Posted by italyprof on 3/24/2021 2:27:00 PM (view original):
I am happy to announced that my new book is now available on Amazon. Please ignore the notice that they don't have copies, because their algorithm orders more copies when they see that there is demand for a book. So order away ! And let me know what you think:

https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Over-Abyss-Europe-Capitalism/dp/1569027463/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TMRTT8R4R6ZKAEAWECXB


And of course you can always order it directly from the publisher's site and support a small, independent, and excellent press:
http://africaworldpressbooks.com/looking-over-the-abyss.../

I look forward to hearing comments, criticisms, and suggestions from your readings.

Thanks iin advance !

Steven

I probably should have ordered this on Amazon being they could promote the book but I didn’t. I ordered it from the publisher directly. I like to support small business. Excited to read this.

Posted by winnetka1 on 4/7/2021 10:35:00 PM (view original):

Posted by italyprof on 3/24/2021 2:27:00 PM (view original):
I am happy to announced that my new book is now available on Amazon. Please ignore the notice that they don't have copies, because their algorithm orders more copies when they see that there is demand for a book. So order away ! And let me know what you think:

https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Over-Abyss-Europe-Capitalism/dp/1569027463/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TMRTT8R4R6ZKAEAWECXB


And of course you can always order it directly from the publisher's site and support a small, independent, and excellent press:
http://africaworldpressbooks.com/looking-over-the-abyss.../

I look forward to hearing comments, criticisms, and suggestions from your readings.

Thanks iin advance !

Steven

I probably should have ordered this on Amazon being they could promote the book but I didn’t. I ordered it from the publisher directly. I like to support small business. Excited to read this.

Thanks Winnetka1. I agree that it is hard to know what is the more important strategy, but the publisher is a small but quality one, and I am happy you gave them your business. I hope you like the book.

I just finished Yankee Resurrection: the Wild Ride of the 1974 New York Yankees by John Bartolick.

My only complaint is that the book is not longer. That season was my second favorite ever, after 1976, when my team after having been awful for so long finally won a pennant.

So I would have liked to read more. But what is here is good, and how I remember that season. The Yankees in first place in late September. A heartbreaking three-game loss to the still-overwhelming Orioles, a winning streak that kept us in it up to the next to last game of the season, George Scott's single for Milwaukee, me at 14 years old listening to the radio in my room in our old house, the one I grew up in in northern New Jersey, which we sold two years later, the season over.

But a likeable team, an exciting one, a gutsy one and a worthy one. The basis, in the end, for the winning years to come a little later. And some troubling signs of what the Steinbrenner era, in its second full year, would come to be, for good and so often for ill.

If MLB.TV or YouTube were to put that whole season online I would watch every game from that year. Somehow, the teams that just missed winning, especially when you were young, stay with you and closer to your heart even than the ones that win big. I loved the 1998 Yankees, it was fun. But it is hard to be sentimental about them now. 1974, still sentimental.

Re-reading the Flashman series starting at book 1:

Recently finished 3 books:

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes - Daniel Everett. A first person account of a Christian missionary who moved his young family to a remote Amazon village in the late 1970s to live among the Piraha tribe. Fascinating on at least 3 levels. First, as a survival/adventure/wilderness story - plenty of dramatic scenes describing life in one of the most remote parts of the world in a pre-cellphone, pre-internet era. Second, as an introduction to linguistics. The Piraha language has many unique features that differentiate it. For example: no system of numbers. Everett has since become a professor of linguistics and has used his experience and research with the Piraha to introduce a number of theories that are unconventional and potentially controversial. I am not innately interested in this subject, but Everett is a compelling writer, and I have since been motivated to watch a number of his lectures on YouTube. Lastly, it is a description of Everett's internal journey in contemplating the big questions of life, including his faith, which he has since abandoned.

The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan. A classic introduction to science and skepticism, written in Sagan's exceptional prose. So, so relevant in a post-Trump world where a large percentage of the population seems to have rejected the value of scientific research and objective knowledge.

The Big Picture - Sean Carroll. A tour de force from perhaps the world's most brilliant contemporary physicist. A highly readable journey through what we know - and what we don't - about the origins of the cosmos and life. If you've never been exposed to Carroll, his YouTube videos are exceptionally compelling.

Interesting news from the literary world: the author of the new Philip Roth biography is in trouble over rape accusations. His book is currently on the NYT bestseller list and has been receiving mostly glowing reviews, but now the publisher is halting promotion and shipping, as well as a second printing of the book. That's the publisher's right, I guess, but I don't see why they should punish the book over the (alleged) sins of the author. Let the courts sort out whatever crimes he may have committed, but leave the book alone.

I agree. There could also be a contractual clause like they have in sports.
Even then they should not exercise it even if they want to and can unless the evidence is so overwhelming and strong that it rises to the level of clear and convincing at the least.

Currently making my way through:




Drawn mostly from the private correspondence of Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson it is very interesting to hear the the profound fears they all had for the future of that which they'd been so involved in creating.

Read the book.

Posted by bagchucker on 4/22/2021 11:14:00 PM (view original):
come on gimme a break

what was 'their' biggest fear

I have no idea why you put 'their' in quotes is there something you're trying to say?

Each seemed troubled by different points in what I've read so far.

Washington as he did for much of his time feared the effects of partisanship on the future of the country and that it had already reached a point where, well to quote: 'Just weeks before his death, Washington wrote to James McHenry, his former secretary of war: “I have, for sometime past, viewed the political concerns of the United States with an anxious, and painful eye. They appear to me, to be moving by hasty strides to some awful crisis; but in what they will result—that Being, who sees, foresees, and directs all things, alone can tell.”

Hamilton on the other hand was consumed with the idea that the constitution hadn't created a strong enough government and was too weak to stand as a result. In his letter to Gouverneur Morris in July of 1802 he referred to it as '... the frail and worthless fabric.' That strikes me as kind of a remarkable thing for the guy who wrote 51 of the Federalist papers to say.

Anyway, I've not made it through the rest though it is a relatively easy read so I'd expect I'd finish it in the next day or two after I build the Cubs team I owe for a 2011 Luck of the Draw league and if you want to talk about disillusionment well just take a look at that roster

the grand masters of chess