320-08:00It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Ten Lessons<p> <span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s Monday, What are you Reading? </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">by</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fareed Zakaria <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvwaJYxlvTUAujWmMpHNuVz5N28-Kk1ss4_le1-qIGnpZXjx180tDayn1VfZA-2HjNPLezrDvLRUhie0Ce4cjB-LE5dYhq1ZOkmZnRfyqvrGTxdxQD6RfMeFbCkVNUFGaSWXTvv3TPy0/s218/Ten+Lessons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvwaJYxlvTUAujWmMpHNuVz5N28-Kk1ss4_le1-qIGnpZXjx180tDayn1VfZA-2HjNPLezrDvLRUhie0Ce4cjB-LE5dYhq1ZOkmZnRfyqvrGTxdxQD6RfMeFbCkVNUFGaSWXTvv3TPy0/s0/Ten+Lessons.jpg" /></a></div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Post-Pandemic-World-Fareed-Zakaria-ebook/dp/B08BWRX6H5/"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></a><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Post-Pandemic-World-Fareed-Zakaria-ebook/dp/B08BWRX6H5/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Post-Pandemic-World-Fareed-Zakaria-ebook/dp/B08BWRX6H5/</span></a><br /><p></p><p><br />I saw Rachel Maddow on MSNBC interview Fareed Zakaria of CNN about this new book, and knew I had to have it, for reference, at least… got the Kindle edition. Their discussion on “Good Government” in Lesson Two seemed especially relevant. Can’t wait to check it out. It is on my Kindle right now. Should go read some more!<br /><br /><b>Amazon Description:</b><br /><b><br />COVID-19 is speeding up history, but how? What is the shape of the world to come?</b><br /><br />Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.</p><p></p><p><br /> </p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-17277213415026802482020-09-07T01:00:00.001-07:002020-09-07T01:00:01.911-07:00It’s Monday, What are you Reading? A History of the Ozarks, Vol 2<p> </p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s Monday, What are you Reading? </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">A History of the Ozarks, Vol 2</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Conflicted Ozarks</span> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">by Brooks Blevins</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQvZpXRW-1NOS4m8tDLKgnEp_gE4lggfZGA2H3olVmWJFRqtasApLGsH34kzfb2ksctHO5V5nKvplyQxnL-GkZk2_POSMzJKnwxk-B47X_Ingyzisz9BHnzSo2soEq88Xt74WkcHfX7M/s218/Ozarks2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQvZpXRW-1NOS4m8tDLKgnEp_gE4lggfZGA2H3olVmWJFRqtasApLGsH34kzfb2ksctHO5V5nKvplyQxnL-GkZk2_POSMzJKnwxk-B47X_Ingyzisz9BHnzSo2soEq88Xt74WkcHfX7M/s0/Ozarks2.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Ozarks-Conflicted/dp/0252042735/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.amazon.com/History-Ozarks-Conflicted/dp/0252042735/</span></a></div><p>I’ve had this book nearly a year, it appears…a busy year, not much reading, really. It was two years ago this week that I wrote about Volume 1. Sept is important for this series, it seems.<br /><br />Description at Amazon:<br /><br />The Ozarks of the mid-1800s was a land of divisions. The uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, North and South, frontier and civilization, and secessionist and Unionist. As civil war raged across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor, unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865. The second volume of Brooks Blevins's history begins with the region's distinctive relationship to slavery. Largely unsuitable for plantation farming, the Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or, in some places, not at all. Blevins moves on to the devastating Civil War years where the dehumanizing, personal nature of Ozark conflict was made uglier by the predations of marching armies and criminal gangs. </p><p>Blending personal stories with a wide narrative scope, he examines how civilians and soldiers alike experienced the war, from brutal partisan warfare to ill-advised refugee policies to women's struggles to safeguard farms and stay alive in an atmosphere of constant danger. The war stunted the region's growth, delaying the development of Ozarks society and the processes of physical, economic, and social reconstruction. More and more, striving uplanders dedicated to modernization fought an image of the Ozarks as a land of mountaineers and hillbillies hostile to the idea of progress. Yet the dawn of the twentieth century saw the uplands emerge as an increasingly uniform culture forged, for better and worse, in the tumult of a conflicted era. </p><p>The Ozarks of the mid-1800s was a land of divisions. The uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, North and South, frontier and civilization, and secessionist and Unionist. As civil war raged across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor, unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865. The second volume of Brooks Blevins's history begins with the region's distinctive relationship to slavery. Largely