false 23 252 171 true 5655793 read 4 true 3412276 currently-reading 77 true 3412275 to-read 31 false 3713807 fiction 23 false 3412362 world-history 15 false 3412360 politics 15 false 4065869 childrens--books 13 false 3412361 american-history 12 false 3412315 belief 11 false 3412359 evolution 11 false 3432184 historical_fiction 10 false 4065450 philosophy 9 false 3877724 science 9 false 3432128 children-s-education 8 false 3432131 literature 5 false 4345588 mythology 4 false 4549544 non-fiction 4 false 4105717 science-fiction 1 false 4115500 plays 1 false 4115501 satire http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79856490 Escape from Freedom (Paperback) by Erich Fromm
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79856463 The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics) by Eric Hoffer
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79856443 Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party (MP3 CD) by Max Blumenthal
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53364444 to: The Graveyard Book (Audio CD) by Neil Gaiman
bookshelves: childrens--books, fiction
I've seen and read a few things written by Neil Gaiman - mostly short stories and movies - and developed an appreciation of him as a writer of stories. He seems able to touch and assemble the archetypes of the elemental story in a way that seems both ancient and timeless.

I heard an interview with him on the audio version of "Stardust" in which he confessed that he was new to reading his stories aloud, and that it was only at a recent reading of an excerpt of one of his books at a book-signing that made him appreciate the visceral joy of speaking the words he had written. His audio version of "Stardust" was fine, but not great.

With this audio recording of "The Graveyard Book", however, Gaiman has come into full flower as a storyteller. He uses the full potential of his amazing voice, which is deep, rich, and creepy - sort of a cross between Jeremy Irons and Alan Rickman - to embody his characters and evoke the emotions of the story. And the story is terrific, full of humor, horror, imagination, and a sweet gentleness. This is a great kids' book, with themes of sacrifice, loyalty, and alienation. Highly recommended.

Edited to add: This book is fun to read aloud, and even better the second time through. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79394869 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Audio CD) by Richard Dawkins
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79394803 Grass (Paperback) by Sheri S. Tepper
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79394668 The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History (Paperback) by Rebecca Fraser
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75987804 to: Understanding the Holocaust (Modern Scholar) by David Engel
bookshelves: politics, world-history
This was a great course. Engel methodically takes you through the history of the events of the Holocaust, leading up to the wholesale slaughter of millions of men, women, and children, and looks at it from a large number of angles. From Hitler's philosophy. From the point of views of top members of the Nazi party. From the Jewish population of Europe. From the workers on the assembly lines of the death centers. From the neighbors of the Jews in Germany, Poland, Axis-allied, and Axis enemy countries. From the leaders of the Jewish councils and youth movements, to leaders of Jewish movements in Great Britain and America. He deals with the problem of consciousness - that is, that people had a very hard time even coming to grips with the scale or the horror of what was happening. He leads you through the history of anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Germany, through the plans for a Jewish reservation either in eastern Poland or Madagascar, through the creation of the final solution itself in 1941. Throughout, he does his best to make some kind of sense of this most senseless, horrible event.

It's a massive undertaking. Engel does his best to make sense of the numbers of Jewish people killed - roughly two thirds of those in the Nazi sphere of influence - and contrasts different countries where larger or smaller percentages of the population survived, and tries to account for that. I learned some things from the course - that there were five death centers, all in Poland, and that other concentration camps were not places where massive, wholesale killing took place (though there were deaths, to be sure). I learned that cyanide gas was only used at one center. I came to understand why the Jewish population did not rise up to defend itself, and why the Nazis chose the methods they finally ended up with.

I also learned, and this may be a stupid way to look at it, but I also learned that Hitler was a moron. Anyone who tries to justify unjustifiable hate and prejudice against another group always has to grasp at illogical straws to try to defend their hate. And those reasons will always be stupid. But Hitler's "logical" defense of his thesis that Jewish people weren't people but rather something else is pathetic. That this fool rose to power in a period of economic pain is an object lesson for us all. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/41948399 to: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Hardcover) by Leonard Mlodinow
bookshelves: philosophy, science
This book deals with probability and randomness, the rise of the modern fields of statistics and probability theory, and the philosophy of dealing with a world which is at heart full of chance.

I especially enjoyed the chapters on Pascal and Bernoulli. Mlodinow also discusses the (now famous) Monty Hall question, the gambler's fallacy, and other mis-conceptions of how randomness works.

Finally he comes to a conclusion similar to that of books such as Outliers: that success, or the outward appearance of success, is often a result not of underlying ability but simply of luck, and that failure comes from the same place. His treatment on unfairly hailed (and unfairly castigated) CEOs should be enough to make every shareholder stop and think a bit. This book is a good and important read. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77952245 Visions of Utopia: Philosophy and the Perfect Society (Audio CD) by Fred E. Baumann
bookshelves: currently-reading
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