The Operator: Firing the shots that killed Osama Bin Laden is the autobiography of Robert O’Neill. He was a kid from Montana who ended up joining the Navy and became a SEAL. It also happened to be him that killed the most wanted man in our time.
The Operator
My Thoughts
I have read through other descriptions of Navy SEAL training and those who have gone through it but I really enjoyed it this time around. I found his story to be authentic and to ring true with what I know of military service. He was always making sure the reader knew he didn’t do it on his own. I particularly liked his description of the Navy SEAL wife network. Good book and great to peal a layer or two back from that time in our nations history.
Recommendation
Not for the younger reader but it was a great book.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly is a non-fiction book that tells the story of the contributions of African American women to NASA during the early days of the space race. The book provides a detailed account of the lives of these women and their work at NASA, as well as the broader social and historical context of the civil rights movement and the Cold War.
Hidden Figures
My Thoughts
Having grown up out West, the idea of racism wasn’t really played out in front of me. Before the trolls start lambasting me on that comment I feel I should mention I hold a degree in sociology and I’m well aware of the systemic and institutional forms of racism which are much more difficult to discern. That being said, it really wasn’t a thing for us. I grew up in a culture where we were constantly told that the white male was taking advantage and yet we were pretty much all white. Then I moved to the East Coast…
My first day of government service was at the Pentagon. I was attending orientation and was sitting next to a former Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant who happened to be black. We got along pretty well and spent our lunch together. He asked me if I was racist. I told him I didn’t think so. He told me, “You will be.” He then told me about how he had spent his entire career on the West Coast and no one had ever had an issue with the color of his skin until he came out East. He told me of an incident at a bowling alley just the week before involving his wife and some men who didn’t seem to believe she and their family should be there. (I have come to refer to these folks as rednecks.) Many experiences out here has demonstrated time and again that racism is still a thing along the coast.
Yet, it goes two ways as well. My first day on the job, before I even had a desk or a place to put my bag, a woman accused me of being racist and sexist. I was the incoming supervisor and the outgoing supervisor was writing up this person for not showing up to work on time. I sat in the corner of the room and didn’t say a word through their interaction. Yet, I was labeled sexist and racist because she felt I should have defended her. I’ve learned through sad experience after sad experience that this is the modus operandi of many federal workers. The good news is these folks are as easily spotted as the rednecks were in that bowling alley.
What does this have to do with the book? Well, I am particularly thankful for those who stood up for what is right and continue to do so. There are wonderful people of all colors and creeds who are a credit to themselves and their respective cultures. However, there are more than a few folks, again of all colors and creeds, who put the brakes on this progress by acting the fool. This book was a painful reminder of both sides of that coin.
I felt the message was powerful and something we should know so we can avoid the same pitfalls in the future. Yet, as a story, I felt it could have been much better put together. Perhaps the movie is better in this sense, but the book jumped around through too many people and too many time periods to keep my attention.
Recommendation
If asked, I would tell someone to see the movie. The book was hard but I had to will myself to continue.
Bill O’Reilly’s book on the assassination of Lincoln comprises the end of the civil war and the few days after the funeral of one of our best known presidents. It was published in 2011 and was on the best seller’s list for 65 weeks. There were some criticism of the book and there were changes made in subsequent versions.
I enjoyed the read and feel I learned a great deal. I do feel there were more than a few points where I stopped and thought, “there’s no way we know that”. Mostly, this is when the author tries to read the thoughts of the people as they are going about their day. Yet, I feel the book gave a balanced look at what happened and even gave time to discuss the conspiracies.
Julia Baird’s biography of Queen Victoria was published in late 2016 and was named one of the best books of the year on Amazon but I couldn’t find the reference. I did find this though. Not every monarch has a whole era named after them but Victoria was ruled for a long time and over a time of great change and expansion. This book takes us from her birth to her death and gives the context through those years.
Victoria the Queen
My Thoughts
I guess the biggest revelation was that she was short and plump. I knew about her being linked to hemophilia but didn’t know she was in as good of health as she was purported to be. I also didn’t know how devoted to her husband she was. I don’t recall the name Albert being linked to her at any point before. I had heard to John Brown though and I had no idea of how much of her life was edited by her daughter.
Reading about the royal families is difficult. I wish I had started with this before I read Elizabeth II’s autobiography. It would have made a lot more sense having this background.
Recommendations
An interesting read. I would recommend it if you are interested in the Queen.
Walter Isaacson‘s biography of Leonardo Da Vinci was released in 2017 and sat on the #1 best seller’s list. It is 600+ pages all compiled by Leonardo’s notebooks and what we know of him from others.
