Category: books

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

On By Rick McIn books, economics, Facebook, firearms, GOP USA, government, human rights, things getting worseLeave a comment

With a rating of 4.36 / 5.00 on GoodReads, this book is popular. And depressing.

My takeaways:

  • Stop worrying about Russia. It’s the richest of the rich deciding American politics.
  • Charles and David Koch started as Libertarians. In fact, David ran in 1980 as candidate for Vice President for the Libertarian Party. In recent decades everything the Kochs do is to enrich themselves. #FollowTheMoney

  • The Kochs will cheat, lie, steal, intimidate to enrich themselves. The GOP are merely a means to an end.
  • The Kochs are good businessmen, employing many. For all the hundreds of millions they’ve spent, mostly on Republicans, they’ve made more back on legislation enriching the richest of the rich.
  • The 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision made the situation much worse.
  • Because their business is mostly Petrotoxins, the Kochs are keenest on preventing action on climate change.
  • Currently Americans for Prosperity is the main Koch lobbyist.
  • The E.P.A. identified Koch Industries in 2012 as the single biggest producer of toxic waste in the United States.

The U.S. political system is a fail, I’d say.

40% think Trump is doing a good job. A majority of those, I’m guessing, believe what they hear on FOX News and right wing radio.

Americans so easily misled deserve worse education, worse health care, medical bankruptcy, etc. … There’s no helping people like that.

I keep thinking American voters will figure out the richest of the rich are taking too much money. They don’t

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016) is a non-fiction book written by the American investigative journalist Jane Mayer, about a network of extremely wealthy conservative republicans, foremost among them Charles and David Koch, who have together funded an array of organizations that work in tandem to influence academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and the American presidency for their own benefit.

Mayer particularly discusses the Koch family and their political activities, along with Richard Mellon Scaife and John M. Olin and the DeVos and Coors families.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Jane Meredith Mayer is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995. …

In 2016, Doubleday published Mayer’s fourth book, Dark Money, which became an instant national best-seller, and the New York Times named it one of the ten best books of the year. …

Mayer revealed that approximately six investigators, led by former New York Police Chief Howard Safir, had been hired by the industrialist Koch brothers in an effort to try to dig up dirt in order to smear her reputation, and that accusations of plagiarism had been leveled at her. She responded by publicly airing those tactics of intimidation, effectively debunking the smear campaign.

 

The Expanse (TV series) – season 1

On By Rick McIn books, TVLeave a comment

If you like SciFi, I highly recommend this series. It’s complex and nuanced with plenty of futuristic technology.

The Expanse is the best show on TV that no one is watching

 

The Expanse is an American science fiction television series on Syfy …

Set in a future where humanity has colonized the Solar System, … they unravel a conspiracy that threatens peace in the system and the survival of humanity.

It also deals with the fractious relationship between Earth, Mars and the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). The OPA is an organization that fights for the interests of inhabitants of the (Asteroid) Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Unrecognized as a governing body, the OPA is often accused of outlaw tactics and terrorism. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Though reviews and audience numbers were not all that great, season 3 has already been given the green light.

At the start of season 1 there’s no real star. It’s an ensemble cast.

My main complaint is that the show is too slow. Not much happens. I’m hopeful seasons 2 and 3 will have a little more action.

The Expanse is based on the novel series of the same name by James S. A. Corey, a pen name of the authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who also serve as writers and producers for the show. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes (2011), was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

I’ll definitely be downloading Leviathan Wakes.

Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett

On By Rick McIn books, government1 Comment

The third book (2014) in the Century Trilogy, after Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.

For me it’s the 6th book in his historical fiction series starting chronologically in the 12th century with the Kingsbridge series.

Each of the 6 books got better, I’d say.

I learned a lot. Kennedy and King were critically important for human rights in the USA, yet both were flawed men.

Edge of Eternity tells the story of the third generation of families developed in the first two novels and located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Russia during the height of the Cold War.

The novel’s characters become involved in a number of the most important global events during the period, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the British Invasion, the J.F.K. Administration, Watergate, and the Civil Rights Movement. …


Superb. I’m very sorry to have finished them all.

I MIGHT start over one day.

Click PLAY or watch Ken Follett explaining the book on YouTube.

Ready Player One – book or movie?

On By Rick McIn books, movies1 Comment

I loved the 2011 LitRPG science fiction debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. …

A film adaptation, screenwritten by Cline and Zak Penn and directed by Steven Spielberg, was released on March 29, 2018.

Could Spielberg do justice to the book on film?

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

I saw it on the big screen.

Cheesy. But a good effort, I thought.

Many, many changes were made for the film because HOLLYWOOD. But I was OK with them.

Rotten Tomatoes has it at 73%. That’s about right. It’s OK … but not a must see.

