I book on how to trust again after you feel the knife sink between your shoulder blades.
This book had a lot of really good ideas if you can follow it and put it into practice. Most of the book is to be read over a great deal of time as the reader starts to find forgiveness for both themselves and the one who betrayed them.
A great read but buy the physical book and go step by step.
The Money Management great courses series by Professor Michael Finke provides a comprehensive overview of personal finance and investing. With his engaging teaching style and real-world examples, Finke covers topics ranging from budgeting and debt management to stocks and bonds, retirement planning, and estate planning. The course is accessible to beginners, yet also provides valuable insights for more experienced investors. Finke’s emphasis on creating a personalized financial plan and his emphasis on the importance of considering risk and uncertainty in investment decisions are particularly valuable takeaways from the series.
This course was so good, I listened to it 3 times. Everyone should know a little bit about personal finance and Professor Finke does a great job of making a difficult subject relatable.
It was very worth the time and effort I put into it.
Girl Wash Your Face is a self help book from Rachel Hollis who does a variety of things from podcasting to seminars and a little bit of everything in between.
This book is aimed at women who want to better themselves by feeling more empowered by believing they are good enough.
I listen to the Rise Together podcast and several women in my life are very familiar with Rachel Hollis. Many of the stories she tells in this book I had heard before. It reads a lot like she talks so it felt very familiar.
It is targeted toward women so I shouldn’t have felt bothered that she kept addressing the reader as “Girl!”. But it was a grating after a while. It is a lot like going to a yoga class and the instructor speaks to us all like we are all middle aged women.
Still, the message was good and I certainly respect where she is coming from. She certainly doesn’t have any issue sharing her feelings and what is on her mind. Yet, it felt like oversharing a couple of times. I don’t know, I like the Hollis couple and I will continue to listen to the podcast but, I didn’t get too much out of this book.
If you are a woman, you’ll likely like this book.
Bible and Sword is a history of the rise of Christianity in Great Britain and ultimately why and how modern day Israel came to exist.
I’ve often wondered why so many countries have been so interested in Israel and why they have been willing to risk so much for little immediate benefit. I have read the biblical accounts about the return of the Savior and know the gathering of the 12 tribes is a big part of what comes before the 2nd coming. However, I didn’t really think that was was the driving force. Of course, it is much more complicated.
The plight of the Jews throughout the centuries has almost been unbelievable. We tend to think of such things as behind us at this point in time yet, with this history has a backdrop, it has vastly improved my understanding of the motivations of the interested parties.
I’m glad I was exposed to this information. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the histories of Europe and the Middle East.
George Orwell made such a splash with this book it is still used as required reading in schools across the nation. Animal Farm is the bedrock of anti-totalitarian books and was published during the second world war.
The book is a story of the animals on a farm who throw off their oppressive masters and start living their lives as equals. As time passes, many things change and very quickly the animals learn that some are “more equal”.
I’m so glad my daughter was given the assignment to read this book as it had been far too long since I had even thought of it. I remember the phrase “more equal” being quoted to me while I lived in Bulgaria and was being told about where the “party members” lived. The Bulgarians were very familiar with the concepts of communism and much of the story rung true their experience.
I think the story does a great job of showing even how the best of intentions can go astray. How the best of us can be corrupted and misused if we are simply given something we can believe in. The horse Boxer’s mottos of, “I will work harder” and “Napoleon is always right” are good examples of this. He had the ability to stop what was happening but he clung to the ideals and ended up working himself to death.
A good quick read. No one has put it better than Orwell.
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.”
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.
Great book. It includes stuff everyone should know but should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
This is yet another of the Learning Company’s “Great Courses”. It takes a learner through the very basics to some fairly advanced theory while giving a history of Western music along the way.
There are over 23 hours of content in this course and I had to slow my listening down so I could hear the music properly. I LOVED IT! I can’t say enough good things about this course. I kept bothering my family about something I learned that day or something I thought was hilarious. Great, great, great course.
Everyone should listen to this course by Robert Greenberg. Play it for your spouse, neighbors, friends, distant relations, and children (including in utero).
Supernormal by Meg Jay is a non-fiction book that explores the concept of resilience and how it develops in individuals who have experienced significant adversity in their lives. The author draws on her extensive experience as a clinical psychologist and her research on the subject to provide a nuanced and insightful look at how individuals can overcome adversity and develop resilience.
This book was hard to read. I had put it down a couple of times but resolved to finish it. I was glad that I did. It wasn’t something I’d suggest others read. It reminded me of much of my childhood and what I considered unfair or wrong. I made my peace with that a long time ago but this book brought back a number of memories. I truly believe each of us have had to endure hard times. Each of us are impacted by our surroundings. Some may be better than others but we each have those moments that define us. They make us “us”.
I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you have a strong interest in the subject matter. It was a solid read but painful for me at times. I was left feeling I needed to fact check a number of citations. (Studies I hadn’t heard of and the like.) Still, there was enough “truthiness” to it that I didn’t bother.
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.
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.
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.
Yet again, not a book but a lecture series by the Great Courses. Power over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory, is given by Professor Dennis Dalton, Ph.D. of Barnard College, Columbia University.
There are 16 lectures in the series with each lecture being 46 minutes. Dr. Dalton quickly covers all the ground from the Greeks to 20th century thinkers and how they saw their world around them.
Honestly, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I did the last course on Greek Philosophy. In some elements, this course and the other are in opposition. Dr. Dalton states Plato was a fond student of Socrates while Professor Roochnik states that wasn’t the case.
Not to disparage the course, I found Dr. Dalton to be engaging and very interesting. Perhaps it was just too broad of a sweep since he had too much ground to cover. Still, many of the facts presented were new to me. Karl Marx’s abject poverty and his writing in London. Gandhi’s inspiration from a quote by Thoreau. The climb of power of Hitler and so on. I was glad I experienced it.
I would recommend this to most people. It was a good overview.