Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Unstoppable Global Warming (2007)

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by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery
… or ‘how I learned to stop worrying and love smokestacks up the ol’ wazoo.’

WarmingThe orthodox global warming theory (GW) holds that humans, by burning fossil fuels mainly for vehicular transport and power generation, are warming Earth’s surface and atmospheric temperatures through emissions of carbon dioxide (which reflects radiation energy back to earth).

Many supporters of GW further hold the corollary view that carbon-based warming is enough to imminently (within the 21st century) threaten human well being and needs to be reined in.

Al Gore’s book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and my favorite book on the issue so far, Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers, are among many popular works representing the orthodox GW position.  Two graphics of particular importance to this theory are the Keeling Curve and the so-called Hockey Stick graph from the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Continue reading →

Book Review: Voluntary Simplicity (1993)

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Toward a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich
by Duane Elgin
1993 (First edition 1981), William Morrow, 221 pages

ElginThis is another one of those books my mom told me about, then I dawdled and kept putting off reading.  But when I finally got around to it, the work turned out to be an eye-opening experience with great relevance, I feel, to moving the bus of the general human condition in a forward direction.

Some of the other books that have come my way via the Mama Knows Best circuit: Building a Bridge to the 18th Century by Neil Postman, State of Denial by Bob Woodward, The End of Oil by Paul Roberts, Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick, The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter, and the Deep Blue Good-By by John D. MacDonald.  All except The End of Oil, I’ve reviewed… and I’ll get around to that one before we run out. Continue reading →

Book Review: Nightmare in Pink (1964)

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By John D. MacDonald 1964, Fawcett Publications , 143 pages

MacDonaldSome of my friends tell me it’s time to lighten up again.  (Well, they tell me to lighten up all the time.)  So, for the book review, I’ve decided to continue to explore more of the subtleties and insights of Travis McGee in this his second incarnation, Nightmare in Pink, by literary GrandMaster MacDonald.

What amazes me for all the books I’ve read—including a McGee novel by MacDonald perhaps a decade ago—that I’ve only just now “discovered” John D’s immense talent.  Seriously.  In his first of the Travis McGee series, The Deep Blue Good-By, I saw his penchant for biting social commentary. Continue reading →

Book Review: The End of Faith (2004)

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Religion, terror, and the future of reason
by Sam Harris
Reviewed by Brian Wright

FaithThe End of Faith is the watershed book for uniting rational, spiritual—and yes, libertarian—humanists in an unprecedented worldwide exercise in the elevation of consciousness.  Several books recently have taken up the cause of releasing our minds from specters of the past, particularly any sorts of deities that insist upon abandonment of natural reason for salvation.

All published in 2006, we have Harris’s own Letter to a Christian Nation, which cleverly skewers the most extreme faith-based positions of too many of our neighbors; UK scientist and author Richard Dawkins gave us The God Delusion, a more academic dance around the escape hatches from reality; and on the lighter side we got The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) by the one and only Bobby Henderson. Continue reading →

Book Review: Atlas Shrugged (1957)

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“So this is the little lady who caused all the fuss…”
by Brian Wright

Atlas ShruggedThose with a historical bent will recognize the subtitle in quotes as what Abraham Lincoln (president of the US, 1861-1865) was purported to have said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—a scathing indictment of slavery that many feel led to the War of Northern Aggression.[1] I’m using it here in a reference to Ayn Rand, who was, as it turns out, a diminutive woman, and to her majestic philosophic ideas… that have and will shake up what commonly has been regarded as proper human behavior for centuries. Briefly, her philosophy, known as Objectivism, stands for objective reality, reason, egoism (enlightened self-interest), and capitalism.[2] Continue reading →

Book Review: A New Earth (2006)

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NewEarthAwakening to your life’s purpose
by Eckhart Tolle
2006, Penguin Group, 309 pages

A few weeks ago I became excited about a book that was referred to inadvertently via an alternative-money Website’s newsletter.  The money guru is Thomas H. Greco, Jr., who mentioned in his newsletter, paraphrasing, “Eckhart Tolle would say ‘nonresistance enables one to transcend ephemeral circumstances and tap into a higher power.”

So I became curious about Eckhart Tolle and acquired his breakout book, The Power of Now (1999). I reviewed The Power of Now, and the following passages from that review are what I took from it: Continue reading →

Book Review: The Prospect of Immortality (1964)

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Hendrickson_Announcement

by Robert C.W. Ettinger
1964, 1966, MacFadden Books, 160 pages

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NsejSxf2L._SL500_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgThe idea for going back into the time machine, purchasing, and rereading this book was precipitated by the need to get my own contract for cryogenic interment up to date.  Shortly after my brother died at the tender age of 56 in May this year, I was contacted by Ben Best of the Cryonics Institute (CI), and encouraged to sit down and draw up the contract, like, now. Continue reading →