Missive #447 Published 19 February 2025
There Will Be War is a landmark science fiction anthology series that combines top-notch military science fiction with factual essays by various generals and military experts on everything from High Frontier and the Strategic Defense Initiative to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It features some of the greatest military science fiction ever published…
Missive #446 Published 17 February 2025
The second book in Tim Severin's thrilling historical adventure series set in Saxon times.
This book was written more in the style of Severin's nonfiction travel books. It is historical fiction that was done well. A good book in a good series.
Missive #443 Published 10 February 2025
This book was long on providing a bio for all the players but short on some history. The Domican Republic insurgency merited one page with no explanation for why or how the US got involved. Tet was mentioned but was not explained, most people today would not know what Tet 1968 was all about.
Missive #440 Published 5 February 2025
The essential skill of creating and maintaining new businesses—the art of the entrepreneur—can be summed up in a single word: managing. Born of Grove’s experiences at one of America’s leading technology companies (as CEO and employee number three at Intel), High Output Management is equally appropriate for sales managers, accountants, consultants, and teachers, as well as CEOs and startup founders. Grove covers techniques for creating highly productive teams, demonstrating methods of motivation that lead to peak performance.
Missive #437 Published 30 January 2025
This is a great suspense/murder mystery. Everyone becomes a suspect before the end of the book. I need to do some research on other books by this author; if she has others like this one they will go on my To Read List.
Missive #436 Published 28 January 2025
A New York Times –bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time. In The End of Everything , military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration.
Missive #435 Published 27 January 2025
The Human Situation is a collection of lectures delivered by Huxley at [University of California] Santa Barbara in 1959. The topics covered range from the nature of man to the foundations of language, with discourses on religion and nationalism thrown in for good measure. Huxley brings his penetrating and prescient insights to bear on his topics, addressing them not as universal truths to be uncovered but rather as open questions to be examined from all angles. Of particular interest is his treatment of the ancient links between mysticism ('the religion of immediate experience') and mainstream Christian denominationalism ('religion as the manipulation of symbols'). The Human Situation stands on its own merits as a well-written, accessible text on issues that, even today, have broad impacts on public policy, human health, and social order. This book also serves as a useful primer or jumping-off point for further forays into philosophy, religion, and the life of the individual in modern times.
Missive #432 Published 22 January 2025
Bernard Cornwell makes real history come alive in his breathtaking historical fiction. Praised as "the direct heir to Patrick O'Brian" (Agincourt, The Fort), Cornwell has brilliantly captured the fury, chaos, and excitement of battle as few writers have ever done—perhaps most vividly in his phenomenally popular novels following the illustrious military career of British Army officer Richard Sharpe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Chronicling Sharpe's involvement in the famous Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Sharpe's Trafalgar finds the young ensign captive on a French warship and in gravest peril on the eve of the one of the most spectacular naval confrontations in history. Perhaps the San Francisco Chronicle said it best: "If only all history lessons could be as vibrant."
Missive #431 Published 21 January 2025
Reviews of High Border Country should be entrusted to novelists since it is one of many current books which are historically based, but in which the emphasis is upon the telling of a good story. The book is superb, rapidly moving description, generously sprinkled with potent adjectives and conversation which skillfully etch the portraits of he-men, and in some cases of he-women, who careen through a famous or an infamous career, usually to a sudden death with their boots on. The book is one of the best collections of tall tales of the northern high plains which have been produced. It is possible that it may give a new name to the upper Missouri country of Montana and portions of the adjoining Dakotas, Wyoming, and Idaho in which it has its setting.
Missive #430 Published 20 January 2025
At least half of these essays were published in previous books. Those that were not were most likely written by Huxley in his 'later years' when he became mystical, experimented with mescaline and LSD and became an advisor to Timothy Leary.