Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Unprotected (2018)

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Failures of General Motors and the United Auto Workers…
By Camille F. McMillan
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

… and the civil and criminal justice in Michigan, and the general community of plant workers who failed to step in and prevent this horrific harassment of an exceptional and accomp-lished journeyman electrician—who happens to be black and a woman.

The title should be Unrelenting, to describe the abuse she suffered, mainly at the Pontiac East Assembly Plant during the 1990s and into the early 2000s. What happily married-for-41-years Camille McMillan had to endure is something out the worst Hollywood version of the Old South in the 1950s. In the Heat of the Night of Sparta, Mississippi, of 1967, ain’t got nothing on the blue collar bad apples (scum)—and their white-collar management and union enablers (often worse scum, participating in the abuse)—of Pontiac, Michigan, of the turn of the 21st century.

Then, after a journey down the big-money-bought (GM branch of corporate government)  citadel of corruption that passes for a judicial system these days, seeking a suitable redress of grievances, Mrs. McMillan’s case(s) are botched by attorneys and summarily, criminally squelched by judges. On top of it all, Camille has Multiple Sclerosis (MS), exacerbated by the trauma she suffered at work and now at a devastating stage:

“I lost my job. My MS is now progressive and I can’t walk. I have weird sensations throughout my body because of it. I have numbness throughout my body. I can only sleep four or five hours a night because of these sensations. The medicine I take does little to help. I’m glad I left [GM] because our work relationship was getting darker. Derek, Amos, and LeRoy were three of four of the worst black males [plenty of black-man-on-black-woman  ‘piling on’ to the underlying pervasive low-life, white racism and sexism at the plant, you get the picture: the harassment was systemic — ed.] I have ever encountered….” — page 222

All I have to say is, “Where is Oprah when we need her?” The world we’re all up against is one giant Jerry Springer Show with a pack of elite corporate-state vipers opportunistically instigating and sustaining all the injustices for their own sleazy financial scams, while smiling down sadistically at their little puppet show with dead eyes. Camille’s story is OUR story, any honest person who has gone up against the man, naïvely, and been thrashed about like a rag doll by a spoiled child. The spoiled children are IN CHARGE of our society… and that has to change. How? Well, I do have a plan.[1] Continue reading →

Book Review: Engines of Creation (1986)

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The coming era of nanotechnology
by K. Eric Drexler
1986, Anchor Press/Doubleday , 289 pages
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

Original review, November 2007.

One of the watershed books of the life extension movement—or any of half a dozen names given to the rising awareness that we humans are destined to transcend our biological limitations—Engines of Creation by Dr. Eric Drexler lays out the vision for molecular-level engineering. (The approximate dimensions of molecules are in the nanometer—1 billionth of a meter—range, hence the words molecular technology and nanotechnology are synonyms.)

These were heady times in the mid to late 1980s for what I’ll refer to here generically as the “transhumanist” movement.  In 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Robert Ettinger had laid out some blueprints for how human beings could reach the next level of evolution: The Prospect of Immortality and Man into Superman.  Other scientists and humanists were also debating the ramifications of cryogenic preservation, gene therapy, cloning, nutritional enhancement, and so on.  In 1982 researchers Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw came out with a bestselling book Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach.

It’s no accident the life extension and transhumanist movement coincided with the heyday of the Libertarian Party’s impingement on American political consciousness—not to mention the thrust of free-market anarchist, individualist, anti-corporatist, Movement of the Libertarian Left, and innumerable variations on the following theme: “We are free agents, beholden to no central political power, and rational self-interest being a good thing, why not stick around as long as we can, vigorously, youthfully?!”

Engines of Creation describes the foundations of and the issues surrounding humankind’s increasing potential for building molecular machines. (Indeed as we stand here on the verge of 2008, notable accomplishments in nanotechnology continue to be made.) Drexler’s “starter kit” comprises what he calls “universal assemblers,” which are nanomachines designed for a simple task, such as replacing defective genetic links with functional ones or bonding one cellular structure to another: Continue reading →

Book Review: Teenage Idol, Travelin’ Man (1992)

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The Complete Biography of Rick Nelson, by Philip Bashe
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

For some reason around Christmas 2018, I know what it was, I was pondering whether I’d be receiving a card from my former boss, Cathy. We had worked together doing documentation of an EDI [electronic data interchange (paperless business transaction documents)] suite of documents for a company in Livonia, Michigan, back in the 1990s. I’d just recently heard a desultory comment from a current coworker that Rick Nelson’s plane had crashed because he was freebasing cocaine—IOW, the sort of rumor meanspirited people, guided by hearsay, not knowing and not caring, use to dismiss another’s achievement.