unsuitable for plantation farming, the Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or, in some places, not at all. Blevins moves on to the devastating Civil War years where the dehumanizing, personal nature of Ozark conflict was made uglier by the predations of marching armies and criminal gangs. </p><p>Blending personal stories with a wide narrative scope, he examines how civilians and soldiers alike experienced the war, from brutal partisan warfare to ill-advised refugee policies to women's struggles to safeguard farms and stay alive in an atmosphere of constant danger. The war stunted the region's growth, delaying the development of Ozarks society and the processes of physical, economic, and social reconstruction. More and more, striving uplanders dedicated to modernization fought an image of the Ozarks as a land of mountaineers and hillbillies hostile to the idea of progress. Yet the dawn of the twentieth century saw the uplands emerge as an increasingly uniform culture forged, for better and worse, in the tumult of a conflicted era. <br /></p><br />Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-5654207218155350022020-08-10T13:02:00.002-07:002020-08-10T13:02:27.733-07:00It’s Monday, What are you Reading? You’re Fired<p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It’s Monday, What are you Reading? </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">You’re Fired:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump by Paul Begala</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilYMM_4Ahw0TqlT_fdmkh_xypSFfwTqwo7sNYddLb7PZYvpUVFILk_GTDl946w0oeZ99DOCxAI8UnEaURFZ0zgKq3WMwbka4RXtpBfRy-nAOrjInQ7J90MwYM0jJWDck6nlnWpaq6ZqiM/s218/Begala.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilYMM_4Ahw0TqlT_fdmkh_xypSFfwTqwo7sNYddLb7PZYvpUVFILk_GTDl946w0oeZ99DOCxAI8UnEaURFZ0zgKq3WMwbka4RXtpBfRy-nAOrjInQ7J90MwYM0jJWDck6nlnWpaq6ZqiM/s0/Begala.jpg" /></a><br /></div><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Fired-Perfect-Beating-Donald/dp/1982160047/"><br /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Fired-Perfect-Beating-Donald/dp/1982160047/"><span style="font-size: small;">https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Fired-Perfect-Beating-Donald/dp/1982160047/</span></a><br /><br /> </p><p>I’ve been a Paul Begala fan since 1992… political operative insight is something I seek out, since working for Gov. Ray in Iowa in the 1970s… could not pass this one up. Enjoy! I will! ;-)<br /><br /><b>Amazon Description:</b></p><p><br /><b>“You’re fired!” Donald Trump became famous bellowing those words in a make-believe boardroom. In November, tens of millions of Americans want to yell it right back at him. Yet Trump has seemed to almost defy the laws of political physics. Paul Begala, one of America’s greatest political talents, lays out the strategy that will defeat him and send him and his industrial-strength spray-on tan machine back to Mar-a-Lago.</b><br /><br />In You’re Fired, Paul Begala tells us how Trump uses division to distract from the actual reality of his record. Distraction, he argues, is Trump’s superpower. And this book is Kryptonite. In it, the man who helped elect Bill Clinton and reelect Barack Obama, details:<br /><br />-The special weapons and tactics needed in the unconventional war against this most unconventional politician<br />-How to drive a wedge—or, rather, a pickup truck—between Trump and many of his supporters, especially blue-collar workers and farmers<br />-Where the votes to defeat Trump will come from, and how the Rising American Electorate can catch Trump flat-footed<br />-How Democrats can run on issues ranging from Coronavirus and healthcare to the economy, as well as climate change and Trump’s long-term plan to dominate the federal judiciary<br />-There is one chapter called simply, “This Chapter Will Beat Trump.” Find out why Begala is so confident and what issue he says will sink the Trumptanic<br /><br />Full of memorable advice and Begala’s trademark wit, You’re Fired focuses on the lessons we can learn from the party’s successes and failures—and the crucial tools Democrats need to beat Trump. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-37119649882524765792020-06-22T01:00:00.001-07:002020-06-22T01:00:09.135-07:00It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Exercise of Power<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><h3>It’s Monday, What are you Reading? </h3></div><div style="text-align: center;"><h3>Exercise of Power: American Failures, Successes, </h3></div><div style="text-align: center;"><h3>and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World </h3></div><div style="text-align: center;"><h3>by Robert M. Gates</h3></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq3TUu4zY79r-ZyYoPgZi1Jc8thdiq9ZiP771l9GXssf5i8diCCTALCP6QYA4JvF1lg9zIkxatBYLUJIykOHKam0WvaCnqYY7OdEvjB10vx4gXuYtXrQUe1lh8VYWJC06tEvTeYhCSBjQ/s218/gates.