Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Call No Man Father

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Book 17 of the Father Koesler series packs a wallop in the realms of ecclesiastics, ‘whogonnaduit,’ and why — by William X. Kienzle
Review by Brian Wright

Call No Man FatherIt’s been quite some time since I’ve picked up a Kienzle/Koesler mystery. Frankly, I cannot remember whether I’ve read the noted original in the series, The Rosary Murders, which was made into a movie starring Donald Sutherland (as Detroit Priest Father Koesler). But I have a special connection to the author through a sister-in-law who actually worked for him when he was a parish priest at one of the old Catholic churches in Detroit.

A few years ago I read a biography of Mr. Kienzle by his widow Javan, Judged by Love. It was truly a touching memoir and really gave an insight into the man… who had been a priest (one of the good ones) and later left the priesthood because of the Catholic Church’s refusal to remarry divorcees. The person of the good priest is Father Koesler, more or less an alter ego for Mr. Kienzle. Continue reading →

Book Review: First Strike

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TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America
by Jack Cashill and James Sanders
Review by Brian Wright

First Strike by Jack CashillFrom the book jacket:

On July 17, 1996, a 747 jet crashed off the coast of Long Island, New York. After much stalling, the government attributed the crash to mechanical failure, and the media played along. But the truth is much more complicated and even more alarming: The destruction of TWA Flight 800 wasn’t just an accident, according to authors Jack Cashill and James Sanders. It resulted from an act of war—the first strike against the American mainland.

My feeling is the writer of the bookjacket blurb did not read the book, or possibly read the first version of the book before the authors had truly assessed the likely scenarios of what happened that day. If the writer had consulted what Cashill and Sanders actually wrote in the final document the blurb might go like this: Continue reading →

Book Review: Crossfire

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The plot that killed Kennedy
by Jim Marrs
Review by Brian Wright

Crossfire by Jim MarrsSo why spend any time on a crime of state that occurred 48 years ago, November? For the same reason we continue to pursue the syndicate who orchestrated and executed the ‘Crime of the 21st Century‘ ten years ago—9/11/2001. Justice never sleeps. Personally, I find the work of James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, along with a lesser known work by Dr. Martin Schotz, History Will Not Absolve Us, to be more compelling and readable—Douglass’s for the peace angle and Schotz’s for the psychological blind-obedience-to-authority angle—than this still extraordinary book by Jim Marrs.

But Crossfire adds the dimension of a huge body of digestible evidence from the street and from the corridors of power. Evidence that at a bare minimum shows the official ‘Lone Nut’ story of the JFK assassination is as gruesome and absurd a children’s fairy tale as the official ‘Crazed Arab’ story of the 9/11 attacks. Continue reading →

Book Review: The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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Fantasy and reality of life on the sidewalks
by Jane Jacobs
Review by Brian Wright

Death and Life of Great American CitiesThis exceptional book was highly touted by Ayn Rand’s coterie of intellectuals back in the day of The Objectivist Newsletter (early 1960s). Jane Jacobs came along in the same era—Death and Life of Great American Cities (Cities) was published in 1961—which was also the heyday of the Great Society programs, where good intentions and city planning could do no wrong.

Jacobs, a citizen-scholar of multiple subjects and a lifelong social activist for individuals and communities as they do and ought to live, devoted her life to truth above conventional practice or slavish obedience to authority. Cities is a tour de force of practical enlightenment: it’s like The Way Things Work about cities… not the way they are supposed to work. More than anything, Jane Jacobs is a people person, as are her cities: Continue reading →

Book Review: What about gods?

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Children’s story on letting go of make-believe
by Chris Brockman
Review by Brian Wright

What about Gods?This marvelous little book came from a very special individual out of a milieu in the young libertarian movement in Michigan in the mid-1970s. There was a certain orthodoxy to that milieu; I remember Chris and his wife Julie seemed on the ‘free spirit’ end of the general ‘rational-libertarian’ structure of our sociology at the time.[1] Chris and Julie were always more antiwar and anticorporate than most of us in those days, and had solid secular-humanist credentials. We in the secular Objectivist-libertarian center had read and heard all the excellent intellectual refutations of the concept of God.[2] I, personally, manifested egoic arrogance in my understanding, to the point of minimizing more humane perspectives. Continue reading →

Book Review: Gravity Golf (1994)

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The evolution and revolution of golf instruction
by David Lee

Gravity GolfMy golf experience is amateur and began relatively late in life, at the age of 44 in 1993. I’ve been a fairly decent athlete, lettering in baseball in high school as a pitcher. Both my parents have good hand-eye coordination, my dad was a pilot in WW2 and had exceptional psychomotor skills. When I was a kid, he played golf occasionally—and coached my little league baseball teams—and the one saying he repeated to me incessantly was, “More technique than muscle, son… never force things.”

David Lee is only five years my senior (4/1/44 and I was born in 1949), but his emphasis on technique over “violence,” as he calls it, makes David Lee seem like he’s offering up the eternal wisdom of my old man. Continue reading →

Book Review: A Tan and Sandy Silence

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Middle of the pack, lesser Travis, but good enuf
by John D. MacDonald
Review by Brian Wright

Frankly I don’t remember the plot too well on this one. Travis does reflect quite a bit on life and love, but these philosophical passages did not seem central as in so many others in the series. The plot involves a search for a missing person, a woman with whom Travis has had a relationship long ago… which ended amiably.

I would have to say this novel, which I believe is number 13 out of 21, reveals the beginnings of Travis’s anxiety over slowing down with age. As a salvage expert, McGee has made a career from helping people in distress. But in so doing—and not being a man of conventional methods—he runs into considerable danger and damage. Indeed it’s somewhat of a conventional ending to witness McGee suffering broken bones, cuts, gunshot wounds, knife stabbings, and even beatings. His adversaries are practically as physical as he is and sleazy cunning. Continue reading →