Book review: Buddha

I'm almost caught up on my reviews.  Based on the content of my blog, you'd think the only thing I do is read.  Not so, gentle reader.  I also enjoy watching TV and films, browsing the internet (now that we have that back, that is), eating junk food, occasionally playing video games, going paint-balling (when time and money allows, which they usually don't) - did I mention eating junk food? - playing the card game Uno with my daughter, having a good conversation with my wife or sometimes with my mom, listening to decent music (I'm wishing for some right now, as the stuff on my mp3 player seems to be letting me down a bit at the moment), studying history - especially Soviet history - and doing other stuff.  And I'm sure I've forgot to mention some things.

When I look back at my life, I hope I have the presence of mind to realize how good I've had it, even though I grumble far too much about what are admittedly little things.  The book I review below really ought to help with that, at least in part.  The guy had some good ideas.  We could all use a little more deep thought and pursuit of harmony in ourselves and our environment.  And a nap.  I could use one of those right now.  Totally.

Source: Amazon.com

Buddha, by Karen Armstrong

From the book’s cover:

With such bestsellers as A History of God and Islam, Karen Armstrong has consistently delivered penetrating, readable, and prescient (The New York Times) works that have lucidly engaged a wide range of religions and religious issues. In Buddha she turns to a figure whose thought is still reverberating throughout the world 2,500 years after his death.
Many know the Buddha only from seeing countless serene, iconic images. But what of the man himself and the world he lived in? What did he actually do in his roughly eighty years on earth that spawned one of the greatest religions in world history? Armstrong tackles these questions and more by examining the life and times of the Buddha in this engrossing philosophical biography. Against the tumultuous cultural background of his world, she blends history, philosophy, mythology, and biography to create a compelling and illuminating portrait of a man whose awakening continues to inspire millions.

Book review: Carrie

We've finally got some internet back at home, which is so nice.  But am I writing this while at home?  Nope.  Here I sit, on my third day of the semester, typing away in the computer lab in the basement of the social science building on campus, and killing time until my 1:30 class.  And listening to "One," the compilation album of the Beatles greatest hits.  "She's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care..."  Which fits, when considering the book review for today.

Source: Amazon.com

Carrie, by Stephen King

From the book’s cover (actually this synopsis is from StephenKing.com):

Carrie was the odd one at school; the one whose reflexes were always off in games, whose clothes never really fit, who never got the point of a joke. And so she became the joke, the brunt of teenaged cruelties that puzzled her as much as they wounded her.
There was hardly any comfort in playing her private game, because like so many things in Carrie's life, it was sinful. Or so her mother said. Carrie could make things move--by concentrating on them, by willing them to move. Small things, like marbles, would start dancing. Or a candle would fall. A door would lock. This was her game, her power, her sin, firmly repressed like everything else about Carrie.
One act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious jokes of her classmates, offered Carrie a new look at herself the fateful night of her senior prom. But another act--of furious cruelty--forever changed things and turned her clandestine game into a weapon of horror and destruction.
She made a lighted candle fall, and she locked the doors...

Book Review: Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World

I'm getting behind again in the reviews vs. books completed stats.  I just finished Stephen King's Carrie, and will have to take a moment to write up a review of that for publication in the next few days (I hope).  But for now, here is a review of the last "serious" book I read.  Pardon the pun, but it was definitly "heavy" stuff.  You know, Uranium is the most atomically dense element that is stable in nature?  Thus my pun about it being "heavy"?  Ok, so it wasn't that funny.  So sue me.

Nobody appreciates a good dumb joke these days.  What is a guy to do?

Source: Amazon.com

Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World by Tom Zoellner

From the book’s cover:

The astonishing biography of a mineral that can sustain our world- or destroy it
Uranium occurs naturally in the earth's crust-yet holds the power to end all life on the planet. This is its fundamental paradox, and its story is a fascinating window into the valor, greed, genius, and folly of humanity. A problem for miners in the Middle Ages, an inspiration to novelists and a boon to medicine, a devastat­ing weapon at the end of World War II, and eventually a polluter, killer, excuse for war with Iraq, potential deliverer of Armageddon and a possible last defense against global warming-Uranium is the riveting story of the most powerful element on earth, and one which will shape our future, for better or worse.

