Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World Review

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Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World ReviewI really don't know how to describe this book----it is not a book that is at all disrespectful of Osama bin Laden yet it is brutally honest. Two of the authors, a wife and a son of bin Laden, clearly love(d) the man but they have quite a saga to tell about life with him before he became a hate filled terrorist.
Their description of Osama's journey from devout Muslim to a jihadist is fascinating.
Their "take" on the reasons why Osama came to hate the West, particularly Americans and the British, is ---again---fascinating.
Furthermore, the main reason (according to them) that he plotted, planned and committed the acts that led to 9-11 are, if they are true, shocking and seem to involve his feelings of personal betrayal by the Saudi royal family regarding certain events of the First Gulf War.
The book starts off a bit slowly but catches up speed quickly and now I want re-read it and try to absorb more details.Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World Overview

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Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty Review

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Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty ReviewThis is a hard book to sum up in a few words. Fascinating and compelling, yes; heartbreaking, often; hair-raising sometimes; exasperating, occasionally. Mostly, it is a vivid reminder of what it is to be still very young, naive, and adventuresome. It's also a book that's very hard to put down.
The reader, of course, knows from the start that Everett Ruess disappears at the age of 21 while on a walkabout somewhere near the Colorado River, in the remote 1930s wilderness of southern Utah. Gifted, bright, and almost painfully sensitive, he writes letters home that are sweetly poignant, thoughtful, opinionated, and rapturously descriptive of the natural environment he loves. Starting at the age of 16, while still a high school student in Hollywood, California, he journeys to Carmel, Arizona, and the Sierras. Leaving UCLA after one unhappy semester, he returns to the Four Corners region of Arizona and drifts northward into Utah where he follows the Escalante down to the Colorado and then vanishes.
A lover of classical music, a reader of books, poet, writer, water colorist, and block print maker, he considers himself very much a misfit in a world of conformity, where people live lives of quiet desperation, pursuing material goals that make them unhappy and unfulfilled. Torn between his desire for companionship and his love of wilderness solitude, he appreciates warm and welcoming company wherever he happens upon it, and seeks it out when he can, sometimes introducing himself to established artists, such as photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. During visits to the home of painter Maynard Dixon, in San Francisco, he is befriended and photographed by Dixon's wife, Dorothea Lange. One of these photographs eventually appears in a missing persons report in a publication of the Los Angeles Police Department.
It's easy to go on and on about this book. The letters provide such a rich psychological portrait of this young man, full of interesting contradictions and curious prophecies of his eventual fate. Meanwhile, there is the mystery of his disappearance and the various theories and speculation about what may have happened to him, which are also included by the book's author.
I am happy to recommend this book to anyone interested in the West, stories about coming of age and self-reliance, rhapsodic descriptions of nature, personal adventures, the desert, Native Americans, and unsolved mysteries. As companion volumes, I'd also suggest Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" and Eliot Porter's excellent collection of photographs, "The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado."Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty Overview

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Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal Review

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Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal ReviewI just finished this most interesting biography of Wyatt Earp and I found myself both fascinated and a bit skeptical. I was fascinated by the life of Wyatt Earp as it was written by a man who interviewed him over a period of time. I was impressed with the research that the author, Stuart Lake, appeared to have put into his project. He had interviewed a number of surviving witnesses to the life of Earp. He also had a number of newspaper accounts and appears to have located a number of valuable documents in the course of his research. The book wasted little time in getting to Wyatt's career in law enforcement in the American West. The bulk, and I mean just about ALL, of the book is spent on his career in Wichta and Dodge City, Kansas as well as Tombstone, Arizona. The many famous (and not so famous) outlaws and lawmen of the Old West move in and out of the story on a regular basis. Stuart lists an almost endless number of feats of daring by Wyatt Earp in the process of making his case for Earp as the greatest of all men of the American West. Many of the events are depicted in great and compelling detail. Many of the parties are quoted, presumeably, from the memory of Earp himself. There is never a dull moment in the life of our hero, especially considering that all this action took place over a relatively short period of time. The book, at times, reads like a well-researched dime novel. For a chance to re-live the wild, wild West, it has little competition.
As for my skepticism, I came away wondering first of all; did all this really happen? Perhaps it did but our hero (and I am not trying to be facetious, Wyatt Earp truly is a hero) does it all seemingly with one hand tied behind his back. My other reservation has to do with the politics of the times and places. There are only good guys and bad guys and no exploration as to the motivations of either side except for good and evil. I found myself wondering if I were the only source of information about the events of my time and I had to relate to the world in 50 years or so the events I had witnessed. Take the Invasion of Iraq, the presidential election of 2000, or the impeachment of President Clinton. I certainly could make a claim as to who was the "bad guy" and who was the "good guy" while somneone else of a different political persuasion could make the opposite claim. There is no one to speak for the opposing view in this book. The author quotes frequently from the Tombstone "Nugget" but always prefacing the unreliability of the source. I found myself wondering if there might not have been something of another side to the events in Tombstone. The labor strife in mining communities of those days was very significant; just study the history of Butte, MT. Is it possible that Earp supported the powers that be and the miners looked for support from wherever they could get it? Maybe not, but it would have been helpful if the author tried to give a bit of an impartial look at the motives of the opposing side in Tombstone. That said, and realizing that this is about Wyatt Earp, not the miners, this is a book well worth the time of any fan of the American West.Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal Overview