Leonardo Da Vinci
My Thoughts
I really enjoyed this. Leonardo is a fascinating figure. It really is amazing what he was able to do and, even if half the things attributed to him were true, he is still one of the most influential people who ever lived. I knew some of what he was and what he did but not really the half of it. The biggest surprise was how the work was done. How collaborative he was with his students and others.
Recommendations
There are some adult themes so I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone but it was a great read and I didn’t get bored the whole time.
Catherine the Great was the Empress of Russia during the time of the American Revolution. Robert Massie details her life from birth to death in just under 700 pages.
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
My Thoughts
This was a much better read than that of Elizabeth the II but the lives of the royals are pretty messed up. Maybe just from my perspective as a middle class American…
She led a pretty interesting and full life given the attitudes toward women. It seemed she played a good hand and things fell into place during her life. Oddly enough, there was a parallel with her daughter in law (Paul’s 2nd wife) and it makes me wonder what would have happened if she had been engaged to Peter instead of Catherine. By the account of the book, this other Sophia (later Maria) was well loved by everyone who met her.
It was an interesting read. I didn’t know so many things were going on in the world at that point. My education was mostly in the West so I knew about the French Revolution and, of course, the American Revolution but I didn’t know much about the rest of the world and how they viewed it.
This biography of Queen Elizabeth II was done by Sally Bedell Smith in 2012. It is 663 pages long to mirror the long life of Queen Elizabeth II who is currently 92 years old. This work takes her through her girlhood all the way through the wedding of her grandson William highlighting many of the events along the way.
Elizabeth The Queen
My Thoughts
While I was interested in the life story of Queen Elizabeth and I was keen on understanding more about the monarchy in general, I was pretty bored by the story. It was very long and felt formal and stuffy. I guess that was appropriate given the subject matter. It was a chore to get through it…
I did learn a lot and found I have more respect for the Queen as a whole.
Recommendations
I won’t be reading it again any time soon but I do have other royals to read up on. I can’t say I would recommend it.
To steal from the Great Courses page “Augustine of Hippo’s magnum opus The City of God is one of the greatest works of the Western intellectual tradition—so powerful, in fact, that one could argue all of Christian theology has been a series of footnotes to Augustine. Written during the transition from antiquity to the rise of Christianity, it is one of the key texts in defining our ethical framework into the 21st century. Yet even serious readers can be intimidated by a book that spans over 1,000 pages.”
Books that Matter: The City of God
My Thoughts
This was a pretty time consuming listen though I feel it was worth it. Pretty much most of the “ah hah” moments I’d had were discussed by Augustine of Hippo or “Saint Augustine” as we’ve likely heard of him. This lecture points out that not much is “new under the sun”. The ancients were pretty bright and most of the drama that we take on a daily basis had all been done before.
Recommendations
This work left my mind reeling a few times. If you can understand it all then you should start your own church. (You won’t be alone out there…)
This book is about how science has gone wrong. How usually well meaning people have created something that can’t quite be put back into the box. “These unwitting errors add up to seven lessons both cautionary and profound, narrated by renowned author and speaker Paul A. Offit. Offit uses these lessons to investigate how we can separate good science from bad, using some of today’s most controversial creations—e-cigarettes, GMOs, drug treatments for ADHD—as case studies. For every “Aha!” moment that should have been an “Oh no,” this book is an engrossing account of how science has been misused disastrously—and how we can learn to use its power for good.”
Pandora’s Lab
My Comments
This was a very interesting book. I was particularly interested in the examples from history; how mustard gas was created, why DDT was banned and so on. Similar books make me want to do a lot of fact checking. I didn’t agree with a few of the examples such as e-cigarettes as I don’t think the verdict is in just yet with what their influence will be. Still it was a great read.
Recommendation
Great book. It includes stuff everyone should know but should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Yet another of the “Great Courses” series, The American Civil War is a lecture given by Professor Gary W. Gallagher, Ph.D. of the University of Virginia. This lecture series is over 24 hours of lecture. As such it took me a while to get through… Professor Gallagher takes us from what lead up to the war before the election of 1860 and details everything through the early parts of reconstruction and how we remember the war today. It was recorded in the early 2000’s.
The American Civil War
Comments
I live in Virginia and continue to be very interested in what happened during the civil war. Although this was a long lecture, I was kept engaged and found myself wanting to know more. I very much enjoyed Professor Gallagher’s presentation of each side and how he touched on many of the theories and popular misconceptions about the war. I feel he gave a balanced account to what had happened and he made sense of a subject highly sensationalized and used for propaganda on both sides. I still want to know more about it and I feel I have been given a good foundation.
Recommendation
This lecture series is not for the faint of heart. There is a lot of material and it will take some time to get through it all. However, I highly recommend it to all Americans. Both those who want to know more about the war and those who should want to know more.
