Over this summer I sought to brush up on my history a bit, so this time around we will take a whirlwind tour of more than half a dozen books I’ve read over the summer break. We’ll look at the rise and fall of civilizations as well as the rise and fall of religious organizations – be prepared, it may be a bumpy ride.
Continuing on my quest to get a better handle on why the world is the way it is today, I figured I’d read about a prominent figure in recent Latin American history. That naturally led me to Che Guevara, who I initially had a bit of doubt about. From the Mao book, I learned that he had great plans for Che and Latin America, but was spurned away when he learned that Che wouldn’t allow Cuba to be dependent on Chinese aid. So since Mao rubbed me the wrong way, I suppose a bit of guilt-by-association made me feel a bit sketchy about socialism and all related things. But I resolved to give Che a fair shot in our greater quest to learn about recent history, and I was pleasantly surprised in what I found.
A while ago I was watching a clip from The Rachel Maddow Show and saw Jeff Sharlet talk about a mysterious underground group named the Family. I was, like many people, pretty surprised to hear about a secret Christian organization that has connections all over the world who only recently became exposed after a number of its Republican members have been in trouble in the news and were found to all have been going to this organization for “help”. So naturally after seeing Jeff Sharlet go back on this show numerous times and eventually make his way onto the Daily Show, I decided I had to go pick up his book, aptly named The Family, and see what all the fuss was about. And rest assured, it is a shocker.
Having read the classic Orwell book 1984 several years ago (and loving it), I always thought I would have got around to reading his other classic work, Animal Farm, much more recently than now. But having stumbled upon it the other day, I knew I had to pick it up and see if it truly is a classic work or not (hint: it is). It is an amazing read, and to nerd it up for all of you out there, I would go so far as to say it is the Portal of books.
![Barnes_&_Noble.com_-_Image_Viewer_Animal_Farm,_by_George_Orwell,_Mass_Market_Paperback,_50th_Anniversary_Edition[1]](http://www.byzantinereality.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Barnes__Noble.com_-_Image_Viewer_Animal_Farm_by_George_Orwell_Mass_Market_Paperback_50th_Anniversary_Edition1.jpg "Barnes_&_Noble.com_-_Image_Viewer_Animal_Farm,_by_George_Orwell,_Mass_Market_Paperback,_50th_Anniversary_Edition[1]")
With the health care debate taking center stage in American politics right now, I figured a good book to read up on would have to be something about America. As I asked around my family for such a book, one book repeatedly was recommended to me: America, the Last Best Hope. Technically, it’s two books, the first covering American history from its founding to right before World War I, and the second covering World War I to right before the fall of the Soviet Union. And while it certainly met the high expectations I had of it, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. Since I borrowed the second book, this review will only cover that material.
Books on Hitler have been done to death. In fact, everything on Hitler has been done to death. The endless fascination with the twentieth century’s greatest villain has led to him or the Nazis appearing everywhere. And it still is a popular topic: the relatively recent movie release of Valkyrie and the endless series of Call of Duty games (nearly all set in World War II) prove there either is a lot of interest in the material or someone with a lot of money who thinks there is a lot of interest in it.
Yet it is always the oldies that pull at our heartstrings the most. Aging gamers will never forget Wolfenstein 3D, despite (and partially because of) the horrendous graphics and unsophisticated gameplay. It was simple and to the point and did just that perfectly. Its common companion in the book world could be Mein Kampf (haven’t read it though so I can’t say anything about pulling heartstrings), but let’s go the lesser known route, to a more historical work that you’ve likely never heard of: The Hitler Book.
Recently I’ve been trying to branch out on the books I read. Normally I read a lot of programming books; and that’s great, but there have been quite a few books I’ve been meaning to read that aren’t in that area. Case in point is today’s book: Mao: The Unknown Story. I’ve heard a lot about Mao and learned about him growing up in school, but never really knew him well enough to talk about him. And the same goes for communism in general: I know and get the basic ideas but don’t really know the leaders or the history. So I picked up this book and expected to find the magic answer to my question of “why communism?”, but instead found something very different.
Today’s read is something quite outside the norm of what I normally talk about. It came to me through one of my favorite podcasts, Common Sense with Dan Carlin. Dan caters to all sides of the political spectrum (and by his accounts he’s infuriated all of them repeatedly over the years), and on a recent show he had on Vincent Bugliosi. Most of his work is before my time, but he is well known for prosecuting the Charles Manson case and has a nearly flawless legal record (the book cites him as winning 105/106 felony jury trials). On this day he was on for legal reasons, but not about somebody you normally hear about being prosecuted for murder:
Now that finals are over I can FINALLY return to writing like I promised you all a billion times. With that in mind, let’s look at a book I picked up for my security class, Exploiting Software: How to Break Code. But does the book hold up to the badass name behind it?
Clojure, Clojure, Clojure! All the time now I’m writing about this funny weird programming language with the interesting name! It’s a bit different than your run-of-the-mill language, both to it’s credit and against it, but shows promise thus far. So you bet that the minute the beta for Programming Clojure came out I picked it up. With that in mind, let’s see how it fares.