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God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History Review

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God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History ReviewFirst, I loved the idea of this book--a compendum of the more significant mathematical breakthroughs in all their detail, as written by their creators. The text is refreshing in that it is not a watered down version of someone's results. I have a math background and all the details are appreciated. There's something about reading the original text, straight from the minds of these great men.
This book could be useful, for example, for someone who likes math and wants a 'sampler' of different areas of study. It could also be useful for someone reading up on the history of mathematics who wants to dig deeper into certain areas and see the original works.
All that said, I have to agree with another reviewer about the editing. It's awful (yes, awful) that such typographical errors could exist in a math book. The first section I looked at in this book, Riemann's original paper on the zeta function, had four typos ON THE SAME PAGE. This is disasterous to someone trying to learn the material for the first time, or someone trying to follow a tight line of argument. If this was a college text book, I'd probably burn it, because learning math is difficult enough, without having to contend with typos. To the editors of this book: COME ON GUYS, YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED (YES, ASHAMED) OF YOURSELVES (you're just COPYING something someone else wrote--and yet you managed to mess that up)! At least put an errata page somewhere online.God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History Overview

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Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling Review

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Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling ReviewI would like to start the review admitting I am not a Mormon. I love biographies of great people in history. I read "No man knows my History" by Fawn Brodie. I came on that book by accident. And I realize from some of the reviews on Amazon that Mormons dont like that book much. I thought it was great, but admit that she paints Joseph Smith in a negative light sometimes. But I could still see through enough to see a great man behind her attacks on his character.
"Rough Stone Rolling" is the exact opposite of that book. Richard Bushman uses a lot of the same stories but doesnt have the same negative slant. But he still shows that Joseph Smith was not perfect, which I admire. This is the best biography I have ever read.
This book takes you all through Joseph Smith's life. From a farmboy in New York who got on his knees and asked God to show him the way, to the man who was gunned down in Carthage a martyr for his calling.
If he was a Prophet or not is up for debate. As a Christian I believe that God is real and God can still speak today. Before I read the history of Joseph Smith if someone asked me if he was a prophet, I would have said no. After reading up on the man I would answer that it is not out of the realm of possibility. I believe he believed he was a prophet. I believe that some unexplainable things happened around him and the early Church.
The question was he a great man or not has been settled in my mind at least. I think he was a great man. To be tared and feathered and beaten, and still preach that next morning. To take persecutions and imprisionment in stride, to never compromise what you believe even in the face of death. These things are the very definition of a great man. The fact he put people off sometimes because he played with children and liked to wrestle and have fun. I think it just shows a genuine human being. His great love for his people caused many of his mistakes in life. Like the idea of everybody having everything in common, and his business dealings. Everything he did was with his people in mind. He not only talked the talk but walked the walk. I encourage everyone to read this book. If for nothing else than read a well written, entertaining biography of a real person that is more interesting than fiction. Good day.Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling Overview

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The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe Review

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The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe ReviewWhen I first started reading this book, I thought to myself, "Oh no, not another book re-hashing the already revealed inconsistencies surrounding MM's death!" Boy, was I wrong!This book is one of the best ever written on the subject of MM's life and, especially, the mysterious and sinister circumstances surrounding her death. Someone should send a highlighted copy of this book to the LA District Attorneys office because this womans death screams out for justice!What amazed me was how Marilyn had no one in whom she could place her trust. The circle of people surrounding and insulating her in her last years were people who had known each other for years. They formed a tight circle around Marilyn and slowly but surely cut her off from people that really cared about her. Little did MM realize that anything she told one person in that circle (supposedly in confidence) was being shared with everyone else. The two most important new voices heard are those of John Minor (who strongly suspects foul play) and Mrs. Murray's (the maid's) nephew, who states that he was at Marilyn's home the night of her death. Their revelations alone are reason enough to re-open the investigation. History should reflect an accurate portrayal of past events, even if that accuracy serves to cast dark shadows on people that were once shining in the public spotlight. The people involved in the death of Marilyn Monroe should be no different.To this point, the "official" story as to MM's death has been nothing more than a piece of fiction. The question now is whether the LA District Attorney's office will have the courage to re-open the case with the new information provided, knowing that some big names might be implicated in a heinous crime. Let us all hope that they will find the strength of character and fortitude to do so.The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe Overview

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To the Rescue: The Biography of Thomas S. Monson Review

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To the Rescue: The Biography of Thomas S. Monson ReviewThis is a fun and interesting book to read. Mrs. Swinton covered the typical events in a biography, from Thomas S. Monson's ancestry through his childhood and then into his life as a general authority. However, the life she followed is so remarkable that the book was hard to put down. It is filled with uncountable stories, some short, some lengthy, that give the reader faith and hope. A choice line reveals that immediately after Thomas S. Monson's call to the apostleship, he went home and mowed the lawn. A majestic chapter deals with Elder Monson's years of service with the East Germans. A progressive thread is the passing of senior apostles, interlaced with the fact that Tom Monson was seventeen years younger than the next junior apostle, Gordon B. Hinckley. Many details in the book reveal that Thomas S. Monson was a humble man, led by the Lord to perform acts of greatness, and yet his favorite breakfast is Wheaties. Elder Monson served in the highest councils of the LDS Church for thirty-six years, gaining tremendous experience and perspective, before being sustained as president.To the Rescue: The Biography of Thomas S. Monson Overview

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