Book Review: Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War

Another book review.  I have been grinding ahead on my readings, though I am in the mood to start on some fiction and put aside all the historical/academic stuff for a time.  I have just finished reading a historical look at Uranium that I'll be reviewing here when time permits, but after that, I'll put up something less intellectual.  How interesting that just as school is about to begin again, I get a hankering to read something frivalous.

Source: Amazon.com

Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War by Edwin G. Burrows

From the book’s cover:

Between 1775 and 1783, some 200,000 Americans took up arms against the British Crown. Just over 6,800 of those men died in battle. About 25,000 became prisoners of war, most of them confined in New York City under conditions so atrocious that they perished by the thousands. Evidence suggests that at least 17,500 Americans may have died in these prisons—more than twice the number to die on the battlefield. It was in New York, not Boston or Philadelphia, where most Americans gave their lives for the cause of independence.
New York City became the jailhouse of the American Revolution because it was the principal base of the Crown’s military operations. Beginning with the bumper crop of American captives taken during the 1776 invasion of New York, captured Americans were stuffed into a hastily assembled collection of public buildings, sugar houses, and prison ships. The prisoners were shockingly overcrowded and chronically underfed—those who escaped alive told of comrades so hungry they ate their own clothes and shoes.
Despite the extraordinary number of lives lost, Forgotten Patriots is the first-ever account of what took place in these hell-holes. The result is a unique perspective on the Revolutionary War as well as a sobering commentary on how Americans have remembered our struggle for independence—and how much we have forgotten.

Book Review: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

I had the opportunity today (well, yesterday now, but who's really keeping track of such things?) to go see The Bourne Legacy with my mom.  It was fairly enjoyable, and I wish I had time to write up a proper review.  The movie did remind me that I had a review sitting about, almost completed, that I ought to take time to finish.  Not my best review, after a brief editing sesion, but it'll do.  But this one was a good book, and I'd feel remiss if I didn't take a moment to upload my thoughts on it.

Source: Amazon.com

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

From the book’s cover:

From the managing editor of the Washington Post, a news-breaking account of the CIA's involvement in the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and gave rise to bin Laden's al Qaeda.
For nearly the past quarter century, while most Americans were unaware, Afghanistan has been the playing field for intense covert operations by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies-invisible wars which sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks and which provide its context. From the Soviet invasion in 1979 through the summer of 2001, the CIA, KGB, Pakistan's ISI, and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department all operated directly and secretly in Afghanistan. They primed Afghan factions with cash and weapons, secretly trained guerrilla forces, funded propaganda, and manipulated politics. In the midst of these struggles bin Laden conceived and then built his global organization.
Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll tells the secret history of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, from its covert program against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989, to the rise of the Taliban and the emergence of bin Laden, to the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998. Based on extensive firsthand accounts, Ghost Warsok is the inside story that goes well beyond anything previously published on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. It chronicles the roles of midlevel CIA officers, their Afghan allies, and top spy masters such as Bill Casey, Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al Faisal, and George Tenet. And it describes heated debates within the American government and the often poisonous, mistrustful relations between the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies.
Ghost Wars answers the questions so many have asked since the horrors of September 11: To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail?

Op-Ed: That's Just the Nature of "Libraries"

A short rant tonight, and it's of no permanent importance.  I'm grousing to myself over a small slight that I've been dealt, and how it relates to an overall situation I face.  But I've promised before, due to circumstances that bugged me more than they really should have, not to discuss the particulars of this precise element of my life.  So I'll have to come up with something creative to call it instead of what it really is.  Let's just say I'm ticked at...  my "local library."  No offense intended to the Weber County Library, but calling something that is really bugging me "my local library" is less trouble than naming it as it really is.

The problem?  I can't openly complain to my "local librarian" about problems that arise when I'm "perusing" the shelves of my "local library," because said local librarian just tells me that my concerns with the... shall we say the way the books are being shelved, or the way they are delivered to the shelves or even perhaps the way the hold system works or any of a thousand other little things is not my business.  Of course, as stated, these are not my real concerns.  But the idea is the same.  Procedure and such, I suppose you'd say.