If you are any kind of GAMER, do see it.

The book is excellent. Especially entertaining you were alive in the 1980s to appreciate all the Pop Culture references.

A book sequel is in the works.

Winter of the World by Ken Follett

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The 5th in his series of historical novels. Each one better than the last, I’d say.

I’m keener on history as it approaches my own lifetime.

click for larger version

Winter of the World,  published 2012, is the second book in the Century Trilogy.

Revolving about a family saga that covers the interrelated experiences of American, Russian, German and British families during the 20th century.

The novel follows the second generation of those families, born to the main characters of the first novel, Fall of Giants, and is followed by a generation of those families in the third and final book in the series, Edge of Eternity. …

… the rise of Nazism, the ascent of Franco in Spain, the short-lived growth of British fascism, Action T4, the Battle of Moscow, the Blitz, the Normandy landings, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the development of the atom bomb, the fall of Berlin and many more. The families, spread across four countries, are related to each other though they themselves aren’t often aware of it. …

Always against war, this historical novel reminds me why. War is Hell.

I’ve already downloaded — free as an audio book from the Calgary Public Library —  Edge of Eternity. 

The Comedians (1966) by Graham Greene

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I’ve always wanted to read more Graham Greene. So far ahead of his time that even today his books seem contemporary.

Set in Haiti under the rule of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute, the novel explores the political suppression and terrorism through the figure of an English hotel owner, Brown. …

The book starts on a ship bound for Port-au-Prince.

Three men meet: Brown, Smith and Jones.

That’s very Graham Greene.

My favourite character is Mr. Smith, a US Presidential candidate who ran on the vegetarian ticket in the American election of 1948. He and Mrs. Smith plan to build and operate a vegetarian centre in Haiti.

Of course impoverished Haitians at the time could not afford to eat meat or fish.

That’s very Graham Greene, too. 🙂

The naiveté of generous Americans.

Needless to say, the dictator Papa Doc was not happy when the book was published. His Foreign Affairs office called Greene  “A liar, a cretin, a stool-pigeon… unbalanced, sadistic, perverted… a perfect ignoramus …”

Unfortunately I don’t feel The Comedians is one of his best books. My favourite, so far, is The Power and the Glory.

 

 

Blind Goddess by Anne Holt

On By Rick McIn books, TVLeave a comment

I don’t recommend this book.

It sounded like it would be good. Award winning crime fiction author Anne Holt is a  lawyer and former Minister of Justice of Norway.

Like her Oslo police officer Hanne Wilhelmsen, Holt too is a lesbian.

She obviously writes what she knows.

Blind Goddess (1993) was her first book, not translated to English until many years later. Some say the translation is uninspired. I’m not inspired to read any other of her books.

She’s very popular in Norway. This book was turned into a TV-series in 1997.

About the only character of interest to me is Billy T, a hulking maverick drug squad investigator.

I learned nothing about Norway.

I read this book immediately after a similar murder mystery – In the Woods by Tana French.

Tana French is a much better writer.

 

Hard Luck Hank – Suck My Cosmos

On By Rick McIn books, humourLeave a comment

Book 4 in the hilarious series.

Though Hank was pretty much immobile by the end of book 3, somehow another mutant was able to give him a new body.

 

… Hank’s greatest facet as the series’s hero is how despite the changes that occur all around him, the major shifts in the dynamic of his setting, he remains immovably the same.
Hank is Hank, and will always be Hank.
His character is the (sometimes literally) immovable object around which every major event in the series finds itself orbiting. …
These books might not ever be featured in any overly self-important critic’s list of must-reads or forced on future students of literature as cultural classics, but they’ve certainly earned a place in my personal hall of fame as one of the most thoroughly entertaining reads I’ve ever had the pleasure of burning away free time with. …

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

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This is the 4th historical novel I’ve read from this author. Each one closer to modern day.

Fall of Giants … covers notable events such as World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. …

It’s a big, important book.

England, Russia, Germany, France, USA.

Coal miners, Russian orphans, British, Russian and German aristocrats, the militaries of all those nations.

Woodrow Wilson, Lenin, Trotsky, Churchill …

The main theme is the stupidity and wastefulness of World War I.

He does write great love stories.

I highly recommend these books. Fall of Giants is the best of the fist four, I’d say.

Read a NY Times book review.

 

 

Snow by Orhan Pamuk (2002)

On By Rick McIn books, IslamLeave a comment

Snow (Turkish: Kar) is a novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. Published in Turkish in 2002, it was translated into English by Maureen Freelyand published in 2004.

The story encapsulates many of the political and cultural tensions of modern Turkey and successfully combines humor, social commentary, mysticism, and a deep sympathy with its characters. …

Sounded perfect for me.

But I didn’t finish. Though well written, it was too slow.