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq3TUu4zY79r-ZyYoPgZi1Jc8thdiq9ZiP771l9GXssf5i8diCCTALCP6QYA4JvF1lg9zIkxatBYLUJIykOHKam0WvaCnqYY7OdEvjB10vx4gXuYtXrQUe1lh8VYWJC06tEvTeYhCSBjQ/" /></a></div><a href=" https://www.amazon.com/Exercise-Power-American-Successes-Post-Cold/dp/1524731889/"><br /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><font size="2"><a href=" https://www.amazon.com/Exercise-Power-American-Successes-Post-Cold/dp/1524731889/">https://www.amazon.com/Exercise-Power-American-Successes-Post-Cold/dp/1524731889/</a></font><br /></div><br />This looks like it would go well with Team of Five… history over several presidential terms from a different perspective. He had both governmental and academe experience to contribute. <br /><br /><b>From Amazon Description:</b><br /><b>From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.</b><br /><br />Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity, seemingly unwilling to accept the mantle of leadership or unable to govern itself effectively. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness, and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the use of military might or the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must encompass as well diplomacy, economics, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, ideology, and cyber. By analyzing specific challenges faced by the American government in the post-Cold War period--Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Russia, China, and others--Gates deconstructs the ways in which leaders have used the instruments of power available to them. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, firsthand knowledge, and insider stories, Gates argues that U.S. national security in the future will require learning, and abiding by, the lessons of the past, and re-creating those capabilities that the misuse of power has cost the nation.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-993124898888901201.post-5846027608539228022020-05-25T03:00:00.000-07:002020-05-25T03:00:10.887-07:00It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Team of Five<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Team of Five:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The President’s Club in the Age of Trump </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">by Kate Andersen Brower</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Team-Five-Presidents-Club-Trump/dp/0062668978/">https://www.amazon.com/Team-Five-Presidents-Club-Trump/dp/0062668978/</a></span></div>
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When I became aware of this book about the President’s Club, I knew I had to have it and read it. A favorite subject, for sure. Not disappointed.<br /><br /><b>Description from Amazon:</b><br />
<b> </b><br /><b>From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women—also a New York Times bestseller—comes a poignant, news-making look at the lives of the five former presidents in the wake of their White House years, including the surprising friendships they have formed through shared perspective and empathy. </b><br />
<b> </b><br />After serving the highest office of American government, five men—Jimmy Carter, the late George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—became members of the world’s most exclusive fraternity. In Team of Five, Kate Andersen Brower goes beyond the White House to uncover what, exactly, comes after the presidency, offering a glimpse into the complex relationships of these five former presidents, and how each of these men views his place in a nation that has been upended by the Oval Office’s current, norm-breaking occupant, President Donald Trump.<br />With an empathetic yet critical eye and firsthand testimony from the Carters, Donald Trump, and the top aides, friends, and family members of the five former presidents, Team of Five takes us inside the exclusive world of these powerful men and their families, including the unlikely friendship between George W. Bush and Michelle Obama, the last private visits Bill Clinton and Barack Obama shared with George H.W. Bush, and the Obamas’ flight to Palm Springs after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Perhaps most timely, this insightful, illuminating book overflows with anecdotes about how the ex-presidents are working to combat President Trump’s attempts to undo the achievements and hard work accomplished during their own terms.<br />Perhaps most poignantly, Team of Five sheds light on the inherent loneliness and inevitable feelings of powerlessness and frustration that come with no longer being the most important person in the world, but a leader with only symbolic power. There are ways, though, that these men, and their wives, have become powerful political and cultural forces in American life, even as so-called “formers.”<br />Team of Five includes 16 pages of color photographs.<br />
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<br />Dr. Bill (William L.) Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857619677138020430noreply@blogger.com0