Well, Cathy, whom I really admired professionally and personally, had shared with me a book on Rick Nelson back in those days I worked for her. Turns out she was a major fan of Rick’s music and of Rick the individual. [“Elvis was too full of himself, and, like, a greaser.”] I read the book that she recommended back then and came away quite impressed with Mr. Teenage Idol, as well. In particular, whatever book I read dwelt on the distressing relationship between Nelson and his wife Kris, the drugs and affairs and whatnot—mostly on Kris’s end of the stick. It was a good book, putting Rick mainly in a favorable light. BUT it was NOT this book that I just read and am reviewing here.

Foundation

This book, Teenage Idol, Travelin’ Man, is several cuts above the other one I remember reading in the early 1990s. Mr. Bashe has delivered a remarkable achievement that focuses first and foremost on Rick the musician and on Rick the person. With a full family history and background, especially of the remarkable Ozzie Nelson.

“Oswald George Nelson was born in Jersey city, March 20, 1906…. A voracious reader, Ozzie dog-eared copies of David Copperfield, Tommy Tiptop, the Rover Boys, and especially Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches boys’ stories. The latter’s recurring theme of infinite possibility had an immense impact on him, as it did on young men as Henry Ford, David Sarnoff, John D. Rockefeller, George Eastman, and Thomas Edison. That they and Ozzie all wound up millionaires might be coincidence. Then again, maybe not: for the honesty and virtue of Alger’s protagonists weren’t their own rewards, but were usually supplemented by cash.”

“Though the public would come to know Ozzie as the indolent, bumbling father he played on the air, in reality he displayed Algeresque drive and ambition his entire life. In addition to becoming the youngest American Eagle Scout on record at 13, Ozzie went on to excel in scholastics, debating, cartooning, and sports…. Ozzie followed his brother Alfred to all-male Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey,” where at 130# he played running back on the varsity football team. After graduating and enduring many hardships, including his father’s death from a rare bone cancer, superachiever Ozzie developed a thriving entertainment business—band, orchestra, singer, conductor, composer—on the east coast while even earning a law degree. — Pages 4-7

By comparison and contrast, Rick fit the following description:

“Strong-willed professionally, in his private life Rick was passive and reserved, the loyal son of a domineering, ambitious father. Ozzie Nelson, creator and star of an unprecedented radio and television dynasty, directed Rick not only on The Adventures [of Ozzie and Harriet] but off camera as well, and was the most influential person in his life. Rick felt forever torn between his devotion to Ozzie and his desperate need to establish an identity separate from father and family. He became an escape artist, always seeking his independence—from Ozzie;  from an unhappy marriage; from adulthood, which Rick resisted like Peter Pan by singing rock & roll; and most of all from the Boy Next Door image that plagued him through the years.” — Page xvii

Continue reading →

Book Review: The Hunt for Zero Point (2001) and Behind the Flying Saucers (1950))

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Inside the classified world of ‘antigravity’ technology
By Nick Cook, reviewed by Brian R. Wright [my rating 6/10]

Reviewer’s Note: Beginning today as 2019 approaches, I’ve decided to shorten significantly most of my new book reviews and movie reviews. This will no doubt please a number of readers, who typically have not the time to spend reading long discussions of what someone else thinks of a book or movie that they may consider taking in. There will be exceptions, of course, mainly when I feel a book is so important that it needs a thorough under-standing. The fact is, that generally I lack the time as well. — brw

It did take considerable time to read The Hunt for Zero Point; I was determined. Mainly, I was kept on the hook by a series of tantalizing research cycles from the author, Nick Cook, as he traveled around the world. English journalist Cook is, or was at the time he wrote the book, the Aviation Editor of a prestigious aerospace magazine, Jane’s Defence Weekly. So he could knock on doors many other researchers wouldn’t even know about.

At the same time, I felt a certain repetitiveness as he kept referring, then back and forward, to one line of investigation and personnel or another… many of the individuals looking into antigravity phenomena being renowned scientists, high corporate and defense officials, offbeat geniuses working out of garages and basements, etc. The other main problem, as I see it, is right from the gitgo, Cook also doesn’t bring up antigravity propulsion or power systems as originating from other intelligent beings (OIBs or ETs). His focus is on human engineering and skunk-works—for example, he spends an inordinate number of pages on what the Germans were doing in WW2.

Many of Cook’s forays produce fascinating information on experimental results as well as antigrav technology being incorporated in stealth aircraft today. But nothing that I can see that accounts for sightings of numerous craft that can stop on a dime from thousands of miles per hour, make a right angle turn and head off at the same speed. These are definitely OIB craft, and my sense is that more ‘mainstream’ ufologists—e.g., Dr. Stephen Greer and Richard Dolan—believe the ETs have mastered antigravity, and humans have reengineered some antigravity tech for the super-dark so-called Secret Space Program. Continue reading →

Book Review: We Almost Lost Detroit (1975)

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A prototype for how NOT to do energy [reviewer’s subtitle]
By John Fuller (1913-1990)

The motivation to read this book arose from simply the fact that I had heard the book title so many times, I live in the Detroit area, and now work part time where sometimes my route takes me to Monroe, Michigan, where the Fermi plant was built on (in 1966 called) Lagoona Beach of Lake Erie. The book was written in 1975 and reads like a thriller…  though as it states on the cover in the form of a subtitle: This Is Not a Novel.

