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What Are You Reading Right Now?

The personal cost of doing good

Chasing chaos : my decade in and out of humanitarian aid / Jessica Alexander, c2013, Broadway Books, 361.25 ALEX.

Subjects
• Humanitarian assistance -- Sudan -- Darfur.
• Sudan -- History -- Darfur Conflict, 2003-

Notes
• All skin and grief -- Hot pockets and sunny delight -- People died this way -- Does everyone you work with have dreadlocks? -- Training wheels come off -- Center for victims of torture fancy dress night -- Too much money -- I make a living off the suffering of strangers -- War don don, peace don cam -- I'm headed to Haiti, where are you going? -- Epilogue.

Length
• 386 pages : excellent maps, no index

A humanitarian aid practitioner’s memoir. Gritty, a look @ the ins & outs, the pluses & minuses of foreign aid, mostly in the private sector. Also the evolution of the humanitarian profession – degrees, experience needed, college/university degrees in the subject. Very interesting reading – a look behind the scenes.
 
Re: The personal cost of doing good



Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction

by David Enrich - Custom House - 2020 - 416pp

New York Times finance editor David Enrich's explosive exposé of the most scandalous bank in the world, revealing its shadowy ties to Donald Trump, Putin's Russia, and Nazi Germany.
 
Re: The personal cost of doing good



Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era

By Jerry Mitchell - Simon & Schuster - 2020 - 432pp

“For almost two decades, investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell doggedly pursued the Klansmen responsible for some of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement. This book is his amazing story. Thanks to him, and to courageous prosecutors, witnesses, and FBI agents, justice finally prevailed.”
 
Started reading Stephen King's Cell. An unknown signal by an unknown party is sent via through, turning people who use them into murdering savages.

DC Comics started a storyline that follows the premise of Cell called DCeased, taking place in a parallel universe. Cyborg is kidnapped and taken to Apokolips, where Darkseid's minions insert a techno-organic version of the Anti-Life Equation into his cybernetic systems. They return him to Earth, and he is unable to control his systems from transmitting it via the internet. Anyone exposed to it turns into homicidal savages. Earth's heroes are either overwhelmed to contain the global murder spree or are infected themselves.
 


The first is Neil Peart’s, the recently deceased drummer/lyricist for Rush, chronicle of a year long motorcycle trip though Canada, Alaska, the American West and parts of Central America after the deaths of his daughter, in a car accident, and his wife, to cancer.


The second is the story of the final year in the life of a young man who starved to death in the shadow of Denali in Alaska. The book was recommended to me by a number of locals when I was visiting the area a few months ago.
The bus pictured is where the young man died. I dog sledded within about 5 miles of it. Beautiful but very rough country.
 
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I have always wanted to have some time to start working out. This has been my chance. I just never really knew how to really go about it in a systematic way. This book is helping cut through a lot of the myths, hype, and propaganda. Very no-nonsense and to the point.

Also, I figure if I'm going to get sick, it's best to be in as good a shape as possible before it hits me. Apparently that makes a difference.

 
i started reading this. i may or may not have time to finish it...



 


It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump

By Stuart Stevens - Knopf - 2020 - 256pp

From the most successful Republican political operative of his generation, a searing, unflinching, and deeply personal exposé of how his party became what it is today.
 
Not as serious as the above, but has me chuckling. Explores how Trump breaks all the ten commandments and asks why Christians would follow him.

I read the Author's first book, which was about how much he disliked kids and it led me to this.

 
The Deserter by Nelson DeMille

I've read every book DeMille has written.
 
So far in lockdown:

Operation Chastise by Max Hastings
Those Who Hold Bastogne by Peter Schrijvers
The Unsubstantial Air by Samuel Hynes
 
This was one of my Mum's favorite books. I'm too sentimental about things at times and I finally gave it away, with some of my Mum's other books to another beautiful lady yesterday who loves to read. I hope she gets the same level of enjoyment out of them as my Mum did.

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles.

For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… or so says the legend.”

-The Thorn Birds.
 
Risky Thicket said:
The Girl Who Kicked Over the Honest's Nest ~ Stieg Larsson.
Click to expand...
I read the Millennium Trilogy a few years ago. I am reereading them in preparation for reading the new series about Lisbeth Salander.

If anyone is interested, the Swedish language movies are available on Amazon Prime. They track the books very well and Noomi Rapace does a fantastic job as Salander. It's not as slick as Hollywood, but much more authentic. Interesting footnote: the woman who appears briefly as Salander's mother is actually Rapace's real life mother.
 

Me too. The Swedish language movies are much better than the slick Hollywood versions, and they are indeed more authentic. I didn't know about Rapace's real mother.

The Millennium Trilogy are or will one day be classics. I enjoyed all three.

You might enjoy "The Traveller" by John Twelve Hawks. The two books following the Traveller were also excellent.

Also, I just found out about this book last week: The Man Who Played With Fire . Sounds good and as a Stieg Larrson fan I plan on reading this book soon.

 


Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations

By Admiral William H. McRaven | Grand Central Publishing | 2019 | 352pp

Admiral William H. McRaven is a part of American military history, having been involved in some of the most famous missions in recent memory, including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, and the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. Action-packed, humorous, and full of valuable life lessons like those exemplified in McRaven's bestselling Make Your Bed, Sea Stories is a remarkable memoir from one of America's most accomplished leaders.

Admiral (Ret.) McRaven commanded Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from 2008-2011 and served as commander of the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) from 2011-2017.
 
"Der Wehrwulf" Hermann Löns

called a "A Peasant Chronicle of the 30 Year War" it's a novel, and a very good one at that.
 


How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason Stanley - Random House - 2018 - 240pp

“A vital read for a nation under Trump.” — The Guardian
 


Shields of the Republic: The Triumph and Peril of America’s Alliances

by Mira Rapp-Hooper - Harvard University Press - 2020 - 272pp

In Shields of the Republic, Mira Rapp-Hooper reveals the remarkable success of America’s unprecedented system of alliances. Today the alliance system is threatened from without and within.
 
In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick
 



Brimstone- Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. From the duo that brought you The Relic. The protagonist is Special Agent Pendergast, who is sort of post modern Sherlock Holmes. A number of bizarre deaths happen in NYC, and the victims seem to have spontaneously combusted. People think its the Devil because of the circumstances, and so its sort of a cross between a murder mystery and thriller. It has some genuine creepy moments and is well-written, but I figured out how the killings were done and who the culprit was halfway into the book. Since I'm reading this for research, maybe I'm learning lol. Rating: 7/10
 


Shocking as it is, this book--a crucial source of original research used for the bestseller Hitler's Willing Executioners--gives evidence to suggest the opposite conclusion: that the sad-sack German draftees who perpetrated much of the Holocaust were not expressing some uniquely Germanic evil, but that they were average men comparable to the run of humanity, twisted by historical forces into inhuman shapes. Browning, a thorough historian who lets no one off the moral hook nor fails to weigh any contributing factor--cowardice, ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and reluctance to force the others to bear more than their share of what each viewed as an excruciating duty--interviewed hundreds of the killers, who simply could not explain how they had sunken into savagery under Hitler. A good book to read along with Ron Rosenbaum's comparably excellent study Explaining Hitler. --Tim Appelo
 


Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America

By Sarah Kendzior - Flatiron Books - 2020 - 288pp.

"Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight should be required reading prior to the 2020 election. It shows the decline of American politics into the corruption that inhabits the Oval Office today....
By giving us a clear eyed view of what we’re up against, Sarah Kendzior has given us cause to continue the fight." ―PrimmLife

I highly recommend this one.
 
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