Book Review: Dewey (2008)

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Brian Wright

The small-town library cat who touched the world
Vicki Myron

Time for some ‘sloppy sentimentality,’ a story I had not been aware of… but in the latter part of the 20th century came to be a symbol of hope for humanity worldwide. “Dewey Readmore Books,” showed up one minus-15° January 1988 morning in the book deposit box of the public library of the small town of Spencer, Iowa. The author discovered the kitten, just a few weeks old barely clinging to life under the returns. [The narrative of how the staff managed to save the poor cat’s life is a thoroughly amazing achievement in itself, putting flesh and blood (or fur and blood) into the observation that where there’s life there’s hope. Honestly, it borders on the miraculous.] Continue reading →

Book Review: Terminator and Philosophy (2009)

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Brian Wright

I’ll be back therefore I am
by William Irwin et al

This book was purchased for me by a friend who thought it looked like “the sort of material I’d be into.” And she was right. Actually, I had never heard of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series of books, much less this particular item—which poses age-old questions of free will, personhood, the man-machine relationship, and so on. Very cool concept to merge such deep discussions with the characters and actions in a major movie like James Cameron’s Terminator series.

The overall quality of the writing is first class, and one is struck immediately by the depth of academic knowledge of each of the writers. Which makes sense, because many of them are gentlemen and ladies with professorial credentials: meaning they’ve read all the classics from authors we college students in the humanities were assigned to read: Descartes, Kant, Hobbes, Mill, Bentham, and a host of others. Continue reading →

Book Review: The God Delusion (2006)

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Brian Wright

by Richard Dawkins
2006, Houghton Mifflin Co., 374 pgs.

Dawkins is a celebrated evolutionary biologist who, along with Sam Harris (The End of Faith), has emerged as one of the better known proponents of atheism in contemporary literature. Both books have been New York Times best sellers.

In my own work, New Pilgrim Chronicles, I have likewise argued for the critical need of the species to evolve from faith to reason:

“Faith, as the antithesis of reason, is a barbarous relic that must be discarded if civilization, much less any prospect for freedom, is to emerge.”— from Chapter 5

Dawkins’ main thesis is the natural world and even sentient beings such as ourselves are accounted for by natural explanations. Thus, God is not a requirement for and has a vanishingly small probability of existence. Continue reading →

The Hot Kid (2005)

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Brian Wright

The feeling of authenticity is astounding
by Elmore Leonard

2005, William Morrow Co., 312 pgs.

A lot of readers confess to a guilty secret for, say, liking a particular romance writer or mystery-suspense-crime novelist. Well, no guilt is required when the author you enjoy is Elmore Leonard. Especially in this particular book, where the jacket states:

“The next time the members of the Swedish Academy think about giving the Nobel Prize for literature, they should take a look at Elmore Leonard.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

Too true.

The Hot Kid is different from Leonard’s other work in being a historical period piece—the action takes place in oil-boom eastern Oklahoma during the late Prohibition-era 1920s and into the Depression-era 1930s. Continue reading →

Book Review: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004)

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Brian Wright

The inside story of Pax Americana foreign policy
by John Perkins

It’s been more than 10 years now since Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was published. And still the mainstream media is effective in blocking common understanding of how the Western banking cartel leverages Wall Street, the national security wonks, and the US military empire—in the guise of ‘economic development’—to transfer wealth from other countries into its clutches… with payoffs in the hundreds of $billions throughout its gorged network of corporate baronies.

John Perkins was a premier agent for these ‘developers.’ Boots on the ground, negotiating with statesmen and kings, skillfully articulating the contractual intentions of his Mob leaders to often reluctant representatives of the target countries. Continue reading →

Book Reviews: Unequal Protection (2002)

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Brian Wright

The rise of corporate dominance and the theft of human rights
by Thom Hartmann
2002, Mythical Research Company, 293 pages

Going into the Freedom Portal (Free State) I had doubts about the morality, perhaps even the constitutionality, of corporations.

What, after all, is a corporation?

American Heritage says: “a) A body of persons granted a charter legally recognizing them as a separate entity having its own rights, privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members. b) Such a body created for purposes of government.”

Now isn’t the b) part of that definition interesting? At the very least we know corporations are creatures of the government and do not exist at common law.

Thomas Hartmann, a true modern lower-case democrat, writes that Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and several other Founders warned strenuously against monopoly corporations:

“I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” –Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816 Continue reading →

Book Review: The Quick Red Fox (1964), et al

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Brian Wright

… and four others from the master of detective genre
John D. MacDonald

If you’re going to have a reading addiction, you can do a lot worse than the works of Mr. MacDonald. Here are four more earlier Travis McGee books I’m sneaking into my program:

MacDonald is one of the most prolific writers of quality detective thrillers in history. The Travis McGee Series consists of 21 books; with these I’m reviewing I’ve read a total of seven. Like some of my favorite authors—especially Larry McMurtry, Elmore Leonard, or Tony Hillerman—or favorite extended stories in cinema—Lonesome Dove, the TV series Friday Night Lights, or the miniseries John Adams—it’s going to be really tough for me to reach the end of the road and read the final John MacDonald Travis McGee book. Fortunately, there are several more to come.

The Quick Red Fox

1964, Fawcett Publications, 160 pages

In this installment of the McGee series, a well-known actress is being blackmailed with photographs for once having participated in a sex and drug bacchanalia several years earlier. Travis is retained by the actress under direction of a beautiful young personal assistant, Dana, who starts off with him like an ice queen, but eventually comes around. They travel together to track down each individual who was present at the incident, doing the detective work to find the blackmailers and put them out of business.

As with virtually all of his works, MacDonald has Travis speak out against and in favor of various cultural realities (these will occupy much of my reviews on this page). The following two segments occur close to each other, as Travis and Dana home in on one of the suspects in Southern California. This first hits home with virtually anyone of the freedom persuasion: Continue reading →