I wanted to get the inside skinny on whether or not the title is true. My conclusion is that, yes, on October 5, 1966, in development since 1953, the Enrico Fermi liquid-sodium-cooled fast-breeder nuclear power plant (Fermi 1) experienced a meltdown of some fuel  assemblies. At the time of the incident it was unknown how many fuel elements had melted and whether a secondary accident of catastrophic proportions—meltdown of the core, subsequent explosion, violation of containment, and dispersion of radioactive plumes covering 10s of thousands of square miles (including metro Detroit some 50 miles from the site)—was imminent.

You can skip to Chapter 12 thru the epilogue to get the short story of what happened during the early days of October 1966, then subsequently as teams tried to determine what exactly had happened while trying to reach a stable condition where the threat of secondary meltdown was rendered minimal. They were able with extreme, tedious effort to remove the damaged subassemblies by May 1967, then it took another several months to determine the fundamental cause of the overheating: some flow shielding that had come loose and prevented coolant flow to those sections of the core.

About two years later, Autumn 1968, the debris had been cleaned up and estimates for resurrection of an operable reactor were a year and a half down the road. By May 1970 Fermi 1 was nearly ready to resume operation, then in July 1970 the reactor was fired up and, in October 1970, four years after the incident, Fermi reached its designed 200,000 Kilowatt power rating. License renewal loomed in January 1971, the AEC reluctantly did so. But the public was voicing increasing concerns, and Detroit Edison was looking at Fermi increasingly as a major load on its bottom line: Continue reading →

Book Review: Palestine: Peace not Apartheid

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by Jimmy Carter
2006, Simon and Schuster, 250 pages
The Israeli garrison state continues to cough up humanitarian fur balls

CarterEditor’s note: This is sixth time (previous: 1/12/18) I’ve reposted the original review.

Editor’s note: I’m replaying this book review from the old version of my site because of its timeliness and what I have learned very recently about political Zionism and the state of Israel,[1] especially regarding false flag operations and crimes against humanity[2][3]… which it certainly would appear are happening, as we speak, in the Gaza Strip. My goodness, this book was written 12 years ago! Time flies. I remember how the so-called Israel Lobby raked ol’ president Jimmy over the coals for this mild-mannered, modest expose, as if he were pushing for rekindling the Nazi death camps. Au contraire, as it turns out, Mr. Carter was simply shedding light on the ongoing programs of war and ethnic cleansing—Carter never refers to it as such—by the ‘Israel Mob.’ Valuable work.

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My review as written, April 2007

If I had to use a single phrase to identify the main thrust of this timely, richly humanitarian book, it would be a message to the Israeli government: tyranny in Palestine ill befits you… and tyranny in Palestine is arguably the largest impediment to peace on the planet today.

Carter’s benevolent yet insistent message is the Israeli government must step up and live up to agreements it has made over the previous 60 years: Continue reading →

Book Review: Unearthing Atlantis, 3d Edition (2017)

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An Archaeological Odyssey to the Fabled Lost Civilization
By Charles Pellegrino [Reviewed by Brian R. Wright]

When it comes to hard evidence and breathtaking scope of delivery, there is none higher…

Reading Unearthing Atlantis is a transcendent experience, very similar to how I felt when I first read The Longest Walk (2015) by George Meegan,[1] for slightly different reasons:

Mr. Meegan’s adventure was a down-to-earth journey touching large numbers of everyday people from different worlds, which he experienced in real time. His life became intertwined with their lives, and inspired George to dedicate himself to a mission of preservation of peoples’ unique cultures and languages—bringing out the best in all humanity via true noncompulsory ‘education.'[2]

Dr. Pellegrino, while similarly sharing in the lives of men and women, these ones going about their arduous scientific-discovery business around the world, communicates their work and discoveries—not only in the context of archaeology, but paleontology and cosmology as well. He’s an amazing writer with an exceptional ability to draw you high above the mundane while at the same time dwelling in it, reveling in it… rigorously. Further, he skillfully condenses eons of time in a bottle, rather a priceless vase, belonging to our wealthy, erudite neighbors, on an island in the Aegean Sea, in 1628 B.C., who had to leave their precious homes suddenly due to one of the world’s major supervolcanoes.

Sadly, these neighbors of ours turned to vapor in the next 24 hours, so we can only converse with them now indirectly in what they left behind. Continue reading →